In Uzbekistan, he [Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan] said, “partial boiling of a hand or an arm is quite common.” He also knew of two cases in which prisoners had been boiled to death.
– The New Yorker, February 14, 2005, as reported by Jane Mayer
Gora Muruntau, Kyzyl Kum Desert, Uzbekistan
The sun rose as Camille was lying on her belly in a ghillie suit in the saddle between two sand dunes, tasting dust, smelling of camel droppings and trying to become one with the desert. Every bug in the sun-baked wasteland seemed to have been waiting its entire existence for someone as sweet as she to come along, but she couldn’t swat, she couldn’t scratch. As a good sniper, she was the Kyzyl Kum and microterrain didn’t claw at itself, no matter how badly it wanted to.
Iggy was positioned a good eight hundred meters away from her, across the runway at her twelve o’clock. The winds were still coming off the mountains as they did at night. In the day, when the desert floor heated up, the prevailing winds blew into the valleys and up the mountainsides. Since planes landed into the wind, Camille needed to make sure she and Iggy were positioned so that the main cabin door would be facing them. If it came in now, she would be the only shooter. As soon as the winds shifted, she would begin her slow creep to join Iggy’s side of the runway so that they would both have a clear shot at the cabin door throughout the day.
Camille peered through the scope on the Dragunov sniper rifle, happy to be working with the gorgeous old girl again, particularly in such a grimy environment. As long as it wasn’t over oiled, it could withstand a sandstorm without choking. The Dragunov was Soviet made-designed for abuse.
Gerbils scrambled across ripples of the red sand, but there was no sign of any larger life forms-or a jet for that matter. Hunter had better be on his way. If she had guessed wrong, she would never forgive herself, but this was the only airstrip within hundreds of kilometers aside from the commercial one at Zarafshan. The KGB had used this one to ferry prisoners to Gora Muruntau and if Rubicon was running the place now, they would do the same-she hoped.
She didn’t like it that they were working without a net. The third operator that Iggy had brought along for overwatch was a longtime mercenary who had somehow caught the attention of Uzbek authorities. They had turned him away at the border. One man short, she and Iggy had decided to take Pete along to the target to provide some support, although they knew she couldn’t handle being on her own in the third position.
Camille was a loner when it came to sniping. She didn’t like doing it military style, working in teams of two, a sniper and a spotter, but Iggy had insisted that he could do it by himself and she wasn’t about to challenge his abilities.
So Pete was working with her, lying prone off Camille’s right calf, ready to help calculate distances and wind. Pete could drive her crazy with nonstop chatter, but today she was strangely quiet. She guessed Pete wasn’t comfortable with the fact that she was about to help several people meet their deaths. Camille knew Pete hadn’t seen much combat and she suspected she had never killed anyone. Camille didn’t like killing either, but the mission required it and rescuing Hunter was worth ridding the world of a few more bad guys.
Camille scanned the skies for any sign of a plane, then studied a patch of dead weeds alongside the runway so she would be ready if one arrived. “Wind, south, southeast, twenty-two to twenty-five knots. Gusts at forty. Range me. Verify.”
“Affirmative,” Pete said.
“They’ve shifted.” Camille slowly pulled a clunky Soviet-era walkie-talkie from her pack. “LIGHTNING SIX on the move.”
Camille inched her body through the sand, beginning the long creep around the runway. Sand was pelting her, but at least her trail would be almost immediately covered.
An hour later Camille’s forearms were burning from the coarse sand now embedded into her skin, but she and Pete were almost at the end of the runway-halfway.
Another hour later Camille and Pete had slithered the final inches to their new perch, some three hundred meters away from Iggy, with him at their three o’clock. The desert tasted saltier than in Iraq. Camille spat and slowly took a handful of peanut M &Ms from her pack and inched them to her mouth. The chocolate inside was liquid. She swirled it around in her mouth and chomped down on the peanuts as she set up the high powered rifle’s bipod.
She studied tumbleweeds at the edge of the runway and recalculated the wind speed. The temperature had already climbed to one hundred and eleven and the humidity was so low she knew she had to take care not to overshoot the target; the round would easily tear through the hot, dry air. She could only guess where the plane would end its taxi and where her target would appear, so she calculated multiple ballistic scenarios, keenly aware that direct sun on the target could trick her into thinking it was farther away and any shadows combined with rising heat from the desert floor could jack her up just as easily.
Camille was lying in position on her belly, her weight supported by her left side and she was looking through her scope, studying plants for any change in the wind and distracting herself from worry about Hunter when Pete nudged her.
“Company,” Pete said.
A small white van drove up the only access road, a dust trail blowing away from it in the strong wind. Only parts of the road were visible; the rest had returned to desert. The van crossed the runway and parked on the edge of the tarmac. The driver and passenger were both Caucasian, a Rubicon greeting party no doubt. Camille shoved in her ear plugs.
“Watch the skies. They should be getting close.” Camille double checked to make sure there were no unusual antennae mounted on the vehicle because she couldn’t risk neutralizing them if they were in communication with the plane. There were none. “Hand me the radio.” Camille called Iggy. “I count two.”
“That’s affirmative.”
“I’m clear for both,” Camille said.
“Same here. I’ll take the passenger.”
“Confirmed. Passenger is yours. Advise when target acquired. WILDCAT will countdown from three. Make contact on one.” Camille turned her head slightly toward Pete. “Anything?”
“Negative.” Pete searched the horizon.
Camille shoved the radio toward Pete, checked the wind, then the range to the van. The men sat inside with it running, probably enjoying the air conditioning. The crosswind of twenty-five knots would try to play games with the round. She adjusted the dope and confirmed her reading of five hundred seventy-five meters to the van.
The driver was a clean-cut blond, no older than thirty, wearing reflective sunglasses. Camille aimed just above them, at the middle of his forehead
Iggy’s voice crackled over the radio. “Target acquired. Standing by.”
“Start the count,” Camille said to Pete.
“Three.”
Camille took a deep breath.
“Two.”
She held it.
“One.”
She squeezed off.
Tariq was lying on a sand dune with his brother Habib, watching the abandoned Soviet-era airstrip through binoculars. He had seen the sleek private jets banking over the camp and more often than not, they came on Thursday afternoons and Monday mornings. It was time to practice his new reconnaissance skills on a real target. No one at al-Zahrani’s midday teaching would miss him and his brother. He had shoved an al-Zahrani tract in his pocket to study so he didn’t fall behind the others even though he didn’t want to admit that he was growing weary of the lectures about purity within their ranks. He had left his family in Saudi Arabia to learn how to kill Westerners, not to purge their movement of other misguided Muslims. They were forbidden to leave the camp, but what good were skills at infiltration and evasion if they only tested them on each other? He’d had enough of the exercises with the other mujahedin. If he was going to succeed in New York, he needed real-world practice. Just as he had expected, he saw movement and followed it with his binoculars. Through a cloud of dust, he could see a white van approaching the runway.