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Chaos Penguin's Guide to Night opping

First off, the necessary disclaimer... Some, or rather, most, of the information contained within this text is illegal to carry out. This text is for informational purposes only - I do not advise or even condone the carrying out of the following. To do so is idiotic and the result is the responsibility of your local law enforcement, not me. Do not carry out the following, or at least contact your local law authority and see what is legal here and what isn’t. Remember, everything here is hypothetical and informational, it is not meant to be followed. Also, I use the pronoun I for convenience only, it doesn’t refer to me myself. It just makes this guide easier to write for me. After all, would I carry out something so incredibly illegal? No, I just love all these lovely restric... laws we have surrounding us for our own protection... Seriously though, these practises are illegal, so don’t do them. If you must carry them out, you’re responsible for the result, I can’t be held responsible for your mistakes. Table of Contents Personal Introduction Basic Principles Finding a Target Your Plan Recon and inside buildings Gear - clothes, masks, equipment Considerations for your plan - weather, time, the enemy Camoflauge and Concealment - Camo Theory, Practice and Movement Escape and Evasion Group Work Various Things Theoretical Operations Outro

Personal Introduction Hmmmm... a few brief notes on this text. This is a general text, a specific text and the first in my series. This version will focus on the principles of the Night Operator. By this, I mean it will focus on what I feel is a night op. The infiltration of an area, the exploration of this area and the exfiltration will be ‘discussed’ here. Also, read Psychlonic’s ‘The Way of the Shadow’. A lot of details seem omitted from here because they’re in there. It’s also quite specific in it’s information, and while a little theft oriented it seems, it’s very, very good for those starting and those experienced, check it out - this is meant for neither, just to give some new ideas and my take on things. However, due to my nature, you’ll have to read between the lines to see them. I don’t like talking about personal things directly. This text is meant for the dedicated operator. Nothing here is for someone who wishes to sneak out of their house and tell all their friends about how they spray painted their own name in the school hall. This is meant for the serious practitioners, as I’ll occasionally be referring to them/you as. Now, an acknowledgement. Whether you’re new to ops or a seasoned professional, I hope you find the ideas in here... useful and I congratulate you on your choice of hobby. Night ops, when carried out correctly, are a very rewarding experience. Go forth, spill into the shadows and subvert society, break the rules forced upon you and conquer your natural fear of authority. So many people think they are safe because everyone follows the rules. Break them, and opportunities are yours. You can live in two worlds, ordinary people don’t even know of the existence of the second. This secondary world is a dark, unforgiving place. A few notes on the word ‘dark’. Dark was a word in Pagan Britain that was associated with the soft, caring and feminine Goddess. When Christianity came to Britain, it changed the meanings of a lot of words - witchcraft, magick and darkness are now associated with evil, and people need to learn. Picture a black background. Nothing but black. And now there is a black cloud, a ‘darker’ black than the previous void. It shifts in shape like a mist and it’s beautiful. Then there is a grey, translucent ghost. It stands in a crowd of people, unseen. It goes where it wants. It is not to, and it does. It fears nothing. Except discovery. Remember, this secondary world is a beautiful place, but if discovered, you bring ordinary people into it. Stay deep inside it, and live outside the rest. Also, to anyone reading this who dislikes the practices involved, operators are perfectly ‘normal’ people. We don’t run around in pyjamas pretending we’re ninjas because we have nothing better to do, and most of us don’t live in a basement, inventing a superior brand of NVGs. We just acknowledge a potential world others do not. By day and most nights I myself am an ‘ordinary’ 14 year old boy in the UK. By night, while you repeat the day, I engage in another hobby, the time is irrelevant. It is no different to your liking of a particular sport, indeed, it is a sport. Or perhaps a very dangerous game. Basic Principles Night ops has one very basic rule. Do not get caught. Compromise is sometimes an inevitability, capture is not. If you are caught, punishment will follow. This can range from your parents screaming at you to you being arrested. So, if capture is to be avoided, perhaps there are some ways to prevent this? While on ops you’re not breaking rules. Rules do not apply to you. Do whatever necessary to ensure you are not captured. Maybe you’ll come face to face with the opposition. Their job is to harm you, so they can’t complain on ops, your path takes back gardens, rooftops and any other places you are supposed to not be able to go. You are allowed to climb up that drain pipe and pry open that window. During the night, no one can tell you not to. Know your limits, and operate so as to almost break them. Rule number 1 is to not get caught. If you feel you’re not able to pull off a certain operation, don’t do it. I personally am 5’9”, very fast, an excellent climber and my specialty on ops is my knowledge of camouflage and concealment and my stealthy movement abilities (and my arrogance, of course). I use these to carry out my mission. If you’re not as fast but twice as strong, use this to your advantage - fight back instead of running, carry heavier tools, on team ops you’ll be able to throw your partners up to ledges where I’d have to throw a grappling hook, for example. Use what you have, this applies to your equipment and yourself. Ghosts. You are a ghost. Act like one, then. Ghosts observe things unnoticed. They go where others can not. They also never have to panic. Ever play (hehe) Ghost Recon 2? The soldier who sprays random shots at you misses continually while you stay still and wait for your reticule to get smaller. You take one shot and your opponent goes down. Apply this to your ops. Plan the hell out of every aspect of your operation, plan for when things go wrong, plan for when your plan for when things go wrong goes wrong... If you don’t panic and think continually you will survive. If you’re being chased, your pursuer will probably be thinking only about capturing you - they’re in a very primitive game and their limbic system takes over. Adrenalin and excitement make them think only of capturing you. You can also get into this state, and if you do it becomes a matter of who can outrun who. Now, ghosts don’t need to outrun anyone, they’re unseen. So jump into concealment, make them think you’re somewhere else. Think. Panic is for your victims, not for you. Chaos. The ChaosPenguin personally only advocates this approach to problems if used by experienced operators. Operate on instincts. Plans can go wrong, and no amount of back up plans will cover everything. If you are chaotic, but in a very precise manner, no one can predict your movements and pre-empt you. I personally tend to plan the approach to my target and improvise my infiltration. Not knowing what comes next will force you to stay alert and very, very cautious. Instincts. You will develop these. And if you trust them, you will survive. These have saved me on a number of occasions. If you feel wrong about something, stay back and observe, or get out and watch. Sometimes it will just be that you have unconsciously noticed something contrary to your recon, sometimes it will be fear and sometimes it will be a very good security guard sneaking up on you. Everyone’s are different, so you have to learn how to use them. Sometimes the thought will come to you, ‘Some thing's not right’. Sometimes your senses will get sharper. With me, my body feels compelled to move. It’s not a thought, more a sensation. Either way, if you learn to use your instincts, you will not get caught. The principles, put simply, are a) to survive, and b) be unseen and the methods for achieving these are a) knowledge, and b) chaotic practice of knowledge Now, you have to think about this. It’s like a martial art - of those I know, Ninjutsu and Krav Maga always function due to the endless techniques and the lethal approach they can take. Other arts are mostly sports these days, and have set moves - ‘if your opponent kicks at your leg, gedan berai block (leaving you open for a punch in the face, most arts have rules these days. Rules do not apply) then punch him in the chest’... these are set techniques, and while fine in the dojo a lot of practitioners will panic when faced with combat without rules and forget these set techniques (oh how I despise them). For set techniques to work (or in this case, night op principles) you must have an unconscious understanding of them. You don’t have to think ‘On the night ops forum they said if I’m being chased I should jump into a hedge and throw a rock at a fence. Where’s the nearest rock and hedge?’, you should be hiding without needing to think about it at all. Practice your ops ‘procedures’ until your every response to any situation becomes automatic.

Finding an Target It’s usually a good idea to start things from the beginning. Who’s heard the joke ‘Life is hereditary. If your parents don’t have kids, neither will you.’? Funnily enough, it’s the same with ops. There are a few ways to find a target. Go for a walk. This is probably the most difficult way of finding an op. First off, leave your house. Then, walk away from your house. Keep walking until you find somewhere you want to op. Well done if you can do this, it’s damn near impossible. Local tourist kiosk. Details of castles and amusement parks/farms (you have not lived until you’ve infiltrated a theme park and climbed up a roller coaster). Almost anything you can find on a tourist leaflet is an amazing op. Internet. Lovely. Local estate agent. Usually empty houses, occasionally with floor plans. Price of the house gives the price of the area - giving you thieves out there an idea of the probable value of people’s property in that area. Suggestions for targets... look for ‘facilities’ rather than houses. What’s the challenge in operating in someone’s back garden? Go for a large area with several buildings - a business park, a school, a hospital, a housing estate... a police station? Hehe, anywhere really, but for the most fulfilling ops, try one from the list. Also, try museums, warehouses, cinemas, ‘malls’, if there’s one near you a sewage plant (Why would anyone want to break into a sewage plant? Minimal security, very Splinter Cell setting, if you’re after a legendary story, there’s an obvious method of entry you can try...). As a rule of thumb, the larger the place, the better the op. I have an op scheduled for October taking place in a hotel, inspired by Hitman Contracts. More on that later. Anyway, once you’ve got your target...

Your Plan Should be basic on execution and specific on times. Something along the lines of... 11:30 - Leave house 00:00 - Reach perimeter of target and cross the boundary 00:20 - After checking the area, infiltrate target building 00:30 - Complete your business, whatever that might be 00:31 - Get out of the building 00:35 - Get out of target area However much time necessary - Get back to base This plan is quite general, but would function quite well. However, it would only be of use if played by Chaos rules. As Ghosts, there is my favorite part of ops to consider before even trying to formulate a plan. Recon This is the most important part of any operation. To play an entire operation by Chaos rules is... fun, if you have the inherent skill to do so, but you will only ever do that once because if you do do this you will realize you need to have seen your target and got some ideas about it. Recon should take place in two parts. Part 1 Night time. If your op is near a club or pub, go one hour after closing time, or any other suitable time. Proceed to your target area. You should know the perimeter from when you found the op. Get across it. Now, in your target area, observe every aspect of the building from afar at first. Look for security first of all - cameras and alarms from the outside, rarely will you encounter anything else. Notice all the windows - where are they? Do they have blinds or one way glass? How big are they? What type of glass? When looking at windows at this stage, you should be looking at them as a place to be seen from, not a means of entry. Lights, obviously. Are they on or off? If they’re off, they might have PIR fields, and if you don’t look out for this they’ll expose you when it’s... inconvenient. Next, doors. Use your optic gear to check these out. They can show security stickers and if you can see through the door, tell you what security measures you’ll be dealing with inside, the lighting inside the building and occasionally, if there are lazy, careless guards. Then you can move closer to the building. Take care of everything you noted earlier and move up to the building. Now you’re looking for methods of entry. This all depends on your personal tastes. Doors or windows are both viable options, see what tools you’ll need to get past them. If you’ve checked all the doors and windows possible an (J ‘evidence of intrusion’...). Sewer tunnels. These DO occasionally have IR beams in them, even in low-security buildings, but they’re still almost always a great method of entry. The problem here is that they’re hard to find, not always big enough to fit in and sometimes have no exit at the other end. Of course, there are other methods of entry on the ground, but next we try my forté... Rooftop entry. First, you have to get up there. Hehe, I’m about to write the thing I despise the most - a climbing tutorial. Check your SC: Pandora Tomorrow for this one. Drainpipes are my personal favorite. First off, find one that you can grab hold of. Metal cylinders are ideal, however, plastic squares that touch the wall can be climbed, but with difficulty. I do it by switching to my rubber gloves and pushing up against the pipe as if I’m pushing it into the wall with my chest, and put my hands on the pipe while ‘pulling’ them down the pipe. This creates a small amount of friction against the rubber, if your arm strength is up to it you can climb up this way. I’m much stronger in my legs, so it’s even harder - I bend my legs (sit down and put the soles of your shoes together, you get a <> shape) and force myself up slowly this way. Just practice it. If there are no drain pipes, try window ledges. Always keep your body against the wall, it makes it much easier to climb. Anything protruding from the wall is climbable, and I mean anything. In my team, I’ve seen the SanguineFairy put throwing knives into brick mortar and climb up them. If you really can’t find a way up, cut a tree branch down. These can be stored virtually anywhere inconspicuously and give you a fast way up a wall. Get two, and with the second one, cut it off the tree with a part of the main trunk still attached so you have a hook (cheers Psychlonic). Climb up pole one and grab the roof with pole 2. Any method you choose, or find, get up there and watch out for pressure pads on more expensive buildings. Slightly raised sections are a sign of these. Stick to laying down on the edges if silhouetting isn’t too much of a problem, otherwise, crouched and move slowly, keeping an eye on your feet. Skylights and large vents are often found, and since people don’t usually think of people climbing onto the roof of their precious building, the skylight is almost always the easiest way into a building. Vents usually have fans in them, but they’re often moving slowly - if this is the case, rappel down them upside down, put your hands on them and twist your rope around one of the blades. This requires some balance and can seem awkward, but if you ever try it you’ll find it quite easy. Anyway, put your rope around one blade and it stands no chance of getting cut, though it will twist which can be quite annoying. Put two loops around the blade for safety. Then push against it and slip through the gap if possible. If the blade is moving fast, go down slowly, feet first, and kick the thing down! If you want to be quieter, I go down head first and put my hand on the centre, then while pushing against it I slide my hands onto the blades, then shove a screwdriver down. Remove it however you can - try stabbing through the blade and levering it out, pushing it down and catching it, or pulling it out. There are, of course, other ways in. Think of your target building as a 3D shape. Now, this shape has holes in the surface. These are what you have to get through, and this part isn’t a metaphor. The holes in the building are what you go through. Also, think about the properties of certain materials - why pick a lock when you can unscrew a sheet of metal on the roof? Think about everything - a way in lies amongst the nothing. Once you’ve located some possible ways in, get out. Do NOT go inside. Even if you have all the tools necessary. Part 2 Now you have to go during the day. Stay concealed in the area, and your aim here is simply to find out when the last person leaves, and if security comes in, when. It’s much more fun to operate in an occupied area, but for safety’s sake I have to advise against it... Parts 1 and 2 should be done at least 3 times, just to make sure of times and procedures. Even that isn’t really enough, I go 5 times. Either way, when your recon’s sorted, then you can formulate your plan. And the first thing after a plan is your gear. But first, since it’s convenient for me (check the virtue of selfishness), I shall tell everyone new about the insides of buildings. Inside Buildings You’re in. You should feel excited and scared. Fear is good. A consideration first, if you entered on the ground floor you are likely to appear in a used room, which is more likely to contain passive security. If you enter an upstairs room and it’s on the edge of a building, it may well be either an office of some sort or a store room. See if you can find out with any windows. If it’s not on the edge of a building, it’s most likely a skylight you’re going through. Into a corridor, probably. So go slow, in case of motion sensors. Or even better... / 1 1 1 \ I hate ASCII... Put simply, a periscope without the tube, using very small discs of glass. Very handy for corners. Either way, make sure you’re not going to be detected the minute you infiltrate the target building. Once you’re inside, check your surroundings. If you knew what was inside, is it the same room? Mistakes can be made. If you didn’t know, where are you? Are you in an office that someone could walk into at any time with nowhere to hide? Are you in a room full of crates that you can hide behind? Are you in the air conditioning and being chewed in inconvenient places by rats? Make sure you know where you are and your environment. You’ll need to hide. My personal ritual after entry is to move straight into a dark area (I like the dark) and into concealment, then wait for a few minutes, thinking about what’s happening next and such. You need to be ‘in tune’ with your environment. Then you need to move in it. First off, we’ll be using a hypothetical situation. Our hero, a brave, noble practitioner known as... hmmm... SG? Yes, that’ll do for now. So, SG is in... his school. SG is in school. But at 2 in the morning, because he opened an upstairs window from the roof and climbed in. Now, being a sensible operator, he is wearing dark clothes... And this is the first problem. On ops you’re wearing dark clothes (or you want to die) and inside most buildings all the walls are white or some such colour. Good for you if yours are black, does the uniform squeak when you walk? Otherwise, you can’t hide in the background. You can wear white inside, but the image isn’t so evocative now, is it? So, where can you hide? You can try behind things, but they’re few and far between in corridors. You can try the ceiling, but that’s... difficult. In an educational facility near me, almost every ceiling can be entered by pushing the thin slats aside and climbing up. It even has a girder network for ease of movement. How kind of them to place that there for any would-be intruders. So he moves from room to room, slowly testing handles then positioning himself so that if doors are opened he is behind them and can slip away. But what if the doors are locked? Buildings are problematic like this. The general rule is, find somewhere to hide and stay there. From there, move to another point of concealment, wherever you can find one. Always check behind you and keep an eye on the top corners of rooms as these are the most likely places for passive security. A lot of people I speak to make the mistake of moving as if they’re outside in a field - slowly, but continually. You should always be moving from place to place. Our hero is hiding behind a potted rubber tree plant. However, this place isn’t dark enough for him... so he goes about taking out the lights. Switches. No damage or evidence. Can be turned back on at any time by someone who isn't you, but will do the trick. In most buildings other than houses the lights will be fluorescent. Can be unscrewed, but that’s ‘evidence’. Can be shot. If you’re shooting them, you probably aren’t including evidence as performance criteria. Try and switch them off. In a fair few buildings, schools especially, the lights are computer controlled. If this is the case they are usually turned off during the hours you’re paying a visit. Just remember that human security often carries torches and passive security often uses infrared or light amplification to make darkness irrelevant. SG is in the dark now, but the walls are still white so he’s crawling along the floor, to lower his profile. He moves to a corner and checks around. Being aware is what saves you, not your skill. Remain cautious and hidden and you’ll be fine. If you are encountered by a guard, Judo (the gentle way) could be very, very useful. Basically, you want to escape the situation which is done by leaving the immediate area, hiding, then leaving the wider area. If you are compromised, get out of sight and hide, if your operation merits it. If the rewards are not worth the risk of operating in an alerted facility, leave. If you can’t escape your pursuers with speed and stealth, you may have to fight them. SG walks around a corner. Into a man with a 2-way and a uniform. Security is, for the most part, unintelligent (but never assume this, determine it first). For example, if they see you they will often shout and give you an opportunity to leave, rather than sneak up and capture you. This can go three ways... Turning around would take too long at this range. So SG simply steps backwards until he’s out of range, quickly, then runs. The guard attempts to punch SG. SG uses his opponents movement and momentum against him by turning into his attackers body, grabbing his upper arm and throwing him, then running. SG takes the initiative. He waves his left hand at his opponent so he moves his head away, exposing his neck. SG’s right hand follows in a boshiken fist and pokes his opponents neck before slipping past him and running. As of yet, while my team have been compromised in the past, I never have been (except on the recent occasions where I wanted to be). The self-defense here has been applied in actual combat, but never in an operational situation. Also, it obviously can never be taught over the internet. But anyway... If you’re surprised up close, you may choose to fight. You want to do this efficiently, so first off, no blocking. A lot of people block ‘incorrectly’ (A lot of people block kicks with their arms, for example) and even if they do it right, they’re often opening themselves up to attack. So, if your opponent attacks you, use it. If they punch you, put your forearm in the way. Me, a hypocrite? Clench your fist, make your index finger protrude. Put your thumb over your finger. Boshiken. ‘Block’ your opponent’s punch, apply this boshiken to their armpit, then push them over. Duck their punch and spring past their side. Your objective is to either bypass them as normal security, or put them on the floor so you can bypass them. Should you need to attack them, a simple method of putting them to the floor is to pull your knee up to your chest and extend your leg into their fucking chest. Aim for the groin, a universal target. It’s easy to hit and the ‘distraction’ is an effective one. Just make sure that however you disable your opponent, you leave. Try not to kill them. One or two ‘moves’ and run. Also remember that they could be a 6th dan in Okinawan Karate (and that isn’t a sport, in my experience). Only fight if desperate - if fighting was your best asset you may as well have fought your way in. Anyway, for now, that’s it. Moving on. Gear Clothes Only one issue I’ll bring up here, it’s something of a large debate. There are some people who prefer to use well fitting / tight clothes as they make less noise rubbing against themselves while you’re moving and, in some people’s opinion, are easier to cross certain obstacles in. However, your shape is easily distinguished as human. If you wear spandex, your captors will laugh at you. On the other hand, some people prefer baggy clothes. Your silhouette is distorted and you can hide equipment in your clothing (shozokus are the best example of this, I feel. With the obi tied tightly, you can carry ropes and such in an easily accessible place. The gear won’t fall out if it’s tied well, and if the lapels are crossed tightly as well the gear won’t come out of those either). Snagging isn’t really a problem is you tie your clothes down. I tie my shozoku at the ankles, below the elbow and sometimes below the calf (when I’m using tabi ‘shoes’ rather than shin length boots). Also, it has a long sleeved ‘jacket’ but I added teko, arm covers basically, that I wear over the sleeves. These are tight at the wrist and just before the elbow, and I’ve got bits of elastic to put my middle finger through so I can keep the backs of my hands covered. With this, I can put some tools in the teko and simply reach in when I need them. Plus, when operating with friends, you can seemingly pull things out of nowhere, always fun. I personally use both. Later on I’ll go into more details. Anyway... My favorite, dark solids. Black or navy blue (I prefer black, though try both in your area and see which works for you), dark grey is even better than both, I find, but I don’t use it often. Whatever you use, it MUST all be the same colour. Dark black and black, for example, do not mix. Think of it as uniform. Uni-form. If it’s all the same, you’re one shape and it removes contrast, which is easily noticeable (the most common mistake I hear of with this principle is of operators wearing subdued urban BDUs, which is a broken pattern, with a solid backpack). Good for urban settings, where the settings are made of full shapes and shadows rather than broken patterns. Stay in shadows, and lay down. Check cheap shops for these, they’re less likely to cover their clothes in logos. Urban BDUs. Absolutely useless. The white and black contrast, it’s... it’s not worth bothering explaining about, really. Subdued urban BDUs are better... the blue and grey version, but they don’t work for me. They’re a bit too light, but if you can find them darker or they work in your area, good for you. Also, you can’t use the lay down/curl up into a ball trick. Stick to solids. Woodland camo. Guess where this works amazingly? While it breaks up your outline in the woods, which is filled with broken patterns, it doesn’t work in urban settings which is composed almost entirely of patterns. You can use this without a mask, and with stage paint (Camo paint is a little too shiny and can come off when you sweat). Use only when your setting has a large amount of green in it - it works perfectly in my area, where we have lots of bushes and parks around. Jungle tigerstripe. Hehe, not half as useful as you’d hoped, actually. While it does break up your outline, the stripes are horizontal and the foliage in woodlands is vertical. It can work, but stick with the ordinary DPM. 3D Camo/ Ghillie suits. Useful on recon missions and, to anyone with the patience, on regular ops. Otherisie, they’re a nightmare to move in, though they often give you the best camouflage possible. Shinobi shozoku. Ninja suit, basically. Designed to break up the human shape, often filled with pockets... these are hard to beat, and even harder to find. Try ‘shinobi-ya’ in Google, does custom shozokus for around... $120 I believe, though it’s been a while. Making your own is the best way to go, however. If you must, here in the UK try blitzsport.com, you can edit the one on there to suit you. Cloak. Awkward to use, but easier than a ghillie suit. It doesn’t just break up your human shape, it destroys it. Try it. Fasten it to your shoulder, and either grab all the bottom in one hand and wrap it around your neck like a scarf or put it through the straps in your bag. The former is better since access is quicker, obviously. Very useful, if you know how to use it and are confident enough to - it’s quite unnerving when you can’t see whether you’ve been seen or not. Splinter Cell suit. Will make you feel very cool. Outside, you’re a very distinguished human shape. Indoors, however, the tight fit means IR beams and such are easily avoided. Countless other trade-offs, but as a general rule, only use inside. To make this, get a wet suit (wear long sleeved/legged rash clothes underneath this, you can’t pull off an op while scratching every 3 seconds) and cover it in spray on rubber, which can be bought from most sex shops. Rubber is much better than latex. You’ll need to keep the can on you, since it can tear. Your movement will feel restricted, so keep practicing with it, eventually you get more than used to it and like it (at least, I did). Great to use, but you have to know how to. Good for inside operations, since you can climb things easier. Spray your gloves and shoes. Footwear has pretty much been covered in Psychlonic’s The Way of The Shadow. The only thing I would add to that is that he didn’t do tabi justice - they are amazing to work with. Masks Masks... an absolute essential. And sometimes hard to find. Psychlonic, again, has it covered. This section will deal with making masks. T-Shirt Mask Turn a t-shirt inside out. Put your face into the t-shirt, so the hole your head normally protrudes from now has your face peering through it. Have the label downwards, it should be about level with your chin. Tie the sleeves in a knot behind your head. This can be adjusted for comfort. The hardest part to explain. Fold the part with the label over, then keep pulling it up while pinning the part with the label in place until it goes over the bridge of your nose. This will appear like a cool looking ninja mask... There is a tutorial for this floating around, with pictures... cut the labels off first. It’s also a really hard breathing mask, but it works well because it really distorts the shape of the head. It also leaves the forehead exposed, so wear a hat underneath it. Scarf Mask Put the scarf over your face in the middle, holding the ends out. Wrap the ends behind your head and then to the front. Pull the ends around to the back of your head again and tuck them in to the bottom of the mask. Wear it with a hat. This is a favourite of mine. You can also put another scarf on to conceal the rest of your head. This is one of the easiest breathing masks imaginable. If you have a high collar or another scarf, just tie it in a knot to get it even tighter (though that tends to fall down a bit more). Experiment to find a scarf mask for you. T-Shirt Mask II - Not half as good looking Put an old t-shirt on, inside out if it’s not plain as before, but don’t put your head through. Put the sleeves up over your head and put a hat on. Cut an eyehole of your choosing. This is where this mask shines. Single eyeholes, slits, two triangular holes, whatever's most comfortable for you. You can tuck the rest in again, or secure it loosely to your neck so it doesn’t feel too weird. This mask, while effective and good because the eyeholes are completely personalised, is very thin since it’s not folded at all. It will get cold. Also, it’s very baggy and doesn’t stay in place as well, so it takes a while to get right. Try and keep it in place with double-sided tape or ties. Once you get it right, it’s lovely, according to CS. All I can think of at the moment. Masks must always be worn to conceal your face, and, to me more importantly, to make your head blend in with the night. Gloves the same. Knives Well... A variety of uses. You can cut things (funnily enough), sometimes pry things, improvise equipment on rural ops, carve things (like signatures if you go for that sort of thing) and use them as weapons. Just a few points I’ll add to the collective knowledge out there - for cutting things like wires and prying small things, a small knife will do. A 2” blade that folds into the handle, kept in a pocket is nice to have around. Not much of a weapon though, as keeping them in your pocket means access is doubtless too slow. The blade could be concealed and used as a nasty surprise, however. ‘Attachable’ teko on a shinobi shozoku can solve the access problem. Big knives (5-8” is ideal, I’d say) make better weapons. I personally use these. Not as a weapon, obviously, it’s just that they can do everything a small blade can do and more. You can’t keep these in a pocket, so the best place is a thigh sheath. If you ever do need to use it as a weapon, you can pull it out in under a second and discourage most opponents. Cutting foliage... well, if it was fire thorn or creeping juniper maybe, but otherwise, just slowly push through it. Not only is it a potential sign of intrusion, it’s also minimizing possible cover (and you do need as much as you can get). If you want to darken the blade (or need to if sheathed externally) try electrode paint from most hardware or car modding shops. You’ll need to get them to apply it though... I’m working on other ways to darken blades. Equipment Separates the... good from the best? Not quite sure, but you need tools. Can be carried in belts, load- bearing vests, button pockets or backpacks. If you can, get the equivalent of the tool belt for the legs, as SF has. It’s the sort of thing you see on Splinter Cell, like a harness type thing, has little bits for carrying things like guns and knives and such. Lovely little things. Also, darken all your equipment. Thanks to Station for pointing out that you can take a lighter to metal objects to turn them black, funnily enough, I didn’t know that. Masking tape, paint... any way you can. Anyway... Screwdrivers. Philip's and flathead. Opening things, and the flathead for prying as well. Pry-bar. If you can get one, it often renders a flathead useless. Cordless drill. Guaranteed method of bypassing locks. Just drill through the pins. The first time I tried this I drilled the pins (of my own door...) and tried to open the door, then wondered why it didn’t work. Funnily enough it was because I’d destroyed the pins but I still hadn’t unlocked the door... Bolt Cutters. 12” can be used, now I use 24”. Grappling hook. Like Marmite, you either love it or you hate it. A lot of people go on about how they’re a nightmare to detach... but these are for climbing UP. If you can get one with a decent hook, get one. You’ll need to practice throwing it, but once you get good with it you can climb a hell of a lot more than usual. Climbing down is annoying... try finding a pole, draping the rope over it and holding both ends. Use it as a pulley. There is a ‘complicated’ (or hard to explain, for the lazy) method, search around the internet. It involves placing cords under the hooks. Or just jump. A lot of people are afraid of jumping heights and don’t know what they’re capable of. I’ve jumped off a third floor fire escape in my school, around 25ft, landed standing and walked off to my friends (who are too scared to even consider asking about ops). However you choose to get down, grappling hooks are good and bad, really. Lock picks, should you know how to use them. I’ve heard of people attaching rakes to electric toothbrushes for home made pick guns, but I’m not sure if it works. Knife. Merits discussed in TWotS. Optics. Discussed in TWotS. NVGs... when using goggles, it sacrifices all of your natural night vision, yes... but the reason you’d have these is because they’re far superior to your natural night vision. So long as you can cover the lenses so they don’t get destroyed every time you face a bright light, these can be used to great effect, though I’ve only used them once. Try uttings.com . Watch. Digital with a light. This way you can check it at any time, you have a small source of light and you probably have a timer. Just make sure you’ve got one that doesn’t make a noise every hour. People have doubtless been caught because of that. This is what I take with me these days, minus the picks since I haven’t actually bothered learning to use them yet. With this set up you can pry windows, manholes, hatches, vents, doors should you have to, break padlocks and cut wires, unscrew vent covers, beat most locks, scout ahead of you/see better in the dark, climb... and almost everything there can be used as a weapon should you really, really need to use them this way. Anything else you think you might need, bring. Everything depends on your personal style - some people like to pry doors off, some people like to unscrew vents. Some people like to use thermite to melt locks, some like to pick them. Your style will dictate your gear. Also, how do you plan to carry your equipment? If you carry them on a belt you can access them faster, but you have all the time in the world. If you carry them in a backpack you can take more and it distorts your silhouette, but it’s extra room, reducing your mobility slightly. Same with load-bearing vests. Personally, until I can get an equipment harness for my legs, I’ll be using backpacks. However you carry your gear, make sure it can’t be seen and can’t be heard. Other ideas include... Air rifle. Not an every night item, I’ve only used them once. A legal limit .22 can be used to take out most lights. If necessary, get a CO2 rifle for thicker covers. Make great distractions - they tend to get people’s attention quite well. If you take a silenced rifle, not only does it force you to operate your best (getting caught with a firearm isn’t good for your health) but if you come up against security, they’ll tend to hesitate when shots are coming at them. Should you ever find another operative, shoot them. This is not being unkind, this is teaching them a lesson. They’ll owe you for it, honest. Water pistol. Yes, very serious. Filled with lemon juice, should give you the slight advantage you need if you’re surprised at close range. Thermite. Easily made, destroys locks. VERY bright light... details on how to make, thanks to Sentinel Owl, can be found on www.op.websiteallies.com in the forum. Spraypaint. Take out cameras fast, if they’re not on a live feed. Bags are a better choice, since you can remove them, but a can will do. Can be used as mace, to camouflage equipment quickly and as a simple trick with police. Should you ever be compromised, get into cover and throw the can. Cheap enough for you to not care about losing, this could also make them think they’re just dealing with a vandal. Pick it up afterwards and spray them in the eyes, then down the throat, beat them senseless with the can, then walk off. Obviously. Untested idea, of course. Cigarettes. The MGS trick does work, I believe, you’ll just never need to use it. Some security guards are idiots too, try leaving a pack near them/their routes. Human greed is a wonderful thing. Variations on this are condoms, porn mags, alcohol or figurines placed in... ‘sexually explicit’ positions. These guards are almost always bored stupid on the night shift, anything unusual to amuse them can keep them distracted for hours - after the initial shock wears off, they could end up joking about it, taking their eyes off the camera screen... Wrench / spanner. Whatever would you use this for? Rarely needed, but could be. PDA. Cell phone, maps, text files (Actually useful. You could bring the materials for thermite into the field and forget how to make it.) and loads of other uses I can’t be bothered to list. However... You should be prepared to destroy it entirely if you’re caught.

There are hundreds of other possible pieces of equipment, but the first list should be all you’ll need for most ops. Glass cutters are another one, though they’re loud. Untested idea: Throw a piece of porcelain through the window, the type toilets are made of or something along those lines. If the window is taped up apparently it’s virtually silent - car thieves swear by it, if I remember Night Ops II correctly. Whatever else you need, get. Be creative - if you think you could do something, try it! My Set-Ups The ‘ops’ spoken of in the next section did happen. Those in the rest of the guide are hypothetical, but those contained in the section ‘My Set-Ups’ did happen. Every single one of them against my house or my friends’. Those referred to in the future are not going to occur, since I’m not that stupid. First off, you MUST NOT operate as I do. My methods are sometimes quite controversial and I have a rather unique approach to ops. For example... Ritual hat Black T-shirt Black backpack (hard cotton) Black elbow supports Black gloves Black trousers Black skateshoes That set up is played with, but one I use a lot for for what I call ‘small ops’. It’s what I’d use if I/we were just visiting the roof of a school or shutting of all the lights in a square kilometer. The gloves are either kevlar or cotton, depending on my mood. The trousers are either jeans or BDUs, depending on my mood. Sometimes I wear my trademark black scarf. Sometimes I wear a long sleeved top. The set up listed is dark black, sometimes I wear faded black. Note how at no point did I mention a mask... ALWAYS WEAR A MASK. SF and I believe that we must look good as well as dress practically. You must wear something that covers your face. Remember, I am like the Eldar - wise, aloof and arrogant. Black ski mask Black longsleeve Black BDUs Black gloves Black skateshoes Black custom load bearing vest This is more like it. The load bearing vests... I have two, both made by my mum. One is basically a tight-fitting, thick body-warmer, sleeveless and halfway up my neck. 3 large ‘pocket’s and 2 small ones. The other has the same pocket layout, but put on straps instead for when I fancy a change. I hope to be adding some thick rubber soled boots to this set up. Shinobi shozoku Tabi Gloves Speaks for itself. I use dark black, faded black, dark grey or light grey, depending on the setting and my mood. Occasionally it becomes necessary to bring tools I can’t store in my teko and inside the lapels (carried in those, everything has to be kept in velvet so as not to make any noise), so I’ll bring either a dark or faded black backpack or a grey satchel, though that’s only really used on my principled missions, hypothetical sabotage or revenge for nature or the injusticed. Aren’t night operators lovely? Camo boonie Camo coat (covers neck, buttons removed on the pockets, zip darkened) Camo BDU trousers Camo backpack The old skateshoes Obvious enough. Used on ops where I’m approaching through the woods or in the numerous areas around me where there are trees and hedges every few meters on the streets. Buttons removed - one of my phobias. The other’s needles. My SC Suit... LBV Made after my experiments with spray on rubber and its effect on gloves when climbing... sometimes I spray my equipment into place, sometimes I use the strapped LBV. Only used on ops taking place inside areas with a decent level of technology, usually. Expensive, so I only use it where I appreciate it. Black wetsuit (cheap, therefore plain) Black neoprene mask Black kevlar/rubber gloves Swimming bag, sprayed with rubber Black flippers Black wetsuits are a nightmare to find... rash gear has to be longsleeved and legged. If, like me, you can’t find long rash gear, wear ordinary clothes and pull it tight when needed putting it on. Funnily enough, this is only used on marine ops, which I’m going on more and more, The bag floats, which is handy. Diving has never been an issue, and several methods of silent swimming have been devised. My favourite is my least tiring - I squeeze the bag between my legs and float, pushing the water under the surface. Propels about 2 feet before you have to push again, but it makes no noise whatsoever. My Equipment I’ve got my hands on a variety of ‘toys’ over the last three years, a small selection of them follows... Bushnell NV-100 Compact (Gen I night vision monocular) Nikko Stirling 10x42 Sniper scope (A scope used by several armed forces, I’ve seen these used by GSG-9, the German spec ops unit) A red-filtered Minimag Rubber-strapped (head and chin) headlamp (no glare, 1 and 3 LED settings for red and blue light) 30ft of paracord (nice and thick) A telescopic electric baton. It flicks out and shocks things. If covered in rubber and used with my rubber gear, perhaps it could be used to destroy the electricity somewhere... A large collection of screwdrivers (the list gets less and less glamorous) A fair few knives, some penknives, some 7” black bladed slivers of death... oh how I love them... A veterinarian’s tranquilizer rifle (yet to be tested, but I’ve got 8 darts loaded with... stuff... maybe tetrodotoxin would be better...) 60lb crossbow (next experiment is with nylon darts, shooting them into the wires of lighting systems) An unusual device in the possession of my team rather than me is a 12ft... thing. You hold onto a pole and wind it up, it lifts you up twelve feet. Expensive and pointless, but possibly useful. A one foot pole. Quite heavy, because it extends and can be locked in place. 12ft. Our headsets, still unsure of model I have no idea why I listed those... I hope to be adding a pair of Gen III NVGs and a pair of thermal goggles (dammit, they’re cool, okay?) to my list, but that’s the favourite I, and the last three we, ‘ve got at the moment. Places to get your equipment... Clothes - military surplus stores for BDUs, cheap shops for solids. Fabric shops for when making ghuillie suits. Elastic bands on camo for 3D camouflage. The rest is as obvious as this... Knives - coldsteel.com does some very nice knives, as will most outdoors centres. Optics - On (sorry for the name-drop) Psychlonic’s recommendation, I use opticsplanet.net . Before I learned of that, I used uttings.com for rifles, scopes and some night vision. Typically, it’s quite expensive, but for something like £8 a month you can get your hands on Gen I night vision monoculars. They go up to Gen II, at extremely high prices. But still, they do the job. They also sell Superflauge, highly over rated camo. That’s what I thought until I used it... Take a look, they’ve done their research with Superflauge. Tools - hardware stores, where else? The D&T department of your school... textbook collection aside, I’m no thief, but you can get pliers, wirecutters, tin snips, even cordless drills if you’re good or they’re not. Lockpicks - I often hear of people getting them from cheaperthandirt.com . For those in the UK and its environs, try bcbin.com . Anything you’ll ever need for ops can be found here. 75 piece pick sets to camo paint to grapnel launchers. I love bcbin.

Okay, since this is in no actual order, I’ll go over the idea so far. You’ve sorted out some basic gear you think you could need for recon. This should consist entirely of optics and mobility equipment, the idea is intelligence gathering at the moment, not the full operation. You've done your recon and come up with a few points of entry, a few escape routes, security (Physical and passive), and you’ve learned the place inside out (or rather, just the outside so far). From your recon you should’ve established a basic plan and the gear you’ll need for it. Next you just have to carry it out. Various settings for ops and then camouflage and concealment will be discussed next. Considerations for Your Plan Weather Can be used for your benefit, and it makes a hell of a difference. Moonlit nights. Lots of light, makes recon easier, makes you easier to detect. Do not operate on a moonlit night. Moonless nights are better, for obvious reasons. Wait 'til the moon is as small as possible. A figure in black, running crouched and silhouetted by the moon looks cool in stories, but they never show the operative getting seen and shot because of it. Cloudy moonlit nights. Difficult, obviously. Try to avoid. Can be used on recon however, though -move when it’s dark and observe motionless in the light. Dry nights. Comfortable to operate in. Otherwise, no use. Wet nights. Evil. Horrible to operate in, the moisture in the air means sound travels better, and if you’re going inside you’ll need a change of shoes. People have also been caught after their crimes because soil in their shoes matched that at the seen of the crime. I saw it on TV. Hehe. Also, gravel becomes harder to walk silently on, and then it sticks to your shoes so you end up making noise when you could otherwise be walking quietly. Rainy nights. Lovely. The rain muffles a lot of your noises, if you’re making any, and it also discourages guards from venturing outside. A guard tends to not be very loyal to his job - or rather, lazy. They’re getting paid to do nothing. Make sure it stays that way for them. Patrolling guards on the outside will also almost certainly seek cover, so you’ll know the likely places to look for them. Watch out for puddles. You can run in this, as discussed later, but make sure there are no splashing sounds. Snow. Change of clothes necessary here. White solids for in the snow, your normal gear for when inside. Snowballs make great distractions, since they’re not too serious and will get attention. However, it’s just so hard to hide in. Anything that isn’t white almost certainly has to be avoided. Tracks are evil - try walking sideways. Should anyone come across your tracks, they won’t know which way to follow them. A better way is to just get up on the rooftops. This way you’re leaving no visible tracks and silhouetting isn’t a problem if you’re prone - you’ll look like a mound of snow. Fog. Consider yourself lucky. If you really know your objective, operating in this is no challenge. It helps eliminate potential sightings, light sources are blurred (fooling NVG wearing security). If you stay silent, as you should, fog is a very nice thing to work in. Time Closing times of clubs and such in the area - people pouring into the streets is somewhat inconvenient. Plan around this - it can be used to your advantage. Makes a great distraction to security forces. If you need access to a nightclub, wait nearby until the crowds are pouring out and the door staff are otherwise engaged, then push through the crowd and stick to the walls. Risky, as lights are probably on, but at least it should be a bit emptier. Hours / half hours. Shift changes, usually. Minutes with multiples of five. Guards tend to perform various habits, whether it be stretching or checking a security screen, at these times. Times of films. Very important consideration. If people are staying up to watch something in your house, it can be awkward. Times of ‘public facilities’. Anything you’re passing by that isn’t a home, you should know the time it’s empty. Old people’s homes are a good example, as often the staff get all the occupants in bed by a certain time. Time of year. Seasons, obviously. But this is more important on rural ops - breeding seasons with animals. They’ll get even more alert and aggressive after giving birth. Also, various sports seasons. If you’re like me and have no interest in grown men playing with balls for a few hours, learn them anyway. People taking to the streets to celebrate at inopportune times isn’t a good thing. The Enemy One of the most important parts of ops. Covered in TWotS, but an important consideration here, during recon most importantly, is to study each individual guard. Everyone is different and has different habits. Note these. Also, if you can, test each guards alertness levels. Some can be conditioned to ignore certain noises or sights, if repeated enough. Important Ninjutsu consideration - never underestimate your enemy, every individual is possibly better at anything than you and you will never know. This is because you can’t do much of anything anymore, apart from decay. But just as important, never overestimate your enemy. Your are more than a force to be reckoned with. You are expecting them, they don’t even know of your existence. Don’t fear your enemy, simply respect the fact that they are a threat and take the necessary precautions. There are, again, other considerations, but this is a general advice text. Not everything can be answered here. However, as you’re about to see, sometimes basic and general can be improved on...

Camouflage and Concealment Stealth is your primary weapon. Speed and surprise is your second. You should never need to use your secondary weapon. So, here we’ll cover camouflage theory (how to reduce your noticeability), camouflage practice, stealthy movement and various recon practices. So, without any further crap... Camouflage Theory Your aim is to not be seen. But, while light is still reflecting off of you and into the eyes of your enemy, this is impossible, should they be looking at you. What you can’t do is stop their optic nerves sending the image of you to their brains. What you can do is make his brain interpret this image as something other than human. And why is this human perceived so easily? Because it’s not meant to be there. A pile of leaves in a field? Wow, a harmless pile of leaves. Oh, a black-clad human being crawling across a field with a rifle on his back... hmmmm... So, if you’re not meant to be there, you have to make yourself look like you either aren’t there, or you belong there. Invisibility First you have to gain 100% confidence in your ability to remain unseen, then spend a few years studying omnijutsu... Here you must hide so that light does not hit you and bounce into your enemy’s eyes. This can only really be done by placing an opaque object between you and them, stopping the light passing from you to them. The second method involves positioning yourself so that they do not look in your direction. So, a few principles and then some ‘techniques’... Shine - shiny objects stand out. Darken everything, including your own exposed skin. Charcoal works well for this, as it doesn’t shine itself like some other things do. Shadow - can give you away, so stay behind lights whenever possible. Stick to the shadows as well, the human shadow is easily distinguished. Where shadows can not be avoided, keep as low as possible to make your shadow smaller and less noticeable. Silhouette - murderous, but the easiest thing to avoid. Just stay below skylines, wherever they may be. Be it hills, rooftops, at the top of a pole you’re zip lining from, try to avoid it, or reduce it as much as possible as before. Silhouetting on poles isn’t so bad - people probably won’t notice you at short range since they rarely look up these days. Surface - don’t disrupt your surroundings. Play Splinter Cell (That name seems to appear a lot here...). Note how you can hide in the shadows and only see the lights on his Sony Erickson and, for some reason, his NVGS. Now change the camera so you can see a black human shape against a white wall. Always make sure you’re matching your surroundings. If there are patterns, don’t break them (i.e. bricks, fences and such.) and if there are no patterns, don’t form one. Humans notice things that are different. Distance - if you’re a good distance away from your potential observer, you’ll be too small to be seen. Movement - slowly. If you move fast you get seen. If you open a door normally, someone’s peripheral vision usually picks it up. Opening it slowly, only as much as necessary, then slipping through and coming up behind them is much more fun. On a ‘The Enemy’ subject, assume everyone has 180o vision. It never hurts to make sure. It always hurts to get things wrong. These words, when reduced to their bare minimums, are the most important aspects of remaining unseen. Stay in the darkness and move where people won’t look. Say you have to go up some fire escape stairs. Where will people look? On the stairs, and the second you get to the top you’re silhouetted horribly to anyone at the top. But, if you were to grab hold of the underneath of the steps, climb up underneath (which people don’t normally do, so isn’t usually looked for...) then slide onto the stairs at the top, you’d stand a much higher chance of remaining undetected. Think about where you want to go and how you’d get there during the day. Now force yourself to get there without taking the way you normally would. Do what you’re not supposed to. Stay low. People focus their vision at head height, slow movement in the edges of their vision can remain unnoticed. So, you can stay low in the shadows, or beside an object. Also, when checking around corners, lay down. The usual ‘back against wall, twist neck’ is useless really. A better method if you must stand is to check around the corner from a distance. It’s hard to explain though. Press your stomach against the wall next to the door / corner. Now step back from the wall, and sideways away from the door/corner. This is where you should be, not against the wall. You can pull back and move towards the corner (sideways), if you see anything human you can usually tell where they’re facing and be much less noticeable than if you were to stand and peer around. If you can get under murky water with a long snorkel... Above. The best, and sometimes most difficult place to be in. People tend to not look up, so stay above them. Get up a roof and press yourself against a chimney. This doesn’t work where people do look up, however, places like stairs, or at medium range. At long range you’re too small and short range you’re too high, but at medium range someone might see you in the edges of their vision. Stay still. Otherwise, you should always try to be above your enemy. Behind. Placing an opaque object between You and Them always works, but because this is the most commonly used method of hiding, it’s also what people look for first. Examples of places to consider hiding in/with - rooftops, tunnels, vents, between large objects (skips, large bins [I believe they’re known as dumpsters in America], hedges etc.), in water, in hedges, behind walls, in alleyways, in pipes, hanging onto pipes, behind anything opaque, around corners... the list is pretty much endless, and limited only to your imagination. Remaining Unnoticed Here you’ll be seen, but not interpreted as human. The easiest way to do this is to get rid of your human shape. This can be done either through distorting your shape, such as curling up into a ball and pretending to be a rock, anything other than a clandestine night operative, or by breaking up your human shape and outline. Ghillie suits work the best for this, as do cloaks. Where there is a distinctly human shape, get rid of it. Baggy clothes can do this, or filling gaps between limbs as a cloak does. However, it’s more than just wearing camo BDUs. In the woods, try to get some of the surrounding foliage onto your gear, and change this as the terrain changes. In urban settings, assume full shapes in the shadows. You just have to think about the shapes and textures in your surroundings and match them as closely as possible. Easier to write about than do, this time. Keep your profile low. I crawl for most of my operations. Much less noticeable. Stealthy Movement First off, this section is composed of ideas and principles, even more so than the rest of the guide, guide being a keyword here. Remembering the technical placement of your feet will not create silence. You can get some ideas though. The most important thing, I think, is the grace and elegance of movement. A lot of people needlessly overdo basic motor functions, such as turning door handles too hard or putting their feet down too hard. If your movements are fluid and elegant, two things will happen. People will notice it and like it, and your movements will be quieter. Anyway, some ‘techniques’ and then principles this time. ‘Stealthy’ Step (Nuki Ashi) There are two different ways to do this. One is to keep your weight centered in the foot on the ground and the other is to balance out your weight on both legs. The latter works better and is much harder to do if you’re not used to it. Anyway... Bend your knees. The deeper your knees are bent during movement and landing from jumps, the more relaxed the movement. Now, point your feet inward slightly. You move one leg in a semi-circle - your foot should pass in towards the ground leg and then out again. There are also a few ways of putting your foot down. One is to put it down heel first, slowly. It works, but it’s not the best. Toes down works better. Since the weight put down is smaller and on a smaller surface area, floors are less likely to creak. An equally as useful method is to place the outside side of your foot down, then roll it inwards so your toes are on the floor, and finally put your heel down. You can use your leading leg to feel for obstacles. This method, when done properly, is one of the best for crossing creaking floors. Another method of crossing a creaky floor is to just stick close to the walls (especially on stairs) and jump to any other areas you need to get to. Normal Walking This is quite hard to do. You should start walking at nine months old. Walking normally is walking normally. The only considerations here are the way you put your feet down. Some ideas are above. Also, when ever walking, make sure you use every available joint in your legs and arms for elegance - a lot of people in the West have a habit of moving using their shoulders and... can’t remember off hand, but the joints near the groin... thingies, joint on the femur... Anyway, this is a tense, rigid walk and it’s not a nice sight to behold, nor is it very good for walking undetected with. Practice with a full length mirror. I’ll see if I can get a video file on to the Net later. Running So very, very hard to do silently. Until you learn how. A method, if I remember correctly, known as ninja no shinobi kobashiri works well. Basically you lean forwards and take very small, quick steps, barely letting your toes touch the floor. A common problem is that people ‘put’ their feet on the floor, making a slapping sound. You should try touching the floor with your toes gently, but still quickly. Only practice will get things done. Take a look at the intro video for Tenchu: Return From Darkness - Rikimaru demonstrates the positioning I use in my running sometimes. Also, since the noise is produced when your feet touch the floor, make sure your feet don’t touch the floor all that often. A sort of gliding feeling is achieved by running with a step that’s half step and half jump. Hard to describe. When your foot touches the floor, pull your leg so it’s bent into a right angle while pushing forwards with your toes as you do so. If you do this right (and if you can just from my attempt at explanation, well done) you should feel like your not moving at all in those moments after you push with your toes. Try to develop your own techniques of running silently. They’re invaluable. Crawling The standard ‘commando crawl’ can be done quickly while keeping your profile low. A slower method is to lay prone and extend your arms, then pull yourself along so that your arms are underneath your chest (like the plank position of Pilates). I find the latter method quieter, when done quickly. The ‘stealthiest’ crawl is a slow commando crawl, the fastest is a hands and knees. Jumping I don’t know why, but first I’ll cover jumping higher. When jumping as high as you can, just pull your legs up into a crouch. Gets you a little higher. If you can’t reach the top of a wall, run at it, put a foot on it and use the momentary friction - push upwards with that leg. If you can’t do this, do what I prefer to do. Jump at the wall, put your foot on it and allow your leg to bend, then push off. If you push off at an upwards angle and lean forwards, you can easily get to the top of most walls around 5 feet higher than you... although you have to keep practicing the ‘technique’ for 5ft to be reached. Landing silently is most peoples’ problem. A simple solution to this is to lower yourself down from heights rather than jump, or roll when you hit the floor, landing on your side and curling up into ball. However, if you must learn the skill, take another look at Splinter Cell. It can give you ideas on how to move (when crouched), how to climb, jump up walls, use your body weight and momentum to force yourself further in jumping and climbing, and of course, land quietly. It’s really just a matter of bending your legs into the floor as you land, which should be on your toes if possible. And practice. Lots of it. Ko Ashi A step that can be used to get through water that can’t be waded through, such as puddles and streams, or, if done slowly enough, dry leaves. Here you lift your leg and tense the lower part, so your toes are tense and pointing straight down. Your should be able to place a plank of wood down your knee, shin, foot and toes, to hopefully give you a better idea of the leg position. Then you pierce the surface of the leaves or water (slower through leaves). When your toe touches the floor, slowly lower your heel to the floor in water. With dry leaves, it’s usually better to just go straight into another tip-toe step. These are some of the methods of movement I use, but the possible others are infinite. Try to use the following principles to develop your own methods of movement. Slowly. Slow movement almost always results in silent movement. This works well on gravel as well. A ‘method’ of walking on gravel is to roll the feet - roll the heel up off the gravel, then lift the toes, then place the toes on the gravel, then roll lower the foot down, then roll the heel up... this is a useless attempt at explaining, but it makes the gravel move downwards rather than sideways as normal walking does. Balance. Distribute your weight equally. Squeaking floorboards, nasty. Don’t touch anything. Keep an eye on every limb, every place you’re about to put your foot, everything. Be constantly aware of where you’re placing yourself so you don’t accidentally hit something that makes a noise. Use every limb in your body. This way you keep control of your entire body. It’s hard to explain, but keep yourself relaxed in the limbs and tense in the joints... A good way of developing your own way of moving is to think of a situation where you’d like to be silent. Then, go through this action but exaggerate every part of it. Using the earlier examples, when walking, stamp your feet down. When you’ve exaggerated every aspect of the action, you can see which parts of it are unnecessary and get rid of them. The end result, if this process is done correctly, will be an elegant, silent movement. Failing that, use WD40 on hinges and tape foam to your soles. Escape and Evasion You should never need this. Maybe you will. This is where physical fitness and / or endurance comes in. If you know you’ve set off an alarm of some kind, get out. If the building is empty or you’re right next to an exit, get out as fast as possible. If the building is occupied, get out as fast as possible without being seen or heard. So long as no one sees you, stealth is your best asset, so use it. If you have been seen, put a small twist on ‘reposition and reacquire’. First, you run. Then, you hide and find out whether or not your compromiser knows where you are. A classic example is the occasion Friend 1, 2 and 3 were in a dark area beside a church. On the inside of the low wall defining the boundary of the church ground, there are some pine trees. You can jump down into a narrow passageway and roll inside a small tunnel that leads underneath a house. However, on the same level as the trees is a dark open space, covered in thick gravel. The friends were crossing this gravel when a light came on. Friend 2 knew this was going to happen, since he was testing friends 1 and 3. When a very angry looking bald man in a football shirt looked out of the window, friends 1 and 3 froze, looked at him and ran. Not into the trees, straight past him, into a brightly lit road and into a front garden. The garden suddenly became brightly lit by a PIR light. Ooooops. Friend 2 heard them running off up the street being shouted at by old people. When asked, they hadn’t realized that Friend 2 wasn’t there until Friend 3 looked for him as they were running. This is because, apparently, Friend 2 had made some noise to make sure someone came to the window. When the light came on, Friend 2 rolled off the gravel, dropped 4 feet down a wall and finished the roll under the house. He’d crossed over to the other side of the house, removed a small metal slat and watched his panicky friends run off. If you’ve been seen by a potential threat to your safety, the above applies. However, it’s more than likely a security element - they may have lights. Analyze them. Radios? Their search could be a well- coordinated one. Weapons? Obvious... Do they want to catch you? Or are they scared? As always, assess the situation and coordinate your actions accordingly. Dogs. They can be avoided by staying downwind and not making any noise. However, so far I’ve only met four people who can avoid dogs that aren’t familiar with them and I’m one of them (even then, my 100% success rate comes through only going up against them once) - even the SAS has admitted defeat. However, I can’t be bothered to explain how to bypass them, this deals with how to escape them. SF and I ran an experiment. We used a Rottweiler as a guard dog (belonging to a relative of mine and trained as guards for a stable) and her German Shepperd (or Al Sation, unsure of spelling for once) as an attack dog. Basically, there are two types of dog - attack and guard. Guard dogs will make a lot of noise, and probably be quite big (Rottweilers, for example). You can often outrun these. I released the dog on SF and noted how it lost ground whenever she ran uphill. SF climbed onto a building and escaped. Obstacles like holly bushes presented no problems to the dog, but, in the next few tests, we found its ability to jump lacking - if you can jump gaps the dog can’t, you may be able to escape. When leashed, she only had to outrun me and my restricted movement - the handler or the dog may dictate the speed, whichever’s faster. So far SF had won every round, but we decided to try the ‘run through water’ method. Surprise, surprise, it didn’t work. Your scent emanates from the top of your head as well, so you’d need a very wide stream. My turn to go up against an attack dog. First note, it wasn’t making any noise. A point made - SF wasn’t willing to hurt ‘my’ dog. I myself am bound to ‘An harm it none, do what ye will’ for those who know. But, her laws are up for interpretation - not lying is honourable, but if everything I said was the truth, there would be no jokes or sarcasm, no exaggeration (‘a face that launched a thousand ships’ is better than ‘I was sexually attracted to her because of her face’). And, harming none meant no harm to me. Since I couldn’t outrun it I stopped and turned around. As it dived for me, I dived for and under it, rolled and got bitten. Still, it was an experiment, not a challenge. So, we tried again, and I sent it gurgling to the floor. However, after more humane alternatives, I climbed up a tree and started crossing them until I could jump down behind into a brick walled garden. 2-1. A few more attempts revealed that it couldn’t cross 5ft fences. However, I have a first edition, hardback Night Watch (thanks to Terry Pratchett) and in there it mentions a peppermint bomb fooling a werewolf. I’d read of the SAS attempts at scattering pepper and they found that they could never carry enough of it. Same with peppermint - I hid, threw some peppermint down and it picked up my trail soon after passing through it. Splashing its nose with peppermint was too hard. The only effective methods we found with dogs was climbing and jumping to where it couldn’t go. When we tried an anything-goes situation with me and the Rottweiler that night, SF climbed up on to the stables roof. The dog just barked, so I tried to climb up. I was reminded that ‘anything-goes means I can kick you in the face, doesn’t it?’ (probably with an innocent smile attached to the voice. So, I put my hat on my hand and grabbed her foot. Experiment yourselves as well, but we’ve found climbing to be the most effective method of evading dogs. Now, people. You’ve most likely evaded one or two individuals, removing the immediate threat to your safety. That’s simple enough, just remember ‘reposition and reacquire’. However, what about an active search operation that could involve cars, helicopters and teams of people? First, determine what you’re up against. This can be done by looking, or by listening (either for helicopters or people communicating). People must be avoided. You must make sure they don’t see you, hear you, smell you (could happen) or feel you (could happen). This should be obvious, just apply everything you already know and some of what’s been put forward in this guide. One thing I learned during my training - let’s say you’re in a concealed position and your enemy is coming towards you. Move past them. ‘The one shadow people never check is their own’, to quote a friend (Muramasa Kitase, I believe he’s probably posting on a Night Ops forum somewhere now). People expect you to run away from them, not through them. For the requisite example, a one-floor section of the same church. I was on one side, CS was looking for me on the other, no torch. As he was walking over to my side, I heard him breathing so I climbed on to the building, crossed over it and walked off, crossed a road and climbed a metal fence on to a school’s field. From there, I walked home and left him. Cars are confined to roads, so avoid them. The only real problems are the possibilities - the occupants may get out and chase you / look for you, or they may turn their sirens on, waking up everyone in the area to increase the potential for you being seen. Just avoid and stay in the dark, if lights get turned on, so be it. They probably can’t see you anyway. Helicopters... as with cars, just theory here. Possibly equipped with night vision, thermal or IR imaging, it will have a spotlight. You can see where this is and avoid it, but your best bet it to get under something that blocks its view. Thick forests would do quite nicely, I believe. If you’re spotted by one, everyone will know where you are. Make sure this doesn’t happen, because if you are seen, you’ll stay seen. If you get out of its view, it will tell ground forces where it last saw you. Despite the small amount of information above, the odds are actually in your favour, I feel. Even so, make sure it never comes to this. Group Work Lovely, and evil. Working in a group opens up a fuckload of options for you, but also provides more opportunities for compromise. If you work in a group, you have to work with people who aren’t going to get caught. You have to be able to trust your team mates with their lives and yours, so to speak. If potential partners aren’t capable of practicing this art, you can’t work with them. So, this part will cover some principles of group work, finding partners, roles and finally some more unconventional uses of partners. Group Operation Principles While one operative you have two eyes, two ears and one nose. While two operatives, this doubles. So, should you be working well, more can be detected. However, this is another ear poking around a corner and another nose whose skin you may have to save. It’s easier to get caught because you can’t control your teammate’s error factors, you can’t think exactly as they do, all sorts of things. Perhaps as an example - while CS and I were out in full gear, taking a ‘walk’ over to a sewage plant, we came to a brightly lit road. Along this road, two designated hostiles estimated to be our age. Since we’d been playing Splinter Cell too much that day, we decided to play with them. We were behind a low wall, and they were quite close so we had to act fast. I made a motion with my right hand behind the ‘hostiles’ and started shaking it about, then repeated it with the others, while making head movements. My plan was for me to go behind the two, get concealed and distract them with noise while CS went past their now turned backs. CS nodded, I ASSUMED (my second mistake here) that he understood. So, I got closer, and hopped the wall. Then CS jumped the wall and grabbed the lead ‘hostile’. Rather than let his friend react, I had to grab the rear enemy. We were left standing in a brightly lit street, dressed like physical espionage agents holding two innocents. While the fact that they were scared shitless was hilarious, so was I at the time. In the end we crossed the road with them and pushed them into some bushes before jumping over them. Long-winded bullet-point... anyway, the lesson learned here, communication is vital and can be misinterpreted. Learn from the above. Your friends can be greedy, or have hidden, or opportunistic, agendas. While in an area, for example, your objective may be a location while your friend’s new objective is to acquire that shiny new video camera or write their signature on a desk... Watch out for this. Trust. You have to be able to trust your friends more than yourself, and have a complete understanding of this art. Say one of you is injured during an op - would they accept the situation, let you continue the op while they exfiltrate? Or would they whine about you leaving them behind? If they’re captured, would they reveal any of your details in exchange for their own comfort? Such things have to be discussed frankly and the appropriate cautions taken. Lies. It may sometimes be necessary to deceive your friends. This is not advisable, if you must, you must not get caught. If you are deceiving a close friend, you are dishonourable. This is the one occasion you should be honourable - with your friends. However, let’s say you have an operations partner you don’t intend to work with again, for example, you know someone has some skills in such matters and you need to use them to get into a shop. Then, you wish to take everything, but they also want everything. So, you tell them to check a room / cupboard and lock them in. Take what you want, then let them out. To make sure they don't let anyone know about your untrustworthiness, grab some of their hair as you lock them in and plant it in the area. Things like this. If you do deceive a partner, assume they will find out. If they do, they won’t work with you again. They may even attempt to recover their losses or get you caught. Just make sure you never deceive someone better than you. Unless someone is a friend, they are an expendable resource, shall we say. They must understand what is happening and behave accordingly. They may, for example, accuse you of taking things too seriously. This is a good excuse to abort the mission. Partners must be able to take things seriously. No one who would act inappropriately or think the wrong way for your objectives should be worked with. Same with questionable motives. Anyway, enough about that, it can be summed up - operate with someone like you. The fewer differences, the easier things will be. However, a problem is just finding team members. So... Finding Teammates The first thing to consider is the nature of the potential partner. Would they ever be capable and willing to carry out night ops? If you asked, would they say ‘... go on...’ or would they laugh and say ‘hehe, yeah, you play too much Splinter Cell’ or ‘yeah, what’ll happen when we get arrested?’? You need someone who’s not afraid to take part in risky, illegal activities, who could take the situation seriously and could carry it out. Remember, you can change their attitude and behaviour over time, you can’t convince most people to break into a building. How would you go about getting your message across to them? You can’t just say ‘How about breaking into school/your neighbour’s house tomorrow?’. You could try saying ‘You know you could just unscrew that window (or any other security flaw)’ and gage their reaction. Or, should you be close, very close friends, you could try the method I used with SF. While at a sleepover, amidst large amounts of giggling just take them out without gear onto someone’s roof. If they like it and find it strangely exciting, you can talk about it later and slowly imply that you do a lot more than climb onto the rooftops. If they’re scared at just the thought, laugh it off and don’t try again. Make sure the target is low-profile, because it’s quite likely the incident will be mentioned. Try reading TWOTS, the Night Ops site or some other night ops related material. Wait until they see it and either show them it, pretending you know nothing about it, or wait for them to read it or ask what it is. ...can’t think of any more... use your imagination. Now, the next section is taken from one of my posts on totse.com. I wasn’t ‘fit for operational duty, hehehe’ to quote, but it’ll do. Roles Motion sensors. Set off when something moves too fast in their IR field. Pellet, moving fast. Possibly small enough to not set off the sensor. Might trigger it though. Try certainties. Walk up to it very, very slowly, like 1 meter a minutes just to be safe. Then cover it in tape, slower than before. Psychlonic, I said I'd have it yesterday but the worry of the rifle put me off. Anyway, a few ideas on team ops. ROLES In solo operations, you can think for yourself, and keep yourself alive. When working in a team, however, there are two different minds, and differences can result in arguments. Therefore, it's essential to have a group leader, sort of the sergeant to the squad. Now, specifics. Group Leader: All operative parties must contain a group leader. Usually the most experienced member of the group, but not always the most skilled. Decisions are made by the group leader, and people obey them. Other squad members can input ideas, but the leader decides what's used. Otherwise, in SWIM's experience, arguments ensue and ops go wrong. Operative: is an operative, and usually the second member of any party. Exactly as group leader but without decision making privileges, as deviations to a plan lead to unnecessary improvising. Can be a specialist in some form of field work, will be with the leader. Recon / Surveillance: Someone patient who can stay on the edges of the area of operation. He'll be checking out areas ahead of the operatives and group leader and covering their asses. This will usually take the form of staying concealed on high ground near the area, or any other place with a good view of the area, with a high powered spotting scope. Can also be a techie, but this obviously lowers his/her ability in both areas. Only really useful in operations taking place outside, or for keeping an eye on guards/points of access/escape to give the operative team advanced warning of potential compromise. This is fucking hard to explain at 3:20 in the morning. Techie: Psychlonic's Overlord. Keeps a police scanner or monitors enemy communications. Obtaining enemy comms fequencies would be difficult, and the equipment to decrypt this hard to find, but if possible, have one. GENERAL NOTES Those roles are listed in order of importance. Group leader makes the decisions for all the operatives, while operatives give the group leader their ideas. What comes of this is an agreed plan. The operative team, if a surveillance man is in place, is guided by the surveillance operative. The team does not move until surveillance says it's clear (even during a compromise, if everyone keeps calm and listens to instructions, recon man can guide the operatives to safety and avoid capture, SG ops with CS and SF. CS plays group leader, CS plays operative and SG is on close recon and distance surveillance. SG has saved CS and SF from capture by security, police and on one occasion a bunch of jumped up TA 'soldiers' because everyone kept calm and SG directed them to hiding places and away from hostiles) GEAR GL's and O's should have the same gear. If one is incapacitated you don't lose equipment or time. It seems cold but you must leave downed people to fend for themselves, otherwise it jeopardizes everyone. For less dangerous ops, operatives carry what they need for their specific role in the operation. If GL is good at lock picking, he takes picks while O takes explosives, for example. Surveillance operatives take just their optical equipment, nothing unnecessary. Obviously, night vision lenses are helpful. Techies SG has never used. Clueless. COMMUNICATION All operatives need to be able to talk to the others. Headsets are best, walkie talkies if not. SG can't remember the name offhand, and they belong to SF, but SG knows his team uses a Motorola headset with British Army standard encryption, costing £80 each. They can be acquired from TA bases. Whatever you use, a code should be made beforehand. A new code should be used for every operation, in case you are being monitored. DO NOT USE THE MILITARY ALPHABET. A lot of people make this mistake - police use it too, and will understand every word. Try to come up with a code that uses monosyllabic phrases. Objectives, locations, operatives, everything should be referred to with this code. Keep transmissions short. TEAM TACTICS Let's assume you’re a two operative team. You have 4 eyes, 4 ears and two noses, and twice the number of potential mistakes. Spread out, and try to make it as if everyone is on a solo op - in the op team, GL proceeds to a waypoint, then O. Keep as far away from each other as possible. Always keep an ear out for SO or T. If the plan and the team are well coordinated and everyone stays in their place, all should go well. Until one of your team mates sets off a motion sensor / talks too loudly / forgets the code. Anything else people need? The compilation won't be for a while, and that's all I can be arsed to do at 4 in the morning besides op and shag and sleep and... fuck it. You're only as good as the worst in your squad. Remember that. Always. CP. Uses for partners. If an operation can be completed solo, it should be, so you have your partner/s for a reason. Here are some uses for them. ‘Packhorse’. You can use your partners to carry more gear than you can on your own. Access. My favourite. Give each other boosts. If you can boost your partner to a location, and they can hold onto the ledge, climb up their body. It’s fun (A last minute edit - I swear to Tiffany Ubisoft are spying on me...). Have one person climb somewhere then hold a rope so anyone else can climb up faster. Or just hold a rope so others can climb down. Get on your friend’s shoulders, make steps out of yourself, lean on fences so they can climb over you. Be creative! Look outs. The use here is obvious.

Skills you don’t have. Obvious, again. Lock picking tends to be the most common reason for this use. Someone to take the blame for you. Make sure you leave no evidence of your own intrusion though. ...that’s about it, here... Various Things A small collection of things that you may find useful in the field, with no real category. Tie knots in ropes to make them easier to climb. Carry another rope without knots, it makes it easier for partners to lower you over various edges. On ropes - find which way you like to climb them. Some people like to walk up the wall, pulling themselves up the rope. Some like to climb up the rope by securing themselves on the rope with their feet, pulling their arms up a bit and then their legs. Hard to explain. If you tie knots in the rope, it’s easiest to climb with tabi or socks. If you can’t remove your shoes, ‘walk’ up the wall. Place your thumb and index finger together, print to print. Then, put the tips of these fingers against their partners on the other hand. You should get a small diamond shape. Keep your lesser eye closed and put this diamond in front of your dominant eye. Things should appear slightly clearer and your vision will seem more focused. Cotton gloves are a nightmare to climb in since they catch on surfaces and your hands move inside them rather than the gloves moving with your hand. Try putting black tape, smooth or rough, around each of the sections of the finger on the outside of the glove. This was found by accident during a trip to France. I know it works there and in the UK, not sure about other places. Anyway, you know those boxes all over the streets, the green ones that do nothing at all? They’re useless. But there are grey ones, tall and thin and with curved corners. Check these for holes. Not keyholes and such, holes that don’t look as if they were put there to allow people to get in. You see, some have holes in them for a reason. If you put a very bright white light over them (white LEDs, for example, or some phones’ torches) nothing happens. You might hear a buzzing noise though. After about ten seconds, count the number of streetlights that have been turned off. This only usually works on the smaller roads, but I can do it to one not far from my house that shuts off all the lights around the roundabout in front of it (and that has lights in monkey puzzle trees). Useful with a partner only though, as the lights come back on not long after you take the light away. Upon further investigation, however, I found that this effect is variable - some lights will come back on instantly, some after 30 seconds. After turning off one set, the lights came back on in 3 different streets. Walking home, however, lights were off 5 minutes later, 2 streets away. Experiment. Learn to resist pain. Remember that in ‘normal’ humans, almost every action we take is for the survival of the species. One of the ways the body makes sure we don’t damage ourselves is to make potentially harmful things painful or unpleasant so we don’t repeat it. So, pain can be ignored. Get a strong friend to play Mercy with you - if you don’t know the game, it’s where you put your hands palm to palm with your opponent and link the fingers into fists. Then you both have to twist and bend the other’s fingers until they scream in pain and eventually say ‘Mercy’, which is when nice people stop. Keep doing this until you can just ignore the pain, remembering that nothing bad will actually come of it. I’ve come to enjoy pain rather than just resist it this way, the unusual feeling becomes second nature. This does wonders for your endurance and general determination. You can hold on to the lip of a building with one arm, 50ft up, and be screaming in pain (silently, in your head) but not letting go while a friend can’t put up with it and falls. You may need a way to warn yourself if someone is coming. The best way to do this is to listen out at all times, and check behind you. Try putting tripwires around, or balancing metal objects against doors. Do some research into Sakki, it does work. If you’re in a room with a door that anyone coming in would have to push (so when you leave you’d have to pull) try putting a balloon next to the hinge. Obviously, don’t set these in the room you’re in, the warning is sort of useless... Black rubber gloves can be bought in bulk from abattoirs. The big, thick kind. Washing up style gloves I’m looking into. Retinal or beta carotene. I believe you’d need to consume eight times the beta carotene to get the same value as retinal... anyway, unsure facts aside, vitamin A speeds visual purple production. Visual purple allows us to ‘see’ in the dark, thus, a lack of vitamin A results in nyctalopia. So, get as much as possible inside you. Too much, however, will poison you. Personally, I’ve been on twice the UK RDA of vitamin A for around three years with no ill-effects. Your maximum level is obviously different. See if you can somehow find out, it’s very, very helpful. Practice everything. Your skills will improve through using them. Necessity is the mother of invention and improvement. Night ops is a form of natural selection. Never be afraid. Highlighted earlier, to be scared is to weaken yourself. Just remember that you could come to harm if you’re not careful, and be careful. Theoretical Operations I would like to point out here that the following is a series of logic puzzles. They are not actual operations I, or anyone else I know, plans to undertake. They are just another tool used for teaching the IDEAS in this text. The pronouns ‘I’ or ‘we’ are used for convenience only. Now, a couple of operations and the approach taken to them. Surgery I was told I was needed for this one by my cousin. Him and his friend are interested in night ops after finding it on a PC I use. Now, his friend, vsanv,’s father is a psychiatrist who owns his own very nice surgery. Since neither of them have any experience in ops whatsoever, they came to me and told me I was needed. Anyway, I was told the surgery has motion sensors, cameras with night vision lenses (which tells me the lights are probably off on the inside), pressure pads on the roof, and a time alarm - if the doors are opened after a certain time, the alarm goes off in 30 seconds. Apparently there is a skylight, which will probably be the means of entry. Once inside, the objective is to proceed to vsanv’s father’s office. Here, I asked vsanv to acquire a map of the surgery and find out everything he can about the security. My cousin, let’s call him MJ, was asked to acquire maps from my location to the surgery. I saw that we could leave our base, leave our estate and proceed across the neighbour’s field, across a few more and emerge with two roads to cross until the surgery. Here we could cross under the chicken wire fence on the field, take it in turns to cross the road and get into a house’s side alley. Here, we could repeat the process to cross the next road. From here we could cross the next road and proceed into the surgery’s car park, avoiding a camera. I could climb on to the roof and, avoiding pressure pads, open the skylight. The inside could be navigated using the maps supplied by vsanv which I’ve asked to be marked with passive security device locations. Possible problems - inexperienced practitioners. They have been told to practice operating in back gardens and then their school. Another problem is that I’m relying on vsanv to do all the recon. Vsanv is very reluctant but after some ‘probing’ he said he’d play the techie and it’s thought he can do this. MJ would be coming with me and that’s the real liability. He wants to get into ops, but he doesn’t have the mentality or skill to even consider operating. Of course, since doubtless you will find this MJ, you could never hope to get out of that surgery. After all, I’d be putting you in there... Good thing that this never will happen. Hotel After playing Hitman Contracts, I decided I wanted to infiltrate a hotel. So, after Sanguine got her family to book her, myself and her father in to the largest, nicest five star we could find, we got to work on recon. We were only there for 3 days, so recon became our primary consideration. The first problem was the large amount of cameras. These are watched a lot, but the ‘guards’ liked to drink Coke and keep an eye on the pool, so on the first night we went for a walk during the day and saw that the security room itself wasn’t covered by a camera. That night we came down and picked the lock, then used two pieces of mirror glass to check inside without opening the door too much in case there was a camera inside. There wasn’t, so we went in and noted down what was and wasn’t on camera. We then went back to our room and decided on an objective. We would proceed on to the roof, cross over to the other side and rappel down on to the balcony of the room in the southwest corner, avoiding the cameras. SF would then pick the lock. Then, if the entry door was unlocked, we would lock it. We would then phone room service and request a methe a l’eau. Whether the room was occupied or not would not be a problem, so long as the occupants were asleep. If they were asleep, we would proceed with the previous plan. If not, we would simply wait until they were. On the second day, we explored the rest of the hotel. Nothing of interest, so we decided to spend the day in the pool. That was, until we found a surprising coincidence - the pool was located pretty much as that of the pool in Contracts. There was a large decorative skylight... another plan emerged... We would get on to the roof and somehow remove a section of the skylight. We would then wait until morning and drop a mannequin down into the pool just as the first person arrived for a swim... So, we would get on to the roof, get into the southwestern room on the third floor. 90 rooms, three floors, we assumed we were going for room 75. However, this was too risky, so we rang our room service and ‘forgot’ to mention our room number. They showed up anyway, so we wouldn’t need to mention the room number later. Beginning again, we would get onto the roof, get in to our target room, make sure the front door was locked, order something positively disgusting, then get back to the balcony, lock the balcony door and climb back on to the roof. Then, we would go to the skylight and remove the glass. For this we would ‘borrow’ CS’s glass compass. Problem being, cutting the glass would make it fall. Simple solution, we would stick a plunger on the glass before we cut it. Then I would go check on our sleeping friends in room ‘75’ while SF got the dummy. Then, it would be a simple matter of waiting for the first person down to the pool. Our recon complete, this operation, were it to actually happen... would take place some time during October when SF can request a room as a birthday ‘present’. However... Problems... we would be getting our own room again, but we would have to make sure that a few things happened. We would need to make sure that no one checked on us, but we could easily do that - lock the door, put SF’s phone on vibrate, ‘do not disturb’ sign. We would also need the same room we had last time, as our method of getting on to the roof would be the drain pipe next to our balcony. So long as no one chose to come out on to their balconies at an inopportune time, and as long as our target room was occupied, the operation should go fine. Things to consider - this operation sounds quite ‘hardcore’, even to the point of being unbelievable, but in fact it’s very simple. All we would be doing is climbing a drain pipe, walking across a roof, rappeling down about 12 feet, picking a simple lock, making a phone call, climbing back up, cutting some glass and waiting. There is almost no way we could get caught, and it’s not at all difficult. Anyone could do this, it’s just that people are afraid of their limits. This comes from earlier. Never underestimate yourself. Now, from those two operations which have not happened and never will, you can see two things. One, no matter how big something seems, everything is incredibly simple and easy, and two, you don’t need to be a ninja or Third Echelon field operative to carry out a night op. Should you choose to carry something out, all you need is a problem and an answer. Think about those two operations. Which sounds more ‘extreme’? Climbing around the roof of a hotel, breaking into central security rooms by walking up to it and picking the lock, then playing two practical jokes? While at first glance the hotel would seem the better op, it’s actually incredibly simple. The surgery would be much more challenging - their are passive security devices to avoid, lots of uncertainties on my part. A key consideration of Night Ops. There is always a way, should you look hard enough. And things are never what they seem. Some past operations that people I’ll label CP/SG, SF and CS have undertaken. They may or may not have happened, I don’t know, since I was not a part of any similar occurrences. School Operatives: SultryGhost Ritual hat Black t-shirt Black elbow supports (the lycra type) Black solid BDU trousers Black skate shoes (és Accels, to be precise) Black rubber gloves Dark blue nylon rope, folded in half and knotted Purple nylon rope, folded in half Wire cutters Flathead SanguineFairy Black hat Black top (longsleeved) Black jeans Black and grey (darkened) Adio Bams, hehe. Dark blue kevlar gloves Black tape Electric pick gun Objective: Infiltrate the building. First note - masks are necessary, only go without them if looking good is a requirement of your outfit. Hehe. Anyway, here we were in my house at 1a.m. Since SF is 4’10” and I’m 5’9” (and a year and a half younger, I still laugh at it sometimes) I held the purple rope and lowered her out of my window before putting the knotted rope on a part of my window and climbing out myself. From here we climbed off of my courtyard and proceeded to a small wooded area (no one can see my house from the back), jumping down into a back garden and moving over one house, onto the street again. From here we waited in a bush for a few minutes until the road was completely empty, then crossed it, running while keeping low. Once across, we ran and jumped up and over a wall and landed in another bush. From here, we went around the side of an old-people’s home into some trees and climbed over the metal, spiked fence. The field was scarily lit, but we had to stay standing as SF’s hair would have been a problem, long red lines of evidence that aren’t blood, unhelpful. We reached the inner fence, and SF boosted me over it. I turned and put my hands through it and SF climbed over. Here we were going to proceed straight along the wall of the new maths / science block, but a window was brightly lit by a flickering blue light - a computer. It struck us as odd, but we decided to not take the risk and crossed back onto the field, before climbing over the fence again past the block. Here, we ran to the wall of the swimming pool and stuck to it, rounding a corner and headed along the path leading to the PE section. Funnily enough, right next to this short path, between two grassy banks, is a large section of piping and such which forms part of the heating system for the pool. We climbed up here and laid down - the live- in caretaker was walking his dogs around the school. I think the warm air from the heating system raised our scents, because the dogs proved no problem. We climbed up on to the roof and, staying low, crossed over the main hall, over the reception center and onto the english corridor roof. From here, we saw that the 2i/c of the school (a very nice seeming, intelligent, vindictive, arrogant man with the same initials as me, strangely enough, SG) had the window of his office open. Now, since I’m on the filming project for the school (due to my... ‘extensive’ knowledge of cameras and how to make things look good) I knew that there was a £2,000 camera in there (An MVX250, for those who know). Also worthy of mention is the £2,500 computer they bought so we could edit our film projects, all to make the school look good on the reception center TV. Hehe, anyway, we crossed over to above his room, at the top. Here, I held the knotted rope while SF climbed down and went in through the window. She then opened the larger window and I climbed in. I turned on his computer, for no particular reason. Then, the interesting twist. It turns out that SF had a pretty little USB plug-in. How convenient. A quick plug and play hack and we were reading his e-mails. It turns out that my english room had been vandalised, and my english teacher, a very nice lady who’s soon to release a book for teenagers, was asking if the CCTV archives had anything. So, we headed over to the camera room and rewound the tape, letting them record over themselves. We went to my English room and saw the graffiti, obviously done by the most intelligent artist known to man. Still, we checked through the obscenities to find his ‘tag’. For the UK practitioners, I can PM you my chav theories. Anyway, with nothing left to do, we went back for the rope left precariously on the roof and picked the reception center door before going home much the same way as the infil. However, it was still only about quarter to three, so we went around the area, lowering eachother down to lights and removing plug covers. However, rather than risk taking 240 volts, we left everything alone but noted that later, should the area need blacking out, we could simply shoot / rip out the fuses. Should we be up against the police any time soon, we can get back to around mine and take out all the lights, ‘fighting’, as it were, on our terms. This operation shows one thing if anything - how simple ops can be and often are. A school was ‘broken’ into and the deputy headmaster’s computer hacked. Sound impossible? Anyone can climb onto a roof and climb through an open window. Even if it was closed, it could have been pried open, ‘slipped’ if I’d bought my favourite window tools. Just remember that simple ops like this get boring. If possible, go somewhere with human security and such. School II Operative ChaosPenguin Rash shirt (longsleeved) Rash shorts Long socks (rugby style) Wetsuit (slightly too big), sprayed with rubber Ski mask, sprayed with rubber Socks, sprayed with rubber Cotton gloves sprayed with rubber Black cotton rope, knotted Nail scissors (holstered on left forearm) Camera phone (holstered on leg) Objective: Access a certain teacher’s desk and retrieve the answer textbook for a large section of homework (2 week time limit) Here, a friend had been complaining about his maths teacher setting a piece of homework that took 6 pages in our textbooks. I looked at the pages in question and thought that, given two weeks to do it in, the homework was reasonable. It was only simultaneous equations, about 15 of them. However, I thought I’d ‘help’ my friend and test out my SC suit, which I’d never used during an operation. So, a few nights later, I approached my school as before. This time, however, I proceeded up the fire escape on the maths / science block. The building has two floors, but the ceiling of the downstairs is about 10 feet and the upstairs has 7 feet ceilings. However, after these 7 feet there are 12 feet ‘tunnels’ up to the skylights. So, after climbing the fire escape, I got on to the railings and tried to jump and grab the roof. About a foot too high, I tried to jump and step up the wall. Considering my position, that was a stupid idea - I almost pushed off the wall and fell down. However, I fell in love with the suit when I climbed up a plastic, rectangular drain pipe just using the friction of the suit on the plastic. On the roof, I noted that the suit was a pefect colour for ops - a sort of faded black/grey colour. I crossed over to a skylight and and used the nail scissors to remove the plastic, rubbery parts (like those found on car windows). Then I just pushed out the ‘pin’ on the outside hinges and lifted off the skylight. I put the top of the skylight on top of the lower section and secured the rope to it. I pulled it about a bit and it stayed in place, scarily. I lowered the rope in slowly. The thing here is, in every corridor in this building there’s a motion sensor in the corners above the doors, presumably so amateurs open the doors too fast. I was a bit worried about the rope moving as I climbed down, setting off the sensor, so I grabbed the rope and put my feet on the wall. I lowered myself down slower than I’d ever moved before and found that I could keep myself and rope perfectly still . Perfect. I like that word. Hehe. Once in the corridor, I went downstairs and got to the target room. For a disabled-friendly, high-technology, ‘secure’ building, the doors need some work. The locks are exposed, you can push them in from the outside. After unlocking the door by pushing the lock with the nail scissors, I walked in and, making sure there was no motion sensor, armed security guard or photoelectric beams, I made my way to the desk and found it unlocked. A shame, that was going to be picked with the scissors (try this on filing cabinets and lockers). I pulled out the text book, which was the first thing I saw when I opened the drawer. Found the required pages, filmed the answers with the phone and got ready to go home. However, ever the anarchist, I TOOK ALL THE CHAIRS OFF OF THE DESK and... TURNED THEM UPSIDE DOWN ON THE FLOOR! Oh yes, I had subverted society and was doubtless going to be killed for my crimes against caretakers, so I quickly left the scene of the terrorist incident. Just for fun, I went back up the stairs and climbed the rope, put the skylight back, uneventful. So, I lowered myself on to the fire escape and and walked in front of the nearest camera. Then I tried a few kama sutra positions (it had some funny pictures, but it’s useless. Try Flic Everett) to see how durable the suit was. No matter how awkwardly I twisted my body, the suit wouldn’t tear. There is no lesson to learn there, the lesson comes from when I gave my friend the phone. Obviously, getting all the answers for him impressed him. However, he asked how I got them. I laughed and said ‘I broke into the school, of course.’. He laughed as well, and we started joking about how I could kill some people to change our GCSE levels later. If you tell the truth like a joke, it’s amazing how people don’t believe you. Hehe. He told everyone, as well. The next day, my friend had written out all the answers and was selling them. He was even kind enough to give me a share. My message here is to the operators that steal. Money can be made from goods, yes. But the real money lies in information. You don’t have to take anything, I’ve made most of the money for my latest toys by getting test answers for people and finding things out. While their full extent is known only to a few, my ‘abilities’ are well known among my various friendship groups and believe me, people will pay for knowledge. Psychlonic’s rule 5, ‘What Happens in the Shadows, Stays in the Shadows’ does still apply - they know I can sneak up on people, never lose in manhunt and hide and seek and can outclimb all of them (yes Morg, even with a broken wrist) but obviously not that I can also photograph them in their sleep. Try local businesses, CS is 18 in under 2 years, when he is he’s going to try selling his skills as corporate espionage. There was a much larger, more personal paragraph here but it was hardly persuasive... I’ll say this - try to find something that gives us a better name, eh? At the moment a fair few of us are known for being mere burglars and ‘petty’ thieves. We can be, and are, so much more. Let’s make sure no one finds out. Shop This is one of my favourite short ops. And by short I mean less than 30 minutes. Operatives: ChaosPenguin Black turtleneck Ritual hat Scarf (not worn as a mask, but could be made into one) Black jeans Black és shoes Large cotton snowboarding gauntlets (I would’ve worn a mask...) CarbonShard Black fleece Black jeans tied at the ankles Ski mask Socks Pry bar and metal rulers Picks Cotton gloves with rubber grips Knotted rope Object transportational device, known as a ‘bag’ You are not safe from your own kind. I woke up one night because CS was staring at me. So, I got dressed and asked him various questions, including why he hadn’t made me breakfast, apparently. We jumped out of my window and walked about a mile and a half into an area that wouldn’t appear out of place in kitsch London. I was cold and awake. Of course, I didn’t need to ask why we were there but I did anyway. CS pointed towards a snooker hall. I stood by the wall and he jumped onto my head before climbing up onto a the front section of the adjoining building. They’d put nails above the snooker hall and its sign, just not the platform less than 2 feet away from it. He leaned over and I climbed up his arms and onto his back - he stood up and I climbed on to the roof. I had the courtesy to put my hands out at right angles, so he jumped into those and sprang up onto the roof. He tied his rope to the chimney and left it on the roof. We checked over the other side and hung down onto the fire escape. The fire door obviously couldn’t be opened so we put some rulers into the window and slid it open. From here, we went through the window and appeared in a very small corridor. Through to the next room, we were in the upstairs snooker room. Nothing of interest so CS put the pry bar through the ‘grille’ covering the bar and turned the latch, helping himself to a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey (which went down the table’s pockets, not into his). The door to the stairs was locked so we picked it and went down into the bar area. Still more tables. Otherwise, nothing. We didn’t like this so we left the way we came and decided to visit the shop next door. We jumped to that one and I hung CS over the edge while he pried this window. With no foothold, we were undecided as to how I should get down. In the end, CS leaned out of the window with his arms extended and I jumped down with mine out to my side. He pulled me in and we had a walk around the store rooms upstairs. Everything was in sealed boxes, so we went to the non-descript office and considered the possible uses of a pricing gun. None. We also couldn’t think of a good way back up to the roof. So, I sat on CS’s head and he leaned out of the window. I slowly stood up and climbed up, pulling him up afterwards. And just for good measure, only 20 minutes had passed. I was unnerved, but duty called as a party of drunken thirtysomethings was walking past down below. Now, there is nothing wrong with them, but they do deserve to be scared every now and then so we dropped a ruler down in front of them. They stayed still and started whispering, so I jumped back to the snooker hall roof while CS dropped another ruler for them. How kind. Of course, ever pushing the boundaries, I had to risk us getting arrested... so I kicked the rope over. CS’s eyes were a picture. The advantage of thick gloves is that you don’t have to climb down ropes. You can just grab them and jump... so I did. And ran. Lesson learned - Ops with no discernable interest are boring, ops without any real security, challenge or point are bad enough to make your head bleed. Other lesson learned - partners are useful. And annoying. While you can do things you can’t do solo, you can’t think about things the way you can solo. The Chaos Penguin was a liability there. And another - Do not annoy drunk people. My N00b Experience (I can’t believe I just typed that damn word...) Well, it had to happen at some point. Holiday village. Around 150 caravans (or RVs, I love my American cousins) and one-floor holiday homes, nice ones. Pool, bars, golf, everything. And some unexpected visitors. The previous ops have used stealth as the main asset, for the most part... Operatives SultryGhost (referred to as CP since most of the others aren’t close) Camo boonie and scarf half-mask, stage paint camo Camo BDU coat (as before, entirely covers my neck with the zip taped inside under my chin [and once to], buttons removed) Camo BDU trousers ÉS Accels Leather gloves (my Kevlars got destroyed recently) Camo backpack (pry bar, fishing line and hooks, spotting scope and 3D camo net) Thigh holsters (Red torch and 4inch bladed knife) Elf Dark blue hoody (turned inside out) Dark blue jeans Black trainers Cotton gloves Ski mask Probably a lighter E3 Camo cap Camo paint (face and neck) Camo coat Camo trousers Medium boots Leather gloves Webbing belt (knife, torch, smoke grenades, wirecutters) Virgo Camo boonie Camp paint (face and neck) Camo coat Camo BDU trousers Black skateshoes Kevlar gloves LBV (Red torch, multitool, mini-binocs, smoke bombs [Running in the Family, Level 42]) Black backpack SanguineFairy Black beanie Camo paint Camo BDU coat Camo BDU trousers Black skateshoes Pockets - red penlight, lockpicks, penknife After 3 days of visiting the place as civilians, we met E3 and Virgo. Strange, but fun. We found their ops gear first, in their holiday home. And Elf... my brother. Found my prybar taped under my bed... So, I agreed to take him out, deciding I’d improvise the set-up. The five of us were in a realtree tent around 2 miles from the site. At 2a.m., I woke everyone up (they all refused to stay up or wake up early) and we headed out. After about a mile we came to some railway tracks and the first problem arose. We heard a freight train coming and laid down, but Elf seemed insistent on running across the tracks. He wasn’t going anywhere on his own, so I pulled him to the floor when the train got close. Needless to say, he complained. When we reached the site, everyone spread out while I went up a tree and got the scope out. A group of chain-smoking, fake gold wearing teenagers were up, but otherwise we appeared fine in the holiday home area, a magic place with very few lights and nice mud, with thick gravel between some of the houses. So, we regrouped and began. Moving through the houses was no problem except for E3 and Elfs’ apparent inability to move across gravel silently. Still, we were fine until we reached a house with two quad bikes. SF picked them and E3 and Elf drove them off to the beach. And then there were three. The next area consisted of an open area with crazy golf and exhibit homes on one side with some trees and a large entertainment complex on the right. Not having the equipment to complete our aims stealthily, we ran crouched over to a large wooden gate. SF and I got down and boosted Virgo over, then she kicked it through and we ran in. It only took a few seconds and I was expecting it to be louder. Still, I couldn’t complain. I dropkicked the door at the bottom and SF caught it before its knob hit me in mine. Virgo threw in a stump remover smoke bomb and, not thinking, I went in anyway and dived under a table, hitting the lone occupant of the kitchen in the legs. Great. I stood up and let the table fall on them while SF and Virgo ran in through into the next room. We were aiming to pierce some of the beer barrels, since lager was agreed as the worst thing humanity has done with alcohol. It ended up with us stabbing about 3 of them before the person I’d floored came in. We ran through to the next room and Virgo smoked bombed the beer storage, even I assumed that would cause some hesitation. Apparently not - I almost turned around before SF put a chair through a window and we all dived through it and ran to the holiday homes. We all split up and, luckily enough, he came after me. I ran up onto the roof of a house and ran to the other side, then dived backwards off of it and ran. I knew exactly where to find everyone - the other two had a damn fire going. Elf even had his mask off, it was in his hands so I grabbed it and forced it onto his head. At least he’d left the bikes going, so those two drove off. There were still three. And a fair few behind us, it seemed, as the one persuer had turned into something like 5. I could see SF and Virgo thinking so I led by example and started swimming. It was cold. It was stupid. It worked. We only had to swim about 100 meters to a small boat, which we boarded. I went through my gear - my torch wasn’t water proof. I wiped my knife with my skin, since it’s carbon steel and got the scope out again, grinning as one of Them set a foot in the water and turned back. Hehe. So, left on the boat, we couldn’t decide what to do next. Virgo wanted to wanted to wait, I wanted to swim and SF kept laughing and saying we should steal the boat. The sensible option? None of them really, so I broke the waiting by swimming again. We got out of the water behind the entertainment complex and went back in through the window we’d broken. We all got to work and put holes in all the crates we could see, grabbing a bottle of Spätlese as the souvenir and did what anyone else who isn’t sensible would’ve done - we ran out the way we entered last time and threw the lovely wine so it was clearly visible near the holiday homes, then ran straight past them and headed back to base. This is the part where I’d like to tell you how we ran past the train, but SF slipped and I saved her at the last minute. No, it was boring. I set up some tripwires (I hadn’t realised I’d bought the fishing stuff, but it ended up ‘useful’) but otherwise, nothing. Then we got back to the tents. The idiots had somehow gotten the quads about two and a half miles away. I was impressed and horrified - what did they think they could do with them? Decency demanded they be returned, and yes, return them we did. I won’t go into the details, but imagine Sam Fisher trying to do his job with elephantitis, in a silent movie... Well, at some point that had the makings of a decent op using speed instead of stealth. The E&E was my first real escape (civilians shouting at you then falling over doesn’t really count), but I don’t count it as being compromised - it was expected and desired. At no point did we stop until we reached the beach, after that the movement was relatively constant. The op was so fast, in fact, that I didn’t even get to set my brother up. Lovely. Still, for speed, E&E and the experience of trying to sneak around with a quad bike made it worth a mention, I feel. ‘Training’ Operation This is just to provide some actual examples and lessons, since I haven’t really done that so far. So... You’ve made a little checklist of things you need. You need to be able to move undetected. You can. You need to be able to leave your base and return to it undetected. You can. You need the necessary gear. You have it. You need a target. You have one. You need a plan. Ah. Let’s start in your room. Your target is a nearby university. So, at 1 in the morning, you move your bed, roll up the carpet and pull out a drill, a few screwdrivers, a small knife, some rope, wire cutters, spraypaint and a rifle scope. You take out some suitable clothes, get everything ready and prepare to leave. Your room is upstairs and you climb out on to the street. However, doing this may leave you unable to climb back in. Any artificial method of climbing back in might arouse suspicion. So, you leave a rope hanging out of your window and pull it sideways and leave it so it’s not just hanging straight out of an open window. Or do you climb out onto your roof and rappel off into the back of your house? Let’s say you go with the former. In the front garden, you hide in the dark and wait - there are a few cars and the road is brightly lit. Once they’ve all passed, you check a few times, wait until the time feels right and sprint across the road, keeping low and vaulting over a low wall into the opposite garden. You check to make sure you weren’t observed, then go around the side of the house into the back garden. From here, you cross a few fences until you reach the last house. You’re crossing the garden and a light is turned on. Depending on what type of person you are, you either think ‘fuck’, ‘shit’, ‘bugger’ or ‘ah...’. You’re stuck without cover and in the light. So you simply stop moving. You’re on one foot because the other hadn’t completed it’s step. Then you slowly lay down and crawl over to the window, and keep just below it. You move over to the last fence and, after checking it, you jump it and cross over into a hedge. Your proceed along in this manner until the university is in sight. It has wrought iron fences with nothing to avoid silhouetting and there’s a security guard at the gate, as if cars are going to need barriers opened for them at half two in the morning. So you climb over the fence and again make sure you weren’t seen. You don’t like the guard for some reason so you move over to his outpost and see a wire running up into the ceiling of the building. Weird, the wiring is external. It should be fixed... So you cut it, then you think about the possibility of that wire being the security alarm that has now sent a signal to the alarm company. But if it has, it was worth it because you can evade the police but that guard can’t see. Hehe. So, keeping in dark areas and crossing light places swiftly and keeping crouched, you eventually reach the medical lecturing hall. You see a drain pipe, it’s so inviting it even has plastic supports and shakes when you touch it... Oh and look, a security camera you hadn’t noticed before, though some distance away. You pull out the scope and notice a red light inside the lens - it’s emitting an IR beam and can see in the dark. Still, you see it’s not actually facing your direction. So you move over to the drain pipe. The second you get there an electrician walks by a lamp post. He’s looked up at the light so his night vision, if he had any, is destroyed. He hasn’t reacted at all, so you can safely say you haven’t been sighted. So you climb up the pipe, slowly since it’s not safe at all really... and just to prove it, a screw falls out, scraping the wall. Somehow the electrician hears this, so again you stop and listen. You see him look about before going back to playing with the light. You climb up and reach the roof. It’s only about four floors, so you decide to try and get in here. You see a fire escape hatch but it doesn’t want to open. You put a flat head in there and pry it - unsuccessfully. You try your knife and see it you can unlatch it. It doesn’t work. Simple solution - you take out the drill and use it slowly on the hatch. The holes don’t destroy the catch, but it’s weakened it and you pry the hatch open. Ooooh, the mystery. You open the hatch and it’s very, very squeaky. Knowing that unless you have cancer, amongst other things, there will almost never be DNA in your urine you pee on the hinges and open it. Inside is dark, you use your watch’s light and climb down. You find yourself on the inside of a very small room so you unlock the door from the inside and check through. It’s empty, and you’re on a stair case. So, down you go. On the fourth floor, nothing but offices with computers and books and probably someone’s revolutionary thesis... boring, third floor, class rooms with lots of very weird looking diagrams but no dead people. Second floor, the lecturing hall. The seats are dark, on the upper floor. The students can get a good look at the disection on the first floor then, which is brightly lit. But it’s empty. How boring. So, you take the stairs down to the first floor and see a few corridors, some more classrooms and a few cupboards.The dead people are probably in those. Ah, reception. Those lovely places with hardwood floors and security cameras... oh, and phones, they always have phones... ‘Police and ambulance please, my friend’s just fallen off of a lamp post and he’s hurt... really bad, I think he’s broken his leg... yeah, we’ve been drinking a bit, not much... yeah we’re at the University of Examples... thanks *hangs up* for fuck’s sake, I was calm...’. Then you make your way back up to the roof and wait for a few minutes. Is the emergency services actually doing it’s job efficiently? Hmmmm... And so you go home... lights are on. Now you’re going to have to prove your skill with lying.... Outro That’s about all I have to say on Night Ops for now... Next will be a complementary text, using this but focusing on espionage (phone tapping, plug and play hacking, spying in general, my preferred method of making money), then probably an actual attempt at a decent night ops guide. Until then, I can be reached on [email protected] with any specific problems. Who knows, I may even take on a student or two over the net. In fact, yes. Applications welcome.

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