Profits of Doom

Andrei Petrov (not this soldier's real name) knew he'd never have a better chance than this. It was a scorching August day in 1999 and Petrov — commander of a Russian special-ops team in Dagestan, a Russian republic bordering Chechnya — had Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev in his sights. Earlier that month, Basayev had led an invasion of Dagestan and called upon local separatists to help in the fight against Russia. With a simple squeeze of his finger, Petrov could take out Basayev, the Chechens' most effective guerrilla general and the man responsible for some of the conflict's worst terrorist attacks....