Sniper Elite (7 page)

“Gil, we've got this guy nailed down to a fairly specific and isolated location not very far over the border into Iran. We've had him under drone observation for the last three weeks. We know his routine. We know that he travels with minimal security. Now is the time.”

“I obviously can't walk in there on my own. I assume you've made arrangements for transport at the Afghan border?”

This time Lerher's glance at the Mossad man was obvious. “No, we can't risk having your movement detected. Al-Nazari would vanish the second it looked as though anyone might be moving against him. You'll HAHO in, jumping from a Turkish commercial airliner during a scheduled flight from Kabul to Tehran. Next photo.”

Another map appeared on the wall, this one showing in red the projected flight path from the city of Kabul to Tehran. A green
x
indicated the point at which Gil would exit the aircraft inside of Iranian airspace.

“We've got Turkey's cooperation on this?”

“We do,” Lerher answered. “It's an audacious mission, Gil, no doubt about it. That's why it's going to succeed.”

“What am I jumping out of?”

“A Boeing 727. It's out there on the tarmac. Our people are going over it now, making all the necessary modifications. It's in good shape. You'll be jumping during a black moon from thirty-five thousand feet, using GPS to guide you as close to the kill zone as possible before you touch down. You'll probably have to travel close
to thirty miles under canopy because it would look suspicious for the pilot to veer off course. This is a black operation, so you won't be taking your usual gear. You'll use a Dragunov SRV for the hit.”

Gil glanced again at the map, reaffirming that he would be jumping very deep into Indian country. “And my extraction?”

“After the hit, you'll lay low and evade until dark,” Lerher said. “Once it's dark, you'll make your way south to the extraction point where the Night Stalkers will pick you up well inside the Iranian border. Now, we don't expect you to have any contact with Iranian troops. This province is a wasteland, and there's nothing there to protect. However, the area
is
rife with heroin smugglers sneaking back and forth across the border at all hours of the day and night. This is the reason we're so confident we can hit Al-Nazari inside of Iran without anyone suspecting US involvement. Allow me to illustrate.”

He looked to the back of the room. “Next photo.”

A map of Sistan-Baluchistan Province appeared on the wall, marked with multiple scattered dots of different colors.

“Sistan-Baluchistan is the hub for eighty-five percent of the world's heroin traffic. Each red dot that you see on this map indicates an assassination. Each blue dot indicates a bombing. And finally, yellow marks the spot of an abduction.
All
of these have taken place since 2008. As you can see, the region is basically a civil war zone—one of the best-kept secrets in the Middle East—so there won't be any reason for the Iranians to suspect outside involvement.

“Allow me to make one thing very clear, Gil . . . every reasonable attempt is to be made to prevent the Iranians from knowing you were ever there. If this operation works the way we're hoping it will, it can open the door for a multitude of future clandestine operations inside of Iran, and I don't need to tell you how valuable that's going to be.”

“Are my comms Russian as well?” Gil never paid much heed to a briefer's admonitions about post-hit protocol. Once the hit was
made, he was on his own time, and he would do whatever was required to get his ass back alive.

Lerher shook his head. “Your radio and GPS will be of Chinese manufacture. Your prep team from SOG will be in directly to brief you on the particulars.” He paused again, glancing at the Mossad agent to see if there was anything to add. The man shook his head. “Well, then,” Lerher said, “I guess that should about cover mission overview. Do you have any more questions before I call in the prep team?”

“Yeah,” Gil said. “How soon do I leave?”

“You will board an Air Force cargo flight for Kabul in exactly”—Lerher checked his watch—“eleven hours, forty minutes. Shortly thereafter, you will board the 727 bound for Iran. Good luck.”

Badira was eating her afternoon meal when Sabil Nuristani, the village headman, came into the hut asking where to find Naeem.

“I don't know,” she said. “I've not seen him since this morning. I think he left for Kabul.”

Sabil looked into the room where Sandra, dressed once again in a grubby gown, lay shackled to the bed by the ankle of her bad leg. She was sleeping. “How long will she live?”

“That depends,” Badira said, tired of being asked that question.

“On what?”

“On how much more brutality she is forced to endure.”

The old man stood brooding, deeply troubled on many levels. He was not Taliban, nor was he a Pashtun. He was Kalasha, and the Kalasha people were not like Naeem and his reckless band of
Wahhabi fanatics, an ultraconservative arm of Islam. Sabil's direct ancestors, those of the Nuristani line, had lived in the Hindu Kush for centuries. The province had even been named for them, in fact. The Kalasha people had their own traditions, their own customs, and they heavily resented the militant presence of both the Taliban and their new friends in the HIK.

Naeem was an upstart lieutenant from the Pashtun south, sent north to help bolster the Taliban presence in the face of the burgeoning Hezbi factions. He had chosen Waigal Village not only because it was isolated far up in the mountains, but also because most of the middle-aged men were dead from recent regional disputes over resources and land. This meant the rest of the villagers were easily scared into submission. The teenaged men of the village had no fathers to teach them tribal ways, no one to give them direction or to keep them on the straight and narrow. As a result, they had been highly impressed with Naeem's heroic tales of the jihad—most of which Sabil suspected to be lies—and they were beguiled by his promises of the afterlife and all of the women they would experience should they be killed fighting the infidel.

“I've sent word to Aasif Kohistani,” Sabil confessed at length. “Once he learns that Naeem is trying to ransom the American wom—”

“But he's Hezbi!” Badira said, fearing the HIK even more than the Taliban. “You should not have done that. Naeem will kill you.”

“It's done. The woman is a danger to us all. This village will be very hard to attack, so the Americans will not differentiate when they come. They will drop bombs on everything, shoot everyone.” He stood gnawing his fingernails, convinced they were all in imminent peril.

“I wish you had waited,” Badira lamented. “The ransom demand has already been delivered to Kabul.”

Sabil waved his hand at her. “They will never pay. The amount
Naeem wants is insane. His Wahhabi ideas have addled his brain. I even heard him telling the boys around the fire that he once met the
Great Usama
. Can you believe it? As if Bin Laden would have bothered to even look at a fool such as him.”

“Bin Laden was a fool,” Badira said wearily. “His jihad has brought us nothing but trouble.” She glanced into the room where Sandra was having a fitful dream. “You realize that Aasif Kohistani cares nothing for this village—or for you. He may come and take the American away, but he will not protect you from Naeem.”

“As long he takes her out of here,” Sabil said. “Then I will have done my duty to the village. Naeem is not long for this earth in any case. Fanatics such as him never are.”

He left a short time later. Badira went into Sandra's room, waking her up. “You need to take your medicine and drink some water. You're dehydrating.”

The antibiotics were keeping infection at bay, but Sandra's bullet wound was still fevered and painful. “You're sure you don't have anything stronger than aspirin?” she asked. “The pain . . . it's horrible. I can't take it anymore.” She was in despair.

Badira sat looking at her. “I can give you opium. That's all I have.”

“Heroin?”

“No, opium—from the poppy.”

Sandra consented, whimpering, “Okay, anything.”

Badira went to the door and told the teenage guard to go and bring her some opium and a pipe from one of the elders.

The boy got to his feet, an AK-47 hanging awkwardly from his shoulder. “For you?”

“For the American. Be quick. She's in great pain.”

The boy looked at her skeptically. “The elders won't—”

“Tell them Naeem has given orders. Go!”

The boy eyed her balefully for a long moment, then turned and went away.

He returned about twenty minutes later with a small, handmade wooden box that he brought into the room where Badira was cleaning Sandra's wound.

“Fine,” she said. “Please set it on the table.”

The boy put the box on the table and stood looking down at Sandra with open disdain. “I thought they hated opium.”

Sandra averted her eyes.

“She's in great pain,” Badira explained. “Now please go back outside.”

“Their pain is important enough for opium, but ours is not? She's a hypocrite—just as Naeem has said.” He reached to pull the loose-fitting garment away from Sandra's neck, wanting a look at her breasts. Sandra grabbed the gown and batted his hand away.

He socked her clumsily in the side of her face and shouted, “Don't touch me, infidel whore!”

Badira jumped up from her chair, pushing him toward the door. “Get out! She is my responsibility when Naeem is not here. Now go!”

“Who does she think she is!” the boy demanded, throwing his hand in the air and shouting, “I am a soldier. She is our prisoner. She does as we say!”

“And you do as
I
say!” Badira hissed acidly, pulling the scarf from her face to expose her hideous disfigurement. “Now get out!”

The boy recoiled from her, frightened by the face that only moments before had appeared very pretty to him, two beautiful eyes peering over the top of a maroon
hijab
.

“I will tell Naeem!” he called over his shoulder as he fled the room.

“Sure you will!” she called after him. “You'll tell him you ran from a woman. If that I could live to see such a day!”

She jerked the curtain across the doorway and went to open the box on the table.

“What was he saying?” Sandra asked, the confrontation having taken her mind very briefly from the pain.

“They are young and stupid,” Badira said, removing a pea-size pellet of dried opium latex, a small pipe, and a short candle stub from the box.

“I have to smoke it?” Sandra asked, painfully raising herself up onto one elbow.

“This is not a hospital,” Badira reminded her.

The tiny ceramic pipe was no bigger than Sandra's thumb, made of fired white clay. Badira put the opium pellet into the bowl and gave it to her. Then she lit the candle and told Sandra to scoot closer to the table. “Get the pipe close to the flame,” she told her. “Breath the flame into the blow and inhale the vapor.”

Sandra did as she was told, sucking the vapor deep into her lungs, desperate to kill the pain in her leg. She inhaled twice and was rapidly transported to a separate reality. Every muscle in her body went limp, and her head suddenly seemed to weigh fifty pounds. Badira caught her and helped her to lie back on the bed, covering her with a blanket as she drifted off on the opium cloud.

Badira knew this was the beginning of Sandra's opium addiction, but if Aasif Kohistani arrived before Naeem returned to take her back to the Americans, addiction would be the least of her worries. For now, it was better to keep her doped up and out of pain. This way she would hardly realize what was happening, should Naeem choose to violate her again.

Gil stood in the tail section of the Boeing 727 looking down the short staircase extending from the rear of the aircraft to the tarmac six feet below. Chief Steelyard stood at the base of the stairs looking up at him with his hands on his hips, chewing pensively at the unlit Cohiba caught in the corner of his mouth.

“Now I know how D. B. Cooper musta felt,” Gil remarked, recalling the story of the legendary D. B. Cooper who hijacked a 727 in November 1971, demanding a $200,000 ransom for the passengers. After the ransom money was delivered to the plane, along with four parachutes, Cooper ordered the jet back into the air, ostensibly en route to Mexico. But this was merely a ruse. Cooper bailed out the tail end of the 727—exactly as Gil was about to do—somewhere between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, never to be seen
again. The FBI had insisted ever since that Cooper could not have survived the jump. As far as Gil knew, no one had ever attempted such a jump before or since.

Steelyard snatched the cigar from his teeth, pointing at the fuselage over his head. “This shit right here comes real close to being beyond the call of duty. You've got three Pratt & Whitneys right over your goddamn head. If those pilots aren't flying this crate straight and level when you jump, the jet blast will tear you apart.”

Gil trotted down the stairs. “They'll bring the airspeed down as close to two hundred knots as they can get it without stalling.”

“I still don't like it.”

“They never found Cooper's body, Chief. I believe he made it. I'll make it, too.”

The older SEAL shook his head, adjusting his cap. “SOG really cooked one up this time. What about the passengers? Seems to me they might notice a sudden loss of cabin pressure.”

“Lerher's techs already killed the feed to the emergency oxygen masks in the passenger compartment,” Gil said. “The flight won't be full, only nineteen passengers. Three minutes before I jump, the pilot's gonna drop the cabin pressure to three psi and knock everybody out. My
stewardess
and I will already be on oxygen by then, hiding in the rear compartment. The passengers go unconscious within sixty seconds, and that gives us a minute to lower the stairs and for me to hit the silk. The cabin should be resealed and back under pressure inside of three minutes. A couple of minutes after that, everybody wakes up again—scared shitless but none the wiser.”