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.”

53

Gannon got off the F train at 59th and Lex with the woman, and they went through the crowded station and down some dirty stairs to another platform and got a connecting uptown 4 train that had just pulled alongside the platform.

As they sat in the half-filled car, he took his first good look at the attractive young navy lieutenant. He saw there was a dazed, stalled-out look in her light brown eyes. She seemed to still be in a state of shock, but at least she was letting him lead her.

“Hey, how you doing?” Gannon said.

She blinked at him and took a breath and started coughing.

He patted her on the back.

“It’s just the smoke. I know this is crazy, but stay with me. We’re going to get through this. I promise. My name is Mike. What’s yours?”

She looked up at him wide-eyed.

“Hey, come on. It’s okay. Just talk to me. What’s your name?” he said again.

“Ruby,” she said, finally looking at him. “I’m Ruby.”

He took her hand again and stood with her as the train screamed into the East 68th Street–Hunter College Station.

“Okay, Ruby,” he said to her as they came out of the rattling doors. “Stay close. I know a place we’ll be safe.”

Up the stairs on Lexington the street was filled with moving cars and buses and there was a bunch of people milling around in front of one of the Hunter College buildings beside the subway.

They were stepping onto 68th Street’s southeast corner’s curb when the speeding SUV came at them out of the traffic on Lexington in a mad-dash diagonal. It was a black Cadillac Escalade with midnight tinted windows and there was a roar of horns as it jumped the curb twenty yards ahead of them and shrieked to a rubber-smoking skidding stop.

Gannon had just registered that its rear left passenger door was already open, when a slim man wearing black tactical clothes and a black balaclava popped out of it. Gannon watched as the man did a graceful crow hop onto the sidewalk and turned directly toward them, hunched over something in his hands.