by Finian Blake
“This is combat martial arts not sports martial arts. The object of the exercise is to subdue your opponent quickly and efficiently. You will do much better if you forget sportsmanship. Remember that your opponent is trying to disable or kill you and not trying to make you submit.” Ted was speaking loudly not shouting, but there was no doubt in Winnie’s mind that everybody in the gym could hear him. Ted was six foot seven 280 pounds without an ounce of fat on him. He called Nadia out to the center of the mat for the next demonstration. The action was fast and furious only lasting about fifteen seconds with both participants taking solid hits. Ted stood in the middle of the mat addressing the participants.
“Never assume that you have an easy target. Even with a smaller opponent there are always surprises. Much of your success will depend on your willingness to damage your opponent. Let’s pair off and get started.”
“There is my Boris, and Nikki pairing off now,” Tamar pointed out two men of equal stature.
“That’s him I thought this was a class for security guards.” Winnie said being slightly confused.
“No, all the students in the class are computer geeks,” Tamar laughed. “They enjoy the physical activity, and everybody here is a key employee so Cherry is having everybody practice an aggressive defense.”
“The term aggressive defense seems contradictory,” Winnie said sounding a little bit confused.
“Ted teaches the students how to disable people with a minimal amount of effort so that they can escape and evade,” Tamar said pointedly. For the next hour and a half, the class assaulted each other until they were bruised and sweating breathing heavily on the mat. Finally, Rhonda walked in the center of the mat.
“Luncheon will be served on the roof of the computer center by the ‘Hospitality House’,” Rhonda said brightly. “You will be provided a special entertainment during our lunch.”
When they arrived on top of the computer center everybody found a mouth-watering spread in the shadow of the ‘Hospitality House’ which was a structure on top of the computer center that looked like a residential home. Folding tables and chairs had been set up for everyone along the western edge of the roof facing the adjoining property. Rhonda steered Winnie and Tamar to the table where she was sitting with Cherry and Boris. After everybody settled in with their drinks and dinner Rhonda stood to make her announcement.
“As you know while we were building the project the Tanners were nothing but a pure pain in the ass. Last week we bought their hundred acres in order to expand our project. I have arranged a little salute to honor the Tanners departure.” Rhonda spoke only one word into her cell phone with venom in her voice, “NOW…!” A collection of buildings about 400 yards away started to explode one at a time. Each blast seemed to be completely catastrophic to the building that it occurred in. The ooo’s and ha’s from the crowd turned it cheers and laughter.
“FUCK THEM…,” Rhonda downed her drinking returning to her seat and smiling it Winnie. “I told the Army that their ordinance team could use those buildings for practice.” Rhonda smiled brighten considerably. “I even arranged to pay for the explosives. I’m just sorry that the Tanners were not home when we did this.”
“It seems kind of harsh,” Winnie said.
“The Tanners made some very harsh comments about Rhonda, Boris, and Cherry’s lifestyle. That made it extremely personal.” Tamar pointed to the photographer taking a video of the explosions. “Rhonda is sending a video complete with sound to the Tanners.” Rhonda pointed towards several bulldozers and dump trucks.
“As soon as ordinance clears the area the bulldozers will start to clear the debris and by the time the sun goes down there will be no trace of their shit.” Rhonda turned to Winnie with a drunken smile on her face. “I guess that will clear the air.
3.
TARGETS
Lloyd was pacing up and down in front of his computer finishing his third drink. His big score, and his entire inventory was fried right there in front of him. He figured the loss would come out to around three quarters of a million dollars. Lloyd wanted some ass and he was going to collect. Lloyd knew the Boris lived in the compound, but he did not know what he looked like. He had gotten there once and was unlucky enough to be caught but this time he knew that there was security there and he would avoid them. Lloyd went to the closet and pulled the backpack off the shelf putting brass knuckles, a knife, gun, and a roll of duct tape in it. Lloyd went up to his room dressing in black pants and a long sleeved black sweatshirt topping the outfit off with a black woolen watch hat. He went down to the garage pulling a set of heavy wire cutters out of his toolbox. Lloyd drove to the same place that he had parked two days before finding that they had repaired the fence. He cut the fence and when he had slipped through the hole Lloyd squatted down trying to figure out which direction he should move.
Cher and Sue decided to take a horseback ride while their parents were teaching a class at the gym. Both girls were the same age which was approximately sixteen years old. Cher was visiting with her parents Ted and Nadia. She had been adopted by the couple when her addicted mother overdosed on meth. Ted and Nadia arranged tutors and Cher had responded quickly. With a large selection of horses back in England Cher had quickly become a proficient rider. Sue liked to dress in formal riding attire which today was a red riding jacket, white Jodhpurs, black knee length riding boots, and black riding helmets. Since Cher was unfamiliar with the riding circuit they decided to walk the horses for the first lap. Tom, Sue’s German shepherd was being a pain in the ass since he always enjoyed running with the horses. Tom was a large German Shepard and at a 110 pounds was trained personally by Sue. Just entering the trees about one hundred and fifty yards from the barn Lloyd stepped out of the brush grabbing the reins of each horse.
“Do you know Boris Baronov,” Lloyd said threateningly only to be answered by Toms threatening growl. Lloyd released the reins trying to get the gun out of his backpack.
“Zipper…,” Sue exclaimed her command. Tom went straight for the zipper of Lloyd’s pants with the terrifying growl. Sue moved her horse quickly forward striking Lloyd across the eyes with her riding crop while Cher jumped off her horse quickly running forward kicking him full force in the head rendering Lloyd unconscious. Cher bent down removing the backpack while Sue used her cell phone to call Eden and security.
“Eden, Cher and I have been attacked by an intruder.”
“If you look to your left I believe you will see your father, Ted and Nadia coming into view.” Eden had spotted Lloyd on the security monitors when he cut through the fence. There is no sense of urgency until the girls had ridden within proximity of him, and Eden notified the parents. Tom, Ted, and Nadia were just outside of the computer center when the call came in, so they sprinted across country to their location. The dog had ripped the zipper out of Lloyd’s pants and was sitting with the bloody trophy in his mouth. Lloyd was lying on the ground unconscious with blood coming out of his ears, mouth, nose and thighs. Cher tossed the bag to Ted who found brass knuckles, a knife, a gun, and a roll of duct tape inside.
“You girls have learned your lessons well,” Ted said with pride looking at the inert figure on the ground. “It appears that our intruder was not here for a friendly chat.” Tom stroked the German shepherd that was named after him. The dog shied away wanting to keep the zipper as his trophy.
“I see that your dog Tom is remembered his lessons too,” Tom said hugging his daughter. “Why don’t you two finish your ride and we will clean up here.” Tom gave his daughter a leg up on her horse while Ted did the same for Cher. The dog laid the zipper at Tom’s feet chasing after the girls as they rode off.
After witnessing Rhonda’s display Colleen and Adam decided to go down to the apartment that she kept in the computer center. Cherry hung out in the spa planning on interrupting their intimate moment after they had been alone for a few minutes. Cherry was walking through the spa. The only other people in the spa were Tamar and Winnie who were enjoying t
he hot tub. She was planning on giving Adam and Colleen twenty minutes before knocking on their door being a pain in the ass sister that Adam knew and loved. Her cell phone rang and she answered finding that it was Eden in security.
“Cherry there was a scuffle by the houses with an intruder involving Cher, Sue and an intruder. While all this was going on I didn’t notice one of the alarms going off up at the spa somebody is trying to access the computer center from the spa. Could you check it out for me please? I believe it to be door number seven.” Cherry moved down the hall moving from the spa to the apartment section which was the area that door number seven was located in. She noticed a man of moderate build trying to access the door. Cherry cursed herself for not taking a weapon with her. She studied the man as she approached slowly noticing that there were several tattoos on his neck. When she was only a few feet away she recognized some of the tattoos as being of Russian origin. It was too late to retreat and she was unsure if he had a weapon or not. Cherry decided to approach in a friendly manner and drop her opponent with an aggressive move. Cherry extended her hand smiling at the stranger.
“Good afternoon my name is Cherry,” she said extending her hand trying to sound as friendly as possible. As she touched his hand Cherry tried to throw her opponent. Unfortunately, he must’ve had the same idea because the end result was her being thrown down the hallway. The man approached slowly and Cherry tried another move which the stranger block successfully throwing her against one of the doors. She backed farther down the hallway and the stranger was standing next to the door that he just bounced her off of. He reached in his pocket pulling out a knife and moving a few steps closer when the door opened behind him.
“Mine goes bang does yours,” Adam said as he leveled the barrel of the Sig Sauer pistol pointing it at the man’s head. There was no hesitation on the part of the assailant. He did a quick spin hoping to get Adam with his knife. There was a loud report and the assailant’s brains were splattered across the opposite wall. Cherry was sweating profusely.
“That was not your average house breaker,” Adam said looking at Cherry. Colleen stepped out in the hall with her pistol drawn looking somewhat shaken after seeing the mess on the wall. Cherry bent down ripping the man’s shirt open revealing, fifteen or twenty tattoos.
“Never assume that you have an easy opponent,” Adam smiled. “Wasn’t that what Ted said not more than a few hours ago in his lecture?” Cherry was going to make a sour comment, but decided against it.
“Let’s get Ted and Nadia. They can give me their lecturer in person.” Cherry said as Tamar and Winnie came running down the hall soaking wet in their robes. Cherry headed them off not wanting to have the Senator see this kind of a mess. “Tamar you and Winnie need to go down to your house we have had a security breach and we need to clean up. Please use the tunnels”
“You had more than a security breach. I can see his brains on the wall,” the Senator said not trying to hide her distress. “You are going to have to report this to the police.”
“While this is not a usual occurrence it has happened before, and we have procedures to follow,” Cherry said calmly hoping that a reassuring voice would eventually calm Winnie down.
Nadia studied the tattoos for a while rolling the corpse over to see what was tattooed on his back. Nadia looked up at the others.
“This man was definitely Spetsnaz at one time and he served in Afghanistan. Ted come with me now, I need a spotter.” Nadia ran down the hall using her key card on door seven. She moved to the arms locker on the computer side selecting the Dragunov rifle with the scope handing Ted a spotter scope. Nadia crouched low moving to the edge of the roof spotting what she was looking for almost immediately. One of the dump trucks working the new property was parked at the fence. Ted set up the spotter scope quickly scanning the area finding what he was looking for.
“I have a target ten yards inside the fence on your eleven o’clock,” Ted said barely above a whisper. Nadia estimated the range of barely eighty yards which would’ve been a sure shot even with iron sights. She quickly dialed in the scope holding her fire until Ted had a chance to search for secondary targets. “I have the second target standing by the left front fender of the dump truck twenty yards behind number one. I believe you may want this target first.” Nadia made a quiet grunt to acknowledge Ted statement sighting in on the man by the front fender.
“Fire…,” Ted said barely above a whisper. Nadia fired once and the head of the first target expelled a small plume of blood. Nadia immediately moved, sighting in the second target squeezing off another round causing a plume of blood to expel from the target’s head. Ted called security on the cell phone.
“Eden, we need to clean up two messes. I need two teams, one to the fence with the dump truck parked at it and the second one to the apartments in the computer center.” Ted was sure that Eden had been watching on the television monitors and knew what was happening, so he did not bother explaining any further. Nadia sensed that something was not quite right and put her eye to the scope searching the area where the drive way met the road. She spotted what she was looking for finding a car parked up on the road about 400 yards away between the trees. Nadia ranged the shot which would be difficult because of the trees. The driver was standing on his toes with his back against the car trying to see what was happening. Nadia squeezed off another round causing the driver’s head to issue a small plume of blood.
“They always worked with four man teams,” Nadia said quietly.
“What if that was just somebody with a flat tire,” Ted asked knowing that Nadia was right. Nadia took her eye away from the scope.
“Then I will apologize,” Nadia said in a sarcastic tone with a heavy Russian accent. She cast her gaze back at the fence line watching a pickup truck pull up to the hole in the fence. The two bodies were loaded in the back of the truck and another crew came out with the materials to fix the fence. The first truck drove out to the road picking up the body by the car with one of the crew driving the car back to the compound. When Ted and Nadia walked back to the hall the body had been removed and a crew was busily cleaning the walls and floor. Within an hour there was no sign that anything had happened.
Senator Ransom insisted on knowing what was going on so Tamar called Rhonda convincing her that the Senator should join the debriefing at the security center. Tom led the debriefing since he was in charge of physical security with Senator Ransom, Ted, Nadia, Rhonda, Cherry, Colleen, René, Eden, and Adam in attendance. Tom started the meeting out.
“We got lucky today that was a Spetsnaz team that infiltrated us. This brings to the forefront one of the things that I was suspecting. We are depending too much on electronic security. The electronics are valuable tools, but we need to bring more of the human element into the equation. René and Eden do an excellent job of supervising the monitor team. That idiot Lloyd cut his way through the fence, and we didn’t take him seriously until things became critical. That was a well-trained Spetsnaz team who just happen to penetrate at the same time as Lloyd. It was a dumb coincidence, but dumb coincidences will ruin your day just as surely as planned moves will. Now that we are up and running we need to toe the line. We created an in-depth security, but it will not work unless we honor each level with the proper attention. Nadia you are our best authority on Russian physical actions. What can you tell us about their team?”
“Well to begin with by their tattoos they were definitely Spetsnaz but I think that they were more of a scout team than a hit team. If they were after somebody specific they would have come in harder, so I don’t think that they came equipped with hard information. They were overly confident. When we brought our Russians over we made sure that they had a fatal accident and a funeral before creating their new identities. One of the things that Boris was worried about is that the work of each programmer acts as a signature. That has the possibility of creating curiosity. One of the things we did to mitigate the risk was to stick primarily with analysis keeping the progr
amming outside of this country to a minimum, however blocking their programs results in some evidence of their existence. I am assuming that somebody over in Russia asked some questions and sent a team over on a hunting expedition to see what they could find out. I don’t think that any of our people would intentionally give us away. That does not rule out the unintentional which we must consider,” Nadia concluded.
“I concur with Nadia,” Tom agreed. “I believe that we must strongly consider the possibility of further inquiries by trained personnel. We should have Boris review the activities of all of his people to see if there is some kind of an unintentional leak there. Finally, we have been doing a lot of outside work for private companies while we have been setting up for the NSA contract. We need to have Boris see if there are any Russian shadows popping up on that network.”
“What about the possibility of the Russians doing a computer attack on the US,” Winnie asked.
“This is something that we monitor every day for the NSA. Boris would’ve had some kind of a sniff on that score.” Rhonda said wishing that Boris had attended the meeting. “I think we will adopt Tom’s ideas without exception plus we will increase physical security at the computer center for our geeks.” Winnie still had a question for Rhonda.
“Don’t you need to do a study before you adopt these measures,” Winnie asked in all seriousness. Rhonda chuckled at the question.
