The Kootenay Spetsnaz

 

Yuriy was looking after the copy machine at Neighbours United in Castelgar. The machine had had the bad idea of breaking down recently and he was the only man within tens of miles who knew how to fix it. He was also one of the only people who knew how to properly repair lawnmower engines, car engines and anything else that was an agricultural mechanic in the area. Finally, his extensive knowledge of computers and network problems made him totally indispensable. Yes, in this small community in the West Kootenays of British Columbia, a guy like Yuriy was valuable. Because his prices were so reasonable, he was constantly called upon to fix the thousand and one mechanical breakdowns of a mostly rural community. 

Yuriy lived with Lena, a girl of Doukhobor descent, a community of Russian origin that was quite large in the area. Lena and Yuriy lived together in an isolated cabin on Sheep Creek Road, at the foot of the Kootenay Mountains. Lena was a simple and sweet girl, very idealistic. She had more or less left her community, although she maintained a good relationship with her parents, to pursue her activist passion. She loved nature and was active in Neighbours United, an environmental activist organization based in Castelgar. It was through meeting her that Yuriy had moved to the region a few months earlier. He had been working as a farmhand, migrating all year round as he could find work. When he met Lena, he decided to stop and offer his repair services to a community that needed them. He said that he also belonged to a family of Doukhobor origin, but he knew nothing about it because his parents, nor his grandparents, had never practiced the particular cult of these heretical Christians. Yuriy spoke a few words of Russian when asked. He had traveled extensively across Canada since his childhood. He said he was born somewhere near Inuvik, far north, in the Northwest Territories. He had no memory of it because his parents had traveled constantly, proletarian nomads like him. His mother had died very early, his father had lasted a few more years before disappearing, ravaged by alcohol, a little before Yuriy's eighteenth birthday. The young man spoke little of his past, which one could guess was painful. But we liked this helpful boy who was useful to the community. He did a lot of service and was never known for his bad behavior. In fact, he was friends with many of the guys at the Columbia Avenue station of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He often went to their homes to fix the machines and helped them out at home when the TV or computer wasn't working properly. Yuriy easily joined the Neighbours United community. The relaxed and friendly atmosphere suited him perfectly. In this group of passionate activists, there were no questions asked. Everyone was welcome, working towards a new world, generous and respectful of all.

No one suspected that Yuriy was actually a member of the Special Forces of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, specifically the special units of the General Intelligence Directorate (GRU), the "eyes and ears" of the Russian Army General Staff. After his combat and English language training, Yuriy, a native of Uelen, a Russian village just below the Arctic Circle in the Chukotka Autonomous District, was again assigned to Cape Dejnev on the Bering Strait. Uelen, his hometown, was the easternmost place on the Eurasian continent. It faced the American Alaska. Yuriy had spent his childhood and teenage years hunting and fishing in the creeks and valleys of the area, so he knew the region perfectly. His thorough knowledge of the currents and the smallest details of the topology and the local fauna made him a valuable intelligence asset for the Russian army's plan to invade the American continent. It was not certain that Russia had the ambitions to militarily occupy this former Russian province, ceded by the Tsar to the Americans in 1867. The idea was simply to create a new military front, a diversion sufficient to force the American army to mobilize defence forces in the next conflict between the Russian Federation and the United States. In preparation for this assault, Yuriy's job was to survey and observe the military installations of the U.S. Army, the police and all local administrations. Then he was assigned to the rear of the future front in Canada, where he and other special forces elements could sabotage installations, roads and interfere with the American and Canadian defense forces.

But Yuriy, despite his training and the psychological guidance of his hierarchy, had a problem of conscience. The generosity and self-sacrifice of the people he met in the region, their sincerity, troubled him more and more. They were like the people back home in Chukotka. They were peaceful people, close to nature, far from the capitals and their artificial ambitions. The war between Russia and America was approaching. The people did not want it, but the financial elites had to overthrow the system, to break the machine to revive the economy. They had done this in all the world wars, sending people to be slaughtered by the millions. Yuriy's father had told him about those times, about his grandfather who had been sent to the slaughter with millions of comrades. The national anthems, the love of the fatherland, the revolutionary songs ended up in the bank accounts of the leaders. Living a simple life with bright souls like Lena, Montana, Sarashmi or Cindy, Yuriy gradually understood that he was only a tool for the coming war. The attack on Alaska was coming soon, the messages Yuriy was receiving were more and more precise. 

He knew Josh, a guy in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who seemed to be the local correspondent for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Yuriy was thinking about his fate, about Lena, about the people of the Kootenay, and it was not easy.