Soar

by John Weisman

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Yates covered the phone’s mouthpiece, ripped the page from the pad, and waved it at the first sergeant whose desk sat opposite his. “Yo, Shep—he had a kid. We’ll get one of those pint-sized BDU shirts made up. This is the name that goes on the pocket strip.”

  Gene Shepard looked up from his to-do list, flashed a toothy smile, and ran his fingers through curly dark hair. “Great idea, man. How is the colonel these days?”

  “Like I said, he’s a new papa and proud as hell. Gonna raise himself a little soldier, just like his daddy.”

  “Tell him assalamu from me, will you? And that I’m looking forward to seeing him again.”

  Yates gave the first sergeant an upturned thumb. “Will do.”

  Then-captain Talgat Umarov had been Ritzik’s initial contact in Kazakhstan’s small, underfunded Special Forces counterterrorist unit, back in 1988. That year, a four-man Delta element led by Mike Ritzik went to Almaty to cross-train with the Kazakhs and teach them cutting-edge tactics. Over the ninety-day deployment, the four Americans and their twenty Kazakh counterparts bonded the way soldiers who share similar passions, missions, and dedication so often do.

  Over the ensuing six years, Ritzik and Rowdy Yates stayed in touch with Umarov, who had been the counterterrorist team’s OIC, or officer-in-charge. He’d been friendly, helpful, and outspokenly pro-American. In fact, Umarov impressed Ritzik so much that in the spring of 2000 they’d wangled a trip to Fort Bragg for the Kazakh and three of his senior NCOs, and sent them home after two exhausting but exhilarating weeks of blowing things up, jumping out of perfectly good aircraft, and long, beer-soaked nights in Fayetteville’s better barbecue joints, with three cases of premium sourmash bourbon and two sets of fourth-generation night-vision goggles—equipment that was impossible to come by in Talgat’s part of the world. In January of the following year, Ritzik had arranged another visit for Umarov, which included a month of English language training.

  The rapport between the Kazakh officer, Ritzik, and Yates had, in fact, been crucial during the first days after 9/11, when it became imperative for the United States to insert huge numbers of Special Forces troops into Central Asia as part of its military buildup in the region. The Kazakh military had quickly agreed to support the American request in no small measure because of the tight personal relationship between Mike Ritzik, Rowdy Yates, and their close friend Talgat Umarov, who, in 2001, was a lieutenant colonel, a battalion commander, and most important, a trusted officer who had the ear of the chief of staff. And the COS was the cousin and confidant of Kazakhstan’s all-powerful president.

  Yates shouted, “Gene Shepard says hello.” There was five seconds of silence. Then Yates bellowed, “Yes, Colonel, he still likes that awful Guinness Stout. Sometimes he likes it too much.”

  Shepard gestured to the sergeant major, who cupped his hand over the mouthpiece again. “What?”

  “Why the hell are you shouting like that, Sergeant Major?”

  “Because it’s long distance, putz.” Yates uncupped his hand from the mouthpiece and said, “Uh-huh. Great, buddy. Yes, we accept. We’re honored. We’re all very honored.”

  The first sergeant said, “Honored?”

  “Affirmative. He wants us to be godfathers.” Yates extended a thick arm, snagged a huge mug of steaming, sweet black coffee, and sipped it gingerly. “How’s Kadisha doing? That’s just super.” He listened for about half a minute, his grin crescendoing all the while. “Sounds absolutely effing great, Talgat. I wish we could have been there with you.”

  Yates plucked a pair of Wal-Mart reading magnifiers, set them on the ridge of his nose, and checked the scribbled list on the top page of the notepad on his lap. “Listen, Colonel, I’m actually planning to be in your neck of the woods soon, and I’m gonna need a little help.” He took another gulp. “Day after tomorrow, actually.

  “Day after tomorrow,” Yates repeated, fighting for the Kazakh word. “Erteng, old buddy, day after erteng. That’s right.” The sergeant major swept his feet off the desk. “Yeah, it came as a surprise to me, too. But you know how these things are—they never tell us anything.” He juggled mug, notepad, and phone as he scrunched his chair up to the desk. “A bunch of us. The old crowd plus a few new faces.”

  The sergeant major paused and listened. “Naw—nothing special. Talgat—Talgat, no!” Yates cupped his hand over the handset. “Jeezus, the son of a bitch wants to give us a big welcome party.” He exposed the mouthpiece. “Talgat, we gotta keep this quiet. So maintain OPSEC. Remember OPSEC? Yeah—good. That’s right.” Yates wriggled his eyebrows at the first sergeant and mouthed, “He finally got it.”

  Shepard gave the sergeant major an upturned thumb.

  “Naw,” Yates bellowed. “We’re just dropping in to see some old friends on the way to Afghanistan. That would be great, Colonel—absolutely terrific.” He tapped his pen on the legal pad. “Well, actually, I do. You got a pencil?” Yates paused. “You still have any of that Iranian 5.45-X-39 ammo left from our last trip? Yeah—about five thousand rounds should do.” He listened. “Uh-huh. Great. And can you have one of your people hit the bazaar? We need some of those Tajik shirts and hats we found last time. And maybe a bunch of Russkie cammo anoraks and those striped Russkie undershirts, too. All extra-large, Talgat. As big as you can find ‘em.

  “Right—put ‘em all in that warehouse at the airport we used as our HQ last time we TDY’d.” Yates’s basso profundo suddenly dropped by twenty decibels. “And I’ll need to borrow a plane, too. Nope—not Army. Commercial. Remember your cousin Shingis from Air Kazakhstan who we worked with on jump exercises when we were over last year? Well, if you can make your usual subtle approach to him, let him know we’d make it worth his while if we could borrow one of Kazakh Air’s Yak-42s for a day or so.” He paused. “Yeah—a Yak-42. Nothing else will do. But it’s got to be done very, very quiet since we’re just visiting on an unofficial basis. Like no ripples anywhere, if you catch my drift. Use lots of OPSEC, Colonel. We have to keep this one in the family.”

  Yates listened, then grinned. “No problem you say? Oh, I do like that, Colonel. I like that very much, sir.” There was another pause. Then Yates roared, “Anything you need from the States, old buddy? Don’t forget: I’m traveling at government expense—weight is no problem.” He laughed. “That’s easy,” he said. “You got it.” He rubbed a big paw over the top of his shaved head and looked at the wall clock he’d already set to Almaty local time. “I’d say by zero five hundred hours your time.” He paused. “Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Day after tomorrow, Colonel, see you. Sau bol, sau bol, Talgat—b’bye, b’bye.”

  Yates slapped the receiver down. “Shep,” he said, “see how the system works? We don’t need to go to Congress and beg for no stinking foreign aid. We don’t need any damn striped-suit diplo-dinks negotiating for us. We don’t got to hijack anything, either. We got ourselves a plane, a pilot, some ammo, local duds, and all it’s gonna cost us is a kid’s shirt, a couple of cases of great bourbon, and a pallet load of Pampers.”

  “Not to mention the suitcase full of cash.”

  “Hell, yes. The well-known suitcase full of cash. The expediter. Hoo-ah!” Yates stood up, extended his big hand, and high-fived the first sergeant. “Is this a great friggin’ country or what?”

  “Hoo-ah, a great friggin’ country, Sergeant Major. God Bless America.” Shepard gave Yates a quizzical look. “But why did you ask for the Russian uniforms. And how come you didn’t tell him about the Rangers?”

  Yates plucked a tiny, well-worn copy of Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War from the breast pocket of his BDU shirt and brandished it in Shepard’s direction like a talisman. “The Master says, ‘Use deception to throw your enemy into confusion,’ Grasshopper. We were on an open line, Shep. People listen in on open lines. And I want anybody listening to believe we’re headed for Afghanistan. Besides, if Talgat knew we were bringing a security force, he’d realize we had something serious going on.”

  “Talgat�
�s no dummy, Rowdy. The minute he sees that C-5, he’s gonna know.”

  “By then,” Yates said, stowing the book, “the Big Suit at the White House will have put the fix in at the Kazakh presidential palace and we’ll be slicker than deer guts in a pine forest. Besides, we’ll have all them young pecker-wood Rangers making a cordon sanitaire around us, so who’s gonna complain?” He stood up and rapped his scarred knuckles on the desk. “Remember the holy trinity, Shep: speed, surprise, and violence of action.” The sergeant major unsheathed his marker, flourished it like a sword, and thrust at the legal pad, drawing a quick Z through a trio of items. He scanned the remainder of his to-do list. “That leaves sixteen for Zorro. How you coming, Sancho Panza?”

  “I think you’re mixing your characters.” Shepard flipped through half a dozen sheets of paper. “Okay: I finally located the chutes, masks, and O-two prebreather units,” he said. “There are two dozen RAPS10 out at Marana the CIA was saving for some black op. Two tandems, sixteen masks, and sixteen double-bottle units. The Air Force bitched and moaned, but SECDEF has the juice, and they’re already on the way. ETA is about fifteen hundred. Then we have to get the chutes out to the rigger’s shed and go over ‘em before we repack and stow.”

  Yates’s head bobbed up and down once. “Get Curtis, Goose, Marko, Tuzz, and Dodger on it. They’re gonna be jumping the damn things; they might as well make sure they’re sound.”

  “Wilco, Sergeant Major.”

  “Equipment?”

  “Good to go equipment-wise: Russian Kirasa-5 tactical vests. Everybody already has GSG-911 boots. I’ve got French Nomex coveralls, Russian web gear, and Bulgarian AKs. We can’t use MBITRs,12 so I found fourteen secure CipherTac satellite-compatible radios. They were made for a Kraut contract. They’ll work with our duplex system and the satcom chips, so the comms are good to go. And the Chinese claymores are up at Dam Neck—they’ll be here by close of business today.”

  “Hey, asshole,” Yates growled, “we never close. Remember that.” He swallowed the last of the sweet coffee. Departure was scheduled for twenty hundred hours—not enough time, he worried, to get everything done.

  At least, Rowdy thought, they’d be comfortable on the trip over. The big C-5 was one of the Air Force’s SOLL-II, or Special Operations Low Level II aircraft, capable of landing, unloading, and taking off under complete blackout conditions. It was coming in from the 436th Airlift Wing at Dover, Delaware. The plane’s upper deck had reclining seats for seventy-three, as well as a galley and real heads. That beat the canvas strap benches, piss tubes, and chemical buckets on the C-130s they usually flew.

  Plus, the C-5’s cargo bay was huge. If they had to, they could check and repack all the chutes in the belly of the Galaxy. It might be awkward working around the pallets, but it could be done. Rowdy shook himself out of his stupor. What the hell had Shep said about Chinese claymores? “Shep?”

  The first sergeant said, “Yo?”

  “Chinese claymores?”

  “Coming from Dam Neck.”

  “Good. Pack three or four blocks of Semtex, too.” Semtex was the old Soviet-bloc equivalent of C-4 plastic explosive. Originally made during the Cold War in Czechoslovakia (for which reason Rowdy liked to say it was great for canceling Czechs), it was durable, malleable, and stable. And forensically, it would leave behind no indications that those who’d employed it were Americans.

  Shepard made a note. “Roger that.”

  Rowdy glanced up at the clock, thinking again how there’s never enough effing time. He had to scramble one of Delta’s six-man 1ST—intelligence support teams—to run the tactical operations center at Almaty. And he still had his research to do. The unit kept case study files on operations running all the way back to World War II. Colonel Beckwith had insisted on maintaining the case studies—and they’d always proved valuable in the past. Rowdy wanted to look at some thirty-year-old SAS operations in Oman. The geography was roughly similar to the Tarim Basin—except for the huge Tian mountain range ringing the Western Chinese desert. He pulled the reading magnifiers off his nose and stuck them in his pocket. “Be back in about half an hour.”

  “Gotcha. I’m just about finished with the comms.”

  “Good. You get hold of any RPGs?”

  “Not yet. I sent Bill Sandman to dig ‘em up. All he could find was LAWs.”

  “Crap.” Yates scratched a large spider bite just below his sunburned ear. “I’ll take care of it. I think I know where I can lay my hands on a dozen or so.” He chicken-scratched the acronym on his legal pad. “What about IR strobes?”

  “Got ‘em.” Shepard gave the sergeant major a wicked grin. “One less item on my list.”

  “And one more on mine. Now, if the sons of bitches at Langley ever give us some of their precious intelligence, we might be able to get this show on the road.”

  “Knowledge is power, Sergeant Major.”

  “If we don’t know where to look we’re going to be running around that desert in circles with our dicks in our hands—and right now the latest poop is eight hours old.”

  “Loner said he’s got it covered.” Shepard used Ritzik’s call sign.

  “Loner’s dealing with all those sharks in Washington,” Yates growled. “I’ll believe it when I’ve got real-time satellite images downloading on my laptop, and no assholes from Langley deciding what I can receive and what I can’t.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “When’s Mickey D supposed to arrive?”

  Gene Shepard scratched his head and consulted his note pad. “Mick? Fourteen hundred at the latest. He’s bringing the strobes.”

  “Primo.” Chief Warrant Officer Michael Dunne was a chopper pilot who worked out of the SOAR at Fort Campbell. For the past six months he’d been working closely with Ritzik’s Sword Squadron to help merge the Delta shooters and the Task Force 160 aircrews into a seamless, unified operation. He’d been brought in by Ritzik, who had first worked with the young warrant officer during cold-weather combat-readiness exercises in the Sierra Nevada, three weeks after Ritzik had been pulled out of Afghanistan in March of 2002.

  Because the ops had been so rough in Afghanistan, Ritzik had pushed hard to change the SOAR’s training parameters. The 160th had gone to Afghanistan using by-the-book training guidelines: pilots were not required to fly in visibility of less than two miles and a ceiling of less than five hundred feet. But combat had forced the SOAR to deliver SpecOps troops in zero-zero conditions: zero visibility and zero ceiling (not to mention unpredictable downdrafts, crosswinds, and wind shears).

  Back at CAG, Ritzik argued that unless a unit trained the way it would fight, the training was essentially useless. Delta trained that way. So did most SEAL units. Ritzik maintained that SOAR’s pilots wanted to push the training envelope, but that a cabal of play-it-safe desk jockeys in the Army chief of staff’s office was holding them back, afraid of losing one of SOAR’s multimillion-dollar MH-53E aircraft. Ritzik took his case to the three-star who ran JSOC—the Joint Special Operations Command—at Fort Bragg. The result was an experimental, three-week, balls-to-the-wall, high-altitude training session under brutal weather conditions, sleep deprivation, and scores of zero-zero landings in rough terrain. It was during those twenty-one days that Ritzik and Rowdy Yates concluded WO-2 Michael Dunne was the best damn chopper pilot they’d ever seen.

  Which was why within a minute and a half after he’d spoken with Ritzik from Rockman’s office, Yates put in a call to the SOAR and had Dunne TDY’d to Bragg on a SECDEF Priority One.

  Yates’s draft op plan called for Mickey D to accompany the main contingent to Turkey. That way he could be briefed on the operation’s problems and add his input to the solution. At Diyarbakir, the CIA’s air base in southeastern Turkey, Ritzik and his people would pick up the last of their supplies, then fly on to Almaty, Kazakhstan.

  In Turkey, Mickey D would rendezvous with an unmarked, unscheduled transport from Fort Campbell, which he’d ride to Dushanbe, the Tajik capital. Fro
m there, he and a four-man Task Force 160 aircrew would fly the radar-defeating covert-ops Black Hawk chopper that was co-cooned in the transport to an old Soviet paratroop-battalion command post at Tokhtamysh, within twenty-five miles of the Chinese border. There, they’d install fuel bladders that would triple the chopper’s range, and wait for the signal to exfiltrate Ritzik’s unit. The two dozen battery-powered infrared strobes Dunn was bringing with him would allow Ritzik to guide him to the LZ without using conventional lights.

  Yates started for the door. “I gotta get out of here.” Halfway, he stopped cold. “Oh, crap—I forgot the RPGs.” Yates plucked up the handset and punched a series of numbers into it. “Keep me posted.” He looked up at the twenty-four-hour clock above the door. “Christ Almighty, we’re running out of time, Gino. I wish Loner’s ass was here with us, not up in D.C. playing with the suits. I don’t like working in a vacuum.”

  5

  SECDEF’s Limousine.

  1155 Hours Local Time.

  SECDEF LOOKED UP from his meeting notes and switched off the limo’s right-rear reading light. He scribbled a telephone number on a Post-it, swiveled toward Ritzik, and handed it to him. “That’s my cell-phone number—the one my wife uses.” Rockman cracked a self-conscious grin. “She calls it my electronic leash. I pick it up—no one else.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now you have it. It’s not a secure line, so be careful what you say. But you call me with an inventory—everything you need—within two hours, and I’ll see that it gets to Fort Bragg, or wherever else you want it sent, by the end of the day.”