“Please don’t shoot me again, Jack!”

What Jim Ehrhart saw next would haunt his dreams.  Jack Hudson pointed his pistol at Mike Crowe’s head just as the wounded man slumped to the ground.  Mercilessly, Hudson pulled the trigger.  When Hudson did this, Ehrhart used that moment to escape the gated compound he’d been trapped inside, and he ran for his life.  He ran across an open field to a nearby building.  Inside the other building was his evidence locker.  And inside the evidence locker, Ehrhart now reached for the loaded sawed-off shotgun he kept there for “just in case.”  

But Ehrhart had never envisioned what was now occurring.  One of the undercover drug agents was murdering his friends!  Ehrhart hoped that he’d be able to run back with the shotgun to try and save the life of Dan Elkins, the drug agency’s commander. As far as Ehrhart knew, Elkins was still inside the compound . . . unarmed . . . and now being hunted by Hudson.

Meanwhile, Crowe lay bleeding in the parking lot . . . still alive, but just barely.  He would soon die on a hospital operating table after a bloody, heroic, but unsuccessful effort to safe his life . . . the wound to his still beating heart too mortal to repair.