The target was in one of those huts below them on the road that led from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

At 5:00 A.M., Martinez reported on the radio that the hunter-killer team was on station and expected the target to move soon. Swanson gave him some map coordinates, and a routine confirmation was returned. Without contradictory instructions at that final radio check, the mission was to proceed, so the snipers went black. The radio was turned off to save the battery, and the backup satellite phone was also shut down.

They would have preferred to conduct the entire operation at night to help with their escape, but the world isn’t perfect in combat. A window of opportunity such as this would be open for a very short time. It had to be done now.

They ran laser ranges on every hut and worked out firing solutions on all of them, including the front door of the target hut, its single window, and the old pickup truck parked out front. There was a scramble of junk in the bed of the pickup to make it appear to be just another vehicle carrying scavenged items for resale at some bazaar.

Kyle Swanson smoothly glassed the area, the huts, and truck. The images jumped in magnification, seeming close enough to reach out and touch. He looked at the guard wandering aimlessly about. Still good.

A light came on in the window, the yellow flicker of a lantern. “We have movement,” whispered Martinez.

A big man came through the door. The snipers, working from a picture, examined him closely through their scopes to get positive identification. The bearded face of Ali bin Assam was unmistakable in the brightening morning light. “It’s him,” said Martinez.

Ali was a top military operative of al Qaeda, one of the operational guys who planned the dirty work, then had others carry out the attacks. He was responsible for a lot of innocent people being dead, and American intel had picked up his scent after a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad had misfired a week earlier. Swanson and Martinez were assigned to hunt him down and kill him.