SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

“Four people had to put their lives on the line to plant your so-called technical tools,” he said. “And in order to position them they had to violate China’s sovereignty. They had to infiltrate covertly.” He paused. “Just like we did.”

“But they didn’t come to kill — anybody. You did.”

“We didn’t come to kill,” Ritzik said. “We came to do whatever it took to get the job done,” Ritzik said. “We did what we had to.”

“But—”

“But what?”

“I don’t see how you can live with yourself.”

Oh, Christ. “The problem with people like you—”

Her eyes flashed. “What do you mean, ‘like me’?”

“I mean,” Ritzik said, “like you. Smarter-than-thous. Piled-higher-and-deepers. Diplomats. Scientists. Technocrats. Thumb-suckers. Head-shedders. Think-tankers. Pundits. Know-it-all journalists. Lobbyists. Political appointees. Congressmen. Senators. Highfalutin moral hypocrites, my father used to call ‘em. That’s what I mean. People like you. When there’s a crisis, people like you scream and yell and beg folks like me to fix it. Go after Usama bin Laden and wax his butt. Break into Saddam Hussein’s palace at Tikrīt and blow him into the well-known smithereens. Sneak into Bosnia, neutralize a dozen or so goons, and bring a Navy pilot back. Drop into the Bekáa Valley and dispatch Imad Mugniyah and the Hizballah high command. Track down Pablo Escobar and shoot the sucker dead. But no collateral damage, please. And no mistakes. Oh — and you can kill them, but don’t tell us about it, okay? None of that nasty stuff — because hearing about blood and death and pain might make us uncomfortable. And then, when it’s all over, and you’ve done your dirty jobs, please leave. Go back to your cage, or crawl under whatever rock it is that you headquarter.”

“That’s neither fair nor the truth.”

“The truth? The truth is exactly what you just said: ‘I don’t see how you can live with yourself.’ The answer is, I live with myself very well. I like what I see in the mirror when I shave. The problem isn’t me, Tracy. It’s that people like you consider what I do to be uncivilized. Unseemly. Antisocial. Trust me: it makes people like you hugely uncomfortable to be in the same room as people like me.”

“That hasn’t been my experience.”

“Oh, really. How many soldiers do you know, Tracy?”

“How many piled-high-and-deepers do you know, Major?”

He really didn’t have time for this BS. Not now. He turned on his heel and started toward the crest of the ridge. “Currently? One. Which is a sufficient statistical model to substantiate my case, so far as I’m concerned.” He turned and pointed toward the truck. “We have carved you out a little time now. Maybe you should start work.”

23

125 Kilometers East-Northeast of Tokhtamysh.

0758 Hours Local Time.

Ritzik watched, so infuriated he was shaking, as Wei-Liu picked her way around the vegetation, descending carefully toward the ravine floor. “Workmanlike attitude, Mike. Workmanlike attitude.” He repeated the mantra half a dozen times aloud, hoping it would calm him down.

Sure, perhaps he’d overstated the case. But not by much. The core of what he’d said was sadly true. Between the demands for politically correct, zero-defect missions and the realities of the twenty-four-hour Internet and television news cycle, there was very little a Special Operations unit could accomplish without being scrutinized, second-guessed, and micromanaged by a laundry list of individuals, organizations, government agencies, and chain-of-command factotums.

Christ, in Afghanistan some IWS — idiot wearing stars — from Tampa had seen a digital picture in a postaction report and was so outraged by how native the Special Forces operators had gone that he ordered all the SF troops in Afghanistan to shave their beards and cut their hair so they’d look more “military.” The asshole didn’t care that his order caused hundreds of shooters, who’d worked like hell to blend in with their Afghan surroundings, to become Obvious American Targets. But that was par for the course. In fact, these days, the formal postaction mission analyses that were invariably conducted by SOCOM’s by-the-numbers staff to ensure that “proper doctrine” had been followed were closer in gestalt to colonoscopies than they were to any sort of previously established military procedures.

Which was why the current acronym around the Combat Applications Group for a SOCOM staff review was BO-HICA, which stood for Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. And you didn’t want them finding any polyps, either. Polyps — even benign ones — could prove terminal to your career.