Free Shadow War by Sean McFate

Nezalezhnosti,” Greenlees said, signaling for the driver to double-park in the busy street. “The center of the struggle. Ten thousand gathered here for two months, until Putin’s puppet fell.”
    Maidan Nezalezhnosti was a concrete park, with a pond at the far end and trees along each side. Under the trees were makeshift tents and barricades, occupied by serious young women and older men in off-the-rack camouflage. I could see sand bags, Cyrillic graffiti, the burned remnants of radial tires. I didn’t know what war these people thought was being fought, but whatever it was, this wasn’t part of it.
    â€œWhere are the young men?” I asked.
    â€œAt the front. Hundreds have gone.”
    â€œBut they’ll be slaughtered.” I had seen it too many times: untrained men and boys run over by trained troops.
    â€œI know that,” Greenlees said, “and so do they. I suppose that’s why you’re here.”
    He paused. He wanted me to say he was right, that things were being taken care of. But he wasn’t right. I was here for five days, to do two jobs. Maybe they would matter in the grand scheme of things. I trusted they would. But either way, by next week I’d be gone.
    â€œThe Trade Unions building,” Greenlees said, pointing out the car window toward an empty space of blackened debris. “The Russians burned it down with protesters inside. Seventy-seven people gave their lives. Seventy-seven. And what does the world care?”
    Count your blessing, old man. It takes one thousand deadAfricans before anyone in the West even notices. Ten thousand, at least, before the cavalry arrives.
    â€œThirty-five years,” Greenlees muttered. “Half my life. And this is victory?”
    I looked out the window, past the shoddy barricades and piles of golden threadlike wire, the steel belts in burned-off radial tires. I liked Greenlees, and I trusted him, even if his jacket wasn’t pressed and his shirtsleeves were showing signs of wear. He was a gentleman, one of those old hands who seemed like a throwback to a more subtle time. But his information was useless, something I could get in half a minute from anyone at the U.S. Embassy. And he was clearly compromised. Us? We? Our? The old man had “clientitis.” He’d gone native, a cardinal sin for a field operative. I knew the company had to go outside its usual sources for work this black, but if this mission was so important to Winters, why would he saddle me with a sentimentalist?
    I looked up. The driver was staring at me in the rearview mirror. Sloppy. He was probably a plumber, before Greenlees brought him onboard.
    â€œWe’re being followed,” I said. “Black car, halfway down the block.”
    â€œDon’t forget about the tan four-door that passed us thirty seconds ago.” Greenlees was right. I had been so focused on the black car, I hadn’t looked farther.
    â€œRussian FSB?” The FSB was the new acronym for the KGB.
    â€œOne’s probably Russian. One Ukrainian. They’re following each other as much as they’re following us.”
    â€œI assume my room will be tossed when I get back.”
    â€œAt least once, probably twice. For effect, mostly. I assume there’s nothing to find.”
    â€œOf course,” I said, as the car started to roll.
    Greenlees handed me three prepaid mobile phones to be usedand discarded. I checked them. They were clean. I handed them back. We hadn’t used burners in the field in ten years. They were a dead giveaway. My cell phone had been programmed by the company with the right amount and type of contacts.
    â€œI’ll stick with a sat phone,” I said, not making a big deal of Greenlees’s error. “You have the Berettas?”
    Beretta Nanos were my favorite pistols for this type of work, small and easy to conceal. No silencers. Noise suppressors reduced range and accuracy, changed the