Present Day

Vick Harwood's mission was to kill the Chechen, but complications arose quickly as two Taliban riflemen appeared on the ridge above their hide position.

It was a tough enough shot without the Taliban factor. Harwood and his spotter were in a dusty hide position. The tan-and-black Kandahar Mountains leaned over them like a pissed-off drill sergeant, hot, smelly, and overbearing. The Chechen was holed up eight hundred meters away. Below Harwood, poppy farmers scraped resin into burlap sacks. Red and white poppy flowers framed the brown waters of the Helmand River and its valley until the horizon met the setting sun. Harwood and his spotter smelled like unwashed week-old gym socks.

But Harwood could make the shot. He'd done it before. Thirty-three times in the last three months, to be exact. Harwood was a sniper. Not just any sniper, but the deadliest sniper in the U.S. Army. He seemed to always be there. Providing cover. Knocking down the guy that was about to kill friendlies. Picking off the mujahedin about to shoot the rocket-propelled grenade. Always there. His buddies had nicknamed him the Reaper. A nom de guerre was a badge of honor among warriors. "Reaper" left no doubt about Harwood's specialty: killing the enemy.

With harvesting the next kill on their mind, Harwood and Corporal Sammie Samuelson — too new to have a Ranger nickname — homed in on the Chechen's domain.

"We've still got movement on the ridge," Samuelson whispered. "Two hundred meters. Muj. Still heading our way. AK-47s. And we've got a convoy closing in on Sangin village a mile in the other direction." Sangin was a small hamlet of adobe huts on the Helmand River and was the nexus of Afghanistan's poppy trade.

"No way the muj knows about us. We're solid," Harwood said under his breath. It was a judgment call. Over the past two days since their insertion, shepherds and wanderers had drifted within fifty meters of their nearly invisible position. They looked like rocks in their tattered ghillie suits.

"You're the boss," Samuelson grunted.

"What's up with the convoy?"

"Three Hilux pickup trucks. Prob Taliban poppy dudes coming in to check the stash."

Clumsy footsteps on the far ridge echoed. Boots scraped on shale. Rocks broke free and rolled hundreds of feet down the sheer cliffs. The Taliban were getting close, but only one kill mattered now — the Chechen — not two Taliban riflemen and not the convoy of small pickup trucks. The sun had the Chechen's hide site — a U-shaped rock formation — spotlighted perfectly.

"Muj closing in, boss. On the ridge."

"Roger," Harwood said.

The Chechen's lightly bearded face briefly filled the crosshairs of Harwood's Leupold scope, which was mounted on his SR-25 sniper rifle, then disappeared.

Harwood had nicknamed his rifle "Lindsay" after a foster sister. Lindsay had been older and kind to him. Cooked for him. Gave him advice. Took care of him and the others. Told him to run as far as he could when the time was right — when things turned bad on the farm. But he hadn't run. He had stayed to fight. To protect Lindsay. To make sure she made it out, too. But he had failed her.

He carried Lindsay with him everywhere he went now. For Harwood, it was all about keeping the memory alive. He didn't have much to treasure from his childhood, but Lindsay was someone, a sister of sorts, he would honor his entire life. Lindsay — the rifle — still took care of him, in her own way. She was outfitted with a ballistic sound suppressor on the muzzle. The suppressor wasn't perfectly quiet, wasn't meant to be, but it was better than the alternative. Most importantly, Lindsay was effective.

Thirty-three kills in ninety days.

The setting sun dialed back the heat incrementally, like turning down the flame of a gas stove. In a matter of minutes, the temperature would swing to cold. The sweat would transition from useful and cooling to damp and irritating. But they were Rangers. Conditions didn't matter. Only the mission.

"Confirm friendlies clear," Harwood said. "Sun is spotlighting his shadow. Might help us predict when he comes out."

"Roger, boss. No friendlies in the AO, but those two muj are sniffing now about a hundred meters away," Samuelson muttered. "AO" was army acronym parlance for area of operations.

"Chechen's moving a lot. Shadow looks like he's on his radio," Harwood said.

"Roger, watching," Samuelson replied. Samuelson was less than five feet from Harwood, observing through his spotter's scope. The standard was to always be within arm's reach of your Ranger buddy. Three weeks ago Harwood's former spotter, Joe LaBoeuf, had been that close when the Chechen's sniper shot found LaBoeuf's forehead. The bulk of LaBoeuf's brains had splattered onto Harwood's face.

"Roger. Ignore the muj for now. Focus on Basayev," Harwood directed.

After LaBoeuf's death, the Ranger intelligence officer had provided Harwood with a full dossier on the Chechen. His name was Khasan Basayev. Considered the number-one threat to U.S. soldiers other than roadside bombs, Basayev was a mercenary. The report indicated that the Taliban and Pakistani intelligence paid nicely to kill American soldiers in Helmand Province. Basayev was mainly protecting supply trains moving between Iran and Pakistan. The Ranger operations officer had briefed Harwood and Samuelson, telling them that their mission was to kill the Chechen so that the Rangers could raid the convoys and interdict the weapons and drugs.

And now, the duel between the Reaper and the Chechen.

Harwood shifted his scope to the town of Sangin, a short half mile beyond the Chechen's position. The three-vehicle convoy Samuelson mentioned consisted of identical tan Hilux pickup trucks with toppers. They skidded to a stop in front of some adobe homes — qalats. Switching back to Basayev's hide, Harwood noticed Basayev's shadow. The Chechen was gesturing with his arms in an agitated manner.

"Check out what has him so freaked, Sammie," Harwood directed his spotter.

Samuelson was nineteen years old and relatively new to the Rangers. He had passed Ranger training and was an apprentice sniper. The corporal had to have some mettle to get through Ranger School. Even more, Ranger Command Sergeant Major Murdoch must have thought something of him to put him on the path to sniper.

"Roger. Three guys out of the trucks now and ... holy shit."

"What?"

"They're dragging two women wearing burqas from one of the compounds. They're handcuffed. Now I see a third woman. She's fighting like a banshee."

"Maybe the Chechen knows them," Harwood said, remaining focused. The Chechen's outline danced against the khaki-colored rock formation like a shadow performance.

With no shot on Basayev, he shifted his scope again to the action Samuelson was describing. He twisted the focus dial with his fingers protruding from cut olive-and-black gloves. The silky sheen of long, raven hair caught his eye. No burqa.

The men were dressed in traditional Afghan outer garments that loosely covered the torso and leg, and the Peshawari turban, a sweat-stained white sheet wrapped around the head a few times with the remainder left to hang like a ponytail. The captors had dark beards dyed with henna. Two men lifted one woman into each truck. A third man pulled the long black hair of the lady...