All of them pull out their guns and begin firing.
STARLING: FBI!
Agent Brigham takes a hit. The FBI shoot two of the henchmen as the other three jump in the Cadillac, a Crip gunship, along with Drumgo as the police and FBI team return fire. The Cadillac driver throws it in reverse and races forward through the busy fish market, crashing into anything in it's way. Brigham recovers, pulls out his hand gun, and begins firing at the Cadillac, it's heading straight for him. The Cadillac slams into Brigham, knocking his body into the car's windshield, blood splatters the glass. We can hear the baby crying through the mayhem.
A shooter positions himself Cheyenne-style in the rolled-down window frame, spraying automatic fire over the top. Auto glass shatters and clangs on the ground. Everyone in the market scrambling for cover. Starling positions herself to get a good shot at the driver and fires. Target hit, the Cadillac goes out of control and crashes into another car, pinning the shooter between the two cars. Starling moving toward it now, following the sight of her gun.
STARLING: Hold it! Hold your fire!
The firing stops. The shooter still pinned in the window frame, is alive but trapped, chest compressed between the Cadillac and a parked car. He comes to and motions to aim his gun to fire back.
Starling takes him out with two shots. The only ones left alive in the Cadillac is Drumgo and the baby.
STARLING: Evelda! Get out of the car!
DRUMGO (opens the car door): Starling, is that you?
STARLING: Step away from the car! Show me your hands, Evelda!
Drumgo emerges from the car, hands buried in a long scarf, cradling the crying baby.
STARLING: Please! Show me your hands!
Evelda looks up at her, fondly it seems, doesn't show her hands.
DRUMGO: How you been?
STARLING: Don't do this!
DRUMGO: Do what?
The scarf flutters. Drumgo whips out a machine pistol and opens fire, hitting Clarice.
Starling fires high enough to miss the baby, hitting Drumgo in the neck, she goes down. Starling falls, the wind knocked out of her from the hits to her chest, to her bulletproof vest.
Starling recovers and races to Drumgo, blood gushing out of her onto the baby. She runs with the baby to the merchant stalls as someone clicks shots from the ground with a camera.
Starling lays the baby down. Grabs the handheld sprayer and washes off the slick coating of HIV positive blood covering the baby. Nearby, Brigham lies dead.
Starling is sitting alone, overcome with emotions, she has a good cry over the recent ordeal and the loss of her fellow agent Brigham. His funeral is shown on a television news report. The report shows Starling attending the funeral.
NEWS ANCHOR: Friends, family, and co-workers gathered here this morning at Arlington National Cemetery to bury BATF Agent John Brigham. Shot and killed in the line of duty Friday, he was forty years old. This ill-fated drug raid that claimed his life and five others, is the latest in a seemingly endless series of incidents. Beginning with Waco, Texas, in which the Justice Department and the FBI have been questioned about their use of fire power rather than judgment.
NEWS ANCHOR: This time it was Special Agent Clarice Starling heading up the collaborative strike force. Agent Starling obtained some measure of celebrity ten years ago when she was given information by Doctor Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter, which led to the rescue of Catherine Martin, daughter of the former U.S. Senator from Tennessee. However, when she returns to work later this week, she won't be so celebrated. Attorney Telford Higgins, representing one of the families of those slain, says he will file a wrongful death suit . . . .
Watching this newscast, is Verger, lying in his bed with multiple video monitors positioned within his view. He uses a remote to turn off the newscast.
MASON: Cordell!
Cordells enters the room
MASON: Cordell.
DR. DOEMLING: Yes, sir.
MASON: Get me the Justice Department.
FBI DC Field Office, Conference Room: Starling is seated among several men in suits. FBI Agent Pearsall is introducing those present.
PEARSALL: Agent Starling, this is John Eldredge from DEA; Assistant Director Noonan, of course you know; Larkin Wayne, from our Office of Professional Responsibility; Bob Sneed, ATF; Benny Holcome, Assistant to the Mayor; and Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta) - you know Paul. Paul's come over from Justice - unofficially - as a favor to us. In other words, he's here and he's not here.
A couple of the men bob their heads at the mention of their names; none offered his hand. A silence stretches out as each man regards her.
KRENDLER: So I take it you've seen the coverage in the papers and on television?
STARLING: I have nothing to do with the news, Mr. Krendler.
KRENDLER: The woman had a baby in her arms. There are pictures. You can see the problem I would think.
STARLING: Not in her arms, in a carrier across her chest. In her arms, she had a MAC 10.
SNEED: Look, we're here to help you, Starling. That's going to be a hell of a lot harder to do with a combative attitude.
A beeper goes off. Every one of the men checks the little box on his belt. It's Noonan's. He excuses himself from the room.
STARLING: Can I speak freely, Mr. Pearsall? (he nods) Your agency called this office to get me assigned to help you on this raid. I tried to do that. I clearly expressed my judgment, it was ignored. And now a good agent and a friend, is dead.
Noonan pokes his head in, gestures to Krendler to join him in the anteroom. A silence before the man from the Mayor's Office speaks up.
HOLCOME: You shot and killed five people out there, Agent Starling. Is that how you define good judgment?
STARLING: This raid was an ugly mess. I ended up in a position where I had a choice of dying, or shooting a woman carrying a child. I chose. I shot her. I killed a mother holding her child. And I regret it. I resent myself for it.
NOONAN (steps back in): Gentlemen. I'm going to call a halt to this meeting and get back to you individually by phone.
Sneed cocks his head like a confused dog. They all get up to leave.
Later, Starling meets with Pearsall and Krendler.
Verger claims to have new information about Lecter (an X-ray), which he is willing to disclose only to Starling.
PEARSALL: You have a secret admirer, Starling. He isn't much to look at, but he does have friends in high places.
He shoves an FBI profile on Verger to Starling. She opens it.
PEARSALL: You know Mason Verger?
STARLING: Lecter's fourth victim, the rich one. The only one that survived.
PEARSALL: He says he has some new information on Lecter. He will only share it with you.
STARLING: What do you mean he will only share it with me? If you want it, sieze it.
Krendler is giving Starling a predatory look, staring at her thighs.
KRENDLER: I'd rather not.
STARLING: I wasn't speaking to you, Mr. Krendler. When I speak to you, you will know it because I will look at you.
He gives her a teasing smile.
STARLING (back to Pearsall): Why would we rather not?
PEARSALL: The last time he called is when we took Lecter off the ten most wanted list.
She looks at a couple of photographs in Verger's profile, of a young man with a kind, trusting face.
PEARSALL: He was upset about that. We said, hey that's life. He said hey, this is a senate oversight, to make your life miserable. His family's political contributions may not be enough to buy a senator, but they are enough to rent them from time to time. There's no reason to go through that again, if he really does have something.
KRENDLER: It's a good deal for you, Starling. You can't pretend it isn't, get to go back on a celebrated case, I'll take care of the media for your Drumgo killing, everyone's going to be happy.
STARLING: I'm not happy.
KRENDLER: Well, maybe you're incapable of being happy.
STARLING: Mr. Krendler, when you are out on the street, you know you might take a bullet in the line of duty, you accept it. When you get out, you live with it. What you don't expect or accept, is taking one in the back in your boss's office for doing your job exactly as they've taught you. That makes you unhappy!
PEARSALL: Of course you're right, Starling. But it really doesn't change anything.
STARLING: It changes everything. It changes me.
Maryland: Starling is sent to Verger's estate to collect the supposed evidence and interview him. Starling's Mustang growling along the rain-slicked expressway. Starling's eyes darting back and forth at the mist shrouded countryside.
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