by DAK
KVSPARROW
A Shadow Wars Novel
By DAK
Copyright © 2012 by DAK
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
The following is a work of fiction. It is not intended to portray real events nor is any character meant to depict or portray any actual person, living or dead. Although many of the locations in the story are real, the events described are imaginary.
Seriously.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Glossary Of Terms
Acknowledgements
Customarily an author begins this section by thanking variously his or her editor, agent and assorted publishing personnel. For obvious reasons, I will forego that tradition. Instead I want to thank, in light disguise, those people whose being in my life has enriched and ennobled it. Without you I would not be the man I am today. More to the point, absent your encouragement, this book would never have been written. Thanks then to C, without whom life as I know it would be worthless. To Pollywog, Double Happiness and NP aka Dudeman, you are my true audience, first last and always. 007, welcome to the clan. To the most faithful friends a man could ever have, JMB and SMB. My love and appreciation always. You are and will forever be missed.
Finally but not last, I owe a debt of gratitude to Walker, my partner in some very interesting times. Either we both come home or we both die in place. You have no idea what a comfort it was to go in harm’s way with someone who meant and lived that level of dedication.
Keep the faith.
DAK
2011
.
Note to the reader:
This book is meant to be a look behind the curtain, a glimpse into the tactics, techniques and procedures, the essential tradecraft in action, of a covert operator in the gray world of deniable intelligence activities. As such, it features a significant amount of explanation designed to enhance the reader’s understanding of the mindset of an operator when facing the issues and challenges which occur in the narrative. This may seem to some to disrupt the flow of the story. To others it may seem excessively detailed and delay getting to “the good parts.” These are valid criticisms of a typical novel, if this were intended to be such. It is not (please see the above). While it is my intent to entertain, it is equally my intent to show operational reality as I have lived it. I hope you read this work as much for a glimpse of this reality as for the “thrills.” To my fellow operators who may read this work, yeah, I changed a few things simply because it didn’t seem right to put that info out there. You’ll know it when you see it. All other errors are me half stepping. Mea culpa. Stay Safe.
Chapter One
It wasn’t too hard to read the guys following me or figure out their intentions. I’d seen them both hanging out near the café where I’d had coffee before walking away from what used to be called Prince Boulevard uphill into Bregu i Diellit. My route this evening had been largely random, trolling around Pristina revisiting old scenes and locations, reacquainting myself with a city I knew and loved almost as much as I did my own hometown back in the States. Coming back here after nine years away had awakened some old ghosts. They reminded me of a time which seemed much further away and more innocent than it actually was. I’d been here at a time when the war had ended but the killing continued. It had been one of the most intense, exhilarating and enjoyable periods of my life and even now, after spending several years in two very hot wars and a few more years working on various covert contracts, I still looked on my time in Kosovo as a high point. The city had changed, some for the better with new buildings and a sense of progress, some for the worse as the tentacles of organized crime and behind the scenes power brokers wound their way deeper into the nascent government of the new state. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before in other parts of the globe but it bothered me just the same. I liked Kosovo and its people far more than I had any of the other places in which I’d lived and worked. Seeing it being eaten by a cancer from within made my joy at returning a bit muted.
The mental reverie as I walked and taxied around the city hadn’t dulled my situational awareness however. I wasn’t here as a tourist and while it was doubtful that the opposition would be aware of me until I went to the right places and spoke with the wrong people, keeping at least a minimal awareness of one’s surroundings is a required skill in my trade. Ramping up that constant attention to detail while on a mission is so fundamental as to go unstated. So when the two young dudes who had been eyeballing me as I left the café appeared behind me as I walked uphill, I knew there was not much chance of coincidence. They wore cheap leather jackets against the fall chill and thin, fresh from Turkey, counterfeit Levi’s. Both had dark hair cut in the mussy style some Albanian guys seemed to favor nowadays and were shooting what they must have imagined were surreptitious glances at me while studiously looking away when I happened to face them. I had turned off Ramiz Sadiku, as I still thought of Prince Boulevard, and headed uphill at the old World Food Program intersection just shy of the start of Pristina University. When I paused to light a Tampa Sweet, my two fans appeared around the corner and then slowed and found a sudden need to stop and hold a conversation. This, combined with having seen them just a few moments before, drew my attention and I took the next left onto a street which paralleled Ramiz Sadiku to see if they continued to follow. They did, staying about a half block behind me and on my side of the street. This poor tradecraft made it unlikely that they were trained but didn’t preclude the possibility that they were there to draw my attention and help hide a more skilled surveillant. It was more likely that they were simply opportunistic criminals, something with which Kosovo was plagued. Still, in deference to my professional paranoia, I continued straight toward the next intersection which had a small grocery store on one corner. Slipping inside, I browsed the shop near the large front window and saw no one else on the street and no vehicles which parked nearby and retained their passengers. It didn’t mean there wasn’t some additional actually skilled surveillance holding back and bird dogging me through watching the two clowns now again engrossed in a conversation on the opposite corner but it was pretty unlikely. Odds were that these two were Up To No Good and that I featured heavily in whatever get rich quick scheme they had in mind.
As I reached this conclusion my mind flashed back on a time when, as a young recruit, I and my classmates had been the beneficiaries of a situational awareness lecture by an older, battle scarred veteran. Pared to its essentials, his lecture stated that there is a regrettable human tendency to not believe the unusual even when we’re looking for it and would otherwise recognize it immediately if it involved someone else. Anytime you take measures to enhance security, either yours personally or on behalf of someone else, the first thing you need to do is be prepared to believe yourself. Anticipation without projection is the key. Think what a threat would look, sound and feel like and then take steps to detect it. Creatively anticipate it and then when
it does materialize, don’t do as most people and go into denial. If you park your car under a streetlight and walk a certain path to get there having looked for possible ambush points at that time of night and then one evening you see a hulking thug lurking right where you expected someone might…get the hell out. It is exactly what it looks like. And if it isn’t, all you’ve done is spend a little extra time in maintaining control of your environment. Too many people, when faced with this type of situation, recognize it for what it is but refuse to accept that it could actually relate to them. While they wrestle with denial and the fear of looking foolish, precious time slips away and they lose the chance to act. I’d had this lesson hammered home while still a young man. Nothing I’ve experienced since has shown it to be invalid. This meant that since the two guys following me were doing so with intent, it behooved me to treat them as hostile. I’d actually begun to act based on this observation when I made my second turn onto this residential street and now, suspicion hardening rapidly into certainty, I was prepared to act without hesitation or self-doubt.
The intersection provided access to Gazmend Zajmi, a street which ran up and down the large hill which gave Bregu i Diellit part of its name of Sunny Hill. Turning downhill would put me heading back toward Ramiz Sadiku but more importantly it would allow me to turn left when the street turned right. This left turn would put me into a wide alley called, if memory served, Arton Cella. This was almost a street and ran behind the buildings fronting on Ramiz Sadiku and the backs of the houses on the street I’d just traversed. If my followers had an innocent destination there they could have much more easily taken any of a number of short passages between the buildings to reach this alley. Following me into it would be a strong indication of direct interest which would require a response on my part. Since they seemed more like common criminals a mugging appeared likely; however it was marginally possible that despite our best efforts, our opposition had aimed them at me. Either way I could exploit the opportunity following me into the alley would provide. A direct confrontation might seem unwise while avoidance of a potentially messy encounter which might involve the police would be in keeping with the need for a low profile and discretion that is de rigueur for covert intelligence activities. This time, however, I elected to go with a straightforward confrontation as it seemed likely that these two were simply muggers who were unwittingly targeting me. Having them dogging me looking for an opportune moment could create more hassle than confrontation would. It would also perhaps help me sort out if they had in fact been run at me by someone else, a sort of low level targeting intended to obtain my documents and determine my skill set. If this was the case at least part of the information gap would be filled in when the two were unable to complete their mission. That only meant I’d need to manage the confrontation in a way and place where my cover for status wouldn’t be compromised.
Pondering this requirement, I bought a newspaper, my rusty Albanian being sufficient for the task, and headed out the door without a glance across the street. I kept the paper, Koha Ditore if it matters, in my right hand and walked downhill, turning left into Arton Cella when the street turned right. I flicked my cigarillo in the ditch as I entered the alley. Back in the day there was a brothel, with frequent name changes but the same management and client base, in a house at the far end of the alley. The parking area there was always left open by the residents of the apartments fronting Ramiz Sadiku so the brothel patrons had a place to park. This wasn’t from courtesy so much as from the fact that vehicles which didn’t belong to the patrons or the management were frequently vandalized past the point of usefulness. Folks who lived here turned a pretty blind eye to the immediate area and that, combined with the dark setting, meant I would have a good place to work. Glancing at the Panerai Luminor GMT on my wrist I saw it was 2155 hours, nearly ten o’clock in the real world. The alley was as I remembered it, dark, deserted and with plenty of patches of deep shadow. Good enough for government work. I slowed my pace, drawing my two new friends closer and into a patch of shadow beside the high wall at the rear of the houses on the alley’s east side. Turning as if suddenly aware of their presence, I folded the newspaper twice as if fiddling with it unconsciously. This served to compact it slightly. As I finished fiddling, my new friends closed the twenty feet or so between us.
When you know you’re about to get into, let alone initiate, a violent confrontation, it’s a very good idea to give your opposition a false façade, something that looks like what they expect and which will make them overconfident. Dropping into a crane stance and making chicken noises will only cause them to become cautious and deploy whatever weaponry they have with as much skill and sophistication as they possess. Posing and drama is for the movies…in real life it’s all about who wins and who does not. This is why I edged slightly backwards as they came closer, glanced quickly to right and left as if looking for a way out and swallowed nervously while not meeting their gaze. You need to look at an opponent’s upper chest anyway in a fight; the eyes tell you exactly zip and looking there you can’t see stance and foot movement or weight transfer in your peripheral vision. So I played the part of the tourist taken unaware and uncertain as to what was about to transpire. Both guys stopped about three feet away and exchanged grins. Guy number one, slightly larger than his underfed buddy, produced a cheap switchblade and flicked it open as he began to talk. I didn’t wait to hear what he was saying as talking seriously slows reaction time. The additional surprise factor of being attacked after producing a weapon he obviously expected to provide an advantage was a bonus I didn’t want to squander. I wanted to apply the magic formula of speed, surprise and violence of action, and there was no better time than now.
The folded newspaper had sufficient heft to stay largely together as I flipped it into knife guy’s face. The pages which spread out during the short flight helped obscure his vision and create the automatic reaction people have when something flies at their face unexpectedly. Knife guy flinched, raising his hands to protect his face and this preventing him from noticing the front heel thrust I delivered to his right knee with my left foot. The joint hyperextended with a wet cracking sound and knife guy gave a high pitched sort of shriek which cut off abruptly as I powered a left forearm into his throat. I added a right elbow to the face which knocked him over and back in a heap. All this took far more time to tell than to complete. Real violence committed by experienced practitioners is a very sudden event. I’d been studying and teaching some rather brutal combat oriented martial arts for thirty five years at that point and honestly couldn’t recall the number of times I’d used that skill set and meant it. Guy number two was to my half right when I finished my elbow strike, just beginning to realize that something had gone very wrong with the soirée. His eyes widened so the whites were visible even in the dark shadows of the alley. Little details like that stick with you for some reason as the brain processes information at an incredible rate under combat stress. To his credit, his immediate instinctive reaction wasn’t to draw back or run. Instead he lunged forward swinging a right haymaker at my head. Brave but ineffective as he ran straight into the mid-line side thrust kick I timed to meet him on the way. The kick folded him and threw him back to bounce off the wall. I followed quickly, catching him with a low hook sweep that took his legs out from under him and sent him tumbling to the deck. This made stomping his head a very easy thing to do so, not wanting to let the opportunity slip by, I crunched his head against the pavement a time or three. One has to be a bit careful when kicking someone’s head when they are down. It’s easy to do more damage than intended and wind up killing or seriously injuring them. In this case I pulled the stomps a little, wanting only to put him out for the duration as well as fuck him up enough to satisfy my desire for cosmic balance. I guess I’m just a philosophic kinda guy. In any case, guy number two was hors de combat and not going anywhere anytime soon. I turned my attention to knife guy who was gurgling and whining around his busted knee.
The rat
ionale behind ambushing these mopes was to attempt to determine if they were sent for me specifically or perhaps just had a really bad target selection capacity. This being the case I needed to speak with at least one of them and I’d registered that knife guy had said something in English. This meant he was likely to be able to communicate with me which in turn had meant his unlucky buddy was superfluous and thus stomped into la la land.
Two’s company, three’s a crowd.
I kicked the switchblade away into the dark and dropped to a knee beside knife guy. He was hurting pretty badly and offered no resistance when I secured his hands by pulling them together over his head, arms outstretched and fingers intertwined in my grip. A quick frisk came up with no more weapons but did yield a wallet, cell phone and keys. These went into the front pocket of my old and well-travelled Barbour Beaufort jacket. After a brief scan of the area which revealed no obvious signs of attention, I grasped knife guy’s face with my left hand and turned it toward me.
“Hi, asshole”, I said. “Why did you and your friend just try to mug me?”
Knife guy tried to shake his head and babbled something in Albanian which wasn’t where I wanted the conversation to go. I moved very fast, letting go of his fingers and clamping my right hand over his mouth while I dropped a hammer fist onto his broken knee with my left hand. He convulsed and attempted a scream, most of which I stifled with my weight and hand over his mouth. He also tried curling into a ball and pushing my hand away, something I estimated was more instinctive than deliberate. Still, I wanted a chat, not a wrestling match, so I switched the hammer fist to a center punch after rising up enough to drive it straight down into the vulnerable joint. Knife guy, as I expected, passed out and fell back limply onto the dirty pavement. It took only a few seconds to drag him and his buddy against the wall, position guy number two where I could see him beyond knife guy and tie knife guy’s hands together with his thin imitation leather belt with its aluminum Hugo Boss buckle. He was coming around when I finished and I again brought his face toward mine and raised my fist threateningly.
“Any more noise and you won’t ever walk right again. Understand?”
This got a nod and a quickly gasped yes. Actually he said “po” but since this means yes in Albanian I wasn’t going to quibble. I am, after all, a reasonable man.
“OK, perhaps I was impolite before. Let’s start over. Why did you pick me to try to rob?”
My unhappy interlocutor took a second or two to process the question and then tried to shrug.
“You look like rich tourist, maybe UNMIK, maybe stupid. We wanted watch and money. Nothing bad, just want money for food. Please mister, nice huh? Please?”
His advantage of numbers and weaponry having failed, knife guy turned to the “oh please be nice to me, I’m just a poor disadvantaged guy trying to get by” routine that is the sob song of bad guys the world over once they find themselves unable to finish victimizing someone. I’d heard versions of this bullshit on four continents and hadn’t bought it then and wasn’t so inclined now. I knew he wouldn’t have felt an ounce of compassion for me had the situation been reversed and he was only in this predicament because he’d pulled a knife and tried to rob or possibly kill me.
Violent crime is a full contact event. The user assumes all risks.
Those risks include picking someone like me as a victim. I had sympathy for folks he might hurt but none for him. Hell, the Al Qaeda and Taliban I’d fought and occasionally interrogated had more courage and honor than this sorry fuckwit.
I explained, in slow simple words, that I really didn’t care about him and wanted only to know why he picked me. Had someone pointed me out? The look of puzzlement he gave me told me it wasn’t just the language barrier. He genuinely didn’t get it because it hadn’t happened. He shook his head vehemently, repeating Yo, Yo, Yo which is Albanian for no. It appeared to be a relief to him to be able to make me happy, something one wants to inculcate in a subject under interrogation. While this was all rather quick, dirty and off the cuff in an alley less than fifty yards from one of Pristina’s main streets, it was enough for me. The odds that he was an excellent actor under these conditions were slim followed by none. If he had that kind of intelligence and talent he’d also have better skills in other areas such as a foot follow. He’d also be much less likely to be sticking up random tourists. I stand an even six feet, weigh about two twenty five of muscle and very little middle aged spread under a shaved head and a less than benign expression. While my jacket would conceal my build a bit, nothing in my demeanor advertised vulnerability and experienced predators watch for signs of weakness before selecting a victim. I hadn’t been giving off those signals, as I had when I elected to initiate the confrontation by providing an opportunity to mug me. This guy was most likely the sort of bottom feeder who wasn’t bright enough to have ever graduated from Thug 101. Of course, one should guard against hubris but a review of the events combined with the application of Occam’s Razor left little doubt that I’d been randomly selected as a mugging victim by less than competent criminals based primarily on greed and wishful thinking on their part.
Hmm…sucks to be them then.
I untied knife guy’s hands, dropped his belt in his lap and then as he was rubbing his wrists, sent him back to dreamland with a circle kick to the head. I checked that guy number two was still breathing, took his wallet, keys and phone as well and headed off. A quick pass between two apartments, a dash across Ramiz Sadiku and a stroll through the grounds of the Pristina University Library showed no signs of anyone interested in me. I ran an impromptu surveillance detection route (SDR) around Peyton before catching a cab to Main Police HQ. I’d already removed the money from the wallets, tossed the cell phones after wiping them down and now I wiped the wallets and dropped them in two separate trash cans as I made my way via a side street from Main Police HQ up to Mother Teresa Boulevard and then south to the Grand Hotel. This venerable establishment still looked much as it had when the state ran it. Its shabby décor, poor upkeep and general air of faded elegance Soviet style, reminded me of the Pristina I had known and loved almost a decade ago. I’d passed on better hotels partly from sentiment, partly because I wanted to avoid the throngs of UN, OSCE and others who normally stayed in the newer hotels. I came in through a side entrance which brought me into the kitchens and passed quickly through as if a lost guest, using the freight elevator to get to the floor above mine. I then used the fire stairs to reach my floor, checked for anyone in the hallway and regained my room seven hours after I had left it. This may seem excessive and under normal circumstances it was, especially if one wishes to appear like something other than an operator. The attempted mugging, however unlikely to have been directed at me specifically instead of generically, had made me a bit more cautious and I wanted to see if there were any other signs of potential hostile attention. As it turned out there were none and the night’s more colorful events appeared to be little more than the random street crime you get in any big city.
It looked like Pristina was both different from what I remembered and much the same. Below the surface of new buildings, cleaner streets and shiny public offices lurked the same dirty, violent world of which I had once been a part. My day had been useful in letting me familiarize myself with the changes to physical infrastructure while also indulging in some nostalgia. Pristina and I were both much the same, we maybe looked a bit different but underneath it all we were the same beasts we’d always been. I settled in with a room service bottle of Jack and some ice and began to review the assignment which was my reason for being there in the first place.