The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

2

According to the schedule, after the speech, the President of Pakistan would walk with the Malaysian Prime Minister from the conference hall, through the hotel lobby, and out into the forecourt of the sweeping driveway. His limousine would take him to the airport, from where he would fly to Kuala Lumpur. In the morning, he was to be in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

Never had Captain Ibrahim Hassan Albar imagined he would be setting up a sniping position to kill his principal, and never had he thought that his own life would have to be taken by one of his closest friends. Looking around, he expected it would be Anwar. Although, as a fellow Muslim, he might not be able to pull the trigger — in which case it would be Lim, a Chinese.

Albar, just two days off his thirtieth birthday, was a man of few words. This was not the time to reflect on how he had come to this situation. Unmarried and without children, Albar was breaking no religious laws. He had been called upon and had agreed automatically. The War against Terror, which had started so many years ago and had altered so many alliances, had finally reached Albar himself, and that was all there was to it.

Now was the time to concentrate on the dozens of little adjustments he had to make to ensure that his one shot would hit and kill. He had decided to lie up outside the hotel, in undergrowth across from the driveway, where the President was bound to linger to thank his hosts.

Albar had chosen the furthest sniper position. He had thought about using a suppressor to dull the sound, but nightfall in Penang was a bad time for a sniper. All day, the air would be heavy and still. Then as the sun went and darkness came within minutes, the change of temperature whipped up unpredictable gusts of wind and rain.

Albar could handle wind on a shot under four hundred yards. Any more than that and the trajectory of the bullet would become too fragile for him to be sure.

He took off the safety catch, and felt the butt of the 7.62mm Dragunov sniper rifle against his shoulder. The weapon was his proudest possession, bought from a Russian marksman when they were both serving on UN duty in Iraq. He settled into the gun. In his earpiece, he heard the Pakistani President wrapping up his opening address: '… refused to admit that in so many areas we have failed as a civil society and failed to confront the demons inside us.'

Albar slowed his breathing, half a lungful in, half a lungful out, to make his body ready for the shot. He was hearing the President's voice, but not listening. 'We will, God willing, act as a beacon to those societies still brooding on medieval or colonial injustices. We will lead our nation to create great institutions of learning and genuine debate and ideas. And if any person or group chooses to challenge this policy, outside parliament and democracy, they will be met by the full wrath of my will. My mission is not the destruction of rival societies, but the creation of new ones.'

'They're coming out,' Albar heard in his earpiece, as applause rippled through the conference hall. His instincts took over, watching the wind in the undergrowth, feeling a light drop of rain on his face, hearing voices in his earpiece, finding the principal through the glass door of the hotel. As he waited for the door to open and for his target to walk out, Albar was enveloped in a great sense of clarity.

His eye focusing through the scope on President Asif Latif Khan, he let his body take over, feeling the trigger edge back, the buck of the rifle, and the rush of satisfaction when he knew he had sent the shot to its target as professionally and effortlessly as ever he could.