rror a few
minutes before. When he looked now, the lights were still there--but the
fact just didn't register until, a couple of blocks later, the car began
to pull around them on the left. It was a Buick, while Boyd's was a new
Lincoln, but the edge wasn't too apparent yet.

Malone spotted the gun barrel protruding from the Buick and yelled just
before the first shot went off.

Boyd, at the wheel, didn't even bother to look. His reflexes took over
and he slammed his foot down on the brake. The specially-built FBI
Lincoln slowed down instantly. The shotgun blast splattered the glass of
the curved windshield all over--but none of it came into the car itself.

Malone already had his hand on the butt of the .44 Magnum under his left
armpit, and he even had time to be grateful, for once, that it wasn't a
smallsword. The women were in the back seat, frozen, and he yelled:
"Duck!" and felt, rather than saw, both of them sink down onto the floor
of the car.

The Buick had slowed down, too, and the gun barrel was swiveling back
for a second shot. Malone felt naked and unprotected. The Buick and the
Lincoln were even on the road now.

Malone had his revolver out. He fired the first shot without even
realizing fully that he'd done so, and he heard a piercing scream from
Barbara in the back seat. He had no time to look back.

A .44 Magnum is not, by any means, a small gun. As hand guns
go--revolvers and automatics--it is about as large as a gun can get to
be. An ordinary car has absolutely no chance against it.

Much less the glass in an ordinary car.

The first slug drilled its way through the window glass as though it
were not there, and slammed its way through an even more unprotected
obstacle, the frontal bones of the triggerman's skull. The second slug
from Malone's gun missed the hole the first slug had made by something
less than an inch.

The big, apelike thug who was holding the shotgun had a chance to pull
the trigger once more, but he wasn't aiming very well. The blast merely
scored the paint off the top of the Lincoln.

The rear window of the Buick was open, and Malone caught sight of
another glint of blued steel from the corner of his eye. There was no
time to shift aim--not with bullets flying like swallows on the way to
Capistrano. Malone thought faster than he had ever imagined himself
capable of doing, and decided to aim for the driver.

Evidently the man in the rear seat of the Buick had had the same