“Conley here. Morgan, is that you? It’s mayhem in there. What—”

“The Iranians,” he said. “They took out all the Secret Service agents.”

“Shit,” said Conley. “There’s been shooting at Grand Central, too. Reports say more than one sniper fired at the crowd.”

Morgan banged his hand on the table in a mixture of rage and worry. Alex. “Conley, I need you to try to call my daughter. She’s supposed to be coming into Grand Central this morning. I need to know that she’s okay.” He gave Conley the number.

“I’ll try,” said Conley. “But the cell system’s overloaded. Not sure I’ll get through.”

“Any idea what the endgame is here?” Morgan asked. He looked at Rosso, who was stooped on the desk, examining the feeds. “They’ve got no chance of making it out of this building alive.”

“They might try to use the hostages for leverage,” said Conley.

“I have no idea what that could achieve. Why here? Why now?”

“I don’t know,” said Conley. “Listen, an NYPD Hercules team is already on its way.”

“Son of a bitch! They’re wiring this place up with explosives. You need to hold them back. We need to find out what they want, and how it’s connected to the shootings at Grand Central—”

“Did you say,” Rosso cut in, “that what happened here might have something to do with Grand Central?”

“Yeah. Do you know something?”

“Maybe it’s nothing,” said Rosso. “But there’s an old train line called Track Sixty-one. It was built for FDR in the thirties. It runs underground between here and Grand Central Terminal.”

“Could the Iranians access it from here?” asked Morgan.

“If they know where it is. There’s an elevator that leads down there from the hotel.”

“Did you get that, Conley?”

“Got it,” said Conley. “That’s their way out, then. Which means they have no reason not to blow up the lobby of the Waldorf.”

“Conley,” said Morgan. “Keep the Herc team outside. If they come in here, they’re going to get themselves and everyone else killed.”

10:04 a.m.

“Do you have contact with any of your people on the inside?” Lisa Frieze asked the Secret Service man, one of two left on the outside. The scene was chaos, as agents of various law enforcement branches moved about frantically outside the Park Avenue entrance to the Waldorf, trying to coordinate with each other. The policemen, instead of trying to keep onlookers away, now surrounded the doors, ready for whatever might come out. She shivered, pulling her blazer tighter around her torso and wishing she’d worn something warmer.

He shook his head. “No response on any of the communicators.”

“Do you have any word from the field office?”

“They’re mounting a response. That’s all I know.”

She swore under her breath and dialed the number for the hotel, which returned a busy signal.

“Agent Frieze!”

She looked up from her phone to see Peter Conley making his way toward her. “Have you got anything?” he asked.

“First responders are thin on the ground,” she said as he approached, “scrambling to deal with the three-pronged attack. From what I gather, though, the Waldorf attack has priority one. This place is going to be swarming with people from at least half a dozen agencies within fifteen minutes.”

“That’s going to be a problem,” he said. “I’ve got a man on the inside, and he just made contact. We’ve got a hostage situation. The people inside are wired with explosives. There’s no way to get them out safely.”

“You’ve got a man on the inside? We need to establish reliable contact with him and coordinate with—”

“He’s not going to wait,” said Conley. “And neither is this situation. We need to buy him time to deal with the situation.”

“NYPD is getting a negotiator here,” she said. “Plus tactical response teams and snipers. Protocol for defusing this sort of situation.”

“That’s not going to work here,” said Conley. “The hostage situation is just a diversion. The terrorists are leaving through an old train tunnel that goes from the Waldorf to Grand Central.”

“How do you know this?” asked Frieze. “Who’s this man on the inside? Is he State Department?”

“He’s a trained black operative,” said Conley. Frieze eyed him, but left it at that. There was no time to quibble about these things.

“How does he know their plan?”

“I’d call it a professional hunch,” said Conley. “It’s the only plan that fits.”

“What if they’re suicide bombers?”

“Then everybody would already be dead.”

Frieze kicked the ground. “Goddamn it,” she said. “What the hell do we do, then?”

“We keep the tactical teams out of the hotel,” said Conley.

“If this doesn’t pan out, my career at the New York bureau is over on my first day.”

“Do you think there’s any other plausible explanation?”

The tire squeal of a halting car cut off Frieze before she could respond. A thickset man with side-parted salt-and-pepper hair and the expression of a charging bull sprang out and pushed through the barrier.

“Get these people out of here!” he yelled to the policemen at the scene. “I want a perimeter set up on a one-block radius. You.” He pointed at the young cop who had let Frieze through earlier. “Push the crowd back, have the barriers set up on Fiftieth, half a block down that way.” The cop stood still like a deer in the headlights. “Now would be good.”

He charged the few additional yards to the front door of the Waldorf. “I’m taking charge of this scene,” he yelled out to all present. “All decisions and new information now go through me. Do we have eyes on the inside?”

Frieze spoke up. “Agent Frieze, FBI.”

“Sergeant Pearson.” His cheeks were splotchy red, nostrils flaring at the base of his bulbous nose. “Are you in charge of the scene?”

“No,” she said. “But I need to talk to you.”

10:15 a.m.

“Another camera’s gone black,” said Rosso, hunched over the monitors in the surveillance room. “The elevator to the Presidential Suite.”

Morgan poked his head out the door and looked both ways down the hall. Wisps of extinguisher powder still hung in the air, but it was otherwise empty. “Does that give them access to Track Sixty-one?”

“Yeah,” said Rosso. “That’s the one.”

“Then it won’t be long before they blow this place,” said Morgan. He sat down next to Rosso. “We need to act. There,” he said, pointing at a monitor showing the lobby. Only one Iranian was left there, all the others having disappeared. “In that man’s hand, see?” It was something small and black, barely visible in the hotel feed. “That’s our detonator. We need to get to him before he blows this lobby sky-high.”

“All right,” said Rosso. “What’s the plan?” He winced in pain.

“You sure you’re up to it?”

“I’m not doing this out of heroism,” he said, refolding his bloody handkerchief and pressing it again to the wound. He stood up, bracing against the desk. He let go to stand only on his feet and swayed. Morgan was ready to catch him, but he didn’t fall. “I’m not getting out of here unless that guy is dead. Saving those people is the only way I make it out alive. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

“I have an idea,” said Morgan. “Let me tell you how we’re going to do this.”

10:18 a.m.

“That’s quite a story,” Sergeant Pearson said to Frieze, half turned away from her. He towered above her, heavyset and broad shouldered. Working his bushy gray eyebrows into a scowl, he addressed two newcomers bearing tactical sniper rifles, gesturing to them with a hand like a ham. “I want you on the roof of the building across the street, and you at the Intercontinental on Forty-ninth.”

“You need to trust us,” said Conley, at her side. “Keep the Hercules teams out.”

“The Iranians will blow the explosives on the first sign of invaders,” added Frieze.