Lethal Velocity

by Lincoln Child

  Suddenly, he stopped, limbs tense, listening. He opened his mouth to call out a challenge, but some sixth sense told him to stay quiet.

  Then something strange happened: his right hand dropped toward his belt. Only to clutch empty air.

  Allocco looked down at his hand with a numb kind of disbelief.

  Years before—in another life—he had been a member of the Boston police force. He had not pulled a gun in the line of duty in a dozen years: what kind of atavistic impulse would prompt him to reach for one now?

  He looked back down the catwalk, shining the penlight into the darkness, searching for a flicker of movement, a glint of metal—anything that might represent a threat. His heart was racing, his instincts still going off three-alarm. But there was no sound, no hint of motion, and after several minutes he forced himself to relax. With a sigh, he straightened up, reaching for his radio, bringing it to his lips. Then he dropped it back into his pocket. He was already at the sensor. What good would it do to call in a backup team now?

  He shook his head at his own foolishness. He’d allowed John Doe to spook him. Thank God Sarah Boatwright couldn’t see him now. She hated weakness of any kind. And here he was: sweating, panting, heart pounding in his chest like some rookie cop on his first taste of action. It was embarrassing, unprofessional. For all he knew, the guy was just a bullshit artist. It was a game, like the phony bomb threats they got so routinely. What kind of terrorists, or thugs, or professional mercenaries, or whatever, would assault a theme park? Utopia had nothing they wanted.

  Laughing quietly to himself, Allocco eased forward once again, penlight sweeping the catwalk in search of the defective sensor. There it was: near the ground, in the same position as the last, maybe twenty feet ahead.

  Instantly, he could see the sensor was not defective. There was something there—something in the path of the beam.

  Allocco crept forward, more slowly now. Then he drew in his breath with a sharp rasp.

  “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. He sank to his knees, eyes riveted to the floor ahead of him.

  Now he knew—beyond any trace of doubt—that, whatever else was going on here, it was most definitely not a game.

  SARAH BOATWRIGHT WATCHED as Allocco carefully shut and locked the door to her office. He jerked the blind cord, shutting out the view of the corridor beyond. Then he came forward, placing a metal case on the conference table. Fred Barksdale, who had been standing on the far side of the room, stepped up. He was frowning, the aristocratic curve of his lips compressed into a hard line.

  Sarah leaned forward in her chair. “Okay, Bob. Let’s hear it.”

  Allocco’s face was red, and beneath the suit jacket his shirt was damp with perspiration. “I’ve got the laser safety officer examining the unit. He thinks it overcharged. Fired at over three hundred watts instead of the rated thirty. Ripped the hell out of it, the head’s totally destroyed.”

  “That’s not possible. The Park only uses Class 2 lasers, and they’re not—” Sarah stopped. “Was the laser robot-controlled?”

  “Yup. Ran along a suspended line, tracking a signal on the poor jerk’s helmet.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “The Metanet again,” Barksdale said in a low tone.

  “I’m just getting started,” Allocco went on. “There were reports of something tripping an intrusion sensor in Griffin Tower. I checked it out. And found this.”

  He snapped the locks on the case, swung it open, and hefted something out by the edges. To Sarah, it looked like a plank of gray plasticine, wrapped in a clear membrane that was stamped with a series of numbers.

  Allocco placed the plank very carefully on the surface of the table. “C-4,” he said.

  “C-4?” Sarah echoed, standing up to take a closer look.

  “High explosive. Military grade. Five-pound package.”

  Sarah froze midstep. Then—slowly—she sat back down behind her desk, eyes on the gray brick.

  “I found it on a catwalk in the tower. It had been deliberately placed against the intrusion sensor.”

  “My God,” Barksdale said. “They planned to blow up the tower.”

  Allocco shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “And why the bloody hell not?”

  A strange little smile came across Allocco’s face. “Because look what I found stuck in it for a detonator.”

  He dipped his hand into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled something out: a Tootsie Pop, wrapped in purple paper.

  Nobody spoke. Sarah stared at the round little lollipop, balanced on the end of its white stick.

  “Grape,” she murmured.

  “I talked to the stagehands, the catwalk jockeys. Nobody saw anything. But somehow, somebody managed to elude all the sensors, place the explosive, and get away.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Barksdale said.

  “I think I do.” Allocco laid the lollipop beside the case. “He’s simply telling us he can hurt people. Destroy rides with impunity. In fact, now that I think about it, all these glitches we’ve been noticing may not have been glitches at all. We got our show: and I think our friend John Doe’s sending us a double message. That he controls both the vertical and the horizontal.”

  Barksdale looked from Allocco to Sarah, then back again.

  “What Bob’s saying is they’ve got us both ways.” Sarah spoke slowly, carefully. She was aware of several feelings—surprise, concern, anger—and she did not want any of them to cloud the decisions she had to make now. “They’ve reprogrammed some of the robots to wreak havoc around the Park—loosen the brakes on roller coasters, overload lasers. But they’ve also got the means to blow us to hell and gone.”

  “What was it John Doe told you he wanted to do?” Allocco said. “Dispel any lingering doubts? Well, I’m a believer.” He walked toward the desk, picked up Sarah’s phone.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Ordering a level 1 phased evacuation of the Park,” he said, dialing. “Then I’m going to contact the state police. My pals in Troop E will be very interested to hear about this. We’ll need two, maybe three SORT teams, as well as plainclothes federal agents trained in crowd dispersal within a fire zone—”

  Barksdale stepped forward and abruptly placed his hand over the phone’s switch hook. It was such an uncharacteristic gesture for the CTO, so full of unseemly haste, that Sarah stared at him in surprise.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Allocco roared.

  “I might ask you the same question. Don’t you recall why they gave us this demonstration? To warn us against making rash moves.”

  Allocco glared. Without a word, he raised the handset again.

  “Put down that phone,” Sarah said instantly.

  Allocco froze, looking at her, conflict clear on his face. But Sarah’s tone of cold command could not be resisted. The security director released his grip, letting the handset drop into its cradle.

  “Before we do precisely what we were warned not to, we need to learn more about what we’re dealing with,” she said, softening her voice slightly.

  Allocco was still looking at her. “What we’re dealing with? Let me tell you what we’re dealing with. I watched the guests leaving Griffin Tower after the show. Guess what? They all had a great time. Nobody knew—nobody had the faintest inkling—that somebody got hurt.” He waved his hand at the explosive. “If that semtex had detonated, it would have blown away the inside wall of the tower. Sent it crashing down into an audience of three thousand people. It would have brought the house down—literally. And do you know what would happen? They’d be loving it—right up to the moment it crushed the life out of them. Because they’d just seen another tower come crashing down on the other side of the theater. A crash that was part of the show.”

  He walked slowly around the table, then approached Sarah’s desk again. “We have, what, 66,000-odd guests here today? And not one of them retains even an infant’s sense of self-preservati
on. They checked their fight-or-flight instincts at the door. That’s what they’re paying for. They see a fire, hear an explosion, feel their roller coaster begin to shear off its track—what are they gonna do? Laugh all the harder. Because they think it’s part of the act. That makes every last one of them a sitting duck.”

  He turned to Barksdale. “How many robots do we have operating in the Park?”

  Barksdale thought a moment. “Connected to the Metanet, you mean? After last month’s cutback, eighty, plus or minus five.”

  “Eighty, any one of them a potential time bomb. Even if we could take them all offline without creating major problems, there’s no time to get to every one of them. But it’s not just the bots. We’ve given this John Doe the perfect playing field.” He leaned across the desk. “He planted explosives in the walls of Griffin Tower. But he could just as well have sabotaged the gas lines for the flame effects. Or—”

  “And that’s precisely the point!” said Barksdale. “You said it yourself. We can’t check everything. These beggars hold all the cards. We’ve got our guests’ lives to consider. Right now, evacuation, calling in the police, is not an option.”

  “Excuse me, but that’s the only option. We’re not equipped to defend ourselves against this kind of threat.” Allocco gestured at the plastic explosive. “As for our guests, do you think the people who planted this give a shit whether a bunch of tourists live or die?”

  “Probably not,” Barksdale replied. “That’s precisely why we can’t incite them.”

  The two men turned toward Sarah, as if appealing for a ruling. She returned their gazes: Allocco, stone-faced and resolute; Barksdale, distress evident on his patrician features.

  “We’re not calling in the police,” she said.

  Relief broke like a wave across Barksdale’s face, while Allocco flushed deeply. “What?” he said. “Are you simply going to lie down for this bastard?”

  “No,” Sarah said. “I’m not going to lie down for him.” As she spoke, she felt her jaw harden as cold anger displaced other emotions. The arrogance with which John Doe had sauntered into her office, drunk her tea, made his demands. Caressed her face. The way he was deliberately, almost casually, violating her Park, hurting her people…He had assumed she would simply roll over before his threats. He had assumed wrong.

  “John Doe told me he’s watching the entrances and exits,” she said. “He implied guests will be killed if we evacuate. I have no reason to think he’s lying. And flooding Utopia with cops isn’t the answer. We’ll deal with John Doe. But on our terms, and with our people.” She turned toward Barksdale. “Fred, you said they hold all the cards. I don’t think so. This is our Park. And that gives us a home court advantage.”

  Barksdale raised his hand to protest. Then he dropped it again, drew back.

  “But first things first. They implied they were watching the monorail, so we can’t do a general evac—not yet, anyway. So we’ll start with limited bomb threat procedures. Bob, put the security leads on alert. But no details. Round up the VIPs, get them into the hospitality suite. Tell them the president’s coming, tell them anything, but get them there. Meanwhile, I’ll put in a call to Vegas, cancel the milk run. Fred, you’ll alert your financial processing staff?”

  Barksdale nodded. Although most financial transactions in the park went through the credit lines on the guests’ passcards, cash was still used in many places, particularly at the casinos. The “milk run” was Utopia-speak for the weekly armored car run from Las Vegas.

  Sarah looked back at Allocco. “We can’t close down the entrances. But let’s start taking the ticket booths out of service a little early: say, four every half hour. We can move up the monorail schedule by a couple of hours, increase outflow.”

  “We can take one or two A-list attractions offline,” Allocco said. “If people think they’ve seen everything, or if the lines start getting too long, they might decide to leave early.”

  “Very well, but keep it low-profile. And let’s get that robot assembly from Griffin Tower down to Terri Bonifacio’s office. Dr. Warne should take a look at it. Maybe there’s some commonality we can use to find which other bots have been tampered with.”

  “I can do that right now.” Allocco reached once again for the phone.

  Barksdale watched him, frowning. Then he turned to Sarah. “But if you want to keep things quiet—”

  “We won’t tell Andrew any more than we have to. But right now, we need his kind of help. Especially since…” She paused. “Especially since it looks like the Metanet may not be to blame, after all.”

  Barksdale stood beside her, smoothing his tie with an absent hand, a troubled look on his face. Sarah felt a sudden, unexpected throb of affection. Then, quite consciously, she put it away. There would be time, later.

  “What’s on your mind, Fred?” she asked.

  “I’m just having difficulty understanding this. If the Metanet isn’t dodgy, then what could be happening? How could these chaps be downloading instructions to the bots? Our site’s totally secure. There’s no way anybody on the outside could…”

  Barksdale fell silent. The only sound in the office was Allocco hanging up the phone.

  Sarah watched Barksdale’s face intently. Freddy Barksdale was the most polished and charming man she had ever met. But he was also a strange hybrid: a youth of privilege spent in English public schools, a career spent in the upper echelons of Information Services. If there was a problem, he turned, by instinct, toward machine failure. It would not occur to him to consider the possibility of human failure or betrayal. That was not cricket, not sporting. Simply not the way it was done. But now, as she watched, Sarah could see something dawning in his eyes—the glimmerings of something she already knew must be the truth.

  “Freddy,” she said, lowering her voice, “I want you to get me a list of everybody on your IT staff with the access and the skills to pull off this kind of thing. And which of them are on-site today.”

  Barksdale stood still for a moment, as if the mere thought had frozen him to stone. Then he nodded slowly.

  “And I think you should do it now.”

  Barksdale turned to leave.

  “And Fred? Keep quiet. Keep as quiet as the grave.”

  Sarah watched the door close behind Barksdale. Then she pulled her eyes away and turned toward Allocco.

  “I want you to do the same,” she said. “Get me a short-list of security personnel with either the means or the motivation. Anyone with a beef about their job, a grudge against their boss. Anyone with a drug problem, a money problem.”

  As Sarah said these last words, a far more significant look passed briefly between them. Then Allocco nodded.

  “This tech of yours, Ralph Peccam. Has he found anything?”

  “He’s still checking the video logs.”

  Sarah paused, thinking. “He couldn’t have staged that glitch in the Hive himself, could he? When we lost the video tail on John Doe?”

  “No. At least, not without adequate preparation.”

  “You said he used to work in Systems. You have complete confidence in him?”

  “I’ll vouch for him personally. He wouldn’t be involved in this kind of thing. I know him too well for that.”

  Sarah nodded. “Very well. Keep him on the logs, then.” She walked away from the table, toward a cutaway diagram of the Park. “You’ve got my ear, Bob. If you can come up with a plan to end this preemptively, without undue risk to our Park or our guests, I want to hear about it.”

  She was interrupted by a low buzzing noise.

  For a moment, Sarah didn’t recognize the sound. And then, with an electric current of recognition, she wondered how she could have forgotten it, even for a moment.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the small radio.

  “Ms. Boatwright?” came the pleasant, mildly accented voice of John Doe. “Sarah?”

  Sarah glanced at Allocco. The security director dug into a pocket, pulled out a microc
assette recorder, and tossed it to her.

  “Sarah? Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” she replied, snapping on the recorder and holding it close to the radio.

  “Did you see our 1:30 show?”

  “Not personally. I heard the reviews.”

  “So we can get down to business without any further unpleasantness?”

  “Get on with it.”

  “As you wish. I’ve got a little story to tell you. Please listen very carefully. It isn’t long, and I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

  “CAN I USE one of these terminals to access the Net?” Georgia had beaten the last Game Boy level and was now sitting disconsolately on the floor, cross-legged, throwing a wadded paper ball out for Wingnut to fetch. “I’d like to, maybe, download some Duke Ellington stuff.”

  Across the lab, Terri Bonifacio was industriously spreading brown shrimp paste over a slice of green mango. “No can do, kiddo.”

  Georgia looked around at the dozen vacant computer terminals with a look that clearly said, What, you can’t spare even one of these?

  Terri caught the look and grinned. “It’s a sealed system, no portals to the outside. Too big a security risk. I’ve got a bunch of bootlegged Guns N’ Roses concerts, though, if you’re interested.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Warne had been staring at the Metanet terminal. Now, he pushed himself away and glanced blearily over. “She went through her California postpunk hard-rock phase last December.” His eye fell on the mango. “I’m sorry, but that looks really disgusting.”

  “You got off lucky. Some days, I bring dinuguan for lunch.”

  “I’m afraid to ask what that is.”

  “Pig’s head, heart, and liver, in a sauce of pig’s blood. And then there’s balun-balunan, which—”

  “Okay, okay.”

  From her position on the floor, Georgia made an elaborate pantomime of sticking a finger down her throat. Terri’s grin widened.

  Georgia tossed the wad of paper toward a far corner of the lab. Immediately, the robot shot after it, sensor swiveling away. Reaching the paper, Wingnut’s pan-tilt head assembly bent forward, large, mouthlike pincers opening. It grasped the ball between the pincers and rolled back toward Georgia at an alarming speed—still managing, however, to drop the paper into her outstretched hand with surprising gentleness.