Driving back to my place in the hills, I kept checking the rearview mirror for any signs of a tail. I was getting tired of foreigners coming to our country and stalking Helena and myself. Goddamn it, I’m a Los Angeles police Lieutenant Detective. Bad guys don’t tail me. I tail them. As I turned onto my street, way down the block sat a white car, parked facing me, with two male occupants. I turned into my driveway, opened the garage door, quickly entered, and executed a hard stop. Hitting the door closer button, I jumped out of the car, turned out the house lights, pulled my 45 from its holster, moved over to the front window, knelt, and peeked under the big, white blind to see if the men had moved. One man was walking up the sidewalk across the street; the other man was on my side, walking toward my house, keeping close to the trees and homes for camouflage. The guy across the street was now directly in front of my house, waiting inside the tree line. Goddamn, these guys are bold. I saw his right-hand move to the edge of his long coat as he placed that hand onto the pistol grip of a sawed-off pump shotgun on a sling. Where the hell is the other guy?
Then I heard the back doorknob turn ever so slowly and then click open. I looked back out the window, and the man was no longer across the street. I could feel the tightness in my arms and legs. I had to move into a better position, so I duck-walked over to and crouched behind my new table. Shit, I just finished a kitchen remodel, and this was not going well. I pulled out another magazine of 15 rounds of 45’s from my belt, holding it in my left hand. That’s 30 rounds total. Stay focused, listen, and react. I pulled myself up behind the table and could see under the table as well as over the chair seats. I raised the 45 to clear the chair seats and pointed right at zipper height. The back-door man did a dumb thing. He jumped out into the room with his shotgun leveled at the front door, firing one blast that damn near blew out the windows. I caped off two. The first one hit his zipper. He screamed and spun, as the second one hit just below the right knee, breaking his leg. Dropping like a lead weight, he tried to lift that scattergun, but the third one hit him in the face and removed the back of his head.
There was another deafening blast, so close that it took out part of my new table, missed most of me, but a burning, stabbing pain in my left armpit got my attention. The impact started me rolling to the left, so moving with it, I slung the 45 back to the right and capped off four fast ones. Two quick blasts came my way, knocking a hole through my new wall. “You son of a bitch,” I yelled, as that clip spent its rounds. My 45 was empty. I added a full mag to my gun and started shooting a circular pattern on the wall. Hearing a scream from the other side of the wall, I ejected that M.T. mag from the butt of my gun, slammed a third fully loaded 15 round mag into the handle, thumbed the slide into place, fired four more rounds into that wall, and finally heard his body hit the floor. Breathing hard and feeling the blood running out from under my left armpit and onto my polished wooden floor, I snatched my phone from my pocket and pushed the code for dispatch. To the operator, I said,
“Code Blue - shots fired - officer down.” I managed to give out my name and address before it all went black. As I fell into that blackness, I remember thinking I hope I won.