Page 100 of The Fourth Option
The single shot broke the sound barrier and caught the officer in the forehead, the bullet splitting the hemispheres of his brain in two down the medial longitudinal fissure.
He was dead before his body collapsed at the top of the stairs.
Walker performed a tac reload, ejecting the depleted magazine and exchanging it with the full magazine in the back pocket of his jeans. He then cautiously worked his way up the staircase. It was a small house. There were not many places Belle could be.
He stepped over the dead man.
You just killed a cop.
You killed an enemy combatant.
The short hallway was clear.
Walker slipped into the first room on his left.
It had once been a bathroom. A sink was on the floor next to a hole where the toilet should be. He glanced into a filthy bathtub as he passed and saw that a body was curled up in it. The smell conjured images of the dead.
Keep pushing.
The bathroom had a second door that was partially closed. He stepped to the side to get an angle on the room, a bedroom with peeling wallpaper. He could hear whimpering. Female. It didn’t sound like Belle. He decided to slow his clearance, the thought being that Belle was now the cop’s bargaining chip.He won’t kill her, Walker hoped. Hope is not a solid course of action. He combat-cleared from the bathroom and discovered the source of the crying: another woman, white, short hair, skinny, sitting on the floor, her face between her knees.
He moved swiftly and silently across the room to a door that led back to the short hallway. A closed door was directly across the hall. Last door on this level. A master bedroom?
He moved into the hallway and listened. He thought he heard mumbling and the scuffling of feet.
Go through the door?
Odds are the cop has his weapon trained on it.
Has he called for backup?
Other corrupt cops?
He doesn’t need corrupt cops. He can just call for backup saying they interrupted a deal gone bad.
Maybe he should just leave?No way, then he kills her. They know she pieced enough together to come here asking for Snowball. They found her phone. She’s a liability. No way he lets her live.
You need to interrogate this guy.
No, you need to save Belle.
Walker looked down the hall. The same rot and decay that infected the lower level was just as prevalent upstairs, including the holes in the walls spilling insulation.
He turned to his left and studied the drywall.
The first hole did not penetrate through to the room beyond.
Walker kept moving.
The second hole was smaller. Made by a hammer? A fist?
He reached out and, as quietly as he could, pulled the remaining insulation toward him.
Slowly.
He tugged a little more and heard feet shuffling beyond the wall.
The hole was small, but it was a through-and-through, and in the green phosphor of his Harris monocular, he saw the police officer. He had Belle’s neck in the crook of his left arm, pulled tight to his chest. She was on her tiptoes, fingers clamped on his forearm. A human shield.
