SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

But there was an upside to Plan Two. When Sam had departed Dushanbe two and a half years previously, he’d left a small but productive agent network in place. One of his principal agents, Halil Abdullaev, was the muktar of Tokhtamysh, a small Tajik settlement where the Soviets had once based a parachute battalion.

Tokhtamysh sat astride two barely traversable smugglers’ roads, one leading east through the Sarkolsk Mountains sixteen kilometers to the Chinese border, the other south across the Pamirs to Afghanistan. From its strategic location Halil — and therefore Sam — had been able to monitor narcotics shipped to the West from Afghanistan, and the weapons that were smuggled back across the border. From Tokhtamysh, he tracked Uighur infiltrators coming from China to join up with their al-Qaeda allies in the Stans, and IMU terrorists moving in the opposite direction to stage raids in Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

If they could reach Tokhtamysh and Sam could find Halil, he’d pay his old agent to smuggle them to the American embassy in Dushanbe. Sam realized Plan Two was also somewhat far-fetched and prone to lead to disappointment. But frankly, it was all he could come up with right now.

Whichever option he decided to go with, there was one constant: before they left, he’d find some way of disabling or booby-trapping the nuke. And the way Sam felt right now — which bordered on clinical depression — he wouldn’t give much of a damn if the frigging thing went off, either.

15

21,775 Feet Above Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China.

2029 Hours Local Time.

Ritzik realized that the Universe had shifted, and the laws of nature obviously weren’t working anymore. At least, not for him. Yes, it was dark — the moon was in its waning eighth. And it was inhumanly cold — his fingers were numb and he couldn’t feel his toes anymore. But, to get to the point, Rowdy had promised nighttime mountain breezes. Tailwinds, to speed them on their way. And yet, according to his lap timer and the GPS unit, he was currently being assailed by daytime valley breezes. Head winds.

This glitch was causing the insertion element a thorny logistical problem. The Ram Air parachute glides at a constant ground speed of thirty miles per hour. With a twenty-mile-an-hour tailwind, the airspeed grows to fifty miles an hour. With a twenty-mile-an-hour head wind, however, ground speed is reduced to a mere ten miles an hour. And that’s what Ritzik was currently doing. This meant that instead of reaching the drop zone in an hour and a half, it was going to take almost five hours to cover the same route.

Which would mean they’d arrive at the intercept point an hour after the IMU tangos had passed through it. More bad juju.

And then there were the Chinese. The gate-crashers. Given the way things were progressing, the PLA had already found Barber’s body, checked the coordinates programmed into his GPS unit, and were waiting in ambush for Ritzik’s element to drop into the LZ.

He inhaled a deep, therapeutic breath of O₂ and switched transmission frequencies. “TOC, Skyhorse.”

As if to confirm the complete TARFUness of his mission status, there was no response.

He tried a second time, and a third. Finally, he heard, “Skyhorse, TOC.”

“Sit-rep, Dodger.”

“No changes.”

That was good to hear. “Target?”

“On course. ETA four hours eighteen minutes.”

“Gate-crashers?” Ritzik was desperate for another small shred of good news.

He got it: “Imagery is consistent. No movement at Changii.”

“Skyhorse out.” Ritzik switched to the radio’s insertion-element frequency. “Skyhorse back door.”

“Skyhorse back door.” Rowdy’s growl answered in his ear.

“We’re not making required speed, back door.”

“That’s been factored, leader.”

Ritzik was dubious and said so.

“Patience, grasshopper. Think sniper. Back door sends.”

Ritzik sighed into his mask. He’d always envied the sniper’s mental strength, the capacity to wait, immobile, for hours — days, if necessary — observing the target, waiting for the right moment to make the shot. The ability to do so — in more than a rudimentary way — was beyond him. Oh, he could physically make the shot; that was no problem. The physical requirements of slowing your heart rate and learning how to fire between beats, so bullet placement wouldn’t be affected by your respiration, were technical elements that could be learned. Marksmanship was a frangible skill that required practice, practice, practice. No, it was the mental aspect of the craft, the snipers’ Zen-like ability to get outside their own bodies and look at their environment in a holographic sense, which had always escaped him. And that was what Rowdy’d just been talking about.