When he had first started sniping, he had used a Russian-made Dragunov SVD rifle, accurate up to six hundred metres. It was a lightweight and reliable weapon, capable of semi-automatic fire and equipped with a ten-round magazine. Most of his kills back then had been at around two hundred metres. His commander had spotted his skill with the weapon and had recommended him for specialist training. He was pulled off the front line and spent four weeks in the desert at a remote training camp.

There, he was introduced to the British L115A3 sniper rifle. It was the weapon of choice for snipers in the British SAS and the American Delta Force, and it hadn’t taken al-Hussain long to appreciate its advantages. It had been designed by Olympic target shooters and fired an 8.59mm round, the extra weight resulting in less deflection over long ranges. In fact, in the right hands the L115A3 could hit a human-sized target at 1,400 metres, and even at that distance the round would do more damage than a magnum bullet at close range.

The L115A3 was fitted with a suppressor to cut down the flash and noise it made. No one killed by a bullet from his L115A3 ever heard it coming. It was the perfect rifle for carrying around – it weighed less than seven kilograms and had a folding stock so it could easily be slid into a backpack.

It had an adjustable cheek-piece so that the marksman’s eye could be comfortably aligned with the Schmidt & Bender 25 × magnification scope. Al-Hussain put his eye to it now and made a slight adjustment to the focus. His target was a house just over a thousand metres away. It was home to the mother of a colonel in the Syrian Army, and today was her birthday. The colonel was a good son and, at just after eight o’clock, had arrived at the house to have breakfast with his mother. Fifteen minutes later, al-Hussain had taken up position on the roof. The colonel was a prime target and had been for the best part of a year.