Free Commander-In-Chief by Tom Clancy, Mark Greaney Page B

The man launched himself back toward Dom, eyes red with fury.
    The attacker in the black tracksuit landed on top of Caruso now, but not before Dom got his steak knife out and up. It buried into the man’s throat, sent him rolling off, grabbing at his mortal wound.
    More gunfire from the outside of the train forced the Americans to crawl out of the vestibule and back into the dining car, where they took cover with a terrified porter behind the counter. They weren’t sure what had happened to the German police, Morozov, or the woman, but they’d done what they could to minimize the slaughter, and now it was all about survival.
    The entire gunfight, from when Chavez and Caruso took down the two rear sentries to the last sound of men running off into the trees, lasted only three minutes.
    Chavez’s mouth was bleeding and his lip swollen from the punch to the face, but he was most concerned about the wound to Dom’s back. Dom pulled his jacket off, and when he did so Chavez saw blood on his white shirt.
    “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 influxof 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
    J ack 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