Before climbing into position in his hide, he’d taken the time to smear black paint over the high spots of his nose and cheekbones, breaking up the form of his face in the moonlight to anyone who might glance his direction.
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His skin was on the pale side - making him particularly visible in the darkness. That route had put him here in a freezing Uzbek desert with a night-vision scope to his eye.Ī ring of curly blond hair bristled from the edge of the black watch cap pulled tight over his head. His narrow waist and powerful, ostrich-like legs had shouted Olympic sprinter when he was in high school, but, on the advice of a family friend, he’d decided to go another route.
He loved the watch, but such things were often the coin of the realm and the price was well worth the comfort the pistol brought resting on his hip under the navy-blue hooded sweatshirt.Ĭooper was slender, a shade under six feet tall. The handgun, along with eighteen armor-piercing rounds, had cost him his five-thousand-dollar Rolex Submariner. Just after he’d arrived, he had haggled with a small-time gun dealer in Tashkent for a Russian GSh-18 nine-millimeter pistol. Still, he wasn’t the type to be completely unprepared. Possession of a sniper rifle could cause an international incident. Coming into Uzbekistan unofficially was dangerous enough for a man in his position. S-shaped metal carcass hooks clanged like blood-rusted wind chimes above his head.Ĭooper pressed an eye to the night-vision monocular and wished it was attached to a rifle. A toothed wind, heavy with the smell of wool, swept through the open window from the northern desert. Sagging sheep pens ran along the west side, forlorn and empty in the purple darkness. Once a fortified rest stop for man and beast on the ancient Silk Road, the dilapidated caravanserai was now a patched stone structure of cell-like rooms. He lay on his chest, watching, flat against a long wooden table four feet off the stone floor of the kill house. Riley Cooper inhaled slowly, ignoring the metallic odor of violent death. December 9 11:30 PM Near Karakul, Uzbekistan
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