by Peter Nealen
In fact, we needed at least two entirely separate extract plans—one with and one without Landau. And the one without had to assume that we’d been compromised, and had therefore elicited hostile attention.
That was hard enough without any on-the-ground reconnaissance. Without knowing what assets we were going to have available, it got worse.
Of course, while we were still hoping for a charter flight that would let us bring in weapons, getting into a firefight in Copenhagen meant mission failure. We were hardly going to make it out if that happened; if we survived, we were probably going to end up in prison for a long, long time, without any possibility of rescue anytime soon. Copenhagen is on the island of Zealand; there’s no way to E&E overland.
We had contingencies in mind, and we kept coming up with new ones. We’d even located several marinas where we might buy or “tactically acquire” a boat. Those weren’t just last-ditch plans in case things went loud, either.
There was no way to know for sure what was going to happen once we got on the ground. We had precious little reliable intel, and so we didn’t know exactly what kind of opposition we were looking at, never mind what other kind of everyday, mundane obstacles we might have to deal with. We were mostly using what remained of the Internet, and that was always a little suspect.
And that was leaving aside Landau’s reaction to our overtures, and what kind of response that might elicit from the locals. Or anyone else who was watching her.
We were down to arguing about which way to go if things went bad on the way out of Aalborg University when Hartrick showed up to the team house with a visitor.
While we might have devoted most of our concentration to the problem at hand, we were all still sort of watching the door with half an eye. Some of that was training. Some of it was experience. We’d spent far too much time in hostile environments. Every one of us had developed a degree of paranoia that probably wouldn’t be healthy in the long-term, but it also meant we were constantly aware of our surroundings. Just in case.
So, Hartrick didn’t catch us by surprise. When he knocked on the doorframe, all eyes were already on him, and the back and forth as to whether or not to go straight to the marina off Peter Holms Vej, or try to lose any hostiles in the neighborhood and back streets of Valby, was stilled.
“You guys can be a little scary sometimes.” Hartrick didn’t seem too bothered, but the man behind him was watching us with a furrowed brow. Hartrick jerked a thumb toward him. “Ivar probably thinks you guys have trail cameras pointed at the door.”
I stood up. “Just a matter of paying attention.” I studied our newcomer. He looked younger than any of us, and kind of soft. Pale, blond, and skinny, he had delicate features that almost made him look a little girlish, despite the faint fuzz of a wispy mustache. “Is this our guide?”
Hartrick nodded, as the young man stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “Ivar Stenberg. I am a professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. I often travel to Copenhagen to give talks, in the same department where Ms. Landau gives her presentations, as a matter of fact. And I am due to give such a talk the same week as Ms. Landau will be there. So, I have offered to help make contact with her.” He had a firm grip, and while he might have been slightly surprised at our vigilance in what was supposed to be a safe area, the guy obviously wasn’t so intimidated as to shrink away from the dangerous knuckle draggers.
“What brings you in on this?” Jordan sounded a little suspicious, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. We’d run into some sketchy people working behind the lines already during this war, people who were not only playing a dangerous game with the EDC, but didn’t always have the guts to go all the way through with it.
“I’ve been a member of a loose network of people who have been, shall we say, dissatisfied with the direction Europe has been taking since the 1990s.” I was pretty sure Stenberg hadn’t been alive in the ‘90s, but then, I’d been a little kid back then, myself. “We have been watching the unfolding situation closely since Slovakia flared up, and I believe that I now have an opportunity to help make things better.”
“Great.” Jordan still wasn’t convinced. “Another Euro activist. Well, I hope you work out better than the last couple we’ve dealt with.”
I shot Jordan a glance. Not that he was wrong, but a little more tact was probably called for. But if Stenberg was offended, he didn’t show it. He just smiled and spread his hands.
“I hope so. Believe me, I have about as low an opinion of most of our activists as you do. Most of them are leftists, after all.”
That raised some eyebrows. “You’re a professor in a Scandinavian university, and you’re not?” Reuben sounded skeptical. He wasn’t the only one.
But Stenberg just smiled wider. “I believe the term you use in America is ‘The Long March Through the Institutions?’ Well, that can go both ways.” He sobered a little. “It has not always been easy. I have had to hide my thoughts and compromise far more than I might have liked over the years. Fortunately, academic language has become so convoluted and meaningless in many areas that I’ve been able to mostly ‘fly under the radar,’ as you say.”
“So, you know Aalborg University and Copenhagen fairly well?” Scott got down to brass tacks.
“Very well. I also know Gritta Landau well enough that I can approach her without her getting too annoyed. She does not usually welcome small talk after she gives a lecture. She is quite standoffish much of the time.” He looked around for a chair, and Hartrick pointed him to an empty cot. My cot, as it turned out. Hartrick himself was leaning against the doorjamb, declining to comment.
“That’s not all I can offer, either.” He rubbed his hands together as he sat down. This guy was obviously enjoying the cloak and dagger stuff a little too much. “I believe you have a problem with commercial airliners putting some…constraints on what equipment you can bring, not to mention the fact that I expect your arrival will be logged and all of your faces and identities scanned. I can help with that, as well.”
“I thought you were a professor,” David said, leaning back on one elbow and eyeing him narrowly. “You a spymaster on the side, too?”
Stenberg laughed. “In a way, I am. I have been running conservative activist groups in Sweden, of all places, since I was seventeen. And not the Anders Breivik sort, either, though the authorities have seen fit more often than not to lump us in with those racist psychopaths.” He sobered, and anger smoldered in his eyes.
I had to say, Stenberg was not quite what I expected for a Swedish academic.
“But that has nothing to do with what I can offer here. I come from a rather well-to-do family. We have our own private jet, and I regularly use it to commute back and forth from Gothenburg to Copenhagen. It will carry all of you, and we can get any equipment you need in that way. I also have a flat where you can stay until it is time to make contact.”
I frowned. There were a few questions that immediately came to mind. “What about Customs? You are still coming from a foreign country.”
He grinned again. “While you might consider the European Union defunct, technically it still exists, though ruled by the European Defense Council. Most of the Scandinavian countries—except for Norway—are still pretending that everything will go back to normal soon. So, just flying from Sweden to Copenhagen is like crossing the border between two of your states in America.”
“At least the way it used to be.” Tony’s murmured words put a further damper on spirits in the room.
“At any rate, there will be no inspection, no Customs to clear. We will have to lie a little, but I like to consider it more of a lie of omission. We simply won’t tell them how many passengers are aboard.” Stenberg shrugged. “They have more important things to worry about. There was another riot around Nørrebro just the other day.”
I still had a lot of questions, and I glanced at Hartrick. I wasn’t sure exactly where this guy was coming from, or who had already made a decision that my complaints or co
ncerns weren’t going to sway. I really wished that he’d come to talk to us before bringing Stenberg in. We were going to have some words, later.
Hartrick, for his part, had shoved off the jamb and was standing with his arms folded. “I know there’s a lot more planning that needs to happen—and you shouldn’t necessarily be in here for it, Mr. Stenberg. We’ll be getting into some things you don’t need to know.”
To his credit, Stenberg simply nodded his understanding and stood up. “I know that we are on a short timeline. I will have the plane ready to go whenever you need, though I have to be in Copenhagen within three days.” He nodded to each of us and left, clearly a little more uncomfortable at the blank, icy stares that followed him.
The door shut behind him, and Hartrick turned to me. “I know, Matt. Just remember, we’re not on our own for this.”
I pointed out the door, where Stenberg had disappeared. “Somebody really wants us to rely on one dude for insert, security on the ground, and infil? Let’s see, how many ways can that go wrong? Oh, yeah. Most of them!” I shook my head angrily. “Don’t get me wrong, he seems like an okay guy, and he’s got guts. I assume he’s been vetted?” Hartrick nodded solemnly. “Well, at least there’s that. But if he’s been politically active for as long as he says he has been, he’s got to be on somebody’s list. If he’s being watched…”
“We’ve been assured that he’s been careful enough that he isn’t considered high-profile enough to be under surveillance. You’ll have to step carefully, though. There’s a first time for everything, and most of our intel assets in Denmark are about as advanced as the open-source stuff you’ve been using for planning so far.” He sat down where Stenberg had been sitting. “I know it’s less than ideal, but we’re stuck with a short timeline and limited options.” He looked around at us. “We really don’t have any indicators that Stenberg’s compromised. He’s smart. He really has been laying low and being subtle about his activism. He doesn’t show up on any target lists we know about, and believe me, we’ve been looking.”
I still didn’t like it, but like he’d said, we were working on a short timeline with less-than-ideal conditions. If I was being honest, I thought the whole mission was a wild goose chase. Trying to replace the EDC with a “nicer” EDC didn’t seem to me like it was going to work all that well. But the powers that be wanted a quick, clean solution that didn’t cost that much and returned things as much to the status quo as possible.
Someone should have told them that there was no going back to the status quo after the EDC had employed terrorists to attack our peacekeepers’ FOBs and then cleaned up with artillery and aerial bombardment.
But the mission was the mission, and Colonel Santiago hadn’t told us to go handle shit on our own yet.
We got back to planning.
***
We hadn’t had a lot of down time, but I found enough to get out in town with Scott. Gutierrez’s orders that no Triarius was to go anywhere alone were still in effect.
Scott was just along for the ride, though. I had a very specific destination in mind.
St. Barbara’s Church was where I usually went to Mass on Sundays—when I could. It wasn’t a Sunday, and the time was wrong for daily Mass, but I wanted to go in and pay a visit anyway.
And there was another reason to be there, too.
I pulled up to the curb and looked at Scott, who was unbuckling his seatbelt. “You coming in?”
“Sure. I’m not Catholic, but the times seem to be good ones to get right with the Lord.” He grinned a little. “Besides, you might need a chaperone, later.”
I punched him and he laughed as we got out. I looked around the street, in front of the towering brick church that had been rebuilt in the ‘50s after being obliterated during the Second World War.
I turned toward the corner just as a beautiful young woman with dark hair came around and saw me.
Klara Mikolajczak’s face lit up with a smile that gave me a jolt of adrenaline, and then she ran up and threw her arms around me. I held her close for a moment, then she kissed me on the cheek. I returned it. Klara was every bit as Catholic as me—though I hadn’t always been. She wouldn’t let it go farther than that, particularly not on the street in front of the church.
We’d actually met on that very street, after Mass. And in the months since, during the brief times we’d gotten to spend together, we’d gotten close.
Scott was grinning from ear to ear. Klara just smiled back at him, her arms still around my neck. “Hello, Scott.” Most of the rest of the team had gotten to meet her at some point, and Tony was still dating her friend and roommate, Inga.
“Hi, Klara.” He tilted his head toward the church. “Shall we?”
Klara and I disengaged ourselves except to hold hands, and we headed inside.
***
Later, we walked through the park together. Scott had gone back to the car after we’d left the church, letting us have some privacy.
I’d gotten quiet again. And Klara, sharp as she was, had picked up on it. “You’re going to have to go again, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Might be quick. Might be for a while.” I couldn’t say more than that.
She wouldn’t ask, though. Klara was a schoolteacher by trade, but she’d jumped into the “Polish Fortress Doctrine” that we’d started working on with gusto. She was a volunteer at the local hospital now, and she’d helped the church take necessary supplies to people who needed them during the winter. She was looking for other ways to help, too. “When do you leave? Or can you tell me that?”
I shook my head. “Can’t really say. It depends on a couple of things that are out of our control, anyway.”
She squeezed my hand and leaned into my shoulder. “I understand.” She kissed me on the cheek again. “I will pray for you until you get back.” She hesitated, and looked down for a moment, before peering up at me hesitantly.
I raised my eyebrows. “What?”
She bit her lip. “My father wants to meet you.”
Hoo boy. “Does he, now?”
She nodded. “Yes. And I think you should come and meet him when you get back.”
I blew out a deep breath. It was a hell of a step. And we hadn’t known each other for all that long.
All the same…
War has a way of focusing you on the important things. In combat, the important thing is staying alive and keeping your buddies alive. In between, though, it got different.
Maybe I was letting my emotions get away from me. But right then, I didn’t really care. I could be dead in a month.
“Then when I get back, we’ll go see him.”
Chapter 6
Stenberg hadn’t been lying; his family was well-off. Their private jet, an Embraer Legacy 500, was swank. It wasn’t big, but the interior was all dark faux wood and cream-colored leather. The seats were plush, and each one had plenty of leg room. They could even recline all the way back.
I don’t think I’d ever flown on a plane that nice.
We each had a civilian suitcase that we’d bought in Gdansk. Luggage had been surprisingly hard to find. Supply chains into Poland were damned thin, and not just for military supplies. Consumer goods had one way of coming in, and that was through Gdansk. And needless to say, the flow of goods into Gdansk, with the Russian Baltic Sea Fleet sitting offshore, had slowed to a trickle.
Each suitcase had been mostly filled with weapons and gear. We’d brought some regular living stuff; a change of clothes, hygiene gear, that sort of thing. I even had a book in there, and I was pretty sure Scott did, too. This wasn’t a greenside patrol. We were traveling under civilian cover, and that meant we had to stay clean-cut and blend in.
As much as a bunch of knuckle-dragging killers like us ever could.
We filed onto the plane, several of the team looking around appreciatively. Stenberg was already aboard, standing near the cockpit to welcome us.
“I didn’t think you would want to put your equipment down in t
he hold.” He pointed toward the rear of the aircraft. “There is not much room, and we might have to rearrange things for weight purposes, but we can put your bags here in the main compartment.”
I nodded. We didn’t necessarily need to have our stuff right at hand. All the pre-mission prep had essentially already been done. We could reach in, grab our Rattlers, flip the stocks open, load ‘em, and go to work in a matter of seconds. Everything was ready to go. But I could appreciate the sentiment.
And I wasn’t going to tell our contact everything, either.
I grabbed the first seat next to the door, and found a spot next to it to wedge my bag. It would have fit better if it had been a duffel or rucksack, but we had what we could get. And most of the duffels we could have used would have looked a little too overtly military.
The rest of the team spread out down the length of the plane. The Legacy 500 only seated twelve, but there were only eight of us. Arkadiusz had stayed back, though he was still acting as a Triarii liaison. He hadn’t been happy about leaving the team. He’d started to feel like one of us, and we’d accepted him as such. But his command also wasn’t happy with the mission. There had apparently been some words exchanged between the Poles and the Americans over the desired endstate. The Poles, understandably, wanted the EDC burned to the ground and the national governments left to sort things out by themselves. I had to agree with the Poles on that, but I wasn’t making policy.
I was just being paid to expedite it.
That thought bothered me, as I buckled myself into the seat and the rest of the team got situated. We were Triarii. We had been formed because “policy” was openly destructive. Because people were being killed and their livelihoods destroyed without those sworn to protect them lifting a finger. And I couldn’t help but see a bit of a parallel here.