Seymour Gerald. A Deniable Death

Two British operatives, known as Badger and Foxy, experts in covert surveillance, are sent to the Iran-Iraq border to watch the house of a man they call the Engineer for his deadly, expert combinations of high explosives and circuit boards that are causing havoc among NATO troops in Iraq. The tradecraft of silent watching and the discomfort, thirst and increasing claustrophobia of the hideout are brought... to life... [As is] the grim landscape of the border region and the harsh lives of its inhabitants...: the flat plains and marshes... the minefields and burned-out tanks still rusting from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the wretched locals who make a living, and dying, by digging up ordnance and selling it for scrap. [The Engineer] believes himself a soldier at war and a patriot, just as his victims do. His wife Naghmeh, a doughty activist demanding that the minefields be cleared, is suffering from a terminal brain tumour and needs urgent medical treatment in the West. Death duly comes, but to more places than expected.