Christopher Nuttall - The Fall of Night

McLachlan laughed. He had a surprisingly deep laugh. She found herself liking him on sight. “He wasn’t just trying to get into your panties?”

“The first woman who gets him interested will be the first,” Caroline admitted, remembering the resolutely gaysexual activities of Fell Nelson. There was a moral in that somewhere, perhaps young men and women should be made to cover their faces when they were interviewed. Many of his staff complained of sexual harassment, something that wasn’t new in the recording business, but mostly it was male on female. “No, I just drew the short straw.”

“Lucky you,” McLachlan said. He met her eyes. She was almost lost within soft brown eyes that seemed to harden, then soften, at will. “I assume you read the background material?”

Caroline nodded. “I read everything they gave us,” she said. She had too; it was long on glossy photographs and elaborate statements of principle, but short on actually useful details. “Most of it was quite bland and uninformative.”

“Don’t breach security here,” McLachlan advised. His voice had become very serious. “The Poles will arrest you, send you to an uncomfortable jail and charge you with malicious accidental espionage. Don’t rely on the Court of Human Rights getting you out, either; after it was proven that that young reporter fool from Portugal caused the deaths of three soldiers…”

He smiled thinly. “Apart from that, we will be showing you everything within the camp,” he said. Caroline gulped. Was there any way for her to be certain that she was not breaking any security laws? “Do you have any specific questions?”

“A few,” Caroline said. She forced her smile up a few watts. “Do you feel that EUROFOR is a viable military force?”

McLachlan’s smile vanished. “A truthful answer?” Caroline nodded. “The truth is that if we had all the units we were promised, we would be the most powerful force in the region. We were promised ten divisions; what we have is around two divisions, many of whom have never worked together before, trained together, done anything together… does that answer your question?”

Near Moscow, Russia

“Go!”

Colonel Boris Akhmedovich Aliyev was first out of the aircraft as it stabilised its course for a matter of moments, falling towards the ground in free fall. The shape of buildings became clearer and clearer as the paratroopers fell towards the ground, the black bursts of ground fire dancing in the air towards the planes as they pulled away, tossing the final paratroopers all over the landing zone. They had targeted the runways of the airport… and, as the seconds ticked away, Aliyev became very calm.

At precisely the right moment, he pulled his parachute, coming to a far more controlled descent as he steered himself and the remainder of his team towards the runways. The black bursts of ground fire were coming closer; Aliyev dismissed them as irrelevant. There was nothing that he could do about them, but endure; if one of those puffs of smoke caught him, he was as good as dead. His fall was still slowing rapidly, but the ground was coming up, and up and…

His legs bent as he hit the ground, an impact that had knocked the wind from him in his first jump, something that he was used to after practicing combat jumps for most of his career. He didn’t hesitate; he barked orders and drew his weapon as the defenders moved to defend their airport, bringing up rifles and heavy machine guns. His team fired back, sending flickers of laser light dancing across the airport; one by one, the defenders fell to the ground and didn’t move as the commandos fanned out and searched the airport quickly and efficiency. They knew the airport almost as well as they knew their own home bases; it was a matter of minutes to search and snatch every last security guard and enemy soldier defending the terminals and the control tower. Some fought, killed and were killed; others held up their hands in surrender. They were searched roughly, cuffed, and dumped in one of the terminals under armed guard. Resistance would be punished with a bullet to the head.

Aliyev himself led the team that seized the control tower. Intelligence had been impressive as to the degree of alertness on the part of the tower staff, something that he was used to and had planned for, even to the degree of risking the destruction of part of the tower to secure it before the controllers could raise support from the outside. Aliyev had every confidence in his men, but they were basically light infantry; a single armoured enemy detachment would make short work of them, or at least shut down the airport and prevent the exploitation of their victory. The control tower had been sealed; a shaped charge made short work of it and the team charged upwards.

“This is Airport One, we need help,” a female voice was pleading, high above them. There was no point in being stealthy now; the team advanced as quickly as they could, finding a second locked door, but one light enough to be kicked aside with a single kick. The paratroopers swarmed into the room, seeing a set of flight controllers, their eyes wide with terror and shock. One of them was screaming into a radio; Aliyev shot her, just on general principles. The others raised their hands and were rapidly secured, searched, and placed out of the way.

“Delta-lead, we have secured objective two,” a voice buzzed in his ears. Aliyev had had years of training to come to grips with the local secured communications network that the Americans had invented and the Russians had copied. “There are seven aircraft and plenty of fuel; five down and seventeen prisoners.”

“Move them to the terminal,” Aliyev ordered, as the flight controllers were herded out of the room, pushed and shoved by Russian commandos. The body of the dead flight controller was moved out of the way as Aliyev took the main terminal, shouting for two of his specially trained commandos to come in and take over the flight terminal. The airport had to be cleared of traffic so that their reinforcements could come into the airport and help them to secure it. “Have the pilots check the aircraft and let me know if they can be used for our own transport.”

“I have locked the airport out of the general network,” a commando reported. “We have full control over the terminals and there are no signs that anyone intends to come take it off us.”

Aliyev smiled once; had it really been ten minutes since they had begun the operation? It felt as if it had been hours. “Get the radioman to work,” he snapped. They had been lucky; one of the other random variables would have been a destroyed or damaged civilian airliner on the runway, something that would prevent them from flying in reinforcements until it could be moved out of the way. “I want them to know that they can send in their reinforcements as quickly as possible.”

He took a breath. There were hundreds of aircraft holding position well behind the front lines; they would have their chance to move in and reinforce the new position, with thousands of additional commandos, some heavy weapons, and even a few light armoured vehicles. By the time the enemy got themselves organised, Aliyev would have an entire brigade sitting on the airport and expanding his zone of control as rapidly as he could. Unless they reacted quickly, the enemy would discover that their rear area was disintegrating under his pressure… and that of the main body of the Russian forces.

“This is Control,” a new voice said. Aliyev lifted an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected that so quickly. “Stand down; I repeat, stand down. This exercise is terminated.”