Battlefield Ukraine

A Traitor in Their Midst

Carl Wiggins walked briskly through the parking lot, casually looking around to make sure no one was paying him any undue attention as he walked to his car, smoking a cigarette. He had arrived at the office an hour ago and once he had seen the meeting notes from the President’s conference in the Situation Room, he knew he had to find an excuse to head to his car and send an emergency message. The best excuse he could come up with was the need for a cigarette break and a java fix. He directed his staff to continue with their duties while he volunteered to grab a bunch of coffees and donuts for everyone to help them get through the long hours. Several people took him up on his offer.

As he walked through the parking lot with his cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, he observed dozens of cars driving into the parking lot. The spaces began filling up quickly with all of the people responding to the midnight recall. It was not often that the Pentagon conducted a 100 % recall of military personnel and critical government civilians, but today was not a normal day. It was 0345 in the morning; the sun was still at least a couple of hours away from rising.

Carl slipped his hand in his pants pocket and pulled out the keys to the black 2016 BMW 525i that he had purchased last year. He had been well-compensated by various individuals for providing intelligence leaks about the Gates administration. It was almost too easy; everyone was eager to know what was going on, and as one of the communications officers who wrote intelligence summaries of the President’s meetings with the National Security Council, he had exceptional placement and access to the inner workings of the administration.

Carl was a deep cover Russian spy. He had spent nearly his entire adult life working to get into the position he now found himself in. He felt the best way to ensure peace and security in the world was to make sure everyone knew what the other group was thinking. He admired Edward Snowden and Chelsie Manning for their bravery in revealing the illegal intelligence collection that the American government had been perpetrating. Their actions helped to reassure him that what he was doing was truly in the interest of world peace.

He was not Russian by birth or heritage, but during college, where he had been a Russian studies major, he came to realize that it was the West who was in a constant state of demonizing Russia. The military industrial complex of America needed a boogieman; they needed a constant threat and enemy so that they could justify spending over $620 billion a year on defense. It was during this time of self-reflection and searching that he had been recruited by the SVR (part of the Russian FSB) to become a spy.

During his senior year in college, Carl was encouraged by his new handler to go into military intelligence, obtain a security clearance, and work his way into a government civilian intelligence position at the Pentagon. He felt like James Bond during his recruitment phase. After obtaining his commission in the Army, he was selected for an intelligence career track based on his Russian studies background. While in college, Wiggins had become fluent in the language, and had even spent a semester abroad as an exchange student in St. Petersburg; since Russian was such a difficult language to learn, there weren’t many people who could fill this need.

During his first four years in the Army, he was stationed at Ft. Meade, Maryland, and assigned to the NSA as a Russian specialist on the Russian desk. His handler in the SVR could not be more thrilled with his posting. He intended on staying at his post with NSA for as long as possible — it was a cushy job. Then President Bush announced the troop surge of 2007, and he suddenly found himself deployed.

When President Bush announced the surge, there was a critical shortage of intelligence officers deploying with the new combat units. Unfortunately for him, Carl was selected to join an infantry unit on their deployment to Baghdad as the battalion’s S2 or intelligence officer. His Russian handlers were not happy, but they had no choice in the matter and neither did Wiggins. Besides, filling an S2 billet was a needed requirement for getting selected to Major later in his military career.

During his deployment to Iraq, he was severely injured during a rocket attack on his Forward Operating Base. Shrapnel had torn through his left leg, shredding it to a point that he had to have his leg amputated below the knee. Even though he would be able to walk again with the new prosthetic limb he was provided, Carl’s injuries meant he was going to be medically discharged once he had recovered. He was incredibly depressed at the thought of losing his career in the Army and his secret life as a spy. While Wiggins was recovering from his injuries, his SVR handler approached him again, and gave him hope. “We want you to try to leverage your war injury to obtain a government civilian position,” he directed. “After all, you still have your clearances. Maybe this will be a stroke of luck for us after all.”

After seven years as a Defense Intelligence Agency civilian employee, serving a variety of positions, he had obtained a coveted position that was right where his SVR masters wanted him. In his new division, he oversaw the transcripts and development of the daily intelligence summaries of the national security council meetings. These meetings included the ones between the President and his staff, advisors, senior military, and intelligence leaders. Once in place, he stayed dormant until the situation in Ukraine began to grow tense. After nearly three years of civil war in Ukraine, his intelligence had helped the Russians continually stay one step ahead of the US and NATO. Now with things starting to spiral out of control with President Gates, his intelligence became critically important.

As he entered his car, he opened the arm rest between the two front seats and pulled out his burner phone. He turned it on and began to write a short, but concise text message. “US preparing for war. DEFCON 2, anticipate hostilities within 48 hrs,” he typed, and then hit send.

Once the message had been transmitted, he deleted the message from the phone’s history, then took the SIM card and battery out of the phone. He opened the car door and got out, dropping the SIM card to the ground and stomping on it, crushing it and rendering it useless. He then kicked it into the storm drain and began to walk towards the building and back to work. As Carl got closer, he walked over to one of the garbage bins and dropped an empty package of potato chips in the bin, along with the phone and the battery. Then he opened the main door, walked in and swiped his card at the security gate before heading to the Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up a dozen donuts and some coffee for the others in the office.