SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

“Ah — idiom.” Umarov took his cigarettes out of his breast pocket, tamped one on his watch, and lit up. “Sometimes fewer personnel is more efficient than many. ‘Less is more — keep it all in the family.’ Now I understand.”

Curtis Hansen and Gene Shepard pushed onto the aircraft, holding a small metal toolbox. Umarov brightened at the sight of Shepard’s face. “Sergeant Shepard,” he exclaimed. He grabbed the trooper in a tight embrace and kissed him on each cheek. “Assalamu alaykim.”

“Waghalaykim assalam—and upon you, Colonel.” Shepard extracted himself from Umarov’s grip. “This is Staff Sergeant Hansen.”

The slightly built Soldier ran a hand through his thinning blondish hair and said, very carefully, “Assa-lamu alaykim, Colonel,” then reddened self-consciously at Umarov’s delighted expression.

Shepard hefted the toolbox. “Excuse us, Colonel.” The pair headed aft, retrieved a pair of socket wrenches, and began to unbolt the rows of seats over the aircraft’s wings.

The Kazakh watched them. “Less is more,” he said. “Right?”

“Colonel Umarov,” Shepard said, “in this case, sir, less is actually less.” He looked at the puzzled Kazakh and grinned.

1332. Ritzik was squatting beside the pair of six-man portable oxygen prebreathers, which were secured against the aircraft’s midbulkhead, as Ty Weaver and Bill Sandman wrestled the ten-foot-long metal mold up the rear stairway. He looked up. “Set it on the starboard side.”

“Nautical today, ain’t we, Loner?” Sandman’s voice reverberated in the narrow fuselage.

The two men walked the smooth pan forward until it cleared the rear bulkhead. Then they flipped it over and jammed it between the windows and the innermost seats.

“Where are the tie-downs?”

Weaver said, “I’ll get ‘em.”

“Do it now — I don’t want to be airborne and find we’ve left’em behind.” “Wilco.”

1337. Rowdy Yates climbed the rear stairway to find Ritzik, a checklist in his hand, inspecting the prebreather. “You beat me to it,” the sergeant major said.

“I was bored.” Ritzik watched as Yates rummaged through the forwardmost luggage bins until he found the aircraft’s safety-display items, took both lengths of demonstration seat belt, clipped them together, and stuffed them in his left cargo pocket.

“Collecting souvenirs?”

“I’m gonna need these later and I don’t want to have to go looking for ‘em.”

“If you say so.” Ritzik tapped the prebreather consoles. “Looks as if they survived the flight over. No visual flaws. The valve stems are all straight. None of the screws are backed out. And the gauge is showing eighteen hundred psi.” He paused. “How’s the lady?”

“Asleep, finally,” Yates said. “Out like a light.”

“Good. The less time she has to worry, the better.”

Yates said, “Loner, I’m worried about her.”

“We don’t get no vote, Rowdy. Our job is to take her in so she can do her job.”

“Hoo-ah, boss. But do us all a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Get a friggin’ diagram out of her before we wheels up. Just in case she croaks at some point, I want to be able to at least take a crack at disarming the sucker if we have to.”

“Makes sense to me.” Ritzik turned the shutoff valve five and a half turns counterclockwise, then squinted at the second gauge on the prebreather faceplate. “Reducer gauge is holding at forty psi.”

“On the money.”

“Yup.” Ritzik stood up. “Get the third unit and secure it as close to the cockpit as you can.”

“What third unit?”

“Don’t shit me, Rowdy.”

“Major, we brought two six-man prebreathers. Twelve people — twelve hoses, twelve couplers.”

Ritzik said, “Then we’re screwed. You’ve read the tables. Each of us needs a full hour on O-two before we depressurize the aircraft and switch to the portable units.”

“So?”

“Count, Rowdy, count.”

Yates looked up toward the aircraft ceiling. “Oh, Keerist. Fourteen, Major.”

“That’s not including Talgat and Shingis. We need sixteen hookups.”

“Oh, Christ. I must have had a major brain fart yesterday.” Yates rubbed his scalp. “I really screwed this up.”

“How many O-two sets do we have?”

“Sixteen sanitized units — and two walk-around bottles for Talgat. I got sixteen double tanks from Marana, Major. I brought ‘em all, because I knew I’d need O-two for the lady and Mickey D — prebreathing and descent.” Yates spat into his plastic cup. “We can rig something for Talgat by using the plane’s internal O-two system.”

“Maybe.” Ritzik glanced toward the nose of the plane.

“Wait here.” He rose and headed toward the cockpit. “Shingis—”

He emerged sixty seconds later, his face grim. “They don’t have oxygen.” He anticipated Yates’s question: “The units are shipped from Germany. They’re on back order. And this particular aircraft is used on short-haul flights — they stay below ten thousand feet. So they don’t bother to keep the system charged.”

Yates cocked his head, incredulous.

“Hey, this is Kazakhstan. The flight safety regs are a little more flexible here.”

“I guess they are.”

“Bottom line,” Ritzik said. “We cut two people.”

“Loner—”

“Do you have a better idea?”