SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

‘That’s SOP{Standard Operating Procedure.} for the Agency.” Ritzik knew from bitter experience that the CIA did not like to share its wealth. They held on to intelligence like misers and doled it out the way John D. Rockefeller used to hand out dimes to street urchins.

But real-time intelligence was the key to victory in Special Operations. The essence of Special Operations, as Ritzik knew, was using small, well-trained units to achieve operational success in denied areas. The mission might be direct action, or it might be political, economic, or even psychological in nature. But no matter what the nature of the mission, Ritzik understood that without a constant flow of detailed, up-to-the-minute intelligence, any small and lightly armed force would be doomed. SpecOps Warriors cannot fight blind.

Rockman’s clear gray eyes met Ritzik’s. “I want you to go out and clean up the Agency’s mess — extract those four men covertly and bring ‘em home before the Chinese find out we’ve violated their territory.”

It wasn’t a question.

Ritzik’s index finger tapped the satellite pictures. “I’ll need real-time intelligence to get the job done, Mr. Secretary — information I can download onto my tactical laptops and handhelds.”

“Everything you need, you will receive,” Rockman said. He watched as Ritzik perused the pictures. “Now, before we leave for the White House, I want to hear from you a rough idea of how you’re going to bring those four men home.”

“I’d feint in the Pacific first, Mr. Secretary,” Ritzik said coolly. “Use the Navy to draw China’s attention away from Xinjiang. Once they were diverted, I’d go in by air and get positioned ahead of the sons of bitches. I’d employ speed, surprise, and violence of action. I’d hit when they least expect it. I’d kill them all, so there’s no one left to come back and bite us on the rear end later. I’d grab our people and run like hell to a predetermined, secure extraction point. And then I’d link up with some of our air assets and get across a safe border.”

“Can you be any more specific, Major? The president is going to want to hear more than high concept from you.”

“Sir,” Ritzik said candidly, “I’m going to need a secure phone so I can talk to my sergeant major before I go any further.”

“Why is that, Major?”

“Because Sergeant Major Yates and his cadre of senior NCOs will be the ones doing most of the planning for this mission, not me. They’ve forgotten a lot more about the specifics of putting these sorts of ops together than I’ll ever know.”

“What?” Rockman’s unflappable composure dissolved.

Ritzik understood immediately what he’d done. Rockman, after all, was SECDEF. Meaning that he was treated like some sort of god. He was “handled.” He was “guided.” He was “shielded” from certain … realities.

The shocked look on Rockman’s face told Ritzik that no general, no military assistant or SpecWar adviser had ever told him that Delta’s operations were developed and planned not by the guys with the scrambled eggs on their hats and the stars on their collars, but by the unit in question’s senior enlisted personnel.

At Delta the mission tasking might come down the chain of command from the president or secretary of defense to SOCOM — the U.S. Special Operations Command at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida — or through JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. But once the tasking — which boiled down to the overall goal to be achieved — had been issued, all the hands-on mission planning was done by the unit’s senior noncoms. It was a system that Delta’s creator, Colonel Charlie A. Beckwith, had brought from his days as an exchange officer with the 22^nd Regiment Special Air Service. “Bottom-up planning,” Beckwith called it. At Delta, in fact, senior NCOs had more than once told JSOC or SOCOM staff puke colonels to shove it after said staff pukes had tried to impose mission-specific orders.

It made perfect sense, too. Ritzik had been at Delta for two tours totaling five years. Of that time, twenty-three months had been spent in language training inside the Delta compound — he spoke Uzbek, Kazakh, and some Dari, as well as a little Russian — and a series of specialized courses where he’d been taught such esoteric skills as breaking and entering (by a career criminal at the medium-security federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia) and guerrilla driving at West Virginia’s Bill Scott Raceway, just outside Charles Town.

But Ritzik was the exception to the rule. Most junior officers spent only two years with Delta, using their tour as a ticket-punching way station on their way to a colonel’s command, followed by a general’s stars.