The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [198]
"Ah," the doctor said. The fetus was fully crowned now, and all he had to do was—Reverend Yu had seen as much evil in his life as most clergymen, and they see as much as any seasoned police officer, but to see a human baby murdered before his eyes was just too much. He roughly shoved the junior of the two policemen aside and struck the doctors head from behind, flinging him to the right and jumping on top of him.
"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 Peoples 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 cops first response was a blow to the foreigners face, delivered with his empty left hand.
Renato Cardinal DiMilo hadnt 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 Yus 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 didnt 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 hadnt, and it didnt. 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 Schepkes turn. His Cardinal, the man whom it was his duty to serve and protect, had been attacked. He was a priest. He couldnt use deadly force. He couldnt attack. But he could defend. That he did, grasping the older officers 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 churchmans 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 newborns 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 DiMilos supine form and landing on his back, so that his chest cushioned the newborns 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