He loved to kill.
Such a simple thing. A squeeze of his trigger finger and a life was ended. A life which now belonged to him. Someone was born, inched his way to his feet, to use words, to think, to run to play and fight and now all that struggle was over at his hands. And he did it for a cause that favored him in the eyes of god. Blessed indeed.
And now the foreigners were moving through his country. Arrogant fools laden down with equipment that wasn't worth taking because it had no reasonable use. Equipment that did not kill, did not produce warmth or food and did not communicate in any way that could be easily understood.
All these people did was look. Their faces avid, their eyes hungry. The women harsh and sour, demanding eye contact he would not grant them. Be careful, they were told. They are journalists. Do not kill them. But all they had that he wanted was their lives. Their stupid, pointless lives.
He took up a gun when he was twelve and learned to use it in the tunnels that brought water to the apricot orchards in the valley. At first he ran dogs along the road the smugglers took. He robbed and murdered and no one stopped him. He could ride a horse or drive a tank, he could run twenty miles without a thought. He could eat anything or nothing and his body would not fail him. He could take any woman or no woman and he no longer cared because god was with him and wasn't that all?
And now this woman with some kind of sore on the side of her face and eyes as blue as he could believe was staring at him. It seemed to him she wanted to take his image and put it in her camera and take it to Denmark or Australia or even America and free it before a world of unbelieving fools who would take his image and pull it into their minds and hold him captive all their lives and take him out from time to time to say just look at this. Look what I have in my mind. He could not allow it.
As he slipped the Kalishnikov into position so sweetly, so easily, he felt the bullet as he had felt bullets so many times before. But this one was killing him he knew. The blue eyed woman was screaming, her tiny gun still in her hand. He tried to raise a hand to point at her but he could not find the strength. He felt himself a child again. So weak.
There was a horror in him. That this woman, this hideous stranger, should be the one to take his life.