With his free hand, Tommy reached for the intruder’s AK-47, which had fallen to the floor during the melee. Kareem, stunned the attack was unfolding in ways no one anticipated, saw Tommy grasp the weapon. As the two men wrestled for control of the dropped weapon, the bartending “wannabe” jihadist opened fire.
The burst of ten rounds from Kareem’s AK-47 had a predictable effect. Both Tommy and Kareem’s fellow jihadist were hit multiple times.
Tommy’s arm was shredded from the blast, flesh hanging from shattered bone. But with his good arm the Korean street hustler attempted to lift the intruder’s weapon and take aim at Kareem.
It was a futile effort. The “convert to the cause” unleashed another burst of fire at the young Korean criminal capitalist and finished him. Turning to the man Tommy had tried to shield, Kareem screamed at Park, cowering behind the desk, “Stay where you are! Arms, spread-eagle! Now!”
Park submitted to Kareem’s commands and sprawled on the floor, hands held far from his body. With his weapon trained on Park, Kareem moved to his Lebanese companion and noted the man was no longer struggling for breath as he lay in a large pool of blood.
Keeping the muzzle of his AK pointed at Park, Kareem squatted next to his terrorist partner and felt for a carotid pulse — he found none.
In the immediate aftermath of the grenades and gunfire, Kareem heard the whimpers of a child as the other three assailants pushed Soo Min, Jenny, and Gracie into the room. Blood poured from a large gash above Soo Min’s eye where she’d been pistol-whipped by one of the misogynistic Lebanese terrorists.
The attacker had Park’s wife by the hair, maintaining control as she fought her captor and struggled to get free. Jenny, a hood over her head, was compliant, controlled by the flex-cuffs securing her hands behind her back. The third intruder held the little girl, who screamed when she saw the slaughter.
“What happened?” asked the terrorist, referring to his friend lying on the floor as he tried to subdue a frightened Gracie.
“Later,” said Kareem.
One of the masked intruders picked up the weapon lying next to Tommy and slung it across his shoulder.
Soo Min struggled again, seeking to escape, and the jihadi pulled her toward him. She lost her balance but before she hit the floor, the attacker yanked hard on her jet-black hair, preventing her from collapsing. She screamed in pain and fear. The intruder swung the weapon, smashing it against the back of her head, opening another wound. Then he threw her to the floor.
Park, ignoring threats from Kareem, struggled to his feet to aid his wife but was greeted by the sharp slash across his face from the barrel of Kareem’s AK-47, draining him of what little strength remained. He crumpled to the floor and Kareem shouted, “If you get up again I will kill you!”
“Let the women go!” shouted Park.
“We don’t need the old one. You can have her but you’ll see the other two again when you answer our demands,” said Kareem as he threw a note at Park.
With that the attacker dragged Jenny and Gracie from the office, the young child’s shrieks echoing down the hallway. Park may have been a criminal and the agent of an enemy regime, but he was also a grandfather.
As the attackers were preparing to depart, the North Korean crime boss made another attempt to aid his unconscious wife. Kareem, in an act of gratuitous cruelty, turned from the doorway and smashed the butt of his AK-47 into the old man’s face. “Stay down!” he shouted as he fired off three rounds into the wall of the office. “We’ll be in touch.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Jake pulled from the curb and flipped a disc into the CD player. Elvis blasted from the speakers. Though he was exhausted, he was celebrating two back-to-back high-risk meetings. Every time he could walk away from one of these events without getting killed or discovered it was a victory. Tonight was a doubleheader win for the good guys. He had managed to sell himself to a criminal kingpin — and the subsequent “rededication ceremony” in the front seat of the Range Rover proved successful with the crime boss’s gangbanging associate.
Though Jake had often been told by others he couldn’t “carry a tune in a covered basket,” he joined the King of Rock and Roll in a lively, off-key rendition of “Jailhouse Rock.” He checked his mirrors, took several side streets, and circled two cul-de-sacs. He was clean but tired. An hour of undercover work is like an eight-hour day to mortals, and he had been balancing too many nonstop undercover days and nights without respite.
After crooning with the King he headed east on Huntington Drive. He turned right on Rosemead Boulevard and then right again into the North Woods Inn/Kohl’s parking lot, the prearranged meeting spot.
As he negotiated his way through the parking lot, looking for Trey Bennett, he hoped this would be a quick debrief and a chance to get home to his firm but very lonely mattress.
Jake spied them and groaned. Instead of just Trey, there were three others standing next to a tan, government-issue Ford Taurus parked beneath a “mushroom cap” sodium-vapor light a few rows back from the Kohl’s main entrance. Jake shook his head when he realized Trey was accompanied not only by their immediate boss, Rachel Chang, but by ASAC Charles Hafner and Wilson, the Agency spook.
Trey and Rachel were in casual attire but Hafner and Wilson were in business suits. All four were drinking coffee from white Styrofoam cups as they chatted, awaiting Jake’s arrival.
When Trey spotted Jake pulling into a parking space about fifty yards away where there were no lights, he hustled over to the Range Rover before Jake could exit the vehicle. “You okay? Everything go well?”
Jake nodded. “Could not have gone better. Why are you guys parked under a light and why all the suits? Nice cover, by the way, suits in a department-store parking lot after dark. Never would suspect they’re feds.”
Trey shrugged and grimaced as Jake stepped from the Rover and the two walked toward the others.
Before reaching the administrators Trey said, “As you can see, we have company tonight.… Please be on your best behavior for a change.”
“Why?” Jake replied. “You worried about your next promotion?”
“Not really. You’ve already made sure that won’t happen. But do me a favor, would you?” Bennett responded. “I just want to get some sleep tonight. And this case has suddenly generated all kinds of extra attention from Washington. Think of your responses to these nice people who are senior to both of us as courtroom testimony. Just answer their questions. Nothing extra. No embellishments. No insults. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jake said, pulling a scrap of paper from his pants pocket and handing it to Trey. “I’ll be a good boy as long as you run this plate ASAP. This car was leaving Park’s driveway as we pulled up.”
Trey looked at the number, nodded, and said, “Deal.”
When the two men joined the other three, the first to speak was Hafner, the ambitious Assistant Special Agent in Charge. It was the first time Jake had known the bureaucrat to attend an after-hours undercover meeting.
Hafner was practically giddy with excitement, a goofy grin running ear to ear. “How’d it go? You get us what we need?”
In compliance with Trey’s appeal, Jake was all business. “It went well. I’m confident Park bought my act. I had some issues with Tommy Hwan but in the end he’s on board.”
“What issues?” asked Rachel Chang.
“Tommy tried the ‘are you a cop’ crap and I needed to head him off. All is now good. He’s convinced I’m the real deal,” said Jake, noticing Hafner was fidgeting, wanting to move the inquiry along.
Interrupting, Hafner asked with the officiousness of a determined bureaucrat, “Did Park bring up the Supernote?”