Sam finds his mother, Rose, in debt to a local mobster known for killing women that cause him trouble. Sam finds out the cops of the 125 are in cahoots with the mobster and ignore his illegal activities for tips on other mobsters.

With a life-and-death hostage situation paralleling own strange circumstances, Sam Tyler is ordered with the rest of the 1-2-5 to diffuse a potentially deadly face-off at a hospital where a crazed gunman is trying to force a doctor to reverse a dangerous operation on the renegade's brother, and the squad are all targeted in the gunman's cross-hairs.