“These camera angles seem high. Traffic cameras, right? Are these live feeds?” Reyland said.

“Yes, it’s called the 3RT Retina system,” Arietta said, heading over to a keyboard. “It’s brand-new. We just got it patched into the traffic cameras a month ago. Watch this.”

Arietta went over and clicked some more keys. All of a sudden, red computer-generated squares appeared around the license plates of the cars and on the faces of people in the crowd. The squares followed along with the moving subjects as driver’s licenses began to appear along the bottom of the screen. One after another after another.

Reyland looked in shock at the smiling driver’s license faces that began to line up along the bottom of the screen. The computer was ID’ing everyone, he realized. He felt a fluttery feeling in his stomach as he watched.

“This is live?” Reyland said. “In real time. You’re picking all this up live? And ID’ing everyone live? I’ve never seen this.”

“It’s the new video analytics platform coupled with the latest in facial recognition. We have the software tapped into that new Cray at the DOE at Oakridge. They just put it online. With our full trunk-to-block fiber-optic linkup, the speed of the processing is mind-blowing. We’re talking two hundred petaflops, which is the equivalent—”

Reyland put up a hand.

“Yeah, uh-huh. It’s quick and powerful. Great,” Reyland said. “Bottom line, if our little navy friend shows her face in one of these locations, we got her?”

“Her face is already in the system,” Arietta said with a nod. “If she shows her face, the computer will know in a fraction of a second.”

“Ruiz, what do you think in terms of a setup?” Reyland said.

The short, stocky mercenary stepped forward. He’d been watching everything silently from near the rear of the room among his contingent of men. He pursed his lips and squinted his eyes as he slowly looked from one location on the screen to the next.

“Let’s get some printouts of these locales,” he finally said. “And we’ll take a look-see.”

43

Gannon got off the train at Pennsylvania Station at 6:45 p.m. and walked through some corridors and came up a set of stairs onto cold Seventh Avenue. On the dark sidewalk in front of Madison Square Garden there were incredible crowds of commuters, and he had to wade against the flow of the massive herd of them to get to the avenue’s east side.

The Arlington Hotel that Stick had told him to go to was halfway down 31st, sandwiched between a luxury wig importer and a shuttered Chinese restaurant called Bamboo Lucky 21. He was a little early, so he passed it and walked the rest of the block over to Sixth Avenue.

He stood there on the corner in the steady rush-hour flow of people. He stepped aside for an Asian woman pushing a double stroller as an ambulance with a blaring siren slowly carved a path through the blocked-up intersection.