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,