SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

Very early on in the campaign, for example, one of the CIA’s Hellfire missile — carrying Predator UAVs actually spotted the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, himself. But by the time this info-bit was filtered through the multiple management layers of CENTCOM’s captains, majors, lieutenant colonels, colonels, generals, and the all-important Judge Advocate General (JAG) legal cadre, it was too late to do anything about it. And so, Omar-baby escaped to fight another day.

It was, Ritzik therefore concluded, just as dangerous to be presented with too many options as too few. Both were limiting.

Ritzik knew that good intelligence, like a dependable weapon, was one of the better tools he had at his disposal. But it was just that: another tool. It wasn’t a crutch, or a panacea.

The essence of unconventional warfare would always boil down to one fundamental element: Warriordom, the deeply ingrained will and fierce determination of Soldiers to use the holy trinity of speed, surprise, and violence of action to prevail against great odds. Full stop. End of story.

And that’s the way it would play out in Xinjiang. If he and his people were able to overcome their initial vulnerabilities and achieve what the SpecWar historians called “relative superiority” over the larger guerrilla force, then in all likelihood they’d be able to complete the mission successfully. No sophisticated, complex op plans, either. Just basic, no-frills, straight-ahead, in-your-face Soldiering.

Warriordom was the heart of Ranger School, and the even tougher Delta Selection course. The weeks of physical and mental anguish were a crucible of pain in which SpecWarriors were forged. The hardship and the severe crescendo of challenges were deliberate. Their goal was to make the Soldier-candidates demonstrate to themselves that they could put out 200 percent more exertion, concentration, and tenacity than they ever thought they could.

Ritzik had entered Delta’s Selection with 159 other men. When it was over, a mere three were accepted into the Unit. The process, which was designed by Delta’s founder, Colonel Charlie Beckwith, and based closely on the British SAS Selection process, has not been altered since the very first volunteers showed up at Fort Bragg back in the late 1970s. Delta Selection proved conclusively to Ritzik that no physical or mental obstacle — not cold, or fatigue, or stress; not topography, or water, or even a determined and dedicated enemy — could ever keep him from completing, and prevailing, in his mission.

That fundamental truth about himself and the Soldiers he worked with was what kept Ritzik on track. He knew that to succeed, at some point he’d have to suck up the pain, overcome the crises, and Drive On, just the way he’d done during Selection, or Colonel Henry Mucci had done during the assault on Cabanatuan. And if Mr. Murphy showed up and the going got rough? Then he and his Soldiers would grit their teeth, say FIDO — Fuck It, Drive On — and grind it out. FIDO: surmount any physical obstacles in their way. FIDO: get close without being seen. FIDO: sneak and peek to ascertain the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. FIDO: attack with utter ferocity and kill as many of the enemy as they could. FIDO: disable the MADM and get the hell out with the American prisoners.

10

Room 3E880-D, the Pentagon.

1912 Hours Local Time.

Robert Rockman pulled the heavy secure telephone across the top of the desk in his hideaway office and dialed a similar instrument on a desk at the Navy Command Center, a bustling warren of windowless, interconnected offices on the fourth floor’s D-ring. Once the phone rang with its unique monotone, he pushed the button that enabled the encryption and voice-distortion devices. And didn’t begin to speak until the red light on the phone receiver had turned green. When it did, Rockman barked, “This is Mr. Rogers at OSD.{Office of the Secretary of Defense.} Get me O’Neill.”

Captain Hugh O’Neill, USNA ‘86, was one of eight “sweat hogs,” or action officers, at the Command Center, working twelve-hour shifts to track naval movements and crises worldwide. At zero eight hundred, just over twelve hours ago, he’d been abruptly seconded to the secretary’s personal staff on a temporary additional duty, or TAD, assignment. At 0805 O’Neill had been ushered into the secretary’s hideaway, where he was presented with a file folder diagonally striped in orange, on top of which sat an SCI — sensitive compartmented information — secrecy form and a Parker ball pen with the seal of the secretary of defense engraved on its gold-plated cap.

The secretary said, “Sign the form, Captain. Then read the file. You can keep the pen.”

O’Neill didn’t have to be asked twice.