Daniel 05 - Social Engineers

I lied my tits off while Stan offered out more cigarettes.

With my hand stabilised, a view on what to expect down the road, the ZALA still airborne and the phone problem under control, we pressed on to head to the N15 highway where we could pick up some speed. I stayed at the front and opened up a lead in case there was more pop-up trouble, so the vans had more warning.

An hour after my medical stop I entered a village called Prosyana.

“Delta, going straight straight into Prosyana. Do NOT stay on the T0406.” I confirmed our route through a junction into a village so no one took a wrong turn. The roads from Bondareve were quiet, it was past midnight and village idiots were long since in bed. Curfews would come soon once the invasion picked up.

“Oscar, straight straight through junction into Prosyana.” The others were only a minute behind me.

“Sierra, we've got a suspect tail. Two vehicles just lit up and pulled out of a side road.” Stan’s was the last vehicle in our convoy. The tail could have been anyone.

“Delta, copy tail. Activate cell monitoring and radio scanning. I’m stopping. I’ll wait for you to pass then go stealth pursuit. Be ready to jam radio, listen for clues.”

I pulled into a side road, killed the lights and mounted my night vision. Our convoy passed followed by two black UAZ Patriots. I followed behind, out of sight with the lights off. I could make a rear interception or just observe.

“Delta, visual with tail, stealth pursuit. Be advised, two UAZ Patriots. Likely local cops. I’ll monitor radios, any bad calls and I’ll jam.”

It was dead around there so either the tail was looking for us or it was just looking for anyone but our Dnipro job was out on the wires.

The snoops have wide frequency capability so we didn’t need police scanners. They do everything and let us monitor police frequencies if we want. There’s a shortcoming in that we can’t trap the radio transmissions because they’re omnidirectional and don’t need to connect to a network via a cell tower. Only the other person’s receiver needs to detect their transmission. What we can do is actively jam the frequencies for their radios, but jamming is an alert to them. It was a balancing act to listen to their first call for a sign of something and then either jam or let them act normally. If we were going to actually fight local police, jamming was a must to block their calls for help and location.

“Oscar, they might be local beat cops. We might be able to blag these boys. Pay attention. If we don’t lose these guys by the edge of the village just continue south to look normal.”

We rolled through the town, hung a left, then the next right at some kind of industrial plant area, heading to our final bend out of town.

“Sierra! Blue lights, blue lights.” I saw the lights just before Stan made his call.

“Oscar, gambling. Take the stop. Delta, hold back and wait. If they wonder why you’re behind, pretend you stopped for a piss.”

I was about 100 metres away. They pulled into an open area leading to an industrial zone. I let the speed drop off naturally to roll to a stop. I needed adequate distance to look like I came from further away when I turned my lights on.

“Delta, range 100 meters, holding.”

The vans came to a halt, carefully positioned to face south, in neat line abreast formation so they could all escape forwards. To some, that would look suspicious. The UAZs parked in front of the vans, cutting off their escape.

I watched through the TAR’s 4x scope. Four cops. Ol moved towards them, hands out in greeting. Ol used his radio to clue me in to the conversation. His throat mic was out of sight and his transmit button was at his left and right knuckle.

“Evening gents, yeah, late shift for us too! How about you? … … Well, if you’re thinking it’s a bit late for deliveries, you’ve never been in the Army! Don’t you know there’s a war on!” He was keeping it jovial.

Calm preliminaries. Opening banter is always judged by law enforcement. If you’re not afraid, not guilty and not wanted, you can largely say what you want. Even in Ukraine, you can have some form of conversation with the police.

“Captain Ruslan, Lieutenant Schevchenko, Lieutenant Kravchenko… Yep, you’re right. This is a ‘short straw’ job.” Ol said “Kravchenko”. He was connecting one of them to the Aidar boss. Smart. That gave us a spoof option on the phone if we needed it. “Special delivery! We’ve got equipment to drop in the direction of Kostyantynopil’… … …We came from Dnipro stores… … … Yeah, there is. A BMW. He’s a lazy escort. He’s probably ahead. If he’s behind he stopped for a piss, a wank or a feed. Probably all three, he’s a bit of a twat.”

Ol admitted to my existence. I clicked the lights into side beam and rolled out, trying to come to a reasonable speed. I whipped off my NV goggles. I pulled in next to their Patriots and hopped out, trying not to give a fuck.

“Evening gents!” I shouted out. “Actually, I should be saying ‘Morning!’, shouldn’t I?” One of the cops came straight through the gap between their cars to meet me, slightly uncomfortable about my approach. I played “Mr. Smiley” and put out my right hand to greet him. He shifted from suspicious to slightly less suspicious. I tried to block his view to the back of my car to distract him from looking in and seeing Marianna. “So you’ve met the boys have you? ‘The farmhands’, I like to call them! Doing the lifting and the packing and the shifting! And always working before the sun comes up! I see you’re the same. We’ve got ourselves a bad deal here. We must’ve all been bad!” As I spoke I moved forwards, through the vehicles, into their pack to engage and steal attention, bringing the first cop with me. “Sorry I'm late, chaps. I had to stop for a call of nature. Had to find a respectable and legal spot to go take a piss!” I beamed out a smile. Then it was time for some proper team banter.

“Boryslav Kulyk, SBU, Special Department. Good to meet you.” I raised my eyebrows expectantly to force a response, and extended my hand in turn. Introductions happened. Sergeant Golubev and Constables Kozlov, Aslanov and Nikitin. Golubev was about 40, moustached, middle-aged, overweight and had probably spent far too many nights out of bed, judging by his puffy and wrinkled eyes. Kozlov looked a little twitchy - he was the one who came straight to my car - and was tall, lean, with short dark, curly hair. Aslanov was the youngest - fresh faced, sticky-out ears and teeth that were too big for his mouth. Nikitin was mid-height, well-built, shaven headed, looked like a weightlifter on steroids.

I confirmed Ol’s story. Sergeant Golubev asked the essential question. “So what's the delivery? The finest wheat and vegetables for the frontlines? I thought they get what they're given - super noodles and boiled beef?”

“Yep, they still get that to eat.” I played along. “But it's no good for taking out a Russian T-72 at high speed. We're delivering fireworks courtesy of our western friends.” I whispered the last bit and gave a knowing look and raise of the eyebrow. Their curiosity was piqued.

“May we see, please? It's not every day that we police get to see big boy’s toys. We make do with water pistols!” Golubev was doing his job, but nicely.

“Captain, care to lead the way?” That was Ol's cue to go to his van. Then naturally they'd see Spiker’s. Stan’s empty van was easy to explain. Ol gently but unashamedly slid his van side door open fully. There was a lot of kit for anyone who wasn't expecting it.

“What is it all then?” asked Aslanov, wide-eyed.

“Oh you know, the standard… anti-tank missiles, RPGs, SMAWs, some small arms and ammo and… all the stuff you need to kill bad guys with.” Ol was smiling, trying to sound knowingly casual.

The van is a fucking bomb. But it's cool, ya know?

“Shall we let them have a look?” Spiker took centre stage and reached for the first crate - wooden, mixed small arms. Ol helped him take it from the van. As Spiker worked to lift the lid, Ol slowly slid the van door mostly closed. I watched the cops, not the theatre. We engaged sociably. Ol showed off the wares, taking out samples of Glock 17s and a grenade, professionally checking the weapons were safe. When it came to the grenade, he paused to check if the cops had used one before. Two of them had during their service; Golubev was 36th Marines in his day, out of Mykolaiv; Nikitin was 23rd Tanks, Zhytomyr.

Stan pandered to the marine. “Blimey, we’ve got a serious bad ass here. You’ll have seen all of this stuff before then, and more! Sorry to bore you! Us regular army types still find this fun.” Golubev politely accepted the compliment with a gruff noise and half smile. Ol drew on Nikitin’s background. “You don’t look like you’d fit in a tank. Were you that size back then?”

“Actually, I was bigger! Nothing to do half the time when you’re on base. I’ve lost weight since I got out. I used to do a routine with our kit and the shells!”

We shared a laugh at the picture of what could have possibly gone wrong. There was some empathy building. Stan shrewdly deferred to their combat roles by underplaying ours.

“We’re all Logistics, so in the rear with the gear. Still, you can’t shoot a gun if you ain’t got no ammo.” Stan gave a few safety pointers on holding the grenade to the uninitiated young cops. He pointed at the grenade’s pin. “Just don't pull that bit there otherwise we’re not going home tonight!” Aslanov and Kozlov were gingerly handling the grenade, getting a feel for the weight.

“So does SBU normally do this? I didn't know you guys were military?” Golubev tactfully enquired.

“Well, depends which bit you're in. Special Department…” I rolled my eyes as I touched my ID dangling from around my neck. “Someone thinks that escorting vans of fireworks at night is ‘special’. So I get all these good jobs. Like I said, I must've upset someone in either this life or a previous one.”

I was pretty certain Golubev and Nikitin weren’t comfortable.

“What else can we show them?” I sort of whispered at Stan, with a smile like I was letting them in on a secret. I was thinking we could show them a rifle then finish with a porn mag and some smokes.

“What's this anti-tank stuff you've got?” said Aslanov.

It had to be, didn't it?

We spent ten minutes giving them a look at the SMAW grenade launcher and a peek into the NLAW box. We’d cracked open some smokes so they knew we had something they could take.

“Hmm, actually,” Golubev started, “maybe you can help us?”

“Sure thing,” said Spiker, “what do you need?”

“You said you came from Dnipro. Have you seen any trouble on the roads tonight?”

“Hmm, well, what constitutes trouble around here?” I quickly came in as I knew how these questions worked. Golubev would start wide, let us dig a hole, then narrow the questions to find the lie. He wanted us to reveal our route. That narrowed down the ambulance, as well as the Dnipro job. There's no way that they didn't know about both.

“Anything from punch-ups to hold-ups to wave downs to drive-bys to kerb crawling. Usual shit. Seen anything?”

“Nope,” I went for certainty in my tone. “The last thing we need is to get delayed or held up with strangers, and as you can see, we don't have the space in the vans for kerb crawling.”

“Well, you're delayed with strangers now.”

Touché.

“Errr, not by my standards. You're Sergeant Golubev, Marines. Aslanov, Kozlov and Tank Lifter Nikitin; you're good guys on our side. You're not strangers!” I beamed a smile. The other lads backed me up and made encouraging and supportive noises. “Have you had much trouble tonight? What's actually happened?” I tried to sound genuinely concerned, and pulled a I'm here to help, what seems to be the problem, sir? look. I put my thumbs into my belt as though I was going into gumshoe mode.

Golubev continued. “There's been a violent incident back the way you came. We'd have thought you'd have seen it.”

“Wow, must have been something substantial then. Where was that?” Ol ran with it.

“Vasyl'kivka. That's the way you came, right?” That was his trick. He thought he'd got us.

“Which one’s that? Let's see on the map?” I asked.

He pulled out his phone and brought it up on the map. I studied it with Ol looking over my shoulder.

“Yeah we did come through there, not the catchiest of names though. We came in from the West. Where was the issue?”

He pointed north of the hospital, where we gave three junkies more than they expected.

“No, we missed that on the route we took. Literally didn't see a thing. We try to stay off the big roads a bit because of the cargo. It takes longer but keeps us out the way of jams and trouble. What happened?” I lied my tits off while Stan offered out more cigarettes. We all took one. Golubev proceeded to explain that there was some kind of attack on an ambulance crew and attempted robbery, which then became something else. Someone came by and seriously saw to the robbers. It wasn't pretty. The good job was that they saved the ambulance crew. One was being abducted and the other had a head wound and could've died. Luckily someone intervened and it was just down the road from the hospital. As for the robbers, it was grim. Two of them were fatally run over and one nearly bled out having lost his hand. A belt and the nearby hospital saved him for the time being. But not for long. He was in deep shit with his bosses.

“So who did it? Who intervened? Another gang?”

“Not sure,” said Kozlov, “it wasn’t long ag…”

Golubev cut in. “The information’s coming in, but it’s unclear.”

“There must’ve been witnesses?” I asked.

“As I say, the information is still coming in. You know these things, it takes time to get the information and process it all.”

“Yep, usually chaos isn’t it, especially at the beginning. Have you got any interdepartmental support?”

“How do you mean?” Nikitin asked.

“Well, do you want some?” I asked “I don't envy you having to chase that down on your own. Who are these bosses? What's that all about?”

“Networked gangs with various connections run rackets large and small, and get legal cover or passes through their corruption. Only small fry get tossed to the cops. A one-handed junkie who couldn't successfully steal when he had two hands and a gun isn't going to get another chance. But these gangs take all resistance as a challenge of force and they work the territories, so they’ll be gunning for whoever interrupted the robbery. For us local police, this stuff is straying off-limits. You'd need a van full of weapons to deal with these crews.”

“Well… funny you should say that.” I nodded at Ol’s van. “I can see why you stopped us. Do you want me to put a call into SBU? Hey, if you give me your number, I can get them to come back to you. That could be useful?”

“Well, possibly…” Golubev pondered the concept of interdepartmental support.

“Give us a sec, guys.” I reached out to put my hand on Golubev’s shoulder for a quiet word. He came with me just out of earshot.

“I might be able to do you a favour here.”

The penny dropped. No law enforcement officers in shit holes like that gave a fuck where the leads came from. They could make up any old bullshit about how they busted someone and sort out the evidential chain, beat up or pay off the right people - including judges - and get themselves a case sewn up. They didn’t even need the right criminal.

“Seriously… I’m not promising anything,” I said. “but if we get lucky here then maybe you could leave night patrols to your mates and you get to stay in bed?”

Golubev finally broke into a smile. “You know, you’re a funny guy. It’s not often you meet someone who’s actually interested in other people’s politics, and we’re fucking cops! Yeah, my back’s had enough of car seats. I need something comfier. Thanks.”

We both laughed out loud. I put my hand on his shoulder and turned back to the pack, smiling.

“I’ll get on the phone now,” I said, heading to my car. They didn’t follow. I pulled a mobile from the glovebox, powered it up and used the snoop to connect to the satellite. It was a kosher phone and I was about to call a Ukrainian number, but the satellite route meant this was all off the Ukrainian grid and secure.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Boryslav Kulyk, Special Department, badge number 7175-P67. Is that the SBU support desk?”

“Good morning, Agent Kulyk. Please can you confirm your security word and your date of birth?”

“BRACKET. 21/02/1980” That was sufficient to authenticate me on this satellite link. Those codes had been issued just for this job.

“Thanks, how can we help?”

I clued the analyst in on the general picture with Golubev and told her she needed to just get info from Golubev - as much as he’d give - as though she would then try and provide later help from the SBU. I got out of the car and went back to the guys, then handed Golubev the phone.

“That’s Niki at the office. She’s on support desk tonight. Just let her know whatever it is you need the help with and she’ll do what she can.”

Golubev took the phone and stepped off to start blabbing intel that would fill us in on the big picture, but I’d already had an idea for a quid pro quo. I turned to Nikitin, who was vaguely amused by his younger colleagues’ fascination with NATO weapons.

“Just wondering if you guys could help us out?”

“What you after?”

“Well, we’re on a bit of a schedule and it looks like the roads are getting slow. Any chance you guys could give us an escort along the N15? Your blue lights would help massively.”

“Well, that depends…”

“I know. But we can make it worthwhile.” Nikitin’s eyebrows raised. I was guessing that he wasn’t a saint. “See all this shit in the vans? There’s so much of it, no one knows where it all goes. If you fancy a Glock each, smokes and some porn in exchange for an escort east, that’s gotta be a good deal, right?” They would get a completely clean, unregistered 9mm for driving that they were doing anyway.

“I’ll see what the Sarge has on the cards, but I don’t see why not!” he said.

Despite the fact that Niki had only taken information from Golubev and not given him any, he felt like I was helping him. With the bribe on top, he agreed to escort us as far east as they could. He’d work out how far once we got going. That was a massive win. One cop in front, one behind would make us untouchable on the main road.

Boris Kulyk isn’t Unit Commander, Special Department, SBU for nothing.

---

It was actually annoying being in an escort with blue flashing lights at 01:45 at night. You don’t want to actually have to see the lights in front of you for any length of time. But we took the win. There wasn’t much traffic on the N15, but Golubev must have felt special with them on the whole way.

“Oscar, tactical review. Let’s keep monitoring the cops’ calls and radios. We look like we’ve had a massive win here, but it pays to be suspicious until you get paid.” Ol was right. We had to be on our guard. They cops could have been calling wives, girlfriends, other patrols, or anyone. We couldn’t trap them in the snoops so we just let their numbers through on monitor mode and sucked data off them.

Tiredness was creeping in. I popped an alert pill. I reached back and roughly checked Marianna’s carotid pulse. If the drugs were wearing off she’d stir with my fingers pushing into her jugular. She was still under and alive, but she could do with a check.

I started thinking about the cops.

What if these guys are smarter than they look and they’re playing us. Why and how would they?

They know more about the ambulance incident than they’re letting on, and they’re working out that there’s a high likelihood that a bunch of guys with serious firepower shot some junkies who were getting in their way. In the process, they saved two ambulance crew and some emo girl, and maybe other innocent bystanders. That’s all still a crime, even if there’s a big fat silver lining. If they suspect us, they know that we’re hard fuckers with heat who could execute them. It’s them with pistols against Team Anti-Tank TAR-21 Special Department. Those odds kinda suck for a Thursday morning, especially if you have kids at home.

What would I do if I was them?

• I wouldn’t have done the escort, I’d have let us go on our way, then alert other units.

• I’d do the escort then start passing messages to others to set up a trap or at least provide intel for other teams to pick up and deal with. Then I’d find a suitable point to peel off and bid farewell.

• Maybe they just accept that people like us can fuck up junkies with immunity if we are tasked by authorities to deliver weapons, so it’s in no one’s interest to fuck with us, at all. Even professionally, if Golubev wants to get behind a desk, fucking with this legit shipment isn’t going to get him there quicker. We looked official and the cover story is coherent enough.

---

I explained my thinking to the others.

“Fucking hell, Dani. I see what you mean but, Jesus! Your angling is bordering on paranoid!” Spiker liked boundaries.

“They haven’t made any calls out of the ordinary, Dani.” Ol reminded me.

“Have they got any other way of sending messages that aren’t mobiles or radio?” I asked. No one knew. Being paranoid was part of my job as commander, but it was also part of all our jobs as operatives. It required constant mental effort but then that’s what “not getting killed behind enemy lines when you are a covert soldier doing an extraction” looked like.

The alert pills started to drive the pain in my hand up. I necked some more painkillers. I told Spiker to check datalink for intel, told Ol to check for fuel stops and told Stan to check the ZALA. We had a lot of plates up in the air and while the police escort took some pressure off, we needed to get ahead.

---

“Street 16, Street 16, what’s your location?” The cops were being called by a controller on their radios. This might have been a clue to their state of mind.

“Street 16, east on N15 near Pidhavrylivka. Street 17 is with us.”

“Copy. Anything interesting seen tonight?”

“Negative. Quiet. Any jobs for us yet?”

“Negative. Did you get a contact about the Vasyl’kivka incident?”

“Affirm. Any updates?”

“There’s a bulletin out on it and there's updates on Dnipro. Check your messages.”

“Copy.”

Shit! Which messages?

“Delta, we need to see those messages. What system?”

We weren’t sure. I needed to talk to Golubev to see if I could manipulate him again. We thought about things a little.

“Oscar, we need to fuel. The only place between here and near Donetsk is Iskra. We need to stop there.”

I called Golubev and let him know we needed fuel. The Iskra stop was confirmed.

Spiker had an angle. It was clever social engineering that avoided trying to involve Home in some complex hack attempt to get into whatever message system the cops had. With the snoop we locked Golubev’s number in a fake cell with Spiker’s and we could all listen to the call. Spiker put on a posh-ish Ukrainian graduate accent.

“Hello?”

“Sergeant Golubev, please.”

“Speaking, who’s this?”

“Agent Chornovil, SBU Support out of Kyiv. Sorry to call at this time, is now OK?”

Spiker sounded like a graduate pencil pusher who’d never killed anyone with a knife in his life.

“Yes, hello. I’m on shift so go ahead, please.”

“I’m just following up. Niki spoke to you earlier? Agent Kulyk called in a little while ago with a request for assistance.”

“Yes, we’re with Agent Kulyk now, providing an escort actually…”

“Ah, I didn’t know that. What’s happening?”

“Well… we’re just supporting him on his job tonight, giving him some company east out towards Donetsk.”

“Really? That’s incredibly helpful of you. Thank you. I've been passed info about a violent incident to assist with. Were you or Kulyk involved and need priority assistance?”

“No, no, no. Nothing like that. Agent Kulyk said you might be able to offer… interagency support to help us with that incident?”

“Yes, OK. We can certainly look for information we’ve got and… hold on… Boss? BOSS! Can you… yeah… it’s Kulyk. Quick! Hold on Sergeant, I just have to confer to see what we can do, can you just hang on?”

“Yes, sure.”

The line was muffled but Spiker was having one half of a totally made up conversation. I could hear “Vasyl’kivka… decent cops… helping… escorting now… help them… authorise as active job?”

“Sergeant, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here, go ahead?”

“OK, sorry about that. You know, there’s a process and all that. Anyway… so… the fastest thing we can do is to share some information and start looking at our sources. We can start with you first and… huh? …hang on a sec.”

More muffled talk. Something about “Kulyk, run local, low key”.

“Sergeant, are you main contact on this?”

“Err… yeah. We’re actively working this while we’re on shift.”

“Great. This is what I have so far: at midnight thirty - plus minus - there was an attempted robbery of an ambulance crew in Vasyl’kivka, then a third party intervened somehow and killed two of the robbers and injured a third. Correct? Any more details?”

“Yes, that’s correct. Exact location was the T0408, just north of the junction with Vulytsya Zaporizhsʹka. Two fatalities were run over. Injury of the other was a gunshot wound to the hand. Also, there were two ambulance crew who were injured. One took a gunshot wound to the head, alive, critical condition. One was… assaulted, don’t think that was a gunshot… attempted abduction, stable condition. Exactly what happened to the robbers isn’t clear. We know one was shot and then assaulted, critical condition, may not survive. The other two got run over by the ambulance and we don’t exactly know the circumstances. Witness chasing is happening, but information’s patchy. Can you hold on while I check an update?”

“Sure, that’s great information. I’m just putting it in the system as you speak. Just tell me what you have when you have it and I can type it in. You don’t get this job if you can’t type!”

The gold was coming. We wanted him to tell us the latest info was in his messages. Then this would either become a clean-up job or they got to see their families.

“There’s an update…” Golubev had the gold. “Yes, there’s a witness in custody. From her, apparently an undercover police officer arrived on the scene and saved her life; she was going to be shot by the robbers. There may have been another officer, but the witness fled once she’d been saved and isn’t sure.”

“Wow! How’s that for luck? Hang on, have you got undercover units who’ve reported this? Wouldn’t you guys be dealing with this in-house then if that was the case? Who were the robbers?”

“Yes, that’s a great point. No, we’ve got no information about other units on site and they didn’t do any arrests or control the scene after the intervention, so that doesn’t make sense. The robbers? They’re likely to have local or national gang connections. So you…”

“Yeah, tell me about it. Our Organized Crime unit's snowed under with gangs. Malina's old news but there’s smaller operators and some clown outfits. Any idea how serious the gang connection is? Any names?”

“In this area, obvious choices could be “Datsyuk” and the “Hopko” gangs. You know them?”

“Yes, they’re notorious. I mean, the names are deliberately chosen, right? “Service Provider” and “Children”.”

“Exactly…”

“Thanks, Sergeant. I can pass this to the organised crime teams and they can look at both ends - the gang aspect of the robbery and the intervention. Let’s go back to that. What do you think the likelihood is that this was a gang warfare situation or rivalry? Could that be a factor?”

“Hmm… I can’t say. On the surface, I’d have to ask why? And now this update about an undercover cop? How would the witness even know, unless the cop identified as police, and then left the scene after neutralising the threat?”

“Yep, good point. We should get you over here to work with us. Is there anything else coming from that witness or any others, or anything else in your systems? We don’t have direct police access for obvious reasons but my boss has just authorised this call as an interagency support for mutual benefit, which means you and I can legally share information now. Anything else you can tell me? Is anyone doing ballistics?”

“Ballistics? No, nothing about that. It usually takes more than 24 hours here, if they find the bullets. Let me see, there were two bulletins…”

If we’re lucky, Stan’s shot went out the car and they might not find it. Or it could be embedded in the car or another. A 5.56 round didn’t come from a police pistol, it came from a rifle. That’s someone serious, but criminals are serious.

“…the primary witness was the one who provided the information about an undercover police officer. Nothing else yet.”

“OK. Thanks. Do you know the reasons for the robbery or what was actually stolen? Not quite the same, but in Kyiv on one night there were co-ordinated raids on pharmacies and surgeries across the city by sophisticated operators who literally cleaned out drug supplies. They didn’t just hit the opiates, it was masses of stuff. Makes sense if you get pharma products for nothing then cut them to 20% strength. That’s an infinite profit margin with one night’s worth of local risk. Could it have been something like that?”

“Honestly, no idea. It’s possible that three junkies robbed an ambulance for anything they had on board for personal use or…” Golubev's brain was ticking. “If you’re Datsyuk or Hopko, and you’ve got trafficked people and you’re mistreating them, what if you need medical supplies to keep those people alive and in your business?”

“Lord alive. Yes, of course. That’s a possibility. I’m not sure I’d have thought of that. Kulyk was right to put you in touch with us. I guess the surviving robber is key to that question. Can you get him to spill his guts?”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Goubev laughed. “Like his friends?” Spiker joined in laughing. “These bastards got what was coming to them. Can you intervene with the witness in a medical sense? If he’s kept in a coma, can you get him out of it? Do you have the authority?”

“Hmm… that’s out of my area of expertise, but I can pass it on to the boss and elsewhere. Have you got details about the witness? Name, location? Is he known?”

“Yes... Bogdan Hudzik, in the Central District Hospital. The robbery took place practically next door. If it hadn’t, he’d have died. How’s that for an inversion of justice? The ambulance crew are there as well. How’s that for perverse? They were on shift from that hospital! And they got put in there by that bastard!”

“Pardon my language but the little shit’s in deep shit! I just hope the ambulance crew survive and recover. OK, Sergeant, I can’t guarantee a really quick response. There’s a lot of bureaucracy and process involved, even if we get some quick joins. It’d be great if we can do something with you here. I mean, if it’s Datsyuk or Hopko, and you help us in that direction, that’s a big win for you and for us.”

They signed off as new best buddies.

I pissed myself with laughter.

That is some of the best social engineering I’ve heard in a while. All the more for it being a cop that Spiker just spoofed. Fuck encryption codes. It’s the human that’s the weakest part of the link.

“Sierra, we've got datalink alerts…” Stan relayed everything to us on the radio so only one of us was reading while driving. “There’s a military block at Kostyantynopil’ and Kurakhove.”

More things to talk about over coffee.

At 02:00 we rolled into the fuel station at Iskra. I went in for coffee with the cops. I just had to hope no one ever came to check the video feeds here and spotted me. Over coffee, snacks and pastries, Gorlubev was open about the SBU call. He was grateful for the attention and the offer of any help.

“So how are you guys doing in terms of time tonight? Any chance you can stick with us further east, say to Kurakhove?” I chanced.

“Well, we can’t really take you much further than Kostyantynopil’ as that’s well into Donetsk Oblast and we haven’t got a formal arrangement in place for tonight’s ad hoc adventure.”

“Well, you’ve already helped us more than enough. You know, I wish we all worked together like this more often. Especially dealing with… what were they called again?”

“Datsyuk and Hopko. Fucking bastards. They steal people, children and the whole nine yards. There was a stash house we found last year. Kids from all over, a lot from Donbass. Plus you’ve got all the stuff passing through and in from Odessa.”

“There was that stop two years ago, SWAT raid or something… Zakarpattia. Gang control. It’s all over the place. We won’t be made redundant any time soon, will we?”

While I was in with the cops, the lads checked Marianna and took care of their own needs. When I saw them taking fuel I whacked a load of cash on the counter so none of them had to come into the store. I’d already overloaded the cops with whatever they wanted from the store, including stuff to take home to their kids. They understood SBU largesse when they saw it.

If I couldn’t get Gorlubev to change his mind about taking us through Kurakhove, we’d probably have to work out an alternate route. I went to the toilet to speak to the lads on the radio.

We had to recover the ZALA before we got close to Donetsk. They’d found alternate routes to skip the block at Kurakhove and areas for handover. By their reckoning, on back roads we still had over two hours of straight driving. I told them to spin up all three DPR contacts and check what other resources were available in the handover region, south of Donetsk. When I came out of the toilet, I chanced my arm again with the cops.

“What was the other thing you mentioned? In Dnipro?”

“How can you not have heard about that?” said Nikitin.

“Coz I’m so Special Department I only do this fucking Army shit and I’m literally not on any street shit. I’ve been on this for months and as long as I can string it out. The money’s way better!”

“There was a shoot out at a cemetery. Fires as well. The news isn’t right but the intel says it’s a snatch job done by pros. They’ve burned out vehicles. There’s a rumour they used a boat or even a fucking sub to get away.”

“Christ. What did they snatch at a cemetery? Bodies?”

“Yeah, but not dead ones. Three families are in the alerts.”

“Jesus. Who are they looking for? Is it worth knowing what to look for?”

“We can show you the messages in the car. Apparently two black guys were in the crew.”

“OK, well, that sort of narrows it down then, doesn’t it?”

Their system was a laptop and dedicated police console in their cars. There was a lot more detail than I’d expected. Site images showing the burned out tail cars and Stan’s handiwork on the distant tail. Three cars had hit the caltrops. The decoys meant that the cops didn’t have a certain direction to focus on and were looking for the families and two black guys, anywhere. That was enough to push perceptions in the wrong direction and mis-allocate resources. They’d be dragging the river for phones, chasing other signals from the mall and probably kicking in the doors of anyone Stan had unwittingly given a phone to. Nikitin had said that someone thought a boat or a fucking sub could’ve been used in the getaway, which was proof that a good spoof can take on a life of it’s own. The river was actually big enough to do an extraction underwater. It was deeply satisfying to know that we’d manage to spin up such illusions. What really mattered, though, was that the cops system didn’t contain anything about the lock-ups, cargo vans, the beamer, Marianna or a team of four. It also didn’t have anything about the couple we’d smashed out during the garden run. Based on the cops system, we were ahead of the information curve as long as we didn’t do something that broke the spell.

When I was back in the BMW, Marianna looked peaceful and was still on her side across the back seat. There was a scent of baby wipes.

“Did you have to do much for Marianna?” I asked on the radio.

“You fuckers owe me! I’m not cooking for the rest of this stint or next one! My hands aren’t clean enough to handle food now. Dani, you were meant to bung her up with the fucking pills.” Spiker’s voice was full of consternation.

“I fucking did.” I said. “I gave her one… after… the air raid siren.”

“That was more than twelve hours ago, you dick! The diazepam doesn't help either. You fucking owe me!”

He was right. I'd forgotten to keep on top of that.

“Come on Spiker,” said Stan, “you’re old enough and ugly enough to know you should wear gloves when you visit with Grandma.” He was unsympathetic.

“Oi, fuck you! My grandma doesn’t get abducted and caught short. She’s meant to be in the place she’s in, and she ain’t bagged and capped. I nearly had to bin Marianna’s pants. Think about that. I stopped when I realised, ‘When she comes to what’s she gonna think?’ That’s actually fucking serious. I’m not joking. It’s one thing for a 78-year-old woman to be abducted, brutally questioned because her grandson is a trafficking nonce and she might have been dodgy, but waking up with no pants on at her age is far more disturbing. There’s a line somewhere and I don’t think she deserves that.”

“Weeeeeell, that sounds like ‘obvious question time’,” said Ol. I knew exactly where he was going.

“Go on,” said Spiker. We needed a punchline.

“It’ll be the first time a covert operative or POW is asked in interrogation, ‘Why are you in possession of a 78-year-old’s shitty pants?’ What intelligence value do these have? What kind of technology is this? Are they some kind of Russian ‘encraption’ device?”

Again, I was pissing myself.

Thank God Marianna can’t hear.

“Spiker,” I said, “if it’s any consolation, you’re off cooking duty for this stint and the next.”

“Good!”

“One one condition.”

“What?!”

“You send the pants to the GRU addressed to the Encraption Service with a note asking for them to be decrapted.”

The good thing about the radio is that only one person can talk at a time, otherwise we would’ve all been laughing out loud right down Spiker’s ear.

This has got some serious mileage in it. Spiker is right to use his collateral for taking care of Marianna. My journey will be tolerable now and it’s a major giveaway if I roll the window down and then try to talk my way through a roadblock stinking of shit. If there’s one thing Boryslav Kulyk, Unit Commander, Special Department, SBU, DOES NOT DO is shit himself. EVER. Especially when he’s driving his BMW 5 series.

“To balance things up,” I said, “We’re gonna have to draw lots for who cleans the pants and re-stows them.”

I’m happy with 1 in 4 odds.