SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

The pair of them glided laterally and to the right for two seconds, and sixty degrees, then Ritzik straightened his body and arms out, resuming the stable free-fall position. “Good.”

He checked the altimeter again. Twenty-five thousand eight hundred feet. Four seconds until deployment.

“Steady — we’re ready to deploy.”

His right arm moved toward the rip-cord handle. Simultaneously, he extended his left arm over his head and drew his legs up farther, in order to keep them from toppling into a head-down position or barrel-rolling to the right. Ritzik peered down to where the main rip-cord handle sat in its pocket, making visual contact. Then he extended his left arm forward, simultaneously reaching his right hand down toward the handle, careful to stay away from the oxygen hose. On Ritzik’s first HAHO night-combat-training jump — from 17,500 feet — he’d been so pumped up he’d reached down without looking, grabbed his O₂ hose instead of the rip-cord handle, and yanked the frigging thing right out of its socket. By the time he’d cleared 10,000 feet, he’d damn near had a case of hypoxia.

His gloved hand closed around the handle, and in one fluid motion he unseated it and pulled it from the rip-cord pocket. Now both his arms were fully extended in a forward position, and he glanced upward, over his right shoulder, to make sure his canopy was deploying.

When Ritzik pulled the rip cord, it yanked a pin on the chute assembly, releasing a pilot chute bridle, which opened its flaps and launched upward. The bridle’s release extracted the deployment bag from the main container, which in turn unstowed the suspension lines from their retainer bands. When the suspension lines were fully extended, they pulled the main chute from the deployment bag, the sail slider was driven downward toward the risers, and the big Ram Air cells began to inflate.

This, Wei-Liu thought as the harness cut into her and she jerked upward, must be what a head-on collision feels like. Her downward speed went from terminal velocity—125 miles an hour — to 18 miles an hour in less than four seconds. The G-force was incredible — it was like being dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows. Her head was yanked backward. Her arms flailed helplessly. She closed her eyes tight and screamed into her mask.

And then, as quickly as it had all happened, it was over. She felt herself dangling, pendulumlike, in the air, the soles of her boots parallel to the ground. Tentatively, she opened her eyes and dared to breathe. She actually pinched herself to make sure she was still alive. Wei-Liu looked up past Ritzik and saw the huge rectangle of the Ram Air chute, its cells filled with air, above her head. “We made it,” she said. “We actually made it.”

* * *

Ritzik’s body ached in every joint from the big chute’s opening shock. But there was no time to think about pain. He pulled the extended steering toggles from the brake loops and released the control lines. He raised his head and looked at the big canopy above them again, double-checking to ensure it was fully inflated.

Wei-Liu’s voice was hyperexcited. “Oh, Mike—”

“Quiet.” Ritzik didn’t want to talk right then. There was too much to do. He was already scanning a three-sixty, as well as up and down, while straining to listen for canopy chatter just in case they’d deployed dangerously close to another jumper.

It was unlikely. The Yak had been flying at just over two hundred miles an hour. That speed translated to three and a half miles per minute. In a normal HAHO insertion, jumpers would either leave the plane at one-second intervals, or jump as a group, depending on the aircraft type. Tonight, they’d had to use a slide for the covert operation. Moving as quickly as they could, they’d still taken five to six seconds each to jump. It was easy — and depressing — to do the numbers. Twelve jumpers times six seconds exit time per jumper equaled seventy-two seconds. At 210 miles an hour, the Yak was traveling 3.5 miles every sixty seconds, 308 feet per second. A six-second interval would separate each jumper by 1,848 feet. Multiply that by twelve jumpers, and Ritzik’s crew was separated by more than four miles of dark, uncharted sky. Even forming up was going to make for problems.

He reached up and removed the tape from his night-vision device, flipped it down, and turned it on so he could pick out the infrared flashers on his men’s helmets. He scanned — and saw nothing.

Ritzik switched the secure radio to the predetermined inflight frequency. “Skyhorse leader. Respond-respond.”

He listened — and heard nothing but white sound. Not only were they separated by distance and altitude — now the goddamn multimillion-dollar satellite radio system wasn’t working. He cursed silently at the crackling circuitry.

Then he heard Rowdy’s familiar growl, stepped on by Bill Sandman’s.