“How bad?” Dom asked. It was in the small of his back on his left side, but too far behind for Dom to be able to see the wound.
Chavez looked at it quickly. “You’re fine. Wrap it with a tablecloth and put your coat back on. I’m going to go check on the cops.”
Ding Chavez found three police officers and one dog still alive in the first-class carriage, though one of the men had been shot twice in the legs. Chavez stabilized him while he talked to the other police. He denied knowing anything about any other shooters on the train other than the cops, and asked the three police what happened to the woman they were trying to detain.
“She got away,” one said, his voice cracking with emotion as he looked at his dead comrades. Chavez thought the man might go into shock within minutes.
More civilians appeared in first class now, as well as the train conductor and a cashier from the dining car. Ding used the influx of new faces to slip back to the dining car, where he found Caruso going through the pockets of the unconscious men. He looked up at Chavez and shook his head. “More ammo. Their bags have clothes, a few toiletries, small wads of cash.”
“Where are their passports?”
“Remember, the guy dressed up as a coach had them. I guess he’s in the forest somewhere.”
Chavez sighed. “It’s time for us to do the same. How do you feel?”
“My back stings like I just got a tattoo. My pride is hurt that I took a bullet. Do the cops suspect us of anything?”
“I doubt it, but it will just take one witness to put us with a gun in our hands to get us stuck here at the German border till things get straightened out. I think we need to get off this train.”
Dom nodded. “I’ll get our bags.”
Chavez said, “These guys were good. Very good.”
Caruso nodded. “Could be a Spetsnaz unit of some sort. If that’s the case, if Russian special operations boys are running around in the West carrying guns and shooting cops, you can bet none of those bodies will have any IDs.”
Chavez said, “We get out of here and call it in. That’s all we can do.”
“Roger that.”
8
Jack Ryan, Jr., was sure he’d lost the man who had been following him, so he climbed out of the taxi two blocks from his apartment on Via Frattina, in the center of Rome. Glancing at his watch, he realized he’d been in the cab for a quarter-hour. He could have walked home from the Piazza del Popolo faster than the vehicle had gotten him here, since the tiny one- and two-lane streets in this part of town made footpower and scooters more efficient than four-wheeled transport. Still, he was sure he’d lost the man in the pandemonium of Roman traffic, especially with all the twists and turns the taxi driver took to get around the worst part of the chaos.
He approached his apartment on foot, a little warily, because he had not been able to rule out the fact that one follower he’d identified could have confederates. But he checked the four or five places he figured someone might position himself if he wanted to watch the front door of his place, and he saw no one who did not belong.
He opened the door to the building and entered a long echoing hallway of black-and-white-checkered tile. His place was four stories above, on the third floor, and the slow, rickety, coffinlike elevator gave him the creeps, so he headed for the enclosed stairwell on his right.
Thirty seconds after Jack entered the stairwell and started heading up, a brown-haired man with a ponytail, wearing a brown leather jacket and carrying a backpack on his right shoulder, entered the front door of the apartment building, carefully shutting the door behind him so it would not echo in the large entry hall. He then stepped to the stairwell, cautious to ascend softly so the noise of his footfalls would not carry upstairs.
He climbed the stairs almost silently, taking his time doing so, and stopped at the first floor. Here he slowly leaned his head out into the hall. He looked left, then right. Seconds later he was back on the stairs and ascending again, making the turn on the landing between the floors. At the second floor he poked his head out into the hall and looked left, then right.
Once again he returned to the stairwell, climbed up to the third floor, and moved to the doorway to the hall. He slowly craned his head out and looked to the left.
The tall bearded man stood there facing him, just two feet away.
Jack reached out and grabbed the man by his jacket, spun him around 180 degrees in the hall, and slammed him hard against the wall. The man with the ponytail was stunned by the blow, but he was still aware enough to reach down to the backpack hanging off his shoulder. His right hand shot inside through a partially opened zipper, and he clutched something there.
Ryan fired a right jab straight out, connecting with the man’s nose, snapping his head back.
“Che cazzo…?” the man shouted. What the fuck…?
Ryan grabbed the forearm connected to the hand in the bag in order to prevent the man from pulling out a weapon, and he smashed the man against the wall again by slamming into him with his left shoulder.
“Che cazzo…!” the man screamed again, his words echoing down the tiled hallway of the old building. The man started to reach into his front pocket with his left hand now, so Jack head-butted him in the face.
The man with the ponytail dropped down on his knees, completely dazed, his bloody face wrapped in his hands, and Jack ripped the backpack off him. In doing so the pack slammed hard into the wall.
“What were you going for, asshole?” Ryan shouted at the man. His own words echoed down the hall, but they were partially drowned out by the groans of pain from the lungs of the man with the ponytail.
Jack pulled out a large thirty-five-millimeter digital camera, cracked from the impact, a couple of high-end lenses, both shattered, and a see-through plastic neck pouch. In it was a media identification card containing a passport-sized photo of the man kneeling on the floor in front of him. The writing on the card was in Italian, but Jack recognized the word PRESSE stamped in large letters across it. Jack then knelt down and found the man’s wallet in his front-left pocket. This had an ID card that said the same thing.
Ryan dug through the man’s bag some more, found a few small Baggies of off-white powder, a metal spoon, a cigarette lighter, and a cluster of syringes, all rubber-banded together. There was also a cell phone, but Jack had apparently smashed it, as well, when he banged the pack against the wall. He dropped everything back into the bag, put it on his own shoulder, yanked the man back to his feet, and pushed him up the hall.
“If you’re press, then I’m the Pope,” Ryan said.
Ysabel rushed to the door when she heard Ryan and another man shouting in the hallway. She looked out the peephole, then opened the door just as Jack came through, his hand pulling the bleeding man by the collar behind him.
Ysabel said nothing, although her eyes revealed her surprise.
Jack all but dragged the man through the living room and into the kitchen, their footfalls on the hardwood floors echoing off the high ceilings of the luxury apartment. He shoved the man onto a chair at the kitchen table and the man crumpled there, still stunned by the vicious head butt.
Ysabel walked up behind Jack now. Sarcastically, she asked, “Will our guest be staying for dinner?”
Jack didn’t answer. He took a moment to let his adrenaline dissipate, and while he did this he watched Ysabel take ice from the freezer and put it in a wet cloth. She cracked the cubes inside the cloth with a metal ladle.