Spy Tips on Disarming, Covert Offenses, Sieges, and more…
In any surveillance operation, you have to resist the impulse to grab your target and interrogate him immediately.
As a spy, a lot of missions depend on the world not knowing you’re there. When an op involves saving someone’s life and keeping your presence unknown, you have to make their escape look credible. So if the person you’re saving is an untrained civilian, you need to make it look liked like an untrained civilian.
Spies deal with foreign agencies, dirty corporations, dirty corporations, and criminal syndicates all the time, but none of them compares to dealing with families. Asking a man to take apart his business or turn on his country is easy compared to going into a man’s home and telling him how to deal with the people he loves. It’s usually a good idea. To tell the truth.
There are dozens of ways to disarm a man with a gun, but unfortunately, they all come with a risk that the gun will go off. No matter how good you are, it’s not something you want to try with a child present. Unless you want to tell a bereaved mom that you gambled with her kid’s life, because you felt lucky.
You can tell a lot about a group from looking at there base. Their fortifications can tell you whether they’re focused on offense or defense. And their vehicle type and number can tell you how mobile they are. The most important thing to check — their weapons. If they’re carrying M16s on full auto, you’re probably not dealing with amateurs camping in the woods.
Sneaking past trained operatives waiting in ambush is usually next to impossible. They can stay alert through the long, boring hours of waiting, ready for action at any second. Amateurs, on the other hand, tend to relax, which can give you the opening you need.
Coordinated covert offensives involving two teams are a lot like ballroom dancing. You have to synchronize your steps, time your moves, and always put your partner first. But unlike the Tango or the Two-Step, it’s good form to hog the limelight during covert ops. If all eyes are on you, your partner can work undetected on the sidelines.
Using an untrained asset to make contact with a target is never ideal. Meeting in person would be an outright failure. So it helps to do it over the phone. That way you can write the script for the asset, and all they have to do is read — most of the time.
Tricking an enemy into letting you inside their stronghold is a strategy as old as the ancient Greeks. But you don’t always need to build a large wooden horse. With a modified special-purpose insertion/extraction harness, you can hitch a ride under a vehicle. And go right through the front door.
For as long as armies have built fortification others have tried to get past them. Siege warfare can involve tunneling under, scaling over, or smashing through walls. Once you’re inside, though, you’re dealing with an entrenched enemy that’s why the most successful sieges often don’t involve attacking at all, but tricking your enemy into coming out.