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The Major - ebook

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Data wydania:
Grudzień 2016
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EPUB
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The Major - ebook

„If Tom Clancy wrote about the occupation of Warsaw, Marcin Ciszewski would have made a worthy rival. «Major» combines the best aspects of a war novel and spy thriller. Until the very end we do not know who will be up for the challenge - the Nazis, the Soviets and Poles” – Paweł Jasiński service Polter.pl

August 2007.
The First Independent Reconnaissance Battalion prepares to join the war in Afghanistan.
As a result of a diabolical conspiracy thrown into the battlefields of the War against Poland in the year 1939...

April 1943. Trapped in time, the battalion soldiers continue to fight against the German invaders and protect the leftover equipment from German and Soviet agents. Commander of the Polish Home Army, General Rowecki, supported by Lieutenant Wojtynski, start negotiations with the Americans trying to gain their support in exchange for future technology. At the same time in Warsaw, SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop arrives for his mission entrusted to him personally by Heinrich Himmler to make the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto...

„But dear Stroop.” The General twitched. Only two persons in the whole world addressed him in such a way. And the stranger surely wasn`t one of them. „I know more than you think. I can foresee the future,” the man said as he smiled again, but his eyes remained cold.
The General’s eyes gradually adapted to the half-light in the room, allowing him to see everything in greater detail, including the eyes of the stranger - the eyes of a killer.

Kategoria: Historical Fiction
Język: Angielski
Zabezpieczenie: Watermark
Watermark
Watermarkowanie polega na znakowaniu plików wewnątrz treści, dzięki czemu możliwe jest rozpoznanie unikatowej licencji transakcyjnej Użytkownika. E-książki zabezpieczone watermarkiem można odczytywać na wszystkich urządzeniach odtwarzających wybrany format (czytniki, tablety, smartfony). Nie ma również ograniczeń liczby licencji oraz istnieje możliwość swobodnego przenoszenia plików między urządzeniami. Pliki z watermarkiem są kompatybilne z popularnymi programami do odczytywania ebooków, jak np. Calibre oraz aplikacjami na urządzenia mobilne na takie platformy jak iOS oraz Android.
ISBN: 978-83-64523-99-1
Rozmiar pliku: 988 KB

FRAGMENT KSIĄŻKI

In 2007, the Polish government made a decision regarding a major increase of involvement in the war – officially called a ‘stabilization mission’ – in Afghanistan. The result of the long discussion was the decision to create a Polish strike force of a strengthened battalion, meant for fighting the Taliban in the south of this beautiful, yet harsh country.

By order of the Minister of Defense, the unit was named not entirely in accordance to its essence – the 1st Independent Reconnaissance Battalion – and was formed around a cadre from the 5th Armored Brigade, which was stationed in south-western Poland and commanded by the vigorous and competent Brig. Gen., Lucjan Dreszer. The battalion numbered five hundred specially selected soldiers, exclusively volunteers. Measures were taken to provide the battalion with the most advanced equipment available, or, where this could not be done, with older upgraded counterparts with the latest military technology, generously handed over by the Americans, who were very keen on creating an anti-Taliban coalition. The freshly promoted Lt. Col. Jerzy Grobicki was, to his surprise, appointed to the position of battalion commander.

American efforts were not limited to supplying military equipment and hardware alone. A squad of American soldiers, led by Capt. Nancy Sanchez, was sent to Poland as well. The squad was composed of thirty men – twelve marines, who served as security and eighteen of the highest-class specialists in IT, electronics, nuclear engineering and communications. It soon turned out that Sanchez was an old friend of Grobicki, a fact that influenced the behavior and decisions of both.

Yet, this was not the most important matter in the endeavor.

The most essential element of the American support was the newest child of the Pentagon’s advanced technologies department called the Mobile Defense System, or MDS for short. This device was capable of projecting a powerful force field, a shield protecting the enveloped unit from any kind of physical danger, including a nuclear blast. As if that wasn’t enough, the computer controlling the force field was powered by a miniaturized nuclear reactor which was capable of breaking the barrier of time and making some limited jumps into the past. The aim behind the idea was to provide the commander of the shielded unit with an extraordinary asset allowing for the correction of mistakes on the field of battle. The principle was to move the troubled squad back in time, about an hour or two, to reverse the chain of events and avoid critical mistakes during the second go round.

It seemed that the old dream about commanding not only reality but the past had finally come into being.

The developers of MDS had analyzed hundreds of battlefield scenarios, and had programmed the computer to react to thousands of possible combinations of events, making MDS and all those in control of it almost omnipotent. They did not, however, foresee one, as it turned out, decisive factor: the inventiveness and almost unlimited imagination of their Polish allies. General Lucjan Dreszer, commander of the 5th Armored Brigade, had his own idea of how to put the futuristic technology to best use. As a distinguished tactician, and expert on military history in general, of Poland in particular, for a long time Dreszer was obsessed with revising, remodeling, and reversing the tragic fate that had befallen his country in the past. In an instant, he noticed that a once in a life- time opportunity had finally presented itself – to move back in time, armed with modern knowledge and technology and reach the focal point, changing it, the result of which would guide the flow of history in the desired direction.

It didn’t take long before the plan of action was ready. Dreszer acquired two relentless and uncompromising men to create a virus that would allow the Poles to take over the MDS’s system. Before the Americans appeared at the base of the Polish unit, everything was ready. Making use of his extensive range of authorizations, the general acquired access to the MDS and uploaded the virus into the main computer, taking meticulous steps to remove any traces of the operation. The virus changed the control software of the machine. During the first force field test, conducted on the training ground near Olesno, MDS activated itself and sent the entire 1st Independent Reconnaissance Battalion and a large supply of ammo, fuel and spare parts on a journey through time that ended on September 1st, 1939.

It was Friday, a few minutes past five p.m.

The battalion landed almost on the back of the German 4th Armored Division and was immediately shot at by a platoon of the German field military police. The soldiers of the Polish battalion had neither the time nor the possibility to conduct a careful analysis of their situation, not to mention the potential outcomes that might have occurred due to their interference. They just repelled the attack, and then, pushed by their momentum and the indomitable will of Grobicki, made a devastating counter-attack. The result was the utter destruction of not only the 4th Armored Division, but the rest of the 16th Armored Corps led by Gen. Erich Hoepner, as well as inflicting severe loses on the 14th Armored Corps, which was advancing to help the embattled 16th. The German offensive on the western front had largely ground to a halt.

However, technological advantage alone is not always sufficient in war, chance and sheer luck or lack of it also play a great part. The third day of September turned out to be very unfortunate for the 1st Battalion. One random bomb dropped from a German plane turned the commander’s plans of playing a poker game with history using his own marked cards to dust. A two hundred kilo bomb filled with explosives, the last chord of a large, successfully repelled, Luftwaffe airstrike, hit the MDS, damaging it so badly as to render it unusable, and severely wounding the general; returning to 2007, only a moment in the future with the MDS, became impossible. The highest ranking officer was fighting death. Supplies, though vast, dwindled rapidly. Opinions as to the future course of action were divided, among officers and soldiers alike. Most of the Americans did not show the will to fight. Faced with such a situation, after running out of offensive capabilities, the battalion was disbanded. Some soldiers, including almost all the Americans, the wounded commander and a few officers, escaped through the rest of Poland and Romania to France and United States.

The rest, numbering two hundred fifty men, commanded by the brisk artillery Capt. Wójcik, after hiding the remains of the heavy equipment in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, headed to Warsaw and took part in its defense in the last phase of the war.

The Autumn Campaign as it came to be known, although marked with heavy Wehrmacht loses, destroyed Poland. At the beginning of October, Soviet forces invaded Poland, fulfilling their part of the alliance with the Reich.

Warsaw surrendered at the end of November. A day before the capitulation, Capt. Wojcik was mortally wounded by what may have been the last bullet shot fired in a free Poland. The Battalion’s remaining officers appointed a commando, an officer of GROM , Lt. Janusz Wojtyński to be the new commander of the unit.Prologue

17th April 1940

Although the snow lingered heavily in the forest, one could smell the coming spring.

Signs of the changing season were not of obvious nature, though – a warm breeze here and there, the shy warbling of a bird, the first bud springing to life. This is the moment which brings desire to breathe the smell of resin to the fullest, till the lungs can take no more and the head gets dizzy, a moment which brings the desire to live.

Especially on a day like today.

Down the bumps of the rural road drove a rickety bus, its windows whitened with lime. It drove without hurry, sure of its heading and destination. Twenty meters behind the bus followed a similar ramshackle vehicle. Even the slightest gust of wind didn’t challenge the disturbing silence. A noble pine forest stood still waiting, almost as if sensing the coming events.

Senior Major of National Security, Piotr Nikolaievitsch Bieriezuhin, didn’t like waiting. He was standing not far from deep, wide pits, dug in the night by an excavator, and was impatiently checking the time over and over again. The buses were supposed to arrive twenty minutes ago. The major knew that the endeavor he was about to witness was not easy from the standpoint of logistics, organization, and, so to say, human resources. However, the local Chekists had received the support of specialists from Moscow so that he, as the highest ranking in this whole band of slightly drunk and nervous functionaries, could avoid freezing his feet off several quarters in a row, with the slow-witted Senior Lieutenant Zajcew as his only company.

At last the buses, outstripped only by their own jarring rattle, appeared at the outlet of the forest road. Unhurriedly they reached their destination, coming to a halt about fifteen meters from the pits. After a while, the doors of the first one opened. About a dozen Chekists jumped out, part of them carrying rifles with fixed bayonets, followed by an officer, and two women dressed in the green uniforms of the NKVD convoy corps. The sight of the two women was a kind of surprise to the major. Only after a while had he recalled rumors he had heard lately – as in every high army part of the time was spent on the exchange and discussion of various official and unofficial news – that women were employed by some NKVD headquarters; ambitious, class conscious, fanatically dedicated communist women, ready to die for Tovarisch Stalin and the USSR.

Out of their map cases, the women took cardboard clipboards, pens and pieces of paper covered with even typewriting. As if driven by a single command they flattened their coats, marched a few steps, stopped at the pits and simultaneously looked at the rest of the group.

The woman standing closer to the major was huge. From the front – she could be considered pretty but from the back she resembled an open hearth furnace. Shining jackboots barely held her mighty calves. Her uniform, stuffed with the gigantic ovals of her body, seemed like it would explode with one sudden movement. Her blue eyes looked cold, and her thin lips were almost laced.

The woman farther away, a girl actually, slender, not too tall, was gifted by nature, as far as major could tell from the distance, with a lot finer figure than her gargantuan colleague. From under her field-cap escaped a little wisp of bright hair, constantly put in order by an impatient hand. The girl was smiling uncertainly, looking around with curiosity.

The officer gave a signal and it started. Two Chekists opened the back door of the first bus and went inside. Something jumbled, somebody screamed harshly, and the bus shook for a while. A moment later, the winded Chekists appeared dragging a man wearing the uniform of a Polish officer and a long trench coat. All three clumsily jumped off the bus. When the prisoner was brought to the edge of the pit he almost touched his knees with his nose. The furnace-woman checked something on the list, the third Chekist approached from behind, swiftly lifting his pistol, and shot the man in the neck. The report echoed weakly among the trees and disappeared in the forest around. The bullet exited through the Poles right eye, and he fell into the pit. His path leading from the bus to death took no longer than ten seconds.

“That’s the way to shoot.” – as the group of selected NKVD functionaries was instructed by Wasia Błochin, the most experienced executor in the USSR, during a recent special meeting.

Bieriezuchin had an opportunity to be at that meeting. He remembered almost everything, word by word: “When you shoot a man in the head from behind, the bullet penetrates the brain and leaves through the forehead, leaving so much blood you can draw in it. You shoot ten, and you still have to get into the pit and arrange them properly as they do not fall down evenly. With so much blood around you will only stain your boots and have trouble cleaning them. And you will bog down. But if you shoot in the neck, between the atlas and the axis, just like this” – which he demonstrated on a young lieutenant who was pale from fear and whom he raised up to his feet a second earlier – “the bullet will come out through the eye socket and go up into the air, disappearing among the trees, minimizing the blood splatter. Saves you nerves and time.”

Everyone was nodding with attention. Wasia is a professional, no doubt about it. He knows what he’s talking about.

The functionaries at the two execution sites near the pits remembered the lesson well. Their shots were fluent, skilled and without need of correction. The assistants standing behind the executioners swiftly changed the magazines in the pistols handed to them and gave loaded guns in return.

The Polish officers pushed out into the spring sun didn’t have any delusions about their imminent fate. Sitting in constantly emptied buses they could hear the gunshots all too well. Only half an hour ago some of them still hoped that this trip – one of many in the last six months – will end only in another camp. The most optimistic hoped for release.

The realization of what was to come, however, was a shock. Most of them accepted their fate, yet there were some willing to postpone the descent into darkness of the pits at any cost. They yanked and strained, and didn’t want to leave the bus. Those were dragged out by force, often stabbed with bayonets, their heads forcefully covered by own coats, hands bound with a rope ending around the victim’s neck.

The execution quickened, as everyone doubled their efforts and death took its toll. The reports echoed through the forest, scaring away the birds.

Thought of wasted time came through Bieriezuhin’s mind. He had his tasks, much more important than overseeing just the next execution, even if the executed were labeled a great threat to national security. A few more minutes and it would be time to go; nothing more to do here, no sense standing here either. For a while, he tried to guess what actually made him come to this place and waste half of the morning. He wasn’t directly assigned to carry out this, as his superiors called it, “special assignment”. He could assist if he liked, but there was plenty of work back in the office, in both his official and, especially, unofficial life

A scream reached Bieriezuchin’s ears, pulling him out of his reverie, and then came a grim realization.

“Tovarisch major!” Zajcew was pulling the sleeve of his uniform with an irritating gesture. “Look.”

But the major had been looking for several seconds now.

At the second site, a young officer tore himself loose of the Chekists’ grasp with a sudden movement. He pushed one into the pit and knocked down the second with a devastating punch to the face, breaking the Chekist’s nose. He turned just when the third Chekist jumped at him with a gun ready. The officer caught the gun, with a free hand trying to reach his opponent’s head. The chaotic struggle lasted a few moments. The gun disappeared from sight, lost somewhere between the two men locked in combat. A fourth Chekist, the one loading the pistols, stood frozen by fear and surprise.

The harsh screams of the fighting men stunned everyone around.

Suddenly a loud report escaped into the woods and the executioner turned dead pale, releasing the gun. The officer jerked backwards, trying to get his hand out of the numb mass of the Chekist’s enormous body. When he succeeded, he held a loaded Walther PP with at least six bullets left in the mag and was only seconds away from taking control of the situation. He had no chance of getting out of this alive and he knew it. His only wish was to take out as many functionaries of the Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del as he could.

He looked at the first site, raising the gun. He completely underestimated the loader and the girl standing next to him and this was a grave mistake.

Just when he turned and prepared to fire, the bright-haired functionary appeared behind him. Up till now she seemed completely paralyzed with fear, just like the loader. But – as it dawned on Bieriezuchin in grim realization – it was only an act, a camouflage, to make the opponent think he had the upper hand. When the man changed position, a split second later, the girl jumped to the loader, pulled a pistol out of his hands, raised it to the line of her eyes and took a shot, hitting the officer in the exact spot the dead executioner was going to just a few moments ago.

The dead officer slumped into the pit right on top of the bodies of his fellow soldiers and the moaning Chekist felled by the first blow.

The persistent echo needed a few moments to die out in the forest. The people gathered in the clearing – more than just a few to calm down. In the meantime, the girl managed to secure the dead Polish officer’s Walther, put it in her belt, pick up the pencil and clipboard with the list, blow the pine-needles from the paper and, after a second of thought, check off the right name.

Senior Major of National Security Piotr Nikolaievitsch Bieriezuhin understood that his morning decision of coming to this place was one of the best in his career.
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