Blackmail Earth (39 page)

“Holy shit,” Jenna whispered. She was beginning to feel like she’d landed in the middle of her own
Black Hawk Down.

Seconds later, as the Expedition raced out from behind the diminutive Smart car, the beret-wearing sport at the wheel changed lanes. Perhaps
Monsieur
Smart car thought he was doing the tailgater a favor, but in a swift and cruel demonstration that no act of kindness goes unpunished, the Expedition plowed right into him without slowing. The Smart car tumbled like a die from the hand of a crazed gambler. Then a Nissan Stanza plowed into the roof of the Smart car, and both of those battered vehicles were smashed by other early morning drivers, resulting in an eleven-car pileup.

Jenna watched, stunned by the unraveling mayhem.

When the SUV was two car lengths back, a bullet shattered the taxi’s rear window and glanced off the Plexiglas behind Korfa’s gleaming bald head. Jenna and Dafoe dove below the firing line, though bullets ricocheting off the security glass could find them easily.

Jenna inched up, saw the Expedition gaining on them in the left lane.

“They’re trying to kill us,” she shouted to Korfa.

“No shit,” he yelled back.

“Faster,” she screamed.

Korfa shocked her by darting into the left lane. The SUV braked and smacked into a series of parked cars on the driver’s side. A metallic screech filled the air. Jenna looked back to see the SUV rocking wildly on its wheels. The taxi was racing away at eighty-five miles an hour.
Nice move, Korfa.

But the Expedition regained its legs quickly and accelerated powerfully. Jenna pulled out her cell. Dafoe stopped her, saying, “If you’re calling 911, there are sirens all around us.”

Squealing
sirens—but no cop cars in sight yet. Their assailants were still roaring toward them. It looked like the Expedition was about to ram the cab. Korfa pressed the pedal to the metal and gained half a car length.

Jenna, fingers flying over the phone’s keypad, yelled to Dafoe, “The police should know they’re chasing a bunch of North Korean assassins.”
They’ll kill themselves to kill you. Wasn’t that what Sang-mi said?

“Turn left on Forty-ninth,” Jenna shouted to Korfa. “There’s an entrance halfway down on your right.”

The cab slid sideways as the driver braked, whip tailed as he came out of the sudden turn, then shuddered, straightened, and sped down the street. Jenna finished yelling at the 911 operator and peeked out the passenger side window. She saw that Korfa was about to rip past the studio’s entrance. “Stop,” she bellowed.

He slammed on the brakes so hard that her face smacked into the Plexiglas. In her adrenaline rush, Jenna barely felt the impact. She jammed two more Benjamins into the tiny tray.

Dafoe dragged her out of the cab and the two of them sprinted toward the entrance. The cab peeled out as the SUV slid sideways to a stop, smashing its mangled grill into the side of a Town Car. An outraged chauffeur jumped out and started shouting at the men pouring out of the Expedition. They shot him twice in the head.

Jenna screamed, “Gunmen! Trying to kill us!” as she raced past the two stunned security guards who patrolled the entrance.

A second later, she heard another round of gunfire. A lot of it, and much closer. Gulping air, she and Dafoe burst through the metal door and careered off the lobby desk where Joe Santoro and Joe English screened all the building’s visitors from behind bulletproof glass. She shouted “Killers!” at them, but with gunshots now flying at them from fifty feet away, Jenna’s warning proved unnecessary.

The two Joes stepped to the side of the Plexiglas and fired at the darkly clothed men pouring into the lobby.

Jenna heard someone shout and turned to see that Dafoe had been hit in the back. He lay on his side with the wound blooming red.

“Go,” he screamed in agony. “Get out of here.”

Joe Santoro took a bullet to his shoulder that whipped him around so fast that he might have been dropped into a blender. He smashed into the white marble wall next to him and slid down it, leaving behind a long crimson smear. Dafoe rolled onto his back and his muscles went slack.

“Don’t die.
Don’t,
” Jenna cried.

“Run,” Joe English shouted. Then he ducked, and she caught a glimpse of the assassins gunning him down before she threw open a fire exit door and started lunging up the stairs.

Three flights. They rose like Everest before her. Her first steps were scorched by the certainty that she would be murdered any moment. As she made it to the second floor, the door below banged open, and she heard the sound of at least three, maybe four assassins racing up the stairs.

Gunshots crackled and bullets glanced off the concrete stairwell walls. Using the handrails, Jenna hauled herself up the steps as stony chips exploded inches from her head, almost blinding her with edges hard and sharp as shrapnel. She felt wetness on her face; when she swiped her hand across her cheek, it came away pink, and Jenna knew she was bleeding.

She dragged herself up the last flight of stairs. She wanted to get out of the stairwell, but she didn’t dare use the second-floor exit. There was only minimal security on that level. One flight up—if she could make it—
The Morning Show
had armed guards. On her way to the city, Jenna had worried that the security detail for the set would keep her away from the cameras; now she hoped those guys would keep her from getting killed.

Her body felt brittle; her arms trembled from the strain of pulling herself up the final flight of stairs. The hours of fear and the long trip were all starting to take their toll. She heard the assassins gaining on her, heavy footfalls that shadowed Jenna with the darkest possibilities. If they gained a few more inches, they’d have a clear shot at her.

She jerked open the door for the third floor, racing through the opening as a shot zinged past her hip with a sizzling sound that fried her nerves. She could tell from her clouded vision that tears were washing down her cheeks, mixing with the streaks of blood from the concrete chips. She bolted directly through another metal door and down the long hallway that was lined with the photographs of network news stars. Gasping, frightened almost senseless, she ran as hard as she could and threw her shoulder into the door on the left that opened to the studio. As she plowed toward the set, she was dimly aware that the theme music for the show had started to play.

Andrea Hanson, who suddenly seemed far more pregnant than Jenna remembered, sat before one of the six precisely positioned studio cameras. She was beaming even more brightly than the lights that lit up her supremely radiant face.

In front of televisions all across the United States, viewers became aware of what was happening at the same moment Andrea did. The commotion drew her attention first, and she turned toward the noise. Viewers saw the shock on the anchor’s face as Jenna Withers burst onto the set. What they didn’t see were the makeup artists and hair stylists, the stage hands, the lighting and audio techs—more than two dozen people in all—gaping at Jenna’s blood-streaked face.

Jenna stumbled in front of the camera that had been trained on Andrea. The startled operator had time to mumble only an incredulous “What?” before the first gunshots tore through the studio and sent everyone scrambling for shelter. The staff of the show had trained for an attack on the set—a dismal sign of the times—but procedures were forgotten in the rocketing terror unleashed by the gun blasts.

Andrea froze. Jenna grabbed her and pushed her toward a hallway. “Get out of here,” Jenna shouted above the boiling madness.

Andrea fled, and Jenna turned back as the security team started firing at the North Koreans. She spotted at least four men in black clothes, and realized that with a full-fledged gun battle underway, she had no hope of getting on the air—and maybe even less chance of surviving if she didn’t get out of there.

She backed away as fast as she could until she bumped into Marv, who was standing by the side of the set. It looked like he’d rushed down to see what was going on and, having found the horrifying answer, had stepped into a freeze frame. She grabbed her boss and pulled him down before he got himself shot.

“You’re going to get killed,” she said. “Leave.” Which was what she intended to do post haste. But as she started crawling toward the hallway, a fusillade chewed up the floor no more than two feet ahead of her.

Rolling hard and fast back toward the set, she ducked behind the giant, paper-thin flat screen that the weather “map” appeared on. The screen extended from the top of the set to about two feet off the floor.

Jenna hunkered behind the corner where the tranquil climes of Southern California often appeared. Marv slipped under the bottom of the screen seconds later and pressed against her. “Get me out of here,” he sputtered. “Get me out of here.”

“Shush,” she whispered.

Their flimsy refuge couldn’t possibly save them; their feet protruded below the map, and Jenna guessed that no one, especially a single-minded assassin, could miss them. But the North Koreans were not the first to discover their hiding place—Geoff Parks was. Kato’s handler was gunned down and fell to the floor not five feet from where Jenna and Marv hid. She spotted horrendous wounds to his arm and leg; blood flowed freely from his thigh, like an artery had been severed. He looked tortured by pain, jaw clenched so hard his teeth had to be cracking. Even so, he caught Jenna’s eye and valiantly tried to push his gun toward her, though he was unable to move it more than an inch.

Where’s Kato?
Jenna wondered.

Parks tried to raise himself up with no greater success, then collapsed to the floor with a thud that Jenna heard over the crackling gunfire. She wondered how long the shooting had been going on, but had no idea. Thirty seconds? Three minutes? It seemed an eternity, more so when she saw another security guard taken down from behind by a knife-wielding Korean. Jenna closed her eyes, but not before she saw the blade slice into the man’s throat.

She felt like she was awaiting her own execution, and Marv was still whining next to her. “Shut up,” she hissed furiously. Then she realized that she could not remain unarmed in a studio rife with murder. She leaped toward Parks’s gun and grabbed the semiautomatic, hoping the magazine was full.

Bullets ripped past her, chewing up the weather screen. Holes shattered the surface where Arizona bordered with Mexico, and she heard Marv crying. Jenna detected no pain in his desperate utterances, only panic.

Jenna rose with Parks’s weapon gripped firmly in her hands. The corner of her eye caught movement, and she wheeled, ready to fire. A North Korean actually smiled as he turned his revolver from the weather map to her, aiming directly at her head.

But she had the jump on him and pulled the trigger. Nothing—the pistol wouldn’t fire: She’d forgot to rack the slide on top of the barrel. The Korean’s smile broadened, and she knew she was dead.

Frantically, she reached for the slide. As she did, a blur flashed in front of her—and Kato clamped his powerful jaws down on the assassin’s arm so hard that Jenna heard the sound of a bone snapping. The gun discharged anyway. A bullet grazed the side of Jenna’s head, burning her severely. She fought the urge to cry out in pain. Millimeters closer and she would have been dead.

She unloaded on her attacker, but Kato’s intrepid attack, and her gunfire, had made them targets. The dog yelped piteously as three bullets ripped into his side, slamming the shepherd into the news anchor’s desk with such force that he shattered the network logo.

Enraged, Jenna turned her weapon on the man who’d shot the dog, hitting him twice in the neck. Then she saw a wounded Korean hobbling for cover and reaching for his ankle holster. From thirty feet away, she took him out with three shots.

She spun around, as stunned by the sudden lull as much as she had been shocked by the onslaught of killing.

Five New York City Police officers rushed into the studio, weapons drawn. The North Koreans were all on the floor, bleeding and unmoving. One of New York City’s finest was on his radio. Another came up beside her.

“Jenna Withers,” he said gently, “can you give me your weapon?”

She heard him, knew that he’d requested the gun, but she wasn’t giving it up. She simply couldn’t, and did not know why. The next instant, Jenna heard whimpering and rushed to Kato, shadowed by the cop who wanted her gun. The dog’s long body shook visibly and blood spilled from his mouth, but he wasn’t the creature making the sad sound.

When she looked around she spotted a Korean aiming his gun at an officer who had his back to him. Jenna shot the Korean twice—and almost got herself killed in the momentary confusion that followed. Three officers drew their guns on her, but the cop who’d asked for Jenna’s weapon jumped in front of her, shouting, “No, don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.” He took her weapon. She did not resist.

As the police stood down, Jenna heard the whimpering again. Disgusted, she walked to the bullet-riddled weather screen and looked behind it, finding a disturbance that felt far more objectionable than any muscle flexing by Mother Nature: Marv.

Jenna looked at him crouched down, and checked her anger. “It’s okay, Marv. It’s over. You can come out now.”

“It’s never going to be over. I’m going to have post-traumatic stress disorder the rest of my life because of you.”

“Marv, I just saved your life,” she managed to say evenly.

“You? You saved
me
?” He stood up. “The only reason you’re alive is that I dragged you to safety, and then you almost got me killed when you started freaking out and trying to run away.”

Jenna shook her head and turned from him: She had no time for Marv, not with Dafoe shot and possibly dead downstairs. But as she rushed away she did notice that camera one was still on, and a monitor on the studio wall showed a wide shot with Marv clearly visible at its very center. She realized that the gun battle had been broadcast live, every gritty second of it. Every hugely embarrassing second—if you were Marv.

She never stopped in front of the camera to warn the world about the North Korean rockets. Shock was slowly overtaking Jenna, and her thoughts could not escape the fallen. She paused only once before racing downstairs: She knelt by the German shepherd that had saved her life, and checked his pulse. Then she yelled, “Someone call a vet, please.” The stalwart heart still beat.