SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

2229. The double-clicks in Ritzik’s left ear told him the target was getting close. Ritzik couldn’t see him, not yet. But Shep could. And he signaled by hitting his radio transmit twice.

And then … there he was. A lone figure, cresting the rise. Ritzik focused as he drew closer. He was wearing a PLA uniform top and non-descript pantaloon trousers tucked into some sort of calf-high boots. His head was bare, his face framed by a fierce beard and long, matted, unkempt hair. He strode, oblivious to his surroundings, right in the middle of the road. If he was the point man for the convoy, he wasn’t taking the job seriously. His rifle — it looked to be an AK — was slung over his shoulder. The tip of the cigarette dangling in Mr. Oblivious’s mouth recorded as a hot spot in Ritzik’s NV. A cellular telephone was clutched in his right hand. As he came over the crest, he soccer-kicked a stone. He cursed in Uzbek as the damn thing glanced off his toe and skittered only a couple of feet. Then he took a second shot, which sent it ricocheting past Gene Shepard’s nose.

About ten yards over the ridge, Mr. Oblivious stopped long enough to take a huge double drag on his cigarette. He exhaled smoke audibly through his nose, then pulled the butt from between his lips, stared at it quickly, dropped it on the road, and ground it out with the toe of his boot.

Mr. Oblivious walked another twenty-five paces and stopped again. He looked left, then right, as if to make sure there was no traffic coming. Then he strode over the narrow shoulder and marched away from the road, ten yards onto the hard sand of the desert floor, not twenty-five feet from where Ritzik and Ty Weaver lay. He turned his head and checked the road again. And then the son of a bitch set down the AK and the cell phone, unfastened his pantaloons, dropped into a squatting position, and took an Uzbek dump. A noisy Uzbek dump. A smelly Uzbek dump.

He squatted there for about a minute before cleaning himself off. He appeared to be about half clean when the phone rang, and Mr. Oblivious cursed long and loud. Despite the tense situation, Ritzik nevertheless found himself amused that the universal law that governs the timing of unwelcome phone calls worked equally as well in China as it did back Stateside.

Mr. Oblivious snatched the phone off the ground and barked into it.

Ritzik listened. Mr. Oblivious was indeed Uzbek, and he was the convoy’s point man. From the one side of the conversation he heard, Ritzik confirmed Mr. Oblivious had been sent ahead to make sure there was nothing untoward in the bridge and causeway areas. Moreover, the man was obviously dealing with a superior, because while he’d let loose a string of deletable expletives when the phone rang, he was now being deferential. Dutifully, the man reported that everything was clear and safe, and yes, he’d wait to be picked up in a couple of hours.

The conversation lasted less than half a minute. And then, Mr. Oblivious snapped the phone shut, slid it into a pocket, called his boss a less-than-polite name, and finished wiping himself. Then he rubbed his left hand in the sand to clean it, brushed the sand off on the uniform jacket, cleared his nose, adjusted his pantaloons, took half a dozen steps toward the road, dropped into a sitting position, reached into his breast pocket, and pulled out a cigarette.

Which is when Ritzik shot him. The suppressed round made a soft thwock as it hit Mr. Oblivious square in the back of the head. The Uzbek fell forward without making a sound.

Ritzik scrambled to his feet, covered the fifteen yards between them in less than two seconds, and — careful to select a firing angle from which ricochets wouldn’t pose a hazard to his own people — put two more silenced rounds in the man’s head.

Killing Mr. Oblivious wasn’t something Ritzik had been especially anxious to do. He took no joy in killing. It was an essential part of his job. And he was proficient at it. But the Selection process for Delta was careful to weed out the rogues, the thrill killers, and the sociopaths, who thought that throat-slitting or double-tapping was fun. Still, Ritzik had no hesitation about killing. And he wasn’t about to compromise his mission by wasting time waiting for the Uzbek to finish his cigarette and move on.

He knelt, checked the man for a pulse, and found none. He rolled the corpse over onto its back, stood astride it, searched for documents or any other intel, and came up dry. Mr. Oblivious wasn’t carrying anything — not even an ID.

Ritzik secured his weapon, extracted the cell phone from the dead man’s jacket, switched it off, and dropped it into a pocket. It would be interesting to discover who paid the bills. “Let’s get moving.”

18

1.5 Kilometers West of Yarkant Köl.

2254 Hours Local Time.