“Detachment 500” by Ranger Elite

Intelligence in WWIII 1946

0325

On a beach near

Vladivostok, the U.S.S.R.

Being this far north and east, the Siberian winter had already set in, and it was bitterly cold. The soldiers participating in this reconnaissance mission were from a very specially trained Special Forces unit known only as Detachment 500. It was not a part of the normal “Able” team structure, but completely insulated and self-contained, operating outside the chain of command to give the Army the option of plausible deniability, in case they were captured. They were inserted by a fishing trawler, whose captain had been paid a large sum of money up-front, and would be paid an even larger sum after he picked up the men for the return trip. The soldiers did not know each other by their real names, only by their assumed Russian names. They were all dressed and armed as Soviet officers and soldiers, spoke fluent Russian, and had been instructed on current Soviet internal events, as they were known at the time they were taught. These men were the best and the brightest, and were driven to succeed in their mission. Failure was absolutely out of the question  for them.

The men made their way to an out-of-way beach in semi-rigid inflatable rubber boats, with muffled outboard motors, speeding them toward their landing objective. As they hit the rocky, barren, snow-covered beach, they struggled to bring their two boats inland, and hide them for the return trip. They referred to maps of the area that were surveyed back in 1919, when the American Expeditionary Forces were diverted here, on their way home from France, to restore order. They were the first American soldiers to arrive here since then, but no one but the Military Intelligence Corps and the CIA would ever find out about this trip.

Their objective was to reconnoiter Vladivostok, and its environs and other surrounding areas, make detailed maps of what they had seen and what facilities were here, what Red Army divisions and Red Navy Pacific Fleet units were stationed here, and what the mood of the locals was. They had three weeks from today to secure the information needed and make it back aboard the fishing trawler, or their mission would be considered a failure and the operation that they were collecting the information for would be cancelled. They were not about to let that happen. The Vladivostok operation was as vital to the Allied war effort now, as the Doolittle Raid had been in the last war. Their commander, known only as “Markov”, was a true Spartan in mindset and determined to make this mission a success. Markov and his men were prepared and proceeded on to their mission.