Soar (17 page)

“I love it.” Rockman slapped his palms together then rubbed them. “Anything else?”

“The Air Force’s Command Center is tracking unanticipated PLA flights out of the Beijing and Guangzhou military districts.”

Rockman said, “Hmm.”

“Sir?”

“Any details?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, sir. A flight of three HIP-H transport choppers and two HIND-D gunships flying cover moved out of Beijing early this morning.”

‘Transport choppers with gunship cover. Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

The hair on the back of Rockman’s head stood up. But he didn’t betray his concern. “You’re positive?”

“Yes, Mr. Secretary. There was also a flight of eight J-7D Fishbed fighters that flew out of Guangzhou, heading south.”

Rockman kept his voice neutral. “Keep me posted if there are any further developments from the Navy. You might as well keep tracking the Air Force, too.” He made a
quick note. “I’ll be here at least until midnight, Hugo—which means you will, too.”

Rockman slapped the receiver down without waiting for a response. He paused five seconds, then dialed a second number, repeating the encryption process before speaking. When he saw the green light, he said, “Nick—this is Rocky. Give me the latest on what the Chinese are up to—and don’t try to hand me a load of your usual smoke-and-mirrors political analysis or hand me any horse-puckey about what sensitive information you can and can’t talk to me about.”

20 Kilometers Northeast of Almaty, Kazakhstan.
0900 Hours Local Time.

M
IKE RITZIK
was pissed. That was an understatement. Mike Ritzik was royally pissed. Royally pissed at Rowdy Yates because the sergeant major hadn’t filled him in. And even more royally pissed at himself because he hadn’t even noticed until he was introducing the men to Wei-Liu.

What had escaped his attention was the presence of a lanky, red-haired warrant officer named Michael Dunne. Dunne had no business being in Kazakhstan. He was the chopper pilot from Task Force 160 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, whom Ritzik had selected to extract the Delta element from China. But Dunne’s mission had been scrubbed. Given the PLA’s involvement, there was no way Ritzik was going to use a helicopter to extract his people and the CIA officers. Odds were, the Chinese would provide their troops tactical air support. Against fighter aircraft, the slow-flying MH-60 would be a sitting duck. And yet Dunne was in Almaty. And it was Fred Yates who had brought him.

Ritzik finally found the time to pull Rowdy aside. “Rowdy, we gotta talk.” He’d learned a long time ago never to wire-brush a man in front of the troops.

The pair of them walked to the far end of the warehouse. When they were out of earshot, Ritzik jerked his thumb toward Dunne. “Why the hell is he here?”

“Who?”

“Goddammit, Rowdy—”

“Mickey D? He’s here because I want him here, Loner.”

Ritzik crossed his arms. “I scrubbed him, Sergeant Major,” he said, the use of Yates’s rank a sign of displeasure. “You agreed.”

Yates reached into the left thigh pocket of his cargo pants and withdrew a tin container of snuff. He took a pinch, stuffed it between his cheek and his lower jaw, wiped his fingers off on his trouser leg, then closed the container and replaced it. “That was how we left it, Major,” Rowdy said. “But, I got to thinking after your last call.”

“I love you like a brother, Rowdy, but you’re pissing me off.”

“Hear me out, boss. We train differently than most units. We cross-train, just like Special Forces. But we add a lot more esoteric specialties. We learn to pick locks and bypass alarm systems. We can hot-wire everything from cars to locomotives. I brought ten men—we have twelve with you and me, thirteen with the lady. Between us, there’s nothing we can’t do. You want to stage our exfil using a combine harvester? Shep can drive one—and he can also perform a minor operation, because he’s cross-trained with Doc Masland. And Doc’s not just a dicksmith, he’s a sniper, because he’s cross-trained with Ty Weaver. And
Ty
can handle just about any heavy machinery we come across.” Yates spat into the polystyrene cup in his right hand. “Are you receiving yet?”

“Not really.”

“So what happens if we need to steal a plane instead of a combine harvester, boss?” He spat again. “When I went up to Dam Neck last month, I found out there are four enlisted men at Dev Group who have pilots’ licenses. They told me they paid for their own training, by the way, because Navy SpecWar officers don’t believe enlisted men should be allowed to touch aircraft controls. That’s neither here nor there. What is, is that Sword Squadron currently doesn’t have a single pilot—officer or enlisted.”

“And you concluded we need one out here.”

“Frankly, yes,” Rowdy said. “We used to have half a dozen people with pilots’ licenses, and guys were always going to flight school in their spare time. That guy Dean Williams who retired last year was qualified to fly multi-engine jet aircraft. But lately we’ve been so busy no one’s had the time to take the courses, and no pilots have come through Selection.” Yates spat into his plastic cup. “Mickey D brought it up when I told him he was scrubbed. He’s got a pilot’s license. What if the shit hits the fan and we have to get out using an aircraft, Major? Bottom line is, the more I thought about what Mickey D said, the more it made sense.”

Ritzik said: “Does he have the quals?”

“I don’t know if he’d make it through Selection,” Yates said.

“Well …”

“That’s not the point. Doing this particular job is the point. Look—he’s a runner. He completed the Marine marathon last year. And he took the MFF HALO-HAHO
¹⁸
parachute course at Marana four months ago.”

“All eight jumps?”

“Roger that. He has the quals.”

“That’s fourteen people, Rowdy—plus the four spooks. Eighteen is a lot to move around.”

“I know, Loner.” Yates used his improvised spittoon. “I’m just thinking about flexibility in the field. I want us to have as many options as possible.”

“You probably brought everything he’d need, didn’t you?”

“ ‘Be Prepared,’ isn’t that the Boy Scouts’ marching song?” Yates growled. “You let me take care of the details.”

1020.
“Loner—call for you. Some guy claiming to be secretary of defense.” Bill Sandman wasn’t a big man, but he had an aggressive edge to him and a raspy, gravel-toned voice that came from two packs of Marlboros a day for more than twenty-five years. He swiveled Ritzik’s chair away from the computer screen, pointed it toward the STU-?? satellite phone, and gave a gentle shove.

Ritzik rolled to the phone and picked it up. “Ritzik.”

“Major.” The satellite connection mildly distorted Robert Rockman’s distinctive voice.

“Sir.”

“How’s it going?”

“So far so good.”

“Glad to hear it. The president wants an update, so sit-rep me.”

“We are on schedule, sir. I’m planning our departure at seventeen-thirty local time.”

“Any chance you can go earlier?”

“Not really, sir. Any reason why we should?” Ritzik’s question was greeted by silence. “Mr. Secretary?”

Rockman hesitated. “I just got off the phone with Nick Pappas. Major General Zhou Yi’s air unit departed Beijing at zero eight hundred this morning.”

Ritzik hadn’t known, which disturbed the hell out of him, because he was supposed to be getting real-time intelligence dumps from Langley. Christ, the CIA was still stovepiping its precious information. “That’s a full day ahead of schedule.”

“I know, Major.”

“What’s their ETA at Changii?”

“Langley says the earliest would be about eighteen hundred tomorrow, local time.”

“How did they arrive at that?”

“Major?”

“Is Langley tracking them? Because if they are, we’re getting none of it.”

“You’re breaking up,” Rockman said.

Ritzik said, “If Langley’s tracking them, sir, we need the info out here now.”

There was static on the line. Then the secretary’s voice, sounding metallic, said, “I don’t think they are, Major.”

Ritzik found Rockman’s reply troubling. “Mr. Secretary?”

“I asked Nick. The son of a bitch said there’s some sort of problem with cloud cover between Beijing and Taiyuan. He said his analysts are working off statistical models.”

“Jeezus.” Ritzik didn’t like that at all. The problem was basic:
statistical model
was a fancy way of saying “simulation.” Intelligence analysts liked statistical models because they were neat and easy to put together on the computer. But no matter what you called them, simulations were
simulated,
not real, events. They were simply educated guesses. More than that, statistical models didn’t take any part of the human element of operations into consideration. Nor did they factor in Mr. Murphy of Murphy’s Law fame.

Nor, for that matter, could a statistical model predict a ground commander’s reactions or leadership qualities or
lack of them. Interpreting those issues required real-time intelligence. “What’s the worst-case scenario, Mr. Secretary?”

“Arrival at Changii in twenty-six hours—that would be about noon tomorrow local time.”

Which, Ritzik understood only too well, would give the Chinese six hours of daylight in which to go hunting. And those hours were precisely the same time frame Ritzik had planned to use to begin his exfil. Events had progressed well beyond the SNAFU range. They were now in the TARFU zone, where things are
really
messy.

“Mr. Secretary.”

“Major?”

“Any news about whether or not we’ll be vulnerable during the infiltration stage?”

“I don’t get you.”

“Are the Chinese capable of intercepting our launch aircraft?”

“Let me look at my notes.” There was a pause on the line. Then Rockman said, “Nick said there are three bases in the region with fighter aircraft.”

“Hell, Mr. Secretary, I can see that much on my imagery. I need to know whether or not they’re going to scramble when we break out of our scheduled flight plan.”

There was another pause. “Nick’s people can’t say one way or the other.”

“Can’t or won’t, sir?”

The irritation in Rockman’s voice was palpable. “Does it really make a difference, Major?”

There were five seconds of silence while Rockman waited for Ritzik to reply. When he didn’t, the secretary said, “You keep me posted, son.” Then the phone went dead.

T
WO OF RITZIK
’
S RANGERS
dressed in Kazakh Special Forces uniforms towed the big white Yak up to the warehouse. Umarov himself directed the tug to position the plane so the fuselage would block any view of what was being loaded. Then he waved the Rangers off with a flourish and a wink. As they cleared the aircraft, Doc Masland, Ty Weaver, Gene Shepard, and Rowdy Yates, all dressed in airport worker’s overalls, emerged from the warehouse to muscle an auxiliary power unit under the nose of the plane. Weaver uncoiled the thick rubber electrical cable and attached the business end to the power pod just fore of the plane’s nosewheel assembly.

Yates said, “Contact,” and hit the APU generator switch.

Masland and Weaver pushed a wheeled stairway up to the side of the aircraft. Shepard climbed the steel treads, opened the forward hatch, and disappeared inside. Fifteen seconds later, the plane’s interior lights came on.

Ritzik scampered up the stairway. “Shep—let’s get the shades drawn, and then you start removing seats and install the prebreathers.” He looked down the long, narrow single aisle. “I think two rows on each side will do it. You agree?”

The first sergeant squinted aft. “Should be enough. If not, I’ll pull a third.” He made his way rearward, racked the exit door lock to his left, and dropped the aft stairway, testing it after he heard it
thwock
onto the apron.

A welcome stream of cool air wafted through the stuffy aircraft. Shepard came forward. “Amazing how strange yet familiar this thing is,” he said. “Like one of those tofu entrées they say tastes just like chicken.”

“Chicken Kiev, maybe.” Ritzik tapped an overhead luggage bin. “The Yak-42’s a doppelgänger of the Boeing 727. It was built during the height of the Cold War when we weren’t selling planes to the Soviets. So one of their most senior aircraft designers—a guy named Alexander Yakovlev—managed to get his hands on a 727 for a few weeks. He reverse-engineered the design, and built his own version.”

“No shit.”

“No shit.” Ritzik heard noise forward. He watched as Talgat hulked through the doorway, blocking the light.

The Kazakh said, “The Yakovlev is a beautiful design, is it not?” He stood aside as Shepard eased past him, smiling.

“Just what the doctor ordered.” Ritzik settled onto an armrest. “When is Shingis due?”

“My cousin? I told him thirteen hundred.”

“Good.”

Umarov said, “So, Mike, what is the story?”

“I’m going to need you to crew the plane,” Ritzik said.

“Crew?”

“Shingis will fly. You’ll crew.”

“Just the two of us?”

Ritzik said, “Talgat, sometimes less is more.” The Kazakh scratched his head. “I do not understand. How can less be more?”

“It’s a figure of speech,” Ritzik said. “It means I want to keep it in the family.”

“Ah—idiom.” Umarov took his cigarettes out of his breast pocket, tamped one on his watch, and lit up. “Sometimes fewer personnel is more efficient than many. ‘Less is more—keep it all in the family.’ Now I understand.”

Curtis Hansen and Gene Shepard pushed onto the aircraft, holding a small metal toolbox. Umarov brightened at the sight of Shepard’s face. “Sergeant Shepard,” he exclaimed. He grabbed the trooper in a tight embrace and kissed him on each cheek.
“Assalamu alaykim.”

“Waghalaykim assalam
—and upon you, Colonel.” Shepard extracted himself from Umarov’s grip. “This is Staff Sergeant Hansen.”

The slightly built Soldier ran a hand through his thinning blondish hair and said, very carefully,
“Assa-lamu alaykim,
Colonel,” then reddened self-consciously at Umarov’s delighted expression.