Pop. Laska shot him in the neck from behind. The silenced weapon’s sound was too loud for the two Poles’ tastes. Bombel pulled out his Glock and trained it on the door. Laska slowly opened it for him, and Bombel went in to look down the stairwell. He went down two stories as silently as his adrenaline-rush and his military boots allowed. He was satisfied to find no one accompanying the sniper.
Their intelligence had been correct. Contrary to their usual doctrine, snipers detached for the Russia Day celebrations worked alone and not in the usual two- or three-man teams.
When Bombel came back up, his comrade had already pulled off the helmet from the Russian’s head and rinsed it out with water from the dead man’s canteen. He also took off the Russian’s uniform and made a quick, sloppy effort to wash out the blood on the front. He pointed Bombel to the uniform and body armor on the gravel. Then, he pulled the lifeless body, now only wearing his striped undershirt and pants, a few yards to the right and rolled it below the large air condition vents.
Meanwhile, Bombel had done his best to hide the traces of the carnage. He had turned over the bloody gravel and covered the tracks the dragging of the body had left.
✽✽✽
“The weather’s nice, isn’t it,” Lyuba said as the two women sat down on a bench in the embassy’s park. Both held their heads in the general direction of the sun, eyes closed.
“It is,” Agnieszka replied. “Do you normally celebrate Russia Day in any way?” She turned her head and looked at Lyuba’s face.
“As I said, I’m from Minsk.” The SVR officer stayed in character. She did not open her eyes or turn her head. “I don’t care much for Russia Day,” she added with a lazy voice. That was the actually the truth. While she did care for Russia, she had absolutely no feelings for this artificial holiday commemorating the day that the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic had declared her sovereignty from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Neither the RSFSR, nor the USSR, existed anymore. Both had been dysfunctional from corruption and the paralysis an irrational ideology produced among the population. The Russian Federation she served was not her idea of an ideal country either, but it was the one country she had.
✽✽✽
The crosshairs of the Zeiss telescopic sight were centered on the middle man of a row of soldiers saluting the Russian defense minister. Startsev had just walked up the stairs onto the white-blue-and-red decorated grandstand.
“In position, eyes on target,” Bombel whispered from under the Russian helmet. He had also donned the dead sniper’s uniform jacket and body armor. On his left arm, he wore a white-and-red armband with a Polish white eagle and the Kotwica, the symbol of the Territorial Defense Force.
“Copy that, notifying group,” Laska whispered from below the gray blanket he had fixed to the parapet on one side. To air surveillance, he would be almost invisible, and Bombel would look like the sniper detached to this position.
In the meantime, Bombel also had faked radio transmissions by the Russian to other snipers on other roofs and tsentr, the comms center, until one by one also these other snipers had been replaced by TDF soldiers. Luckily, the sniper’s call sign had been taped to his radio. He had held the mic far away from his mouth and the wind had distorted his voice enough so that nobody noticed the difference. Fortunately, the Russian he had picked up during a semester in St. Petersburg had also held up to the task.
A chirp came from under the blanket. Laska looked at the display of his sturdy smartphone. “Fire at will,” he relayed the orders. He knew what would happen as soon as Bombel fired the first shot of the day. He crossed himself and put on his white-and-red armband.
✽✽✽
Gleb Yevgenievich Startsev felt glorious. That morning, he had come to Warsaw in the president’s plane, a highly modified Ilyushin Il-96, a very luxurious ride. His girlfriend had been very impressed, and during the short two-hour flight she had insisted on using the very comfortable leather sofas in the forward meeting room to join the mile-high club.
Now, just after noon, he was standing on the right end of the grandstand below the fabulous Stalin-era highrise. Russian tanks were lined up before the grandstand on the vast parade ground. Russian soldiers on a day’s leave, over 12,000 of them, applauded the minister as he looked around and waved. The plan was that he walk the row of soldiers, pin a medal to their chest, and afterward give a short speech in honor of the brave men who took Warsaw in just one day.
Ambassador Kedrov was at his side in his new function as civilian high commissioner for Russian-occupied Poland.
✽✽✽
“Middle man coming up next,” Laska said from behind his binoculars still hiding under the blanket. A Russian chopper could be heard in the distance, Laska made it out circling the office buildings beyond Centralna station, one and a half clicks away. “Bandit is out of reach, we are good to go,” he said.
✽✽✽
Startsev had taken his time talking to the sergeant major with the bulky frame. The name had stood out in the reports that had reached him. He was one of GRU’s best, he had hunted down the four Poles in Luhansk, been in the action taking Chopin airport and then apprehended the first daughter. His contribution to the success they celebrated today was outstanding. Startsev shook the man’s colossal hand very long and praised his skill and dedication.
Sergeant Major Sergei Ivanovich Krug of the Spetsnaz GRU, codenamed Shashka, accepted the powerful man’s praise with a neutral expression. He returned to gazing forward when the minister moved on to the man to his right, and he was done shaking the sweaty, fish-like hand of the ambassador.
The minister had just lifted the medal to the next soldier’s chest when a fine red mist sprayed over Shashka’s face and uniform followed by a deafening crack. The minister fell on his back, the explosion of his face pushed the body over. He was dead even before the remainder of his head hit the floor.
The sergeant on Shashka’s right held his blood-gushing chest, dropped to his knees and died.
The ambassador lay flat on his belly within a split-second. He looked around in panic and decided to crawl over to the granite balustrade and hide behind the massive stones.
Immediately, Krug scanned the surrounding roofs. His best guess was the Aco’tel diagonally across. He ran forward and jumped off the grandstand onto the T-14 below. He pulled the driver up through the hatch by the uniform collar.
That moment, his peripheral vision caught multiple flashes on the roof of Galeria Centralna. He looked up and realized that the pinpricks of light coming at him and the tank column were RPGs. He dropped the driver and jumped back up behind the granite balustrade. He landed on top of the screaming ambassador.
The rocket-propelled grenades were destroyed by the tanks’ ERA, explosive reactive armor, just before impact. The massive explosions shook the earth. Shashka’s ears rang, and he had to shake off a slight dizziness.
He looked up over the balustrade through the smoke. He jumped down on the tank again and pulled the same conscript up through the driver’s hatch.
“Do you carry live ammunition?” He shouted.
“Yes, Comrade,” the scared young man answered. He tried hard to keep inside his armored vehicle where even the direct hit of an RPG could hardly harm him.
Sergeant Major Krug pointed at the sand-colored highrise. “Load and fire at the hotel roof!”
The turret turned and fired. The tank made a hump backward. The 125 mm round hit the top floor of the hotel and ripped a ten-yard-wide hole into the wall and sent up a cloud of smoke and dust.
“Order the other tanks to fire at the roofs of that building,” Shashka shouted at the conscript again.
Turrets turned and fired wildly at the shopping center’s roof.
A surface-to-air missile hit the surveillance helicopter as it raced toward the explosions on the ground. The hulk of burning metal tipped sideways and crashed into a line of buses parked at the Palace of Culture’s south entrance.
The so
ldiers from the audience ran off in all directions. Snipers from roofs of various surrounding highrises, unnoticed in the general chaos, picked Russian officers like cherries.
From the Palace Hotel on Aleje Jerozolimskie, automatic fire rained down on the panicking mass of men as they were desperately looking for cover.
The crew of a GAZ Tigr at the rondo Dmowskiego checkpoint tried to find the right angle to engage the shooters in the nearby Palace Hotel. The private working the Kord 12.7 mm heavy machine gun took a rough aim and put a whole belt into the first-floor windows from which the muzzle flashes had come. The entire front of the hotel was riddled with holes, the frames of most windows had been smashed, some fell out of the wall and dropped down on the street below. He struggled to fit the next belt in when an RPG hit the Tigr and tipped the heavy vehicle over. The screaming and cursing private crawled out of the hatch. His hair was on fire, ribbons of skin dangled from his burnt face as he ran off towards the Aco’tel.
✽✽✽
Lyuba could not scream, it all went too fast. A gloved right hand covered her mouth from behind, and a man’s left arm pulled her over the backrest of the bench and through a hedge.
Agnieszka startled at first, but she noticed the white-and-red armband on the man’s arm. She hopped across the backrest and struggled through the thick hedge.
Lyuba kicked and tried to twist out of the Territorial’s tight grip.
A second soldier jammed a needle into the woman’s neck, and the injection incapacitated her instantly. The Polish soldiers tied Lyuba’s hands behind her back with black zip ties and covered her mouth with a strip of duct tape.
“Oskar, nice to meet you, Pani Agnieszko,” the man took off the glove and offered his right hand.
Agnieszka shook it with a slightly puzzled expression on her face. “Nice to meet you, too,” she said.
“We need to find your father, do you know where he is?” Oskar ended the niceties and went down to business.
Twenty-Seven
Agnieszka gave the two Polish operators a quick download of what she knew. It was not much. She had seen her father last at the steps leading up to the guest quarters. He was not on the embassy’s guest floor. She had shouted out the windows often enough during the past nights, he would have answered or at least tried to give her a sign somehow.
Agnieszka pointed at the passed out woman. “She’s SVR, maybe she knows something. Just don’t hurt her, she was good to me,” the first daughter pleaded in favor of her minder.
Oskar nodded to the other soldier. “Kuba, we need her awake.”
Kuba slightly slapped the SVR officer’s cheek. She was unconscious. He pulled off the duct tape, took a pen-shaped thing out of his small backpack and rammed it into her thigh.
“Don’t! I said, don’t hurt her, kurwa no,” Agnieszka hissed between her gritted teeth and banged her fists against the soldier’s shoulder.
Lyuba’s body jerked as much as her ties allowed, she opened her mouth wide like a fish, her eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets. She gasped as if it were her first and her last breath at the same time. She was still not able to scream, she needed her breath more to feed oxygen into her body.
The soldier now kneeling half on top of her let her cough and rolled her to the side. Then he rolled her back, and put his hand on her mouth.
He looked into her eyes and spoke in a soft but very firm voice. “Listen carefully, girl. You may live if you help us find the president. Otherwise, we put your lights out again and dump you headfirst into the fountain. You’ll be dead within a minute. Nobody will save you. Take a moment, think, and make your decision.”
“Lyuba, please, I don’t want them to kill you,” Agnieszka pleaded with tears in her eyes. She was not at all comfortable with what was happening around her, but she understood that time was of the essence to liberate her father.
Lyuba still had too little oxygen in her brains to be her usual self. A small fight erupted inside her mind. The trained part of her, the SVR officer, shouted fuck you. The unspoken words echoed in her head. The person part of her whispered what the heck, I don’t owe anybody anything, might as well tell them in response.
“My best guess is the basement. I’ve never been there, but I overheard some grunts bitch about having to empty some stinking bucket twice a day.” Lyuba had decided to listen to the gentle, human voice in her head and dismiss the mechanic demon who now cursed and screamed and called her a traitor.
“Thank you,” Agnieszka whispered with tears streaming down her cheeks.
✽✽✽
The sun shone through a few fluffy white clouds over Poznań’s Stary Rynek, the old town square. Normally, on a warm June day like this, the square would be bustling with tourists, college students sitting in the sun with a beer and their books, and young women taking a rest from their shopping. This day, the beautifully restored houses were mostly quiet, the patios of the cafés and bars all around the square empty. Folded chairs and tables rested against the walls of the closed establishments.
A few beer and sausage stands were set up in front of the Arsenal Art Gallery. They were all green, the color of the local brewery. From afar the scene resembled a festivity like so many others on the former market. From up close, the scenery was quite odd. Instead of young women, the beer stands were manned by Russian conscripts who poured beer from taps into pint-sized plastic cups. The customers, too, were exclusively Russian soldiers. Polish service crews simply failed to show up for the Russia Day celebrations, and the remaining local population went about their business, mostly in other parts of town.
Since about ten a.m. the Russians had been drinking and celebrating. With little to no official program, they simply did as they felt. They drank, they sang, they danced to Russian techno music coming from Bluetooth speakers. Two hours later, at noon, most of the soldiers, including NCOs and officers, were drunk. They started eating the partly charred kiełbasa grilled by equally drunken privates.
Like on cue, dozens of first-floor windows flew open on the south side of the square and automatic fire rained down on the partying Russian soldiers. Few realized what hit them when the bullets whizzed through the canvas roofs of the beer stands.
In each of the windows stood two Territorials. One emptied the AK-74 onto the beer stands while the other held a second rifle out to him, locked and loaded. As soon as the magazine was empty, they swapped rifles.
Hardly any of the Russians were armed. In fact, the chief of the garrison had thought it would be a good idea not to mix alcohol and guns. Only two dozen Voennaya Politsiya, military police, with small arms were present. Five minutes were enough for hundreds of thousands of rounds to be fired.
✽✽✽
Oberleutnant Schröder walked into General Hartmut Rauschenberg’s office with a completely white face. “Herr Generalinspekteur, I could not overlook what you were doing with these forms. I came in early and made a quick overview for myself. During the last three days, you have moved more materiel back and forth than during the last three years. Everything with a ready status is moving to the east, every piece of Schrott west. You have enough Armed Weapons Carriers and tanks in Brandenburg to invade Poland. On top of that, you have moved decommissioned RPGs and explosives to low-security depots when they should be in high security. What is happening?”
“Schröder, you are smart, that’s why I wanted you here, but some things I cannot share with you.” The general had grown very fond of the sharp-minded officer over time, but he had trouble trusting anyone at the moment. It did not feel right to brush her off like that.
“No, the reason why I’m here instead of talking to the Militärischer Abschirmdienst is that up until now I had held you in the highest esteem. You were my role model. I need to know, or else, we both will be going to the MAD director together. Right now.”
She trembled, Rauschenberg could not fail to notice. He thought for a split-second what he could do to shut her up. But right there, in the middle of the defense ministr
y, with hundreds of soldiers working in the building, there was no use in trying anything. He had to take a leap of faith and trust the young officer he had chosen as his assistant just a year earlier.
Whatever would happen next, the MAD, Militärischer Abschirmdienst, Bundeswehr’s military intelligence, were the last people he wanted to get involved right now.
✽✽✽
“Good enough for me,” Oskar said after he had thought a few moments about Lyuba’s hunch as to where the Polish president may be held. He looked around.
All his squad members nodded in agreement, so did Agnieszka. Kuba applied a fresh strip of duct tape to Lyuba’s mouth and put his fingertip to his lips. The still dizzy woman nodded briefly, let her head sink back on the ground, and closed her eyes.
The rumble of distant explosions made Oskar pause for a second. Their mission was just on time.
“Pani Agnieszko, you go out the back with this man, he will take you a waiting car on ulica Spacerowa.” Oskar said and gestured toward a sergeant who held up his gloved hand.
Agnieszka nodded, got up, and they left.
Oskar pushed a button on his smartphone. “Basement, high probability, engage in 30 seconds,” he whispered. Then he gestured to Kuba and the rest of the squad to get ready to move.
The U-shape of the building would make them targets from all sides, but making it across these thirty yards was the most important advance of the war to this day. Either they made it and they might become heroes, or they didn’t and their wives would be widows.
Oskar stood silently, looking at the face of his handmade Polpora watch, a gift from his wife Liliana for his promotion to captain in the Territorials. It had a white-and-red band following the northern horizon and a red number 1918 printed next to the nine o’clock position. The piece was a limited commemorative edition honoring 100 years of Polish independence. The small dial above the six o’clock ticked faintly, the seconds passed, 27, 28, 29.
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