SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

X’s first instructor had been a private contractor, a Brooklyn-born, seventysomething World War II veteran who called himself Roy (although it was probably an alias, since just about every instructor at Harvey Point worked under an alias). Whatever his real name might have been, Roy was irrefutably a heavily tattooed, bulldog-faced retired chief boatswain’s mate, a former member of the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams. He had first practiced his craft as a nineteen-year-old, blowing up miles of coral reefs and beach obstacles in the Pacific to create channels for Marine landing craft. He’d refined his abilities during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. According to the scuttlebutt, he’d left the Navy in the early 1970s and been “sheep-dipped” by the Agency, going to work for Bill Hamilton, Langley’s smooth-talking, genteelly diabolical head of maritime services.

Roy’s instructional style had been … unique. He flapped bent elbows against his rib cage, almost as if he were trying to fly, when he growled at his students. And The swore exactly like the chief petty officer he had once been. But he knew his stuff, and more to the point, he was Old Navy — the Navy of oral, not written, instruction. And so he passed his tradecraft on through vivid example, memorization, and anecdote, not the sort of sterile PowerPoint presentations or dry, pseudo-academic lectures they were used to. X-Man had found it hugely energizing.

Roy had started them out with the basics: two days of blasting-cap crimping. “You people at Christians In Action got friggin’ money to burn,” Roy told them the first day, tempering his language because of the three women in the course. “And so they’ll give you all the friggin’ toys money can buy. If its electronic, or cyber, or automated, they’ll buy it for you.”

The old guy paused, then fired for effect. “But lemme tell ya: that don’t mean squat. Because when you’re gonna need this stuff, you’re gonna be out in the boonies in some friggin’ sixth-world country where they ain’t got no friggin’ electricity, or friggin’ satellite-enhanced detonators, or what have you. And all you’re gonna be able to friggin’ lay your hands on is the same kind of blasting cap I used fifty years ago. Which is why I’m gonna make sure you won’t blow your friggin’ hands off when you handle your basic Mark One Mod Zero keep-it-simple-stupid blasting cap by crimping it too damn high.”

And so, X-Man and the rest of them learned. And after a while they progressed to newer-design electric and non-electric blasting caps, pencil detonators, pressure switches, and radio-controlled detonators. They set off ammonium nitrate bombs. They learned to deploy shaped-chain and cable-cutting charges, and how to position Mk-133 and Mk-135 demolition packs to collapse suspension-bridge towers and highway-overpass abutments. In the second week, Roy taught them about improvised demolitions. They learned to make shaped charges out of number-ten cans and C-4, and cobble together blasting caps out of plumbing pipe, ground tetryl, wire, and pencil lead. They learned (one of the women with some noticeable embarrassment) how to waterproof firing devices using condoms.

By the time X-Man took the three-week advanced explosives course the following year, making the earth move was a sure thing. He could flip a bus, vaporize a limo, or even collapse a bridge. Now he learned how to build car bombs, and wire cell phones so he could blow the target’s head off when the son of a bitch answered, but not disturb the hairdo of the person across the table. He made huge bombs out of fertilizer and diesel fuel, powerful enough to bring down a ten-story building. He absorbed the intricacies of platter charges, ribbon charges, breaching charges, and roof-cutters.

But no one at Harvey Point had ever taught X-Man alchemy. Making claymores without some way to contain the plastic explosive and direct its explosive force precisely where he wanted it was going to be tough.

He pulled himself to his feet and wandered over to the charred hull of the chopper. Maybe he’d be able to find something else usable inside. But after three minutes, he came up dry and decided not to waste any more time.

He watched as Rowdy and four others gently slid the MADM into its shipping container then moved it out of the truck bed. He stayed where he was: he’d had enough of It’s company. But after they muscled the damn thing up the ravine wall into a protected position some two hundred yards away, flanked by rocks and shaded by sparse trees, he and Kaz climbed into the truck and poked around.

Wei-Liu had left the MADM battery unit behind. They examined it. Probably weighed fifty, even sixty pounds. It was seeping a nasty-smelling liquid, too. Not a good sign. The truck bed was empty, so they eased themselves off the rear gate and headed back toward the meager pile of explosive.