North-west Bosnia and Herzegovina
November 29, 2:30 p.m.
Highway M16 cut through the mountainous terrain covered with dense coniferous trees, snaking around the jagged rocks and carving hairpin turns. Justin Hall and Carrie O’Connor, two agents with the Canadian Intelligence Service, were positioned at a hidden vantage point at the edge of the forest. They controlled the zigzag section of the highway below them and could see as far as two miles away in both directions. The second team, composed of Nathan Smyth and Dragan Traskovic, was stationed down below, a mile to the east. They were going to be the first to lay eyes on the oncoming “guests,” which were expected to arrive at any time.
The snow had stopped about fifteen minutes ago. A soft blanket had covered the ground, and it gave the entire landscape a calm, peaceful feel. Almost a Christmas postcard. The temperature was about thirty degrees, and the sunrays bounced off the icy slopes across the highway. It was a perfect day to enjoy nature, go horseback riding or hike through the trails that led to a mountain lake a couple of miles down south. A good time to relax and unwind.
But Justin and his team were not here to relax and delight in the great outdoors.
They were here with a mission.
They were here to kill.
Their target was Razaq Hakim, an Afghan man who had been a member of the mujahedeen—guerrilla fighters engaged in a holy war—during the bloody ethnic conflicts in the Balkans back in the nineties. A horde of mujahedeen from all over the world had flocked into Bosnia to help local Muslims who were being slaughtered by the Serbian and the Croatian regular armies and paramilitary forces. The mujahedeen had amounted to almost three thousand fighters, and they had provided vital help in defending Muslims and training recruits for the Bosnian army.
Most of the mujahedeen had returned to their countries after the end of the conflicts, but a small number, including Hakim, had stayed in Bosnia and had married local women. Along with their combat skills, the mujahedeen had brought their extreme Islamic views and their jihad—holy war against infidels—which they had begun to spread among the local population. Hakim in particular was believed to have participated in a few terrorist acts in Eastern Europe over the last few years.
Justin’s team had been dispatched to assist the Southeast Europe Station operating out of Croatia’s capital, Zagreb. The CIA and the MI6 had provided solid evidence to the Canadians about Hakim’s terrorist involvement. He was financing a terrorist camp to be built in north-east Bosnia, near the village of Gornja Maoca, home of a radical branch of Islam. He had been behind an attack against the American Embassy in Sarajevo the previous year and had channeled almost a million dollars to Islamic rebel fighters in Syria.
The local station in Zagreb had gathered intelligence about Hakim’s current location, future plans, and impressive security detail. He never left the country and always travelled surrounded by heavily armed bodyguards in a small convoy of armored vehicles. They had been with him for a long time, and he paid them quite well with money made through alleged pillaging and black market trade during and after the Balkan conflicts.
The police authorities of Bosnia had no appetite to mount a small war against Hakim’s private army, which removed the option of his arrest. Plus, some of the political leaders of the country considered him a war hero, despite his recent track record. The CIA was not interested in a covert operation to capture Hakim and carry out a prolonged trial against him in the US. Not so soon after the elections, which had given the incumbent President a second term in office. So that eliminated the snatch and grab option and left Justin and his team with one final scenario: an authorized kill.
Justin disliked stepping into another station’s territory and taking charge of its affairs. He would have resented it if agents from other stations came to the scorching hellholes of Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia that fell under his area of operations and told him how things were done. But he had been given his marching orders, and he was going to follow them.
No matter what the bosses said and no matter how much training an operative had, every hit carried the potential of things getting messy. Even more so when they were supposed to make this kill look like a rough, local job of brute force, not a sophisticated infiltration into one of Hakim’s many mansions around the country. Hakim had made many enemies, but only a few of them would dare to strike such a fierce blow. Justin was counting on the fact that no one would truly miss the man he had been called in to kill, and local authorities would conclude this was a settling of old accounts among rival gangs. In and out, unseen and unhurt, Justin’s boss had said. Justin had made no promises.
The staff of the Zagreb station had no hurt feelings when Justin and his team arrived on the ground a week ago. They offered complete and full cooperation and acted professionally at all times. Justin’s team followed Hakim’s movement for a few days, after they wiretapped his cellphones, his houses, and his cars. They learned about his planned trip and decided on their plans. A dry run showed a couple of flaws in their mission, which they fixed by making a few changes. Then they left the previous night to set up position in the early morning hours and to prepare for the ambush, before anyone got up to travel on the road.
Now they waited for their target.