Soar (31 page)

The pitch of the HIP’s rotor blades changed audibly, and their velocity slowed. But the big bird still scraped across the ground. As it came around, Ty’s scope picked up the minigunner. The poor bastard was fighting centrifugal force, trying to hold on but still vainly searching for a target. The sniper tracked the hatchway, led the target slightly, then squeezed the trigger, the rifle muzzle actually following through the shot. The door gunner pitched backward into the cabin and disappeared.

The HIP’s nose smacked up against a boulder. The wounded bird finally came to rest. Ty’s crosshairs settled on the cockpit. He saw the copilot’s hand move on the collective handle. He raised the crosshairs until they found the zygomatic bone, the thin plate covering the brain between the eye and the ear. He eased the sight back, lifting the crosshairs until they touched the tip of the helix—the curled, upper edge of the target’s ear. And then he squeezed the trigger, watching as the copilot’s head disintegrated with the shot.

Ritzik blinked as the HIP ground itself to a halt. He raised himself out of his concealed position. “Mickey—” The pilot had the RPG leveled at the chopper. Why the hell wasn’t he shooting? “Cream the goddamn thing,” he ordered.

But Mickey D obviously had other ideas. “C’mon—” He dropped the RPG. “Ty—give us cover.” He grabbed his AK
and charged down the ravine toward the chopper, followed by Doc Masland and Bill Sandman.

Ritzik scrambled after the trio, pistol in hand. He was eight, maybe ten yards behind the other three, still crabbing down the ravine, when a bullet kicked up rock splinters six inches from his right foot. He spun, rolled to his left, and brought the pistol muzzle up.

A Chinese Special Forces soldier, helmet askew, was coming up the hill, firing his rifle from the hip. He shot wildly in Ritzik’s direction, his eyes wide in double-take shock as he spotted Ritzik’s camouflaged but unmistakably Occidental face. The rifle jammed.

The soldier dropped the weapon, reached into a pouch on his chest, and pulled out a grenade. Ritzik head-shot him—
tap-tap—
just as he was yanking the pin.

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.

“My twelve—” Ritzik heard Sandman’s voice in his earpiece. It was followed by one-two-three three-shot bursts. Now he stepped up and entered the chopper cavity. Moved quickly but smoothly heel-toe, heel-toe over the greasy decking, easing to his right along the bulkhead following in Doc Masland’s trail, his pistol’s field of fire centered on the far-side rear corner of the fuselage.

Doc shouted, “My two—” and fired two three-shot bursts.

There was movement at Ritzik’s ten o’clock. His pistol came up and he put one-two-three-four shots into the target. It wasn’t clean shooting but it was effective.

And then Ritzik’s weapon locked back. He’d forgotten to count rounds. He was empty. Like some damn greenhorn on his first day in the shoot house. He was a freaking overpaid RTO. He shouted, “Cover!”

Without removing his gaze from possible threats, Ritzik dropped the magazine out of the well, slipped to one knee, retrieved a fresh fifteen-rounder from his thigh and smacked it into place with the flat of his hand, then released the slide with his right thumb. He shouted, “Okay!” and stood.

Just in time to catch movement at his twelve. Ritzik and Masland shot simultaneously and a Chinese soldier went down. Masland was moving now, using his foot to kick weapons away from dead hands. Quickly, he checked the bodies for signs of life. He found none. He shouted, “Clear!”

Mickey D vaulted into the chopper and made for the cockpit. He reached over the bodies for the power switches and shut the engines down. “Bill, gimme a hand.” The pair of them pulled the dead pilot and his number two out of their shoulder harnesses and seat belts. They dragged the corpses aft and rolled them out of the hatch. The pilot
slapped the HIP’s airframe. “I’m going to see if it’s still fly-able,” he said to his partner.

Ritzik helped Doc Masland pull six Chinese soldiers out of the HIP’s cargo cabin. With the door gunner, the two pilots, and the other three from the ladder, there were ten in all. Ritzik pressed the transmit button on his radio. “Rowdy, Loner—sit-rep me.”

Rowdy’s voice came back strong. “We got fourteen hostile DOAs and one aircraft down, Loner. No friendly casualties.”

That was good news. And there was more: Bill Sandman reported that HIP One’s machine gun was operational, with two seven-hundred-round ammo containers secured adjacent to the doorway. Rowdy discovered a third box undamaged in HIP Two.

0751.
Ritzik detailed a six-man crew to hide the corpses. He didn’t want them visible from the air. He was pleased to see his Soldiers handle the Chinese dead with respect. An hour ago they’d been fathers, sons, brothers. Now they were unwitting casualties of a shadow war, and their remains didn’t deserve to be mistreated. War, Mike Ritzik thought, is full of paradoxes, some far more difficult to grasp than others.

He watched for a few seconds more, then struggled back up to the crest of the ravine to find Wei-Liu. She was still where he’d left her. She sat, hunkered, her arms tucked around her knees, her face and neck still smeared with cammo cream, although it was obvious to Ritzik that she’d tried to remove it. She didn’t look happy.

“What’s up?”

“You just … killed them all … “ she said. Ritzik was not in the mood for clichés. “What’s your point?”

Wei-Liu started to say something. But Ritzik cut in first. “People like you think war is sterile,” he said, “because that’s the way you’ve seen it, on television. Oh, you see wounded kids. You see the casualties of suicide bombers. You see victims. God, how good television is at showing victims. But that’s not war. War is chaos. War is nasty stuff. It’s about killing people. Killing people and breaking things. War is not nice, Tracy. It’s not a computer game, or a movie. It’s horrific. It’s blood and pain and violence and confusion, and mistakes that cost lives and idiots issuing orders that get people killed. But when it comes down to the real nitty-gritty, war is about killing other human beings, before other human beings kill you.”

He looked down at her. “So, yes, we killed them all. What would you have me do? Declare a time-out? Ask them to leave us alone? Make ‘em promise not to tell anybody we were here and send ‘em on their way? For chrissakes, Tracy, we’re violating China’s sovereignty. That’s a bloody act of war. Can you imagine the consequences if one of us was captured?”

“I hadn’t thought about it in that way.”

Why the hell hadn’t she? She was a freaking high government official. She should have “thought about it that way.” Ritzik bore down on her. “Why not? After all, you had a hand in designing the sensors—and they’re the reason we’re here.”

“But that’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. The sensors are technical tools. They’re no different from a satellite, or the kind of SIGINT or TECHINT the National Security Agency gathers.”

“Except for one element,” Ritzik said.

“Which is?”

“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.”