SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

But not quickly enough. The spoon still flew. Time stood still. Ritzik watched as the small sliver of metal arced toward him. His eyes followed its trajectory, and saw behind it how beautiful and clear the morning sky was; how the high white clouds actually intensified the blueness. Ritzik threw his arms over his face and neck and tried to find cover behind the low rocks.

The Chinese crumpled. And he took the brunt of the blast. But not all of it. Something hot and sharp smacked into Ritzik’s flak jacket, knocking the breath out of him. He rolled over, checked himself quickly. He was okay. He half crawled, half walked to the dead Chinese. The man had been cut in two. Ritzik rolled away, looking down the hill. Mickey D was already clambering toward the HIP, AK in hand.

The warrant officer ducked under the still-spinning rotor blades. He came upon a Chinese soldier lying crushed under the fuselage, weapon still in his hands. The warrant officer shot him once in the head, then moved forward, crouched, until he reached the hatchway. He reached in, his gloved hand caught the door gunner’s harness, and he pulled the dead man out of the aircraft, drawing fire. The warrant officer dropped flat. Crawling, Mickey D made his way below the hatch, moving to the tail. Once he was safely beyond the opening, he slowly, slowly, raised himself until he could see the forward portion of the chopper, looking into the cockpit area.

He hand-signaled that the cockpit, at least, was clear. Doc Masland eased up to the opposite side of the open hatch, scanning as much of the tail portion of the fuselage as he could. Bill Sandman came up behind him. He put his left hand on Masland’s shoulder to let him know he was in position.

Slowly, Masland “cut the pie,” sliding closer and closer to the open hatchway to allow himself an ever-increasing slice of vision into the rear section of the fuselage. He could see most of the right side of the cargo cabin. The canvas troop benches were flush against the bulkheads. Masland’s vision was obscured by a pile of what appeared to be cargo netting in the rear of the cabin.

Ritzik came up behind Mickey D. Sandman pointed groundward. Ritzik tapped the warrant officer, who dropped onto hands and knees. The Doc put a booted foot on Mickey D’s back. Weapon at the low ready, he stepped quickly into the fuselage and moved directly to his rear, scanning as he went. Immediately, there was gunfire — three three-round bursts — from Masland’s AK. Without hesitation, Bill Sandman stepped into the chopper cabin and moved in the opposite direction, edging toward the chopper’s cockpit, his back to the fuselage bulkhead.

Most Special Operations units practice room-clearing with four-or six-man teams. Ritzik’s Sword Squadron was different. His unit was capable of clearing rooms with two, four, six, eight, even ten men at a time, depending on the size of the space and the level of the threat. Moreover, Doc Masland and Bill Sandman had trained together for years, the pair of them clearing spaces that ran the gamut from trinity tenements to town houses, to apartments of all shapes and sizes. They’d taken down double-wides, center-hall colonials, ramblers, and eight-thousand-square-foot McMansions; they’d rehearsed on embassies, office suites, schools, barracks, even jails. They scenarioed ways of dealing with stairwells, hallways, and corridors with eccentric configurations. They’d practiced assaulting warehouses stacked with cargo containers, pallets, or floor-to-ceiling shelving. They’d learned how to clamber up icy North Sea oil rigs and board cruise ships in port or on the high seas; they’d worked on successful tactics to use for taking down buses, clearing trailer trucks, and attacking aircraft of every size and shape. And they’d even rehearsed dealing with hostage-taking no-goodniks who’d commandeered a transport chopper — a scenario, incidentally, more than thirty years old, dating from the Black September terrorists who’d killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

And so, the two Delta shooters worked like the proverbial well-oiled machine, flowing into the area without hesitation, the first man taking the long side of whatever space they were attacking, the second following to cover his teammate’s weakest side.

Sandman understood exactly where Doc Masland was going to be. So when he sensed movement at his ten o’clock he knew it wasn’t his brother-in-arms. Sandman’s AK came up and his finger moved from its indexed position on the receiver to the trigger. His peripheral vision caught the movement again. He moved forward toward the threat, releasing one and then another three-shot burst as he advanced.