Tracy Shaw, a four-foot slip of a girl, stood erect on the balance beam. Chalk, a dusty reminder of an earlier workout on the bars, covered parts of her sky-blue body suit. The suit hugged her sinewy frame with the familiarity of a longtime friend. She stood with poise, her back slightly arched, in a sensual meeting of body and athletics.

She had blocked from her mind every dull inch of her surroundings — the women's gymnasium at the University of California at Los Angeles. Concentration gripped her youthful face. Over and over her mind repeated instructions that had been drilled into her head by her coach.

Over and over the eleven-year-old thought of her goal, the goal of every amateur athlete-Olympic gold. The Games were only five days away.

She was tired. A long day of workouts had zapped the energy she usually possessed. The diminutive gymnast turned her mind from the tired aching in her muscles. She concentrated.

Slowly, treading with the grace born of practice, she walked backward on the beam. Her face remained a mask of concentration, her head tilted slightly skyward. Suddenly, like a cat, the sinewy girl exploded into action.

Blasting off the beam, she arched her spine into a perfect backflip. She was halfway through it when her skull exploded, spewing shards of bone and mutilated brain, the pretty face collapsing into ruin.

And she struck the beam, a slithering, lifeless thing, devoid of grace. For half a heartbeat she was balanced there, then her rag-doll form surrendered to the draw of gravity and collapsed into a viscous, spreading pool of blood.

The shot had not uttered a sound. It had carried out its duty with deadly silence.

Babette Pavlovski, a Czechoslovakian defector and coach of the U.S. women's gymnastic team, gagged at the sight of the young girl being shot. Pavlovski and America's top hope for a gold medal, Ellie Kay King, had been spotting for the girl in the otherwise empty gym. King, nicknamed Kelly, threw up.