Daniel 08 - The Haul
The first thing we do is choose to survive or die. To survive, we adapt in the moment. Survival is the measure of adaptation.
Everything hung on Kravchenko taking the bait but there was a fuzz factor: accurate determination of specific vehicles. SigInt was Home's domain and we depended on Home’s ability to give us a target list and track them as they approached the kill zone. SigInt from the targets’ known cell and device signals gave us a real time picture of who was moving and their location, but not the vehicles they’d be in.
“We need eyes on the admin building exits, and the north and south roads from the Mais’ke dump for initial vehicle ID,” I said.
“Home still has some eyes and operators in Dnipro,” said Spiker. “They can set up an OP around the admin building. We haven’t got the manpower to watch the two roads out of Mais’ke that the targets have to use.”
“Two of us could do a lazy tail from Mais’ke all the way, or overtake when they’re two thirds of the way,” said Ol. “Or… we could sneak in and track some of the vehicles. Or we could do a vehicle audit with the small drone and give that to Home to work out.”
“Fuck the tail. We have to draw the line somewhere,” I was certain. “The tail could get compromised or delayed and either screw the whole thing or get left behind. We’re leaving this stint together, kills or no kills.”
We told Home to set an OP on the admin building and went with the last option at Mais’ke. The small drone had good enough optics to identify all the vehicles there and it was a 30 minute drive from the hide. It was a quick job to compile a list of all the vehicles on site that Home could use to improve the accuracy of the target list. Any cell signals could be used to track the targets en route. It was up to Home to deal with that and any efforts to defeat tracking, which was harder than it sounded. The discipline required to evade cell tracking is high and most people don’t stick to it because of the convenience modern communications presents and the habits everyone forms in using them.
Even if they switched all their signals, Home could still use certain techniques to filter all unknown cell signals over time, distance and trajectory to look for likely groups travelling together. Along the way, open or hacked security cameras could be used to look for the initial vehicles to confirm targets. If we’d still had the Zala we could have done a lot of the tracking work ourselves.
The difficulties of tracking depended on how paranoid, scared, prepared and resourced the targets were. They had to be planners with the ability to put extra vehicles ahead of them en route. To beat tracking they would have to go dark, dump all devices and switch vehicles en route, at a minimum. The SigInt we’d grabbed from them suggested they weren’t that professional. We just had to trust in Home’s ability to build a target list from our work and its capabilities.
Checking our datalink messages gave us a burst of good news. “Air’s confirmed. There’s an attack chopper and a transport in the system. They just need to know timing. We’ve done everything we can. Let’s get ready to move. Say goodbye to this place. Doubt we’re coming back.” We left the apartment’s traps in place. It was still an asset and a base for someone.
To stay ahead of the targets we donned Army uniforms with Aidar insignia and took our kit, weapons and the bait to the kill zone to meet with Bravo, the second 9-man team who were based further east. There was an abandoned pumping station at a sewage treatment pit that did as a holding point for the bait. With the zone set up, Marko’s phone signal pings popped up in the right place when we checked for messages from Kravchenko. If he demanded proof of life, Stan could give it on the spot using the bait. We’d fall foul if he demanded it from the Russian, but it was too late for that. If they used the pings to send an advance team, we’d have to deal with that in the moment. Escape and evasion was a fast run east or north. Home wouldn’t send in the choppers under those circumstances.
We used Bravo to set a 6-man OP up on the highway with a good view to watch for the targets arriving and turning into the kill zone. The remaining three set up with the Barrett rifles to attack the targets once inside the valley. We secured the bait at the pumping station, left Stan with them and set up camp on the other side with the NLAW. While we waited for Kravchenko to make contact, we marked out a LZ to blow with det cord and went hunting for dinner. We were at Home’s mercy and whatever target list and tracking info they sent us. We’d done everything we could.
“Delta, Sierra. We’re game on for weird o’clock. He said he’ll be here after 2AM. He only spoke to Marko. What’s for dinner?”
Once we heard from Kravchenko and with the kill zone fully sighted, there was nothing left to do except wait. We offed Titan and Sarmat at the pumping station. They were in bad condition anyway, and then they were carrion. To be eaten and shat out seemed fitting. That logged us two kills and we put Kostil down as a half, although the atropine was likely to finish him off. Marko was with us on the ridge, capped and hooded with the deer strapped to him to disable him and weigh him down. He was cargo. At 21:47 we were pinged. Home sent its target list. As far as we were concerned, it was right. SigInt was their domain and they’d carry the can for bad intel. Now, we were just the triggermen.
“ETA for air is 22:50. Targets are all civilian vehicles. Primary is a Nissan Qashqai SUV. Kravchenko picked size over speed by the looks of it.” I looked over the target package on the Voice. “There’s a Peugeot, two BMWs and MPVs. The staff and the foreign heads are likely spread through those. Home suspects financiers are in the Qashqai with Kravchenko. There’s vans and trucks from Mais’ke, so we can assume kit and weapons with some air defence, so we let the pilots know. Travel time is a minimum of 4:20 from Dnipro, 4:00 from Mais’ke with no stops. If the two groups join up and stop, we could easily be looking at 5 hours or more. We’ve just got to watch the tracking updates.”
We were right to demand air support. We had no idea what to expect of Kravchenko’s visit to the kill zone. If I was him, I’d never have come. We’d done extremely well to get the convoy to pass by. When the convoy split at the kill zone, the pilots did their thing. Credit to them, they did an impressive job.
The destruction of the kill zone was satisfying in itself. Four of the cars were vaporised there. Bravo didn’t have much clean up to do but we couldn’t be sure of the occupants or their numbers. Home would have to work it all out from SIGINT, or the lack of it. Watching a chopper unleash hell is a fearsome sight that imbues you with a sense of power and retribution when it’s on your side, firing at the enemy. When it’s the other way around, it’s something else. We were 2km straight down the road from the kill zone and got to enjoy the fireworks. We didn’t need to fire a shot. Bravo snipers got some practise with the Barretts when they put rounds into the two BMWs, but they were already ablaze by then.
Waiting to hear about the pursuit was the tense bit. Shame it was a good result tempered with bad news.
“Mayday, mayday! We’re hit, inbound to LZ, one casualty. Prep for medevac,” came the call after we’d sent them off in pursuit along the highway.
“All stations, helo declaring mayday, one casualty. Prep for medevac. Standby for further information.” I immediately commanded the teams to ready. We had to receive the chopper on the ground and do what we could. “Bravo Sniper, move forward of transport 100m. Establish frontal OP and defence. Expect contact, kill anything that approaches.” I had to protect us with a perimeter.
I split the men from OP1 between flank and rear defence, and medical. We readied a stretcher from the transport.
“Spiker, set up a medical bay with full gear in the transport. Stan and Ol, go primary response when they land, with two others for the stretcher. I’ll marshal them in.”
Spear called again. I could hear the suppressed stress in his voice. It was Luka, the less funny one.
“Delta, Spear. Inbound, ETA 3 minutes. Prep medical assistance on arrival. Expect neck, head or chest wound. I need you to stabilise then extract him from the chopper. Support him in the transport. Read back.”
“Spear, Delta. Copy casualty and medical. Neck, head or chest. Stabilise then transfer. Transport is on site. Land behind it. Medical standing by.”
Well, his chopper still works. That’s a plus. We might need a field hospital en route.
“Lift 1, Delta. Confirm you copy inbound casualty?”
“Delta, Lift 1. Affirm. We’re on it. We’ll work options in the air and co-ordinate with Spear. Expect low and fast on the extraction.”
Spear appeared over the kill zone, aggressively scrubbing off speed and sinking down to land just in front of me. Stan and Ol set straight to work. I eyeballed the chopper and saw a ton of blast strike along the right side. They were lucky. If that shot had hit, they wouldn’t have stayed in the air. Between us, we got the co-pilot out and into the transport.
“Delta, Bravo Sniper. Two vehicles approaching from south, range 1800m.”
“Copy. Engage to kill. I’ll task the chopper. Call shots, be ready to extract.”
Luka jumped out so I had to get him back in the game and up in the air. He got it. No one was safe until we were all safe.
“NO! NO! We have to leave! Get back in the air! We’ve got him! Contacts are inbound from south. GET UP! EXFIL! EXFIL!” We needed Luka covering the valley while the transport closed up.
The snipers kept the traffic at bay then we withdrew onto the transport as Luka lifted off and I tasked him to finish off the contacts to the south. He’d barely cleared overhead the transport before his guns opened up and a rocket went out. It was like the closing crescendo of an orchestral piece. I stepped into the transport and it lifted before I’d made it off the ramp. The noise was deafening and the power of the transport’s rotors pushed my guts down. I powered along the ramp into the compartment. Stan and Ol were busy with the busted co-pilot. I grabbed a headset as the doors closed.
“What’s his status?”
“Multiple shrapnel wounds. Right side neck, chest and arm. Light arterial bleeding from the arm. Right lung’s starting to suck. His neck’s hard to assess.”
They’d cut open his clothing. Two IV lines were in him and probably a shot of morphine. His eyes were rolling a little and he looked relatively relaxed for a bloke shot in the neck. His right hand was still strapped to it. Ol and Stan worked with two others to roll him and patch the side of his chest. There was no point trying to remove shrapnel in case it caused more damage. Stabilisation and stopping blood loss were the main focus.
“What about his arm?”
“The tourniquet’s his best bet. If we move his hand, his neck might get worse. There’s minimal bleeding now. If he’s lucky, that’s missed his carotid.”
I couldn’t see any major damage to his helmet. I hooked him into the transport’s comms.
“Can you hear me? Tell me your name.” I was hunched over him, looking for signs of responsiveness.
“Hhhyazz.”
“Yaz, it’s Daniel. You’re on the transport chopper. We’re going home. Can you feel pain?”
“Hhnnot… Hhssome. Neck. Side.”
“You took shrapnel on your right side. Your arm, chest and neck were hit. We’ve patched your chest, your arm’s got a tourniquet on and your hand is strapped to your neck to block that wound until we get you to hospital. Can you breathe OK?”
“Hhnn some.” There was blood in his mouth. Stan and Ol were on it. I could see fear in his eyes.
“You’re gonna be OK. Just fight, you motherfucker! You killed all those bad guys. You saved the fucking day for a lot of innocent people. Fight for your family!” I waved over an OP team guy. “Keep him talking and fighting.”
I dragged my way along the compartment to the cockpit. On headset, I updated the pilots. We were just above the treetops. The chopper gently rose and sank, hugging the line of the terrain.
“He’s semi stable, but the wounds are serious. He might have a punctured lung and there's a serious neck wound. What’s our status and options?”
“We’re 12 minutes from the contact line, 17 from planned refuel. There’s no field medical there. Hospitals in the city don’t have landing pads. Best bet is to get home. ETA 45 minutes.”
“OK. If Spear asks, tell him his buddy’s stable. Call me if there’s a change of plan.”
Stan and Ol were busy. They’d dressed his arm and decided to look at his neck to see if they could stem the bleeding. When they took his hand away, a black edge of a blade-like piece of shrapnel was sticking out of his neck. They got haemostatic powder and dressing onto it then put his hand back in position. To stop him choking on his blood, we raised his legs and body up and then focussed on keeping his airway clear and open, talking to him as much as possible to make sure he was breathing. There was nothing else we could do but watch his vitals and keep him awake.
Before I knew it, we were landing. The refuel took only a few minutes and then we were up again.
Home straight. Come on, lads. This is only high performance if we fucking make it.
We cracked the doors at base and a team flooded in around Yaz. They slapped on ECG pads, switched over his drip bags and pulled him off onto a cart. Stan and Ol went with them for a handover. I wanted to collapse into a seat but there was no chance. Bravo were up, grabbing their kit and moving for the doors. As Spiker and I waited for them to make room, a skinny, rough looking guy in a shitty red jacket and four other operators stepped on and pushed past Bravo.
“Welcome back!” he shouted. “We’re here to take delivery. Where is he?”
I pointed at the deer, then they saw and realised. Then they started laughing.
“Leave the deer. That’s worth something,” I told them.
“He’s in surgery. They said you did a good job with him. Thanks.” Luka looked exhausted. His short dark hair was scruffed up and sweaty. The neck of his overalls was soaked and he was hunched in a chair in the aircrew block’s corridor, outside the medical area.
“It’s the least we could do for our team. You both did a phenomenal job. You two were the job. I’m sorry you took a hit. What’s his prognosis?”
“Vascular work on his brachial. Minor lung puncture should be fixed OK. The shrapnel in his neck missed his artery by half a centimetre. Getting it out without killing him is the main challenge. He’s gonna be in there for ages.”
“You’ve done a man’s work tonight. You both did. You got us back safe. Thanks.”
“Thank Kamov for making a tough ship.” Luka sighed and gave me a sort of wry, half smile but his eyes betrayed his fear and pain.
“How was the chopper?”
“Secondary hydraulics went, the blades took some blasting but not enough to cause a problem. The weaps on the right side were screwed. Lucky they didn’t go bang when we took the hit. They need to make the windows blast proof though.” There were tears in his eyes; exhaustion, sadness and adrenaline collapse combined. I had to pick my words carefully.
“Luka, remember this. We agree to take risks we can’t fully fathom until they become real. When they do, they’re never the way we imagined them to be, if we ever really tried to. In those situations, the first thing we do is choose - we choose to survive or die. To survive, we adapt in the moment. Survival is the measure of adaptation. With help and luck, your brother will survive because you adapted. Then he will adapt and keep surviving. We’re in the abyss, bound together. We are the rope. Do not let go of the rope that binds you to your brothers. If you do, you or they will be lost. Holding the rope is how we survive.”
He was quiet. We sat still, opposite each other. His thousand yard stare told me his mind was elsewhere. I began to think about my report and whether Luka still had our intel copy. I needed to take it and hand it over.
“The Golf…” he began, “why did you assign that target?”
“Because it was there at that time. We didn’t know how good our target list was and what exactly the convoy had done on its journey. It could’ve been carrying targets, or it could’ve just been unlucky. The time of the attack lowered the chances it was just unlucky.”
“'They… you mean they. The people in the Golf.” I had to close this down, for both our sakes.
“Yes, they. Or him or her.”
“They didn’t drive like the others. Lights were on, they were going slower. They weren’t escaping.”
“You were ordered to attack it by a fire controller who had more but imperfect information, who made a decision in a dynamic environment. You followed that order, as agreed and as you’re meant to. There's two possibilities here: they were a target who adapted their vehicle and behaviour to try to survive; they were not a target, we adapted and they didn’t survive. Collateral damage is on me as the fire controller.” I probably should have left it like that. “When we were lifting off, why did you engage the targets in the valley approaching the transport?”
“Because I agreed that we needed to protect the transport. The context was Yaz, our delay extracting, and the possibility of threat from the vehicles that could’ve affected any of us.”
“And that’s exactly why I ordered you and the snipers to engage the Golf and those contacts. I didn’t know who they were, but I know that we escaped, brought Yaz home and did what we could for him. We adapted to dynamic variables and we survived. Like I said, we agree to take risks that are never like we imagine. You know that’s the nature of combat. If we’d attacked that convoy in day, collateral damage would’ve have been ten times worse and we wouldn’t have escaped. We managed the risks in line with all the threats.”
I couldn’t tell what effect I’d had on him. Hopefully I’d done enough to remind him of the bigger picture and that, like it or not, we’d agreed to put ourselves in situations that didn’t have comfortable, tidy conclusions.
“We’ll see you tomorrow and check on Yaz. He’s alive because of you. We’re alive because of you both. Remember that.” We shook hands. He gave me the intel pack and I headed for our tent.
Knowing what to tell people is hard. It’s even harder when they don’t see things like you do. I’d told him the truth of combat and the truth of orders. I’d told him the truth about what it takes to survive and keep your team alive. I just didn’t bother telling him that he was sweating the small stuff. People, stress and weapons don’t mix. It’s that simple. You do your best to hit the right people for reasons that enough other people agree are right. You accept there’ll be fall out and sometimes you have to deal with that fall out. If you’ve done enough up front, you aren’t accountable for the fall out. In the worst cases, you hold yourself accountable forever.
Most of my report was already in my head. That was our first job on base. The factual details weren’t the hard or important bits; they just took time to compile and order. Stan, Ol and Spiker did that work. The hard art was in creating a story from those facts that told of high performance, but I knew that this was a story that would tell itself. I made our sneak into the dump harder, to enhance our operator skills; more guards, less gaps. I amplified the risk that Marianna could have been a double or a trafficker, and the potential consequences to us and the extraction. That justified everything that came after. I minimised the couple in the house whom we’d had to control as we ran the cargo through the gardens on the way to the lock-ups; if I’d omitted it and the cargo spoke about it in their debriefs, it would’ve come back to us in a bad way. I explained the ambulance roadblock as a one-way route where we and civilians were mortally threatened. The chase down went along the same lines - I amplified the threat from criminals who may have murdered the people in the cars, actively came after us and risked the mission. Only criminals had been killed. Now that we were out of Ukraine, we’d only face judgement by peers in our nation. I glossed over the techniques we’d used on Marko and his pals because three of them were dead and one of them was a scum capture target who’d only been roughed up and psychologically fucked with. I detailed our social contacts and management during the cargo run and kill job and how we’d spoofed everyone, especially the cops and Kravchenko, being sure to amplify Stan’s role and the risks he’d taken. He’d entered hell and walked out with a Burberry mac and umbrella as the only things to show for it. We had every reason to boast, as long as the language wasn’t boastful. We had a first draft done in four hours; a team review and final draft honed to manage perception was done in another two.
We had a field command post just away from the infantry section in a self-contained unit. We checked in with Captain Dryagin, our ranking officer in base. He was better at administrating than operating. We handed him the intel pack and our report then squared away the usual admin.
“Any information about the cargo and the prisoner, Sir?”
“Cargo’s good. They’re being debriefed before they’re brought over the border. The prisoner’s under different management. I’ve nothing to say on that.”
I stayed behind after dismissal.
“Sir, I’ve made recommendations for decorations and promotions for my team. I hope you’ll see from the report and our results that they excelled in the most demanding and dynamic covert conditions. Also, I’ve recommended recognition for the attack chopper crew. They were responsible for executing the final stages of the attack, were wounded and operated under adversity during exfil. Without their results, the kill job would have underdelivered and we would’ve had a harder fight.”
“Noted and understood, Warrant Officer. Your recommendations will be considered.”
“Is there any information about what we can expect next?”
“A venison dinner, from what I heard. After that, no. The landscape’s changing. We’re adapting now. Insertion and extraction is much more difficult. Border control’s tightening. Air defence is spinning up. You were lucky to have left when you did. In a week or two’s time, your helo run might not be possible. So, just wait and see. Decompress. Anything else?”
I took my leave. At midday we went to see Yaz in the flight crew medical station in their section of the base.
“He’ll live, but he’s got some recovery,” said the Field Surgeon. “It took two operations to get the fragments out of his neck. The biggest piece was curved. I don’t know how, but because of the shape it missed his artery. If it’d been straight, he’d probably be dead. We had three people working on him at once to deal with his chest and arm as well. His voicebox is damaged so he might suffer with that. His arm and lung should heal up OK. You did well to get him back. You were right not to try and do too much. He’s sedated so not the best company. His mates have been knocking around so he’s not lonely.”
I left the others to investigate the flight crew mess while I looked for the pilot’s Commanding Officer. I could hear a lot of voices in their briefing tent, talking pilot shit. There were a few remarks about Yaz and Luka. To avoid them I kept to the outer perimeter and went under the back wall to get into the section that connected to the command unit. I surprised an officer at work on a station there, but he quickly calmed down and took me through to the boss, Stepanov.
“Sir, I came to advise you that in the course of our shared duties, your pilots performed to an exemplary standard and I’ve requested their recognition via my field report. I can make the relevant sections available to you for review.”
We spoke through Yaz and Luka’s work and I upsold him on the flying, being sure to emphasise that they’d been critical in getting so many targets, including the primary, and what they had to deal with after. He was more keen to listen than to speak, and he made good coffee too. An unusual character, especially considering he had a nasty face and a resting look like a bulldog licking a thistle.
“Luka might struggle with his mate’s situation, obviously, but also with possible collateral damage. There was a car in the convoy that could’ve been civilian, but we didn’t know. I designated it a target in the moment. During exfil, I ordered suppression of inbound contacts. It was all necessary to satisfy mission parameters and ensure safe exfil. Luka may see things differently. I thought it best you know.”
“Thanks, Warrant Officer. I appreciate your candour. Help me out. What can you tell me about the targets and what the point of the job was? Between you and me.”
When creating heroes and enemies, it’s best to deal in absolutes as much as possible.
“Last night was a long term, high risk field op. Targets were Nazi paramilitary and militia command, with foreign covert agents who import weapons, training and insurgency methods. There were financing attachments as well. They were utter scum. As bad as they come, and they were readying to attack our territories. I can go as far as telling you that their activities were way across the line… They are… were trafficking people in the Donbass, as well as running guns and shooting them. Your lads cleaned that up. It was just… shit luck that Yaz took a hit. He’ll make it. They won’t. We can call that justice. Between you and me, Sir.”
Tying up loose ends is important. Getting others on side makes the tying up easier and tighter. The lads were taken care of and the pilots too. The report would worm its way through the system and manage perceptions of people who knew me and more who didn’t. If it reinforced High Performance, I was on for a win.
I thought about calling Vera but there was no point. We weren’t spanning the chasm and a phone call wouldn’t change that. Vera didn’t give a shit about what I’d been doing and what news would she have for me? Stuff about Misha that I didn’t control could wait. If I got what I wanted from this stint and a new job, then I’d have news and changes that I could exploit. By the time I went “home”, the chasm might have grown big enough to set me free. Vera might have found a new attachment and I could leave her to it. Maybe Mischa would come good and I’d feel differently. Then I’d just have to manage him.
I went through all my kit and reset everything for a rapid deployment, while I processed random thoughts about the stint.
So much for burying Marko and his crew in the pantry. That would’ve been more dignified than those fuckers deserved. As victors, we got to decide their end and as losers they got what they were given. Begging at the end is a sign of weakness. You can forgive that in someone who isn’t really bad and has something to live for. Marianna was right - their begging told us they were weak people who preyed on those even weaker. When it came to the crunch, they were deluded. They believed there was a chance they could persuade us to let them live in spite of what they chose to do up to that point. The truth was that the darkness they chose brought judgement. We weren’t the judges. We didn’t decide their fate. Home and their own game did. We just delivered an end that had degrees of utility to us. They were pawns who were played by Kravchenko for a while until we took control of the game and played all of them. Pawns are destined to be sacrificed.
How will Marianna frame her grandson’s end? What story will she tell herself in the absence of certain knowledge? Maybe whatever she’s been through in life makes her able to balance the scales.
I went up to the gym for a workout and some yoga among the life and the noise of TV news. Across the way was a holding facility, judging by the razor wire. Marko would be in there getting compressed while we decompressed. I was interested to know what value he still held.
The war will morph. There’s weirdness in military objectives geared around combatting trafficking in a war zone. That’s not a normal, so why was Marko extracted? Pushing forces into territory is a normal way to defend people and their normal lives. Evacuating them and taking refugees is another option. Fighting and hunting traffickers while tanks roll and bombs drop is a line we crossed but it was a subtext, not an objective. We didn’t save Marko’s victims. We killed a few of the hunters and left the field. Dropping bombs on Mais’ke might deliver Marko’s victims to better fates than the dragging lives of victims trying to recover in this life. Marko’s crews were still out there, among others, and someone else will take Kravchenko’s place. The war will just establish new borders and lines; on one side, scum might still hunt freely and on the other side we might create normality and more safety. Between then and now, destruction will keep the abyss open and we’ll have to operate inside it. Leaders choose to create the abyss and most people don’t ask why because they don’t want to look and find out. That’s why they accept the story instead of questioning it. It’s brutally simple: in darkness, anything can be destroyed with no accountability. The spoils get sold off to the highest bidder.
War and everything that goes with it is an ingrained, inevitable way of human life. Fighting is human. Fighting backstops other behaviours and choices. Pacifism is not human. It backstops nothing. That’s why every country in the world has an army and weapons. There isn’t a pacifist country on the planet, just armed ones and better armed ones. Pacifists exist surrounded by people who do violence on their behalf. How many pacifists would remain passive if you threatened their families? Ghandi was no exception. True pacifism needs to be tested by the ultimate force but never is. Pacifism doesn’t stop people being hunted and used and harvested. Only running away or self defence through force does. Life creates roots that make it hard to run, so the backstop of force, defence and fighting must exist if life is to persist in place. Nature tells us this.
War doesn’t deliver light into the darkness. It pits darkness against darkness, to slug it out in the dark while people watch from the side lines and argue about rightness, wrongness and morality. Those in the darkness have to survive first by making choices that bear no resemblance to the judgements rendered by the audience. When the fighting stops, whatever comes next is built out of and on top of that darkness, pain and memories of violence. When history is written it never gives true voice to the pain and the memories. If history books were full of individual accounts of acts and choices and endured suffering, there would be too many stories to study and historians would despair in misery. History isn't truth; it’s a biased account of events compiled from other partial accounts and constructed in a way that tells a certain story for certain purposes. Most people don’t tell their stories, so most history cannot be an objective amalgamation of collected, subjective truths. The story told by a General is nothing like the stories told by soldiers and civilians, yet the General’s story is the one most likely to be told and to persist, directly and in reference. So memories of violence are lost in the abyss and the cycle of human nature persists.
There’s already talk about nukes in Ukraine. The western press is instantly accusing us of being willing to attack with nukes and all that bullshit, like we’re so weak and stupid, like there isn’t a shitload more to go through before that was a reality from any side. And yet, despite the threat they cite, not one outlet will go in search of any of the Japanese victims of nuclear war and holocaust to remind the world of Why Nuclear War Is A Net Bad Idea, then confront the leaders with those truths. If that moment came, still the choice to survive or die would be forefront in everyone’s minds. If the bombs were big enough to drive the doomsday scenarios of permanent winter, I’d choose to move on. Such a pitiful, painful existence spent fighting on barren earth against desperate millions wouldn’t be worth living. Until then, there’s work for us and in war there’s opportunity; some evil, like the ones Marko picked; some ambiguous, like a soldier given a line to walk as best they can. If more people learned to mind their own business, there might be less war. But that’s not how the business of the world works.
It was time to share some of our spoils. Spiker had skinned the deer and cleaned it. We found Bravo and invited them to dinner to celebrate not being dead. Bravo thanked us for giving them such an easy job. They’d just turned up, spotted a few cars and got two .50 cals as payment.
“Invite Luka. He was part of the team,” said Spiker.
We all laughed when Luka put down the wine. A bottle of Bastardo was fitting in more ways than one. We were all bastards who had taken on other bastards. We’d prevailed to drink a wine that spoke of the part of our nature we had embraced.
The guy in the shitty red jacket said his name was Arkadiy. It was no more his name than that was his genuine choice of outfit. Wiry, sharp features. Like a weasel. He dressed down but his eyes betrayed cunning.
“Good work. I’m looking at your report and intel dumps. Difficult tasks and deadlines. You did well to get access to the targets. Some creative stuff there. Seems like you managed to get into Kravchenko’s head well.”
“We did enough with what we had. There was a lot of gambling. We managed the risks as best we could. Life would’ve been easier if we’d just bombed the dump and the admin building. They became military targets as soon as we knew who was there.”
“We want the networks so we can grind through them at our pace. You know that.”
“Yeah, but the price of a bomb is lower than a whole team.”
“And you want their price to go up.”
“Fair pay for fair performance. High pay for high performance.”
“Yeah, I read that white paper of yours,” he said. “Creative writing goes a long way. The Army’s a funny place, isn’t it?”
“Funny? Well, it’s ironic, I know that.”
“How so?”
“If you tell people killing is funny, even an Army career runs into limits.”
“Is killing funny?”
“Killing involves taking the risk of being killed. Is dying funny?”
“Touché. I’ll take that as a ‘no’, then.”
“What’s your answer to the question? What’s killing like to you?” There was a good chance this guy was management who’d never been in an operation. He fished about in a crate under a table in the command container. He pulled out a bottle of Polugar vodka and poured it into two mugs.
“No ice. But then that just kills the flavour.” He sat in the chair beside me and put his feet up on the edge of the desk in front. He sipped his vodka, put down his mug then leaned back with his hands locked behind his head and stared up at the ceiling for a time, contemplating his own question.
“The intensity of the circumstances often overrode or displaced the analysis. Contemplation came later, in many ways. When I was under threat and perceived no other options, it became the necessary act. Necessity unleashed trained fluidity. It changed me. I became someone else. I have to find control, balance and judgement in a way I never did before. It’s not funny, but a general sense of humour is necessary to face life. And death.”
The vodka was decent. The rye was punctuated by a sweetness and a hint of almonds, like it kept company with amaretto.
“Why was Marko taken off the kill list? Why do you want him?” That would confirm he wasn’t Army. He had to be SVR. FSB could be this close to the border but this guy’s interests went over that line.
“Yeah… that wasn’t deliberate. More the consequence of compartmentalisation and circumstance.”
“If he’s a target of opportunity, what opportunity does he present now? He’s a walking piece of shit. I’ve heard enough direct intel.”
“It’s not… That’s not quite what I meant.” He changed the subject. “Who came up with your mission planning? For both jobs - the run and the kills?”
“Team effort. We run flat. I instil open-mindedness, creativity, critical analysis and risk management across the board. That’s not the place or the team to depend on false superiority or hierarchy. Planning isn’t a command decision when you’re in the same hole and you’re each other’s way out. Our reports and results, and my recommendations make that clear.”
“OK, thanks. That’s what I wanted to know. We’re thinking about how we move forwards as operations change. Covert planning is on a learning curve.” He held out his hand for the mug to tell me that the conversation had met an abrupt end. “If I have more questions, I hope you won’t mind indulging me?”
“As long as you pay for dinner.”
He was a scheming bastard. It was in the way he’d use manipulative and leading questions to try and draw me out or test me in some way. His spiel on killing was credible but non-specific. It could have been a well-rehearsed lie, or some degree of truth. It might have been his truth, delivered at arm’s length to mask personal details but trigger my emotions.
Compartmentalisation. Circumstance.
Compartmentalisation limited information and intel sharing. The layers of Army and military intel didn’t easily interface with SVR, less so FSB. The same target could be picked up independently. If Marko was on someone else’s radar before he popped up on ours then he should’ve been deconflicted or ringfenced earlier. Marko’s circumstances made him a military target and signal in a bunch of Aidar signals. The trafficking was a side line.
We aren’t here to fix trafficking and save victims. We’re here to do politics off the back of war.
I felt compelled to make sure Marko was where he should have been. I’d scoped the prison complex from the gym and built an attack plan. When I swung by stores there was only a Corporal on the desk. I pulled out fresh fatigues to make me look like a pen pusher, and said I needed some Sergeant’s insignia for an infield promotion. Who was getting promoted was my business. When he was in the back, I pulled a clipboard off his desk and stuffed it up my back.
As a shiny Sergeant, I paced out around the prison complex car park while scribbling notes then looked in from the front and left side of the fence, making more notes. Down the left side was where the building work was, at the back quarter. Then I just walked straight up to the front guards.
“Evening, Sergeant. What can we help you with?”
“Evening gents. Just checking on the work and what room we’ve got left for expansion. What do you make of the place?” I needed to get them involved to win trust and get freedom to wander. Rank would only get me so far. As long as everything felt normal to them they’d say nothing about my arrival. The two guards said only the front half was lit, but that was fine while it was practically empty. The back section roof leaked but it was secure enough for now. When a guard came round from the side, I went with him for a stroll along the perimeter. I grabbed a tape measure off the work stack and pissed about checking walls like I knew what mattered.
“Give me a leg up, I need to check noise.” Hanging off the top of a wall, I dropped onto the bare ground. “See? You can hardly hear a thing. We need to get mixed gravel down here. If you’re down that end and someone came off the roof, you wouldn’t hear them.”
“Mix in broken glass, Sarge. If they come off in bare feet, they won’t get far. We’ll be alright in boots or off the gravel.”
“Good idea.” I made a note of his name.
After five minutes of that bullshit, I went back to the entrance for a look inside. There was a Corporal at a plywood counter with screens and a terminal, some chairs and probably some porn mags and toilet roll stuffed in a drawer. He made me sign in so I flashed my ID with my finger slightly over my unit designation codes, but basic access clearances visible, then signed “Bazhanov” in dogshit handwriting with a false number. He didn’t check what I’d written matched my ID so the place needed serious work. It must’ve been years since we’d run serious POW camps. The Syrians would have pissed themselves laughing at the state of our jail. I got the Corporal talking about the adequacy of the layout and cells. He didn’t have much to say, given that the only prisoner in there turned up the night before.
“Let me just have a quick look through the door at how he is in the cell. I don’t need to open the door or speak to him. I just want to see the space for a second then look at an empty cell, then I’m done.”
It was Marko. He was sat on a plain box bed, on a thin foam, piss proof mattress. He was just in shorts, despite it being nippy. He had a tattoo on his right shoulder - the Wolfsangel - and on his left chest was a modest, slightly dull geodesic pattern that I’d seen on Azov soldiers. I expected more. His face was still fucked. I’d busted his nose in the back of the car and no one had reset it. His thighs were seriously bruised from the kicks that stopped him running. He’d gotten off with barely a scrape. We’d put his bitch pals through hell then killed them. Looking at that cunt in the cell, I thought of the worst of our country’s killers and what I could remember of their crimes. Marko and his pals were different. They’d made money off their crimes in addition to what they’d done to the victims. He looked up at the viewing slot. I stared him hard in the eyes and imagined using him as a punchbag. I closed the slot and checked a cell a few doors down. All the walls were smooth, the ceiling was out of reach, the bed was just a plywood box platform. You could’ve smashed your head against the sharp edges of the bed over and over, but there was nowhere to hang yourself. Shame.
At report the next day we had a meeting scheduled with Arkadiy, just before lunch.
“Who’s that?” Spiker asked.
“Probably SVR, maybe FSB. Knows about Marko. I spoke to him yesterday. He asked about our planning but he’s a sneaky bastard. Be careful. Stick to what we put in the report. Skip the details on the bait. We’ll be fine on all the other stuff. The people who bought it were all bad guys and shit at fighting.” They understood. Showing hesitation, fear or doubt would create more and endless questions. That’s why we worked on the report together.
We all refused his vodka. We wouldn’t be cheaply tricked.
“Been through your report.” He was behind the desk this time. “That’s a hell of a stint. You got a lot done in six weeks.” He smiled but it wasn’t genuine. “More than I expected to read. I’ve got to say, you’ve got an eye for planning and execution under pressure. Ever thought about raiding a bank?”
“I was planning on having a go at the canteen vending machine tonight. If you keep watch, I’ll cut you in. 80/20 split,” said Spiker.
“Small beer for you boys. You’re more like a bunch of crime fighters or vigilantes, cleaning up streets while you save families in distress.” He smiled again. Something was coming. That was the set up.
“Encounters were mission critical. We did what was necessary when there was no escape. We tried to evade the last contact but they cut us off.” I wasn’t taking shit off someone outside our organisation.
“Calm down. Let’s not get off on the wrong foot. No need to be defensive. It’s just my way of warming you up to the idea of a career change.” Despite our refusal, he poured out five vodkas into mugs on the desk. “How do you feel about working behind the lines in a war?”
“Depends on the task, the variables, the support and the chance to exfil,” said Ol. “It’s a massive country. If you walk out, there’s only east or north east through hostiles, or taking a dip in the Black Sea. Every other direction leads to more unfriendlies. We won’t get another air lift.”
“I’m not up for a limited lifespan suicide mission,” said Spiker.
“Jail isn’t much of a better long term career prospect either,” said Ol.
“Sensible,” he said. “What about paramilitary or resistance command and training. Management jobs? Square meals when you get them and free ammo.”
“Not sure we’ve got the rank for that. Is that an offer of promotion and pay rise?” I said. I had an agenda to push: ours.
“Maybe. Or there’s straight up fighting to be done with our own boys. Lots of assignments to be had across the field.”
“Is this a ‘managed choice’?” asked Ol. This twat’s style had pissed us all off. He was playing with us. “We’ll go where the boss tells us, with a possibility for a bit of consultation. Why are you talking to us about jobs instead of the boss?”
“It’s my job to explore personnel options.” He reached into a desk and pulled out some papers and a pen. “Read that. If you sign it, we can have a conversation.” It was a limited clearance agreement. We’d be given access to information in the time window, but we’d be bound to secrecy for life. “I can’t explain unless you agree to those terms. You current clearance doesn’t cut it.”
A five minute pow wow had us agreeing that we had nothing to lose. We handed back our signed forms. He handed out the mugs.
“Relax. This isn’t a test or a judgement. It’s the landscape. Now I can explain the changing view. I’m SVR, not FSB. The Army’s withdrawing operational teams and assets from behind the lines. It’s too risky and unstable to keep them there. All intel suggests martial law and worse is about to ramp up. SVR worked with military intel and wargamed scenarios. The worst case was complete border closure and conscription. Operators left there could be conscripted or be found out as not belonging, then get picked up. Imagine that! Forced to fight for the Ukies when you’re one of us.” He took a swig. “It’s good, isn’t it? I told Daniel it’s better without ice. Lots of flavour. Don’t be shy. There’s a decent lunch coming if you’re hungry. Officer’s mess should be your standard.”
Signing his forms made him marginally more tolerable. I worried that too much vodka might reverse that and lead to a punch up.
“What applies to military operators doesn’t quite apply to SVR. We balance extracting assets that weaken the regime with maintaining assets that have better utility in country. You came out as military operators bringing out military intel assets you ran through Marianna. The people you brought out were in power generation, biomedical research, specialist medical, finance. They all had a wider view. They’ll keep helping us from the safety of Moscow or wherever and feed the machine and future political work. They and Marianna were military matters you’d established. The only other team in Dnipro was tied up on an installation infiltration and came out on another extraction so Marianna had to go with you once the SMO kicked off, otherwise she’d have been stuck. Our military intel withdrawal leaves SVR’s well-established network of sympathetic locals, embedded deep cover nationals or managed assets working for cash, other motivations or some form of solid pinch.” He took another swig.
“OK,” I said. “So we’ve left the place to you spies now that bullets are flying.”
“Yeah, pretty much. That puts you in a position of choice and opportunity. You’re expensive soldiers and losing your skills in a straightforward skirmish on the frontlines would be wasteful. You and the others like Bravo have done more in this theatre than any other soldiers and most spies. A lot of spies can’t fight. They talk from cover. But we’re in a hybrid war now and our management and yours want to make better use of expansive skillsets that were born in fire. People who can run, strike, talk and think at the same time. That’s what got your cargo out and what killed your targets. If we keep gaining intel by catching the worst scum, we can use that on the international stage to win the information and perception war. That helps back up the SMO in the longer term, maybe shorten it.”
“So that’s what Marko is - proof of the crimes in the militia? We brought him out because he’s a political win?” said Spiker. “Is he going on trial?”
“Yes… and no. He’s…” Arkadiy let out a long sigh. “He’s the things you say but he’s also a lesson in deep cover. He’s ours.”
“What? If he’s yours, why was he on a fucking kill list? And if he’s fucking scum, why’d he come out?” I was fucking seething.
“He’s a Ukrainian national. He was never part of our military. He’s not like you. We recruited him in 2015. He used to be a mid-level police administrator, so he watched the meltdown in 2014 and the rise of the right. He applied for a visa to get out, so we worked him and recruited him. He was against the regime but he agreed to work for good money and a promise of escape to build a new life. He was a good asset. He really got into it. He agreed to join the battalions and got the tats. He’s got a narcissistic streak and he’s a bit up the psycho curve as well. That predisposed him to risk, reward and the right kind of praise. He just happened to have sympathies towards us, not them. The money and the escape path kept him motivated. We just encouraged him up the ladder. He put us on to trafficking operations and we let him run with it. He wasn’t giving us weekly reports; he’d have been found and killed. He was a free agent, running deep and delivering intel in dumps maybe three or six months apart. The compartmentalisation between military intel and SVR meant we didn’t know you’d picked up on him and were using him as a source for Aidar’s military operations through Marianna. Your kill list made sense, militarily. They were all key Aidar soldiers first and criminals second. Kill them all and you take out command, control and income. We only deconflicted Marko by accident at the last minute. I saw Marianna’s name, Usenko, on an extraction list and started asking questions. Deconfliction meetings brought Marko up and we stopped it. We would have extracted him ourselves fairly soon, but you were already in position and involved, so your orders changed to help us out.”
I necked my vodka and helped myself to another shot.
“But you just did a deal with a devil. You know what he’s been doing. You’ve brought out the worst of them.”
“How would we know about the scale of their formalised operations and networks if we weren’t inside them? Marko was desperate to come out. From what he’s told us, his marginal saving grace was that he administered the grabbing but he didn’t get properly stuck in. His crews did most of the dirty work. We need to fully debrief him and even then, we’ll never really know if that’s true. But we made a deal with him early on and he took as much risk as you and in some ways more, for years. Now, because of him, we know what we know. That knowledge plays well and carries serious punch in the international, legal and information frontlines. He’s not the only contact we have in those fields but they’re the hardest to get and even harder to get out intact. Because Marko worked his way up, he knows Aidar’s body count, the trafficking operation and how it connects to the state and international money. We were looking for a time and a way to get him out that didn’t lose us the rest of his contacts. In the end, the military decided it for us when it decided to kill the rest of his contacts. We couldn’t stop your strike on Aidar completely, but your work gave us a way to pull him out.”
“If you’d just left him on the list, you’d have had the fucking intel and we closed the network off anyway!”
“Think of the bigger picture. He still has downstream value. Now we’ve got a Ukrainian national witness to parade on the international stage. His birth and records are indisputable. Police, militia, crime, politics. It’s all there. He had more value alive, and we’d made him a deal a long time ago. He went somewhere most people won’t… can’t go. And he still came out on our side of the fence.”
“Why the fuck didn’t he tell us this when we pinched him?” said Ol. “We gave him a hard time. Why didn’t you tell us who he was when you took him off the list? We could’ve delivered you a mute cripple and still claimed mission accomplished and we’re the team he’s working for!” This was not our fuck up.
“Think about it. The vodka and the anger probably doesn’t help. Who grabbed Marko?”
“We did!” said Stan.
“No, the SBU did. Why would Marko admit anything to the SBU? That’s a guaranteed trip to a library to be immortalised as a leather-bound book, isn’t it? Personally, I can’t believe he didn’t break but that says something about his fear of the SBU and possibly about how much you roughed him up.”
“His mates definitely came off worse,” said Spiker. “If he’d stayed on the kill list much longer, he’d have a big ear and less tattoos, that’s for sure. But we threatened him with the worst. Fuck me. Talk about being a victim of timing… and a beneficiary!”
“The only option we gave him was working for the SBU so he could live,” I said. “Rock and a hard place. If I was him, if I believed I could’ve survived and escaped east after making a deal with the SBU, I might have stuck it out myself.”
“And we thought we’d put his buddies in the Cunt’s Conundrum!” said Ol. “He was in a worse one!” It was undeniably funny.
“What do you mean?” Arkadiy didn’t get it. That joke wasn’t for him.
“So what’s next for Marko?” I said.
“He’ll get protection, immunity and a pay off. Therapy if he wants it. We’re not sure how damaged he is. He’ll always be watched and kept away from kids. We’ll take him as far along the testimony road as he’ll go. The stuff could end up at the UN with other things in the pipeline. It’s not just the trafficking, it’s what they’re being trafficked for. That’s Syria and now Ukraine.”
He poured us all another round then eyeballed us from his side of the desk as we mulled his words and sipped the drink.
“Marko’s a lesson to management on the need to integrate operations in our new territories. To you, he’s an opportunity to join a new department that integrates SVR, Military Intel and Spec Ops in Ukraine, with a foot in politics. No matter what happens in the war, we need to secure our expanding borders in an intelligent way that feeds the military and political machine. It’s not a quick fix and it’s not a job for everyone but it needs doing by those who have the stomach, technical and people skills. It’s a hybrid war now, gents. I’m offering you a seat at the table. Lunch is in the Officers’ Mess. Your names are down. I’ll leave you to enjoy it. Come back with questions.”
“What’s your offer on pay and shift patterns?” I said.
“Good, and negotiable.”
“It needs to be high, with performance bonuses.”
— Fin —
I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness adorns a soldier. But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature.
But I do not believe India to be helpless. I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature. Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
We do want to drive out the beast in the man, but we do not want on that account to emasculate him. And in the process of finding his own status, the beast in him is bound now and again to put up his ugly appearance.
The world is not entirely governed by logic. Life itself involves some kind of violence and we have to choose the path of least violence.
Mahatma Gandhi
Destiny made her way and found you in a room
They told me, they told me
To undo the rule of mind and body
And nature laughed away as their voices grew
They told me, they told me
"Clean out the room and bury the body”But I know you with a heartbeat
So how does the night feel?
When the lights fade out
But now it's gone, it's gone, it's gone"I haven't walked for days though I wanted to"
You told me, you told me
"For with every move the feeling follows"
"In nature's empty face, I am of little use"
You told me, you told me
"I'm just another fool for the earth to swallow"But the road through most will lead you back
And I will be with you
For the road of your mind will eat you up
On your island of doom
Where the voices all have gathered up
To a choir of fools
But I know my mind will reach you there
And I will be with youOh, I know you with a heartbeat
So how does the night feel?
When the lights fade outAnd now it's gone, it's gone, it's gone
Ooh, why'd you wake me up today?
When the lights fade outAgnes Obel - Island of Doom