True Faith and Allegiance

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 expected 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.

* * *