True Faith and Allegiance

18

Dominic Caruso had jogged a mile and a half in the past twenty minutes, which was nothing to brag about, but he wanted to be fresh if things got crazy at nine a.m. He was taking lots of breaks along the way to walk, tie his shoes, stretch, and otherwise try to fit into his surroundings here at Merdeka Square. Plus he was on his second paper surgical mask over his face, as the first one had torn due to his sweat and heavy breathing.

He stretched against the western steps of the tower, and he spoke softly after checking his watch. “It’s straight-up nine, guys. I’ve got nothing on my side.”

Jack was to the northwest, still riding around on his scooter through the increasing number of other two-wheeled vehicles and pedestrian traffic. “I’ve got eyes on some of the DPRK guys. The camera crew is remaining in the trees for now, so I don’t think the Koreans have ID’d their target, either.”

Chavez was on the far northwestern side of the square on the opposite side from where today’s target worked at the U.S. embassy.

He saw a tall man walking alone on the sidewalk toward the National Monument, fifty yards ahead of him. He wore a black trench coat and had a black backpack slung over his shoulder.

“I’ve got a possible. Northwest side of the square. Still two hundred yards from the monument, moving south down the eastern side of the road.”

Dom had moved around to the south side of the monument, so he had no view, but Jack turned his scooter around and approached from the northeast with his binos out and up against his eyes.

He saw the tallish man walking with his hands shoved into his pockets, his body slumped forward and his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. As he watched, the man scanned all around, even turning to walk backward for a second.

“Yeah…” Jack said. “That could be him.”

Chavez quipped, “And I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he’s a first-timer at this spy shit.”

“First time for everything,” Dom replied.

Chavez stepped out of the trees and began following behind the man, jogging along slowly enough to where he wouldn’t overtake him at this speed before he arrived at the monument.

He said, “Okay, our target is ID’d, let’s get another check of all the oppo we can see.”

Among the three of them, Jack, Dom, and Chavez counted ten men in the square who might have been DPRK operatives. “Christ,” Chavez said when the number was confirmed by the others, and he did some quick thinking. If Clark were around he’d defer to him, but Chavez was the senior operative now, and it was his call. He looked over the North Koreans in sight, and he took them for serious men. The fact there were at least ten involved with this also told him this pass was damn important to them. Chavez knew if he just grabbed the American diplomat and started ushering him back to the car, these ten men would intercede, probably with weapons.

Chavez wanted the traitor, he wanted the intelligence the man brought with him, and he wanted to get himself and his men out of this alive.

The scope of this operation had just increased before his eyes.

He said, “Jack, here’s how we’re playing it. Haul ass to the car. It’s behind me. Pass close to me and I’ll toss you the keys as you drive by. Bring the car here to get us all off the X.”

Ryan went full throttle on the scooter, began racing toward Ding, which meant he’d race right by the tower on his left with the North Koreans standing around and the American diplomat walking south toward them on his right.

But while complying with Ding’s orders, he said, “You do know there are no cars allowed here on the square. Local po-po is going to get interested if I get in the car and then plow over the wooden barricade to come back in here.”

Ding said, “I know. Be ready to do some Fast and Furious shit, because this isn’t going to be pretty.”

Caruso muttered, “That’s not gonna stand out.”

Chavez replied, “Five minutes from now, the first thing on everyone’s mind around here is not going to be the car driving in the pedestrian-only zone, I can promise you that.”

Jack passed the target, who by now had his eyes locked on the northwest corner of the steps to the monument. He was standing more erect, looking directly at his destination, still 150 yards away.

Five seconds later, Jack rolled past Chavez, who jogged along at a relaxed clip in his black warm-up pants and black zip-up hoodie. Jack reached a hand out and Chavez tossed a set of car keys through the air. Jack caught them deftly and headed for the exit at the northwest.

Chavez was closing on the subject slowly. He was just a hundred feet behind him now, and he knew he still had time to draw his gun and grab the man, then pull him back away from the monument where the North Koreans were waiting for him. He decided to do just that, but before he did so, he called for some backup.

“Dom, I’m going to take him in one minute, give Ryan a little time to grab the car. We’ll be just across the wide street north of the monument, and in the open. The DPRK guys are going to see us, plain as day, and they aren’t going to like it.”

Dom said, “Roger that. I’m behind the action on the south side, and I’ve got the bad guys in sight. Nobody’s got eyes on me, so I can get the drop on them if they pull weapons.” He added, “There are a whole bunch of them so I’d rather not.”

“Don’t draw, just keep reporting what they’re doing.”

“Understood.”

Ding said, “When I grab the target I’m running for these trees to the north. That should give me some cover. I’ll link up with Ryan when he gets the wheels. This might turn into a foot chase.”

Dom groaned. “Why does everybody have to run all over the place this morning?”

Jack Ryan, Jr., raced his scooter past the red plastic and wooden partitions keeping cars off the street that went into the square, heading for the parking lot where Chavez had left his rental. He heard Chavez’s transmissions to Dom, and knew the grab was going to take place in just a minute, but while he was listening to this he noticed a black Mitsubishi Pajero minivan idling in a no parking zone right next to the entrance to the square. The vehicle was empty aside from the driver, an Asian man wearing sunglasses.

There were other vehicles around, but not in this area. To Ryan this guy looked like he could have been North Korean, perhaps the driver that just dropped the six guys off at this entrance, and now he was just waiting to pick them up after the exchange.

Jack said, “Ding, what if I was able to get us some wheels that the local police couldn’t trace back to a rental company we used?”

“We rent cars through shell companies. You know that.” Then Ding said, “Goin’ radio silent, grabbing this asshole in thirty seconds.”

Ryan said, “What if I was able to take a set of wheels away from the North Koreans?”

When Ding said radio silent, he meant it, because he didn’t respond to Ryan. He was closing in on the American on the sidewalk, and couldn’t let himself be heard chatting while trying to pass himself off as a passing jogger. But Dom Caruso came over Jack’s earpiece. “You have to make that call, cuz. You don’t want to be wrong, and you don’t want to get into a fight on your own.”

But Jack had already made the call. The man behind the wheel of the minivan put a walkie-talkie to his lips, and Jack was even more certain he was a DPRK agent.

He drove the scooter in a tight U-turn through the morning traffic, parked behind the vehicle, and climbed off his bike.

On his left scooters rolled by, and a green truck that said POLISI on the side, which obviously meant “police,” drove on, but continued past the entrance to the park.

Jack realized that, whatever he did, he wasn’t going to be invisible while doing it, so he’d have to do it quick.

Domingo Chavez didn’t go for his gun. This man ahead of him had his hands out of his raincoat now and they swung with his walk, and Ding knew he would be able to stop the man from reaching for something, in the unlikely event the man even had a weapon. Instead, he picked up the pace of his jog and came up alongside him. They were two hundred feet from the National Monument and the DPRK men standing among the tourists there, split up in groups of two.

Ding put a tight grip around the walking man’s shoulders, and spoke to him in a voice that meant business.

The man lurched with surprise.

“You say one word and I kill you.”

Ding spun the man around and began guiding him quickly off the sidewalk and toward the trees that ringed the square.

The man did not speak at first, he seemed utterly panicked, and Ding spoke for benefit of his earpiece now. “What are they doing?”

Caruso responded. “Shit, Ding. They are coming your way. Walking. Wait… Nope, it’s official… they’re running.”

“How many?”

“All of them. Eight guys.”

“Shit!” Ding said, and grabbed the taller man around his waist and took off for the thick grove of trees.

Dom Caruso sprinted across the road that ringed the National Monument, chasing fifty yards behind the eight North Koreans just now disappearing into the trees. Chavez had a thirty-second head start on them, but Dom knew he had to get closer in case things went loud.

He decided he’d run straight up the road to the northwest that ran to the left of the trees. That way he could move faster, to get ahead of the North Koreans, and be in a better position to help Chavez out when he came out of the trees and into the vehicle Jack was supposedly in the process of securing right now.

Dom sprinted as fast as he could go, arms and legs pumping with the effort. He saw a police car parked across the road and facing away, but he wasn’t that worried about stationary Indonesian cops at the moment, so he just ran on.

Chavez had pulled the man in the trench coat a good hundred yards through the trees now, but it had been work to do it. The American traitor obviously knew he was busted, and he tried to pull away more than once. Chavez shouted at him, knowing the enemy was close behind. “Come on, man. Run!”

The man in the raincoat tried to pull away now. “No!”

Chavez brandished the Smith & Wesson in his right hand while holding on to the man with the left. Without breaking stride he said, “Not asking you.”

The man looked terrified, but again he said, “No! I can’t! I have to—”

“You can and you will!” Chavez jammed the gun tight in the man’s side and ran even faster. “How long on the wheels?” he asked Jack over the net.

“What?” the American traitor asked.

“Not talking to you, asshole. Just keep running!”

Now the man in the trench coat heard the shouts in the trees behind, as the North Koreans got closer.

To Chavez’s astonishment, the man shouted out to them, “I’m here! Help me!”

Chavez punched the man in the nose as he ran with him, silencing the shouts. “You do that again and I’ll shoot you in the knee and carry you.”

Jack walked silently and quickly up the driver’s side of the Mitsubishi Pajero, knowing he would be visible in the rearview mirror and visible to passing traffic on the street. He would have much rather come up the far side, but the driver’s window was partially down, and Jack needed access to the driver to pull this off.

Jack surprised the man, who had just put his walkie-talkie down. “Excuse me? Do you know the way to San José?”

The driver reached to the passenger seat quickly. Jack saw a black semiautomatic pistol lying there, and now he was certain he had correctly identified a getaway vehicle for the North Korean agents.

Jack’s own gun pressed against the left temple of the driver. “Don’t know if you speak English, but I bet you speak terminal ballistics. Pick up the gun and I paint the dashboard with your brains.”

The man brought his hand back to his lap.

Jack got him out of the minivan, looked left and right quickly to make sure no police had seen him in the commission of his carjacking, and he got in.

Leaving the North Korean agent standing there by the road, Jack fired the vehicle and launched forward. He turned hard to the right and plowed through the plastic and wooden barricades.

“Be advised, the black minivan entering the square and heading your way is me! Check your fire!”

Ding Chavez could hear the North Koreans closing in on him, not more than twenty-five yards back now. The trees were thick but not impenetrable, and it was obvious the opposition was gaining on him as he tried to force the noncompliant man forward.

After Jack’s transmission, Ding told him he’d make his way left toward the road and they’d link up somewhere around halfway between the National Monument and the northwest exit of Merdeka Square. He then whirled his prisoner hard to the left and pushed him on, in the direction of the road.

The traitor said, “You have to listen to me! I can’t let—”

A gunshot from deep in the trees behind them cracked; it tore through branches five feet over their heads.

“Shit!” Ding shouted.

He heard Dom Caruso’s labored voice in his earpiece. “Yo! Somebody’s shooting!”

“No shit,” Ding replied. “One of the guys on our six missed high.”

Another shot cracked off. Ding heard this round zip by even closer. His prisoner’s eyes were showing the effects of shock.

Jack Ryan spoke over the net now. “I’m here, I’m looking for you guys.”

Ding said, “Still in the trees. Not sure how much longer till we—”

Just then, Ding and his prisoner broke out of the trees, even with the black minivan, parked on the street just one hundred feet away.

“Got you!” Jack shouted. He slammed on his brakes, put the vehicle in park, and climbed out to open the side door.

A pair of gunshots zinged close to Chavez and his prisoner. A third slammed into the left calf of the man in the black raincoat, and he tumbled into the grass.

Chavez spun around, dropped to his knees, and raised his weapon. While doing this he said, “Dom! Suppress that fire!”

Dom Caruso was running along the sidewalk fifty yards southeast of the minivan, and he could see Chavez raising his gun back in the direction of the trees and the wounded prisoner rolling in the grass.

He dropped to his knees himself, raised his Smith & Wesson, and took aim at the edge of the tree line. It would be a long shot to hit someone with his compact pistol, especially considering he had been at a full sprint for over a minute and his heart was racing, causing his front sight to bob and weave with his heartbeat. But his job was to suppress the enemy, to give them something else to worry about.

He wasn’t here to win a sniper competition.

As soon as he saw movement — a man in a T-shirt and shorts with a gun in his hand — he fired. Off to his left Ding Chavez did the same.

Jack scooped up the wounded prisoner in a fireman’s carry, while Chavez fired at the men in the trees. Jack lumbered with the traitor back to the minivan as fast as he could, trying his best to ignore the gunfire going on behind him. He literally threw the man off his shoulders and through the open rear door of the vehicle, then he drew his own pistol and aimed at the trees.

“Ding, I’m covering! Move!”

Jack fired three rounds at a flash of gunfire deep in the trees. As he did this he realized the man he’d scooped up didn’t have his backpack on him any longer. “Ding, the pack!”

In front of him on his right Ding raced toward the minivan, not even slowing down while he swept his arm down and scooped up the backpack lying on the grass. He leapt in the back with the wounded man, and Jack emptied his magazine at dark targets in the trees. He wasn’t sure if he’d hit anyone, but now it was his job to drive.

As he got behind the wheel he could see Dom Caruso on the sidewalk, fifty yards straight in front of him, changing out his magazine and firing again on the North Koreans. Jack said, “I’m on you in ten seconds!” And then he floored the Mitsubishi.

He heard bullets tear through the metal of the vehicle as he raced on, and the shattering of glass in the back.

“You okay back there?” he asked, careful not to use any names this close to their prisoner.

Chavez replied, “You just get us out of this and we’re fine. He’s got a GSW to his leg, but he’ll make it.”

Jack saw Dom Caruso stand from his crouch and begin running toward the minivan that was quickly approaching him. But Jack saw something Caruso did not. Behind him on his left, the POLISI car was racing across the street, directly toward Caruso from his left side. They were going to try to get in front of this shooter and cut him off.

Jack shouted, “Hang on back there!” He turned his wheel to the right, raced past a confused Caruso, and slammed the front of his Mitsubishi into the front-left quarter-panel of the police car, spinning it forty-five degrees and smashing the front left tire.

Jack’s airbag deployed, smacking him in the face. Cops inside the vehicle would probably be dazed from the impact, and they’d certainly be pissed, but this was a hell of a lot better than the Campus team getting arrested and held in Indonesia on weapons and kidnapping charges.

Dom turned around and ran back to the Mitsubishi and dove into the open back door, on top of Ding and the prisoner, who by now was crushed facedown on the floorboard. Dom closed the door behind him, Jack waved away the chalky dust from the deployment of his airbag, and he pushed his minivan forward through the damaged police car, while the snaps of handgun rounds continued striking the vehicle.

“Heads down!” Jack yelled.

As he drove past the cop car he looked down at the stunned and dazed police, through their cracked windshield.

“Sorry, guys,” he said, but they couldn’t hear him.

He floored it now, charging east, and then he made a hard left and raced northeast to the exit of the square.

In the backseat the prisoner was pulled into a sitting position. He moaned in pain for a moment, then he shouted, “Listen to me! You have to—”

Chavez put the barrel of his pistol in the man’s open mouth. “Trust me, you’ll have plenty of people who want to hear you talk. I’m just not one of them.” Chavez now turned to Dom. “This guy is a screamer. He tried to lead the DPRK goons to us in the trees.”

Dom Caruso said, “I’m gettin’ the tape!”

“Good deal,” replied Chavez.

Seconds later Dom used electrical tape from his personal medical kit to tape the man’s mouth shut. Ding then rolled the man on his stomach and looked over his calf wound more closely, used gauze and tape from his own kit to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t bad at all, but it would be messy if he didn’t stanch the flow.

From the front Jack said, “Something just occurred to me. Either I’m the luckiest dude in the world for finding this van at the particular corner of the park I exited, or they have other vehicles around the square. That means they have other guys mobile who can chase us.”

Chavez said, “And they know what kind of vehicle we’re in, seeing how it’s theirs and all.”

“Yeah,” Jack conceded. “Good point. I’m going to go back to the parking lot to the west. We’ll transfer into our rental to take back to the airport.”

“Do it, but watch out for trouble.”

“Sure,” Jack quipped. “We sure wouldn’t want anything bad to happen.”