Character List
UNITED STATES
CIA
Zane Abid – Deputy Director National Clandestine Service
Audra Bauer –Deputy Director, Counterproliferation Center
Karl Berg – Staff Operations Officer, National Clandestine Service
Erin Foley – NCS Liaison to Black Flag group.
Thomas Manning – Director, Counterproliferation Center
Richard Sanford (TA) – Director
Sandra Tillman – Director National Clandestine Service
FBI
Dana O’Reilly – Deputy Associate Executive Assistant Director
Ryan Sharpe – Associate Executive Assistant Director, National Security Branch
BLACK FLAGGED
Dihya Castillo – Black Flag, Middle Eastern Group
Scott Daly – Former U.S. Navy, SEAL. Black Flag Americas Group
Richard Farrington “Yuri” – Black Flag, Russian Group Leader
Aleem Fayed – Black Flag, Middle Eastern Group Leader
Erin Foley – Former CIA agent. Black Flag, Contract Associate
Timothy Graves – Black Flag, Electronic Warfare Team, U.S.
Ashraf Haddad – Black Flag, Middle Eastern Group
Jared Hoffman “Gosha” – Black Flag, Russian Group Sniper
Nikolai Mazurov – Former Black Flag Operative.
Enrique Melendez “Rico” – Black Flag, Americas Group
Jeffrey Munoz – Black Flag, Americas Group
Daniel Petrovich – Black Flag, Contract Associate
Jessica Petrovich – Black Flag, Contract Associate
Brigadier General Terrence Sanderson – Black Flag, Leader
Abraham Sayar – Black Flag, Middle Eastern Group
Department of Defense
General Frank Gordon – Commander, United States Special Operations Command
White House
Alan Crane – President of the United States (True America Party)
Nora Crawford – Secretary of State
Erik Glass – Secretary of Defense
Bob Kearney (Major General, U.S. Army retired) – Homeland Security Advisor
Beverly Stark – White House Chief of Staff
Gerald Simmons – White House Counterterrorism Director
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Frederick Shelby – Principle Deputy Director of National Intelligence
Gary Vincent – Director of National Intelligence
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Federation Security Service (FSB)
Arkady Baranov – Director, Center of Special Operations (CSN)
Maxim Greshnev – Chief Counterterrorism Director
Alexei Kaparov – Deputy Director, Bioweapons/Chemical Threat Assessment
Yuri Prerovsky – Federation Agent, Organized Crime Division
Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)
Dmitry Ardankin – Director of Operations, Directorate S
Vadim Dragunov – Zaslon operative, Directorate S
Mihail Osin – Spetsnaz operative, Directorate S
Stefan Pushnoy – Director
OTHER
Ernesto Galenden – Wealthy Argentinian business tycoon supporting General Sanderson’s Black Flag program
Srecko Hadzic – Former leader of the “Panthers,” a Serbian ultra-nationalist paramilitary group associated with Slobodan Milosevic’s regime
Darryl Jackson – Brown River Security Corporation executive
Mirko Jovic – Leader of “White Eagles,” a rival paramilitary group
Dima Maksimov – Solntsevskaya Bratva, Pakhan (Leader)
Matvey Penkin – Solntsevskaya Bratva, Avtorityet (Brigadier)
Anatoly Reznikov – Former scientist at Vektor Institute
Grigor Sokolov – Former GRU Spetsnaz. Bratva Security.
ORIGINS
A BLACK FLAGGED SHORT STORY
© Steven Konkoly 2017 All rights reserved
Foothills of Divjaka, Republic of Kosovo
August 1998
Marko Resja stood a few meters away from the raised dirt road leading into the crude village, swatting flies away from his grimy, sweat-covered face. August drew stifling heat and oppressive humidity to the Balkan Peninsula, which couldn’t have been timed worse for the Yugoslav offensive. The heat seemed to incite the flies, which needed little encouragement in these hills. He wondered if these insects could sense their role in the impending tragedy. It would certainly explain their increased activity.
He raised his twenty-year-old M-76 sniper rifle and stared through the worn scope, scanning the road as far as possible. He was assigned to watch the most likely western approach for Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) vehicles, sharing the duty with another relatively new member of Srecko Hadzic’s Panthers. Satisfied that nothing threatened to approach from the outskirts of Divjaka, he lowered the rifle and shrugged at his partner, who then spoke a few hushed words into a cheap plastic handheld radio.
When Sava finished sending the report to their commander in the village, he rolled his eyes, before slapping the flies away from his head. Sava’s dark green camouflage uniform was filthy; crusted with light brown mud up to the knees. Large sweat stains formed odd circular shapes under his armpits and across his chest. The only thing clean about Sava was his rifle, which was slung over his left shoulder—to free him to perform the occasional radio check-in and chain smoke cigarettes. Sava’s face disappeared in a cloud of tobacco smoke and reappeared sporting a grin. His yellowed teeth stood out through the thin layer of unevenly applied green and black camouflage.
The camouflage greasepaint had nearly worn away over the past three days, as their unit moved through the hills mopping up “suspected” bands of KLA resistance. The designation “suspected” had always been a loose term among the Panthers, but after yesterday’s gruesome discovery in Klecka, the word had taken on a new meaning. From what he understood, any ethnic Albanian Kosovar found in these hills was now classified as a “suspected” terrorist; the disturbing find outside of Klecka serving to “legitimize” an unofficial policy implemented by Milosevic’s paramilitary nationalists for the past several years.
Regular Yugoslavian forces left behind to secure Klecka had been escorted to a makeshift crematorium, where evidence of scorched human remains were uncovered, along with several trenches filled with badly decomposing bodies in a nearby orchard. A young boy informed the soldiers that the KLA had killed a large group of kidnapped Serbians, ahead of the Yugoslavian offensive. Word of the discovery spread like wildfire through Serbian nationalist paramilitary units in the foothills, and Marko’s platoon was roused from a deep sleep at three in the morning to prepare for an urgent operation.
Several armored vehicles arrived in the camp shortly after they mustered and provided the platoon with transportation to the outskirts of Divjaka, where a mortar team set up in a clearing to the west. Half of the thirty-man platoon drove to the eastern road on the other side of the village, along with a few of the M-80 armored personnel carriers. The entire platoon’s focus was a cluster of homes and structures in northern Divjaka, isolated from the main town, and accessible by two roads, which were now blocked by a heavily armed Serbian paramilitary force.
They loitered in the western tree line until a crimson sun started to creep over the eastern hills of the tight valley, and fingers of deep orange light caught the tops of the trees around them. He could only imagine the terror spreading through the homes in front of them as residents helplessly listened to the distant rumble of idling engines beyond their sight—and waited for the inevitable.
Mortar tubes announced daybreak across the valley, firing a volley of 82mm high explosive rounds at the closest grouping of structures visible along the road. The shells sailed in a high arc and took an eternity to find earth again. When gravity finished its job, the ground behind one of the houses erupted skyward in a light brown cloud, followed by another geyser of dirt from the road. The
sharp crunch of the impacts washed through the men, giving rise to a few cheers.
The mortar attack lasted five minutes, as the mortar crew haphazardly fired several more salvos into the village, adjusting their aim to walk the shells through the entire length of the community. Luckily for the inhabitants, the mortar team never focused on the buildings. Only once did they see a shell make a direct hit, sending large wooden chunks of a red roof flew skyward into the dust cloud obscuring the village. This led to a chorus of cheers from the men around him, which he pretended to eagerly join. He felt relieved that the mortar attack had done so little damage, but his solace would be short lived.
Without ceremony, the mortar teams disassembled their equipment and loaded it into the troop compartment of one of the M-80s. The entire detachment of regular army vehicles sped away, leaving his squad with their own odd assortment of AUZ jeeps and SUVs—and a ghastly task.
Nenad Sojic, the platoon’s de facto leader, spoke to his radio operator, a lean, darker-skinned Serb named Goran, and waved the squad over. Through the radio handset, Goran relayed Sojic’s orders to the men positioned on the eastern approach to the village. Without ceremony, Sojic told them that they would search house-to-house for KLA insurgents and weapons caches. Once a house was searched, the inhabitants would be sent to a centralized location for further questioning. Even the most naive members of the platoon knew what that meant.
They walked through the dew-covered fields down the road toward the simple concrete houses. Cool mountain valley air penetrated their thin uniforms, and most of the men still wore the black wool watch caps they had donned while shivering in the middle of the night. The caps would be ditched by mid-morning, as temperatures reached unbearable highs. The jeeps roared to life behind them and soon met up with the soldiers on foot.
When they reached the first set of homes, Marko and Sava were detached to serve as pickets at the western edge of the village. They were tasked to observe the same road the armored personnel carriers used to hastily separate themselves from Marko’s paramilitary comrades—and report any incoming vehicles. They both quickly turned their attention to the road, as doors were forced open and the screaming started. He concentrated on the empty road, as the rest of the squad and the vehicles moved down the road, pushing hesitant villagers ahead of them. Neither of them wanted to look back and acknowledge what was happening.
Marko’s thoughts shifted back into the present, as he tracked a crow flying through the air from the west. The large black bird landed on a crude wooden fence several yards back from the road, joining the several dozen already quietly arrayed along the fence. More crows were perched hidden among the nearby trees. They weren’t intimidated by the soldiers’ presence in Divjaka. They had as much right to be here as the flies, and they were here for the same reason.
“They know something we don’t,” Sava remarked, dragging on his cigarette.
The man had smoked non-stop since they left a Belgrade primary school soccer field three days ago, and he suspected that the young northern Serb must be close to exhausting his supply of cigarettes. All of them must be running low. Marko carried a pack of cheap Serbian smokes to fit in, but he generally never indulged, unless offered. He had always despised the habit, but his trainers at The Ranch had made it clear that he would smoke. Everyone smoked in Serbia, at least casually. He’d grown accustomed to the taste, and no longer minded the acrid smell of tobacco smoke in cramped spaces. Still, the habit did nothing for him, except help him blend into his environment.
Sava grinned nervously, and Marko wondered what he was thinking. He didn’t look or sound too eager to head deeper into the village. He was young and didn’t have the same brutal edge that was common among Hadzic’s veteran Panthers. This thought brought another concern back into focus. His platoon was comprised of too many newbies, several of which had been swapped into the platoon just after last night’s dinner. He was new to the Panther organization and had only been deployed to the field in a large-scale operation twice before, but this structure stuck him as odd.
Hadzic’s field units typically overflowed with hardened paramilitary veterans of the Bosnia conflict, or former Yugoslav military. The process for integration of new recruits was brutal and discouraged most naive youth. Still, they had no shortage of volunteers, and in times of war, the training camps swelled with eager recruits—pushed through to augment roles left behind by combat hungry veterans. This platoon brimmed with newbies, and that concerned him. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew something was off.
His concentration was shattered by the sudden crackle of automatic weapons fire in the distance, as hundreds of crows scattered, briefly drowning out the sound of the guns. Like the crows, Sava reacted instinctively and threw himself onto the ground next to the slightly raised dirt road. He flinched, but stood impassively in the middle of the road, as the volume of gunfire diminished, finally ending with an occasional shot. He hadn’t felt or heard the familiar snap or hiss of bullets passing near him, so he kept his composure. He knew exactly what had happened, and turned his head lazily towards the center of the village. Occasional, single pistol shots started to fill the air, and Sava rose to his feet to rejoin him on the road.
He wore an expression that betrayed his true feelings, and Marko knew that the young Serb felt the same way that he did about the situation. They were both equally relieved to have been assigned to a deserted stretch of road, even if three hundred meters of separation didn’t provide them with any absolution for their presence in the valley. Sava’s radio crackled, and their respite from the madness was over. They had been recalled to the village center.
He slicked his thick, matted brown hair back with his left hand and wiped the sweat onto his camouflage pants. Sava looked terrified for the first time since they had piled into green, tarp-covered trucks in Belgrade. He patted the kid on the back and nodded.
“Let’s get going.”
The two of them started to jog down the road, careful not to twist an ankle in the shallow crater created by one of the mortar impacts. He spotted several AUZ jeeps in a clearing to the north of the village. All of the doors in the village had been left open, which gave the village a frightening aura. Almost like it had been abandoned. The first thing he heard was the crying, and it nearly stopped him in his tracks. He searched for the source and saw a group of women and children huddled under a tree, guarded by a soldier. As the scene started to unfold in front of him, he sensed that Sava had stopped altogether.
“Keep moving, or you’ll end up in one of those trenches,” Marko said, wondering if that was where they might end up anyway.
They were blocked by a group of Panthers and told to leave their weapons stacked against one of the vehicles. He saw several assault rifles leaned against a mud-covered chassis and walked over to the jeep to add his weapon to the collection. One his way, Marko scanned the scene to assess the situation. A shallow pit was visible, just beyond a dozen or so Panthers, who were staring down into it. A few of them shook their heads, while others spit at the earth. As he placed his sniper rifle against the jeep’s rear tire, Sava joined him.
“Fucking burial duty. Wonderful,” Sava said.
“It’s typical for new guys,” Marko lied.
He hadn’t seen shovels among the men standing in front of the long pit. His stomach tensed, and he fought to remain calm. This would probably be his defining “critical point,” as the Black Flag psychologists termed it. They had prepared him for these moments, characterizing the different types and their potential significance. This one looked like his “terminal critical point.” He would either survive and emerge as a trusted member of the Panthers, or he would die in the pit along with the rest of the villagers. No aspect of General Sanderson’s training program could truly prepare him for what would transpire in the next few moments. He had a choice to make.
If he lined up with the rest of the men, he would have to trust his chances to a gamble he had taken a few weeks ago. A little insurance
policy that might save his life. His other option was to put his training to work and fight his way out of here. He might even be able to kill all of them. Half of the group was unarmed, standing unarmed like sheep, in front of their own grave. The twelve remaining men? He had several loaded assault rifles sitting right in front of him. He could sling two of them over his shoulder and start cutting down the armed Panthers with a third. The odds were in his favor, given his capabilities. It might even be blamed on KLA guerillas.
He glanced up at one of the men that had ordered him put his weapon against the jeep. The man’s greasepaint camouflage had been recently reapplied, neutralizing his expression, but his eyes gave Marko pause. They were cold and alert. He would have to make his decision within the next fraction of a second. Taking his hand off the sniper rifle, he decided to gamble with his life. The payoff would secure his status among the Panthers, which was the ultimate purpose of his training as a Black Flag operative. He swallowed shallowly and followed Sava around the jeep, never taking his eyes off the hardened soldier escorting them.
As he approached the pit, a buzzing sound hit his ears, causing him to stop.
“Get with the rest of them,” someone barked from behind, and he continued forward.
A few of the dirty soldiers ahead of him laughed and pointed down into the trench, which demonstrated exactly how clueless some of the new recruits could be, when confronted with the obvious.
Marko caught his first look into the shallow trench and fought the urge to gag. He betrayed no emotion as the full scope of the atrocity appeared before him. He no longer wondered about the buzzing sound. Thousands of flies swarmed over the freshly slaughtered corpses; fighting to land in bright red pools of blood, drawn to the stench of involuntarily voided bowels. As the smell started to overwhelm him, he decided to stop and turn around.
He faced the members of the same firing squad that had put all of the village’s men into a hastily dug mass grave. A few of the executioners mingled with him in the doomed group, some complaining about being put on burial duty, others bragging about the accurate shots they had fired into the “terrorists.” One of the loudest newbies called out to the platoon commander, who was talking into a radio headset.
OMEGA: A Black Flagged Thriller (The Black Flagged Series Book 5) Page 33