She started to move, but it took her too long.
At the stop a thick crowd of some fifteen people, the majority obviously tourists, were already boarding at the door nearest to Allende before she made it close enough to get off. An equal amount boarded at the door at the front of the car. By the time Chavez and Caruso had her moved through the group, the doors had closed again.
The train began moving.
Ding looked at Dom. “Stand her by the door and keep your head on a swivel. At the next stop we are moving.”
“Roger that.”
If not for the large group of straphangers standing in the middle of the car, Ding and Dom would have seen the two Asian men board from the door between their car and the car forward of them. But the men entered the car and began moving through the crowd, looking for their targets. When they did see the woman and her two mysterious protectors, they were only ten feet away, close to the rear side door. Instantly the North Korean operatives reached inside their coats to the small of their backs.
Caruso and Chavez saw the men right as the guns came out.
The North Koreans drew pistols, pushed a middle-aged woman and her grown daughter out of the way, and the guns rose in the middle of the group of stunned passengers.
The two Campus operatives went into their pants for their own weapons. Dom pulled a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield .40-caliber from inside his waistband under his shirt, and Chavez snatched a Glock 26 nine-millimeter from a Thunderwear holster. As Chavez drew, he stepped in front of Marleni Allende and shielded her with his body.
The North Koreans got the jump on the Americans, but the Americans executed their drawstrokes faster, so the race to get sights on targets was a four-way tie.
The screams and yells of thirty people came last of all.
Within one and a half seconds of the two teams seeing each other in the same train car, the four men had one another at gunpoint, each with two hands on his pistol in a combat grip. Their extended arms and gun barrels meant their muzzles were within eighteen inches of one another.
Men and women all around them dropped to the floor or recoiled out of the way in all directions, but the four professionals stood still as stones in the middle of the train car.
It was clear to Chavez these were North Koreans; he guessed they were members of their foreign intelligence service. He was surprised they were operating in the city with firearms, but, Chavez told himself, a gun was a decent tool for an assassin, so it stood to reason these guys were packing.
Caruso was on Chavez’s right, and as it happened, he had his gun on the man directly in front of Chavez, while Chavez himself was targeting the man just six feet in front of Caruso. The North Koreans had crossed their aim as well. The four weapons formed a near-perfect X that rocked and rolled with the rhythm of the moving train, and Chavez couldn’t help but think about the fact that he and the other three men would catch simultaneous point-blank rounds to the head if anybody on this train car so much as even sneezed.
He pictured what that would look like to the captive audience here. One extra-loud bang and four armed assholes dropping dead to the floor in a massive pool of blood.
That would be one hell of a vacation memory for all the tourists on the train.
No one said anything for the first few seconds, so Chavez took the role of master of ceremonies. “English? Either of you boys speak English?”
Sweat covered the brow of the man at the end of Chavez’s notch-and-post gunsight. Chavez didn’t look at the man in front of him, because that was Dom’s responsibility, and he knew Dom would have that guy covered.
Chavez’s man, dripping with sweat, had eyes that were wide and alert, but he did not seem panicked. He said, “I speak English.”
Chavez nodded. “That’s good.” He smiled a little, trying to bring even the slightest bit of calm to the scene. “This is a mess, huh?”
The North Korean didn’t reply.
Chavez continued, “I bet you and your partner want to go home tonight just like me and my partner. Am I right?”
The North Korean did speak now, but it was low and guttural and in Korean. He was talking to his partner, and while Chavez thought he might have just been translating for his partner’s benefit, it didn’t sound good at all.
The guns wavered a little as the train began a bumpy curve to the left, but still four muzzles were pointed at four faces, and four trigger fingers took up the slack in four triggers.
A female tourist in her thirties started to say something, but Caruso just hushed her without looking.
Chavez said, “Why don’t you two lower your weapons and you walk out of here at the next stop? We’ll let you do it. Matter of fact… we’d love for you to do it.”
The leader of the two shook his head no. Sweat drained down his temples.
The train began to slow for the 8th Street stop. In a voice that was demonstrative but cautious, because he didn’t want to startle the dude with the gun in his face, Dom said, “Everybody relax. I’m a federal officer. Nobody move until we’re stopped, but as soon as the doors open I want everyone to leave the train in a quiet and orderly fashion.”
The North Korean said, “No! No! No one leaves!”
Chavez said, “If either of you take your guns off of us to point them at these civilians, we will shoot you dead.” That sank in for a moment, then Chavez added, “Tell your buddy if he doesn’t understand.”
A college-age man sitting on the bench behind Dom said, “Sir, do you want me to—”
Caruso said, “I want you to do exactly what I just said. Nothing else.”
The subway car was quiet other than the rattling of the movement over the tracks, but when Caruso heard sounds behind him, a slight shuffling of clothing or a purse, he said, “Anybody who pulls out a camera phone will probably get themselves killed, but if you don’t, I’m gonna throw your ass in prison. Stay still!”
The sound behind ceased instantly.
It was a jolting stop at 8th Street; all four men stumbled a little, but the guns were back up and in their X in an instant. The men and women on the train — fortunately, it was late enough at night that no children had been on board — behaved even better than Dom had expected, and in seconds the train was clear.
Marleni Allende was one of the first off. Caruso and Chavez noticed that the North Koreans, though obviously on a life-or-death mission, had the good sense to not try to stop her. They were focused on their difficult predicament.
Caruso expected the train to stay at 8th Street. Surely someone would tell the motorman that there was an armed standoff on his train, and he’d sound the alarm and stay right there. But the doors closed and it began moving again.
He realized they were in the second-to-last car, and perhaps the people who’d scrambled off had been more concerned about getting the hell out of the line of fire and going to the exits and less concerned about running all the way up the platform to the front of the train.
Of course, everyone would be on their mobiles once they got to street level, or else they would tell the first transit cop they came across, so both Caruso and Chavez knew the train wouldn’t make it past Union Square, the next stop.
Chavez tried his hand at dialogue again. “The woman is gone. We can shoot it out over nothing, or we can just call it a night.”
The North Korean said, “We have diplomatic immunity.”
Caruso replied, “Who doesn’t, really, at this point?”
Chavez latched on to this. “Then drop your guns. You haven’t done anything that will get you more than an expulsion. It doesn’t have to end bad.”