SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

Ritzik used his upwind toggle to turn the canopy in a tight circle. He would repeat this maneuver until the rest of his team assembled around him. As he pulled on the handle, he heard a partial transmission. “Sk — c.”

Ritzik held steady and broadcast again. “Skyhorse leader — repeat.”

“Shep confirms.”

“Goose confirms.”

“—z confirms.”

“Skyhorse leader. Repeat-repeat.”

“Skyhorse leader — Doc confirms.”

Followed by white sound. Then: “Tuzz confirms.”

And right on top of that, “Mickey D confirms.”

That was seven.

“Curt confirms.”

Eight.

The altimeter on Ritzik’s wrist read 25,300 feet. He was moving in a slight updraft. He adjusted his toggles to increase his speed and descend.

“TV confirms.”

Nine.

One to go. “Skyhorse leader — Barber-Barber.”

* * *

Suspended below Ritzik, Wei-Liu saw one, then two other chutes, even though she wasn’t wearing night-vision. They, like she and Ritzik, were circling. And then she felt Ritzik adjust the toggles, and the big sail above their heads swung them around, and she watched as the other parachutes began to adjust their positions.

She strained to look up at Ritzik. She couldn’t hear him because her headset was tuned to another frequency.

Ritzik was oblivious to her. “Rowdy — repeat.” He was trying to hear Rowdy Yates, but the frigging transmission kept fading out.

“Repeat.”

“ … caught u…”

Who? What? Where?

“Repeat.”

“Stick … came … Un … down.”

Dammit. “Repeat-repeat-repeat.”

And then, just as inexplicably as the net had decided to stop working, Rowdy’s voice suddenly blew five-by-five into his headphones. “ … went out just ahead of me. The Yak hit an air pocket — real bad buffeting for five, six seconds, boss. He bounced off the slide into the stairway header — slammed him hard — then he was gone.”

Ritzik said: “Skyhorse leader. Did you see a chute?”

“Negative-negative. But I was busy fighting the vibration and turbulence trying to get myself out alive.”

“You okay?”

“I got smacked pretty good, but I’ll live.”

Ritzik knew it was altogether possible that Barber’s automatic rip-cord release had deployed at twenty-five hundred feet even though the man was unconscious. “Skyhorse leader. Anybody see Barber’s chute deploy?” Ritzik waited for answers. But deep inside he knew there would be no responses. And to confirm what he knew, all he heard was white noise.

This was not good. Todd Sweeney was one of the element’s two snipers. He also had been carrying two of the five Chinese claymores they’d brought, along with two spools of firing wire and two firing devices. And six hundred precious rounds of ammunition. Yes, the man had left a wife behind. And parents, both still alive. And two gorgeous kids — Ty Weaver was their godfather. But there’d be time to mourn him later. Right now all Ritzik could think about was how to compensate for one less shooter on the ground. One less weapons system. Fifty percent of the sniping team, and — most critical — the suppressed MSG90 sniper’s rifle. Doc Masland was every bit the shooter Barber Sweeney was. But Sweeney’d been carrying the big HK rifle. That was the other fatal loss.

In a night ambush, the sniper’s role was critical. They’d pick off the drivers before the bad guys even knew they were being attacked. Ritzik had learned this in Kosovo, where he’d used his sniping team to take down a heavily armed convoy belonging to a group of Serb paramilitary goons known as Arkan’s Tigers. There were ten trucks in the Tiger column. By the time the Serbs realized what was happening, Ritzik’s snipers had already head-shot eight drivers. Two trucks overturned, the Serbs panicked, and Ritzik’s fourteen-man element had been able to take an entire company-sized unit out of action and turn it over to NATO.

Tonight, Ritzik needed not only to stop the tango convoy, he would require at least three of its vehicles to make his escape. That was the genius of using two snipers with their silenced weapons, as opposed to claymores. But with only one long gun now available, the situation was going to become far more dicey.

Plus this nasty possibility: given the omnipresence of Mr. Murphy on the op, it was not inconceivable that Barber Sweeney’s body would drop right on top of some effing PLA general. The Chinese could very well know they had visitors hours before Ritzik’s element was even on the ground. That prospect, Ritzik understood all too well, was not good juju.

“Skyhorse leader.” Gene Shepard’s voice forced him to focus on the here and now.

“Skyhorse leader sends.”

“We are forming on you.”

Ritzik illuminated his GPS screen, took a reading, called out his position, and asked for a verbal confirmation that they’d all received it so they could assemble. The infrared chem-sticks on Wei-Liu’s legs would help them see him as he circled. He checked his elapsed-time readout and cursed. They hadn’t even begun yet, and they were already running behind schedule.