A Polish major approached, his English crisp despite the accent. “Sergeant Torres? Major Kowalski, 11th Armored Cavalry Division. I’m your liaison for the transit to Drawsko.”
Torres saluted. “Sir. This is Lieutenant Novak, our platoon leader.”
Kowalski returned the salute, then extended his hand. “Welcome to Poland, gentlemen. Your reputation precedes you — 1st Armor’s finest, yes?”
“We try, sir.” Novak shook hands, finding his command voice.
“Your route is secured. We’ll move in convoy — Polish lead and trail elements, your vehicles in the center. The roads are clear, but…” Kowalski paused. “There have been incidents. Russian sympathizers, mostly graffiti and protests. Nothing serious.”
Yet, Torres thought but didn’t say.
“Distance to Drawsko?” Novak pulled out his own tablet, probably triple-checking the route Torres had already memorized.
“Three hundred twenty kilometers. Five hours with rest stops. Your soldiers are already boarding buses, correct?”
“Yes, sir. They left Ramstein an hour ago.”
Torres’s phone buzzed. It was a text from Sergeant Burke: “Alpha-22 secured. Starting inspection.”
“Excuse me, sirs. I need to check on my crew.”
Torres jogged across the dock, dodging forklifts and cargo nets. The Abrams sat massive and patient, condensation already forming on its composite armor. Burke stood on the front slope, running through his checks.
“How’s she look, Nate?”
“Intact. Some surface rust on the track pins, but nothing major.” Nathan Burke, a Nebraska farm boy turned tanker, knew machinery like some men knew women. “Munoz is checking the bustle rack. Boone’s underneath, inspecting the running gear.”
“Good.” Torres circled the tank, eyes cataloging every bolt and weld. He’d learned to spot trouble before it spotted him. A loose track pin in Romania had nearly cost him his first tank.
“Sergeant Torres!” PFC Munoz appeared from behind the turret. “Permission to ask a question?”
“Ask away.”
Munoz hesitated. “My girl, she says the protests in Warsaw got pretty heated last week. Anti-NATO stuff. Do you think we’re gonna have any problems while we are here?”
Torres considered his answer. Munoz was twenty, from Jacksonville just like him and Maria. He had steady hands on the loader’s controls, but this was his first real deployment.
“Poland invited us, Munoz. Most folks here remember what Russian occupation looks like. A few protesters don’t speak for the whole country.”
Munoz nodded. “Roger, Sergeant. That’s good to know.”
As Munoz returned to work, Torres knew he hadn’t been completely honest with him. He’d listened to the intelligence briefs the S2 had given prior to them leaving Bliss. Pro-Russian and — Chinese information operations were running at full speed across Poland and most of Europe — especially after that incident off the coast of Gotland. The discovery of Chinese naval officers conducting espionage activities from a commercial vessel had really shaken things up in Europe. In addition to regular sabotage against undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, Asia, and the Caribbean, small acts of sabotage were starting to appear at rail junctions and port facilities across major logistic nodes in Europe and even back home. It felt like the world was slowly shifting beneath their feet and they didn’t even know it.
“Hey, Sarge.” Boone emerged from beneath the hull, coveralls already filthy. “Trans is good, but we’re down about two quarts of hydraulic fluid. Looks like normal seepage, but still, there has to be a way to keep it from leaking like that.”
Torres shrugged. He knew how to do regular maintenance on his tank, but he was far from a grease monkey who might know how to solve a problem like that. “Ugh,” he commented. “OK, Boone. Get it topped off before we roll. Burke, you and Munoz check the ammo storage. I want every round secured.”
Torres headed back to where Novak now stood with Major Kowalski and a Polish captain by the name of Piotr Sikoa studying a tablet map.
“—avoid the A1 through Toruń,” Captain Sikora was saying. “There’s construction delays, plus it takes us too close to Kaliningrad.”
“How close?” Novak asked.
“Hundred fifty kilometers at the nearest point.” Kowalski’s expression darkened. “Close enough for those Russian Helios ISR drones or even those new Chinese Winged Dragon high-altitude surveillance drones. We’ve been spotting more of these drones edging Polish airspace as they monitor our ports and the rail and road networks entering from Germany. For an exercise, they sure are conducting a lot of surveillance across much of our country.”
For a moment, no one spoke as the words hung in the salty air. The Russians had always maintained a presence in their Kaliningrad enclave, but the recent arrival of some Chinese units was beginning to cause alarm in Poland and even Germany that this so-called exercise might become something more. The Kaliningrad pocket was strange — a piece of Russia wedged between Poland and Lithuania. The so-called Suwałki Gap was the only thing separating Russia from its proxy Belarus.
“Geez, are these drones armed?” asked Novak.
Kowalski shrugged, his smile not reaching his eyes. “Who knows these days. When they first announced this new military and trade pact, I genuinely thought we might begin to see a period of normalcy with Russia. You know, neighboring countries trading with each other and perhaps moving beyond our past. Now? Who knows what Moscow and Beijing think anymore.”
A horn blast drew their attention. The USNS Fisher was maneuvering into the adjacent berth, her deck stacked with shipping containers. Inside those boxes were four M5 Ripsaw autonomous combat vehicles, the platoon’s new silicon-brained partners.
“Ah!” Kowalski brightened. “Your robots arrive. We are very curious about these systems.”
“You and me both, sir.” Torres had done the training at Fort Bliss, but three weeks wasn’t enough to trust his life to a machine.
Novak’s phone buzzed. He frowned at the screen.
“Problem, LT?” Torres asked.
“Text from Captain Morrison. Third Platoon had an issue clearing German customs. Some paperwork glitch with their Ripsaw’s AI classification.”
“They get it sorted?” Torres pressed.
“Yeah, but they’re twelve hours behind now.” Novak pocketed the phone. “We might be running our validation exercises shorthanded.”
Torres shrugged. In sixteen years, he’d learned that plans were just suggestions. “We’ll adapt.”
The next two hours blurred. Tanks were offloaded, inspected, and fueled. The Ripsaws emerged from their containers like lethal insects — low, angular, bristling with sensors and weapons. Each one cost more than most Americans made in a lifetime.
Torres watched the civilian technicians fuss over Ripsaw Two-One, his platoon’s assigned unit. The thing looked wrong somehow. Tanks had personalities, quirks you learned like a spouse’s moods. The Ripsaw just sat there, cameras swiveling with mechanical precision.
“Creepy, right?” Staff Sergeant Granger appeared beside him, coffee steaming in the cold. “It’s like it’s thinking.”
“It is thinking,” Torres insisted. “That’s the point.”
“Yeah, but thinking what?” asked Granger. He was eight years in and steady as bedrock; he didn’t rattle easy. But the Ripsaw had them all on edge.
“Right now? It’s probably calculating firing solutions on those seagulls,” Torres teased.
Granger laughed, breaking the tension. “As long as it doesn’t mistake us for seagulls.”