An Encounter in Atlanta | Page 2

the sound of something hollow clattering on the ground caused him to look away from the doors.
A truly beautiful blonde woman in what appeared to be little more than a bathing suit and boots stood just behind his car. She seemed to be looking for something, probably some sort of accessory to her scandalously inadequate costume.
Thinking that she must also be a visitor to the science fiction convention, Ahmed's eyes locked on her marvelous bare legs and ample bosom for some moments as she crouched and knelt to try to reach whatever had fallen beneath the taxi.
Her eyes met his in the mirror and she smiled coyly as she walked up the driveway. Allah be praised for letting such a magnificent woman be his last sight on Earth! And her glorious breasts were nearly leaping out of her costume!
Concentrating on her approaching breasts, Ahmed never saw -- and was conscious only long enough to barely feel -- her fist slam into the side of his head. The blow sent him sprawling against the luggage on the seat and into oblivion.
The woman quickly shifted the car into neutral, went behind it to grab the bumper, and began pulling the Crown Vic backward down the ramp to the street, where she jumped to the front of the car, lifted it by the bumper and reached under it to grip the frame, and launched upward with the Crown Vic dangling from her grasp.
From the indoor cafe across the street, Mohammed Jamal took his eyes off the policeman and another man who were having a light lunch at a nearby table and stared with incredulous awe as a half-naked blonde woman lifted the Crown Victoria and seemed to leap into the sky with it.
He'd frozen in mid-sip of his coffee with as much complete, mind-boggling shock as anyone else witnessing the event, but he recovered fairly quickly as he realized that there was still a slim chance to set off the bomb in or near the canyon-like confines of the streets.
Hurriedly putting down his coffee cup, he reached for the 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 -- likely the car -- had exploded above the city.
Some guy dressed as a knight was standing smack in the middle of the street, aiming a camera of some sort straight up at the sky. The light turned green at the