I had a normal childhood. My mother, as loving as any mother could be, was religious. She taught me the basic tenets in Islam and instilled in me the requisite and ritualistic religious education, and made me understand the sense of right and wrong, the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, of being a human.

But situations, surroundings, experiences have shaped me into a persona not even my own mother would recognise.

You see, my mother only taught me what she thought I should not become. She said not to steal, for stealing removes from another a possession dear to them.

She said I should not tell a lie, for telling a lie begets more trouble than one could ever hope to handle. She also said not to consume liquor, for liquor is the root of all evil. The thing is, she only said a few things that I should not do.

She never said I should not kill. She would never have imagined that her dear son would be a paid killer. She never said I should not commit adultery. There were many things she didn't say that I shouldn't do.

The pillars of killing

My subconscious mind only registered a few don'ts. My mother was a simple village woman who did not know what modernisation would bring or how it would affect mankind. She simply did not know.

As I grew older, I also learned that in Islam, fate is pretty much predestined. It is just that we do not know how things will happen. Our fate is programmed before we are even born into this realm.

What we do or don't do will not affect the future. Therefore I think of myself as an asbab - Arabic for a reason or a cause - for God to do something else.

Fundamentalist or evangelical Christians think the same. They think that they are God's vehicle for a divine purpose. I think I am God's vehicle for perhaps more mundane purposes. Evangelical Christians may think that they are the Cadillac version, I just think of myself as a Ford Pinto.

So a person who dies is a person who dies - the cause (me depositing lead into his flesh) - is only a cause. I am only a bridge in time to which something happens. As a bridge I am only there to serve a purpose, and regardless of whether you are crossing the bridge or not, the bridge will be there. Should you decide to cross the bridge, you will get to the other side.

Therefore both my upbringing, and my later understanding of Islamic theology, actually paved the way for me to become an assassin. Moral cause is always the ultimate cause. Nothing is higher nor deserves greater conviction than a moral justification.

Once something has been morally justified, blood or life is a distant second in the order of importance. That is why it is easier to have an intellectual reasoning of things like contract killing, because then you have a moral standing.

More importantly, or more truthfully, this is an outlet for clearing a conscience that has been bottling up for the past oh-so-many years. I want to redeem myself while I still can, tell my story while I am still able, and seek forgiveness wherever it is necessary.

Please forgive me

It is funny when I think about it. One of the most notorious terrorists and the most prolific in recent memory, Prabhakaran, the leader of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was said to have softened as he grew old.

He now has a family to think about and can no longer bear to see young women blowing themselves up because one of these young women may as well be one of his daughters.

Similarly, I found myself in that dire situation. The children I've orphaned, the widows, after all these years, this does bear down on one's conscience. It is easy to sweep all these away when you're younger and full of immeasurable fire, but when age finally catches up with you and you have your own kids to think of, you feel mellowed and responsible. Repent, oh ye, repent.

As a hired killer, I receive orders from my controller as to whom should be taken out. The controller usually provides a name and a picture, and perhaps some information relevant to the job.

Sometimes, a picky client will want their target to die in a certain way. Either by knife or by bullets. Any which way, I do not entertain requests like "a slow, torturous death". That is simply impractical and can endanger myself.

Furthermore, I do not see myself as a sadist in any imaginable way.

A controller acts as a buffer between the clients and me. Most of the time I do not know who requires whom to be killed. In the case of the Ipoh blade, I only knew it was a rival gang group, I did not know which group ordered the killing.

The client does not normally know who will be carrying out the killing. The controller has a list of options he can utilise, as there are more than enough assassins to choose from, with varying degrees of experience and expertise.

The controller himself is an accomplished assassin, he sometimes does the job himself, maybe just to polish his skills.

Leading a fruitful life

In between assignments, I lead a normal life. I have daytime employment which I am quite good at. That is my official cover story, my alibi.

The "unofficial" life is where I hunt down my target and take them out calculatively, without remorse or emotions, before, during, or after the job. It is a job. One that I carry out diligently, forcefully and dangerously.

Most of the time I schedule the assignments I receive so that they will coincide with my official visit to the capital city of Kuala Lumpur. I will be asked by my employer to attend a course or conduct factory acceptance tests (FATs) somewhere in the Klang Valley or in the Peninsula.

During the day I will do this, but once my time becomes free, I will move to my "real" assignment and seek my target. I drive to the destination, arrive at night, and or at dusk, and set up my ambush point immediately after.

Usually the assignment does not set a deadline as to when the target should be put down. This is fairly simple because I can finish the assignment at my own leisure. But if so and so must be "sent to sleep with the worms" before 2pm on Tuesday, then it becomes quite tricky.

But that is the least of the problems I face. Setting up a vantage point, clearing an escape route, coming up with alternative plans B and C and D, these are more difficult, especially since I am a one-man outfit.

Making sure no one recognises or remembers me upon meeting me without using any mask or make-up is an art by itself. This I have achieved by observing the manner of the people in the area I am scouting and by matching their dress sense and blending in with the crowd.

All this is, in retrospect, fairly easy, now that I think of it. How hard is it for me, a Malay, to blend into a Sungai Petani crowd, for example? Or me, with my Chinese looks, to sit down in a kopitiam in Miri?

Although I do not limit my area of operation, for now opportunities only let me work in the Peninsula. Only thrice have I carried out assignments in other Asean countries. I do not relish foreign assignments, simply because getting arrested in those countries is simply suicidal.

Globalisation

But when I was younger, I thought getting foreign exposure like that would hone my skills and make me a global worker. After all, this is the era of globalisation.

In Malaysia, public and not-so-public officials are extremely poorly protected in terms of their personal safety. No one here has ever heard of the bullet vests, and bodyguards do not necessarily carry firearms. Cars are never fortified, no matter how expensive and expansive the car is.

This is changing, as the government has recognised the threat of violence to their officials, but getting the policy correct and implementing the policy is entirely bureaucratic, which means for the next decade, at least, I will be pretty much left undisturbed, at least by the local authorities.

In assassination terms, we call easy targets a "home run". One does not need to check on the guards, or on the security details, or on the target themselves.

If the target is wearing a bullet proof vest you have to aim for his neck, which is rather difficult from four hundred yards away (officials wearing bulletproof vests are usually well-protected and you have to be very far out otherwise you'd give yourself away immediately after shooting).

If there is extensive security you have to watch your back to see if there is anyone watching, or if there is another sniper being assigned to wipe out threats to the target. If the targets are too close to the guards, you might waste bullets and time between reloading, thereby losing your target.

Accuracy by way of shorter range will improve all these odds but also increase other risks.

Small-bore guns at close range (2 meters or contact) are sometimes preferable because most of the time the bullets are very small and leave no immediately visible mark on the skin. An inexperienced coroner who is inundated with work would immediately rule such deaths to be caused by cardiac arrest or choking.

Why aim for the neck? Because the face must be there for recognition (and collecting the upah). The target must be positively identified before and after the job. Then there is this preoccupation with 'saving face' amongst certain groups of people in this part of the world.

Yes, kill him, but let him have his face (for open-casket funeral, I guess). Sometimes thighs are better options because the main arteries are there, but you have to have a lot of practice and patience because you have to be in rhythm with his swagger.

Remember the person who was gunned down at close range in his car at rush hour traffic in downtown town up north with his wife next to him? I am not saying this job was mine but that was a good example of (1) how easy it is to carry out the job and (2) the type of weapon to do the job.

What I can say about that job was that it was carried out by two assassins working independently from each other. One was on a bike, the other was two hundred yards away. The bullets from that job will confirm this because one was from a revolver and the other was from a rifle, a 9-milli and a 5.56, respectively.

Wouldn't you like to be me?

THE ARMY CAPITAINE lives in East Malaysia. He considers himself a friendly person. Email him at armycapitaine@yahoo.com.