He tracked the men as they made their way down the thoroughfare. He continually kept one of them in his crosshairs and could determine the presence of the other by the way his subject kept turning to address him as they walked. They arrived at a café and pulled up chairs at an outside table. That was suspicious enough behaviour, who else in this benighted land took their beverages outside in the open? They may people watch from the boulevard cafés in Paris, but further north we didn’t really possess the weather for it.
Nevertheless, they might not be players after all. How covert could their conversation be if they were prepared to air it with the waitress bent over their table wiping it with a cloth? Both men were looking up away from each other and smiling. He trained on the pretty waitress’ face, on the pencil behind her ear, which somewhat counteracted the delicate elegance of the dangling drop earring swaying with the slight motion of her head as she talked. She removed it to take their order and then left. Rather than follow her, he picked up fixing on the two men once more. Neither was now saying anything as they both leaned back into their chair, as he ricocheted the barrel of the gun from one to the other. A wisp of smoke coiled into this sights. He swiped his lens to trail the wisp of smoke back to its source, only to see it was merely the steam rising from the mugs of tea the waitress was returning with. No, this gathering was an innocent party of three and he arced his scope elsewhere.
He jagged the spectral divining rod of his rifle so seamlessly from figure to figure that no empty space ever pervaded between them. It was if all these people were part of some human paper chain stitched from flesh and blood. From his aerial roost he cast his vitreous fish-eye on their mouths miming into mobile phones. On their cramming a hasty sandwich into their maws as they snatched lunch on the move. He trailed a woman moisturising her scaly and blistered lips with a chapstick. He drew a bead on a man wiping away a bead of sweat from his forehead. Sign of a guilty conscience? He pulled the focus in tighter and caught a cartoon character tattoo peeking out of the man’s coat collar. No serious threat to the state would bear such a stigmata of the frivolous. 
For they had been trained, seasoned until the callouses on their trigger fingers bled, on what signs to look for to determine hostile from non-combatant. Two dimensional anatomies with target roundels to measure your accuracy of shot, while whether they were wearing balaclava or headscarf graded your accuracy of reaction. Cardboard cutouts of innocents and the iniquitous. The telltale rictus mouth of the zealous ideologue, when their enemies were actually far more cunning and whispered from the corners of their mouths rather than betraying themselves with cartoon snarls. Each pastiche picked out in lurid green monochrome, which made them all appear like Martians. The cityscape in which he operated was familiar enough with the same road signs as back home, but all the populace here were alien to him. In this windy city, none wore balaclavas though all wore hoodies. And if they pulled a rictus smile, it was only when they stood over your corpse and you were beyond any ability to register it. 
When he was home on leave, he tried to realign himself as a civilian. However, these days he could only filter people through a glass scope, with finely calibrated gradations framing the dimensions of their humanity for him. At social gatherings while folk talked and laughed and regaled each other, or just snuck clandestine glances at members of the opposite sex across the room, he was forever searching for a roundel target across their chests or reticles upon their brow. When introduced to new people, he could not help but cock his head and squint one eye shut when regarding them.
He regathered himself and resumed people watching. Searching for concentric circles and rictus smiles.