Riding the Red Horse (27 page)

The important thing to remember is that it's hard to keep a secret, and military secrets—particularly those to do with operations and plans—are harder than any to keep. By their very nature, those involved in an operation or the planning for one must be told about it, and the preparations for an operation will quickly become obvious. A well-crafted, well–planned operation may achieve strategic surprise, in that it catches an opponent off-balance and unable to respond effectively, but is unlikely to achieve tactical surprise to the extent that a sudden attack is utterly unexpected.

One interesting manifestation of the last fifty years or so has been the evolution of special forces and their significant relationship with both tactical military intelligence services and with strategic national intelligence services. Special forces are a very tempting tool for policy makers, as they promise a degree of discretion, a touch of deniability, and an unmistakable hint of romance. As political leaders increasingly have little or no military experience, they rely more and more on both their military advisers and upon their own interpretations of the military, which have often been formed at second-hand from media, entertainment and the direct input of the special forces community itself, which generally attracts very bright people with considerable charisma and a deserved reputation for competence and ruthlessness.

These same characteristics are attractive to many intelligence agencies, who see in them the possibility of taking an active role in the shaping of events in addition to their more passive role of observing and understanding them. Intelligence agencies have always had a role in the generation of narrative by means of what are nowadays called information operations and they have always maintained at least a small capability for direct action. But the enthusiasm for special forces and their widespread adoption by most nations since the end of the Second World War has forged an ever closer alliance between these two communities, particularly as using special forces in this way can, to an extent, insulate the intelligence agency from the political and reputational consequences mentioned above.

In summary, all nations carry out intelligence operations and all nations have professional intelligence services. These services undoubtedly do good and useful work for their sponsors, but, ultimately, no more than that. Modern societies are so complex, and modern economies so interrelated that even with analysis restricted to open sources, it is relatively straightforward to work out what is actually going on. There should be relatively few surprises—although the fall of the Soviet Union, in retrospect inevitable, or the outbreak of the Arab Spring, ditto, should not have been—and there are more successes than failures. That said, the impact of an expected negative event is largely the same as that of an unexpected one and it has never been an intelligence superiority or coup that has won a war or propelled a state into hegemony. Such results are a function of economic and industrial power, political will, and popular support, none of which are particularly affected by you knowing what the other guy’s up to. It’s nice to be informed, and knowledge is rarely a disadvantage, but intelligence is not the overwhelming game changer it is often popularly supposed to be.

Giuseppe is a life-long martial artist and for the last decade he has trained in the Russian martial system developed by the Soviet military known as Systema. He is the founder of one of the UK's largest Systema clubs and is the author of
Systema: The Russian Martial System
. He is also the author of
The Face on Mars
and the
Overlords of Mars
science fiction series.

“Red Space” is a tale of the power of a capable individual who nurses his hate until it grows into a ball of fire. I’ve explored that theme myself. It’s not necessary to see precisely the same conspiracy at work that Giuseppe does to sense that there’s something going on in the world that bodes ill for us peasants down here on the ground. Some call that budding neo-aristocracy the “Tranzis,” for “Transnational Progressives.” You know, progress? The way cancer progresses? The way a new plague progresses through a virgin population? Right, that progress.

I don’t actually worry about it too much, day to day, and won’t until I see that Europe’s upper class parasites are marrying into American political families, who are marrying into Hollywood, who are marrying into industry, who are marrying into Japanese zaibatsus and Chinese scions of high Party cadres. Why not? Because until then they’ll stymie each other and still need us for cannon fodder to defend against the cannon fodder of other civilizations. There’s some freedom in that, at least.

When that marriage barrier crumbles, though, and Oceania, East Asia, and Eurasia become one, well—Yuri, can I borrow your railgun?

Yuri Ivanovich was born just a few days after the Americans landed on the Moon. It it was now a quarter past midnight on the 6th of August. In two days it would be Yuri's 54th birthday. Alexei, the young man less than half his age as the other member of the two-man team, did not know this. He did not know much about Yuri and Yuri made it clear that he did not welcome questions.

When Alexei was assigned to the team, Yuri had insisted very strongly that he did not need a partner, as one would only slow him down. Their section commander finally told Yuri that he had a choice. He could take Alexei along or he would not go at all. Stone-faced, Yuri silently nodded, saluted, and left the tent.

Most Novorossiyan fighters were older men of Yuri's age and more. What they lacked in speed and physical ability they more than made up for in experience, orneriness, and a bloody-minded determination to stop the National Guardsmen from taking their land and killing their families, friends, and relatives. By teaming up the young with the old, the younger men learned from their wily older colleagues, who were not inclined to tolerate their foolish bravery, and this kept their casualties down. That was why Alexei was assigned to Yuri. All Alexei was told was that he was to help Yuri reach the south-west area of Kiev. Yuri carried a tall and mysteriously heavy backpack that was never opened, and Alexei carried another large one that contained all their food, clothing, sleeping bags, and assorted other items.

Alexei lost his mother and sister in the initial battle for Novorossiya, but somehow their loss had left him with a great sadness inside, an emptiness that was much quieter than the angry fire that seemed to burn relentlessly inside the older man. Over the last three weeks, during which they had hiked, hidden and occasionally crawled from the town of Pryluky all the way to the outer edge of Kiev, Alexei had gradually come to believe that something must have happened to Yuri —as it had to so many of the people living in Eastern Ukraine when the meteorite shower struck in 2020— that changed him into this grim, silent, scary old man.

The meteorite event had given the Americans the excuse to send in contract troops nominally intended for “humanitarian aid”. The securing of strategic corridors by these mercenaries escalated into a protracted, if relatively stable, low-level border war between Russia and the Kiev puppet government that called itself the Ukrainian People's Government. The real war, mostly fourth-generation in nature, was being fought between the UPG and the pro-Russian separatists calling themselves Novorossiyans. Currently Novorossiya was less than half of its ancient size. It extended no further west than the banks of the Dnieper River, and was losing both ground and men steadily, although the Novorossiyans were making the Ukrainians pay in blood each time they extended the border deeper into Novorossiyan territory.

Alexei had learned that the best way to lighten Yuri's mood was to be useful, quiet and efficient. Yuri did not let Alexei even touch the heavy backpack, but when Alexei served their rations at night —usually cold because Yuri insisted on not producing any unnecessary heat signatures—the older man would acknowledge him with a nod. It wasn't exactly the most gracious thanks he'd ever received, but Alexei knew it was as much thanks as he was ever going to get.

Yuri's backpack remained unopened throughout their journey. It stood tall on his back and was an odd, elongated shape. There were water bottles in its external pockets. Whatever else was in the backpack, Alexei did not know. But he had his suspicions.

Reaching their current location had been an exercise in patience. The closer they came to Kiev, the slower their progress became. They reached the outskirts of the city in a week, but it had taken them two more weeks to carefully circle it and reach the southern side of the city. Two men with backpacks wearing the fatigues of the UPG's National Guard did not attract any undue attention, and they managed to move with relative impunity through the back roads and smaller villages and towns. They could easily have arrived at their destination several days earlier, but Yuri was cautious to a point of paranoia so intense that Alexei felt little need for vigilance himself. Yuri's paranoia was not unfounded. If they were captured wearing the enemy's uniform, they would probably be tortured to death before being shot. Yuri permitted them to move only at dusk, night, or during heavy rain. It was slow and dreary, but their movements went unnoticed. And tonight, if all went well, they would finally arrive at their objective.

They had set up their day camp inside the outer wall of a small dilapidated building on the outskirts of the aeroplane graveyard established south of Kiev's Zhuliany International Airport. To hide their heat signatures from satellites, whenever they slept outdoors they did so under a thermal-camo tarp. But on this occasion they had remained awake, sweating and almost immobile under it for just over 20 hours now; making sure they would not run into any regular patrols that might be in place this close to the airport. It was sensible, of course, but Alexei was bored, hot and uncomfortable, and hoped they would move soon.

Yuri whispered the word for which he had been waiting. “Now.”

Within two minutes Alexei had folded away their kit and tarp back into his backpack and was following Yuri through the darkness.

It was quiet here, but Alexei knew there must be patrols this close to the airport, even if they had not seen any. Both he and Yuri wore night vision goggles and moved silently through the underbrush and sparsely wooded area surrounding the airport. The unused and derelict storage warehouses of a past era lay haphazard and abandoned like old toys in the shadowy landscape of pale green that was Alexei's current view.

Yuri stopped, and suddenly Alexei's senses were on red alert. After almost a month of close proximity to Yuri, he had become attuned to the older man's ways. Alexei's silenced VSK-94 came up smoothly, pointing just off Yuri's right shoulder. Yuri had his own VSK up already, and with his left hand he made a lowering movement. Both men squatted, then lay down in the foot-tall grass. Alexei slid forward as he lay flat so that he had come up level with Yuri.

“Take your goggles off,” said Yuri in a voice so soft Alexei wondered if he'd heard it or imagined it, but he complied, switching the goggles off. He knew that Yuri must have heard or sensed something, and night vision goggles can give off a signature to equipment designed to find them in the darkness.

Yuri reached into his left breast pocket and pulled out the therm-fan, opened it in silence and laid it in front of his face. At three feet in diameter, the rough semi-circle shielded Yuri from detection by anything on the far side of the delicate cammo-painted fan. Alexei copied Yuri and opened his own fan, resting its edge close to Yuri's to make its shield appear natural. To any sensor that might get pointed their way, the silhouette would resemble nothing more than a small bump of topography, not unlike an oddly shaped boulder or mound of earth. They lay motionless and silent.

He could not tell its colour in the darkness, but the dry grass smelled yellow to Alexei.

After two minutes, the sound of a vehicle could be heard. A little later, the lights of what could have been a large car or small truck changed the colour of the landscape beyond the fans, but neither man saw the actual vehicle as they remained hidden from it behind their flimsy barriers. The menacing sound of the machine moved slowly through the terrain ahead of them, passing no further than 20 or 25 metres from them.

Suddenly, a bright light shined directly on them, and Alexei's heart froze. Waiting for the impact of rounds in his upper back, he closed his eyes and prayed.
If this is my time to die, please God, make it quick.

But the vehicle's occupants must not have seen them, because the light moved past them and eventually away.

Yuri waited less than a minute. The vehicle's headlights could still be seen off to their left now, illuminating the dirt road and the grass at its edge, barely a hundred metres away. Yuri picked up his fan, steadied himself in a low crouch due to the heavy backpack, then he ran straight ahead, crossing the track where the vehicle had come nearest to them, but being careful to step into the middle of the track, where the grass grew, so as not to leave an obvious footprint. Alexei had panicked a little, thinking he would lose Yuri, but had kept up. Ten minutes later they had reached the outer fence of the aeroplane graveyard and Yuri had begun to dig under the fence with the entrenching tool like a man possessed. Twenty minutes later, the hole under the fence, which they had squeezed their backpacks and then themselves through, had been backfilled, the fence remaining uncut and intact. Almost an hour later, they were inside an old Aeroflot plane close to the southern edge of the airport proper.

For the first time, Yuri allowed them to sleep at night. There would be nothing to do until daytime, as it was too dark inside the old plane to do any work, and using lights inside it at night was just stupid. It would give their position away. So they slept, and Alexei did not dream for the first time in weeks.