CHAPTER 4

Al-Hasakah, Syria

November

ROJAVA, BETTER KNOWN AS the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, occupied the northwestern corner of the embattled nation. This multiethnic confederation had seceded from the central government with relative success and operated as an autonomous nation with its own constitution. After expelling ISIS, known there as Daesh, from the area, the local residents and refugees from the south enjoyed reasonable living conditions. In Rojava, equal rights for both genders, freedom of religion, and individual property rights were all enshrined in the founding document. These principles of secular democracy had united Arabs, Kurds, and Turks into relative peace and stability and had the potential to spread across the rest of Syria. To most this would seem to be good progress. To others it was a threat to their power. The Interior Ministry of Syria had dispatched a sniper named Nizar Kattan to cut the head off the snake.

The federation and its nearly five million residents were led by copresidents: an Arab, Masour Hadad, and a female Kurd, Hediya Fatah. Nizar was not a particularly devout Muslim, but he was an Arab and found the concept of a woman running a nation offensive. However, given the freedom to choose which of the copresidents to target, Nizar decided upon the male. As much as he would love to teach this Kurd bitch a lesson, leaving a woman in charge would actually help unravel this little fiefdom even more.

President Hadad’s home sat in one of the better neighborhoods of Al-Hasakah, a large city that sat geographically near the nation’s borders with both Turkey and Iraq. Hasakah was urban, crowded, and flat, making a long-range shot difficult to plan and execute. Though taking out the target at close range would make Nizar’s escape more difficult, he’d planned for that contingency. He had examined the aerial photographs as well as the intelligence provided by regime assets operating in the city, but he could not locate an appropriate hide site. One of the older men in his unit mentioned a technique used by the “D. C. snipers, ” a pair of criminals who had terrorized the Americans’ capital city over a period of weeks just a year after 9/11. Nizar was too young to have remembered the attacks, but an online article gave him all the inspiration he needed to create his own rolling hide.

The battered white Kia Frontier truck looked to be of similar vintage as most of the other vehicles parked on the street, and local plates had been secured so as not to arouse any suspicion from the Asayish, the local security forces. The truck’s bed was piled with building materials covered by a plastic tarp and so looked like one of the many vehicles connected with a nearby construction site.

Just after 9: 00 p. m., Nizar pulled the truck up against the curb, with the bed facing the target’s home. The street was deserted but he went through the motions of pretending to look for something among the concrete blocks and lumber in the back of the truck, ultimately crawling into the hollow space he’d built and pulling a block into place behind him. He wasn’t a tall man, but Nizar wished that the truck bed had been longer when he had to bend his knees to fit into the space. The night air was cool; he pulled up a woolen blanket, adding warmth and an additional layer of concealment to his prone form.

• • •

Nizar had dozed off on a thin foam mattress but was jolted awake by the sensation of the truck’s movement. The Kia bounced on its worn shocks as someone pushed down on the rear bumper. He heard the rustling of the tarp and the scraping sound of blocks being moved against one another. His heart began to race, his hand finding the plastic pistol grip of his rifle.

Am I compromised?

He slowly moved the selector switch to semiauto, making far more noise than he’d hoped, but whoever it was didn’t seem to notice as the scraping of the concrete continued. The blocks were a faç ade stacked on top of wooden slats just above Nizar’s head, and removing one or two would surely reveal his position; in a matter of seconds, his mission could be over.

“What are you doing? ” an authoritative voice cried out in Arabic from what sounded like ten or twenty meters away.

The movement of the blocks came to an abrupt halt.

“I am just looking at these blocks, these are good blocks, ” the nearby man responded.

“Those blocks are not yours, old man. Get away from that truck before I have to arrest you. ”

“I was only looking. ”

Nizar felt the man step down from the bumper.

“I am sorry, sir. ”

“Go now! ”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir. ”

Nizar could hear the man scurry away on sandaled feet. Heavier steps approached and a bright light blazed through the cracks between the blocks. Nizar put his head down and closed his eyes, not even daring to breathe, hiding from the police officer’s flashlight like a child under sheets. The seconds ticked by slowly before he heard the light click off, and, after a pause, the boots moved away. The sniper audibly exhaled; no more sleep would come this night.

His thoughts wandered to memories from his youth, his father teaching him the virtue of patience under the thin metal roof of their family’s farmhouse. Their perch in the loft was not much different than this one, cramped and dank but comfortable on a cushion of hay. The muted form of the golden jackal circled the goats’ pen, but Nizar couldn’t see the sights in the predawn light. The old British rifle felt huge in his hands and his neck craned forward uncomfortably due to the length of the stock. He could hold it only by resting the long wooden fore end on a rolled-up blanket. He could smell the tobacco on his father’s breath as he whispered to him to stay calm. Nizar shook with excitement but his father’s voice slowed his breathing and steadied the tremor of the iron sights. When the jackal circled again, the gray light had turned pink and he could make out the rectangular post through the rear notch. His father’s repeated words became almost a hum as he began to squeeze the World War I rifle’s heavy trigger. Calm. . .

As dawn broke, the city began to come alive: engines coughed, dogs barked, birds chirped, and children shrieked with laughter. Even during war, life went on. Among the many sounds of urban life, one stood out for Nizar: the ringing of church bells. Al-Hasakah was home to Christian churches as well as mosques, and, instead of the call to morning prayer echoing from a minaret tower, the bells of the Syrian Orthodox church clanged in the distance.

Under the cover of darkness, Nizar had rotated the concrete block in front of him so that he could see through the hollow end; he had broken the center section out so that neither his suppressed muzzle nor scope would be obstructed. He observed the increasingly bright area around Hadad’s front door through the 4x magnification of the Russian PSO-1 scope mounted to the side of his VSK-94 rifle. It was an ugly black thing that looked like the stepchild of the ubiquitous AK-47, with half a meter of tubular suppressor in the front and a boxy stock to the rear. Nizar cared nothing about its odd looks. Instead, he found beauty in its function.

The home was surprisingly modest. The one-story structure was surrounded by a low stone wall topped with an iron fence that extended eight feet above street level. There was no sign of guards, armed or otherwise, though Nizar assumed that the gate was at least locked.

The sloping range estimator engraved into the scope’s reticle allowed the user to bracket a man’s height and establish an approximate distance to the target. No one moved within Nizar’s field of view, but he could see the front door, which he used for the same purpose, taking into account that the door aperture would be slightly taller than the average male figure for which the reticle was calibrated. The range was just over one hundred meters, which was an incredibly short shot for a sniper of Nizar’s talents, particularly from this stable shooting position. This rifle and its cartridge were engineered for maximum stealth: the suppressor masking the report of the shot and the bullet flying at less than the speed of sound so as not to create a sonic “crack” on its way to the target. As a result, the 16. 8-gram subsonic bullet dropped like a rock, which made knowing the range to the objective critical.

Nizar had to piss but he dared not move since the target could appear at any moment; he hadn’t come this far to be caught with his dick in his hand. With the rising sun came the encroaching heat, violating his confined space, his cloth head scarf quickly soaking through, sweat stinging his eyes. The waiting was always uncomfortable, but that was the job of a sniper.

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