True Faith and Allegiance

This snapped the man’s head back, and he reeled on his heels, but still he did not drop.

Jack feinted another attempt to tackle, and the Asian man went for it, spinning to his left. Jack went to where he thought the Asian man’s movement would take him, and he lowered his right shoulder and put his entire body behind it, slamming hard into the man’s chest.

Both Jack and his opponent landed in the middle of Aleea Michael Jackson, fists and knees and elbows thrashing in both directions. Behind the ground fight, the sound of snapping gunfire erupted again.

Jack felt the Asian man trying to reach for something at his waist, so Jack pinned his arms as best he could, and head-butted him mercilessly twice, then three times, before the man dropped back dazed.

Quickly Jack felt around the man’s body and found a stiletto clipped into his front right pants pocket.

Jack pulled it away, yanking it from its sheath in the process, and then he rolled off the man and began crawling for his pistol. He got to it just as the man behind him reached down to his ankle and pulled a tiny silver backup gun, so Jack opened fire at close range, stitching him from his pelvis to his face with bullet holes, and ending the fight.

* * *

Midas shot the third shooter behind the van, and Chavez pumped four rounds into the last man in the trees, sending him crawling off on his hands and knees, presumably to die, because he’d left his pistol where it fell. Chavez told Midas to look after Felix, and then he climbed out of the minivan and began moving forward carefully but quickly.

He’d called Jack several times over the net but had not received any response. He hated to expose his location, but he also didn’t want to walk in front of Jack’s gun. “Ding is comin’ to you!” he shouted, then passed the white van on his left.

“It’s clear!” came a response from farther back, relieving Chavez instantly. “All hostiles down!”

Chavez found Jack with a flashlight in his mouth, training it on a wounded Romanian police officer, a young man who couldn’t have been older than twenty-three. Jack had found him lying in the grass next to his vehicle. He’d been shot through the forearm and the shoulder, but he would survive.

All in all there were five dead hostiles, and one more who Ding was certain he’d shot multiple times in the torso and was probably bleeding out in the woods. There were also three dead cops. Felix had been grazed in the forehead and had some deep cuts on his cheek from broken windshield glass striking him at high speed, but he was still awake and aware, and apologizing for wrecking the minivan.

Sirens were closing in from both sides of the park by the time everyone started back to the minivan, but Chavez realized there was no way to get the vehicle back up on the road from where it had crashed. They made the decision to pile into the white Renault, although there were several bullet holes in the windows and doors. Chavez climbed behind the wheel, and the other two Campus men helped Felix inside.

As Chavez raced out of the engagement zone with his headlights extinguished, he found a narrow unpaved lane through the trees to avoid the oncoming police vehicles.

* * *

It was silent in the vehicle until they got out of the park, turned on the headlights, and began driving normally, despite the holes in the sides.

Chavez said, “That was nuts, but the only thing I know for sure is that Dalca is gone.”

Jack said, “We can go north and look for him. He still might be on foot.”

Chavez said, “Negative. We have to pick up Gavin and get out of Dalca’s neighborhood. This whole part of the city is going to be crawling with cops in no time.”

As he drove he called Clark. It was afternoon on the East Coast, and the director of operations of The Campus answered immediately. Chavez spent five minutes filling him in on every detail, and Clark said he’d try to get Mary Pat on the phone and reach out to the Romanian intelligence services. They had a great relationship with the Ryan administration, and although Mary Pat would have some difficulty explaining the fact that several undeclared agents of her government had been at the center of a running gun battle in Bucharest, she also had some cards in her favor for the conversation to come. A Romanian ex-con had been at the center of the ISIS attacks in America, under the nose of the Romanian government, and the Romanian government would have every reason on earth to help America and to keep this out of the news.