Sam Fisher- Two Targets, >One Second

  A hundred feet to the south he could see the bridge; the team's two Audis sat at its head. His own vehicle, the belly-up Range Rover, lay in the creek where he'd abandoned it. What do we have here? Three figures stood on the shoulder of the road before the bridge. He unslung the SC-20, laid the forestock on the log, and zoomed in on the trio. He was surprised to see only one familiar face: the Japanese Vin Diesel, whose narrowed eyes and furrowed brow told Fisher that the other two men, who stood side by side across from him, were not friends.

  The first man was fortyish, bald, with a wrestler's build; the second was gaunt and pasty with dark black hair. They were standing in profile to Fisher, the stout one closest to him, the taller one closer to the road and standing a couple of feet back from his partner. As had Vin's eyes, their postures told Fisher this was a bad situation about to get worse.

  The stout man shifted his feet, turning slightly, and now Fisher could see the squarish outline of a semiautomatic pistol dangling from his left hand. Fisher panned slightly to the right and scanned the gaunt man: He, too, was armed.

  Could these two men be the tail he'd spotted at Doucet's warehouse outside Reims? Who were they, and was their interest in Vin alone or Hansen's team or Fisher himself? None of that mattered right now, of course. As he watched, the stout man raised his semiauto to his waist and leveled it with Vin's belly. Fisher couldn't hear the man's words, but Vin's reaction told the story: He clasped his hands behind his back and knelt down in the dirt. Execution.

  Fisher zoomed out slightly, adjusted his aim. As the stout man raised his weapon, extending it toward Vin's forehead, Fisher laid the SC-20's reticle over the upper rim of the man's ear and pulled the trigger. Even as he was dropping like a puppet whose strings had been cut, Fisher was adjusting his aim. His second shot came less than a second after the first, the 5.56mm bullet drilling into the tall man's head two inches behind his temple.

  Fisher zoomed out and refocused on Vin. He was still kneeling, gaping at the two crumpled forms before him. He rotated his head right, looking for the source of the shot, then rose from his knees into a crouch and began sidling right, reaching for something--his own gun he'd been forced to toss away, Fisher assumed. He adjusted aim again and fired a round into the dirt six inches from Vin's groping hand. Vin froze, raised his hands above his head, and gave an "okay, okay" shrug.

- Conviction, Chapter 13