The first book in the Sniper series, 2007

A DUSTY HAZE HUNG OVER the little cluster of mud and brick huts just before dawn, and the smell of cooking fires filtered back to the snipers. A boy with a stick herded a few goats across stony ground to the east, trying to find something on which the animals could graze. The land was barren and bleak, like the lives of the few people who lived here. A single guard with an AK-47 walked about, trying to stay awake.

It had taken Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson and his spotter, Corporal Eric Martinez, seventy-two hours since being dropped by helicopter to reach the hidden overlook position. They had humped through valleys and steep ridges, following faint trails that led them to a rough road running through the no-name village.

They had moved only during darkness, for although they wore the same sort of clothing as the locals, they obviously were quite different. Swanson was a Massachusetts Irishman with reddish-blond hair, and Martinez was an olive-skinned Mexican. With such distinctive faces, plus being weaponed up, they could not take the chance of being examined too closely.

They made scheduled radio checks every two hours. Swanson led the way in silence as they closed in on the road until they spotted the lights of the village in the distance. He looked at the map for a final time, smiled, folded it up, and put it into a pocket.

It was still the darkest hours of the night when they discovered the deep cave on the ridge above the village. It had an exit at the far end, which allowed them to crawl in undetected. They gathered weeds and bushes from the rear side of the ridge and stuffed them into the folds of their loose clothing to create crude ghillie suits, and became invisible in the night. They took their positions, set up the rifle and the spotting scope, and lay motionless fifteen yards back in the gloom of the small cavern.