Warlord

FORTY-SIX

UNDER A TATTERED TENT PITCHED beneath a vast black dome pricked with sharp, ice-white stars, they ate. The two men sat directly opposite each other on the stained Bokhara rug. They were drinking steaming potions of cardamom tea spiked with vodka and eating their meal of boiled mutton, raisins, onions, carrots, and rice. The sniper, his rifle close beside him on the Bokhara, ate in stolid silence.

This was fine with Smith. His man was a shooter, not a talker, and it bode well for the approaching mission.

Dressed in his well-worn Afghan mufti, an anonymous tunic over shapeless cotton trousers and the traditional pako headcover, Smith felt strangely at home inside the tent, the horses and mules tied outside. But there was a strong strain of the nomad in his blood, and he gladly went anywhere in the world his life might lead.

Beyond the tent, the surrounding landscape resembled the far side of the moon. U.S. Air Force B-52 long-range bombers and AC-130 Spectre gunships had been pounding these limestone mountains for days, raining death from above on entrenched Taliban fighters, their military bunkers and strongholds. Not the safest neighborhood perhaps, but fields of battle seldom were. Field was such an odd, incongruous word in the context of war, Smith thought, suggesting vast acres of green clover or bright red poppies, rather than rivers of blood.

Sangin, his destination, was a small Afghan town, with a population of less than fifteen thousand. The inhabitants were all Pashtun and all fiercely supportive of the Taliban. Sangin was also infamous as the center of the opium trade in southern Afghanistan. Since the summer of 2006 British, American, and Canadian troops had engaged in heavy fighting with Taliban insurgents and allied opium traffickers in the area.

Many had died on both sides. Recently, a large group of Taliban fighters attacked a UN convoy making its way up a narrow mountain pass. The convoy somehow reversed down the narrow twisting road, escaped, and was rescued by U.K. and Canadian forces supporting them. The frustrated Taliban attempted escape by crossing the Helmand River. Air support was called in. All were killed by a single two-thousand-pound bomb delivered by a USAF B-52 bomber based out of Saudi Arabia, completely out of sight, circling high above.

That bomb had been called in by a young British Army soldier acting as a forward air controller. His responsibility was calling in fighter jet support and bombing strikes on suspected Taliban targets. He also had the ability to provide the enemy's GPS coordinates for drone weapons to take them out. The job of the young FAC was critical, especially on battlefields where U.K. forces were typically outnumbered.

Bomber pilots circling above knew the young soldier as Widow Six Seven, never suspecting the voice crackling on the radio belonged to Second Lieutenant Harry Wales.

FORTY-EIGHT HOURS AFTER BIDDING SHEIK al-Rashad farewell in his Islamabad hospital sanctuary, Smith and his Talib sniper Khalid were making their way on horseback, traveling south through the footlands of the southern mountains. Reaching the Helmand River just as night fell, they crossed, then started upward again trekking silently through the dark night, their sure-footed mounts climbing toward the peak of a snow-covered mountain. Their destination was a cave whose mouth overlooked the small village of Sangin far below.

There were countless mountain caves here, deep and well fortified, built over the decades by the Taliban, first used against the Soviets and now the Americans and their British allies.

On an earlier exploration, traveling alone, Smith had discovered that one of these caves had a direct sightline to the heavily guarded front gate of the British Compound. He had spent two days in this perch, watching the comings and goings of the FAC patrols through high-powered binoculars, jotting down every bit of information he would need for his mission to succeed.

Three hours after fording the river, having climbed three thousand feet, the two men had reached that very cave.

The British Army's forward outpost on the outskirts of Sangin was clearly visible from their position, the lights of the town and the outlying camp twinkling below. The cave, nearly a mile from the British position, was the last place British Army spotters would be expecting a Taliban sniper to be setting up shop. Typical Talib snipers used AK-47s, and such weapons were hardly accurate at anywhere near such a distance. But Khalid was not a typical Talib sniper and his weapon was definitely not an AK-47.

Once inside the cave, the men ate hungrily, fed the animals, and, exhausted, bedded down for a few hours of sleep.

Smith and Khalid Hassan rose an hour before dawn to get themselves in position before daybreak. They wedged themselves into the surrounding rock formations protecting the cave. A flat, stable surface at the bottom of a narrow crevice provided an ideal rest location for Khalid's long-range weapon.

The kill would be from a distance no other Taliban or al Qaeda sniper Khalid knew could even conceive of. Nor would they. He would never speak of this to anyone. Almost a mile! He'd been told early on in his training that if he ever informed anyone of this most secret action, he and his family would be beheaded.

The sun rose, turning everything violent shades of red and gold. The sniper began the long process of sighting in his weapon, adjusting for distance, elevation, windage, humidity, and haze. This gun was a miracle and he'd no doubt, God willing, that he'd accomplish the mission.

Smith crouched beside him, just to his right, hidden behind the massive rock formation, a pair of high-powered binoculars hung round his neck. Both men had a plastic-coated color photo of the target taped around the outside of the left sleeve of their fur coats for quick reference. Khalid got the distinct feeling the man beside him would like to be taking the shot himself. He was glad there was only room for one of them at the bottom of the V-shaped crevice or the man would be asking to look through his telescopic sight.

Khalid began regulating his breathing. He was calm. Confident. Ready. All he needed now was a target.

IN HIS BRITISH ARMY REGIMENT, the Blues and Royals, Khalid's target was known as Cornet Wales. Prince Harry, the handsome young redheaded Royal whose raffishly smiling face had graced so many worldwide magazine and tabloid covers, was the youngest son of the Prince and the late Princess of Wales. He was third in line to inherit the throne of England, but he'd just been promoted to second lieutenant, an honor he treasured.

Khalid did not know the target's true identity, nor did he need to know.

All he needed to know was exactly what the target looked like. And that face was smiling up at him from his sleeve.

He'd studied numerous close-up photographs in the past month, memorizing every feature. Luckily, the target, due to his reddish complexion, had an easily recognizable face, one that would make his job much easier. Given the enormous magnification power of the new scope, he was not anticipating any difficulty once the target stepped outside the sandbag redoubts surrounding the base camp.

"Soldiers emerging from the redoubts," Khalid said quietly to his companion, the binoculars held to his eyes.

One hour after sunrise, six British soldiers had suddenly emerged from the camp. They moved slowly and began to spread out carefully. One of their number had lost two limbs the previous week when he'd stepped on a Taliban mine. Although the perimeter of the camp was swept almost continuously, it was the old Soviet-era mines that usually caused British casualties.

Khalid, sighted in on a troop, stopped breathing during that natural pause that comes between inhalation and exhalation. He extended the breath pause from the normal three seconds to ten seconds. This was his window and now it was wide open. He began moving the scope in minute increments from face to face among the soldiers, looking for the handsome red-cheeked boy.

No. No. No.

Yes.

Target acquired, he was relaxed, nearing his ten count, the stock welded to his cheek. He applied gentle pressure to the trigger as he centered the reticules carefully, bisecting the face of his target…and began the slow squeeze…

Khalid's expertly trained finger never finished pulling that trigger. His head exploded into a fine mist of blood, gristle, and bone and his body was thrown violently back against the stone face of the mountain wall behind him.

Smith, drenched in the sniper's blood, looked back at his grisly remains in shock. What the hell? He raised his binoculars and looked down to the valley. No shooters, no one looking up in his direction. Where had the shot come from? What the hell was this? Good God! He had to get out of here, now! He scrambled on hands and knees along the ledge behind the rock all the way down to the cave opening.

Inside the mouth of the cave, the two horses waited patiently.

He mounted the faster of the two, a fine Arabian the Sheik had ordered to be given him, spurred the animal's flanks, and headed toward the rear of the cave at a trot, the wavering beam of his flashlight illuminating the dark tunnel.

The cave he'd so carefully chosen was not a cave at all. Although, from the rough wooden-beamed exterior, it looked exactly like the countless others in these mountains.

The cave was actually a half-mile-long tunnel.

It had been built by the Taliban fighters for moments precisely like this one, when emergency escape from imminent attack by enemy forces was necessary. The tunnel had taken more than a year to complete. It burrowed all the way through the rugged mountain. At the other end, another anonymous cave mouth overlooked an entirely different valley.

He knew air support was being called in; it was happening now. USAF F-15Es would be streaking up and down this valley looking for Taliban on the run after the failed assassination attempt on Prince Harry. And troops from the Blues and Royals regiment would be racing up the mountainside in search of the dead sniper and any other enemy combatants who'd run for cover.

Eventually, they would find the corpse outside the cave where Khalid's horse remained, waiting for his dead master's return. But they would not find this entrance to the tunnel, carefully hidden for decades at the extreme rear of this deep cave. He reached it, reined in his horse, and dismounted.

Smith cursed himself as he pulled at the small boulders, clearing away an opening large just enough to accommodate horse and rider. He remounted the stallion and rode through the hole he'd made into the semi-darkness, the distant opening on the other side of the mountain soon visible as a tiny wavering disc of sunlight far ahead.

He'd made two very stupid mistakes. He'd not counted on the enemy spotters and snipers possibly surveilling the mountains above the camp with exactly the same powerful sniper scope and weapon Khalid had been using!

Unforgivable.

And, two, in his haste he'd left the very latest English sniper weapon available beside the dead sniper's body. Virtually impossible for anyone outside the British military to acquire. And yet this dead Taliban fighter had one, and they would assume he knew how to use it.

An English gun. An extremely rare and unusual weapon that could only have come from an English source. They could never trace it to him, of course. How could they? Still, it was a grievous lapse of judgment.

But now, for the first time in all these years of immaculate success, he'd left behind a bloody clue. He knew enough about clues to know that even one could be fatal. Especially with the full force of both British intelligence services arrayed against him.

He emerged into the hard light, dug his spurs into his horse's flanks, and raced toward the safety of Sheik al-Rashad's compound. Just four days ago, he and Khalid had decamped for the mountains above Tangin, supremely confident and sure of success.

As he galloped down and through the narrow valley, he took stock of his situation. He had always thought of himself, when he thought of himself, as a kind of magician. Or, better still, a composer. Yes, exactly that. A conductor orchestrating his own composition, a complex design he had been weaving since childhood, its dark threads, its potent symbols; all those myriad strands of his existence that required the dexterity of a true virtuoso in order to keep flowing.

This mistake, this frayed strand threatened everything; all of his meticulous plans now needed to be accelerated before they unraveled completely. He needed to step back and take a serious look at the fabric of his life. Hit the reset button. Make certain no more missteps were made in these few remaining weeks culminating in his ultimate objective. He could ill afford the one mistake he'd just made.

Still, perhaps the one, but no more.