Robert Dougan and Brendan Campbell were both survivors. Dougan, a leading loyalist, escaped unhurt when the INLA attacked his home in 1993. The following year he was slightly injured in an IRA murder attempt.
Despite the changed times, he remained conscious of the security risk and had taken measures to protect himself at his home. "He was wary, very wary," said a friend. "He knew they were after him."
Republicans shot Mr Dougan at lunchtime yesterday. He was sitting in his car outside Balmoral Textiles, a carpet factory in Dunmurry, south-west Belfast, when a lone gunman approached.
Mr Dougan had been waiting to pick up a woman friend of his wife and the car window was wound down. The gunman shot him through the window several times from point-blank range.
He was hit in the head and chest and died before an ambulance arrived.
Witnesses said they saw the gunman run away. It is thought he ran to a waiting car, which detectives believe was abandoned in the nearby nationalist Twinbrook Estate. Three men arrested in Twinbrook were last night being questioned by the RUC.
Mr Dougan, who was in his 30s, lived with his wife and 12-year-old son in the Suffolk area of south Belfast. RUC and loyalist sources said he was a member of the UDA. It is understood he was a close associate of Mr Jim Guiney, another UDA member shot dead last month by the INLA.
Mr Brendan Campbell (30), a leading drugs dealer from west Belfast, had survived two previous murder attempts. Three years ago he was attacked by gunmen in his home. Last month he was shot twice in the chest as he sat drinking in a bar on Boucher Road. A bullet-proof vest saved his life. Both attacks were carried out by Direct Action Against Drugs.
On Monday night Mr Campbell had just finished eating with a woman companion in Planks restaurant on the Lisburn Road, south Belfast. The couple were getting into a car when a lone gunman approached. Mr Campbell attempted to run down an alley but was shot several times. He was dead on arrival at Belfast City Hospital. His friend, a 19-year-old woman, was shot twice. She is described as "serious but stable" in hospital.
Mr Campbell is reported to have been responsible for making a grenade attack on Connolly House, Sinn Fein's headquarters in Andersonstown, late last year. One source in west Belfast said: "He really hated the IRA. He taunted them continually."