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  “We leave tomorrow morning.”

  Paulina let out a groan. “Tomorrow? But why? What’s so different about the Russians in Belarus this time compared to all the other times?”

  “Dunno, girl. All I know is that I have an art history paper due as soon as school starts again in January, and I haven’t even started on it. This really sucks.” She looked up with a smile. “I guess I’ll get more time to study, although I’ll be doing it squatting in some muddy trench.”

  Paulina reached back over the counter, struggling to grab her purse, which was tucked onto a shelf with a row of coffee syrups. She retrieved her phone and saw she’d received four calls and thirteen texts. As she began scrolling through them Urszula said, “I’ll save you the trouble. We’re to muster at Centralna at six a.m. We’re being bused south somewhere.”

  Paulina looked off into space. “My boss is gonna literally freak out.”

  She had studied for a year at Warsaw University, just like her best friend, but she’d dropped out the previous spring because she hadn’t been focused enough to keep her grades up. Since then she’d worked for the coffee chain, both here in the Old Town and at another location, in the Centralna train station.

  She thought she might make assistant manager before too long, and while drawing espressos all day wasn’t exactly Paulina’s dream career, she figured she’d stick it out while she decided what to do with her life.

  And she had also joined the Territorial Defense Force, the national civilian militia. She had friends in the group, Urszula included. It seemed cool, and she was aware of her patriotic duty, even if she didn’t give a damn about politics, guns, or the scratchy, ill-fitting uniforms.

  And joining the TDF meant an extra four hundred zlotys a month. A hundred bucks U.S. a dozen times a year would help Paulina buy a used car before long, and if she were honest with herself, she’d acknowledge that this was the main reason for her service.

  But she sure as hell hadn’t joined up to deploy during Christmas.

  The Territorial Defense Force was most definitely “military light.” Paulina served two weekends a month, training with her company in camps just outside of Warsaw or in high school gymnasiums around the city. Often the training would amount to little more than exercise, marching, and watching films produced by the Polish Land Forces about how to operate weapons, including some weapons Paulina had yet to even see in person.

  An actual mobilization of Paulina’s unit had seemed unreal for the past year, even in the last week, when other Polish paramilitary units had been getting call-ups in different parts of the country in response to Russia’s war games in neighboring Belarus.

  No one in her group, least of all Paulina, had any belief they would ever be called on to fight in combat. Even if the Russians did come pouring over the border, the Territorial Defense Force would most likely be utilized to organize trucks of retreating civilians, build tent cities, guard train stations in the west of the country from looters, or ferry equipment to the national army, the Polish Land Forces. And if Russia did take the nation, the TDF would, in theory, serve as an instrument of hybrid war: thirty thousand civilians trained—to one degree or another—in military tactics.

  A middle-aged couple entered the coffee shop and shook rain and ice off their coats inside the door, and Paulina gave them some stink eye for it, but she kept talking to Urszula. “Why the hell are we leaving Warsaw? If the Russians invade, they are coming straight here.”

  “The army is staying here, ready to put tanks in the streets if it actually happens. We are being sent south somewhere.”

  “What do they want us to do?”

  “Same as ever, I guess. Stand around in a field.”

  Paulina cocked her head now. “Will Tytus be there?”

  Tytus was a lanky, good-looking DHL driver who served in a different section of her company. Paulina had a serious crush on him; this Urszula knew well.

  The brunette just rolled her eyes. “It’s the whole company, girl. Maybe you’ll get lucky and Russia will attack so you can dive into a foxhole with Tytus.”

  It was a joke, but neither laughed.

  Paulina made drinks for the middle-aged couple and they left; then the girls sat down at a table in the now-empty café. They looked out the window at the decorations all over the town square. The big tree wouldn’t be put up till the evening of the twenty-fourth, but the holiday feel was impossible to miss.

  “It really sucks that it’s at Christmas,” Urszula said.

  Paulina’s greatest worry at the moment was telling her employer she was following Leo and Julia out the door during the holiday season. She said, “Didn’t they always say that if the Russians invaded, it would be in the spring or summer? They aren’t going to do anything in the winter; even I know that.”

  Urszula just sighed. “I swear to God. They should put us in charge.” Her chest heaved; then she launched back to her feet. “I’ve got a million things to do. Call you tonight.”

  CHAPTER 16

  MINSK, BELARUS

  22 DECEMBER

  The 10:35 train from Moscow was only eight minutes late as it stopped at Minsk-Passazhirsky Railway Station in central Belarus. The passengers climbed out, their bodies stiff from the eleven-hour journey, but one man moved more quickly than the others. He wore a Russian woodland and winter uniform with the rank insignia of a Spetsnaz major, and on his back he hauled a massive pack that must have weighed forty kilos.

  He passed through the midmorning crowd in the large and modern train station, stepped out the main exit, and scanned for a taxi stand. It was a gray day; the temperature here in central Belarus this morning hovered just above freezing, and several inches of snow had fallen the night before, blanketing the walkway to the glistening street and the rooftops beyond.

  As he started forward again, a booming voice called to him from behind.

  “Mitya!”

  The major spun around, smiled, and embraced a bearded man in a Gore-Tex winter parka and ski pants. He carried a huge pack of his own, but it was from a civilian manufacturer. “Lyosha! Good to see you, my friend!”

  “You have time for a drink?”

  “Always!”

  The men mounted the steps to the train station’s outdoor café and pulled the metal chairs from the tables, cleared the snow off, and sat down. The outdoor portion of the café was closed due to the cold and sloppy conditions, but the major waved to a waiter through the glass, and he began quickly heading their way.

  Lyosha laughed. “He sees your winter ‘war god of the north’ uniform and he knows to move his ass!”

  “What about you? You look like a stoned tourist! What have they done to you, my poor Lyosha?”

  “We get to grow full beards and we get to wear comfortable and stylish clothes. The girls in Germany will think we’re Austrian Olympic skiers.”

  Now Mitya laughed. “Can your troops even wear a straight face and follow your orders when they see you in that bright blue jacket?”

  “Mitya, you were not selected for my special assignment because Central Headquarters knows you hardly have a hair on your ball sack, let alone the ability to grow one on your chin!”

  The waiter, who was now within earshot, was obviously startled by the coarse discussion between the two men, but he recovered quickly. “Coffee?” he asked as he handed them menus.

  Lyosha waved the menus away. “Hell no. Vodka. Two glasses.”

  “The bar is not open yet, sir,” said the waiter with some trepidation.

  “Then you will open the bar for us. Right?” It was hardly a request. The waiter nodded and scurried off. Lyosha said, “How are your men? Are they ready for this?”

  Mitya nodded. “They are. I’ve got Sergeant Utkin with me. You remember him?”

  “The beast who won the regimental competition at Hatsavita in 2016?”

  “
The same.”

  “He’s a bear.”

  A frigid wind blew snow around them in swirls, but the two men seemed immune to the cold. As the drinks came, they scraped a small area clear of snow on the table. Two full shots of vodka were placed in front of them. The waiter waited a moment to see if they would pay, but they ignored him and began a toast.

  “To the 2nd Brigade! Anytime, anywhere, anything!” shouted Lyosha.

  “To the 45th Guards Regiment! Only the strongest of the wolves will win!” Mitya roared.

  The men downed the clear liquid in one gulp and only then looked up to the waiter.

  “Two more vodkas, two pilsners, and two strong black coffees,” said Mitya.

  The waiter shuffled off again.

  Lyosha said, “The other teams are already in Africa by now.”

  Mitya nodded. “I heard. Nice and warm. Bastards. We’re leaving for the border at midnight. Crossing over through the woods into Ukraine, then passing over the river just north of Sobibór, Poland.”

  “You have a big group to slip over the border?”

  Mitya shrugged. “Forty-eight in total. But the river is all but unguarded there. Just some acoustic sensors that we can get around. How are you guys infiltrating?”

  The man in the ski outfit said, “We’re leaving tonight as well, but we take civilian trains and buses. We’ve been given documents for travel into the EU by the spooks. All perfectly legitimate and civilized. Thirty-nine men and ten women.”

  “Women? Any good?”

  “Good enough. All Spetsnaz trained. They’ll help us blend in.”

  “What about the laser navigation equipment?” Mitya asked.

  The wind died and a light snow began to fall. Big, heavy flakes drifted down among the morning auto traffic adjacent to the train station.

  “Some was shipped and picked up by teams already in Poland and Germany; we’ll carry parts in ski bags and backpacks when we board the trains. It’s designed to look innocuous, like camera equipment. GRU operatives have rented helicopters in the Czech Republic and brought in good Russian pilots so we can get around,” Lyosha said.

  “What happens if you are captured in all this ridiculous civilian clothing?” asked Mitya. “You can be shot as a spy, you know.”

  “We’ll have our uniforms under our ski suits.”

  “Good. You boys will set up the nav equipment that will allow the column to find its way to the objective. You’ll be heroes of the rodina.”

  “And you and your men will control the path for the trains. You make it back home and you’ll be promoted to colonel by President Rivkin himself,” Lyosha said. “Where will you be during the action?”

  “In the middle of the route, east of Wrocław, near some small cities where the rail junctions meet. I’m with Team Zhenya. How about you?”

  “To the end of the line, my friend. The highest peak in Germany with Team Gregory. Teams Anna through Vasily will be in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. I am saving the really good action for myself. I want to be the one to place the last of the lasers to guide the assault column to its final objective.”

  “Cool. Then what? You just walk back home in that silly winter gear?”

  Lyosha laughed. “Probably.” He looked down and ran his hand over his Gore-Tex jacket. “Maybe they’ll let us keep it. We have many routes back. Some through Czechia, some south to Austria, and some north to Kaliningrad. We disappear, then meet again for the next step. I’m off to Africa in just over a week to support Lazar’s attack of the mine.”

  “You know, Lyosha, I thought I was the lucky one. I thought, since I was leading the uniformed forces, which will probably get to shoot, we had the best mission. But now I think maybe it is you. You get to do the truly undercover stuff and you get to play in phase two, in Africa, as well.”

  “Yes, but I will be honest with you: I have nightmares of being captured out of uniform.”

  “I can understand.” Mitya grabbed his beer and held it up. “Don’t get captured.”

  The men clinked glasses. “To your health and success, my friend. I will see you in a few weeks back in Moscow.”

  “I look forward to it, brother.”

  They clapped each other on the shoulder and each man placed a Belarusian thirty-ruble note under a glass on the table.

  * * *

  • • •

  WARSAW, POLAND

  22 DECEMBER

  Paulina stamped her feet on the sidewalk in a futile attempt to stay warm outside Centralna. The northern side of the train station was a flurry of activity bordering on chaos: there were thousands of TDF volunteer militia members mustered both inside and outside the massive building, all to be sent to different locations around the nation. Old-school buses, modern travel coaches, and canvas-covered military trucks picked up individual units, but a seemingly endless supply of volunteers continued to arrive, and the crowd appeared to be getting larger, not smaller, by the minute.

  Wherever the buses took her company, Paulina figured they’d all just go sit in a cold barrack building or a freezing tent and eat canned food for a couple of weeks. Then the Russians would finish their stupid showing off as they’d always done before, and she’d be back making espressos for the morning commuters.

  Still . . . Christmas would be ruined, and she’d never forgive those old assholes in the Kremlin for this.

  On a leather sling hanging from her shoulder, Paulina carried a long wood-grain rifle that looked like something from the Second World War, because it was something from the Second World War. In fact, the very weapon on her back was a 1940s-era Mosin-Nagant, a five-shot wooden rifle designed in Russia in the 1890s.

  It had been state-of-the-art once, but that was more than a hundred years ago.

  The brand-new battle rifle of the Territorial Defense Force—in theory, anyhow—was the Polish-made FB Radom MSBS “Grot,” but no one in Paulina’s company had ever even held one. Most of the riflemen in the outfit carried AK-47s, and Paulina had been trained on the AK, but she wasn’t a rifleman, so she’d been issued a Mosin that had been pulled from ancient surplus inventory from the Polish Land Forces. She was adequate with the weapon—she’d even shot one a few times as a kid, because her father owned an even older model—but she’d never once gone boar hunting with her dad and brother, preferring to stay home and read books or go to the lake in the summertime with her friends.

  Urszula appeared out of the crowd, and the two young women greeted each other with kisses and hugs. Urszula was head to toe in her green-and-brown camo uniform, which, with all the snow on the ground, appeared to Paulina to be rather ineffective camouflage. Paulina wore an identical uniform, but her backpack was the same one she’d worn to the university back when she was enrolled, and it was bright purple in color.

  Not exactly general issue.

  Her company’s two buses arrived twenty minutes late, due to all the traffic around the station, but eventually Urszula and Paulina loaded in with the rest of the unit, and they were out of the capital by noon.

  Paulina’s Territorial Defense Force company consisted of ninety-three men and women; the youngest among them were eighteen, of whom there were many, and the oldest was fifty-seven: a baker who had served as a cook in the Polish army back when the Soviets called the shots. They were commanded by Lieutenant Robert Nowicki, a twenty-three-year-old active-duty Polish Land Forces infantry officer, one year out of the General Tadeusz Kościuszko Military Academy of Land Forces, as part of a program where junior officers rotated into the militias in an attempt to improve them. Paulina could tell that Nowicki would much rather be back with the PLF instead of leading citizen-soldiers, but he carried out his orders without obvious disdain for the men and women under him. She figured this wasn’t always easy, because Nowicki normally saw his company for only a few days a month, and they were free to quit at any time.

  Th
ey were not free, however, to talk back to their commanding officer or refuse lawful orders, but this happened sometimes. Nowicki was half the age of several men in the company, and it wasn’t uncommon for the rough older guys to mouth off a little or question the young university man.

  Paulina did what she was told, however. Not because she had any great respect for Nowicki. She was a diligent worker, whether she was brewing coffee or training for combat, because she didn’t like getting in trouble.

  Nowicki sat just behind the driver of Paulina’s bus, and he talked on his mobile phone for the first part of the journey. A half hour after leaving Warsaw, he climbed to his feet and took the handset of the driver’s PA system.

  “Listen up. We’re heading west of Radom, where we’ll be tasked with guarding”—he looked down to some notes in his hand—“Expressway Twelve. It’s a direct route between Radom and Piotrków Trybunalski.”

  A thirty-five-year-old store clerk called out, “Why?”

  Nowicki looked up in annoyance, the microphone in front of his face. “Because that’s what we’ve been ordered to do.”

  “I mean—”

  Nowicki cut him off. “I know what you mean. I can’t answer that, and if you were regular military, you’d know not to ask.”

  Nowicki continued for a few minutes with details. Still the questions continued, called out from the bus passengers like they were unruly students addressing a substitute teacher.

  “Why did we get deployed?”

  “Who says Russia is going to invade?”

  “What the hell does Russia want with Expressway Twelve, Radom, and Piotrków Trybunalski?”

  Nowicki had no answers, so Paulina tuned out the exchange quickly. Instead, she and Urszula whispered to each other about Tytus, the DHL driver Paulina had a crush on. He’d climbed aboard the other bus, and Paulina worried that meant something bad about her chances with him; but Urszula did her best to assure her that the object of Paulina’s affection was just oblivious to the fact Paulina had been trying to flirt with him, and as soon as she rectified this, he’d probably fall head over heels in love.