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.