The Morgan Files. Leo J. Maloney

from a Latina girl about two years younger than her who was sitting nearby. The ear was cut up and looked like it might leave scars. Wincing, Alex dabbed at it with a wet wipe provided by the same girl, cleaning out the dirt and congealed blood. Fresh blood welled out bright red. She wiped that away too, and held the sleeve of her sweater against it like a compress until the bleeding stopped. She’d have preferred to do this in the bathroom rather than sitting on the cold marble floor, but the line to the bathrooms went halfway around the downstairs waiting area.

      “How are you doing?” she asked Clark, who lay back against the marble floor, staring at the ceiling, phones in his ears. He shrugged, hoodie rustling against the stone beneath.

      She reached to her pocket to check if her cell phone was there, but it wasn’t. She’d left it in her backpack, which she lost when she was knocked down by the crowd.

      “Hey,” she said, prodding him. He removed his earphones. “Can I borrow your phone?”

      He pulled the earphones out by the wire and propped himself up on his elbows. “Here,” he said, pulling out the headphone jack and holding it out for her. “I tried to call the ’rents already, though. Couldn’t get through. Maybe you’ll get lucky, though.”

      She dialed her father, then her mother. No luck.

      “I’m going to take a look around,” she told him, handing him back the phone. She stood up with aching muscles. She couldn’t sit still. She was antsy, with a bad feeling something else might happen, something worse. More than anything, she wanted to make herself useful.

      The main concourse of Grand Central Terminal echoed with loud voices. People were standing and sitting around the expansive floor, and more were downstairs. She estimated that they numbered at least five hundred. MTA Police had spread out, mostly keeping to the exits and the walls, although she spotted two K9 teams doing rounds, inspecting people’s bags. She passed a prayer circle as she made her way around the concourse, people old and young, of all races, holding hands as a middle-aged black man spoke a solemn supplication. “Lord, deliver all your children from harm . . .”

      Near the passage to the Lexington Avenue and Forty-seventh Street entrance, she heard the disconsolate sobs of people who had lost someone outside, or who had simply broken down from fear and shock. “My son is out there,” one young mother pleaded with a policeman holding people back from the door. She sank to her knees. “Please. My Lawrence, my baby . . .”

      From there, Alex made her way to Vanderbilt Hall, which opened into the main entrance. It had been cleared and set aside to form a sort of makeshift hospital. Here, people in everyday clothes were attending to the injured. Only two of the people there had bullet wounds. The rest had been injured in the tumult, trampled, pushed, or had fallen against the pavement.

      “Hi, excuse me, dear,” said a tiny lady who looked to be in her forties sporting spiky orange-red hair in comfortable pants and a casual sweater. She spoke with surprising authority. “Come over here, we’ll have someone look at your ear.”

      Alex said, “No, my ear’s okay. I want to help. I have some first-aid training.”

      “Oh, that’s very kind of you,” said the woman. “We actually have enough doctors and nurses here. But we could use some more water, if you’d be a dear and get it for us at the market.”

      It wasn’t the help she wanted to give, but, of course, help shouldn’t be about what the helper wants. Alex made her way to the Grand Central Market. The shops all seemed to be closed, but a group of girl scouts and other children were lined up to receive bottles of water and fresh fruit at the door to the market itself, where four vendors were distributing them to the kids for free. Alex approached one of them, a young, brown-skinned Hispanic man in a black cap.

      “I need water,” she said. “For the wounded.”

      He set off into the market and came back with a plastic-sealed case of six twenty-ounce water bottles.

      “You want me to carry that for you, miss?”

      “Don’t worry,” she said, grunting under the weight as he handed the case to her. “You look like you have your hands full.”

      9:58 a.m.

      Morgan and Rosso watched through security video as two of the Iranians attached the wire, which had been zip-tied to about one in four people in the crowd, to the ten or so black suitcases that were laid along the perimeter of the hostages.

      “What are they doing?” asked Rosso. He sat in the chair, clutching his wound, his breathing heavy. His eyes were beginning to glaze over.

      “It’s a trip wire,” said Morgan. “Attached to the bomb in the suitcase. If the wire is cut or detached, they blow.”

      “They’re going to have to cut the zip ties loose one by one,” said Rosso. “Evacuation’s going to be impossible.”

      “Yeah,” he said. “For the hostages and the terrorists.” Morgan reached for the phone on the desk. “I need to talk to my man on the outside.” He lifted the receiver, but it was dead.

      Rosso pointed toward the dead Secret Service agents. “Whatever they had to communicate with the outside, they’re definitely not using it anymore,” said Rosso.

      Morgan bent down over one of them. He had short, curly brown hair, and he was young, so goddamned young. He had the slightest bit of stubble, and Morgan could tell his beard was still patchy and irregular. “Sorry about this,” Morgan said, and popped the earbud out of his ear and followed the line to the transmitter in his breast pocket. Morgan pulled it out and fiddled with it to patch into the frequency he was using to communicate with Conley.

      “Conley, Conley, come in,” he said.

      “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.”