SOAR: A Black Ops Novel

Mickey D strapped himself into the pilot’s seat. Sam Phillips pulled the shoulder straps tight and attached them to the waist belt. Then the spook reached down, plucked the big headset off the console, and clamped it around his ears. Ritzik and Gene Shepard held on to the flight-deck support struts, watching as the pilot’s left hand used the collective control to add throttle and increase the pitch of the HIP’s rotor blades. The ravine filled with sand and loose brush as the twin turboshafts increased thrust and the six blades began to bite the morning air.

The HIP raised itself, shaking wildly as the broken gear cleared. Mickey D fought the controls. The ravine walls were the problem. The steep incline created unnatural turbulence. The rotors weren’t getting enough air, and the HIP didn’t want to lift off — and if it did, there was a good chance he’d slam back groundward. He eased the chopper back onto the ground, listing dangerously to port. Dammit, the big chopper was out of balance. There was at least two hundred kilos more weight on the starboard side, where the external fuel tank hung.

Mickey D tried to remember what the side clearance for a HIP was, and drew a blank. Well, if he had a hundred feet of clearance on either side, he’d be okay. He looked to port and starboard. Not close.

“You guys get your asses aft,” Mickey D shouted. “Help me balance this thing out.”

“Roger.” Ritzik hand-signaled Gene Shepard, and the two of them edged aft, to where Ty Weaver had strapped himself and his big sniper rifle into port-side seats. The aircraft rose once more, lifting jerkily. The first sergeant found one of the crew safety harnesses, shrugged into it, and fastened it securely. Ritzik stopped amidships, holding on to a bulkhead strut with his right hand. His left pointed toward three boxes of machine-gun ammunition, stowed against the starboard bulkhead. “Let’s move this.”

Ritzik had already started for the opposite side of the cabin when the HIP rolled violently to port, corrected, and shot vertically twenty yards into the air. He was tossed clean off his feet and catapulted toward the open door. Shepard, strapped in, one-handed the shoulder strap on Ritzik’s body armor before he pitched out the hatch. The lanky soldier dragged Ritzik aft, found a safety harness, and attached it to him.

Then the three of them got to work. There was one seven-hundred-round ammo box already attached to the machine-gun arm, the belted rounds positioned in the feed tray. Ty secured the weapon, which was swinging freely on its pintle arm, while Ritzik and Gino unstrapped the two additional ammo boxes, dragged them port, and secured them where they’d be easy to reach using webbing attached to the canvas troop seats.

Ritzik saw something strapped down across two of the rearmost seats. He clambered aft and found the RPG launcher and three rockets that the first sergeant had brought aboard. Jeezus H. Kee-rist. Unless it was fired at just the right angle, the backblast would bring the HIP down like a rock. Ritzik started to say something, but Shepard cut him off. “Don’t worry, Loner — I got it all figured out.”

The big chopper’s nose tilted down now. As the aircraft rose into the morning sky, Mickey D increased the cyclic pitch so that as the rotor blades passed over the tail of the aircraft, they chewed more air than they did when they passed over the nose. The chopper flew forward, circling slowly.

Ritzik looked down through the open doorway. He could see his people moving purposefully, stripping the downed HIP, carrying equipment, setting explosives. They were, Ritzik noted, doing what they did best: soldiering. For an instant, it flashed across his mind that he might not see any of them again. But that’s the way it was. At the compound, you never knew if the brother-in-arms you had a cup of coffee with at zero six hundred, and who departed for Beirut, Lima, Kinshasa, or Kashgar at thirteen hundred would make it back. Delta operators were consummate warriors; the best-trained, most highly motivated shooters in the world. They were comfortable with themselves, and with their abilities, confident they could prevail in any situation, anywhere. But in the end, you could never really know how events would play out. That existential uncertainty was something people like Ritzik accepted; an integral part of their life’s equation. You assumed it like a mantle when you were accepted into the Unit. It was a fundamental part of the equipment — both physical and psychological — that you carried every time you left on an assignment.

Ritzik caught a glimpse of Rowdy clambering over the tailgate of the big truck. They hadn’t said good-bye. They wouldn’t have. Good-byes weren’t a part of their lexicon the way greetings were. And then the chopper banked away, Mick turned east, the HIP flew into the sun, keeping a steady three hundred feet above the ridgeline, and Ritzik lost sight of them all.

132 Kilometers East-Northeast of Tokhtamysh.

0829 Hours Local Time.