Roseanne's Summer Vacation- Chapter 41
Natasha came piercing through the air like Bruce Lee. Her kick certainly rendered Tae-jun short of a few teeth.
The Korean spy, however, quickly recovered from the unexpected K.O. Natasha attempted another kick, hoping to break the boy’s leg, but he caught her foot in mid-air and threw the girl right into a nearby dumpster.
“Hold it right there, you son of a bitch!” Roseanne ran through the entire pier. She took out the Beretta and fired at Tae-jun right away.
The bullets flew past his temple. This effectively scared him away. Roseanne kept pulling the trigger until the boy disappeared behind a dilapidated building near Washington Street.
“Everybody okay?” Roseanne asked.
“Ugh—” Natasha grunted while emerging from the dumpster. “This is going to leave a mark.”
Mr Orville ran up to rejoin the group. Nika and Milena helped Thally stand up. The gumball lights on her shoulders were still working.
“I think we’re okay,” Natasha said through clenched teeth. “Though my left knee seems busted.”
“Oh gosh! I can’t believe it!” Thally exclaimed. “We got back Mr Orville and we’re all in one piece! Mission accomplished!”
“No, it’s not,” Roseanne protested. “This scumbag not only had the audacity to kidnap Mr Orville, but he also stole our money for the trip. I’m getting it back.”
“Girl, are you out of your mind?” Nika came up to her.
“Roseanne. That’s enough. I’m telling you to stop!” Mr Orville ordered firmly. “Let the police handle the rest.”
“If the police had handled the whole thing, you would have been dead!” She looked at him, her eyes filled with tears. “I know what I’m doing.”
Roseanne ran as fast as she could. Mr Orville tried to stop her, but he tripped over the bloodied trainer. The teacher was out of strength. The other girls aided him when Roseanne began her chase in the distance.
***
Even though Tae-jun had a head start and was out of sight, this wasn’t a problem for Roseanne. She had actually bought not one, but two AirTags. One was installed on a hard drive in the backpack, the other on the laptop Tae-jun was now running away with. That’s why she needed Thally’s iPhone—to track these devices.
A quick check near Sea Towers revealed that Tae-jun was currently on Świętojańska Street, heading towards Kaszubski Square. It was a significant distance he made in a short amount of time. Maybe he stole a vehicle? Roseanne suspected. She had to catch up fast.
The girl noticed a Taxi stand near the high-rise. There was only one Dodge Charger over there, with the driver sleeping peacefully on the passenger’s seat. Roseanne snuck swiftly inside the car and turned the ignition key.
“Whoa! What the hell is going on?” The driver woke up from his nap, surprised that there was a military student behind the wheel.
“It’s okay,” she said, getting hold of the transmission stick. “I’m learning to get my driver’s licence.”
“Wha—” The driver wanted to ask more, but it was too late. Dodge Charger shot into the dark.
***
As soon as the adrenaline level lowered, Tae-jun felt the crippling pain that kept increasing in his thigh and on his forehead. He wobbled back and forth on the street.
That wicked witch and her merry bunch of hoodlums! When I get back to the fatherland, I will nuke her home! He kept screaming in his mind.
Hatred for Roseanne did not give him additional strength, however. Tae-jun suffered from pain and blood loss. He couldn’t run anymore. So he did the only reasonable thing his brain could think of at that moment. That is to say, he punched an innocent teenager off a scooter. The newly acquired vehicle allowed him to travel much faster to the main hospital, where Murphy awaited him.
Just a few more minutes and I’ll be flying home. Tae-jun kept thinking. His left hand controlled the scooter, and his right hand held on tightly to the laptop.
I’m not giving up.
***
Murphy’s prediction was correct. Nobody bothered about a helicopter on the landing bay. The idiot doctor who dared to confront him was still unconscious after the rendezvous with the stun baton.
The Huey had its cabin door wide open. The pilot was sitting in the backseat, enjoying a sandwich. The alarm on his wristwatch signalled it was 9:30 p.m. already.
“Time to work,” Murphy declared. He switched to the pilot seat, put on his basketball cap, and fired up the engine. The rotor blade and the tail rotor began to spin slowly. The bright anti-collision lights were blinking continuously every other second. “A passenger is one more thing I need.”
The doors to the staircase were kicked wide open. Tae-jun swayed out of the elevator. The spy was panting. His right leg, with a bleeding thigh, was numb. Still, he climbed up the stairs and approached the helicopter.
“Sweet Mary and Jesus! What the hell happened to you?” Murphy was shocked to see the wounded boy.
“Just… get me out of here,” Tae-jun grunted. He threw the laptop into the backseat and sat next to it.
“Dude. I don’t mean to get into any uncomfortable details, but did you attract the local heat?”
“The fuck do you care. Take off!”
Murphy put down his headphones and stepped off the chopper. “I care, you idiot! Because I don’t want to become a wanted man with an extradition order on my head.”
“Nobody will extradite you from Pyongyang.”
“I don’t want to spend my life in Pyongyang, you cross-eyed moron! I need to get back to America. I’ve had enough of this country-ass Robert Ludlum’s burn-after-reading bullshit. The farm is my home. The ocean is my refuge. You, your fat leader, and Russia can kiss my ass—”
Murphy went on a never-ending rant. Tae-jun was injured, but he realised he would have to pilot the Huey on his own. He knew the basics. Just as when he was thinking how to get rid of Murphy without engaging in hand-to-hand combat, his eyes had noticed a stun baton stuck between the seats. Murphy must have left it there when he took a sandwich break.
“—I love America, even if it’s like a live-action GTA. The rest of this miserable world is a hellhole, you follow?”
Tae-jun stepped off the helicopter and approached Murphy. The pilot was shocked with the maximum setting of the device. He instantly collapsed on the asphalt.
“Americans talk too much,” Tae-jun commented, assuming the pilot seat in the cockpit.
***
“Lady! What are you doing?! No!” The taxi driver was shivering from fear.
The iPhone showed that Tae-jun was currently in the main hospital. Roseanne rushed through Świętojańska Street to get there. She tried to be careful on the road, but this was a chase, and time pressure only amplified her stress. As a result, she put the pedal to the metal, which didn’t end well for a motorbike parked just by the side. When the Dodge bumper kissed it, the two-wheeler turned into a ground-air missile that totalled a bunch of bicycles attached to a rack.
“Sorry!” Roseanne shouted to cyclists in despair as she sped by.
“Don’t destroy my car! Don’t destroy my car!” the taxi driver pleaded.
“How do you turn off the ABS in this thing?” Roseanne looked around for the fuse box. “Never mind.”
Near the hospital, the girl pulled the handbrake and violently turned the wheel. The car lost traction for a moment and made a sliding U-turn, stopping at the hospital entrance.
Roseanne threw the petrified driver 10 Po credits. “Thanks, and keep the change.”
***
Inside the hospital, she faced a real pandemonium. The patients were yelling and going in all directions. Roseanne got hold of a staff member to ask about Tae-jun. “Have you seen by any chance an injured Korean guy? My height, similar age.”
The nurse turned to her and replied, “He scared the living hell out of everybody. He drove on a scooter through A&E and into the express elevator down the hall. We’ve called security.”
“Where does this express elevator go?”
“To the landing bay, of course. Why do you ask these questions?” The nurse looked curiously at Roseanne’s uniform, but there was no time for explanations.
The girl ran into the elevator.
***
Before takeoff, Tae-jun wrapped a belt around his wound and tightened it to limit the bleeding. God only knows how long he will have to fly to reach Kaliningrad. From there, he would be transferred to Moscow and from Moscow to Pyongyang.
He increased the thrust in the engine. The Huey helicopter started to gently ascend.
Roseanne slammed the exit doors and reached the steel staircase. She could hear the engine roar and the rotor blades slashing the air. The chopper was two metres above the ground. Not even thinking about what she was doing, the girl ran up and jumped, throwing her hands high up.
She got hold of a landing skid. While clutching to it, the Huey gained altitude and turned, leaving the landing bay for good. There was no turning back now. The ground was a few dozen metres below Roseanne.
Oh god! What have I got myself into? Roseanne’s mind went berserk. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. She kept repeating in her thoughts.
But she did look down, and the view wasn’t a pleasant one. While having her arms and legs wrapped around the landing skid, she saw the night skyline of Gdynia with tiny cars going by and people roaming the streets like NPCs. The height took her breath away. She was higher than any apartment complex in the vicinity.
“I want to go home! To my mom, dad, sister, and dog,” she cried in terror, but the engine noise was too loud for Tae-jun to hear anything.
Roseanne closed her eyes to avoid the paralysing view, but she quickly realised that there wasn’t any solution. She had to act to get out of this mess. In consequence, the girl looked up rather than down. She noticed the open cabin door just above her head. Maybe she could climb in there.
She reached for the edge of the fuselage, but the helicopter wobbled, nearly throwing her off balance. Both hands resumed the clutching ritual, so she wouldn’t fall off the skid.
Calm down, Juzynski. Get a grip. She thought. You can do this. Just watch out for the motion of the chopper.
Roseanne tried again. This time, she waited a while to make sure the helicopter was steady. She raised one hand and caught the edge, then another and she gently pulled herself up.
Her upper half was already on the cabin floor. The legs were still standing on the skid. Her eyes glanced diagonally and noticed Tae-jun in headphones, holding a control stick. She had to be careful.
Roseanne slowly crawled inside. The engine noise was deafening as both sides of the cabin were wide open. The laptop was lying on the backseat just millimetres away from her temple, but she didn’t care about the device. Tae-jun was the focus of her attention.
With caution, she pulled out the Beretta and reloaded it. The viewfinder was directed at Tae-jun’s head.
Roseanne considered what she should do. Calling out the villain was pointless because he wouldn’t hear her. Shooting him in the back wouldn’t do any good because the helicopter would crash. No, she had to use the element of surprise and force him to land.
As a result, she misdirected the gun slightly and fired away.
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