“I trust I was convincing,” she said, as they headed down the stairs. “I thought I might actually have managed to raise someone on the outside that time.”
Aliyev shrugged. They came into the main terminal, where commandos were untying the hands of the defenders, while the ‘dead’ defenders were abandoning the pretence and assisting the commandos in freeing their allies. Like soldiers everywhere, there was plenty of bullshitting going on, but the lieutenants in command of the smaller detachments were trying to gather the early results. The referees would tell them just how well they had done, but damn it; Aliyev knew that they had done well! He was proud of his people; it was the ninth time they had played the exercise and they’d won almost all of them.
He glanced at Captain Alexander Vatutin, his second-in-command. “Causalities?”
“We lost twelve men in simulation and four serious injuries in reality,” Vatutin said. He sounded pleased with himself and he had reason to be; the expected loss rate for attacking a defended target with paratroopers was very high. In some of the more aggressive simulations, where the enemy had an entire armoured unit nearby, the loss rate had been total and the game had been lost. “Sergeant Ulya Kozlina is the worst; he broke both legs and several ribs.”
“Have a medic see to him and the others,” Aliyev ordered shortly. “Any news on why the exercise was discontinued so rapidly?”
“That would be me,” a voice said, from behind him. Aliyev almost jumped; he was a trained Spetsnaz commando, with an almost supernatural awareness of the area around him, and the voice’s owner had slipped up behind him. He turned sharply, taking in the uniform and the badges that marked a former Spetsnaz officer, and saluted sharply; it wouldn’t do to irritate the President’s most trusted officer.
“General Shalenko,” he said. The General returned his salute. Shalenko had been an officer in the Spetsnaz himself for a while, before transferring to the combined arms sections following an injury while taking part in a dangerous antiterrorist mission. “Welcome to Airport One.”
“Your men did well,” Shalenko said. “The referees are still counting beans, but I think that you will be declared the undisputed winner of the contest.”
Aliyev laughed at the dry tone in his voice. The Russians knew, better than the Americans, that it wasn’t body counts that were important, but victory. If Aliyev had lost half of his force and taken the airport, he would have won; if he had saved his force, but been driven away from the airport, he would have lost.
“Still, there are other matters at hand,” Shalenko continued. “If you would care to pass over command to your second and come with me…?”
Aliyev followed him outside, into the cold morning air. Airport One was a giant simulation of an airport, built to allow the interior to be continuously revised and allow the defending force considerable advantages. Aliyev was certain that he could have held the airport with his paratrooper force alone, assuming that he had had a few days to prepare the defences; a handful of mines alone would have made the task of the attack much harder. The Spetsnaz used it to prepare antiterrorist operations, or at least that was the official explanation; their recent operations suggested something else.
They were going to war.
“This room has been secured,” Shalenko informed him, as they passed a set of guards and entered a secure room. Paranoia didn’t just run in the FSB, it galloped; there was hardly anything in the room that could conceal an electronic surveillance device. It was almost like a prison; no television, no computers, no radios… nothing. The cold hard benches reminded Aliyev of his early days in the Russian Army. “We can talk freely.”
“I see,” Aliyev said carefully. If he were in trouble for something, Shalenko wouldn’t bother coming out from Moscow to scream at him in person; one of his minions could do that. The odds were vastly in favour of this being good news.
Shalenko seemed to read his thoughts. “How would you rate the performance of your brigade just now?”
Aliyev didn’t hesitate. “We are ready for anything,” he said, and meant it. The unit was oversized for a reason; they could soak up training accidents and move on. It was the sort of attitude that had kept them in business even though the dark years of Yeltsin. “Do I assume that you have a mission for us?”
Shalenko clasped his arm. “This is ultra-classified information,” he warned. “If you breath more than you are permitted to breath, you will be shot in the head; understand?” Aliyev nodded. “On the 1st of June, we will go to war with Europe.”
Aliyev stared at him. “Yes,” Shalenko said, understanding his concern. It wouldn’t be the first time that a Spetsnaz unit had been put through hell, or deliberately misinformed for political reasons, but Shalenko seemed deadly serious. “All of the training that your unit and almost every other unit stationed in European Russia and Belarus has been angled towards this moment.”
“I see,” Aliyev said finally. It made a lot of sense; they had attacked Airport One so many times now, so many different scenarios, so much that he had wondered if there was a motive behind it besides simple sadism. “Our mission, then, is to seize an airport?”
“Szczecin-Goleniów Airport, otherwise known as ‘Solidarność,” Shalenko said. He pulled a small CD-ROM out of his pocket and passed it over to Aliyev. “That is all the information we can gather about it, reviewed by me personally, and the overall details of the plan that we have spent five years putting together, reviewing, updating, and finally implementing. We slipped as much as we could of Szczecin-Goleniów into Airport One; taking the airport is important to allow us to establish a presence in western Poland as quickly as possible and deter the Germans from trying anything clever. There are details in the CD, but one possibility is that the European forces in Poland will attempt to retreat into Germany; it might be a good idea not to let that happen.”
“Of course, sir,” Aliyev said. He paused. “What about the other airports in Poland?”
“All of them will be targeted,” Shalenko assured him. “If everything goes to plan, you should only have to hold out for a couple of days at most before we manage to place an armoured force into the area from the sea, or a little longer from the east. The enemy should be heavily confused — we have a number of operations going to give the Germans and Poles other problems to worry about — and you may not be attacked for hours or at all.”
Aliyev studied the map for a long moment. “That’s quite close to Berlin,” he observed. “Will we be advancing on the city?”
“Perhaps,” Shalenko said. He met Aliyev’s eyes. “I have been in your shoes, Colonel; your main concern here is to secure the airport for us to fly in supplies and equipment to you. Unless you get very lucky and capture a lot of Polish tanks, we don’t expect you to do more than hold the airport until relieved.”
He held up a hand. “It’s not an insult, Colonel,” he said. “Russia needs your young men too much to simply throw them away.”
“I know, sir,” Aliyev said. He felt real excitement spinning through him… and a desire to even the score a little. Some of Russia’s worst enemies would never have taken up arms against them, were it not for Europe; some of the Chechen leaders whose forces he had fought and defeated had taken up residence in Paris, well out of Russia’s reach… or were they? “I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t,” Shalenko said. He tapped the map thoughtfully. “I don’t expect you to secure the city either, but I do expect you to behave yourselves; we don’t need to make either the Poles or the Germans think that they’re doomed under our rule, understand?”