Laynie Portland, Spy Rising—The Prequel Read online

  “There is no ‘Lost Dog,’” Stephanie suggested. “It’s a fabrication, so who would tear off a phone number for a dog they haven’t seen?”

  “Good—if there is no ‘Lost Dog,’ the odds are miniscule that anyone would take one of the phone numbers. What else?”

  “People don’t generally tear from the center,” another trainee said, “so tearing off the only misprinted number makes it a deliberate choice.”

  “Good catch! And this? What does this mean?”

  Chin put up yet another transparency of the bulletin board. The same “Lost Dog” notice was there, but the top corner of the sheet of paper was dog-eared, turned down and creased.

  Several trainees spoke at the same time. “Burned!”

  “That’s right. The sender has signaled the recipient that the drop has been compromised. They won’t use the drop or that set of signals again. And this?”

  Same, board, but scrawled across the “Lost Dog” notice was the word, “Found.”

  “That’s much more noticeable,” someone said.

  “If it is, what’s the reason?” Chin asked.

  “Danger,” Laynie murmured.

  “Who said that?”

  “I did. It’s a danger signal, perhaps a ‘change location quick’ or ‘get out of town now’ message.”

  “That’s exactly what it is—all prearranged agent-to-agent. Now, let’s look at another set of signals.”

  The next transparency showed an antique shop set on a corner, its front window display cluttered with vintage goods including an entire set of shelves filled with knickknacks.

  “Good one,” someone said. “Lots of possibilities.”

  “But obvious, don’t you think?” Black asked. “It’s like a signals smorgasbord.”

  Without comment, Chin replaced the transparency. Same corner antique store, same busy window filled with furniture and the case of knickknacks.

  “What’s the signal? Anyone?”

  “Bottom shelf, right side. The vase is different.”

  “Is it?” Chin put up the original foil.

  “Nope. Same vase,” a different trainee declared. He blatted the sound of a “wrong answer” buzzer, and the class laughed.

  But Laynie had spotted the signal; she’d seen it because she hadn’t focused only on the window. She nodded to herself.

  Chin replaced the original foil with the second one again. “Anyone have it? Anyone?” Chin looked at Laynie, and she smiled.

  “You have it—right, Magda?”

  “Yes.”

  The remainder of the class looked from her back to the second foil. After a moment, several said, “Got it,” while others struggled to see what they’d missed.

  “Magda, show them.”

  Laynie got up, walked to the projected image and pointed—not at the shop window, but at the wall that ran from the shop’s corner down the building’s side to a water spigot on the wall. “This.”

  Her finger touched the projection of a faint chalk mark next to the spigot. The mark was not more than an inch or two long.

  Exclamations of surprised or muttered curses went around the classroom.

  “Way to go, Maggie,” Black said, giving credit where it was due.

  “It was what you said—‘It’s like a signals smorgasbord’—that changed my focus, Black.”

  “Chuck,” he muttered.

  “’Fraid you’re stuck with Black,” Taylor laughed. “That’s all Maggie calls you, so I think most of us think of you as Black, too.” He added with a grin, “But, Black is better than Dudley . . . or Dud, right?”

  He and Stephanie high-fived while Black growled, “Payback, buddy, payback. It’s a-comin’.”

  Chin turned off the projector. “Groups of five. I want each group to devise a dead drop and a set of signals and be ready to demonstrate them tomorrow.”

  He pulled a box across his desk, opened it, and tossed decks of cards onto the desk. “These are your intel packets, and these are the rules: Drops and signals must be within the boundaries of the training grounds and in plain sight. You may utilize the public areas of the hotel, dining hall, and gym, and the external areas of the commissary and staff offices. Hide your packets, make your signals.”

  He pulled six Polaroid cameras from the box and plopped them on his desk. “Each group takes a camera. Come to class tomorrow with two photographs: The drop with the intel package inside and the posted signal. Be prepared to share your burn and danger signals, too.

  “A last word: This is not a competition; it’s a learning experience. Devise and justify. Poke holes in what doesn’t work. Got it?”

  Nora, Taylor, Black, Steph, and Laynie automatically formed a group, as did the other trainees with their dining partners. Nora retrieved a camera and an “intel packet.”

  “This should be fun,” she grinned.

  “Finding the time will be the issue,” Laynie said. “We have our lunch period, the hour before dinner, and whatever time remains after dinner and the AAR.”

  “Let’s brainstorm during lunch,” Steph suggested.

  WHEN CHIN DISMISSED them, they had fifteen minutes to use the restrooms, dress out for the gym, and report to their next class, which had four instructors—two men, two women.

  “I’m Pelton; this is Lonetree, Montes, and Tillman. We’re your hand-to-hand instructors.” He moved to the center of the gym floor and Lonetree followed him. “Make a circle around me, please.”

  The trainees complied.

  “Hand-to-hand is close-quarters battle with one or more adversaries. It connotes fighting for your freedom or your life. We don’t train to a code or a style; we don’t bow and show each other respect. We train you to survive, to win. To win, you may need to use whatever weapons you have on you and around you, and that means no available weapon is off limits. However, you are limited by how skilled you are with those weapons.

  “We’ll start with our bodies as our weapons. Every part of our body can damage an enemy, even kill him: Take the human hand. With it, you can punch with a fist, slice with the side of your palm, gouge with your fingers. Knowing where to deliver the blow is as essential as how to deliver it.”

  Lonetree stood passively while Pelton—with no weight behind any of his moves—demonstrated. His fist jumped out and connected (barely) with Lonetree’s Adam’s apple. “A blow to the throat can stun, paralyze, or kill.”

  Lonetree balled his fists and struck back. As he did, Pelton ducked under Lonetree’s extended arm, moving around him. Pelton opened his hand and, with stiffened fingers, jabbed into Lonetree’s open and vulnerable armpit.

  “Youch,” someone muttered.

  As Lonetree recoiled, Pelton whirled and sliced the back and side of his opponent’s waistline. Lonetree went to his knees.

  “Excruciating nerve pain under the arm followed by blows to the kidney,” Pelton pronounced, “using only my fist, my fingers, and the side of my hand.

  “Now, I’m going to turn you over to Montes and Tillman who will work with you to optimize the three uses of your hands as weapons—fists, sides, and fingers. Then you’ll practice on our dummies over there.”

  “Over there” was the end of the gym where three rubbery dummies on weighted stands stood ready for them.

  Tillman and Montes described and demonstrated ten different attack moves, while explaining that a female agent had to employ any and every advantage to offset a male’s physical advantages in height, weight, reach, and strength.

  Eventually, the class lined up in three groups to deliver to the dummies the blows Tillman and Montes had demonstrated.

  At Tillman’s shouted commands, Laynie gouged the dummy’s eyes with her fingers, throat-punched him, and kidney-sliced him. Over and over. She used the flat of her hands to clap the dummy’s ears simultaneously, a move Tillman promised would remove a man’s hands from around a woman’s throat.

  “If you’re being choked, don’t go for the hands choking you—this is wasted, futile effort.
Go for the eyes, ears, throat, and nuts.”

  When ordered, Laynie was to punch the dummy in his “family jewels”—a cheap shot, Montes screamed at Laynie, that would save her life someday. Laynie, fueled by Montes’ shouted intensity, drove her fist into the specified target, imagining how a male attacker would outweigh her, have a longer reach, and own the stronger blows.

  After their second shower of the day, the trainees dressed and dragged themselves to the dining hall. Laynie should have been exhausted, but she’d left the class keyed up with adrenaline and the desire to learn more. She fidgeted over her lunch and found it hard to concentrate on their dead drop exercise.

  “Dang, Mags,” Taylor said. “I was watching you attack that dummy, and you really got into it. I daresay that dummy won’t be fathering any kids after you finished with him.”

  Laynie finally relaxed. “Got my blood up, I guess.”

  “Well, just don’t do that to me when we get to sparring, okay?” Taylor ribbed her.

  Black pulled them on task. “Let’s get to our dead drop exercise, okay? Any ideas?”

  THE NEXT MORNING, THE six groups presented their dead-drop exercises to the class. Chin had the other groups critique each presentation. They spent an hour picking apart the ambiguities, drawbacks, or issues they noted.

  Three of the groups had used the dining hall’s bulletin board for signals; one group had left a wad of gum on the base of the flagpole.

  Laynie and her team turned a flowerpot so that the red geranium (as opposed to the pink one) faced outward. For their danger signal, they cut off the red blooms. To signal that the op was “burned,” they were much more dramatic: They pulled the plant out of the pot.

  “I hate you guys,” Lesley, a female trainee remarked. “Uprooting flowers is wrong!”

  Her comment elicited chuckles from the class, but an unfortunate group earned derision instead. They had placed chalk marks on the tires of a staff vehicle that was regularly parked outside the staff offices.

  Black shook his head at their mistake. “Do you control that vehicle? Just because it’s usually there doesn’t mean it couldn’t be driven off at any time, right? What then?”

  “Good,” Chin said. “You’re getting the hang of the process, what works and what doesn’t. Remember, when you are charged in the future with running an op, it will be up to you to devise clever, foolproof means of communication.

  SATURDAY EVENING FINALLY arrived, and the trainees gathered in the dining hall for dinner. Laynie got her tray, filled it, and settled into her seat with Black, Steph, Nora, and Taylor. She picked up her fork and then paused. Set it down. Looked around their table.

  “What?” Steph asked.

  “I’m pausing to reflect, to make a memory,” Laynie said. “Stop with me for just a minute.”

  She laid her palms flat on the table and waited. The others, after a moment, followed suit.

  “What memory, Maggie?” Black teased. “Like, how many bruises you have from landing on your butt seventeen times this week?”

  Taylor guffawed. “Pretty sure that was seventeen times every day this week, bro.”

  “Give it a rest, you stupid, witless blokes.” Nora wasn’t putting up with the guys’ banter at present. “Maggie’s trying to say something serious to us. Go on, now. Tell us what you mean.”

  Laynie tipped a half-smile in Nora’s direction. “I guess what I mean is this: Think back to last Sunday afternoon, the day we arrived here, a week ago tomorrow. Consider what’s happened since then, in six short days. What we’ve seen, what we’ve learned, what we’ve done, what we’ve fought through.

  “Like, what we didn’t know about tradecraft then versus what we know now. What we didn’t know about firearms then; what we know now. What we hadn’t experienced before this week, and how these past six days have already changed us, dramatically, from who and what we were, to who and what we are becoming. Compare yourself now to that person last Sunday afternoon.

  “Do you see? This week is the pivot point in our lives. None of us will ever again be who we were last Sunday due to this experience. I just thought it was worthwhile making note of it before it passes because . . . because the who I will be at the end of this course? Well, I’m excited—and a little anxious, if I’m being frank—to meet that person.”

  She exhaled and picked up her fork. “I guess what I’m saying is, whatever it costs me, I’m in this thing.”

  “Hear, hear,” Nora agreed, lifting her water glass. “Whatever the cost, we’re in it!”

  Laynie put down her fork and lifted her glass. They all did.

  The five of them clinked their glasses and vowed with one voice, “Whatever the cost!”

  Chapter 7

  THE TRAINEES WERE HARD into the second full week of the program. By now, they had the daily schedule planted in their minds: PT before breakfast, tradecraft after breakfast; hand-to-hand training for an hour and a half before lunch, firearms training for two hours after lunch; team obstacle course work for an hour, followed by showers yet again; more tradecraft consisting of case studies and films from 4 to 5 p.m.; an hour’s break before dinner and, finally, the daily after action review—in which the mistakes any trainee may have made were dissected and remedies discussed.

  Laynie and her classmates had grown accustomed to the firing range and its norms, to the mandatory rangewear and eye and ear protection, to promptly obeying instructions. The six firearms instructors, under the oversight of Mr. Henry, the rangemaster, had drilled the trainees on the rules of firearms safety until the students could repeat—and follow them—in their sleep.

  On their second day on the range, the instructors had placed a series of handguns in the trainees’ hands, beginning with a Smith & Wesson Model 10 snubnose revolver. The trainees practiced thumbing open the cylinder, dropping the six .38 Special rounds into the cylinder, and reloading until they could do it flawlessly in under ten seconds. When they had mastered manual loading, they were given speedloaders, a preloaded cylindrical device that allowed them to drop all six rounds into the revolver’s cylinder at once, cutting the loading speed in half and reducing the likelihood of fumbling and dropping bullets—an essential consideration in a firefight.

  “You won’t always have speedloaders; someday your life may depend upon your facility to load manually, to do so quickly and without dropping bullets,” Mr. Benelli told them. “This is why we train you to excel at both.”

  After that, Mr. de Guerre demonstrated a two-handed grip and the isosceles stance, where the shooter faced the target squarely, feet shoulder-width apart, knees somewhat bent, arms extended straight out before him, forming the isosceles triangle. Using unloaded revolvers, the trainees practiced the demonstrated stance, aiming their guns down range.

  Then they loaded and shot the revolvers at targets a mere three yards away. The six instructors moved from student to student, correcting stances, adjusting grips, and loosening elbows to absorb recoil.

  “Do not allow the muzzle of your firearm to rise or ‘pop up’ in an uncontrolled manner as you fire. Control your firearm; do not let it control you. A strong, firm grip will limit the rise and will help keep the barrel level with the target so that successive shots remain on target.”

  Then, with a stopwatch running, the trainees dropped their expended shells, manually reloaded, shot, dropped the shells, reloaded, and shot again—repeating the exercise until they could fire and reload twice in under ten seconds, flawlessly. When the students completed an exercise, they laid their revolvers on the bench in front of them—cylinder open and empty, barrel pointing down range—and faced away from the range to await their next set of instructions.

  Between drills, one of the range staff, a woman named Steyr, shouted, “Trainees! What you must understand is that weapons handling and marksmanship are perishable skills, meaning they have a short shelf life. This maxim applies to handguns in particular! We will review the fundamentals and practice them, ad infinitum, because your success in the
field proceeds from those fundamentals.”

  A second instructor, Weatherby, added, “Our focus at this moment is not on your marksmanship but on your intimate familiarity with your weapon’s weight, feel, and workings. Precision loading and unloading—doing so quickly, without fumbling—are essential components to surviving a real firefight. Why? Because when your life is on the line, your gun must be an extension of your hand: Loading and unloading it must be an automatic, unconscious act. When you are so familiar with your weapon’s workings that muscle memory takes over, you can then focus all of your attention on your target and your situation.

  “Remember, the best you can do in a firefight is limited by the training and equipment you bring to that fight. Training, therefore, is as important as the weapon you carry.”

  Steyr took over. “Furthermore, as a covert operative in the field, you will not carry a firearm openly as law enforcement officers do. In fact, many theaters of operation forbid civilian carry and/or ownership of firearms. For this reason, you will handle and shoot a variety of handguns to broaden your experience, including several models that are smaller and easier to conceal than a full-sized gun.”

  Under the instructors’ watchful eyes, the trainees cleaned and oiled their revolvers. The two armorers then collected the revolvers and issued semiautomatic handguns and magazines in their place.

  The issued Beretta 92 was a more complex mechanism than the revolver, but it had certain advantages over a revolver: The Beretta shot fifteen 9mm rounds from a double-stack magazine opposed to the revolver’s six rounds, and a fully loaded magazine could replace an empty one in half the time it took to manually reload a six-shot revolver.

  Before the trainees picked up the Beretta, Weatherby spoke to them. “Listen up! Even after you have dropped the magazine, a semiauto can have a round already chambered. You are to visually inspect the magazine well and the chamber. Look to verify that the magazine has been ejected and that no cartridge is chambered. Use your index finger to check for a round in the chamber. You must check both the magazine well and the chamber before declaring that your weapon is cleared.”