Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

“Getting this?” Barry Wise asked in the corridor.

“Yep,” Nichols confirmed.

What offended the junior policeman was not the attack on the doctor, but rather the fact that this-this citizen had laid hands on a uniformed member of the Armed People’s Police. Outraged, he drew his pistol from its holster, and what had been a confused situation became a deadly one.

“No!” shouted Cardinal DiMilo, moving toward the young cop. He turned to see the source of the noise and saw an elderly gwai, or foreigner in very strange clothes, moving toward him with a hostile expression. The cop’s first response was a blow to the foreigner’s face, delivered with his empty left hand.

Renato Cardinal DiMilo hadn’t been physically struck since his childhood, and the affront to his personhood was all the more offensive for his religious and diplomatic status, and to be struck by this child! He turned back from the force of the blow and pushed the man aside, wanting to go to Yu’s aid, and to help him keep this murderous doctor away from the baby about to be born. The doctor was wavering on one foot, holding the syringe up in the air. This the Cardinal seized in his hand and hurled against the wall, where it didn’t break, because it was plastic, but the metal needle bent.

Had the police better understood what was happening, or had they merely been better trained, it would have stopped there. But they hadn’t, and it didn’t. Now the senior cop had his Type 77 pistol out. This he used to club the Italian on the back of the head, but his blow was poorly delivered, and all it managed to do was knock him off balance and split his skin.

Now it was Monsignor Schepke’s turn. His Cardinal, the man whom it was his duty to serve and protect, had been attacked. He was a priest. He couldn’t use deadly force. He couldn’t attack. But he could defend. That he did, grasping the older officer’s gun hand and twisting it up, in a safe direction, away from the others in the room. But there it went off, and though the bullet merely flattened out in the concrete ceiling, the noise inside the small room was deafening.

The younger policeman suddenly thought that his comrade was under attack. He wheeled and fired, but missed Schepke, and struck Cardinal DiMilo in the back. The.30 caliber bullet transited the body back to front, damaging the churchman’s spleen. The pain surprised DiMilo, but his eyes were focused on the emerging baby.

The crash of the shot had startled Lien-Hua, and the push that followed was pure reflex. The baby emerged, and would have fallen headfirst to the hard floor but for the extended hands of Reverend Yu, who stopped the fall and probably saved the newborn’s life. He was lying on his side, and then he saw that the second shot had gravely wounded his Catholic friend. Holding the baby, he struggled to his feet and looked vengefully at the youthful policeman.

“Huai dan! he shouted: Villain! Oblivious of the infant in his arms, he lurched forward toward the confused and frightened policeman.

As automatically as a robot, the younger cop merely extended his arm and shot the Baptist preacher right in the forehead.

Yu twisted and fell, bumping into Cardinal DiMilo’s supine form and landing on his back, so that his chest cushioned the newborn’s fall.

“Put that away!” the older cop screamed at his young partner. But the damage had been done. The Chinese Reverend Yu was dead, the back of his head leaking brain matter and venting blood at an explosive rate onto the dirty tile floor.

The doctor was the first to take any intelligent action. The baby was out now, and he couldn’t kill it. He took it from Yu’s dead arms, and held it up by the feet, planning to smack it on the rump, but it cried out on its own. So, the doctor thought as automatically as the second policeman’s shot, this lunacy has one good result. That he’d been willing to kill it sixty seconds before was another issue entirely. Then, it had been unauthorized tissue. Now, it was a breathing citizen of the People’s Republic, and his duty as a physician was to protect it. The dichotomy did not trouble him because it never even occurred to him.

There followed a few seconds in which people tried to come to terms with what had happened. Monsignor Schepke saw that Yu was dead. He couldn’t be alive with that head wound. His remaining duty was to his Cardinal.

“Eminence,” he said, kneeling down to lift him off the bloody floor.

Renato Cardinal DiMilo thought it strange that there was so little pain, for he knew that his death was imminent. Inside, his spleen was lacerated, and he was bleeding out internally at a lethal rate. He had not the time to reflect on his life or what lay in his immediate future, but despite that, his life of service and faith reasserted itself one more time.

“The child, Franz, the child?” he asked in a gasping voice.

“The baby lives,” Monsignor Schepke told the dying man.

A gentle smile: “Bene,” Renato said, before closing his eyes for the last time.

The last shot taken by the CNN crew was of the baby lying on her mother’s chest. They didn’t know her name, and the woman’s face was one of utter confusion, but then she felt her daughter, and the face was transformed as womanly instincts took over completely.

“We better get the fuck out of here, Barry,” the cameraman advised, with a hiss.

“I think you’re right, Pete.” Wise stepped back and started to his left to get down the corridor to the stairs. He had a potential Emmy-class story in his hands now. He’d seen a human drama with few equals, and it had to go out, and it had to go out fast.

Inside the delivery room, the senior cop was shaking his head, his ears still ringing, trying to figure out what the hell had happened here, when he realized that the light level was lower-the TV camera was gone! He had to do something. Standing erect, he darted from the room and looked right, and saw the last American disappear into the stairwell. He left his junior in the delivery room and ran that way, turned into the fire stairs and ran downstairs as fast as gravity could propel him.

Wise led his people into the main lobby and right toward the main door, where their satellite van was. They’d almost made it, when a shout made them turn. It was the cop, the older one, about forty, they thought, and his pistol was out again, to the surprise and alarm of the civilians in the lobby.

“Keep going,” Wise told his crew, and they pushed through the doors into the open air. The van was in view, with the mini-satellite dish lying flat on the roof, and that was the key to getting this story out.

“Stop!” the cop called. He knew some English, so it would seem.

“Okay, guys, let’s play it real cool,” Wise told the other three.

“Under control,” Pete the cameraman advised. The camera was off his shoulder now, and his hands were out of casual view.

The cop bolstered his pistol and came close, with his right hand up and out flat. “Give me tape,” he said. “Give me tape.” His accent was crummy, but his English was understandable enough.

“That tape is my property!” Wise protested. “It belongs to me and my company.”

The cop’s English wasn’t that good. He just repeated his demand: “Give me tape!”

“Okay, Barry,” Pete said. “I got it.”

The cameraman-his name was Peter Nichols-lifted the camera up and hit the EJECT button, punching the Beta-format tape out of the Sony camera. This he gave to the police officer with a downcast and angry expression. The cop took it with his own expression of satisfaction and turned on his heel to go back into the hospital.

There was no way he could have known that, like any news cameraman, Pete Nichols could deal seconds as skillfully as any Las Vegas poker dealer. He winked at Barry Wise, and the four headed off to the van.