Stick stared at him.

“You need to pick up on the theme here!” Gannon said. “These guys are trying to kill us.”

“Four dead feds,” Stick said quietly, shaking his head.

Gannon looked at him, looked through him, pacing now, trying to think.

How in the hell did they find us so fast? he wondered.

It was impossible. Pure dumb luck. Or had they tracked them on the subway somehow? That must have been it.

They can do that now? he thought. Surveillance and artificial intelligence is that good now? To track someone in real time through Manhattan?

Think about that later, Gannon thought. Now matters. What does it mean for us now?

He stopped pacing, his hands coming together as he closed his eyes.

It meant they knew they were in here.

He thought about Wheldon. The reporter’s brains staining the bad carpet.

He turned and looked at the pebbled-glass office door.

They would come in, he knew.

It didn’t matter that it was a precinct. All normal rules had been cast aside. The gates of hell had been unhinged over this.

They would actually come in.

A fire team was what? Four? There would be two of them. Eight!

He let out a breath.

Eight professionals. Eight elites with a whirlybird. Four would come from the top, four from the bottom. And they’d be in between, stuck in the middle to play the shit part in the shit sandwich.

He thought about the back way out, windows, but they could already be on them.

Then he hit on it. Pacing toward the door, he saw it across the bull pen, leaning up in a corner.

Plan C, he thought.

“Okay, listen up. I know what to do,” Gannon said, throwing open the door.

57

“Hey, Sarge, these are the other members of my team,” Ruiz said to a pudgy NYPD sergeant named Farina as Shepard and the rest of his men showed up in their tactical fatigues and backpacks.

From the corner of his eye, Ruiz watched Farina give Shepard a thumbs-up. He had already shown the cop his fed credentials that said he was a member of the US Marshals Service. He had given him the vague impression that the dead men in the truck were his colleagues and that the shooting might have been related to some fugitives they were in pursuit of.

Ruiz glanced out on the Lexington Avenue sidewalk behind them. There were four NYPD patrol cars and a fire truck around the shot-up SUV like a wagon train.

And more coming, Ruiz thought with a groan as he saw two more radio cars show up.

“You have a description of your perps yet so we can put out a BOLO?” Farina said.

“I’m still waiting to hear back from my boss,” Ruiz lied. “Until then, I was wondering if we could set up a staging area inside the precinct house. Like right now, if that’s possible.”

“You got it. Of course. Follow me,” the doughy cop said, guiding them through the lights and cops and lookie-loos already four deep on the sidewalk.