SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

“Curtis, can you and Goose give me a hand?” Tracy Wei-Liu had reached a critical stage of the disassembly. She’d unbolted the capacitor bank from the body of the MADM, then disconnected the fuse wires running from the energy cells into the Pentolite, easing the wires millimeter by millimeter from the capacitors. That had been the most problematic element of the exercise because there was no way of measuring whether or not any of the capacitors’ latent energy remained in the wiring. More to the point, the core of the fuse wire was made of copper — and Chinese Pentolite, Wei-Liu knew, reacted adversely to copper, brass, magnesium, and steel. There were two wires buried three inches in the pale grayish-yellow explosive. By the time she exposed the end of the second one from the capacitor unit, she’d sweated clear through her shirt.

Rowdy had put her in the most secure position he could find. She and the bomb were concealed under a ten-foot-long outcropping of rock, some twenty yards below the top of the ridge. Slightly below her position, a ragged cluster of scruffy trees, bent almost forty-five degrees by the wind, helped shield her from view. Rowdy and the rest of them had used whatever they could find to obscure her work site. They’d brought boughs from below, as well as using the tarp from the truck to create a trompe l’oeil effect of light and shadow that masked Wei-Liu and the device.

It was time to remove the capacitors, to get them safely clear of the explosives. For that, she’d need an extra pair of hands or two. The capacitors themselves were banked in an insulated rectangular box that sat atop the MADM’s hull. The fifty-five-pound battery pack, which resembled the compressor compartment of a 1930s refrigerator, had been bolted directly behind the capacitors. The battery had been removed. But acid had leaked, fusing the six capacitor-unit bolts to the metal hull. Wei-Liu hadn’t been able to budge a single one.

The two Delta shooters ducked into Wei-Liu’s hideaway. She showed them the problem.

“Give us a couple of minutes,” Goose said. He rolled onto his back and pointed a small flashlight inside the MADM shell. “Got to see the nuts.” He squinted, then pulled himself onto his knees. “Twelve millimeter — maybe thirteen,” he said. “You have a socket set, ma’am?”

“I don’t,” Wei-Liu said. “I have a set of wrenches, though — here.”

The soldiers examined the tools. Curtis fit one of the wrenches to the top bolt and twisted it. “Too big — use the twelve.”

Goose picked through the pile, found the wrench, and worked his arm inside the MADM hull. After a few seconds he said, “Damn,” and pulled his arm out. He looked at Wei-Liu. “It’s fused. Gonna have to muscle it off. You have any pliers?”

Wei-Liu retrieved a small pair from her tool satchel and displayed them. “Will these work?”

Goose’s face fell. “Needle nose,” he said. “Useless. I can’t get traction.”

Wei-Liu said, “What’s the problem?”

“The bolt head and nut are the same size,” Curtis said. “You have a single twelve-millimeter wrench. I need something to hold the bolt head tight while Goose takes the nut off.”

“Got it covered.” Goose pulled a dark multipurpose tool from a pouch on his belt. “Try this.”

He tossed the tool to Curtis, who flipped it open, revealing a set of snub-nosed pliers. “We’ll have these off in a couple of minutes, ma’am.”

Wei-Liu’s hand covered the bolt head. “Wait—”

Goose looked at her. “What’s the problem?”

“Those are steel,” Wei-Liu said. “You can’t use them — they might cause a spark.”

“Your call, ma’am.”

Wei-Liu plucked the multitool from the soldier’s hand and played with it for a few seconds. And then she extracted a saw-edged knife blade from one of the handles, locked it into place, and cut two small strips of cloth from her shirt-tail. She wrapped one strip around each of the pliers’ jaws. “Now,” she said. “Now.”

0900. “Fire in the hole.” From his position behind a boulder fifty yards upwind, X-Man shifted the safety bail on the firing device to its armed position, depressed the flat handle, and ducked. The six-pound charge of Semtex lifted the uphill side of the truck and flipped it, rolling the big vehicle onto its back in a huge orange fireball and cloud of toxic black smoke.

Kaz poked his head up to admire their handiwork. “Was it good for you, X?”

X-Man brushed debris out of his hair. “Oh, yeah. The earth really moved for me, Kazie-poo.” He waved at Yates, who gave the two spooks a smile, an upturned thumb, and then beckoned them up to his position.

“As soon as Bill and Tuzz finish siphoning off the avgas, get to work on the chopper. I want it burning when the Chinese show.”

Kaz grinned. “How come you give us all the good jobs?”

Rowdy shooed them away. “Go — play with matches. I have real work to do.”