Free Devil's Fork by Spencer Adams Page A

combat
situations. The vast majority of fights end up with both fighters
on the ground immediately. On the ground someone who knew Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu had a complete advantage. A Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
practitioner knew multiple chokes and submission locks to which a
kicker or puncher had no idea how to respond. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
was a form of grappling or wrestling developed in Brazil originally
from a form of Judo brought in by a Japanese immigrant. In the SEAL
teams, Tom had learned Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to a level that gave him
a distinct advantage in any potential hand-to-hand combat
situation. He had practiced the Triangle choke so many times he
thought he could perform it blindfolded. The Triangle was the
classic move – if one was on his back and the opponent was on top,
trying to punch or attack in some way, one could wrap a thigh
around the neck and lock that leg’s foot with the other leg’s knee.
At the same time one pulls in on attacker’s arm and locks it with
the attackers head in the legs. The attacker ends up looking like
he is raising his hand in school, with someone’s legs wrapped
around his raised arm and neck. The triangle, named from the shape
one’s legs made, constricts the carotid artery carrying blood to
the brain. It makes the attacker pass out in less than a
minute.
    As Tom was stepping into the warm shower, he
thought about what that video out of North Korea really showed. It
showed a pure fanaticism. What drove people to that point? History
had examples of fanaticism at this level: during World War II, both
the SS and the Japanese soldiers demonstrated a similar fanatical
indoctrination. Each ended up fighting to the death at a heavy cost
to the allies. Could these North Koreans really believe in their
regime in the same way? Tom knew he could not question their
sincerity. He had to assume that once he entered that land of
darkness, he would be in the midst of true believers.
    Tom wondered if that copy
of Heart of Darkness had arrived yet. He had memorized passages from it while in
college. One piece stuck out in his mind at this moment:
    “ They howled, and leaped,
and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the
thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote
kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.”
    There is only one thing worse than nobody
believing in a cause, and that is everyone believing in it.

CHAPTER 10
     
    TUESDAY
    Langley, Virginia
     
    Sara did not sleep well the night before. In
her office, the pervading smell of coffee seemed to attach itself
to everything in the room. She had turned into a state where her
mind could not get over the message that she sent the previous day
with Matt. She thought about it over and over, almost like a
computer that catches a virus and starts performing the same task
in a loop. She worried that Matt’s computer did have a virus and
that someone could have figured out what they were doing with Tom.
Matt had combed through his computer afterwards and said he could
not find any malware installed, but that did not satisfy her.
Something felt wrong.
    In the world of traditional
espionage, Sara knew you could never be completely sure whether you
were the one carrying out the mission, or whether a mission was
being carried out on you. It was confusing, but examples sometimes
helped to make the concept clear. Double agents typically created
these situations. In one of the most famous cases, the allies in
World War II made the Germans believe that German agents had
conducted a successful operation to determine where the allies were
planning to land in Normandy. During Operation Fortitude, the
allies placed inflatable objects that looked like tanks, trucks,
and artillery guns onto English fields on the coast close to
Calais. German agents in London confirmed that the allies planned
to invade Calais. The Germans had believed that they conducted a
successful intelligence mission and prepared themselves for