The Kill List by Frederick Forsyth; corgi books; Price: Rs.399; Pages 348 The reckless, cold-blooded murder and mayhem unleashed by jihadists ” fanatic soldiers of Islam ” upon innocent civilians in the US (9/11, 2001), the UK (7/7, 2005) and most recently in France (the Charlie Hebdo murders ” 1/7, 2015) which was preceded by the massacre of 132 school children in Pakistan (December 16) are all self-driven, and perhaps final nails in the coffin that Islamic fundamentalists have built for themselves. These atrocities have aroused the red-hot fury of Western powers who are aggressively deploying their awesome technological prowess to directly target and decimate rabid Islamist preachers and hatemongers, regardless of borders and collateral damage. The US in particular has swiftly transformed its overwhelming economic and technological superiority to gather intelligence and unleash remote-controlled weapons of astonishing destructive power. During the past decade, American scientists and technologists have cut to size the overweening monarchy and potentates of Saudi Arabia and OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) who have been covertly funding Wahabi terrorism, by assiduously researching and developing fracking technology. As the foolish and greedy sheikhs of the Middle East raised the price of crude to $140 per barrel, it became viable for corporate America to invest heavily in fracking, which extracts natural gas and crude oil from abundantly available shale rock and sediments. Today a shale-fired US ” hitherto the world™s largest consumer of OPEC and Saudi crude ” is poised to become an oil exporting nation, and the international price of crude has fallen below $50 per barrel. With the profligate Saudi monarchy having failed to develop or invest in indigenous industry even as its youth population has multiplied dramatically, the end of the Ibn Saud monarchy is a prophecy foretold. Adulation of the awesome might and capability of Western ” particularly American ” technology is the subject matter of The Kill List, the latest oeuvre of best-selling British novelist Frederick Forsyth. According to Forsyth, in the œdark and secret heart of Washington D.C, the US president and six men meet every Tuesday morning to review a œkill list featuring the names of terrorists so dangerous to the US that they are to be taken out œwithout any attempt to be made at arrest, trial, or any due process. The exord (presidential executive order) is to be implemented by J-SOC, œthe world™s biggest and most dangerous private army. In turn, J-SOC uses TOSA, œa body so obscure that 98 percent of serving US officers haven™t heard of it. In spring 2014, TOSA™s director presents his senior manhunter Kit Carson, an enigmatic lieutenant colonel of the US Marine Corps, known only as the Tracker, an exord on which are written the words: œThe Preacher. Identify. Locate. Destroy. Thus begins a transnational hunt for the Preacher, a rabid pan-Islamist ideologue who broadcasts English language hate sermons on the internet based on selected passages of the Quran which are so venomously impactful, that even well-adjusted Muslim youth in the West…
