Free Pandora's Grave by Stephen England

concrete pad.
    Gideon turned to look at the rest of his men. There was Chaim Berkowitz, twenty-four years of age, their sniper. A tall, lean boy, his name meant ‘life’.
    It couldn’t have been more inappropriate. Angel of death would have been more fitting. But he did his job. That was why Gideon had picked him.
    The third team member was leaning over the FAV, already helping Yossi unscrew the launchers from their fastenings. His name was Nathan Gur. The youngest man on the team, he had gone into the Bekaa with Gideon the previous year, as part of a joint American-Israeli op.
    None of his men were rattled by the short notice they had been given. They were accustomed to it, to the strain of laying on a mission in a hurry. Often they only had hours before a terrorist would change locations. The mood this time was actually relaxed.
    All that would change soon enough…
     
    8:32 P.M. Baghdad Time
    Q-West Airfield
    Northern Iraq
     
    Thomas Parker glanced at his watch. Five hours. He laid down his cleaning brush and picked up the scattered parts of his 7.62mm SV-98 sniper rifle, starting to reassemble the gun. It wasn’t his favorite weapon, but it would do the job. Anything of American manufacture was out of the question.
    He re-mounted the scope, brushing a fine layer of dust off the lens. Sand seemed to permeate everything.
    The scope wasn’t standard-issue, it had come from an American lens manufacturer whose name had been carefully ground off the side. It gave him magnification up to 10x and night-vision capability. More than he needed, but with it, he had placed bulls-eyes at fifteen hundred yards.
    It was the rifle he had carried into Azerbaijan. That was another reason he didn’t like using it.
    Rising, he left the reassembled SV-98 on the bunk, and walked over to the window. Out on the runway, they were readying a fighter jet for take-off.
    Thomas stood there for a moment, staring out into the desert, his eyes shadowed. Azerbaijan. Failure. He didn’t like to be reminded of failure. Of the men that had been left behind. Of the men he had let down. He could never let it happen again.
    He returned to the bunk, picked up the sniper rifle, cradling it in his arms. It was a personal way of killing. You looked down the scope, you looked into the eyes of the man you were about to destroy. If he was the first man to die in an area, you saw him as he was, cheerful, determined, going about his life.
    If others had gone before him, you saw the raw, naked fear in his eyes, the pallor of his face as he heard your rifle-shot ring out in the distance, speeding death his way. Messenger of destruction…
     
    11:57 P.M.
    Q-West Airfield
    Northern Iraq
     
    “Request permission for takeoff. Ident two-seven-one Lima.”
    “Permission granted, two-seven-one Lima. You have go-mission clearance.” A brief pause and then Tower added, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”
    “Thanks, Motel Six,” Tancretti acknowledged sarcastically, turning back to his work. He had a chopper to fly.
    The strike team sat in the back, arranged in the order in which they would exit the plane. Tex was closest to the door. On the ground, he would take point. Hamid sat right beside him. Harry sat across from the two of them, followed by Davood. Thomas sat in the far back, the sniper rifle slung over his shoulder. He would provide rear security. They were dressed in desert camouflage, their faces painted a sandy brown.
    Nothing on their clothes identified them as American, nothing about their weapons. They were clean, deniable.
    Harry glanced out into the darkness as the chopper slowly began to lift off from Q-West, feeling adrenaline surge through his body. They were going. This was it. They were committed. The moment of truth, the writers called it. Perhaps.
    He looked around at his team members. Their expressions were unreadable in the darkness, the face paint masking their eyes. Davood stirred at his side.
    His dossier had said he’d never been