December 5th, 2016 | 22:10
Sector 14B, Industrial District, Tnemratia | Major Arkady Bykov
"Major," the director had said upon his arrival, "we were just reviewing your file," he continued. The air was thick with the caustic smell of smoke and the "we" a bit worrying. Arkady had been summoned from his desk with an urgency that only those in trouble received. Thankful that he had pressed his uniform that morning, he couldn't help but wonder what he did wrong. The ride from the 17th to the 39th floor was long and nerve-racking as he searched his mind for any transgression that he might have done. In a society like Tnemrot was, one could never know just what they did - if anything at all. Sometimes you were accused of something just to get you to admit to some impropriety or another. For Arkady, who was well versed in these tactics, being a counterintelligence officer, the summoning was truly worrying.
Before Arkady could answer the director's line of speech, a man seated at the conference table, whose face Arkady did not recognize, said hastily, "And it is exemplary." With those four words, Arkady's fears were instantly allayed and the weight that had been pushing down on his shoulders was suddenly gone.
The director resumed, "Which is why we have a special assignment for you, one that is precisely up to your caliber. How familiar are you with the term 'Fear Factory' Major?" The director asked and it was then that Arkady knew this was his moment to shine. As a counterintelligence officer in the State Security Directorate's Third Directorate, shining and standing out was no easy task. Though there were bountiful enemies afar, there were few within the country's borders, largely thanks to its extremely rigid tourism and immigration policies, which heavily discouraged anyone coming to Tnemrot. The country was not full of spies, despite what the nightly propaganda spewed. Insofar as internal threats, the overwhelming majority of the vermin dealt with by the SSD were of the criminal nature and that was handled by the First Directorate. The Third Directorate had full dominion over all intelligence in the country but one, which was surveillance intelligence. This fell to the technology officers in the Fifth Directorate, who also hunted down cyber criminals, which was a rather boring job given how thoroughly the internet was censored by the "Great Tnemration Firewall," as it was known.
Now twelve hours later, the sun long since down, Arkady was trying to coax every bit of hot air from the BTR's blowers that could be had. The vehicle had a 373 kW diesel engine that pumped out a considerable amount of heat but in a vehicle that had only the bare minimum for insulation there was no amount of heat that could be sufficient. Slogging its way up a hill, the blowers were only barely registering as the driver coaxed the vehicle through its gears, using considerable power to make the climb. Behind them, the gunner sat in his turret facing forward, ignoring the likelihood that there were any hostiles ready to ambush them. He reasoned it was too cold for an ambush and even if it weren't, the thick fog would make seeing anything impossible. The infrared was cold and that was all he needed to worry about as the vehicle crested the hill and lurched forward.
Arkady turned and looked at the eight men seated along the vehicle's walls. They were warm, much warmer than he was but this was also because they were carrying at least 20 kg of body armor and thermal clothing. The eight men were from the Sixth Directorate, responsible for staffing the action teams as they were called. These men were the heavy hitters who stormed flats and homes for criminals and traitors. This evening they were the muscle behind Arkady's assignment, which was the destruction of a Fear Factory, the first such instance in nine years. He would never forget the words as his section chief pointed to a spot on the map and said, "There is a Fear Factory in this sector," his finger hovering over Sector 14B in Tnemratia, the capital no less. "What do you know about Sector 14B?"
"Nothing sir I have never had any cases or targets there," Arkady answered quickly, firmly.
"It is largely abandoned, very industrial. It would make sense that there is a Fear Factory here but not one so developed as this one is," his section chief snubbed out his cigarette. Vlad Balashov was ten years Arkady's senior but he somehow kept a youthful face despite being a three-pack per day man. Balashov looked at the man under his tutelage and continued, "First Directorate has swept through here a few times in the past year, the last time just three months ago. They were picking up vagrants and other non-desirables hiding from their civic duties here. The arrests netted fourteen, not something we'd go to the news with without proper adjustment of course. It was through interrogation of one Alina Kharitonova that we learned of the Fear Factory. We put her back into Sector 14B and watched her."
"Is she a CI?"
"She is expendable," Balashov had said cold and quickly, without thought. "She has fulfilled her purpose. She is unaware that we will launch our raid so soon, we have given her no indication that we will just in case she is playing against us."
"Do you have a photograph of her?"
"Yes here is her mug shot," Balashov passed the photograph from a folder to Arkady.
With his mind back in the BTR-4, he couldn't help but remember the striking portrait of Alina Kharitonova. She looked younger than he did; perhaps she was only twenty-five. She had brown hair, kept in a braid down her right side. Her eyes were a hazel color and her skin proof that she was a resident of Tnemratia, pale and unused to the sunlight. She looked frightened in the photograph, as if she expected this to be the end of her life. It was tragic. Arkady was conflicted at once because she was beautiful and he, a man of thirty, was single. There was only duty to the state and nothing else, no time for love interests. He figured - until he saw that photograph - that if he'd needed a girlfriend the SSD would provide the necessary form and an instruction booklet.
"Only seven kilometers to go," the driver said, snapping Arkady back to the miserable presence of the BTR's internal hull. The heat was back to full blast now that the road was flat. The thick fog had not let up and the driver kept the vehicle moving at only 35 km/h. Behind this BTR-4, there would be nine others, all carrying eight-man teams of Sixth Directorate goons. "Goon" was what men like Arkady who used their brain versus their brawn to handle matters referred to Sixth Directorate personnel as. Arkady didn't answer, he didn't need to; it wasn't expected of him. He was the man-in-charge here. One hundred and nine men were under his command and of them, eighty were muscle and the rest were the crewmen of the ten vehicles. Their mission was to neutralize the Fear Factory, capture its leaders, round up or execute any of the lower adherents, and then call in the mop up crew. The mop up crew could cart off the prisoners and the dead bodies, bring the leaders - if they were alive - to the interrogation chambers of the 165-meter tall SSD building, and then bring all of the pertinent documentation and intelligence recovered from the Fear Factory back to the building as well. Arkady's job was to lead the mission and personally execute Alina Kharitonova.
His mind wandered back to the photograph and it stayed there for the remaining fifteen-minute journey until they reached the outskirts of Sector 14B. The ice fog was just as thick and winter was in full bore even though it was only the beginning of December. Tnemratia had only five months of the year where the temperature was above freezing as a daily average and that was May through September. From October onward, the average temperature was below freezing and in the dead of winter, which was December through February, temperatures often dropped to -40°C. The coldest Tnemratia had gotten was -65°C, one February before Arkady was born. Thus, a temperature of -25°C was a bit on the warmer side but then again, it was only the month's beginning.
"Go slowly and make sure you communicate to each vehicle to have the gunners do full sweeps. We are not positive the enemy is unaware of our raid."
"Yes Major," the driver responded, passing the order through his radio. He was a lowly private, young and barely old enough to shave and yet he handled his vehicle like an old, seasoned professional. He had practice and he wanted to be someone within the Sixth Directorate even if he would never become an officer. For a young private such as him, the senior sergeants were gods and that was enough of an aspiration though it would take twenty years to get there. In another twelve years, Arkady could make lieutenant colonel, perhaps even colonel, so long as he pulled off this raid successfully. There was no pressure, to put it as sarcastically as possible. This raid would make - or break - his career with the SSD and if it broke it, he would be torn down like a ruined poster, discarded in the rubbish heap as if it were nothing more than a used napkin. Arkady had a lot riding on this raid and yet all he could think about was the photograph of Alina and her scared facial expression.