SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

“Oh, yes, sir,” Ritzik said. “Gotta keep it short.” He paused. “Got it. Okay.” He listened intently. “Sure. Yes, we’re all fine. Could you call our friends in the other place? The place we came from. Just update them — tell them we’ll be in touch sooner or later.” Ritzik screwed the phone into his ear. “You’re starting to break up.” He reached across Sam Phillips and slammed Gene Shepard on the shoulder, signaling him to stop the 4x4. The vehicle screeched to a halt and Ritzik’s thumb went up. “Yes. Good. Got it. Absolutely. Okay. Bye-bye, bye-bye. And thanks.” He pressed the end button and then shut the phone off. The damn things could be triangulated. He turned to the case officer. “Great idea, Sam.”

Sam said, “Thanks. Who was that on the other end?”

“The SECDEF. Robert Rockman,” Ritzik said matter of factly. He pressed his radio transmit button. “Rowdy, Loner. Pull over. We gotta head-shed.”

0246. Sam Phillips didn’t like being cut out of the planning process, and he made his feelings known. But Ritzik was intractable. From the cryptic exchange he’d had with SECDEF, he understood that while the Chinese concentrated their efforts to the north, he had a brief window in which to move quickly. The unknown variable in this equation was Major General Zhou Yi. From what Rockman had hinted, Ritzik understood that Zhou’s Special Forces hunter-killer group was now in Kashgar. But whether it would search by air, or set up static roadblocks, was something Ritzik hadn’t been able to decipher from Rockman’s enigmatic words. God, how he would have liked the luxury of overhead surveillance.

Sam Phillips was convinced Zhou would use his air assets. Ritzik wasn’t. “The Chinese haven’t integrated their Special Forces into air ops yet,” he said. “They have nothing like the SOAR.”

“Common sense tells me they’ll use what they have,” Sam said. “They have aircraft — therefore they’ll use them.”

“Their choppers have no infrared capability,” Ritzik said. “They’re blind at night. Besides, they have no way of identifying nuclear devices from the air.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know it,” Tracy Wei-Liu interjected. “It’s my job to know those things. The Russians have two helicopters in their inventory, the MI-8MTS and the MI-8MTT, which are radiation-reconnaissance-capable. The Chinese are still negotiating with Moscow to get the MTS and MTT enhancements on their aircraft.”

“They’re an ingenious people,” Sam said. “They improvise — and they learn fast.”

Ritzik switched his GPS unit on. “Look,” he said. “Zhou is two hundred miles north of here. If they believe the IMU is heading northwest, they’ll be concentrating here—” He tapped the screen. “We go here — hide ourselves during the daylight hours. Even if Mr. Murphy shows, we’ll be able to get that far at least. Miss Wei-Liu will have all the time she needs to deal with the nuke.” He tapped again. “And then, after dark, we head straight up there — into the mountains.”

Sam threw up his hands. “You’re running this, Major Ritzik,” he said. “You do what you will.”

Ritzik took Rowdy Yates aside. The two men studied the GPS screen and spoke quietly.

Sam Phillips walked over to where Wei-Liu stood. “He’s wrong, you know. So’re you.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because both of you are making decisions based on nothing more than assumptions.”

Wei-Liu said, “We are doing nothing of the sort. We’re making empirical judgments.”

She watched as Sam’s right index finger pulled at the skin below his right eye — French body language denoting skepticism. “You’re mocking me.”

“Christ, the two of you sounded like our analysts at Langley. ‘According to our most current economic statistical models, we can confidently predict that the Soviet economy will be fundamentally sound and perhaps even resilient for the next fifteen to twenty years, despite the considerable fiscal pressures of maintaining military and scientific parity with the West.’ I have a copy of that particular assessment framed on my wall at home. Guess what? It was date-stamped and circulated the day before Mikhail Gorbachev formally dissolved the Soviet Union.”

“But—”

“Look,” Sam said. “I don’t dispute that you know all about nuclear weapons. And that when it comes to hostage rescue or counterterrorism, the major is damn proficient. And I agree that we’re much better off moving at night and hiding during daylight hours. Where I disagree is in underestimating the Chinese — and assuming their tactics will be rigid. These guys are good — and they’re flexible.”

Wei-Liu said, “I guess we’ll see who’s right in the next few hours, Mr. Phillips.”

“I think we will, Miss Wei-Liu.”

The Third Forty Hours: FUBAR

21

125 Kilometers East-Northeast of Tokhtamysh.

0735 Hours Local Time.