Free Soar by John Weisman

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 tobelieve 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 RAPS 10 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 bejumping 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-9 11 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,