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Chapters (83)
  1. Cover
  2. ALSO BY TOM CLANCY
  3. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
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  83. What’s next onyour reading list?

The three students laughed, too, as Amador crossed back over to the two kneeling men. He stared down at them. “Now, seriously. If you have no weapon against a knife, escape if at all possible. A knife is very dangerous. Nothing to fool with. Understood?”

They both nodded.

Amador held out his open hands. Martinez and Dom carefully held up the razor-sharp karambits and Amador took them in his fighting grip.

“You saw how powerful one blade was in both attack and defense,” the wizened Filipino master said. “Can you imagine what two of these can do in the hands of one who can use them?”

Jack ran through the katas he’d seen in years past. In his mind’s eye he threw punches and kicks at the little Filipino, then watched the two karambit blades in the master’s hands cutting his limbs like scissors or blocking Jack’s unarmored flesh as it struck. Jack felt his two thighs being ripped open at once, his two wrists slashed at the same time, and two pointed claws tearing across his eyes simultaneously. He shuddered.

“Does it matter if we’re fighting an opponent who uses two knives?” Jack asked. “Or do we use the same approach as someone who only uses one?”

Amador’s smile faded. “I will tell you what my master taught me when I was first learning the way of the knife and asked the exact same question.”

Amador handed the two lethal karambits to Jack, then laid a strong hand on Jack’s broad shoulder. His voice lowered. “‘Whenever you are faced with a true master of two blades,’ he said to me, ‘pray to God that He is ready to receive you in Heaven, because in that moment you are surely going to die.’” Amador leaned in closer to Jack. “In other words, my friend, RUN LIKE HELL!”

Martinez belly-laughed. So did Dom. When Amador finally cracked up, Jack allowed himself a grin.

Martinez stood. “Let’s grab some breakfast. All this knife fighting has made me hungry. Then we’ll come back and Master Inosanto will run us through some more of his drills.”

“Works for me,” Amador said. “I’m dying for pancakes!”

Dom stood up to grab his shoes, but Jack just stared at the two blades in his hands, feeling their heft and fearing the worst.

7

WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM

WASHINGTON, D.C.

He’d read somewhere that the Chinese ideograph for the word crisis was supposedly composed of the two words for opportunity and danger. Even if it wasn’t true, President Jack Ryan found it relevant to today’s meeting.