SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

So Ritzik focused on the president and hot-washed. “Units like the one the chairman is suggesting do work out just fine — in Hollywood movies, sir. But in the real world, they get people killed. That’s why at CAG, our senior noncoms insist on doing the mission planning. Because every time some staff puke colonel or dumb-as-a-brick general comes up with a bright idea — we pretty much know it’s going to get our people killed.”

Pete Forrest looked intently at Ritzik. “I was a staff puke, Major.”

“Yes, sir, you were,” Ritzik said, his tone unyielding. “But before that, you were Airborne. You led a platoon in combat. You know I’m right.”

The shocked look Ritzik got from the national security adviser told him he’d probably just put an end to his career.

But he wasn’t about to back down. “The way I see it, sir, junior officers like you and me often end up sending good men home in body bags because somebody with stars on his collar wants a piece of the glory for his service, or his unit.”

Ritzik focused on President Forrest’s face. “Remember that Navy SEAL who fell out of the chopper in Afghanistan a couple of years back, sir?”

“At the start of Operation Anaconda,” the president said. “Chief Petty Officer Jackson.”

“Yes, sir.” Ritzik was impressed the man remembered. “Well, I was in the AO, sir. I knew that assault element hadn’t ever worked together before. It was thrown together — Rangers, Special Forces, and SEALs, with SOAR pilots and aircrews. All strangers. But you know how it was: we had all those alleged instant communications setups in operation, and so instead of letting some junior officer or master sergeant on the ground run things, all the staff pukes — excuse me, ma’am, the ‘joint operations advisory staff’ officers — a hundred miles away at Bagram Air Base, and the middle-manager pukes seven thousand miles away at Central Command in Tampa, they all put their two cents in on how things should be done.”

The national security adviser stroked her chin. “I never looked at it that way before — DOD never put it in those terms when they briefed us.”

“They wouldn’t,” Ritzik said. “But it’s the truth, ma’am. Bottom line is that the Navy micromanagers at CENTCOM wanted their service to grab a piece of the glory, and so did the Marines, and the Air Force, and my boss’s boss’s boss, and the rest of ‘em. So the mission was hobbled from the get-go. Worse, COMCENT{Commander CENTral Command.} didn’t have the, the”—Ritzik caught himself up—“the guts to tell the paper pushers to butt the hell out. And then Mr. Murphy got himself added to the manifest.”

Monica Wirth said, confused, “CIA?”

“Of Murphy’s Law fame, ma’am. Of course, your briefers tend not to use that term. They prefer to talk about ‘the fog of war,’ or what Clausewitz called la friction. But it all boils down to what can go wrong usually does. At Takhur Ghar — that was the objective — first, the chopper, it was an MH-47E, developed mechanical problems, which delayed takeoff until very close to dawn. So the team lost one of its key assets, its ability to attack at night, when the enemy couldn’t see them coming. Then the weather changed — for the worse, naturally. But they kept going. The comms got spotty, because they were using line-of-sight radios, and the ridges got in the way. So they couldn’t stay in touch. The altitude presented new challenges, too. Takhur Ghar is twenty-one hundred meters high — that’s almost seven thousand feet. But the pilots hadn’t trained to fly combat missions at that altitude and under similar weather conditions, so they had virtually no idea how the choppers would react in the thin air, zero visibility, and turbulence. Then the intel turned out to be bad. The satellites and the Predators and the billion-dollar photo recon systems all missed the bad guys because al-Qaeda had done a good job of camouflaging themselves and their bunkers. And we didn’t have any HUMINT. So no one warned the assault element they’d be facing Chechens. No one told them the LZ was going to be hot. That’s why the pilot brought the chopper in a little flat, flying an admin approach, because it was easier to control in thin air. But he caught ground fire. The chopper was hit. The hydraulic systems went out, and the pilot panicked.”

“Panicked?” Wirth said. “That’s strong language, Major.”