At a New York airport, a security agent suddenly grabbed my arm and whispered, “Pretend I’m arresting you. Do not react.” I thought she was joking until her grip tightened. She pulled my daughter and me away from the gate. Twenty minutes later, the entire area exploded.

The world dissolved into white noise and smoke.

Nadia grabbed Mila, throwing her to the concrete floor as the sound of automatic gunfire erupted from the side doors of the hangar. Hale fired twice at Victor, but the CEO had already dove behind a stack of steel shipping containers, his security team returning fire with suppressing bursts.

"Go! Go!" a voice shouted from the darkness of the hangar’s rear exit.

A man in a grease-stained mechanic’s jumpsuit sprinted toward them, carrying a tactical shotgun. It was Marcus, the chief maintenance engineer for the hangar—and, as Nadia quickly realized, Hale’s inside contact who had helped her track the security threat in the first place.

"The utility tunnel!" Marcus yelled, pointing toward a heavy iron grate in the floor of the tool room. "It leads to the municipal water treatment plant outside the airport boundary! Get them out of here, Rebecca!"

Hale grabbed Nadia’s arm, pulling her toward the tool room. Mila was running beside them, her small hand clutching Nadia's so hard her knuckles were white.

Behind them, the sound of gunfire grew more intense as Victor’s mercenaries breached the hangar. Marcus stood his ground at the door, firing his shotgun to keep the mercenaries back, but a burst of automatic fire struck the metal doorframe beside him, sending a shower of sparks over his face.

"Marcus!" Hale screamed.

"Go!" he roared, sliding a heavy steel shelf across the door of the tool room, wedging it shut. "I’ll block the entrance! Don't look back!"

Daniel, Hale, and Nadia scrambled down the rusted ladder of the utility tunnel. The air inside was freezing and smelled of stagnant water and old iron. Hale pulled the heavy iron grate closed above them, securing it with a thick steel padlock she had taken from the maintenance shelf.

They ran.

The tunnel was barely six feet high, forcing Nadia and Hale to run with their heads bowed. Mila scrambled ahead, her small size giving her an advantage in the tight space. Above them, they could hear the muffled thuds of explosions and sirens, the physical evidence of the chaos that had consumed the airport.

"Where does this lead?" Nadia gasped, her legs burning from the exertion.

"The Jamaica Bay water treatment facility," Hale said, her flashlight beam cutting through the damp darkness. "It’s outside the Port Authority jurisdiction. We have a safe house in Brooklyn. A secure apartment owned by my brother. No one knows about it. Not even my superiors."

"How did Victor know we were at Hangar 17?" Nadia asked.

"The tracking device on my radio," Hale said, realizing with a look of horror. She unclipped her police radio and threw it into the dark, rushing water of the sewer line beside the path. "They weren't tracking you, Nadia. They were tracking me."

They emerged forty minutes later through a storm drain near the marshy banks of Jamaica Bay. The cold wind off the water was a relief after the suffocating air of the tunnels.

In the distance, across the gray water, the smoke from JFK was still visible, a dark scar against the morning sky.