Five...
Four...
Three...
Two...
One...
Li Jie watched the red targeting ring in his vision slowly close around the robber nearby, who had his gun pressed against a hostage's head. Crouching behind a car, he picked up the megaphone and called out, "You're the only one left alive. Are you sure you don't want to surrender?"
"Cut the crap! Get me a car, an SUV with a full tank!" the masked robber screamed himself hoarse. "No, get me a helicopter! Put the money on it!"
Fine. For having the nerve to demand all that... may Martin Luther King forgive me.
Li Jie silently crossed himself, then raised his hand and pulled the trigger in a flash.
The gunshot bounced between the buildings along the shopping street like a bird trapped in a cage, beating its wings. Before the echoes faded, the masked figure's knees buckled, and his whole body dropped straight to the ground like a puppet with its frame ripped out.
Blood seeped from the other side of his head, slowly spreading across the gray paving tiles.
The hostage was a woman in her thirties, collapsed below the steps outside the bank. She held her head in both hands, her shoulders shaking in spasms. A dark wet patch stained her trousers.
Li Jie walked over and lifted the robber's mask. Just left of the center of his brow was a small hole, its edges curled slightly inward, as though something had taken a bite out of it. The back of his head was another story entirely. Fragments of skull were mixed with its contents, no longer distinguishable.
That was the difference between reality and movies. In movies, people died cleanly. In reality, a bullet went in through a little hole and came out through a crater.
But that wasn't