The Arch Deceiver

CHAPTER 1

Ottawa, Canada

Embassy of the Republic of Serbia

The Ambassador was angry enough to kill someone. Anyone. Within an hour he did.

Where’s Major Brosic? General Steven Sepic, soldier turned diplomat, shouted at a security man guarding the Serbian embassy’s foyer. That fool is three minutes late! I sent the limo for him an hour ago!

Sepic still possessed a military punctuality and no one kept him waiting, at least not a second time. According to his Jaeger-LeCoultre chronometer, a sixteen thousand dollar war trophy, it was precisely three minutes after nine A.M.

It was also three minutes after the chief of his protection detail was to arrive.

The tardy solider was scheduled to escort his boss to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) hearings at the Justice Building on Wellington Street, not that the general wanted to be there.

Sepic scowled at his Jaeger-LeCoultre once more. Brosic’s mistress was probably arguing again! That hell-cat should be put in a gunny sack alive and tossed into the Ottawa River!

The diplomat’s mood currently matched his appearance. Hawk-like, dark eyes brooded below pointed eyebrows that resembled miniature horns on a well-dressed devil.

The ferocity wasn’t surprising. Sepic had inherited it, and his cunning, from generations of warrior opportunists.

After Slobodan Milosevic, the then President of Serbia, failed to unite all Balkan Serbs in one state due to United Nations intervention, the general demonstrated his guile. With the help of friends, he quietly left the army for the diplomatic corps. Ambassador-at-Large was a title without a job but it kept him a step or two ahead of the ICTY. Or so he thought.

The roaming diplomat remained foot-loose until his country’s ambassador in Canada died of a heart attack. A shocked Sepic found himself appointed as a replacement.

In Canada, the thug-in-an-important place was to discover he hadn’t left his dark exploits behind in the Balkans. Nearing the end of its mandate, The ICTY sent a delegation to Ottawa.

Sepic checked the chronometer yet again. He stalked outside and swore at a rose garden.

At that moment, one of the few women in the embassy appeared at the patio door. Attuned to the new ambassador’s instant mood swings and evil-temper, she remained ready to bolt.

General, a cable just arrived for you. Her voice had a forced calmness. It is marked personal and urgent.

Without acknowledging the young woman, Sepic stormed by.

Thirty-five minutes later someone was dead.

CHAPTER 2

While the diplomat cursed the chief of his security detail, Major Zelkjo (Zig) Brosic shouted at a traffic warden controlling a line of vehicles creeping onto Rideau Street. The warden wore safety gear including helmet, windbreaker, orange reflector and boots as well as an industrial mask. Although Brosic suspected the flagperson was a woman, he refused to temper his language.

Broomless witch! We’re late.

The individual reacted to the soldier’s insults by brandishing a baton in the air as if it were a pirate’s cutlass. The meaning was clear: ‘Stop!’

A motorcycle cop parked near the intersection turned his head in the direction of the commotion. He noticed the diplomatic plates and slid a pair of aviator sunglasses onto his nose.

Where to? The policeman asked.

Our embassy! The major yelled.

The cop pumped his arm in the air with a ‘follow me’ signal and the bike’s red bubble-light flashed as it pulled away from the curb. As the limo roared by, Brosic stuck out his tongue.

The flagperson saluted him back with the American third digit sign of discontent.

When they arrived at the embassy, the cop pulled over to a curb and allowed the limo to proceed along the driveway.

Following strict rules of protocol, the chauffeur stopped at the bottom of the steps with the passenger side of the vehicle facing the building.

Attired in dark blue livery and a forage cap, he opened the front passenger door for Brosic then saluted. The major straightened his shoulders and smoothed back his mop of unruly black hair. After pinching his thin, straight nose, he clambered out.

Remain with the vehicle, Brosic ordered and hurried up the steps.

The security man, at whom Sepic had been yelling a few minutes earlier, was waiting. He and the major exchanged a few quiet words then they disappeared into the building.

Meanwhile, the chauffeur had stepped to the limo’s right rear door and opened it. Using a handkerchief, he dusted the travelling seat for senior officials, military officers and diplomats. Satisfied that not a speck of lint remained, he lit a cigarette and stared at the main entrance.

Distracted, the man didn’t notice the motorcycle cop proceed slowly along the driveway towards him. The bike’s engine was barely audible. As the cop pulled by, he kicked something under the opposite side of the vehicle. The driver finally saw him after he stopped near the roadway. His glossy white helmet shone in the morning sunlight.

A few minutes before Brosic arrived at the ambassador’s office, Sepic opened a cable marked personal. It was a poem written by his friend, Radovan Karadzic, the deposed Bosnian Serb President. He was now in detention at The Hague but had still managed to send the communication.

Sepic decoded it and discovered a message buried in its second stanza. His temples pounded. A film of sweat beaded on the man’s forehead.

Somebody’s trying to murder me!

Now at the door, Brosic withdrew a Makarov semi-automatic pistol from his shoulder harness and charged into the room. Sepic stood behind his desk with his back to the wall.

Read this! The diplomat had ceased hyperventilating. There was anger in his voice as he shoved the poem across the table. Assassins are after me!

Brosic remained in front of the desk, pistol still in his hand but pointed at the floor. He read the message while Sepic extracted a state of the art bomb jammer, the size and shape of a police band radio scanner, from his safe.

Has anyone had access to my limo? Has someone been around who might have attached a bomb to it? He bellowed the questions.

No. It’s been secured at all times. The driver took it directly out of the garage, collected me then returned here.

The executive protection chief put the Russian military pistol back in its shoulder harness. We even had an escort. A traffic cop picked us up at Rideau Street.

Good. Then Sepic’s renowned rage boiled over again. Nobody’s smart enough to murder me! Especially a bomber!

Just as fast as it had appeared, the anger vanished. A smile formed in the corner of His Excellency’s mouth as he opened a window and prepared to scan the driveway and grounds.

The FSB developed this technology after the Chechens started using radio-fired mines to kill Russian troops. This device not only detects and jams remote controlled devices, it detonates them.

I’ll warn the driver.

No. Sepic switched on the scanner. As he studied it, his pointed eyebrows twitched.

A bomb is out there! He depressed a button.

A second later an explosion reverberated over the building. A large chunk of the limo’s rear fender, incarnadined by the driver, crashed through the window. Brosic hunkered down at the base of a wall, while his boss dropped to the floor and curled up under the desk.

Sepic bellowed curses as he lay in the dust and glass.

Brosic ran a hand over his neck and touched splinters. A thin line of blood seeped over his collar.

An experienced soldier, the major knew the explosion might force their assailants to ground. He took advantage of the lull to peer out the window at the devastation below. The explosion had changed the building’s façade, mottling it black and grey.

The bomb also blasted the front seats out of the vehicle. They landed on the lawn and appeared as if waiting for someone to walk over and sit down. More shredded pieces of the limo lay scattered along the driveway.

While Brosic looked for the bombers, Sepic did a clumsy crabwalk over to a cabinet beside the safe. He tossed a Steyr submachine pistol and two fragmentation hand grenades to Brosic.

Use these! Kill those swine!

Before Brosic could bring the Steyr into a firing position, police vehicles, with sirens wailing and emergency lights flashing, careened into the driveway.

CHAPTER 3

Canadian Forces Base,

Petawawa, Ontario,

170 km (110m) Northwest of Ottawa

Lieutenant Colonel Ian Munro was a Sun Tzu disciple. Although the Chinese soldier sage penned his treatise The Art of War nearly twenty-six hundred years earlier, Munro appreciated that its axioms remain a cornerstone of successful military doctrine. He also realized they were relevant in other spheres including the corporate world, family life and romantic relationships.

Sun Tzu established many principles, but none more important than fraud, force and surprise. Staring out a window of a C-130 Hercules transport into the pre-dawn darkness of an April morning, Munro was once again reviewing those cardinal tenets.

Outnumbered at least four-to-one and leading an airborne force against an entrenched enemy during Exercise Swift Fury, the spring war games at Canadian Forces Base, Petawawa, Ontario, Lt. Col. Munro had few options. As a result, his plan of battle was pure Sun Tzu: subterfuge and surprise.

Swift Fury was a level 4 BTS (Battle Task Standards) exercise. Four was an operation at the battalion or brigade level, while numbers 1, 2, and 3 were designations given to smaller elements.

Munro’s objective was to test the capability and flexibility of a battalion, in a fortified position, to repel a combined operations assault. Ian Munro had several fans among the officers at 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group Headquarters in Petawawa who planned Swift Fury. Although they had prepared what looked like a sure-fire winning scenario for the defenders, there were more than a few wagers that the attacking force might actually be victorious.

Previous encounters of the military kind had demonstrated that Ian Munro was a dogma dissenter, an officer with innovative, almost radical, ideas of tactics and soldiering. A colleague once described the colonel as ‘an officer who thought well outside the battle box.’

Munro glanced at the red band on his right arm identifying him as a member of the enemy force. He almost smiled at the symbolism. The bad guys always wore aggressive red while the good ones donned passive blue.

He checked his wristwatch again. It was three minutes to the drop zone. For once the pre-dawn morning gusts that normally blew westward across the Ottawa River were a mere breeze. Consequently, Munro and his paratroop company were jumping into darkness as well as in weather conditions that paratroopers call a ‘dead air drop.’

According to the exercise scenario developed by 2 MBGE Headquarters, Munro’s entire command was expected to parachute into Quebec and land on the eastern banks of the Ottawa River, an expansive body of water often with troublesome currents. Recce engineers of 2 Combat Engineer Regiment would then guide Red Force back to Ontario in assault boats.

Their target was a battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR), well over six hundred men and women dug in on the western side. Most, if not all, of Munro’s one hundred and sixty men were expected to become mock casualties.

Never one to march to the beat of an orthodox drum, Munro revised things. Instead of arriving from Quebec, the bulk of his command was going to parachute into Ontario and attack the RCR from its rear and flanks. Pretending to follow the original script, forty Red Force troopers were landing in Quebec.

The Red Force commander removed his helmet and stared into a mirror wedged between cargo straps. Although silver flecks dotted his dark hair, and the grey/green eyes seemed somewhat world weary, Munro was aware that he looked younger.

Twelve years earlier, then a major in the Canadian Forces Intelligence Branch, he left to join the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The new spy kept his links with the military by joining the reserve army. An instructor, Munro was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Anyone who met him realized was a serious man with ambitions which included becoming a general.

Sir? A jumpmaster pointed to a window on the starboard side of the aircraft. Your reinforcements are here. Colonel, you must have some serious connections.

A United States Navy EA-6B Prowler was in position off the Hercules’ starboard wing. Its striped, low visibility formation lights glowed yellow-green on the aft fuselage and wingtips.

The light blinked above the door to the flight deck and Munro responded to his summons from the air crew. The female pilot, a captain, was staring at the Prowler.

How on earth did you pull this off?

It’s a long story.

Munro then reflected upon the reason the U.S. Air Force had assigned him a Prowler during Exercise Swift Fury. While stationed on the Golan Heights with the United Nations Disengagement Observation Force (UNDOF), Munro rescued a pilot. The flyer, an American major on detached duty to the Israeli Defence Forces, had ditched his chopper near Syrian positions after it developed engine trouble. To ward off an international crisis, Munro spirited the pilot out of the area.

That major was now a general at Norad Headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. He happily dispatched the Prowler from a base in New York State, just south of the US/Canadian border, to assist the unconventional Canadian who had saved his backside and career.

I flew one of those a few years back while training with the Americans at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, the pilot said, breaking into Munro’s recollections. That bird is equipped with a USQ-one hundred and thirteen communications jammer. It also looks like it’s armed with a HARM missile. In English, HARM means high-speed anti-missile surface-to-air radar destruction and suppression.

Contact that Prowler, Munro said. In a few seconds, it’ll be time to fry Blue Force’s electronics.

He returned to the cargo area where jumpmasters checked paratroopers standing in lines at the doors. Behind them, officers wearing the white arm bands of umpires assigned by brigade, waited.

Munro moved to the front of the line on the port side. Air rushed past the door as the plane flew below five hundred feet and at 110 knots per hour. His stomach knotted. From experience, he knew even under perfect conditions a short jump could hurt. The light flashed green and Munro leaped out. His men followed. To the starboard, soldiers disgorged from a second Hercules.

A few seconds later, Red Force troopers jumped from the command’s third Hercules. That group had arrived at the drop zone across the river in Quebec as the original plan called for.

Before Munro jumped, the Prowler’s countermeasures officers activated their jamming systems. Curses erupted among Blue Force’s signallers. They were now unable to communicate with each other as their frequencies walked on, or interfered with, one another.

Crewmen of a Coyote Reconnaissance Vehicle were also having problems. The American aircraft caused the Coyote’s radar, video and night vision equipment to malfunction. Swearing erupted from inside the vehicle and from soldiers manning a remote surveillance unit mounted on a tripod nearly two hundred meters closer to the Ottawa River.

At the same time, well behind the entrenched Blue Force, Munro’s troops sorted themselves out. As soon as they were ready, the unit divided into three groups and charged. Still focused towards the east, the good guys were waiting for the entire force to attack from Quebec.

By now morning gusts had arrived, bringing the pungent odour of wet grass and dank earth. The air cooled the beads of sweat dribbling down Munro’s forehead and onto his cheeks. One of his eyes burned when sweat mixed with cammo grease landed in it. Blinking, he raced ahead.

On the eastern bank of the river in Quebec, explosions erupted. In response to the Battle Simulation, Blue Force RCR troops in Ontario fired back with small arms. Their LAV 111 (Light Armoured Vehicle) 25mm stabilized M242 chain guns as well as top-turret mounted machine guns also spewed blank ammunition.

"Brrrappp!!!

A cluster of starshells exploded above the far bank and signalled the Red Force’s crossing was underway. On the opposite side of the river in Ontario, orders and curses from officers and NCOs, still without communications, became louder.

The senior umpire, sprinting along with Munro’s group, had already fathomed his tactics. A hundred on our bad guys, he said into his portable radio to a colleague.

You’re on, the reply cackled back.

He then made the same wager with the umpires on the flanks. They accepted.

Within seconds Blue Force’s left flank disintegrated. Two platoons of Munro’s paratroopers attacking in the darkness, in an extended line, didn’t fire a single blank round until they were on top of the defenders’ gun pits. They didn’t have to. The infantrymen, signallers and LAV crews were focused on the river where divers of 2 Combat Engineer Regiment ferried the small Red Force contingent across in assault boats.

Seconds later, the RCR’s right flank collapsed. Aware of the commotion on their left, the good guys were dividing their attention between it and the river. Nobody concentrated on the field beside them until, like their comrades thirty seconds earlier, they were overwhelmed by an extended line of paratroopers storming out of the darkness.

While Blue Force’s flanks crumbled, Munro and his group assaulted its rear echelon and regimental headquarters.

This time, it was an especially noisy affair. An arc of white starshells exploded above the area, while a salvo of thunderflashes further disoriented the troops. Advancing at the double, Munro and his men added to the chaos by discharging continuous volleys from C7A2 Assault Rifles. Five C9AI light machine guns added to the din by spewing blank rounds as well.

But it was the wailing, eerie sound coming out of the semi-darkness behind Munro’s force that unhinged many of the defenders.

A fistfight almost broke out when a gunner leaped off a LAV and threw a roundhouse punch at a Red Force paratrooper. The soldier dodged and sprinted ahead. Profanities followed as he charged towards the regimental headquarters set up in a communications van. He helped Munro and five others eliminate the guards. Then Munro climbed onto the roof and tossed a dummy hand grenade down an air vent.

Blue Force headquarters obliterated, the senior umpire said into his portable radio to his colleagues. He added with a smug voice, I win.

In record time, medics classified the casualties. A Red Force signaller had been tossed into the river when a current swamped the bow of his assault boat. It propelled him along until three comrades hauled him back in by his lifeline.

One of Munro’s sergeants became the second injury when cordite blew into his nose. Whereas the bad guys had suffered only two real injuries, Blue Force’s feigned casualties were in the hundreds.

When a paratrooper checked his watch, he discovered it was nearly ten o’clock. The exhaustion brought on by his post-adrenaline rush and the weather made him feel as though it were late afternoon.

NCOs bellowed orders. Turrets clanged shut and the LAVs growled to life. They moved over to a field where three Griffon helicopters were parked. Meanwhile, other troops trudged across muddy ground to a field kitchen. Although they had been at each other’s throats earlier, they now shared cigarettes and war stories.

Munro was speaking with the Blue Force commander, the RCR battalion’s commanding officer, and a long-time friend.

Lieutenant Colonel Munro, you are a scallywag, a deceiver. The ire in the CO’s voice disappeared and he said with admiration, "No, you’re an arch deceiver."

Several officers grinned and nodded in agreement, but remained silent out of respect for the CO. They knew he wasn’t finished.

You change rules. You use Prowler Aircraft. And you scare the hell out of everyone with bagpipes.

The pipes are the only instrument ever designated as an instrument of war. It seemed appropriate to bring along a piper. Munro saw a smile creep across the CO’s face as he added, Our objective was to test the flexibility of entrenched troops against an airborne, water assault. I wanted to see just how flexible you really were.

And I lent you my parachute company to pull it off. The CO’s