“Have you made your decision?” Boone shouted.

Silence.

A bullet hit one of the two fluorescent light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. A second burst of gunfire and the fixture was blown away with a shower of sparks; it bounced off one of the steam pipes and hit the floor.

Now that the room was darker, Maya understood what the child was trying to convey. Boone and his mercenaries had night-vision devices. Once the second light fixture was destroyed, she would be blind while Boone and his men could see their targets. The only way to hide from infrared devices was to become very cold or to push your body next to a warm object. Alice knew this; that was why she had stayed behind and hidden beneath the steam pipe.

The shooting started again; two laser beams were aimed at the second light fixture. Alice rolled away from the steam pipe and stared at the dead body lying in the doorway. “Stay here!” Maya shouted. But the girl jumped up and ran over to the doorway. She crouched down when she reached the dead mercenary, making herself as small as possible, then grabbed some equipment that had been clipped to the man’s belt. When Alice scurried back, Maya saw that the girl was carrying night-vision goggles attached to a head strap, and a hand-size battery pack. Alice tossed the goggles to Maya and returned to her hiding place beneath the steam pipe.

A bullet hit the second light fixture and the room was absorbed by darkness. It felt like they were in a cavern deep within the earth. Maya pulled the night-vision goggles over her eyes. She pressed the illuminator button and immediately the room was transformed into different shades of green. Anything warm-the steam pipes, the pressure gauges, the skin of her left hand-glowed with bright emerald color, as if these objects were radioactive. The concrete walls and floors showed a light green color that reminded her of new leaves.

Maya peered around the top edge of a steam pipe and saw a green light growing brighter as someone walked slowly down the tunnel to the open doorway. The light wavered slightly, then a mercenary wearing goggles appeared in the doorway. Carrying a sawed-off shotgun, he carefully stepped over the dead man’s body.

She moved behind the pipe and pressed her back against the warm metal. It was impossible to predict the mercenary’s position as he moved around the room; she could only plan the general direction of her attack. Maya felt as if all her energy were flowing from her shoulders and down her arms to the gun held in her hands. She breathed in, held her breath, and moved around the pipe.

A third mercenary holding a submachine gun had appeared in the doorway. The Harlequin shot him in the chest. There was a flash of light as the force of the bullet pushed him backward. Even before the dead mercenary hit the floor, Maya spun around and killed the man holding the shotgun. Silence. The faint scent of cordite mingled with the rotting smell of the room. The steam pipes glowed green around her.

Maya shoved the night-vision goggles in her shoulder bag, found Alice, and grabbed her hand. “Climb,” she whispered. “Just climb.” They hurried up the maintenance ladder, passed through the gap, and reached an area just below an open manhole. Maya stopped for few seconds and then decided: it was too dangerous to enter the track area. Still holding the little girl’s hand, she pulled her down a tunnel that led away from the station.

Holding on to the rungs of the ladder with his left hand, Naz used his right to push on a cast-iron manhole cover. After much grunting and swearing, he finally maneuvered the cover over the lip of the holding bracket and shoved it to one side. Gabriel followed Naz through the opening to the lower level of Grand Central Terminal. They were standing between a soot-covered concrete wall and one of the tracks of the railroad line.

Naz looked as if he were ready to take off in any direction. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Where are Vicki and Hollis?”

Gabriel peered down into the manhole and saw the top of Vicki’s head. She was twenty feet below him, moving cautiously up the ladder.

“They’re right behind me. It might take a minute.”

“We don’t have a minute.” Naz heard a distant clattering sound, spun around, and saw the twin lights of an approaching train. “We got to get out of here!”

“Let’s wait for the others.”

“They’ll catch up with us in the terminal. If the motorman sees us on the tracks he’ll radio the transit police.”

Gabriel and Naz sprinted across the tracks, vaulted onto the passenger platform, and walked up a concrete ramp toward the lights. Quickly, Gabriel removed his bloodstained jacket and turned it inside out. The lower concourse of the train station had been turned into a food court ringed with fast-food outlets. Only a coffee bar was open, and a handful of commuters dozed on benches while they waited for late-night trains. The two men sat down at a café table and waited for the others to emerge from the track area.

“What happened?” Naz asked. “You saw them, right?”

“Vicki was climbing the ladder. Hollis was just a few feet below her.”

Naz jumped up and began to pace back and forth. “We can’t stay here.”

“Sit down. It’s only been a couple minutes. We need to wait a little longer.”

“Good luck, man. I’m gone.”

Naz hurried over to the escalator and disappeared into the upper level of the terminal. Gabriel tried to imagine what had happened to the others. Were they trapped below? Had the Tabula caught up with them? The fact that a tracer bead was hidden in the ceramic gun had changed everything. He wondered if Maya would take an unnecessary risk to punish herself for what had happened.

Gabriel left the eating area and stood in the open doorway that led to the tracks. A surveillance camera was focused on the platform, and Gabriel had already noticed four other cameras mounted on the ceiling of the concourse. The Tabula had probably hacked into the terminal’s security system and their computers were scanning the live feeds for his image. Stay together. That was what Maya had told them, but she had also provided a backup plan: if there was a problem, they would meet up tomorrow morning on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Gabriel returned to the dining area and concealed himself behind a concrete pillar. A few seconds later, four tough-looking men wearing phone headsets came down the escalator and ran through the doorway to the track area. The moment they were gone, Gabriel went the other way, climbing a staircase to the main concourse and passing through a doorway to the street. The cold winter air made his eyes water and his face sting. The Traveler put his head down and stepped into the night.

DURING THEIR TIME in New York, Maya had insisted that everyone memorize safe routes through the city and a list of single-residency hotels that were off the Grid. One of these places was the Efficiency Hotel on Tenth Avenue in Manhattan. For twenty dollars in cash you got twelve hours in a windowless fiberglass pod that was eight feet long and five feet high. The forty-eight pods lined both sides of a corridor and made the hotel look like a mausoleum.

Before Gabriel entered the hotel, he took off his leather jacket again and folded it so that the bloodstains weren’t visible. The hotel clerk was an elderly Chinese man who sat behind a bulletproof barrier and waited for customers to slip their cash into a narrow slot. Gabriel paid him twenty dollars for the use of the pod and an extra five dollars for a foam rubber pad and a cotton blanket.

He received a key and walked down the hallway to the communal bathroom. Two Latino restaurant workers were standing bare-chested in front of the sinks, chattering to each other in Spanish as they washed the cooking grease off their faces and arms. Gabriel hid in a toilet stall until the two men were gone, then came out and washed his jacket in the sink. When he was done, he climbed a ladder to his rented space and crawled inside. Each pod had a fluorescent light and a small fan to keep the air circulating. There was a single peg to hold his jacket, and the wet leather began to drip softly, as if it were still sodden with blood.