Daniel 07 - Dark Lines
“You ever had scopolamine? It’s called the zombie drug. It’s fucking funny. Funny to watch, not to be on. That’s literally a fucking nightmare."
The alert pills robbed us of the will to sleep. Spiker turned his twitchiness to the Voice and looked over our latest orders. We would plan the HVT strike as best we could then extract. Now the war had started, bombing the ammo dump was the easiest and fastest option but Home denied its destruction by any means, which meant it wanted to preserve the dump’s place and use within the Ukrainian network. If we eradicated that node we’d have to find whatever replaced it, and we’d alert their leadership who would reconfigure aspects of their behaviour and security.
There was Kravchenko and six of his direct reports who formed his Aidar command staff, plus four Right Sector “officers” who were upskilling in the arms trade. Killing them all would weaken Aidar and Right Sector while disrupting the arms shipments from Mais’ke for a while, without taking the ammo dump off the map. Then there was Marko and three of his Aidar colleagues who were working the skin trade together. They didn’t pull much rank in Aidar but got a pass to do their work from Kravchenko, who was clearly in on the goods and the take. Marko was connected to Marianna, but also a Nazi, so we guessed he was a target of opportunity for Home, not a priority - we hadn’t invaded Ukraine to fix trafficking but Marko was still a soldier in a group of legit targets. A Ukrainian businessman, Yakiv Bublyk, and his PA/lawyer, Mykhailo Hrytsenko, were Aidar’s connection into private funding and political elements, probably making money off the weapons and maybe being entertained by Marko. Any strikes to close those kind of connections were more useful than sanctions. The icing on the cake was the foreign military heads. There were two British “trainers” - probably SAS or SBS, maybe MI6 - and a French mid-ranking NATO “specialist”. It was likely that the Brits and the Frenchman were providing training and actively helping to run the weapons importation, network and logistics. Killing them was a military win that would never appear on the news. Whether they were all involved with the skin trade was anyone’s guess. Our surveillance hadn’t been that extensive and we didn’t have the time left to work it out. We just had a massive kill list that we had to somehow lump together.
“I’ve had a few ideas thanks to this big road trip,” said Spiker. Over a hot breakfast, he tried to lay it out. “We need to keep them together. Get them in or going somewhere we make a kill box. If we know their diaries, maybe we can work something out. If we don’t, we need to take control and manufacture a reason for them to move together. If we focus on Kravchenko as the local high ranker, that could drag most of them with him.”
In broad principles it made sense.
“Marko’s now our serious problem,” said Spiker. “If he misses granny and gets spooked, that could affect all our targets. She’s only been gone a day. If we take control, we can manipulate the whole group via Marko. That would get us off the ‘Marko & Marianna problem’. She owes us for doing right by her and she’ll be back to normal soon. We can use her to lure Marko.”
If we snatched Marko and his gang, made them into traitors or double-dealers, sold Kravchenko that story and fucked with his head, we could exert some control over Kravchenko. Spiker was trying to join Marko, a captured Russian agent and another criminal gang together into one big lure that Kravchenko would take an interest in. It was a little bit of each of the things we’d done or encountered in the extraction.
“We pretend to be that Datsyuk or Hopko crew, and claim that Marko’s been stepping on toes and is connected to Russians. We make a business offer to Kravchenko to replace Marko’s shitty operation and offer up Marko and his Russian contact as a good faith gesture to close the deal. Marko’s the lure, his location sets up the kill box. Some of the list might come along. If we can combine that with something else in the diary, more might move as well.”
“Fucking hell.” I liked the sentiment and the ambition, but I hated the complexity. “That’s a fuck of a lot.” I could see Stan and Ol’s brains start to fire up. “Just write everything down and we’ll work through it, but if I was Kravchenko, I’d have you come to me, I wouldn’t come to you.”
We left the ZALA with the DPR team. We needed to get back to the hide at speed and the van wouldn’t cut it. Intel showed that military roadblocks back west weren’t there. Our invasion seemed pretty underwhelming, with contact confined to the moving fronts in northern and southern areas mostly. There’d been some limited deep strikes on a few targets but no shock-and-awe bombardments. Nothing was happening in Kiev, Dnipro or further west. Donetsk had active fire zones before the invasion anyway, so the situation there wasn’t hugely changed. It wouldn’t take long for our forces to advance to the DPR frontline and for fighting to increase.
We swapped our skirmish 5 Series for a normal black A5 off the farm. We didn’t want to risk being in any vehicle seen on our outbound trip. We decided to make a straight run back in one car with a story up our sleeves if we got wind of a block we couldn’t avoid. We’d blag I was transferring wounded soldiers back from Donetsk to Dnipro hospital. We took a load of medical kit from the farm and dressed Ol, Stan and Spiker’s legs and thoraxes as if they’d suffered semi-serious injuries. We could do head, arms or hands on the road. That tied up with their Army uniforms, pressed the sympathy button and limited being fucked with on the grounds of them all being in pain and urgent need. That justified carrying some kit and their personal weapons, and I was ready to invoke Boryslav Kulyk one last time. 5 hours of winding route avoided highways and the places we’d come through but with us all in one car it was an easy driving rotation that gave us time to rest and plan as we made our way back.
“This is gonna be the end of the 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off pattern, Dani. It was good while it lasted, though. Well done.” Ol was right. Shit happens.
“Let’s just go out on a high, as in high performance and make this report legendary. We might swing some medals and a pay rise with the right bit of embellishment,” I said.
“If we get out of this, I’ll write any old shit,” said Stan.
The DPR agent told Marianna she’d been rescued from her bent SBU abductors by the Russian extraction team. The SBU caught me, then her, then tried to intervene with the extraction but lost because, being a corrupt little group, they hadn’t fielded a full team and the Russians had. The extraction team grabbed Marianna along with the rest of the cargo but couldn’t save me. That sort of fitted the picture of the mayhem, dead guys and burning vans around the cemetery and closed the chapter on Krivoshapka. Emotionally, it took Marianna further down the road she was already on.
Marianna knew exactly what we wanted from her. She practised it on the phone to Spiker to make sure her delivery was as required. We gave her a chance to land a final strike against the shitbag regime she was leaving behind. We thought she’d say no because it involved directly setting up Marko, but she shocked us. On the phone to Spiker, she gave a strange, short speech, as though she’d prepared it some time ago. She said:
“Some degree of respect must be paid to the strong people in society who may perform what others judge to be wicked or evil deeds. Such strong people are willing to face the strong although they invariably hurt and exploit the weak. Marko is not that kind of person. He is a weak man who only exploits the weak and needs the strength of others in order to achieve that. He has betrayed his heritage, his family, the right laws of his country and he revels in it. He should face the true consequences of that as a final test of his strength.”
“If that doesn’t make you feel ashamed for interrogating her, nothing will, fellas,” Spiker said. “Brought a tear to my eye. We had her down as a potential trafficker.”
I was protecting our interests, minimising doubt and maximising chances of success. She didn’t come off badly, and we got her on her way. What the fuck have I got to cry about?
I was uneasy for a while but that gave way to the belief that we’d done enough to deliver an old servant of Russia an ending she could happily leave this world with. That counted for something.
“She’s got the call script all sorted. Nice and natural. We’ve not missed any calls from Marko yet. Probably up to his eyeballs since the invasion started. She’ll call him when we’re ready and get him over.”
It was the last time we hung out in that burned out shithole across the road from Marianna’s. We recovered the rifle and the escape kit. We set up a box at the entrances to her area, then Marianna made the call to lure her grandson just after twilight.
“Oscar. Dickhead’s brought all three of them. He is dumb as fuck and a fucking coward.” Marko had just passed Ol’s entrance to the box. “Take them in the car as planned.” Spiker and Stan raced from their corners of the box to get near me before Marko turned into Marianna’s street.
I was waiting in a parking spot on the road by Marianna’s place. When Marko turned into the street, I slowly pulled out in his full view to draw him to that spot out of convenience. As he pulled in, I reversed and blocked him in. Ol closed at speed from the rear as Stan and Spiker ran across from their cars to close the net around Marko’s car. We weren’t coming back to the estate any time soon.
Alongside Marko’s car, I had two pistols up, screaming through my open windows.
“SBU! SBU! DO NOT FUCKING MOVE! HANDS UP! HANDS UP NOW!”
The momentary shock in their faces was funny, but I kept on with the hatred. Then Ol ran up on the other side with another pistol and more aggression.
“SBU!” Ol fired a flashlight into the back to blind them and expose their movements. Marko was in the back on my side. Some ugly bastard was at the wheel - boxer’s nose, shaven head, visible shitbag tattoos up his neck and onto the scalp. I wanted to execute him on the spot. He was “Titan”, the front passenger was “Kostil” and the back passenger, another bald piece of shit, was “Sarmat”. They were the poncey callsigns they gave each other.
Their hands came up slowly. We looked the part in black and masks. Not full tactical gear but long coats with arm patches, turtle necks, masks. We needed to control and disable them. Ol opened the back door to get to Sarmat. Stan was at the front door to get to Kostil. Ol did a max power stamp on Sarmat’s ribs and fucked his chest up, then slammed him in the face with his gun. Stan just booted Kostil in the jaw and knocked him straight out, leaned in and punched the muzzle of his pistol straight into Titan’s eye. It was satisfying to watch. Marko shat himself three times in quick succession. Then Ol and Stan just dosed them all with needles of morphine. We slung Titan in my trunk, Ol took Marko’s car and we made for our hide in the woods.
“Marko, Special Department wants a fucking word with you. You’ve not paid the right cunts. Trouble is, they’re all much bigger cunts than you.” I was right up close, gripping his collar and was letting my inner psychopath flood out through my mouth and eyes. I loved the chance to dump hatred back onto him. He looked petrified as he came to in the car in the dark. “Why didn’t you just fucking pay us?”
“I d-didn’t… I don’t… Who are you? Pay w-who?” Marko was shaking.
“SBU. Where’s our fucking slice of cake, you little cunt?” I didn’t wait for an answer, I just smashed him in the face. We left him till last.
We dumped Sarmat and Kostil straight down the 8-foot pantry to hurt them more. In the cold woods, at the bottom of a cold hold in the ground, they were in for a long night. Boosting Sarmat awake amplified the pain from his broken ribcage, busted face and neck. The noise didn’t go far out of that hole. I had his throat and held his head back, with a torch in his eyes. His lack of hair annoyed me, but not as much as his tattoos.
“One chance to live.” He needed to know where he stood. “Tell me about the trafficking operation, your contacts for it and who you paid instead of paying us. If you don’t answer or it doesn’t match what Marko just told me, I’ll smash all of your rib cage. You’ll drown in your own blood while I torture your mate right on top of you.” I punched him in his right side. He shouted through the tape. Bulging eyes told me he remembered his left ribs were fucked. No position he could take stopped that pain. Breathing hurt so much he was locked in a paradox between his end and his survival.
“See, here’s my problem. I like Aidar. And I like Right Sector. I even know Kravchenko a bit and he’s my kinda guy. He knows how to get things done to scum in Donetsk, doesn’t he? And he knows how to have fun turning a profit.” Sarmat nodded in desperate agreement but he was desperately agreeing to nonsense. “Tell me about your work helping Marko with Stingers and Javelins.” I pulled off the tape to let him have a go at bullshitting. He rolled over immediately and gave us three names in SBU, then began telling us about how they used Army cover to grab people from the conflict areas. Stan was up top listening and making notes. I just leaned on his chest then kneed him in the stomach to fill him with more pain. Then I made him repeat his story and the names forwards and backwards. What I found most disgusting were the prices. Lower than I’d expected. I taped his mouth and we stood him up on tiptoes in the hole using a noose pulled tight up at the top. He was stretched with smashed ribs but if he relaxed, he started to choke. He was in “The Cunt’s Conundrum”.
We strung up Kostil in the same way, then boosted him awake. We gave them both a cocktail. Being boosted on enough adrenaline and atropine is unpleasant. Involuntary tachycardia on its own generates powerful anxiety. Restraint, confinement, pain and restricted breathing in a small space makes that feeling worse and induces claustrophobic panic. Atropine induces confusion and hallucinations. Imagine feeling all that while you’re strung up by the throat and you’re staring at your mate in exactly the same conundrum. We just left them struggling. Neither could speak. They were staring at their own fate.
Ol had a go on Titan in the back seat of Marko’s car. He wasn’t smashed up and bleeding at that point. There was a big plastic sheet in the back to keep him off the leather and scare the shit out of him. Ol’s preferred tool was a stick too big and wide to be poked into Titan’s earhole and a gun in place of a hammer. It’s effective on three levels: minimal blood, maximal pain; you can hear it as much as you can feel it; if it punctured the ear drum, there was a spare and Titan could still hear what he needed to.
Titan was worse under stress and dumber than Sarmat. We put him under serious pain quickly and gave him a fair chance, but he couldn’t be consistent with the details over and over, so that cost him. We left Titan with a different conundrum.
Theirs was a grim set up but far from new. It was widespread in Syria. It’s a longstanding business model so these bastards didn’t win any prizes for innovation in commerce. The rise of the right in Ukraine and the ongoing civil war in the east gave them unfettered access to a terrorised civilian population. They hunted in packs through the pockets of shelled buildings. Straight out abductions of vulnerable adults, active hunting for civilians in basements or shelled housing, and ploughing through unprotected or orphaned children were their main sources of fresh meat. Their artillery and missiles created product that they periodically harvested. They weren’t the only ones doing this and they knew it, although they hadn’t been at it long enough to be considered big players. Three gangs of five worked together under Marko. At any one time, at least one gang was east, hunting. They took an APC or a hard-sided armoured truck in as a meat wagon and literally no civilian could do anything to fight back or stop them. No authority interferes with military vehicles. Mais’ke had holding pens with 25 men, women and children at the ammo dump. The rate of flow depended on the buyers. Some buyers paid outright and took full ownership at $20,000 per adult, $35,000 per child. Kravchenko’s officers handled the network and distribution, which included supply straight into brothels they controlled, various mobile sites or onward sales across the borders. There was more overall profit in turning the meat rather than in one-off sales. They were keeping the troops entertained for profit as well. Kravchenkco himself was the main beneficiary of both money and meat-on-demand from Marko’s work. Being a supplier to other and higher elements of the power structure gave Kravchenko, Aidar and Right Sector increasing power to operate however they wanted. There was the secondary blackmail market as well. People forget about the power of and profit in blackmail. If your product compromises your customers, you own those customers as well. Doesn’t matter if they’re a plumber or a politician. Hopko wasn’t on these fuck knuckles’ radars, but they knew about Datsyuk.
“There’s worse than what they’re telling us,” Spiker said. We all knew.
“It’s a kill job, not an investigation,” I said. We needed intel to get our targets, not solve endless crimes but we were already back in the abyss.
“Right, Marko…” I was in matter-of-fact mode. “You now work for us. Titan, Sarmat and Kostil are dying right now. Sarmat’s ribs are smashed and lungs are punctured so he’s drowning. Kostil’s hands are gone and he’s crushed under Sarmat in a hole over there. You’ll see them in a bit. We dragged Titan along a road to scrape off those shitty tattoos, put petrol on him and he’s just bleeding, hoping we don’t set him on fire. The only one who could live is Titan. Guess how he’s gonna live?”
Marko was struggling for an answer. “By telling you something?”
“No no. He already told us stuff. He told us stuff before we dragged him down the road and put petrol on him because he’s a fucking nonce. He sold you out straightaway. That’s how good your mates are. You’re mates with dead nonces. That’s how much of a fucking cunt you are. Your grandma was more of a man than you.” I let that sink in while I lit a cigarette and enjoyed the moment. “The only way Titan gets to live is by prepping you for our dungeon in Kyiv. You’re gonna die in our dungeon as a Stinger with no tongue or hands. I think you know what that looks and sounds like, don’t you?” He was crying. You couldn’t blame him. I strung it out and made it worse. “You like drugs, don’t you?” He didn’t answer. He screamed the instant I stubbed the cigarette on his cheek. “I asked you a fucking question.”
“A a b-bit. C-coke. P-pills.” He was doing that sobbing and sucking and gasping thing, like an overwhelmed child.
“You ever had scopolamine?” Marko shook his head. “You will. It’s called the zombie drug. You’ll be on that in the dungeon. It’s fucking funny. To watch, not to be on. That’s literally a fucking nightmare.” There was a grunt outside. I lowered the windows. In Ol’s flashlight beam we could see Ol kicking Titan’s blood covered torso then he splashed more petrol on him and the muffled scream reminded me of Syria.
“Put yourself in his place. If I was doing that to you and your only way out was to prep Titan, you’d do it. He’s not your mate anymore. You haven’t got any. Slaves don’t have mates.” I took few more drags. “If you tell me how much I’ll make off you in the dungeon and afterwards, and you get that right within $1,000 then your maths are good enough to be my slave. You’ll get to set fire to Titan and work for me. Otherwise, Titan takes that place and you live a nightmare in the dungeon while I get rich. Take your time. I’ll come back in ten minutes. I want to hear all your working out.”
It was a total mindfuck that would tell me the extent of his knowledge. The dungeon was real, just like the library. If he knew what happened there, he’d know how long people lasted, how much for a turn, and then what happened after that. The black market organ trade wasn’t reassuringly expensive. Organs were thousands to ten-ish thousand dollars and quality was variable.
He knew enough to be right to within $5000. He knew the organ prices, he just calculated the turns in the dungeon wrong. I pretended he was close enough. Their operation wasn’t big, but it plunged deep into the abyss.
“Before we make Marko finish his mates, we need to get a game plan going. Kravchenko might want some of them back.”
Marko’s value seemed to spike two hours after we told Home what else we knew about him. He wasn’t to be offed.
“Are you fucking kidding?” said Ol. “He’s ticked every fucking box on hell’s list. How the fuck…”
“Look at the headers…” I said as I zoomed in to show him the top of the orders page. There was a classification and routing code on it: “FOS/ICF”. “FOS” stood for “Foreign Operational Security”, which meant SVR, our Foreign Intelligence Service. “ICF” stood for “Internal Criminal FSB”, which meant a branch of the FSB was interested as well. Those markings weren’t on any earlier orders.
“Why now? He started on the kill list.”
“We just fleshed out to Home more criminal network connected to military, in a country we’ve just recognised and invaded. If we don’t give the place back, I’m guessing someone’s gonna wanna clean up the place. Marko’s a starting point.”
“We shoulda just done them all then told Home. Too late. We’d have had four in the bag by now.” Stan was half joking.
“So he’s bait and cargo?” said Spiker. “He doesn’t get a seat home, he goes in the fucking hold.”
“It doesn’t say how alive he needs to be, so we can still make him good bait,” I said.
I’d have done it, I really would. It was a real, full blown skills test. If I hadn’t run around as Boryslav Kulyk and ended up on cameras in the petrol station, I could have.
Stan did it. He had that lean, hungry look. There was an accessible, cruel and scary streak in him, deeper and darker than Marianna had seen. He did a very good, low, growling Ukrainian accent that tricked you into thinking he was educated but also did nasty things when other people played tennis. It wasn’t overdone like a movie voice. It was all about giving glimpses of edges to get the ball rolling in someone else’s imagination. Stan had to make his own persona and look so he could go in there and stand a chance of coming out.
He called Kravchenko from Marko’s phone to get straight through. No point talking to the help.
“Marko! You’re busy, I hear.”
“Marko’s taking a break from his work.”
“Who’s this?”
“Commander Kravchenko, I have an offer to make based on security and mutuality. These things are much, much more important than my name. I represent Hopko.”
There was a pause. Maybe he was processing what “Hopko” meant.
“Do these concepts interest you, Commander? Security and mutuality?”
“Perhaps. Depends on the context.”
“We share business interests. Business has a security need: security of supply, security of knowledge. Your security has been breached. That breach encroached on my business and now I realise that we share mutual interests. Regarding mutuality, I believe that you may have a wish to continue business. There is an opportunity for mutually beneficial terms. Is this of interest?”
Stan did enough to get an audience in the admin building. There was no way Kravchenko would turn up at another location from the get go. We had to hook him and sell him on a few levels, and even then, it was a gamble. We didn’t know how paranoid he was, or his awareness of the scale of Russia’s interests and reach. He was doing well in his world and was difficult to touch. That kind of set up breeds hubris but also meant he could access intel that could undo us.
Stan was flying solo the moment he left the hide. No phone, comms, overwatch, backup or evac. He had a suicide pill, buckle knife, garrotte lines, a shock zippo, a pack of Dunhill and a Rolex swatcher - a wristwatch with audio and video recording that couldn’t transmit. This was all about business. He had to be more professional, more valuable and more long term profitable than Marko Usenko’s team of miserable cunts. It was Stan’s job to make that pitch and walk out with an expression of interest.
He looked the part. Elegant navy suit, black shirt, no tie. No shiny material. A fine platinum chain and subtle ring. We used one semi-permanent tattoo on his chest to give a glimpse of a pagan symbol under his open shirt, but very little and very ambiguous. We gave him a small facial scar just down from his ear, like he’d been lightly slashed a very long time ago. He blocked his prints with superglue on his fingertips, smoothed down with sandpaper. He put a dull gold cap in the corner of his lower teeth. You had to be close or he had to laugh to see it. He was naturally darker in complexion so we just enhanced that and took it down a couple more tones. Any more and it would look and smell fake and obvious. His look was a little dark enhanced by time spent in sunshine. Stan wasn’t a two bit criminal in a basement. He was someone good enough to be off-the-radar and making money. That’s where his value lay, with long-term profit beyond that. He had two bags: one for the limo’s trunk and one for Kravchenko. Kostil went in the trunk bag. We’d properly fucked him up so he couldn’t mess with the story. His tongue was gone, hands perma-smashed, voice box buggered and we’d poisoned him with the atropine then knocked him out with morphine. He was a lump of meat Stan returned as a gesture that acknowledged unpleasantness, demonstrated will and capability for violence, and got attention for the story about the other bag. Even if he was revived, Kostil wouldn’t speak, write or type. The atropine would kill his heart soon. In the pantry opposite Sarmat, he hadn’t been interrogated; he’d hallucinated, panicked and shat himself, so he had next to nothing to tell anyway. Stan took a top end limo from Dnipro airport, loaded the trunk himself, headed for the admin building and that was the start of his test.
He was in for a long hour, left the limo at the Epitsentr and lost his tail by nipping into the back retail staff alleys behind the storefronts. We didn’t hear from him until he met me in Lazar Globa Park wearing a tan Burberry mac over his suit and swinging a matching brolley.
“Did we have room on the budget for that?” I laughed as he gave me a twirl.
“When was budget a thing? The shoplifting alarms are at the front doors, not the back ones. Come on, I’m fucking starving and the deli closes soon.”
Watching and listening to the playback of Stan’s performance was amusing and impressive. This was direct insight into darkness; Stan was - we were - doing business in the abyss with evil. The only difference between us and Kravchenko was we hadn’t done what he had. But we looked, acted and talked like him. We could think quite like him and understood his method. We shared some of that method. More than some. If any of us left the service, we could have set up in their game the next day and been better at it. That’s a fine line to walk. It’s a line not on the edge of the abyss, but somewhere in it.
Stan’s cover came from Home. Igor Dudnyk was low key. He had a youth record for theft and assault of two peers that could only be found with security or top level police or judiciary access. He’d done correctional time on the child system that was known to be riddled with hardships and abuse, like most. That implied he’d glimpsed pain and suffering and maybe tasted it. That was important. It put Dudnyk into the abuse loop in his late teens. Public records showed that he’d been orphaned while inside but inherited a small trust from his parents. That gave him seed money for some education and a start in business. Dudnyk didn’t work, he invested. That was key. Altogether, we had the makings of a sociopath. All this was there for Kravchenko to find if he looked, although he didn’t have time to find it all. This quality of cover was the result of Russia’s 8 years plus of field work in an ex-Soviet country. Lots of detail had been set up a long time ago that fed all of our military and security services’ needs. We also had agents or assets in their system. Money far outstripped ideology in Ukraine.
Guards checked both bags and did a full search in the courtyard. Kostil stayed bagged by the entrance metal detector and they called up to their boss to explain the delivery. Igor was taken up to the top floor, past guard tables on each landing. Kravchenko told us what kind of man he was the instant he was alone with Igor. He threatened Igor and forced him straight into the pitch. No charm, no dance, no subtlety. From that we could tell he was both insecure and arrogant.
“It was unfortunate that my business in Vasyl’kivka was interrupted by an associate of your employees. That cost me three of my employees. I found him, then I found your employees and eventually came to understand your business. I’m here in good faith, Commander, in your office. I’m no threat to you. I’m an opportunity. I’m better, faster and cleaner than Marko at the business. In that alone, there’s more profit for you if I become your supplier. From you, I would expect greater access - “top cover” if you will - wider freedoms, bigger networks to sell in to and we would agree a pricing structure. These are… the mutualities I spoke of, Commander.”
Kravchenko had no problem with the basic evolution of business, but he was fucking fuming about Marko being done over and held somewhere. Igor was pretty much a dead man for that.
“That, Commander, is the issue of security. You’re aware of an incident in Dnipro a few nights ago? I’m aware that it was a Russian operation to… recover people east. That operation crossed paths with mine around Vasyl’kivka and eventually I caught one of the operatives outside Donetsk.”
Igor took a phone with no sim from the Hermes satchel and waited silently for it to boot. On the phone were two videos and two photos, nothing else. Igor handed the phone to Kravchenko.
“The first man is the Russian operative I caught. You can see from his condition how I came to learn what I know. The second man is, obviously, Marko Usenko. Marko and the Russian move people together, in both directions. He’s making money from the Russians as well as from you. He sends Stingers and Javelins west, and whatever the Russians call their prey he sends east.”
Kravchenko didn’t buy it. Marko was a good Ukrainian Nazi with enough of the right tattoos and a work history. He wasn’t Russian. He wasn’t in Russian networks.
“You’re not aware of his family history then? His grandmother is a sweet, quiet lady. Very quiet about her past, and her present. She’s just moved house. Marko’s Russian friends helped her move east. Yes, Dnipro was her moving day. He was one of the movers. Imagine being 70-something and still getting help to move back to Russia.”
That was enough to swing Kravchenko’s interest and stoke a desire to extract “truth” from Marko. Igor had indirectly told Kravchenko that Marko had been fucking him over for ages, which played straight into his pride and insecurity. The “Russian agent” was just video from Home’s archive and we’d filmed Marko ourselves. It was about establishing the correct emotional and perceptive framework. The stuff would stand up to technical scrutiny well enough.
“So, I trust you see that I’ve found and fixed a security matter for you that overlaps with our mutual interests. As a gesture of goodwill I returned one of your employees - the least valuable one - with two gifts.” Igor placed the Hermes satchel on the desk. There were two gift boxes inside. Igor’s seat gave a clear view as Kravchenko took delivery of a box containing $10,000 in cash and a box containing a piece of skin bearing some of Titan’s Nazi scapula tattoos.
“It’s a pretty trophy, no? I have one just like it myself. So, Commander, I imagine you are keen to consider my information and offer. I will take better care of Marko and his friends while I wait to hear from you and we can arrange to meet again. They will await collection. And…” Igor stood to take the phone again and brought up the photos. “There are some of my current stock. We could perhaps provide a sample.”
Kravchenko was quiet in the face of seriously heavy news, most of which was actually true in a certain way. This would largely hang together when Kravchenko dug into it all the second Igor was gone. That Kravchenko let Igor leave in the limo he arrived in told us the pitch had worked as well as we could have hoped.
“You’ve got some fucking balls on you, Stan,” Ol laughed. “That was cool work. You can be a real slick bastard when you want.”
“Only when I’m in fake tan with a gold tooth in. Or maybe it was the tattoo. What did you get off the phone and the bag?”
“He copied off the videos and photos and shut it off.” The phone was never off. “We’ll have to wait for its burst to see if there’s value. It’s in the admin building. The bag’s now at the Tsunami Spa Hotel on Sobornaya.” I said.
“If we’d bugged it I bet we’d hear him beating off into the skin,” said Stan, “while someone cries in the background and room service arrives.” It was a joke grounded in too much truth. We still laughed.
“We’ve put our backs out on this stint.” I said. ”Whatever comes out of this set up, we’ll only get a single chance on any of the targets, and it won’t be all of them. We’ve got… a nine-man team based east, available within 4 hours, and we’ve got to extract that little cunt now as well. Let’s make sure we stay on this roll. Once we get an idea of the kill box, let’s demand air.”
“Might as well be nice to ourselves if we can, eh?” said Spiker. “There’s a fucking war on, you know.”
Four days into the war, our forces had rolled in from three sides with forces in the north headed towards Kiev. Home didn’t send any forward notice of strikes or movements for obvious reasons. Some strikes had been reported west of Luhansk, around Severodonetsk, Lysychans'k and Izyum, but they were limited in scale. We were keeping an eye on multiple Russian and Ukrainian channels, plus Home’s periodic bursts. The western press was comedy. We got more useable intel off Telegram. We were interested in ground events, not politics and propaganda.
Home pinged us with a priority alert that built on information we’d known about for ages. Orders that pre-existed the invasion had positioned the paramilitary and some of the military forces east, in preparation for large attacks on the DPR and LPR intended to take those regions back. We’d seen these orders two months before the invasion. 60,000 men were involved. We’d monitored the paramilitary movements through nodes like Marianna and Marko. Our forces were headed straight for them and we had no doubt, just days into the war, that serious damage was going to be inflicted. Putin had said, very clearly, that we were pursuing certain objectives against the military and Ukraine’s ability to join NATO. That meant doing damage on a big scale. I’ll never forget watching Putin’s SMO announcement as we sat in the vans by the cemetery.
The lads were laughing. “Denazification? That’s a job even the Jews never finished. Demilitarisation? These are pretty open-ended objectives. Vlad’s not gonna be saying ‘Mission Accomplished’ in 6 months time, is he?” Ol sounded cynical but we all knew he was right.
“We need to get time and a half or double time from now on. We need to make the most of this,” laughed Spiker.
“Let’s try and get a pay rise of the back of this stint then, and we’ll be doing even better.” I had to do what I could to motivate them and push High Performance.
Azov was biased towards the east south east. Aidar was nowhere near as big a force, but it had a history of nasty shit east north east, around Luhansk as far back as 2014. There were a lot of small battalions like Aidar that totted up to over ten thousand hardcore troops with zero oversight. The frontlines were going to be manned by a blend of the Army in the permanent defensive positions on a formal strategy, and all of these other forces floating and moving in some kind of concert. It was our early strikes on the edges of Luhansk that seemed to give us our one opportunity.
Home told us that Aidar, Right Sector, Kraken and other units had been ordered to move forwards and establish positions further east, northeast and north. Aidar was to set up in Kramatorsk, north of Donetsk. By our assessment, the ammo dump in Mais’ke was running adequately. Right Sector could probably staff it on minimum numbers. Aidar didn’t need to be there any more and the war wasn’t in Dnipro. Aidar’s move to Kramatorsk gave us a direction, a time window and the ability to influence which route the targets might take. We couldn’t be certain which targets would move together and which might enter any kill zone, but we would try what we could.
“I’ve always wanted a reason to blow the hide,” said Stan. We entertained the idea of luring them to a meeting or party at the apartment and detonating the whole place. We ruled it out on civilian casualties and the risk to us. We’d be too closely involved getting the targets into the apartment and Home wouldn’t authorise an air strike on it.
“We only just bought Commander Kiddie Fiddler a drink. We’re just trying to get near enough for a kiss, never mind fuck him.” said Ol. “We’re making good on Igor’s offer, still building a relationship. Kravchenko needs to pick up Marko and a Russian, maybe Titan and Sarmat. That’s what we’ve promised. We didn’t say it would be anything fancy or long duration, or a party. If he got en route co-ordinates to a pick up he might send a crew to walk in, collect and walk out. We need a credible minimum lure to draw him into the kill zone.”
“The meat. That’s the only other thing we’ve got. I said he could get a sample. Titan and Sarmat aren’t more of a lure than Marko or the Russian.”
“Meat still doesn’t guarantee he’ll do the collection. Would you walk into a stranger’s shithole and compromise yourself with a slave for an hour? Or would you just get yourself a suite?”
“I asked your dad that once. You wouldn’t like his answer.”
We spent an hour trying to think of ways we could improve our offer or lures. We were stumped. We couldn’t think of anything credible or realistic.
“Fuck it, let’s have massive steaks and the best wine we can find.” I took a stroll to town and went mad on meat and the most expensive wines in the deli. I didn’t bother looking at the labels, I just took eight different bottles. I didn’t know how many more meals we’d have together.
“Let’s look at the constraints in a different way.” I was mid mouthful. “We’re getting the targets into one specific place because of us with guns and an NLAW. That applies to a cruise missile or a bomb too - limited kill zone. Let’s see if we can get a chopper, and all we need to do is get the targets into a bigger kill box. The chopper can pick them off, chase them and we sweep up. Kramatorsk isn’t far over the frontline.”
Igor’s call to Kravchenko reminded him that Marko and his Russian bitch were waiting for pick up. We were chancing the location, north of a village called Holubivka, in the middle of nowhere. It was conveniently off the obvious major routes from Dnipro to Kramatorsk, towards the end of the journey. It drew the targets off the highway on to a single stretch of road in a shallow valley where we’d have oversight and could establish a three-point ambush. We left timing up to Kravchenko. If he never suggested a time, we’d know we’d blown it and would have to come up with a plan B.
We had no chance of escaping from a raid on the admin building in the city. The ammo dump was off the cards and we were hugely outnumbered there. We could tail them on the run to Kramatorsk with the extra men and spread out along their convoy then close attack them on the highway, but that was still difficult to do and escape from, especially if they travelled in the day. If we let them get to Kramatorsk, we’d be outnumbered again or attacking multiple locations in a built up area. The extended highway attack seemed like the only plan B we could pull off if Kravchenko didn’t go for the bait. We held off a day then pinged him a message asking if he was interested in picking up a “product sample” with Marko and the bitch. We gave him a choice of Stinger or Javelin.