Reincarnated: Vive La France-Chapter 350: Welcome to Poland

The first siren is a needle through the dark.

Then the sky rips open.

A Stuka drops out of the clouds and the hangar at Bielin snaps like dry bread.

Fuel drums go up in a stack of black fire, sparks spitting into the wind.

The air tastes like pennies and hot rubber.

A man runs with a hose and disappears in a sheet of smoke.

"Up! Up!" someone yells from the tower.

The radio answers with coughs, then the flat scream of feedback.

"Bielin hit....hangars...."

The sentence cuts off when the glass blows in.

On the road north of the field, engines are already awake.

German bikes flick past the hedgerow in pairs, goggles down, mouths tight.

A half-track eases off the verge to let a column of trucks nose forward.

In the first tank, the commander slides into the cupola, slaps the hatch twice, and leans to the radio.

"All callsigns, confirm green," he says, voice steady. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Green answers crackle in his ear.

He stares across the grey field toward the low black wire that means border.

Fog clings to the ditch like old wool.

"Trumpet in ten," the company net says. "Keep it quiet, keep it quick. No poetry."

Inside the tank, the driver snorts. "As if we've got time for poetry."

"Shut it," the loader mutters. "Helmet on."

They roll.

Tracks clack, mud whispers, exhaust stinks.

A scout waves them to the gap in the fence they made last night when no one was looking.

The tank takes it slow, the wire sighing against steel.

The machine slides over like a bull through tall grass.

"Welcome to Poland," the gunner says, and nobody laughs.

Lieutenant Kulesza is already standing in the beet ditch with his men when the first shapes show.

He can't count them in the fog just dark blocks and those low, quick bikes that look like thoughts.

"Hold," he says. "No lights."

Corporal Białek hisses through his teeth. "Sir....listen."

They all do.

The ground carries it better than air engines, metal, weight.

Far left, a dog goes mad for ten breaths, then shuts off like someone put a hand on its throat.

The phone at their post is dead.

The radio coughs up half a phrase from HQ "confirm before..." and then static.

"Fuck confirming," a private whispers.

"You shut your mouth," Kulesza says, not loud.

He watches the road where the bridge is. There's a shadow on it a truck with a tarp, flanked by two soldiers in grey with the faces of clerks.

Behind it, the first tank's nose.

"Challenge," he says.

A sentry steps out to the road, heart thudding somewhere up in his throat.

"Who goes...."

"Pass under orders," the German NCO snaps, Polish flattened and clean.

He holds up a laminated card like it's a blessing.

"Let me see...." the sentry begins, and the tank is already halfway onto the planks.

"Hold!" Kulesza shouts.

His men don't fire.

Their fingers dance on triggers, then freeze.

Orders are orders until they're not.

A single rifle cracks from somewhere back in the orchard.

It's not one of theirs, it's too far behind and left.

The first German truck shudders, a tire bursts, men spill off the tailboard.

Someone screams, a real scream, not a word.

"Shit, contact!" the German NCO barks. "Clear the hedgerow! Go, go!"

Grenades arc, pop.

Dirt slaps Kulesza's cheek.

He tastes grit. "Down!" he snarls. "Keep low!"

Across the road, a door bangs open.

A woman in a nightshirt pulls a child into her chest.

A German soldier swings his rifle and then jerks it aside at the last second, cursing,

"Drinnen! Drinnen!" He shoves them back with a forearm.

"Sir....orders?" Białek asks, voice too steady.

"Wait," Kulesza says.

His eyes are on the bridge.

The second tank noses onto the planks, engine growling, bow wave of mud pushing out.

The pioneer team at the abutment two of his engineers are on their knees with a canvas bag and the small neat parcels of their trade.

One of them looks up and meets his eye.

The engineer's face says, Say it.

Make me do it.

"Not yet," Kulesza mouths.

His stomach flips like a fish.

In the cockpit of the Stuka, the pilot thumbs his stopwatch and pulls back into cloud.

"Target suppressed," he says, calm as a man reading a timetable.

He can smell his own sweat in the rubber of the mask. "Secondary run?"

"Two minutes," his wingman answers. "Then we move to the junction. Watch flak."

Flak at Bielin is frantic and thin.

A black puff too far back, a string of yellow that looks like beads thrown by a drunk.

The pilot pushes his plane's nose toward the road and sees the bridge in a slash of fog.

Small figures.

A flicker of fire.

Something hits the canopy with a sound like rain.

"Down there," he says. "Crossing."

"Copy." The wingman's Stuka tips, siren biting the air again.

Farmers miles away put hands over children's ears.

The siren is not a sound.

It's a judgement.

At the outskirts of the village, a German bike team slams to a halt and tips into the ditch.

One rider yanks his goggles up, eyes red. "Where?" he snaps.

"White house, blue door..." the squad leader starts, then a bullet chews the air where his ear was a second before.

"FUCK...down!"

They find the angles fast, trained hands and bad tempers.

One man lobs a grenade through an open window; it pops, glass sprays.

A boy stumbles out coughing, hands up.

He can't be more than sixteen.

He's got a hunting rifle and a belt with three shells.

He looks at the Germans like he's waiting to be told he did it wrong.

"Drop it!" the German shouts.

The boy does.

The German boots it away, kicks the kid in the shin, and leaves him shaking by the wall.

He's not thinking about mercy.

He's thinking about movement.

"Clear?" the squad leader snaps.

"Clear," someone answers, and the shot that kills him comes from the barn, not the house.

The man drops like a sack.

His friend yells and fires until the rifle goes dry.

"Barn!" the leader gasps, and then they're in it: straw, dark, the sour of cows.

A Polish farmer ducks behind a cartwheel and swings a pitchfork like a man who understands his tools.

The German knocks it wide with his rifle, stomps the farmer's foot, and smashes the butt into the side of his head.

The farmer goes down gasping, swears in a way that sounds like a prayer.

Outside, the second bike team roars past, tossing a canister that bumps across the road and vomits white.

A cough of smoke, a curtain, the cover they need to run.

"Back on!" the leader snaps, voice shredded. "Move!"

They kick-start the bikes.

The men don't look at the body by the wall.

They've learned not to count this early.