transmitter in his
left coat pocket, but the chair arm got in his way. He stood up, wasting
precious seconds and knocking his chair over as he continued to stare upward
through the window at the Crown Vic. He'd finally managed to get his left hand
into his pocket as the two men he'd been watching also stood up and began coming
at him.
The one in a police uniform pointed at Jamal and said, "Freeze!" as he
reached for his sidearm. Jamal -- his radio transmitter momentarily forgotten --
made a grab for his Beretta 9mm pistol in his right coat pocket.
Jamal had thought the cop was the greater danger. He was wrong; before Jamal
could even finish bringing his own gun into line with the two men, the other man
yanked a pistol from a shoulder holster, leveled it at Jamal, and fired twice.
Mohammed Jamal felt the hot slugs plunge completely through his chest as
their impact slammed him back against the window facing the street. He was
barely aware that he fired his Beretta as he toppled; for a moment he actually
wondered why the light fixture by the coffee bar exploded.
The bullets that had passed through Jamal hit the window behind him a
split-second before Jamal did, turning it into a ten-foot-tall spiderweb of
shattered safety glass that collapsed around Jamal's body in a glittering cloud
as he fell to the sidewalk below.
The bushes below the window snagged Jamal's coat and violently twisted him
in mid-air, then he fell to the sidewalk on his left side, hearing and feeling
the bones of his arm snap as his head slammed against the concrete. Momentarily
stunned, Mohammed Jamal fought to remain conscious and stared upward, trying to
locate the Crown Victoria.
There! Almost directly overhead, an odd-shaped dark dot against the sky!
Jamal waveringly aimed his pistol at the men who leaned out of the window frame
above him and prayed to Allah that his transmitter hadn't been broken.
Forcing the unfeeling thumb and fingers of his shattered left arm to squeeze
the small transmitter took a supreme effort. Jamal cast the pistol aside in
frustration and dropped his right hand over his left to help it close on the
transmitter even as more bullets tore through his chest and skull.

Chapter One

Looking down from the cafe window at the man he'd just shot, Ed Cade saw the
brilliant overhead flash reflected in the windows of the hotel across the street
and realized that something -- li