Shin climbed out and quickly surveyed his surroundings. The truck had smashed through the wood-framed house. He stood in the living room of the two-story structure.
A figure moved down a flight of stairs to his left. The shadow cast by the headlights revealed a man with a rifle in his hands. Shin spun toward the moving shape, pointed his pistol, and fired three shots. The figure slammed back against the wall and tumbled face forward. The rifle clattered to the bottom of the staircase.
Shin heard a moan in the truck. Eyes wild with rage he turned, raised the pistol and fired three more times into the cab. The body of the woman trooper convulsed violently. Her face grimaced; eyes squeezed shut, lips burst open in a rush of air. All three bullets smashed her chest. She struggled to breath.
Shin squeezed his eyes to focus through his own pain. He raised the pistol, wavering and unsteady. He pulled the trigger again. A spatter of blood shot across the passenger-side door.
Wyatt lay still. Her chest stopped rising and falling. Her face relaxed its tense expression and her muscles slackened their hold on her bones. She drooped in a languid heap on the floorboards of the F250. Blood oozed across her face and dripped from a lock of loose hair above her ear.
A high-pitched scream erupted from the bottom of the stairs. The shrill noise was so loud and severe that it made the ieutenant’s ears rattle and his heart leap inside his chest. Shin turned and pointed his pistol to the source of the sound, but saw no one. He stepped out of the light of the truck and moved toward the staircase. In the doorway at the bottom of the stairs stood the source of the noise that threatened to pierce his eardrums.
A girl, maybe twelve years old, stood in front of her father. She wore a white flannel nightgown that reached to her ankles. Her hair was tied in long pigtails that reached to the middle of her back. She stared at the bloody heap of her father's contorted body, face-down at the bottom of the stairs. Shin stared in confusion.
“Drop the weapon! Drop it now!” A loud male voice demanded from behind him.
In an instant reaction, Shin spun and grabbed the pre-teen with his left hand and held her tightly against himself as he turned to the source of the voice.
“Back off, cop!” he demanded. “I will kill the girl!”
“Let her go, you son of bitch!” came the growling reply.
“Go to hell!” Shin lifted the terrified little girl higher. He held her up as a shield and fired three rounds at the voice. He could not see the man in the darkness, but heard the sound of his boots as he jumped aside.
Shin ran toward the front door of the house, carrying the terrified little girl. He kicked the wooden door open, smashing its bolt and catch through the wooden frame. The North Korean ran to the patrol car that was still running in the driveway. A shot zipped past his head that caused him to duck, more out of surprise than fear.
“I said, drop your weapons or I will kill you!” shouted the man from the house.
Shin turned. “Don’t make me kill the girl!”
He made out the form of the man silhouetted on the porch in the glow of the truck’s headlights that still shone from inside the house. He turned, girl raised high to protect himself, and fired at the figure in front of him.
Two shots exploded in the darkness then the slide stayed open. He had emptied his pistol. There was one spare magazine in his coat pocket. He started to reach for it, but realized that he could not load the spare magazine without releasing the hostage.
“ Drop the girl!” shouted the deep, strong voice. “Enough is enough! There’s no need to die here tonight.”
Shin mentally ran through his options. The mission would not be able to proceed — at least, not without drastic measures.
He reached into his chest pocket. With a flick of his finger and thumb, he opened the plastic case, reached in, and pulled out one of the vials. He pressed it against the girl’s forehead.
“If you take one step toward me,” his voice came out in a low, rumbling growl, “I will smash this against the girl’s head and we will all die the most agonizing death you can imagine!”
The girl started her high-pitched, nearly supersonic screaming anew.
Chapter 46
Marcus stood like a statue on the porch of the wrecked house. Terror contorted the little girl’s face. The eerie glow of lights from inside the house and from the trooper vehicles gave the scene a dreamlike feeling. He had lived this nightmare before. A desperate terrorist with a terrified hostage was a situation that almost never ended well.
The last remaining North Korean commando held the poor child up with his left arm, gripping her tightly across the chest. Against her head, Shin’s bloody, mangled right hand held the vial of deadly poison.
He had been so far ahead of the rest of the chase that Marcus didn’t think the other patrol cars would find them for some time yet. Johnson stood his ground, pistol raised, aimed at Shin’s head. The guy was wavering on his feet. He couldn’t get a clean headshot without hitting the girl or the vial. The police car’s headlights cast long, dark shadows onto the snow as the North Korean soldier limped back, the vial of death pressed into the girl’s sweating temple. Her screaming had stopped. The wretched creature breathed in shaky, sobbing whimpers.
The air lay frigidly cold. Steam poured from around the truck in the open hole in the house. Every breath sent up a white mist that hung in the air like a wispy fog around their heads.
Shin reached the side door of the car but couldn’t open it. Not enough hands. He would have to either lower the vial or put down the girl. He looked back and forth between the door and Marcus, then quickly reached for the door with the hand that held the vial.
In a sudden flurry of movement, the girl completely freaked out. She kicked and screamed so violently that the North Korean soldier nearly dropped her. He tried to raise the vial toward her head again. Before he got close, she kicked back with her feet. Her heel smashed his damaged knee. The dead, frost-bitten flesh, already torn wide open by the boot of the lady trooper, peeled completely from the joint. Shin lurched back in pain as the bones of his right knee twisted. The ligaments audibly snapped under the strain. The sudden disconnect sent him to the ground. Searing pain flashed like a bolt of lightning through his entire body.
Shin still clung to the girl as she spastically flung her arms and kicked like a berserker, mind lost in the midst of the fight. The child repeatedly slammed her head into his nose until it was completely flat. Blood poured like a river over his lips and dripped off his chin. Shin held her with his right forearm, the vial still in his fingers’ grasp.
He reached around with his left hand to restrain her head. She opened her mouth wide to scream again and found his hand on her face. The girl clamped down with her teeth. A chunk of flesh below his thumb came off in her mouth. Shin threw her clear as he screamed in pain. His left thumb, nearly severed, dangled by a few sinewy strands.
The girl scurried away through the snow toward the house. A smear of blood spread around her mouth like a horror-movie lunatic.
Marcus lunged toward the North Korean commando, pistol raised to the man’s chest. He pulled the trigger. The pistol responded with a dull click. The weapon was loaded — there was a round in the chamber — but something blocked the firing pin. Marcus yanked the receiver and let it slam forward to clear the jam. When he squeezed the trigger, again there was only a click. Moving from cold to heat to cold again, condensed moisture had frozen in the weapon. The firing pin was blocked.