SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

He smelled cigarettes. Sam’s eyes swept a hundred and eighty degrees, trying not to make direct contact with any of the bad guys, but able to see half a dozen red spots in the darkness as they pulled on their smokes. No one spoke. The four of them were on display. The boss man, whoever he was, was probably trying to figure out how to deal with them. Sam hoped boss man wasn’t a Chechen. Brutality was a way of life in this part of the world, but the Chechens were the worst. In Afghanistan, al-Qaeda’s Chechen fighters had tortured and mutilated every American they’d gotten their hands on. According to one report Sam had read at the time, the Chechens at Takhur Ghar had cut the ears and privates off a Navy SEAL they’d captured before finally putting him out of his misery with a bullet to the brain. Even the Russian light colonel he’d recruited in Tajikistan had warned him to steer clear, “Sam, out here is what we call dikiy-dikiy vostok — the Wild, Wild East. Out here, the Tajiks, Turkmen, or Uzbeks, they take no prisoners. But compared to Chechens, Tajiks and Uzbeks — they are nice guys.”

Sam’s mind was racing. His most important job was to keep everyone alive. To do that, he knew that he had, somehow, to establish control. Control was the key. That was the first rule of case-officerdom he’d been taught at the Farm.

No matter how desperate or dicey the situation might be, the instructors told them over and over, you always try to gain control. Just the way you control your agents, your developmental — everyone you deal with. And even if you’re captured, or detained, you work to establish some form of control over the people who grabbed you. You come up with a tactical strategy — and you find a way to execute it.

It’s like that old cartoon, one instructor’d said, the one in which two guys are manacled to a wall, hand and foot, suspended twenty feet above a pair of hungry lions. There’s no window to their cell, and the lions are between them and the door — which is locked from the outside — and besides, they’re chained up. So one guy is saying to the other, “Now, here’s my plan…”

Sam understood that he had to find a way to establish control over the lions who were holding them hostage. Even though the lions had just beaten the crap out of them. Even though the lions were holding automatic weapons.

And so, he struggled to his feet.

From somewhere, a heavy boot swept his legs out from under him. Sam went crashing face first onto the desert floor.

Scattered laughter erupted from the darkness beyond the truck headlights.

Establish control. Sam fought the pain and the panic that was rising in his throat. He pushed himself off the sand.

A shadow loomed in front of him. Sam looked up. He was a large man, with a Saddam Hussein mustache and a single, prehominid eyebrow. He was dressed in a PLA uniform jacket and what looked like U.S. Army-surplus woodland-camouflage BDU trousers. Even in the nighttime coolness he reeked of sweat, garlic, and tobacco. In his left hand was an AK-47, its barrel pointed at the ground.

Slowly, Mustache Man brought the weapon up, up, up, until its muzzle was even with Sam’s clavicle. “Tökhtang—stop.”

Sam raised himself farther off the ground.

The AK’s front sight jabbed against his chest. “Tökhtang!”

Sam fought to keep his eyes steady and his voice even. “Siz Inglizcha gaplashasizmi? Do you speak English?”

In response, he received another shove with the AK’s muzzle.

He took the risk of getting shot by pushing back. “Siz Inglizcha gaplashasizmi?”

After what seemed to him like a decade, the pressure of the AK barrel on his chest was reduced slightly. “Inglizcha?”

Sam pushed himself on to his knees, and then stood up as straight as he could, looking directly into Mustache Man’s black eyes. He anticipated the boot coming at his legs again, but nothing happened. “Kha,” he said. “Yes, Inglizcha.”

“Men Inglizcha. Uzbekchada, Ruscha, Tojik.”

Mustache Man’s accent was Uzbek, not Chechen. A huge surge of relief washed over Sam. But outwardly, he showed nothing.

The Uzbek’s eyes bore into him. Sam realized he had to speak — the team’s lives depended on what he’d say, and how he’d say it. But he didn’t trust his Tajik or Uzbek. “We are English,” he said in halting Russian. “Journalists. Media. We work for a television company in London. We do not understand why you have taken us”—he tugged at his brain for the right word—“prisoner,” he finally said. He paused, translating in his head before he spoke. “Please free my friends. Please give us all some water, or tea, and some rice. It has been a long time since we have had anything to eat or drink.”