He was Special Forces..No, more than that … he was Delta..The best of the best..The mission was Beirut. Take out a target, with extreme prejudice. A bad guy, who had to go..A JSOC special..Go in, get it done. Get back. And nobody will protect you. Not now, not ever. You’re on your own..Mission plan, set to go. On the trail of the target with good intel. At least, it seemed like good intel..Deltas are trained to freeze and stun opposition with speed. Its credo is ''surprise, speed, success.''.It is famed for its commando hunt for former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man..But not on this day. This was a day, when the situation went haywire..As with all operations, something goes wrong. Something they’re not expecting. It’s a dynamic business, you know. .Change with it or die. Worst case scenario, of course..A minivan pulled up, several muscled goons pulled out, threw a hood over his head on a quiet Beirut street, and tossed him into the back of a minivan.. Beirut ... a hot-bed of spiesBeirut ... a hot-bed of spies. .Whammo! A gun against his head — or at least it felt like that. In fact, it felt a lot like that..The Austrian-produced Glock 17, favourite of FSB types. Nothing like that to get the blood flowing and full attention..Trained as a Delta, he tried to remember the speeds and turns of the minivan, and listen to the voices. Any clues would be important, he hoped..But it was pointless. After several radical shifts, left and right, he lost count. It was impossible..They told him, in English, to behave, and he will be OK..The minivan stopped, and, with his hands zip-tied behind him, they led him to a Beirut safe house. It wasn’t far from the scene of the abduction..He was expecting a pistol whipping, but it never came. Strange..Still, figuring his days were numbered, he decided to tell them shit, if they interrogated him. I won’t tell them anything, he thought..But the inquisition never came … instead, they offered him coffee..“Cream or no cream,” a husky voice said..He said, “Just black, thanks.”.Shockingly, they did as they said. He was just held, for several hours..Finally, another voice arrived..It turned out, they were Russians. And they wanted this target, this bad man, way worse than the US..And they didn’t want anybody to f*ck up their operation..They set a trap, and, fearing Deltas would only make things more complicated, they had to be removed. Cleanly and quickly..He really must have been a bad dude, and, by all rights, he met his maker, in fine fashion. Mother Russia made sure of that..Yet another spy story, that will never hit the headlines. We will never know, who he was, or why he was killed..That’s just how it goes in that world. Another enemy Joe gone down the drain..Beirut is infamously linked to the spying game, especially the Cold War spying game..It was there where MI6 traitor Kim Philby would be exposed by his friend and colleague Nicholas Elliott in 1963, but not before holding a bizarre media event at his Beirut apartment, claiming his innocence.. Kim Philby’s infamous flat in the hills of Ras BeirutKim Philby’s infamous flat in the hills of Ras Beirut .Rumours have it, they had wanted him to run to avoid embarrassment back home, but true or not, what haunted the services was that he had been tipped off..Philby’s Soviet contact arranged for him to be smuggled aboard the Dolmatova, a Soviet freighter that was loading cargo on the night of a storm..In the early hours of January 1963, as the Dolmatova weighed anchor and sailed out into the Mediterranean, vanishing in the rain and sea mist..And the rest, would be history. A man who had betrayed hundreds of agents, in numerous Cold War ops, would get away Scott Free.. Kim PhilbyKim Philby .He had been working for the communists since he was 22, but instead of a hero's welcome, he was shut away in a flat near Moscow city centre..Even the Soviets were suspicious that he had got away so easy. Nobody trusts anybody. And nothing has changed..Meanwhile, back to Beirut..The minivan would drop off our Delta man, safe and sound. He got a quick look at the plate, but it did not register. It was a fake plate. The Russians are not that stupid..No faces, either, just haunting voices..The game, as it’s called, is very strange. No more good guys and bad guys. Just winners and losers. A wasteland of bodies..Try not to be on the bad end of that, they say. Bad for business..They might have been FSB, they might have been Spetsnaz — Russia’s special forces — he wasn’t sure. But they were efficient..All he knew, was that he was still alive, and live to tell the story..And the bad guy, probably dead. No doubt, swimming in the Mediterranean Sea..He sleeps with the fishes..Hezbollah’s intelligence service, which seems to know everything going on in Beirut, looked on, and did nothing..Not their cup of tea. Bigger fish to fry against Israel. Do your business, and get the hell out. Do not involve us..It is rumoured that as many as 12 Palestinians factions — including splinter groups from Fatah and the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine — participate in the network, which may not even have a fixed nerve centre..It might even be virtual..If it did, the IDF would have bombed the shit out of it, by now..Just another day in Beirut.
