The street market was packed with people, jostling, laughing, and haggling for everything from rugs to Tupperware to stuffed animals. It was late morning and the heat of the day was already descending, mixing the stench of sweat with the aroma of spices and cooking meat to create an atmosphere that felt oddly comfortable to Randi Russell.

It was ironic that Muslim countries had become the easiest environments for her to operate in. Covered head to toe in a hijab, surrounded by the constant roar of Middle Eastern life, she could move around with almost ghostlike anonymity. For all the chauvinistic morons looking right through her knew, she could have a rocket launcher strapped to her back. But why would they worry? What could they possibly have to fear from a woman?

“Okay, Randi. He’s right in front of you. No more than four or five yards.”

She acknowledged the voice in her earpiece with a short nod, though she wasn’t sure it would be visible from her teammates’ position in a multistory hotel to the east.

She felt sweat break across her forehead, but it wasn’t from the sun beating on her black headgear. It was a mouth-drying, heart-pounding sense of childlike excitement. Four or five yards. She’d started to doubt whether she’d ever get this close.

Charles Hashem had grown into a top al-Qaeda operative whose evil was matched only by his infuriating competence. It had taken the CIA two years even to place him in Egypt and her another five grueling months to find her way to this particular market on this particular morning.

“Got him.”

His gray shirt, sunglasses, and average-length black hair didn’t provide much to differentiate him from any other man in the street, but she’d had every existing photo of him stuck to her wall for the last year and a half. Oddly similar to her bedroom as an early teenager except that fantasies of being whisked away by Luke Perry on horseback had been replaced with dreams of ending the life of the man hurrying toward a narrow souq in front of her.

It was a shame she didn’t actually have that rocket launcher. Seeing his burning body parts cartwheeling down the cobblestones would have been one of the happiest moments of her life. And she had her camera phone with her. Best CIA Christmas card photo ever.

“Can we get him to a viable extraction point?” the voice in her ear said. An unwelcome reminder that her mission was significantly different from her fantasy.

“Are you kidding?” Randi mumbled, counting on her throat mike to pick it up. “Look around me. Eight hundred people would see us toss him in the van and then where would we go? Traffic’s moving slower than I am.”