Reyland, in the fusion center, stood before the war room screen in a frozen rictus of wide-eyed baffled rage. On the screen above, smoke was pouring into what looked like a stairwell as a voice repeated, “The source of the alarm signal you are hearing is now being investigated. The source of the alarm signal you are hearing is now being investigated.”
“Emerson, you said we had a team on the floor.”
“We did,” Emerson said, typing into one phone as he cradled another with his shoulder and chin, “but they split up to cover both sides.”
“Who’s down?”
“Sanderson.”
“You put a rookie there on this!” Reyland yelled.
“No, you did, Reyland,” Emerson said, glaring at him. “I told you she wasn’t ready for our New York team, but she’s your buddy the senator’s niece!”
Reyland stood there infuriated. He looked back up at the screen. You could hear feet running somewhere in the distance, the sound of pounding.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!” someone yelled as an unseen door boomed open and closed followed by the bedeviled clown whistle again.
“Which one of you assholes did it?” Reyland yelled into the comm link on the desk speakerphone.
“What was that?” Ruiz yelled over the rotor thump.
“Who set the hotel on fire? Did I tell you to burn the place down?”
“It wasn’t us. It was the target,” Ruiz said over the rotor roar.
“Wheldon?”
“No, he’s down,” Ruiz said. “The other one. The guy. He lit the room up after we popped Wheldon. Then he dipped with the girl.”
“What guy? There’s a guy? Who?” Reyland screamed. “Where’s the girl? Where’s Everett?”
“She’s with the guy who set the room on fire. They made it out onto 31st heading east.”
“Arietta, what the hell is that drone for? Get me eyes on that street!”
“On it, on it,” Arietta said.
The screen changed to show the intersection of 31st Street and Sixth Avenue. A man and a woman were rounding the corner turning left, running north up the west-side sidewalk of Sixth Avenue.
The camera zoomed in.
The woman had brown hair.
“Ruiz, get that bird over Sixth Avenue. We see them. They’re heading north toward 32nd.”
They watched as the couple ran diagonally through the intersection on 32nd Street into a little park.
Reyland slapped a palm down on a desk as they suddenly disappeared under some leafless trees.
“Where the hell did they go?”
“Shit,” said Emerson, now standing by a laptop. “They went down some subway stairs into a station.”
“No, wait. 32nd and Sixth. That’s not the subway. That’s the PATH train entrance, isn’t it? The Jersey train?” Arietta said.
Emerson clicked at the keyboard.
“Double shit. It’s both. There’s a corridor that leads to the PATH train and another one a block long that leads to the subway.”
“Where the hell is our team from the hotel? Get them over there!” Reyland yelled.
“Wait, wait. No, this is a good thing. We have this... I’m patching in... We have a link to the MTA CCTV system,” Arietta said.
The big screen changed to show a tremendous grid of cameras, and Arietta brought up a screen of a platform with the commuter PATH train.
“I don’t see them,” he said.
“Gee, Arietta, I guess they’re not headed out to the Jersey Shore in January. Go figure,” Reyland said.
“It’s them! Look! Number 23. I just saw them,” Emerson said, pointing. “What’s that? The corridor. Where’s that?”
“It’s the two-block underground corridor that runs toward the subway station at Macy’s Herald Square,” Arietta said.
“Get our team down into the subway station at 34th and Sixth now,” Reyland said into the comm link.
“No, no! Tell them to stay on the road,” Arietta said, watching the screen where now the man and woman were running past homeless people down a wide gray corridor.
As they disappeared out of the frame, he brought up the next camera and picked them up again.
“We have eyes on them now. They have cameras throughout the entire system. If they get on a train, we’ll see them. The teams can follow from the surface.”
Reyland rubbed at his chin as they followed the targets across the grid of screens. At the entrance of the subway, they watched as the man paid for a metro card at a machine.
They got a closer look at him for the first time. A stocky white guy, close-cropped sandy hair, about six foot or so, around forty but lean-faced and fit.
Reyland looked at the shoulders on him. Reyland had played Division One college ball, second-string left tackle at Notre Dame, and he thought the guy looked like a running back, a tough, sneaky white boy faster than he looked.
“Arietta, hit this fool with the facial recognition,” he said.
A red square appeared around the man’s profile. Reyland took in his lean face, his blue-gray eyes. His goatee was the color of the Carhartt jacket he was wearing. Is he a hick or something? The reporter’s friend?
They waited. After a minute, the square turned purple.
“What happened? Where’s his license?” Reyland said.
“Purple means the computer can’t find it. Or he’s not in the DMV system.”
“It just works for the New York DMV system?”
“No, we’re tapped into all of them. It’s a national database.”
“What do you mean? He doesn’t have a frickin’ driver’s license?”
“Maybe he’s not American? Or it could be a glitch. Like I said, we’re still in the first stages of this thing.”
“Is he using a credit card?” Reyland said.
“No, it was cash,” Emerson said as the stocky guy swiped himself and the woman through the turnstile.
They watched them go down some steps to a platform. A train pulled in.
“Okay, Ruiz. Coordinate with the other teams,” Emerson called over the comm link. “They’re getting on an uptown F. Next stop is 42nd. Bryant Park.”
“Is there a camera on the train, too?” Reyland said.
“No,” Arietta said, “but there’s one in every station. We just need to keep tracking them. As soon as they get off, we’ll be waiting.”