Saturday, 2125 hours, 80 Kilometers from Base

5 minutes to checkpoint

“Sorry guys! There’s nothing we can do”

“But…”

“We have no one to take out that cross-link. I’m sorry!”

There was disappointment in his voice. We were so close to covering the entire city, 3.5 Million MUs for each layer, if we had succeeded. We didn’t.

It was a sad day. 5 of us had traveled over 100 kilometers in different directions only to be thwarted a few minutes before we were about to cover the city. Two minutes before our first link, to be precise. We could think of no other explanation except that our plan had leaked. The portal used for the cross-link wasn’t accessible at night. And it was one hour away from the city. A strategic portal that happened to have one ENL agent present next to it so late into the night at the very moment we were ready to field over the city. What are the chances! None. Unless, the toad knew what we were up to. Were there double agents in our city? L8s who were blue only to provide information about our ops to their green drinking buddies. It’s difficult to isolate the double agents because they would play just like any of us. They’ll deploy R8s, come for farms, help in key transfers, they might even be key reps for all we know. The only thing that separates them from a regular agent – they won’t let us win the local cell for every septi.

We hadn’t been able to execute a single cover our city that year. Considering we had over 80 L8+ active agents in the city at that time, there was something extremely wrong. But then again, numbers do not mean efficiency. How could we ascertain that our plans were failing because of a mole (or moles) and not due to our own incompetence? Now this was a tough problem that needed to be fixed at the earliest.

I’m a movie buff. And I’m really into con movies. The sting, Confidence, 9 Queens, Ocean’s Eleven – we would need to try something similar. We needed a con to fool the moles – A decoy op!

I started working on a plan for covering the city. However, this time, everyone needed to know only what I told them. Nothing more, nothing less! I began working on two different plans with a trusted friend. Only the two of us would know what each cover looked like. I picked a few agents who were already suspected of being moles and put them in different on-field teams. None of the agents knew that there was more than one cover plan, all they knew was that they needed to travel to a few locations and throw links to specific portals. And complete silence on COMM. No captures, no attacks, no hacks, not even upgrades before the Op. And all discussion moved to Telegram and Zello.

I had my own favorite suspect in the team. I had been tracking his activity for quite some time. What made me suspicious was that he stayed in a toad-infested area. 5 toads, 1 smurf. Even though all of them played regularly, he said he had never met any of them. Every evening, I could see notifications on COMM for portals in close proximity being captured by him or any of the toads. Unless none of them looked up from their phone screens ever, it was impossible they hadn’t met. In a city like ours, two months is a long time for agents to play near each other and never greet each other on COMM. Or meet.

The agents met me at a coffee shop near the City Center and were on their way. It was tough convincing them to not discuss the plan with anyone outside their own group. Fortunately, they agreed and didn’t share their part of the plan. At least that’s what I think.

5 minutes before we were supposed to start linking, I radioed a Good Luck message on the app. Two minutes later, a cross was thrown eliminating any links from the south-west part of the city. Another distant strategic portal was used to block the links. The cross link affected only one of the fake field plan I had shared with one team. The team with my favorite suspect. The layers for the other field plan went up as planned. We had a blue cover over the city. And we had our mole.

It was painful, sharing the truth about my op with the faction. Most of them were angry. Angry that I hadn’t trusted them. But, my plan had worked. We had apprehended the culprit. It took some time for the agents to realize that I did it for the team. I was forgiven by most of them with the condition that if I ever did something like this again, they would put me in the hospital. Fair enough.

The double-agent was asked to leave. His account got deleted two days later and he is now playing for the team he should have joined in the first place. Not me though! It was a close shave. I wasn’t as careless as him whenever I met the ENL agents in my area. My best friend is a toad – he is the one who helped me create the decoy op in the first place. As a matter of fact, he is the one who introduced me to the game. I’m also a movie buff. And I’m really into con movies. Although my friend wanted me to join the ENL, I already knew what role I wanted to play – the spy. After the constant failed ops, a lot of accusations had started to fly about, and some of the senior players had begun to suspect me as the double-agent. All I needed to be in the clear was a scapegoat, and the L8 noob smurf provided that. He acted quite predictably, telling his friends about the big op happening next weekend, with my best friend listening attentively and trying his best not to laugh.

Although I took a big risk with the op; the entire faction could have turned against me; I have now become one of the most trusted smurfs in the city. And the smurfs still can’t figure out why we haven’t won a single cycle since that day.

(Reference: Septi refers to the Regional score and timer present under the ‘Intel’ tab in ops. One septi equals one countdown cycle under the section)