Chapter 9

Palmyra, Syria, March 2012

Nobody told her the target’s name until she was already in country.

That was how these missions worked — information parceled out in increments, each piece arriving only when the people managing her decided she needed it. She’d been pulled off a routine overwatch tasking in Kandahar, driven to the airfield, put on a transport that filed no manifest, and delivered to a forward location in eastern Syria that didn’t appear on any map she’d ever been given access to.

A man she’d never seen before met her on the tarmac. No rank insignia. No unit patch. A face so deliberately unremarkable she understood immediately that being unremarkable was his professional skill.

“Sand Viper,” he said.

“Yes.”

Not sir. He wasn’t military. Or if he was he wasn’t wearing it.

“Your target is Khalid al-Masri.” He handed her a folder. “ISIS military coordinator for northern Iraq operations. Former Iraqi Army, colonel level, Tikrit background. He’s been organizing troop movements and supply lines for six months. He’s also been very careful about where he sleeps.” A pause. “He got careless.”

She opened the folder. A photograph — mid forties, heavy through the shoulders, a manicured beard trimmed close, dark eyes that looked at the camera with the confidence of a man who believed he was protected. A mole on his left temple.

She noted the mole.

Filed it as her aim point before she’d finished looking at the photograph.

“Wife and three children are with him,” the man said. “He surfaces once a month to see them. We’ve confirmed his location in Palmyra — a residential building on the north side of the city. He uses the apartment on the fourth floor.” Another pause. “He likes to stand at the window in the evening. Holds the youngest — a girl, four years old — while he watches the street.”

She closed the folder.

“ROE is straightforward,” he said. “Positive identification before you engage — confirm the beard, confirm the mole, confirm it’s al-Masri and not someone who looks like him. Once you have positive ID the shot is at your discretion. No clearance required, no radio confirmation.” He paused. “The window may be narrow. We can’t have you waiting for a callback that takes thirty seconds you don’t have.”