CHAPTER 59

Eastern Turkey

September

THEY WERE MORE LIKE artillery than small arms. The rifles weighed nearly thirty pounds each, even without the massive telescope-like optics. Both weapons had been waiting for them in the farmhouse, packed carefully in crates hidden under blankets. They didn’t look like any rifles that Nizar had seen before. Tasho must have requested them. The stock looked almost skeletal, and the bipod mounted oddly above the long, thick barrel. The scope was as large as his forearm and would look right at home on the enormous rifle. Nizar spoke some English and was amused by the name of the scope, the “B. E. A. S. T. ”

After his assassination of President Hadad in Syria, Nizar had received his next assignment from General Yedid. That assignment had brought him to this remote land in eastern Turkey to prepare for a long-range shot, the longest Nizar had ever attempted.

The two men painstakingly mounted the U. S. -made optics, using machinist’s levels to ensure that there was absolutely no cant to the reticle before torquing down the screws. The scope mount itself had a small bubble level attached so that the shooter didn’t inadvertently cant the rifle while making a shot, something that could cause serious problems at extreme distances.

Packed with each rifle was a large amount of ammunition, hundreds of rounds, from the looks of it. Nizar removed one of the cartridges from its white cardboard box and examined it. He had never seen a rifle cartridge so large; it looked like something an antiaircraft gun would use.

Tasho appeared to be familiar with the equipment and worked quickly and efficiently. When he was done mounting his optic, he made sure that Nizar’s was set up correctly as well. The scopes were secured using ERA-TAC adjustable mounts so that they didn’t run out of vertical adjustment. Nizar didn’t know who their target was, but from the looks of the sniper weapon systems, the shot was going to be a long one.

Nizar didn’t care for the Shishani, as Tasho was nicknamed, despite his reputation. He was too cold, too solitary, too serious, but more than that, Tasho made him uneasy. He looked younger than Nizar had expected for someone with such a storied past. A pale face and red beard had become part of his calling card. When conventional forces in the Eastern world heard rumors of sightings of a sniper with red facial hair, they all prayed it was not the Shishani.

Nizar was not naï ve enough to believe everything he had heard about the man with whom he now worked; not all of it could possibly be true. But if a fraction of it was. . . Still, he decided not to ask too many personal questions. Though he called him only by his first name, to Nizar he was still “the Shishani” as per his legend.

It was said that Tasho had begged his father to let him fight the Russians in the First Battle for Grozny. Though he was old enough to fight at age fifteen, his father would hear none of it, leaving him at home to care for his mother and two younger brothers. Tasho’s father did not return that New Year’s Day 1995, nor any day after. He was killed by the Russians early in the fighting, inadvertently causing exactly what he had attempted to prevent: Tasho now knew his life’s calling, to kill Russians.

Choosing service in the Georgian army over life as a sheepherder, Tasho proved himself adept at shooting and stalking. Showing such promise as a tactical leader, he was recruited by the Georgian Special Reconnaissance Group, distinguishing himself in the Second Battle of Grozny in 1999. He killed fifty Russian soldiers in a single week. To Tasho, each was the Russian who had killed his father. The war also taught him his first practical lesson in asymmetrical warfare, guerrilla tactics being the order of the day: IEDs, suicide bombings, urban warfare, a war of the rats.

His youngest brother’s death at the hands of the enemy in what became known as the Novye Aldi Massacre only sealed Tasho’s resolve. When he buried his mother after the official end to hostilities, his last ties to his hometown of Shali were severed. Arrested for selling weapons to Chechen rebels, he served close to two years in prison. Identified as a prime target for recruitment and radicalization, he emerged as a full-fledged jihadi committed to the cause.

From 2004 to 2011 the cause was Iraq, where he plied his deadly skills against the infidels. He worked primarily in Ramadi, Fallujah, and Mosul, targeting coalition troops and civilians as the insurgency reached its deadly climax. As his reputation grew, so did his responsibilities in the organization known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI. One of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s most respected fighters, he led cells of insurgents against the occupiers. With AQI’s transformation into ISIS following the expulsion of U. S. forces, the Shishani turned his attention to Syria, where he fought Assad’s forces under the new black flag. The battle for Aleppo in 2012 cemented his status as one of the most respected jihadist warriors in the Eastern world.

What his masters leading ISIS couldn’t know was that Tasho’s allegiance was to something other than Islam. Every time he pressed the trigger, regardless of the target, he was killing Russians.

Captured by Assad’s special security forces in a raid in 2016, he was interrogated by the one man who had studied him enough to figure him out. He still remembered General Yedid’s offer as he lay strapped to a metal mattress, car battery, cables, and water at the ready.

“How would you like to work for me? ” the general had asked politely. “Come work for me, and I’ll give you a chance to kill Russians. ”

• • •

Nizar couldn’t care less about politics or revenge; to him this was just a job. He had joined the Syrian Army to appease his father and found success in the ranks. He was recruited by the Interior Ministry thanks to his intellect and physical stamina, and had been trained as a sniper.

As the political uprisings in his country escalated into all-out civil war, Nizar played a key role in suppressing the insurgents by actively targeting their leadership. He preferred head shots, as they had a devastating effect on the enemy’s morale; there’s nothing quite like having your commander’s brains splattered on your face to suppress your will to fight. He felt neither joy nor sadness in taking the lives of his targets, only the satisfaction of a successful hit.

As established media outlets fled the war-torn nation, freelance journalists from the “new media” tried to document the fighting using their own video cameras and smartphones. They became his targets of choice. He racked up an impressive record of one-shot kills at increasingly greater ranges. Syrian arms and training were relatively crude compared to first-world armies, but what he lacked in technical training and equipment he made up for in real-world experience and predatory instinct.

Nizar’s skills caught the attention of General Yedid as he built his network of mercenaries to operate outside Syria. With the money that he would receive from this off-the-books job, Nizar could walk away from Syria before his luck ran out and make his way into Europe, where opportunity awaited.

That Nizar and Tasho had fought on opposite sides of the Syrian Civil War didn’t seem to bother either of them. They were snipers and they had a job to do.

• • •

Nizar had painted the steel target with orange spray paint and driven back to the farmhouse in the small pickup truck. These trips were getting longer as he moved the heavy steel plate increasingly farther across the open field. They had begun at five hundred meters, which Nizar had protested was too easy a shot, and had steadily increased the range as they’d learned to release their rounds simultaneously. He climbed onto the flat roof of the house and found Tasho lying prone, already staring through his scope toward the target.

“Did you have me in your sights? ”

The other man grinned in a rare signal of emotion. “Never miss an opportunity to train, Nizar, ” the elder sniper offered. “I read that on social media in a post from one of the infidel military social media influencers. ”

Nizar looked quizzically at the legendary sniper with whom he now trained. Though they were both part of General Yedid’s network, Tasho was the lead. What he didn’t know was that General Yedid had entrusted Nizar with a follow-on mission known only to the two of them.

“Never mind, Nizar. On my mark, at two thousand. ”

Nizar climbed behind his own rifle, identical to Tasho’s, and moved the towel that he’d used to cover his ammunition. At first, they’d blown primers as they fired, which was an indication of excessive chamber pressure. They’d discovered that keeping the loaded rounds in the sunlight during the heat of the day was getting the cartridges too hot and raising the pressure. Tasho was no fun to be around but he was a competent professional and had passed along the towel trick, which had eliminated the problem.

Nizar found the tiny target in the scope as Tasho entered the range and environmental data into his handheld computer. The software accounted for everything from bullet drop to temperature, barometric pressure, wind, Coriolis effect, and even the spindrift caused by the barrel’s right-hand rifling. The rifles were zeroed precisely at one thousand meters, which was only halfway to their current target.

“Come up thirteen MILS. ”

“Thirteen MILS up, ” Nizar repeated as he made the elevation correction using the dial on top of the optic.

“Hold three MILS right. ”

“Three MILS right. ” Nizar placed the appropriate hash mark on the scope’s reticle at the target’s center to account for the wind call.

“Ready. ”

“Ready. ” Nizar began to exhale.

“On my count: three. . . two. . . one. ”

Both rifles spoke in unison, sending a combined seven hundred grains of copper across the plowed field. Even with the long tubular sound suppressors attached, the rifles’ reports were still quite loud. It took the bullets nearly three seconds to reach the target and an additional six seconds for the sound of their impact to echo back to the shooters’ position. Two hits. A few more days’ training and they would be ready.

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