He prayed the required five times a day. It was pleasing to be back to such discipline. That was of great benefit. In speaking to Allah, in beseeching His holiness, in putting his petition for assistance before His greatness, he calmed himself. Was he speaking to God? That wasn’t the point. The point was, his brain thought he was speaking to God, and Juba’s respiratory system, his musculature, his digestive track, even his subconscious, felt subdued by the rigor. A great calm spread through him, and his limbs and veins thrummed with energy and confidence. No man in the world could do this thing, save him—not even Bobleeswagger—and his prayers enabled his effort.

Of course, he made sure to be on the rifle, eye locked on the scope, at the same time each day as the shot so that he could learn the play of the light in different weather conditions. Snap! went the dry trigger, over and over again. Maybe the day would be cloudy, maybe bold with sun. Snap! Shadows would cut the image, maybe not. Trees and the rills on the river would describe the wind, and he would have to understand how to read them. Snap!

Each day, afresh, he ran the program on the FirstShot ballistic calculator, and, each time, the solution came up the same for the preset eighteen-hundred-yard zero, arriving at the setting to which the scope was now set, 48 MOA elevation and 24 MOA right windage, which took it all into consideration—the wind, the temp, the humidity, the air density.

In the afternoons, after a brief lunch at a fast-food place and a cup of god-awful American coffee, he walked down as close to the river as he could get. Various barriers prevented actual riverside visits, and he couldn’t risk violating them, for if nabbed by security or police, how could he explain the Kestrel?

He ran the Kestrel to record the exact weather conditions. He marked the waves in the water to match them to wind speed and learn it. There wasn’t much variation, only in the cloud cover. No rain expected, humidity not ominous, wind tepid. It was as if Allah were sending him the ideal conditions. He looked across the river at the cityscape, the skyline. It was, as he expected, majestic, with proud towers and soaring structures, alive with the reflection of the sun off a million windows, humming with power, the dynamo of the West in one image.

He loved it. He hated it. It beckoned him. It sickened him. It mattered so much to him. He mattered so little to it.

Your buildings tell us our place, which is in their shadow, bent and craven. We reject that, and you declare us monsters. We fight that, and you call us murderers. Your airplanes drop bombs guided by technical magic we could not understand and smash our children to jelly, and yet we are the beasts.

Tomorrow, I will destroy you.