I was up to my ears in a Gore-Tex sniper suit, a big, bulky overall with a camouflaged outer and a duvet-type lining. It had kept me warm for the first few hours, but prolonged contact with the ground was steadily draining me. I had about two days' food left, but being so close to the target, I was on hard routine. I couldn't heat up food, or make a brew. Still, at least I was dry.

I raised the binos and scanned the ground again, controlling my breathing. It wouldn't take much of a vapour trail for someone to think I was having a cookout.

The coffin-shaped scrape I'd dug after moving covertly into the area was about two feet deep and covered with camouflage netting. I adjusted it again to make sure the objective lens at the front end of the LTD [laser target designator] had a clear field of view to the factory. When Mladic arrived to do whatever he was going to do in the middle of nowhere, I'd call it in. The Firm, getting shelled to shit by the Serbs back in Sarajevo, would green-light a fast jet loaded with a 2000-pound Paveway laser-guided bomb. About fifteen or twenty minutes later, depending on how long it took the platform, as we said in the trade, to deliver, there'd be a top-level vacancy in the Serb high command.

After the hit, I'd get the fuck out as quick as I could. The Serbs weren't fools; they knew these precision bomb strikes were man-in-the-loop technology and they'd be out looking for me.

Apart from the LTD and my daysack, everything from the sniper suit to the plastic bags of shit and petrol can of piss would stay in the hide. It wouldn't matter if the Serbs unearthed it: this wasn't the first time they'd been marked, and it wouldn't be the last. They knew who was doing it, but would blame the Muslims anyway. I'd rather have left the LTD as well, but there was a difference between the Serbs knowing they were getting designated and being able to prove it.