Sniper Thomas Beckett is hired by NSA officials William Avery and Richard Addis to perform a covert operation to eliminate a suspected terrorist kingpin in the People's Republic of Vietnam. The kingpin turns out to be a thought-dead friend and war-buddy of Beckett's, Paul Finnegan, and the real purpose of the mission turns out to be something other than what Beckett was told.
Beckett begins to suspect his employers' motives are not what they claimed after he is counter-sniped at after attempting to assassinate Finnegan. Beckett undertakes a mission of his own to get to the bottom of the mystery, involving escaping from capture by Vietnamese police, working with an NSA-recruited Vietnamese police operative Quan and using his military training to search for Finnegan.