Cockroaches!

By Serge Lapytski

I look average and act average, that is what I do best and that is what I was trained to do.

The name of the novel is Cockroaches. This is a very interesting and useful book, covering such topics as Human Relationships, Love, Betrayal, Military Intelligence, Espionage, Counter Espionage and much more.

This book unveils the attempts by some Foreign Intelligence Service, through a third party, to illegally acquire top secret technology.

One Military Cadet, by the will of destiny and his own hard work, was hurled into the core of the dangerous and very important Intelligence Operation abroad.

Eight undercover agents, including the Cadet, were sent to the foreign country to find proof of illegal activities and uncover the truth. This is a very dangerous task and the agents have to meet a lot of challenges. They need to outplay the Foreign Counter Intelligence Service, which is trying to prevent them from making things right.

The Foreign Counter Intelligence does everything to get in the way of this young Military Cadet and his superiors. Nevertheless, the agents are very brave and intelligent people; they know what to do in situations like that. This is a fiction book. However, the methods of Surveillance and Counter Surveillance, the Close Combat Fighting rules and Message Traffic, Military Lessons and Encryption Keys used, they are true and that is what makes the story look very real.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468558418

Serge Lapytski

Serge Lapytski is a graduate of Boston University, a former Military Officer and the author of “Cockroaches!”, “Believe, Achieve and Forgive!”, “Me and my life: guilty without guilt or confessions of the innocent” and “The heart of a lion! E-Hare”. The books were published during 2009-12. Serge successfully completed many special programs at various educational institutions in Canada, England, Russia, the USA and some others. So far in total Serge visited twenty countries for didactic, business and pleasure purposes. To get more information about Serge’s work please visit the www.lapytski.com website or www.google.com search engine and type Serge Lapytski in the search criteria field.

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgments from Serge

Introduction

Dreams

Lucky Break

A Submarine

Victims of Jealousy

A Blue Bone

Embarrassment

Always Warm Up

Satellites

Close Combat Fighting

Field Training

Jessica and Kathy

Simulator

A Secondary Goal

Lessons

What?

Code

Janet

A Good Student

Melissa

A Wake Up Call

An Unusual Pattern

Interesting Thoughts

Just In Case

A Standard Procedure

Celebration

Back to the Future

Graduation

About the Author

I would like to dedicate this book to my mom Valentina, who died in October 2011. My mom always served as a good and powerful example of dedication, hard work and honesty to me and at all times she supported my actions and decisions. She was a great mom and an honorable teacher. And she always will be. Thank you mom for everything.

Rest In Peace.

mom.jpg

To mom

Can I ever pay you back?

My dear mom

For your care and school snack

For sugar-free gum

For your worries and love

I do not deserve

For the chocolate dove

And sweets you preserve

For your red face at school

When I did something wrong

For your strengths to stay cool

And the phrase: Please be strong

For your help and support

When I needed it most

I arrived to the port

And you stood on the coast

Can I ever pay you back?

My dear mom

For your warm hug and kiss

For your kindness I miss

Even in front of a crowd

I do not have any doubt

I can say very loud:

Mom, you made me proud!

Acknowledgments from Serge

I would like to express a special Thank You to the entire AuthorHouse.com staff. You guys are awesome and real professionals.

My lovely and hilarious daughter Christina deserves a special Thank You too. She is always on the ball, passionate and devoted. Thank You Christina for the help in writing this book.

My thanks and appreciation to:

You, The Reader, whom I always kept in mind while writing this book.

My son Roman, who is about the same age now as is the main character in the book.

My wonderful sister Galina and my charming niece Marina, for their support and encouragement, Thank You very much guys.

My very lively auntie Zina and my cousin Evgeni. Thank You guys for the inspiration.

My friends, you gentlemen are fun and amazing.

Introduction

The name of the novel is ’Cockroaches! This is a very interesting and useful book, covering such topics as Human Relationships, Love, Betrayal, Military Intelligence, Espionage, Counter Espionage and much more.

This book unveils the attempts by some Foreign Intelligence Service, through a third party, to illegally acquire top secret technology.

One Military Cadet, by the will of destiny and his own hard work, was hurled into the core of the dangerous and very important Intelligence Operation abroad.

Eight undercover agents, including the Cadet, were sent to the foreign country to find proof of illegal activities and uncover the truth. This is a very dangerous task and the agents have to meet a lot of challenges. They need to outplay the Foreign Counter Intelligence Service, which is trying to prevent them from making things right.

The Foreign Counter Intelligence does everything to get in the way of this young Military Cadet and his superiors. Nevertheless, the agents are very brave and intelligent people; they know what to do in situations like that.

This is a fiction book. However, the methods of Surveillance and Counter Surveillance, the Close Combat Fighting rules and Message Traffic, Military Lessons and Encryption Keys used, they are true and that is what makes the story look very real.

Sincerely,

Serge Lapytski,

Dreams

Give me another fifty, it was a big, scary looking Sergeant ordering us, first year military Cadets, rookies, to do push-ups. Then he stepped on the back of one of the trainees and continued:

You Loser – you are the first candidate to clean toilets tonight when everyone will be resting. That Cadet’s name was Peter; he was a heck of a guy and a friend of mine.

We were very tired and almost lifeless, but the possibility of punishment adjusted the adrenaline level in our bodies and we continued moving up and down on our hands. Like crazy. We already ran eight miles, with pretty good speed, just before that and it was still slightly after six in the morning. Probably not giving us enough sleep was a part of the program. Almost certainly the commanders were trying to find those who could not handle the pressure well and let them go.

We had the same little routine everyday, no matter if it was summer or winter, rain or sunshine. But that was not all; we had to do a lot of gymnastics and different exercises on a cross bar. Our huge sports facility was created to accommodate about eight hundred people at the same time. We had another two hours of training after breakfast and yet another hour in the evening. Do they want us to become little terminators? Or do they just like hurting people, especially young men, who only have thoughts about pretty girls and tasty food in their heads?

You are an elite group, handpicked; you were very well selected across the whole country. Just one out of twenty men made it here. All of you have a high IQ and remember: you went through a number of tests, psychological evaluations, and medical assessments and you had to pass a lot of exams to be here. So gentlemen, do not screw it up, try harder, it was my Company’s commander, the Captain Cockroach. We called him that because he had a big moustache and looked like a cockroach. And every time we had cross country training he yelled the following:

Why are you so slow Cadet? Can’t you go faster? You move like a pregnant cockroach…

Over thirty years went by since my admission to the military college. The World is a totally different place today; new technologies, new equipment, but I still see the same dreams: when I was a first year military Cadet at the age of sixteen in the elite military college. Yes, I was sixteen. Why do you wonder? Some gifted kids are able to get into universities at the age of fourteen.

It is not that I am too smart or brave. No, not at all, I am totally normal. I can act stupid if I want to and I could easily be scared of someone or something. And if I need to be courageous I could do it too. So, I am an ordinary person; believe it or not - nothing special.

You have to look and act average, liked to repeat Captain Cockroach. You will be given a lot of skills and specific knowledge. You will do a lot of drills and training. Remember again, no tattoos, no piercings, and no other distinguished things which could easily be remembered by others and blow your cover…

Let me introduce myself: my name is Serge; today I am pushing fifty, I am still young, elegant and still in good shape, working for the United Nations, trying to make this World a better place to live in, by using Diplomacy, not Force. And yes, I look average and act average; that is what I do best and that is what I was trained to do.

For the next four years, twenty four hours a day, you will be learning about 50 different subjects. It is a combination, a mixture of military related courses and civil courses such as Theoretical Mechanics or Advanced Mathematics, Foreign Languages or Dancing. Yes, Dancing. Do not laugh. This program is unique. You will be multi-purpose professionals. If you are in an Art Gallery, you will be able to talk Arts. If you are on a battle field, you will know what to do as well. I repeat again, this is a unique program. We have enough specialists whose job is to focus on one discipline, for example Physics. They become experts in their field and stick with it forever. You are different. We do not ask you to remember everything, but we will teach you how to find what you need. We will teach you to think on your feet and find answers. You have to be able to figure out what to do and where to go, if you need something. You have to adjust to diverse situations; you have to know how to find information…

It was a speech of one of our professors, whom I liked very much. His last name was Bored. He was a very intelligent man and he was our Philosophy teacher. A very creative gentleman and it looked like he was bored of everything in reality. To keep himself occupied, and amused, not jaded, he gave us little assignments to figure out how and why this World works. Then we had to write big essays on these topics. Something comparable to this: From theory to practice or The Law of Contradictions and so on. Do you know what all of that could mean? Yes, it would mean that I could easily be annoying, talking about Philosophy or the World structure. I am able to make an elephant from a little fly and a fly from an elephant. Keep that in mind.

At the end of a hard day we could not go to sleep until we finished all we had to do: learn how to put on our uniforms in a limited number of seconds in case of an alarm signal, or to prepare ourselves for the next day. I am telling you it takes practice, but you will learn it quickly if you want to sleep. You will be flying there like a jet, when you know that your relaxation time is already started, but you cannot go to sleep because your shoes are not sparkling enough or something. Your uniform must be clean; your homework must be done; you have to look fresh, be shaved and neat.

The territory of our college was big in size, covered by its perimeter with a fence; we had everything we needed in there: a library, sports amenities, swimming pool, movie theatre, restaurant, hairdresser, sauna, hospital and God knows what else. We also had a separate fully equipped training territory outside of the city hidden in the forest. And that was not all: we had a large section of land for military exercises somewhere in the open field.

We started our training in July. But the first big test came in the middle of November. After a few months of hard work, studying, exercises and sleepless nights - one early morning there was a noisy, wild, dreadful siren.

You sleepy bastards, move your asses, I will see you in a few seconds ready to act… Then I heard someone’s bed being turned over and some miserable body flew into the passage, still trying to understand what is going on. The Sergeant was kicking everything he saw in his way. In a matter of seconds we were standing in the passage, fully dressed, with all our belongings and machineguns in our hands, ready to take action.

It was a military training exercise, where we had to cover about eighty miles on our feet. The time was three in the morning; it was very dark and cold outside. Ten minutes run, three minutes walk, ten minutes run, three minutes walk. The first break was after four hours of such punishment. We quickly ate our breakfast, which included some water and a type of energy cookie; then we continued the same joyful routine: ten minutes run, three minutes walk. I do not remember how we survived the first day, but I remember waking up in the middle of the night in an Army tent. I could not move my arms or legs; my peers’ bodies were thrown on the furs tree branches all around the tent. Strange sounds reached my ears; it seemed like someone was crying in their nap. I told myself:

Go back to sleep, you need to get some rest; tomorrow is another hard day…

Cold weather; strong wind was blowing into our young faces, the mixture of rain and snow hanged in the air, coming down from the sky. Some thought it was torture; I made myself think that it was just another test. I was right and wrong. It was a test, but the real test started when we had to run, after what we have already been through, five final miles in groups. Every group was meant to move as one unit: no man left behind. The examiners did not care about the first guy to cross the line, they were looking at the last guy and that counted as the time of your unit.

Clean, good looking, smiling and happy inspectors, with timers in their hands, were timing our movements. Do you know how much stuff soldiers have to carry with them? Yeah, I know it too. And I was doing just fine when I noticed that three or four of our guys were running slower than everyone else and looking at their faces I understood that they are almost done. Not thinking twice I took a bag from one of the guys and that gave him some freedom and energy. Eventually I finished carrying things from three Cadets, not bad for a rookie. Exhausted and tired we finally crossed the finish line, but it turned out that we just stepped on the obstacles course, which we had to complete as well. The culmination was when after the obstacles course we had to use our machineguns with the final shooting on targets.

That was very creative. Who would have thought of that? Was it some mad commander? Certainly yes. Our bodies, and especially hands, were shaking after all we had to accomplish before that. What if, theoretically, there is a machinegun in someone’s shaky hands and that someone has an unstable mind? The bullet might go in the wrong direction…

But they did psychological evaluations, they know us better then we know ourselves. They know we are prepared mentally and physically, they know we will pass the test. At least the majority of us.

I ordered myself to relax, and calm down, and to control my breathing. Lower your pulse rate (after many years I still have a very low pulse rate), pull the trigger gently… The targets appear for a brief moment on diverse levels (different distances from the shooter) in the right, left or center. You have to be able to identify the target, the danger, and strike it. Somehow I hit all I was supposed to hit and received a mark of an A. And I still had some bullets left.

When we arrived back to our college facility, we had to cut off shoes from some Cadet’s feet. They could not take it off themselves, their feet were swollen, and they had calluses everywhere. I was OK, a former hockey player; my feet were prepared for such tests. By the way I was a good hockey player (and probably still am) and my dream was to play hockey: did not happen though. The next day was a relaxation day; we had to clean up the created mess, wash uniforms, and heal wounds and so on. But of course we did not have the day off. Instead of field training, we were sitting in a class studying something like Political Science or Psychology. We did not have days off, even on Sundays. There always was something to do.

Lucky Break

One night Peter whispered into my ear:

Tomorrow we have a test; we will run some distance, so try hard. The first three places will receive tickets to the dancing party. A lot of Goddesses will be there, we have to make it. I will try to stay behind your back while running, so you can pull me up with you.

I said: Deal, but be patient, stay behind my back and breathe well, make sure you stay a safe distance from me, not to trip me, and keep your energy level up, we will speed up towards the finish line…

I do not know how, but Peter always knew what was going on around the college. It is like he had his ears everywhere; big ears, strange looking ears, broken ears, because he was a wrestler. And he was a really good one. Have you seen wrestlers’ ears? Then you know what I am talking about. All of our Cadets used to wrestle or do something like martial arts before enrolling into the program. Some were swimmers or football players, and they were the really good ones.

The next day, when we had the competition, Peter surprised everyone. He was able to finish third (did he buy everyone out?), according to our plan, and I was able to get the first place. Thanks to my hockey practice: we did a lot of ground work to prepare ourselves for the season and running was a huge part of it, which is why I was good. We had someone named Tom in between us. Tom was a great guy as well. From the beginning of the race I took a very fast pace to stretch the group and Peter was sitting just behind me. And it is difficult for anyone to lead the group, but I was doing fine, because I had a good motivation: tickets to the moon. Silver Moon was the name of the club, where we went after we got our well deserved prize. Tom did not go with us, he did not know anything about the prize tickets; he just felt like running at that moment. He got his ticket and went somewhere else instead.

The club was packed with all kinds of people. We saw a couple of beautiful girls sitting at the table in the corner, from where they could see the whole area, screening everyone and everything. Two beautiful ladies together – it is a rare combination. They usually compete against each other in such matters. We positioned ourselves next to those gorgeous creatures, so that they could hear what we were saying, and decided to make a move.

Peter started: I will take the one on the right.

OK, I agreed quickly, the other one is my type too.

One of the girls turned her head and asked: Are you talking about us, gentleman?

Yes, replied Peter.

Why do you think we would want to talk to you? continued the Goddess.

Because we are nice and will treat you with due respect, answered mister Smart. Because we will make you forget about everyone else and we have a big list of things we can do…

Peter had all the answers, what a dude! I was just silently