Another Man's Freedom Fighter

by Joseph Carter

  He sent the picture to all TLKS contacts of the dead insurgents, a wide net. If his social engineering skills where as good as he believed them to be, this picture would travel from phone to phone for quite a while. Every infected device would then be his to spy on and even control remotely. He would be able to read messages and listen in on calls, even encrypted ones on TLKS, turn on the microphone and camera to listen to conversations in the room and of course follow the device’s owner around the city.

  He reckoned, by the end of the day, he would present several dozen new targets to Colonel Popov and Shashka.

  ✽✽✽

  “Six calls went out last night,” Svetlana told Mark during their secure TLKS call. “Too bad, we can’t really track our success rate.”

  “Well, we are doing all we can right now,” Mark replied. “Let’s stay on top of this, and I’m sure, new ideas will come up.”

  “There’s a new feature to our insurance policy. I’ve built something like a health status app that keeps me updated at all times. We’ll know within seconds if they got a whiff of us.”

  “Cool, bye.” Mark ended the call. He had not been able to get in touch with his friend Michał. He was off with his TDF unit, that much he could gather from the four words Michał’s wife dared to say on the phone.

  “He’s not here,” she had said.

  Mark understood. He knew his best friend’s wife, Natalia was a chatty one. If she said nothing that told Mark a thousand stories. There was not much more he could do now.

  ✽✽✽

  The digital clock on the wall in Generał Brygady Witold Bilinski’s room showed 14:59:55 when a rap on the door disturbed his glum thoughts.

  “Proszę, please,” he shouted at the door.

  “Panie Generale,” Captain Kryska saluted. “I think I have something.”

  “What are you talking about, man?” Bilinski groaned. He had already forgotten about the argument he had had with the captain earlier in the day.

  “Those calls, telemarketing, threats, whatever one wants to call them. You gave me until 1500 hours to come up with evidence on the topic,” the captain repeated his orders.

  Bilinski had gotten up from his chair and banged both his hands on the table. “Kurwa, Kapitanie, don’t fuck with me right now. Tell me what you want to tell me, ale już, on the double,” he screamed at the officer.

  The captain straightened and at something between at ease and attention shouted his report back at the general. “I questioned both the student and the husband, both gave a verbatim of the call. It was in both cases the same. ‘You are first name last name. You are at number and street name in Warszawa, Polska. You are in danger, leave your location immediately. Your phone is monitored, discard your phone.’ Both described the voice as female, but mechanical like a call robot.” The captain took a deep breath and continued at a lower volume. “I got the number from the student. It had a Turkish prefix. I checked it, it doesn’t exist. After that I sat down with one of our cybersecurity specialists while he was on his break,” he raised his hands knowing that the general would reprimand him if he had pulled any resources from the current war effort without prior permission.

  “He drew this,” he said and handed Bilinski an almost transparent napkin with blue ballpoint pen doodles on it. “It’s a rough schematic of a system that would pull information from the GRU system and generate an automated, anonymized call to the target person. He said the theory was simple enough, to put it into practice it was near impossible as no one he knew was able to get into GRU’s systems.”

  “So we know nothing more than before you wasted a day’s work and ruined one of our men’s lunch breaks.”

  “I must contradict. We know a lot more now. We know this is not a coincidence. That is the key, Panie Generale. We now know these calls have a pattern and this pattern suggests that someone has their fingers in GRU’s systems.”

  “It might well be GRU themselves.” Bilinski sat back down.

  “It might. They might have been willing to risk two squads and sacrifice a few lives. But to what end?” The captain had thought of this before but discarded the possibility early on. His commander challenged him to think again. “The only thing I could think of was to shake the tree and see who fell out. But our people didn’t fall out the tree, they were right there where they were supposed to be. Well, except the student who was banging his coed four floors up,” the captain smirked.

  “Still not funny, Kryska,” Bilinski barked.

  “And look at the tree we’re talking about, sir. They would have had to generate calls to the whole of Warsaw to sufficiently shake it.” Captain Kryska continued to make his point even though his superior’s unwillingness to listen was obvious.

  And yet, Bilinski had nowhere else to look for a lifeline for his stay-behind army. He knew the Russians would root them out sooner or later unless he could do something to warn them of the danger without creating panic and destroy the network that way.

  “Dobra, Kryska, I’m still not happy with the evidence but I’m taking a chance on your hunch. You and I will talk to General Pułaski and decide on a course of action.” Bilinski got back up, took his hat from his desk and led the way.

  ✽✽✽

  “The social-democratic party leader warned the chancellor again not to interfere in the war in neighboring Poland,” the TV anchor read the news dispassionately as always.

  A statement of the fifty-year-old politician was interspersed into the program. “We believe that the German non-interference is the best step toward peace in the region. The chancellor should instead use her good working relationship with the Russian president to build a bridge between the two European nations, Russia and Poland. Otherwise, we will end the coalition government, and new elections will have to be held.”

  “You gotta be kidding. That old nag still didn’t hear the shot. She’s making politics instead of working toward a real solution,” Mark said to himself while cleaning his Glock. The secret compartment in the unused chimney was open, and the Sanders’ go-bag lay next to it unzipped, contents showing.

  The news about the war were depressing. The losses on both sides were unheard of. Nearly every media outlet made comparisons to the trench war in World War I France.

  In the United States and the United Kingdom politicians engaged in heated discussions about supporting the Polish government in Kraków. Some demanded a complete stop of the military cooperation while others wanted to have more support for the Poles but rather from the countries that had so far kept in the background, first and foremost Germany and France.

  Germany’s streets, especially in Berlin, were filled with protesting right-wing and left-wing radicals who were oddly united in their call for the end of the war and a renewed friendship with Russia. While the leftists called the Polish government a fascist regime, the right-wingers had another choice of words, but essentially the message was the same: Russia good, Poland bad, end the war and make Poland pay for the losses.

  The extreme right went so far to make a case of how positive the developments in Ukraine turned out. Almost half a million ethnic Ukrainians had left the regions east of the Dnieper river since the beginning of the referendum three days earlier. “Apparently, the wish for peace and living among their own kind is very strong,” said the geriatric leader of the German Alternative in an address to his party members. “The German government should respect that and see this as a great step forward in the peace process.”

  Mark re-assembled the Glock and looked at the two empty magazines sticking out the bag’s top. Mark had always stored them empty to not wear out the springs. Given how much he and Svetlana were sticking their heads out now, he reconsidered. Worn-out springs seemed a small risk to take right now. When he got a call in the night, he better have all the tools available to him to get his family to safety.

  ✽✽✽

  “I am happy to report, Comrade Colonel, that I could identify twenty-eight new targets,” Bravlin said with a
sloppy salute and a wide grin on his face. “My RAT was downloaded about fifty times, I could single out the twenty-eight and added all necessary information to track them down. Most are currently at their homes, some are gathered at locations I assume to be safe houses.”

  Popov looked at Krug.

  The sergeant major nodded.

  The colonel grinned and turned his head back toward the hacker. “I will send a commendation to 6th Directorate, Captain,” he said.

  Smagin’s grin widened even more. Not that the commendation itself was really anything of interest to him, he did not even want to be promoted to major. He knew, that this testimony of being useful to the Russian elite would earn him a lot of money a few more months down the road after making a move into the private sector. Everyone sells himself in our society. After this, my price will go up considerably, he thought.

  ✽✽✽

  “Thank you, generals,” Captain Kryska said exhausted from the long argument. Bilinski and Pułaski had just agreed to send a coded message to all stay behind operatives. This move was a desperate one, normally such broad outreaches were avoided. Even now, Bilinski feared a complete breakdown of the network by the panic this warning might create. He insisted on wording the message very carefully. The three officers spent an hour on weighing words.

  “Read it one more time, Kryska,” the intelligence general ordered the captain. The message now read ‘GenStaff to all operatives. Increased nightly raids by opfor. Take warnings from whichever source seriously. Evade or engage at will’.

  Kryska looked at the two generals for final approval. The clock on the wall showed 20:56:32, it was dark outside now.

  “Alright, it’s short enough. Encode it and send it asap,” Bilinski said and rubbed his temples with his right hand.

  ✽✽✽

  Still elated by his success, the GRU hacker Bravlin, sat in his office in the former railroad works. It was quiet outside on the shop floor. The Spetsnaz were getting some rest before moving out to take care of tonight’s business. Hardly any sound penetrated the thin drywall and the large dirty windows.

  He had a map of Poland on one of his large screens. As he tapped the down arrow on his laptop’s keyboard, different lines appeared on the map. Most were a muddle all over Warsaw, some extended as far as Skierniewice, about fifty miles south-and-west of the capital. But one extended much further, it ran all across Poland via Wrocław to Dresden and Berlin in Germany.

  “Huh, interesting,” Bravlin said while looking at the screen.

  He flicked through the rest of the lines. None of them piqued his interest further. The device from which he had extracted the international travel route was still connected to his analysis array. As he disconnected the smartphone it vibrated, so did two other devices on his rack.

  “Greetings from sunny Kraków,” he read out loud and looked at the picture of the Sukiennice, the Kraków Cloth Hall. It was a pretty bad, amateurish shot with a date and time stamped into the lower right corner. He looked at the other devices that had vibrated, the same picture and the same message. “You are a popular son of a bitch, ‘Witek’,” he mumbled to himself and yawned. “But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  Walking out of the building, he noticed Shashka and two squads heading for the improvised mess hall. He raised his hand. No response, so he just turned toward the carpool where a private would be ready to take him to his quarters.

  ✽✽✽

  The four men in uniforms sat around a coffee table on a worn out faux leather sofa and two matching armchairs. A camping lantern was the only source of light, it faintly illuminated their faces as they all sat on the edges of their seats. They were having a heated discussion.

  “Kurwa, Marcin, we continue with the operation. The General Staff want us to look out but not panic. That’s all,” Bombel shouted at the blond man with the reddish face. “I say, we all stay and do our duty tomorrow.”

  The other two nodded.

  Marcin’s face turned to a light pink complexion, he took another swig of beer from the green can. “Dobra, I’m on board.”

  Three of the four smartphones on the glass coffee table vibrated, incoming calls. Laska, Bombel, and the third man answered.

  Marcin, his face was back to its normal red color, took his phone and looked around the room.

  The mouths of the other three opened, they all raised their eyebrows, and let out a slow ‘kurwa’ simultaneously.

  “What’s up?” Marcin asked.

  “This is what the GenStaff message was about, I guess. We’ll get visitors tonight,” Bombel said. “Pack up the weapons, we’re moving out to.”

  Laska interrupted him mid-sentence. “Wait, wait, wait. We’re already here and the GenStaff said we may engage. Let’s do just that, let’s give tym skurwysynom the beating they deserve.”

  Thirty-Six

  Ulica Wilcza in Sródmieście Południowe, the southern part of central Warsaw, is a one-way street with apartment buildings on both sides. With only one lane plus parallel parking spaces it is a narrow street. While on its western and middle part cafés, bars, and restaurants are plentiful, the eastern end is much quieter. On this hundred-yard stretch between ulica Mokotowska and Aleje Ujazdowskie is only one store which had been closed since the war had begun.

  Number 3 is a grey, still unrenovated, 1950s building, almost on the corner with ulica Mokotowska. Opposite is a wing of Mokotowska number 56 without an entrance on Wilcza. Diagonally across Mokotowska there is a new apartment building with a flat roof.

  Two GAZ Tigr MPV pulled around that street crossing and came to a stop in front of the five-story house number 3. All windows facing the street were dark, as was to be expected on a Sunday morning at 0425 hours.

  Two squads spilled out of the vehicles as they came to a quiet stop. With full body armor and their submachine guns slung across their chests, the soldiers took positions left and right of the black iron gate. The drivers secured the vehicles, doors open, engines running idle.

  One of the soldiers pulled a battery-powered lock pick gun. He applied pressure to the lock with a short pick, and after three short bursts with the gun, the lock sprung open.

  The two squads walked up the stairwell single file. In point position, Shashka led the raid squads onto the third floor corridor. Left and right of the door to apartment 3B, a two bedroom with three windows overlooking Wilcza, the men took position.

  As usual, a soldier from the back of the file came forward with a ram and opened the door with a single, heavy blow. Shashka and his numbers two and three swooped into the place. As he had just passed through the door, his boot got entangled in a piece of wire that hung from the smashed-in door. He turned and saw the three fragmentation grenades taped to the wall above the door, safety pins out, spoons released.

  “Granaty,” he shouted and ran toward one of the windows. His elbows covering his face, he dove head-first through the double glazed window. Two stories below, his body armor and helmet, as well as the roof of a white delivery van absorbed just enough of the impact to keep him conscious. Two of the three windows were blown out by the explosion and the metal fragments of the grenades. As he lay on his back on the van’s roof, spitting blood, he heard his numbers two and three wincing above. The other men shouted as they moved in to collect their wounded comrades.

  As he tried to get up, two flaming streaks crossed the street above. He had no chance to warn his men about the RPGs, it was over in less than a second. The explosions blew out the window frames and parts of the outer wall which rained down on the truck and the cars parked downstairs. An old American car’s alarm went off and wailed through the night.

  Shashka rolled off the van. He landed on his feet, yet he had to steady himself on the hood of the Korean compact parked behind it. He peeked around the back of the van and raised his submachine gun. Over the ringing in his ears, he heard heavy footsteps from the house’s front gate.

  “Nyet, stop,” he shouted.

  As soon a
s the three remaining men of his two squads heard him, they stood in front of the gate, undecided what to do. Then, they went for the MPVs through a rain of automatic fire. None of them made it. Where are the drivers, Shashka thought. Then his instincts kicked in.

  He held his submachine gun above his head, pulled the trigger, and while he ran the fifteen paces to the first Tigr, he emptied his magazine at the third-floor windows across the street. He entered the vehicle through the passenger door, crawled across the wide center console with the twin transmission sticks, and sped off. The driver-side door closed from the acceleration, and as the car turned around the corner, he caught a glimpse of the drivers lying dead in the middle of the street.

  ✽✽✽

  “Don’t take a risk. Get the fuck out of here,” Bombel’s voice resounded off the walls of the buildings as the three other members of his cell carefully made their exit from Mokotowska number 56. Bombel was still looking down from the roof of the new building across the street. His night vision scope showed no more movement on Wilcza. He had tried to shoot the bulky Russian while he had made his run for the Tigr, guns blazing. He had missed with both shots from his bolt-action rifle.

  Anyhow, he was content with the night’s events. Their improvised trap had worked, and their cell was still intact, they would be able to continue their fight for freedom.

  ✽✽✽

  General Witold Bilinski raised his blanket and sat up. The metal springs of the forty-year-old People’s Army issue single bed screeched as he moved. The private room was lit by a nightlight. It was 0531 hours, the general wake-up call had just sounded through the barracks’ corridors.

  The general rubbed his temples, he had not slept well. A loud rap on the door startled the military intelligence man. “Proszę,” he shouted, asking the early morning caller in.