Sam Fisher- Choking Ames

  Within a few seconds they were there, and Ames offered his hand. “No,” Hansen told him. “I’m snagged on something from below.” He looked to Gillespie. “Go down there.”

  She took off toward the staircase while Ames came over to him and whispered, “What’re you doing, Benjamin? Taking the path of least resistance?”

  “Oh, you’re a funny bastard.”

  “Hilarious. I’m laughing so hard I’m crying as Fisher gets away.”

  Hansen told him where to go, and Ames rose and took a few steps back. “No respect.”
...

  Ames opened his mouth as the arm came around his throat, but before he could react he was being lifted from the floor and dragged backward into the darkness. He gasped, reached up to seize the arm, which was like a piece of steel pressing even harder against his throat.

  He tried to breathe. Tried.

  And then a moment of panic before… darkness.
...

  Hansen took a step forward, directing his light toward a hatch he hadn’t seen before and a pile of fallen bricks. And just behind the pile a boot was visible. He started over there, holding his breath, and then he turned, looked down, and there he was: Ames, lying on his back, dead or unconscious. His rifle was lying beside him, but the magazine had been ejected, and the holster for his SC pistol was empty. Fisher had taken his weapon.

  With a start, Hansen dropped to his knees and checked Ames’s neck for a carotid pulse. Strong and steady. Damn! Fisher was a goddamned ghost — perfectly silent.

- Endgame, Chapter 23