SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

His gaze dropped to Wei-Liu, suspended beneath him. He wondered what she was thinking. He tried to speculate how she’d respond when the shooting started, and surprisingly found himself optimistic. If the way she’d come through the jump was any indicator, she’d be all right under fire. He also tried to figure out why she’d agreed to come with them in the first place. It certainly wasn’t going to do her career any good.

Still, the willingness to stick her neck out was something Ritzik appreciated. He himself had come to grips with the fact that he’d probably never make 0–6—colonel — although it would be a disappointment to his family. Ritzik came from a large North Philadelphia family of émigrés — refugees from the abortive pro-democracy Hungarian uprising of 1956. His father, Andy, had been a beat cop for thirty-five years before he’d pulled the pin and retired to the Gulf Coast of Florida in the mid-nineties. The move was well deserved: Andras Ritzik had raised five children alone after his wife died of a stroke at the age of forty-two. And he’d done well as a single parent: Ritzik’s brother Frank was a sergeant on the Philadelphia PD’s SWAT team; elder brothers Andy Junior and Joe were Pennsylvania State Police troopers, and his sister, Julianna, worked as an investigator for the City of Brotherly Love’s district attorney.

Ritzik’s father, who’d never gone above the rank of patrolman, had always wanted to see his firstborn command a battalion or a regiment. But Ritzik knew all too well that promotion these days was based not on the ability to lead, but on the pure Machiavellian cunning to thrive within the backstabbing environment of staff assignments and the willingness to curry favor with paper-warrior generals.

It just wasn’t his milieu. Indeed, Ritzik was considered bureaucratically challenged because he preferred stabbing his people in the front — and with a knife, not a memo. Plus, he had a short fuse. He was undiplomatically blunt. And obviously, he was impolitic: he’d turned down the chance of a lifetime to work on SECDEF’s staff, after which promotion would have been a gimme. Neither was he particularly anxious to attend the National War College, which was where you went if you were fast-tracked for a command billet and a general’s stars. No, Ritzik was a most atypical West Pointer: no eagles or stars in his sights; happy where he was as a junior officer who had the privilege of serving with the finest and most capable Soldiers in the world.

Two years before, when Ritzik told Rowdy he’d just turned SECDEF down, Yates thought over what he’d said for about thirty seconds.

Then the sergeant major spat tobacco juice into his cup, wiped his lower lip, and said, “The way I see it, Loner, the only real difference between a brown nose and a shithead is depth perception — and there are already so many damn officers with depth perception working at the Pentagon they just don’t need you and your twenty/twenty vision screwing up their lives.”

* * *

Ritzik shook himself out of his reverie. He checked his timer and GPS unit and discovered much to his amazement that they’d picked up a little speed. The winds actually were shifting. Maybe. Still, he did a little quick mental math and was happy to see that if everything remained constant, they’d reach the LZ in just under three hours. That wasn’t good enough — not by a long shot. But the situation was far better than it had been half an hour ago.

Room 3E880-D, The Pentagon. 0739 Hours Local Time.

The secure phone on Robert Rockman’s desk was ringing as the secretary came into his hideaway office. He launched himself at the receiver, hit the button, and waited for the green light. “Rockman.”

“This is Captain O’Neill, sir. Signal, please?”

“Skyhorse-Pushpin.”

“Thank you, sir. You were anxious to hear about PLA aircraft movement yesterday. I just picked up something relating to those HIP-? transports out of Beijing. You asked me twice about the choppers and only once about the fighter aircraft, so I figured you had a special interest in keeping ‘eyes on’ the choppers.”

Perceptive fellow, this O’Neill. “Yes?”

“I made some quiet inquiries. DIA reports SIGINT that the choppers have been diverted from their original destinations.”

Rockman wrinkled his brow. “Diverted,” he said.

“Langley had plotted them going to Changii,” O’Neill said. “I know that because of—” He paused. “Well, sir, I just know it from a good source.”

“Go on.”

“The flight plan was changed. The transports are going to Kashgar instead.”

“Kashgar. Gunship cover as well?”

“Affirmative, Mr. Secretary.”

Rockman cursed silently. The shift put the PLA four hundred miles closer to Ritzik’s rescue operation. “Has CIA advised anybody of this?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

“Do you know why they’ve buttoned up?”

“May I speak with you face-to-face, sir?”

“Come on down.”

As O’Neill came through the door, the secretary could see that he hadn’t been to sleep. The captain said, “I’m sorry for my appearance …”