Day One

lights off, its interior filled with shadows. The passenger window was halfway open, and he couldn’t remember if it had been that way before. Was someone sitting there, motionless? For a moment he thought so, but when he approached slowly, holding the tank up like a weapon, Hanscomb leaning against him for support, he found the twin captain’s chairs empty.

There were no keys in the ignition.

Abruptly the engine switched off again. They were left with the tick of hot metal as Hanscomb’s head lolled sideways against his own.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

2:34 P.M.

ALTHOUGH HE HAD HIS SUSPICIONS, Hawke had little time to question the ambulance starting up by itself. There were five of them and two oxygen tanks, and time was running out. But ambulances might carry portable emergency oxygen tanks like the ones he had found in the morgue. It was worth a look.

He went around to the back and opened the door. The interior light came on, illuminating a space cluttered with medical equipment, EMT bags, drawers, a padded bench and a stretcher. Nobody inside; he wasn’t sure what he had expected. He left the tank with Hanscomb and climbed up, holding his breath. There was a mask hanging on the wall, the line snaking down through a hole in the cabinet. He opened the door and saw it connected to a larger machine to help people breathe. No way to remove it.

His body was beginning to protest the lack of air. He turned on the machine but couldn’t get it to run. He rummaged through the rest of the drawers and turned to the bench. Beneath it, he found a storage cavity with a portable tank inside.

His chest had begun to ache again. When he was finally able to get the mask fixed to his face, breathing was like heaven. The oxygen spread through him like warm fire, prickling his skin, sharpening his senses.

As he climbed back out of the ambulance, a voice crackled to life from the front. A radio in the driver’s cabin, the kind used to call in emergencies, was turned up loud enough to echo through the loading dock. Some kind of police dispatcher was putting out an all-points bulletin. The dispatcher described a suspect wanted in connection with the day’s terrorist attacks: five ten and 180 pounds, dirty blond hair, blue eyes. The suspect might be traveling with three companions, the dispatcher said, two women and another man. The woman’s voice was flat and oddly familiar. Hawke knew who she was describing long before she said his name.

“Jonathan Hawke is wanted in connection with the terrorist group Anonymous… bombing at Seventy-eighth Street and Second Avenue this morning… armed and extremely dangerous….”

Jesus Christ. Weller had been right; the entire New York City police force would be looking for them. Don’t think about that. Keep your mind away from it. Focus on getting out. He pulled Hanscomb up the steps to the wide hallway, pausing to let her take in some more deep gulps of air, and found Vasco and Young at the doors to the morgue. Vasco was cursing through the mask as Young shared her tank with him.

“Where’s Price?” Hawke asked.

Young shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.

Hawke left Hanscomb with them, took the hallway branching to the right and followed it to another set of exterior doors, the ones Vasco had checked before they entered the loading dock. Price was on the floor, motionless. Hawke turned the man over and checked his chest; he was still breathing.

The reinforced glass doors were still locked. He peered out at the street, just steps away. But the locking mechanism was electronic and he could find no way to release it.

He rattled the handles, slammed his fist into the upper panel of glass. Nothing; he might as well have been punching stone. He took a step back, wound up with the oxygen tank like a batter and swung it with all his strength, low from the knees and up in an arc, connecting with the lower panel with a shuddering thud.

The tank rebounded hard, ripping the mask from his face and spinning him halfway around. When he turned back, the glass was webbed with cracks. He kicked at it, managing to separate the top part from the frame, kicked again until the entire sheet fell out onto the sidewalk.

Air wafted through the hole, bringing with it the scent of oil and asphalt and smoke. After the sour, dead air of Lenox, it might have been the best thing he had ever smelled. The others had heard the noise and joined him, and they all crouched and slipped through the opening, Vasco pulling Price’s unconscious body with him.

* * *

Hawke stood on the sidewalk, blinking in the sunlight. Hanscomb crouched beside Price, sharing her oxygen with him. He moaned and began to stir. Sirens shrieked in the distance, along with what sounded like the chatter of automatic weapons that raised the gooseflesh on Hawke’s arms.

“I heard the radio,” Vasco said. He breathed in and handed the mask to Young. “What the fuck did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what that was all about.”

“The hell you don’t,” Vasco said. He took another breath of oxygen. “Weller was right, we are on the most wanted list, and there’s gotta be a good reason for it. So tell me: what did you do?”

Hawke got the feeling that if the man hadn’t been so weak from the gas, he might have taken a swing at him. Hawke’s heart was hammering in his chest. Hanscomb was staring at him like she might at a spider that had crawled out of her shower drain. “I knew some people years ago,” he said. “They were involved with the hacker group Anonymous. We did a few things I regret. But I haven’t been a part of that since my son was born.”

Hawke didn’t know why he had said that, or felt the need to explain himself at all. But the truth was, he was still a hacker. There was the professor’s e-mail account, for one, and plenty of other questionable examples as well, if he was honest with himself. It was part of his job, part of his life, as natural as breathing. But what he had done lately wasn’t associated with Anonymous and wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near this level of scrutiny. Maybe the authorities were going after anyone with a connection to the group? But then why single him out by name? There had to be hundreds of people in New York with closer ties and far worse records.

No, this had something to do with Eclipse, and Jane Doe. Admiral Doe. Jesus. Was he really buying into this? That some kind of intelligent program was trying to get him killed?

“I’m being set up,” Hawke said. “We all are. Jim was right about that, too.” He glanced at Young. “But the bottom line is, the entire NYPD is going to be looking for us.”

“The hell with that,” Vasco said. His face was red with anger. “I’m gonna give myself up to the first cop I see and point them your way—”

“Bad idea,” Hawke said. “If I’m right and you go to them now, they’re going to shoot you on sight. I saw them do it.”

“How do I know what you saw? I’m supposed to take your word for it?”

“It’s true,” Young said. “We’re all implicated. And we’re all at risk. It doesn’t matter whether we’re innocent or not.” Her nostrils flared slightly as she breathed oxygen in, handed the mask back. Hawke thought of the woman on the screen, how Young had reached out to touch the image with a shaky hand, the only thing that revealed any kind of emotional connection. A porcelain shell. Young had her own secrets; he just wasn’t sure what they were yet.

“We sure as hell can’t stay here,” Vasco said. “Where’s the next checkpoint?”

“Checkpoints aren’t exactly working out for us,” Hawke said. “Let’s think for a second—”

“Yeah? You were the one who suggested this place,” Vasco said. “How do we know you didn’t just make it up? Sarah? You remember them saying ‘Lenox Hospital’ on the radio?”

“I…” Hanscomb shook her head. “I can’t think; I don’t know. I heard ‘Grand Central’; I remember that.”

“So we go to Grand Central—”

“It’ll be crawling with cops,” Hawke said.

“Like I said before, they can’t just kill us in front of everyone like dogs. We’ll get the chance to turn