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

close to his ear.
    Chavez said, “Oh shit. What does
this
mean?”
    Caruso turned and his eyes went wide. “I guess it means the amateur soccer team is a professional security team, and Morozov has himself a dozen goons.”
    The soccer team stood as one and began to reach for their luggage, which was all positioned on the racks high above their heads. Morozov moved back through the dining car, passed Dom and Ding again without looking at them, and continued into his compartment, where he closed the door. The six police farther down the car, standing around the woman by the exit, didn’t even notice he’d left his compartment.
    Dom saw all this, but Ding wasn’t looking. Instead, he had his eyes on the Ukrainians. They’d all slung bags over their shoulders, placed their hands inside the unzipped bags, and they were flooding toward the dining car.
    Chavez said, “These dudes are packing. They are going to try to get the girl back.”
    Caruso said, “And we’re unarmed.”
    Chavez lifted a dirty steak knife off the table and hid it under the cuff of his suit coat.
    Caruso gave Chavez a look. “You’re going to engage a dozen armed dudes with a steak knife?”
    “No. I’m going to engage
one
armed dude with a steak knife, and then I’m going to engage eleven armed dudes with a gun.”
    Dom grabbed his own knife, wiped some sauce from it with his napkin, and hid it in the cuff of his jacket.

7
    D omingo Chavez knew he wasn’t breaching his cover by staring at the men in black storming up through the dining car toward the police. It would have looked completely inauthentic to continue drinking his coffee with his eyes on his empty lunch plate while a dozen men with intense faces marched by in single file, every one of them holding something hidden inside a gym bag. So he stared, tried to ID who they were and how far they were willing to go with this. Quick eye contact with Dom, then an almost imperceptible nod, passed on the message that these men were the real deal; they looked willing to kill some police to keep this mystery woman out of the hands of German authorities, and Dom and Ding had to keep this from happening.
    After the first ten men passed the table, then went through the vestibule door, the last two turned around in the dining car by the door, drew black automatic pistols from their bags, and covered the dining car and second-class car beyond. This put their eyes right on Dom and Ding, a dozen feet ahead of them on their right. They held their guns low in front of their bodies.
    Chavez instantly realized these men were well trained, otherwise all dozen would have just attacked the known threat, and they wouldn’t have set up a rear guard for any other potential threats.
    Still, both Caruso and Chavez saw that they were within a dozen feet of the pair of armed men, close enough to engage. They just needed to act with speed, surprise, and violence of action, and they could even the odds of this one-sided contest.
    As the door to the vestibule between the dining car and the first-class car closed, Dom raised his hands and began to stand in the aisle, drawing the attention of both men.
    “Don’t shoot! Just tell us what is going—”
    Ding Chavez spun low out of the chair with his coffee cup in his hand and flicked the steaming liquid out and up toward the faces of the men. He took one step to square his body with the gunmen standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the door, and he launched himself forward. Both pistols rose toward the motion, but the hot coffee in their eyes caused them to flinch and recoil before they could aim. Chavez slammed into the midsections of both men, sending them back hard onto the floor. One man banged his head against the door and dropped his pistol, and the other man’s gun hand was pushed high to his right by Chavez’s left shoulder. A shot rang out in his first-class cabin just as Caruso arrived, leaping through the air over Chavez’s prostrate form, then landing,