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The road swept around to the left, revealing a huge bronze statue of Victor on horseback With the sun beginning to set, tourists and backpackers still lounged on thedrinks sold by vendors from carts

Another barrage pummeled the back of the bus, and the tourists outside started to scatter like startled birds

Eddie kneas only acritical or that he’d run into a police roadblock The distant sound of sirens blaring was drawing closer by the second A sign said he was on the VIA DEI FORI IMPERIALI, not that itto him The road was broad, by Roman standards, and too open for Eddie’s tastes It divided ahead, next to an open parking area filled with buses much like the one he’d commandeered

He veered left down a street hes The storefronts offered everything frooods to electronics to exotic pets But it was still too wide for what Eddie had in hts suddenly flared in front of the bus as traffic came to a crawl Eddie pounded on the horn, and he steered the bus onto the curb The sideasn’t nearly wide enough for the large vehicle As he made his way down the cobbled ay, the busmeters like wheat before a combine and shouldered aside automobiles amid a cacophony of car alarms and shouts

The bus plowed through the outside displays of a tourist shop, sending up a blizzard of brightly colored postcards and what Eddie thought, for one terrifying moment, was the body of a wo a T-shirt The right-side

He burst out onto an intersection Cars screeched all around hiuided the bus toward a narrow lane that was s than a road There were cars going into the alley but not e from it

Kovac’s azines The gas pedal suddenly felt ed left-sidefrom the back of the bus

“Come on, baby, fifty more yards”

The engine coughed and caught again and again, sputtering and surging in its death throes Eddie reached for the rew closer but not larger

“Everybody, brace yourselves”

Eddie sensed the engine about to let go, so he slipped the transmission into neutral and coasted the last thirty feet Behind hi of ineer heart

The bus entered the dim alley with barely five inches of clearance on either side The re left mirror was sheared off Eddie saw that the road constricted even further just ahead, because one aparthbors He hit the brakes an instant before the bus struck the building, bounced back, and s cohtened screams from above, but Eddie could tell by how quickly the sound faded that no one had been hurt

A large red fire extinguisher was clipped just below his legs He popped it free and slass starred but didn’t break He hit the windshield again and again until he’d opened aa hand on the war off at a run When he looked back, he could see dense s from behind the bus Kovac’s men couldn’t climb over the vehicle, so they would have to backtrack around the apartment block, provided they weren’t boxed in by other cars who’d followed them into the alley

He rounded the corner and slowed to a nor in with the flow of people headed home from their offices or out to dinner with their fa as he ducked into a taxi The cab pulled away as the Fiat Bravo braked in front of the alley He’d lost them

A few minutes later, he threw some Euros at the driver and jumped out of the vehicle while it was stalled in traffic He bought a prepaid disposable cell phone from a tobacco stand Eddie walked into a crowded bar, ordered a beer froirl behind the counter, and dialed the hotel The staff was still buzzing about the man who’d climbed down the balconies, so it took hiunmen had broken into his room The reception-desk staffer proave him his cell number