Before I could aim, she had fired at me. Mike squeezed off a round that nailed her in the throat, although in real time I couldn't have seen him do it. I would have been dead.

"Saved your skinny ass again, Coop."

"I give up. I don't know how you guys do it, day in and day out."

"Ready for another one, Alex?" Pete asked.

"I'm telling you this should be mandatory training for every prosecutor your office hires. Most of them have no idea what we're up against till they're chauffeured to a crime scene in an RMP at three o'clock in the morning," Mike said, referring to the department's blue and white radio motor patrol cars, "and they get an up close and personal sense of what the job is like."

"I don't think I can do it, Pete. I need a nice still target like the thug-nobody shooting back at me-in a quiet room like this. Nothing interactive."

The second tape started to play. It appeared to be a routine traffic accident. A dark green Toyota truck smashed into a silver Honda and spun the car around. The driver of the Honda was slumped against the steering wheel and the wailing siren announced the approach of a police car.

Mike moved into place behind one of the barrels. He didn't need instructions from Pete. I watched as the driver of the truck stepped out of its cab. A passenger in the Honda got out and opened the rear door, coming up with a tire iron.

"Stop right there! Put it down," Mike said.

Instead of obeying Mike's command, the passenger continued walking toward the Toyota, cursing at the other driver, who was reaching into his rear pocket to remove his wallet. The second man returned the expletives with some ethnic slurs, as Mike yelled at them both to back off.

The Honda's passenger began to charge the truck, banging on the hood with the tire iron. As the camera sped in-representing Mike's dash toward the Toyota-the driver turned around and pulled a gun from his waistband, shooting at Mike before pivoting to kill the civilian.

Mike had been quick enough to duck behind the barrel but the shot he fired off was neither timely nor accurate.

"That's why you need a partner you can trust, Coop. There's barely time to think when things heat up on the street. It's like a combat zone."

"I guess what you need, Alex, is the old-fashioned, basic indoor range. It's much calmer, and you'll be able to concentrate," Pete said. "Want to give that a try?"

"One more chance. Then it's back to the law library for me."

Pete shut off the equipment and we walked out of the building, down the steps, in the direction of the huge visitors' parking lot. "We've got to go past the gatehouse," he said, "beyond all the shooting ranges and bomb squad."

The heat was escalating as the late-morning sun climbed higher. The three of us were sweating as we crossed behind the equipment trailers on the edge of the property to get to the new indoor range. There was no shade on the path, just ten feet from the border of scrubby brush that separated the facility from its nearest neighbors. And ever present was the sound of dozens of automatic weapons being fired by cop after cop, eager to plug the thug on the target.

Pete squared the corner at the entry checkpoint, just past the last RESTRICTED sign. Mike stopped short behind him and leaned over to massage a kink in the calf of his left leg. He was still recovering from a stress fracture he had suffered earlier in the year.

I kneeled to retie the laces on my sneakers. Just as I did, I heard the sharp repeat of a semiautomatic weapon fired from within the stand of trees closest to the entrance where dozens of police officers had parked their cars.

I fell to the ground as bullets dimpled the side of the gray shingled gatehouse. Mike thrust himself onto the dirt and crawled over to me, shielding my body with his own, screaming at me to stay down. I could barely breathe, between the fright of the close call and the pressure of his body on my chest.

Pete Acosta called for backup and ran off in the direction of the shooter. The uniformed cops at the checkpoint-at least four of them-took up chase with him. I lost sight of them in the dense shrubbery that edged the roadway near the entrance.

Four others answered Mike's call and formed a circle around us. Mike helped me to my feet and we brushed ourselves off, reassuring the men that we had not been hit

Take her into the gatehouse," he said. "I'll catch up with Pete."

"Could you just stay here with me a minute?" I didn't want to be left with strangers while Mike exposed himself to whoever had been shooting at us.

Mike wasn't going to indulge my nerves. He walked away and inspected the holes in the side of the building. "Might as well get Crime Scene out here. Let them dig these bullets out. See what they are," he said to one of the guys trailing behind him.

"You don't even know where Pete is," I said. "You don't know who's out there."

"Inside for you, Blondie," he said, grinning at me to try to ease my anxiety. "Some nut's running around with worse aim than you have. Should make you feel better already."

The fifteen-minute wait for Mike and Pete to return seemed like hours. All the windows in the little shack were open for ventilation, and I could hear the endless volleys of gunshots.

"What'd you get?" I asked, standing at the door as I saw the men coming back.

Their arms were covered in scratches, and Mike had a long, thin trail of blood down one cheek. The thick foliage had been hard for them to penetrate.

"What did we get? STDs, in all likelihood."

"What?"

"This may be the first case where the Center for Disease Control can count poison ivy as a sexually transmitted disease," Mike said, dabbing at his face with his handkerchief.

The other officers looked at me and Pete Acosta said, "What?"

I could feel myself reddening.

"Only for the love of Coop would I take off into a briar patch. The rest of you must be dumber than I am. It's itchy already," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "and you don't even know the broad. You got a hard line in there?"

"Yeah," one of the cops said. "There's no cell reception."

"I noticed," Mike said. He walked past me, patting me on the shoulder, and dialed his office. "It's Chapman. Give me Lieutenant Peterson."

"Will you tell-?"

He put his fingers to his lips. "Ssssssssh. Anybody know you were coming here today?"

"No."

"It wasn't in the gossip columns, was it? You didn't give it out to Liz Smith? Or the Social Diary?" he said, trying to defuse the tension in the group by poking fun at me. "What blond prosecutor had a midmorning tryst with a thug on the old Pell's Point estate, once the private reserve of Samuel Rodman?"

"Somebody was shooting at us, Mike. Why is everything a joke to you?"

The cops were laughing.

"Hey, Loo. I'm up at the range. Just had an incident. I think you'd better call headquarters and let them know."

Mike was going up the proper chain of command. He explained to his boss what had happened as we walked near the perimeter of the restricted area.

"No reason to take it personally," Mike said. "Coop? Other than eating a mouthful of Bronx dirt, she's fine. She's having an outer-boroughs experience this week."

Peterson was asking all the questions.

"Pete Acosta-he's one of the instructors-he'll sit down when the CO comes on for a four to twelve. Pete's guess is that it's somebody on the job, a member of the department with a major problem. Better let the commissioner's office know. Check who's been put on the rubber gun squad lately," Mike said, referring to cops ruled psycho who've had to surrender their service weapons.

"The shooter was aiming at us," I said.