“We are a tough people, we used to have war all the time. Fighting is in our DNA.” At a major international fighting event this year, all four athletes competing for world championship titles hailed from the Caucasus. The event, UFC 311, which was held in California on Jan. 18, …
Read More »When the KGB Took on the Soviet Police
by Boris Egorov At the end of 1980, on the outskirts of Moscow, a number of Soviet policemen picked an argument with a KGB major. They had no idea what dire consequences the encounter would have for them and the entire Soviet police force. On the morning of December 27, …
Read More »Wilderness Tracking in Arizona: A Mission Along the Border
by Heath Hansen “I sent the grids; we’ll be heading out by noon on Thursday,” Tim Foley informs me over the phone, before I hit the road. Foley is a grizzled former paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne Division, and leader of the volunteer group Arizona Border Recon (AZBR). For more than a …
Read More »Irish Rebels Fought the 1916 Easter Rising With Homemade Weapons and Smuggled Mausers
As World War I raged across the European continent, the streets of Dublin erupted in violence on Easter Monday, 1916. Not with the tread of an invading army, but with gunfire from Irish rebels. On that day, a force of some 1,600 nationalists rose against British rule, to proclaim the …
Read More »‘Troops of the Hunter Class’: Creating Britain’s Legendary Commando Force
Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill in World War II wanted “specially trained troops of the hunter class, who can develop a reign of terror down these coasts [of occupied Europe], first of all on the butcher and bolt policy… leaving a trail of German corpses behind them.” This translated into …
Read More »Man Applied for Fake Hitman Job on Parody Website
by Susan Katz Keating A member of the Air National Guard was hit with criminal charges – but not for leaking classified documents. It has to do with murder-for-hire. A Tennessee man who serves in the Air National Guard agreed to kill someone for a client who actually was an …
Read More »Dirt, Dope, and Deceit: ‘Operation Hades’ Unearths Moroccan Drug Tunnel
by A.R. Fomenko “The ghost has been illuminated.” VIENNA BUREAU – It was the kind of pursuit that runs slow and cold. Spanish authorities hunted in vain for years to uncover a smuggling tunnel between Morocco and a tiny exclave of Spain within the North African country. The underground passageway was …
Read More »The Sands of Agadez: Where a Woman Knows More Than She Should About Gun Lords and Mercenaries
by Carl Hancocks For the past four years, the city of Agadez has been what could barely pass as home for a woman without a name. Nigerian, she fends for herself as a sex-worker, but that was not how she arrived in this place. Her story is that of a …
Read More »MiG Pilot Viktor Belenko: ‘I Am the Luckiest Man Alive’
by Susan Katz Keating In retrospect, it seems fitting that I met Viktor Belenko in Reno. He was a gambler hanging out in a gambling town, surrounded by pilots in their fast moving aircraft, barreling wildly around pylons. I went there many years back, looking for stories to be found …
Read More »Ranch Dog Rescues Missing Toddler After Harrowing Night in Arizona Wilderness
by Bobby Dee “Buford was just sitting there with the little kid. Just brought him up from the horse pasture and brought him over to the gate and was just hanging out with him.” A two-year-old boy who vanished from his home Monday afternoon was found safe the following morning …
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Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers

