True Faith and Allegiance

by Tom Clancy

“What’s our boy doing?”

  “Dalca is snoring. He’s coming through loud and clear on the laser mic.”

  There was a delay, presumably while Chavez woke himself up. Then he said, “Okay, I’ll be right there.”

  “You want me to call the others?”

  “How does it feel? Tell me your intuition about the guys you saw. The way they moved.”

  Midas thought about it a couple seconds. “It feels squirrelly, Ding. These guys look like trouble.”

  “Shit. Okay, I’ll wake everybody up.”

  After a long afternoon and evening, and now a late night of static surveillance, suddenly Midas could feel the familiar surge of adrenaline coursing through his body. He had no idea what was going on across the street—but the arrival of this group of men felt significant. The team hadn’t been expecting anyone else to show interest in their Romanian target, but whoever these guys were, unless they were up to no good at one of the other apartments in the building, Midas was pretty sure things were about to get interesting for Dalca.

  He heard the sound through his headset now. The unmistakable heavy pounding on a door.

  Quickly he transmitted to anyone who was up on comms. “I’ve got someone banging on the target’s door.”

  Chavez responded instantly. “Roger that. Felix and I are on the way to you. Jack is heading downstairs to street level. I’ve got Gavin coming to relieve you ASAP.”

  There was another set of knocks at the door to Dalca’s apartment, and Midas focused on the main monitor in front of him, displaying the image from the low-light camera pointed at Dalca’s balcony.

  Just then Dalca appeared through the drawn curtains, opening the sliding glass door to the balcony the laser audio device was focused on. The opening door made a scratching noise through the headphone so loud Midas had to pull it off his ear and drop it on the desk.

  Across the quiet intersection, Dalca had a backpack on his back and he carried a big bag in his arms. Midas had to look closer to the monitor to be certain, but the Romanian also had a black bike helmet on his head.

  Midas said, “The target is on the balcony, looks like he’s gonna try to bolt.”

  As Midas watched, Dalca knelt down behind the cover of the balcony railing, then returned with the huge bag in his hands. He tossed the bag over the side of the balcony, and it spiraled down, spooling out a long emergency fire ladder behind it. The chain-link ladder spun down, almost all the way to the ground. Dalca attached the hooks at his end to the edge of the balcony.

  Chavez and Felix entered the storage room and knelt down next to Midas. Together they looked at the monitor. “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s got a chain ladder, one of those things you buy to get out of a building on fire. He’s climbing down. This guy was ready for a quick getaway.”

  Chavez spoke into his headset. “Jack, be aware, he’s going to be at the street when you get around the building to his side. Gavin, we need you in here to relieve Midas, now!”

  “Going down,” Jack called over the radio. “I’ll go foot mobile.”

  Midas added, “Target’s wearing a bicycle helmet.”

  “Then I guess I need to find a bike.”

  Dalca was halfway down the ladder, having trouble with it in places where it dangled in the open space between the balconies on each floor, when a man stepped out onto the balcony. Midas, Chavez, and Negrescu looked in silence at the figure, dressed head to toe in black. He looked over the ledge and down to the street, but Dalca was climbing down on his right, and he couldn’t see him.

  A second man stepped out onto the balcony now, and this man had a silenced pistol in his hand.

  Chavez spoke silently. “Everybody listen up. We want Dalca, but more importantly, our primary objective is keeping these guys away from him. I don’t know who they are, but I don’t want them getting the intel that he possesses.”

  Dalca dropped the last six feet to the sidewalk and collapsed in a heap with a grunt audible all over the intersection. The men on the balcony had started going back inside, but it was clear they heard the noise, even four stories above, because both spun back to the balcony. Looking down, the man on the right saw Dalca as he raced around the corner of the building.

  Without hesitation, the man raised his pistol and fired, missing just to the left. The suppressed handgun made plenty of noise in the dark and quiet environment of the street, more than enough to be heard without audio equipment in the Campus overwatch position forty yards away.

  Dalca disappeared into the dark alleyway, and the two men ran back inside the apartment.

  Chavez said, “Jack, these guys have no problems going lethal. Subject is heading north on foot through the alley west of his building.”

  Gavin came into the storage room now, filling the space. He was panting hard, and still held his shoes in his hands.

  “What was that noise?”

  Chavez said, “Gav, take Midas’s position. Record everything you can until there’s nothing going on, then break everything down as fast as possible. Exfiltration plan, Alpha.”

  “Alpha, got it. What about you guys?”

  “We’re going after the target, but even if we don’t get him, he won’t be coming back here.”

  “Okay,” Gavin said.

  Chavez slung his ready bag over his shoulder, and Midas lifted his. Felix had the keys to the van in his hand, and all three men ran for the hallway to take them to the stairwell down to street level.

  58

  Jack Ryan, Jr., raced across the lighted street to follow after Alexandru Dalca, which meant he worried that the guys chasing Dalca would come outside and see him, and that Dalca himself might be standing there in the dark alley with a weapon, just waiting for some idiot pursuing him to race into his path.

  Fortunately for Jack, neither happened, and by the time he made it through the side alley and into a little street running behind Dalca’s apartment building, there was enough light for him to see his target riding a bicycle fifty yards to the west. Jack saw a row of bikes parked in a rack right next to him, but as he ran down and checked them out it appeared they were all chained or bolted to the bike rack.

  Jack just continued sprinting after Dalca on foot, doing his best to stay out of the streetlights. The American had been awake all of three minutes and now he was running as fast as he could, already dreading the muscle cramps he’d start to feel when the adrenaline left him.

  He pressed his transmit key. “Ding, do I have permission to tackle and zip this guy if I get a chance?”

  Chavez said, “That’s affirmative. We don’t know who’s after him, but we need him more than they do.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear.”

  —

  Gavin Biery focused his cameras on the white delivery van next to Dalca’s apartment as four men piled into the back and the vehicle rolled onto the street, making a right, and then another right to go down the dark alley.

  Gavin pressed the PTT button on his headset. “Jack, be advised. The unknown subjects are heading in your direction in a white Renault van.”

  Jack came over the net instantly. It was clear from his transmission that he was running. “Roger that. I’ll find cover. I can still see Dalca but won’t for much longer.”

  Now Chavez said, “Felix says he knows a way we can get in front of Dalca and cut him off. You keep tailing him while we try that.”

  —

  Alexandru Dalca’s leg muscles screamed from the effort of riding a bicycle for the first time in more than a year. He’d pumped up the tires the day the Chinese came to ARTD, and this afternoon he’d purchased the emergency ladder and stocked his backpack with his passport, computer, cash, and the hard drive containing the American files, all to be prepared just in case the Chinese came for him before he had a chance to run to Macedonia.

  He hadn’t really expec
ted it, but he was glad he’d taken the steps.

  Yet he hadn’t done a thing to get his body ready to outrun a group of Chinese goons. The banging on his door could mean only one thing, as far as he was concerned. The Seychelles Group had somehow figured out that he had the files, and that he’d been working with ISIS.

  The gunshot as he raced around the side of his building had made him doubly sure he’d made the correct decision not to open the door.

  He just had to get clear of them now, and his plan to do that was to get himself into the darkness of the massive Herăstrău Park and hide out till morning.

  Just then, far behind him, the lights of a large vehicle turned onto Strada Alexandrina. It was way too late in this quiet neighborhood for this to mean anything but trouble. He wasn’t sure he could make his way into Herăstrău before they were on him, and there was really nowhere else to hide. He looked back in their direction as they drove under a street lamp, and he saw the vehicle was a white van of some sort.

  Dalca jacked his bike to the left onto a wide boulevard. Half a kilometer ahead of Dalca was the Arcul de Triumf, a 1930s-era monument in the center of a large traffic circle. Just to the right of this was the entrance to the park, but that seemed too far, considering how fast the white van was moving.

  Dalca knew what he had to do. As he pedaled as fast as his aching thighs would let him, he held on to the handlebars with one hand and pulled out his phone. With his thumb he dialed 112, the emergency number for fire and police.

  A woman answered in seconds, and Dalca all but screamed into the phone, “A group of Chinese men in a white van are shooting!”

  “What? Where?”

  “Around the Arcul de Triumf! They are crazy. I think they are chasing a man into the park. Hurry!” He hung up the phone, crammed it down the front of his shirt, and pedaled on like mad, wishing like hell he was in his Porsche right now.

  —

  The white van raced past Jack on the Strada Alexandrina, but the American remained undetected by leap-vaulting a five-foot-high metal fence and landing in the side yard of a modern two-story home there. He remained crouched on the balls of his feet until the red taillights of the van illuminated the end of the street, then he stood back up.

  He saw the dog food and water bowls right in front of him at the exact same time he heard the sound of a large, angry animal rushing at him in the dark. Jack launched back on top of the fence and rolled over, collapsing onto the sidewalk just as a big German shepherd charged forward, its teeth gnashing inches from Jack’s face, but on the other side of the fence.

  “Jesus!”

  Jack crawled to his feet and ran on, but as soon as he could catch his breath he spoke to his team “Dalca and the white van both made a left onto the road at the end of Alexandrina. I do not have visual.”

  Chavez came over the net seconds later. “We can’t pick you up now. We are to the west, trying to get ahead of Dalca. Felix thinks he might try to lose his tail in a park to the north. Suggest you head that way. We’ll get you when we can.”

  Jack kept running.

  —

  Dalca waited till the white van was just meters behind him, then he hopped the curb on his bike and began racing parallel to the chain-link fence lining the southern side of Herăstrău Park. The van tracked alongside him with the front passenger window rolled down, and even though the Romanian on the bike didn’t look to confirm it, he felt sure there was a gun pointed his way, so he purposefully laid down the bike, tumbling at high speed just as the crack of a suppressed pistol erupted to his left.

  Dalca fell end over end, but he wasn’t seriously hurt and he bought himself a few seconds when the van’s driver went another thirty yards before slamming on his brakes and screeching to a halt.

  Dalca got to his feet, ran to the metal fence lining the park, and climbed it as fast as he could, ignoring pain in his knee and back from the bike crash.

  —

  At two hundred fifty yards’ distance Jack could not see the man on the bike in the darkness by the road, but he could certainly see the van, the flash from the gunshot, and then the red brake lights. The sound of screeching tires came next, and Jack realized the action was happening before the traffic circle. This told him Dalca had probably bailed off the bike and climbed the park fence.

  Jack had the same fence on his right while he ran, so he immediately shot up to it, heaved himself over, and dropped down into thick woods of Herăstrău Park.

  It was nearly pitch-black here in the trees and he would have killed for some night-vision capability, but all he had was a flashlight in his go bag. He decided against using it, giving up situational awareness for personal security, and he just made his way as fast as he could through the woods, straining his eyes and his ears for some signal as to where Dalca was. He knew the Romanian had to be several hundred yards away still, but if he was coming this way, the two men would meet in under a minute.

  He thought it more likely Dalca would continue to the north, because that direction was deeper into the park and the opposite direction of the white van chasing him.

  Jack himself turned to the north, drawing his pistol for the first time.

  “Jack, what’s your location?” It was Chavez.

  Softly he answered, “I’m in this big wooded park. Dalca is in here somewhere, he lost the van on the road. Don’t know if hostiles bailed from the van and went in pursuit or not.”

  Chavez replied, “We have the van ahead of us. Be advised, it just turned into the park at speed.” Jack heard Chavez ask Felix for the name of the street the van was now traveling on. Felix answered and Chavez relayed the information. “Okay . . . the van is now on Michael Jackson.”

  “It’s where?”

  Chavez confirmed with Felix, then said, “It’s a big tree-lined street that runs through the park. Aleea Michael Jackson.”

  “Cool,” Jack said as he ran on, his pumping legs and arms exhausting more with each yard. He all but stumbled into a clearing, and the light was better here. He looked off to his left and saw someone running across, well ahead of his position.

  “I’ve got him. He’s seventy-five yards to my west and back in the trees on the north side of a clearing. Still heading north, but he looks pretty worn-out. I’m going to keep parallel for now and then try to flank him.”

  When Chavez came back over the net, he said, “Shit. We’ve got police sirens and flashing lights up ahead. Looks like one patrol car. They will make the turn into the park before we get there, so we’ll have to hang back.”

  Ryan slowed a little on the far side of the clearing, and he doubled his efforts to stay concealed in the trees and darkness as he advanced, holding his pistol down low by his side as he ran on.

  —

  Alexandru Dalca heard the siren as he stumbled exhausted through the trees. His legs had all but seized from the lactic acid buildup, but he pushed on, often pulling himself with branches or shoving off tree trunks, flailing his arms to propel himself to the north, knowing that the main road through this part of the park was just up ahead.

  He had no idea if men had climbed out of the van and were in pursuit of him now, so he couldn’t just wait here in the dark and hope for the best.

  The headlights of a vehicle began moving through the trees around him, shifting shadows like ghosts chasing from all sides. He broke out into the clearing by Aleea Michael Jackson, and into the glare of the headlights. He knew, without any idea how he knew, that this was the white van. Instantly he saw the police car whip into the tree-lined street a hundred yards behind the van.

  Thank God, he said to himself, and with a fresh jolt of adrenaline Alexandru Dalca darted across the road right in front of the van and disappeared into the trees on the other side.

  The van raced up to where Dalca had passed and slammed on its brakes, but as the side door opened and men ran around the rear of the
vehicle to pursue their target, the red-on-white police car shined a spotlight on the men and skidded to a stop, just thirty meters behind them.

  The three men stopped and raised their empty hands.

  —

  Felix Negrescu pulled to the side of the road with his headlights off. Just to his right was the entrance to Aleea Michael Jackson. In the front passenger seat Chavez held up a pair of binoculars. Although it was dark, the lights from the police car on the van revealed three men standing there, held at gunpoint by two local police officers, each of whom stood behind his open door.

  A second police car approached from the northeast end of Aleea Michael Jackson, but Chavez could tell this only from the flashing lights in the woods on the far side of the two vehicles.

  Midas was in the backseat. “You see our target?”

  “Negative,” Chavez said. “Ryan, what’s your poz?”

  Ryan’s whispered voice came over the men’s earpieces. “I’m in cover in the trees. One hundred feet to the right of the white van on the south side. A squad car is pulling to a stop right in front of me, and another is holding subjects at gunpoint at the back of the van. I do not see Dalca, but if he got to the other side of the road, I can’t get to him now without exposing myself to the local cops.”

  Chavez replied, “Roger that, hold position.”

  Midas had scooted over and put his own binoculars to work sizing up the situation. “If these guys from the van want to shoot it out with the cops, do we get involved?”

  Chavez said, “There are five of them, minimum. There are three of us with guns, and these are untested and unfamiliar pistols.”

  Midas didn’t take his eyes off the road. The men behind the van were clearly not doing what the cops were telling them to do. They just stood there, as if they were waiting for an opportunity to act.

  Midas said, “You know, in the Unit we used to say, ‘You piss with the dick you got.’ These blasters will get the job done.”

  Chavez focused his binos to the south side of the road, at the tree line, and he saw movement. At the same time he heard one of the police officers at the rear of the van shouting orders to the men standing there.