Abdul-Ali slowly looked down to glance at his watch, which was visible for all the world to see.
Smiling, he pressed one of the buttons on the side of its face.
The last thing he saw was an almost impossibly bright flash.
That wasn’t too bad, was his first thought.
He also found himself mildly surprised, in the milliseconds before he blinked out of this world, at the lack of pain as he and much of the crowd around him, including the US president and his protective detail, ceased to exist.
* * *
The US president’s assassination was just the beginning. It was the first shot in a war Abdul-Ali’s compatriots intended to go on for as long as necessary to subdue the great beast that was America. In one way or another – using one sort of device or technique or another – many members of the
