Lethal Velocity

by Lincoln Child

  “Got a count yet?” The automatic counter showed that sixty-one people had entered Station Omega before the doors were shut, but there was always a hope the count was wrong, that there were actually fewer people on the ride than they thought.

  “No. Not in the state that’s in.” The doctor made the merest motion of his head toward the huge, lumpy tarp that covered the rearward floor of the tent. “So far, we’ve processed twenty-seven.”

  Twenty-seven, Allocco thought. Throughout the 1990s, there had been a total of twenty-one deaths at all amusement parks across all fifty states. Last year, there had been only five. Here, in one incomprehensible tragedy, the number was more than ten times as large. It would go down in history, forever haunt the Park. People would always be wondering, when the doors of some thrill ride whispered shut around them, if the same thing might happen again: the sudden stop, the darkness, the panic, the indescribable merciless heat…

  He shook himself back. “Thank you, Doctor. Don’t let me keep you. Until we get an official presence here, I’ll be monitoring the situation from the command post outside. If you need anything at all, just let me know.”

  The doctor glanced at him a moment, then nodded and returned to his chart. Allocco turned away, letting his gaze fall across the tent. At the far end, a man wearing an A-level hazmat suit was lifting a zippered bag from one of the stretchers. The bag was clearly light, maybe forty or fifty pounds. As Allocco watched, the man backed away, pivoted, then carefully laid the bag at the end of a long row of similar bags. Then he turned toward the massive tarp covering the mouth of the ride, held out a heavily gloved hand, lifted an edge to reach beneath. Allocco caught a fleeting glimpse of something—glistening, bright as boiled lobster—before he turned away and ducked back out of the tent.

  IT SEEMED HE had been pacing—down eight steps, turn, eight steps back—for an hour. Probably it hadn’t been more than five minutes. As he’d paced, Fred Barksdale had tried very hard not to think. Thinking would be too painful. And yet despite his best efforts, shame and rage, fear and bafflement and mortification, had begun to settle over his shoulders like a cloak.

  The other occupant of the holding cell had lain down again, closed his eyes. Although they’d met for planning sessions half a dozen times, Barksdale did not know the man’s name. He was simply Cracker Jack. But then, he didn’t know any of their names—they were just aliases, like Water Buffalo, Candyman, or that really frightening chap, Hardball. Barksdale had always felt reassured by this anonymity, as if his ignorance were a kind of protection. Now, he didn’t feel so sure.

  When that strange unknown fellow in the corduroy jacket had appeared out of nowhere—tricking him with that fraudulent KIS story, showing him the gun—Barksdale had simply shut down. The agitation that had been growing inside him over the past week had abruptly dissolved into, strangely enough, a kind of relief. It was over. For better or worse, at least it was over.

  But by the time they’d entered the Security Complex, this numbness had given way to a terrible inner conflict. He hated himself for having started all this; for letting things spiral out of control, for letting John Doe alternately charm and threaten him to such an undignified conclusion. And the talk of casualties in Callisto, vague as it was, felt like a dagger piercing his heart. And yet he’d tried hard to suppress his surprise when they had opened the cell door and revealed Cracker Jack on the cot within: any signs of recognition would only work against him. Despite his pain and self-loathing, Barksdale knew, deep inside, that he was still hoping to beat the rap.

  Cracker Jack opened his eyes, took in the pacing. “So, how ’bout them Lakers?” he asked.

  This drollery received no reply. Barksdale simply quickened his pace, back and forth, back and forth.

  “ ‘I am a man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratched,’ ” he said to himself, too quietly for Cracker Jack to hear.

  He hadn’t been entirely truthful with Sarah, back in Medical. A line of Shakespeare’s had, in fact, come to mind. All may be well. But it had been spoken at such an inappropriate time, and by such an inappropriate person—Claudius, murderer of Hamlet’s father—that he could not bring himself to utter it.

  O, my offense is rank—it smells to heaven…

  He pushed these thoughts away. There would be no consolation in Shakespeare today.

  How had it all gone wrong? It had seemed so simple. All the pieces had slipped so easily into place, almost as if somebody else were assembling the puzzle for him.

  But then again, someone had—if he’d only seen it. And that someone was John Doe.

  It all started with a great anger. Despite being an ideal candidate, he’d been passed over for head of Operations. Even more galling, the powers-that-be had hired someone from Carnegie-Mellon in his place. Sarah Boatwright’s impeccable credentials—positions as executive administrator at Busch Gardens and VP of Administration at a Silicon Valley microchip manufacturer—hadn’t mattered to the outraged Barksdale. The point was that they had hired out of the Park. Chuck Emory, arrogant swine of a CEO, had never really liked him. Barksdale had almost quit in disgust.

  But then, something had occurred to him. Something better than quitting.

  At first, it was just an idea he liked to toy with; an intellectual challenge he found interesting to solve. It was only after he realized just how clever, how perfectly simple, the solution was—and how he, as head of Systems, was the only one in a position to implement it—that he began to think more seriously.

  The answer lay in the high degree to which every process within Utopia was automated. Automation was all-pervasive: from the movement sensors that tracked crowd dispersal throughout the Park; to the computers that monitored and readjusted light, temperature, humidity, water pressure, and countless other environmental variables; to the system that ran the collection and processing of money.

  This last—the Financial Processing System—was a beautiful system indeed. As he spearheaded its development, supervised the implementation, he’d used as his model the networks of Roman roads that once strode across Europe and Asia. He remembered being fascinated by these roads as a child in grammar school. Straight, paved, uniform—the Domitian Way, Aurelian Way, Appian Way, countless others—and all leading back to the milliarium aureum, the Golden Milestone, at the Forum in Rome.

  Utopia, with its imagetags and Park credit cards for guests, had tried to dispense with paper money as much as possible. But there were still countless places throughout the Park—the food vendors and souvenir sellers, holographic photo galleries, T-shirt emporiums, cash-only Embarkation booths—that accepted it. And, unlike other theme parks, Utopia had something else: four vast casinos, whose slots, video poker machines, blackjack tables, and roulette wheels had proved insatiable magnets for cash.

  Barksdale’s Financial Processing System drew money from countless far-flung sites across the Park, channeled it without human intervention to a variety of collection and processing substations, and ultimately deposited it in the central vault on C Level: Utopia’s own financial Forum Romanum. And from there, once a week like clockwork, it was taken off-site by an escorted armored car. It all happened automatically, autonomously, under Systems control. In fact, nothing could interrupt this weekly cycle of collection and delivery but the head of Operations. Only a call from Sarah Boatwright could cancel an armored car pickup. And she would only make such a call if there was a perceived threat to the integrity or stability of the Park.

  But what—Barksdale had wondered to himself—if an armored car came anyway?

  The regular truck from Utopia’s chosen carrier, American Armored Security, might be canceled by Sarah Boatwright. But it was Barksdale’s responsibility to cancel the internal processing, the actual financial disbursal. If it was done cleverly, the systems personnel on C Level would never know that the real armored car had been canceled. Because Barksdale would not act on, or pass on, Sarah’s order. Knowledge would stop with him. And when a replacement armored car rolled i
n, it would be filled within minutes, as usual, and sent on its way, as usual—with what, over the last two months, was averaging a staggering hundred million dollars a week…

  Barksdale paused in his pacing. A hundred million dollars. If he was completely honest with himself, he had to admit that it wasn’t just a noble anger that motivated him. It was the money as well.

  The facade he had always presented to staff and superior alike—Frederick Barksdale, born to the first water of English nobility, rider to hounds—was a sham. He’d grown up in a miserable semidetached house in Clapham, reading moldering books, fantasizing that he was one of the privileged lads attending Eton, or Harrow, or Sandhurst. The idea of working for a living seemed distasteful, beneath him. His real calling, surely, was to tread the boards as a Shakespearean actor, like Gielgud or Olivier. Of course, his parents had no money for such a childish indulgence, despite his obvious flair for acting. So he got a scholarship to Canterbury Technical College, where he soon found he had another aptitude—an aptitude for computer design. After graduation, he secured a systems management position in the States, and his star rose quickly. He soon learned he had yet another aptitude: to don the affectations of an upper-class Englishman. With his gift for voices, his inbred love for the finest things in life, it was easy. The persona developed subtly. Nobody ever questioned him. In time, Barksdale stopped questioning himself. And he began to indulge himself in the way he’d always known he deserved.

  This turned out to be very expensive. Debt multiplied with frightening rapidity. And yet the things he most wanted—the kind of luxury, the civilized life he merited—still remained out of his grasp.

  A hundred million dollars.

  Of course, it could never be done. Not really. Barksdale couldn’t be seen messing with his own systems. And besides, it wasn’t a job for one man. It would require a skilled team, men who knew where to procure such things as uniforms, the truck, everything else. Things that Barksdale himself wouldn’t have the first clue about.

  Although Barksdale was enterprising, rather desperate for money, and full of righteous indignation, he was not particularly brave. The discreet, cryptic advertisements he placed in the Times of London, Punch, and a few other journals known to be read by ex-MI5 members were more a private joke with himself than anything else. Unusual investment opportunity. Successful candidate will have performed with distinction in one of the Special Branches. Sangfroid, high organizational and leadership skills necessary. Small initial investment, large return possible. The fainthearted and morally scrupulous need not apply. Barksdale’s advertisement had satisfied his sense of outrage: look what I could do if I wanted to, it said.

  But then, the ad was answered. And one thing led to another. And now he was here, inside this cell.

  Inside this cell…

  There seemed to be some kind of activity going on beyond the door. Barksdale paused in his pacing to listen. Apparently, still more guards were being called away to deal with whatever had happened in Callisto. The guard that had been visible through the small meshed-glass window was no longer there. At the thought of Callisto, of the security specialist named Chris Green, Barksdale felt a fresh stab of pain. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. That was the promise.

  Cracker Jack, too, was intrigued enough by the noise to get up from his bunk. He walked toward the window, took a look around. Then he rapped on the door. “Hey!” he yelled.

  Nobody answered.

  “Hey!” he yelled, more loudly this time.

  The youthful, acne-scarred face of Lindbergh, the guard, appeared in the window.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” Cracker Jack asked.

  “Later.”

  “Fuck later, man. I gotta go now. What are you going to do, make me shit my pants?”

  On the far side of the window, Lindbergh looked first left, then right. A key jangled in the lock, the door opened slowly.

  “Keep your hands in front of you,” Lindbergh said. He was holding his billy club at the ready. “And don’t try anything. I don’t want to use this on you, but if I have to, I will.”

  Barksdale watched the door shut again, heard the rasp of the lock. He turned away with a sigh. Unlike Cracker Jack, he was unaware that Lindbergh was now the lone remaining guard in Security.

  Barksdale resumed his pacing. Now he could see that the ease with which things had come together—the way the plan had almost assembled itself—was illusory. It was like that terrible kind of dream where one seemingly innocent event leads naturally into another, and then into another, and you go along without thinking until suddenly you’re locked into a nightmare from which waking is the only freedom. A nightmare that had been carefully, deceptively engineered by John Doe.

  Abruptly, Barksdale stopped again. Turning toward the wall, he touched his head to it gently, once, twice. If only he could wake up now.

  And yet it should have worked. Every little problem that cropped up, every potential snare, had been quickly solved. The man who had answered the advertisement, who called himself John Doe—mysterious and elusive though he was—proved supremely shrewd and clever. He was clearly of good breeding, highly cultured, student of Bach and Raphael and Shakespeare, a man that Barksdale could understand. John Doe seemed to genuinely sympathize with him. As planning went on, the man assumed greater and greater control, telling Barksdale precisely what systems needed further explanation or what schematic he wanted copies of. He’d taken care of recruiting, luring Tom Tibbald on board for the lighter inside duties. And it was John Doe who had seen the real potential, beyond anything Barksdale had ever dreamed of. At first, it had been just about the money. But soon it grew into much, much more. John Doe showed him how the very ruse that would convince Sarah Boatwright to invoke emergency procedures—to, among other things, call AAS and cancel the armored car run—could be used to procure the Crucible, a technology worth even more than the cash itself. It would all be quick, almost effortless. Best of all, it could be accomplished without violence.

  In fact, by that point, Barksdale’s only reservation didn’t involve the plan at all. It involved Sarah Boatwright, the woman he had so resented for landing the job as head of Operations. He’d never planned on liking her. He wasn’t even sure how, exactly, it had happened. She wasn’t his type, at all—so sure of herself, so American. He hadn’t tried to charm her, particularly; he had merely been himself. Oddly enough, that was what did it. It was funny, the way their relationship seemed to have developed in lockstep with his own plans for the Park. If either one had come markedly first—his feelings for her, or his scheme to enrich himself—the other would probably never have come about. As it was, he grew increasingly conflicted. But every time he decided to call it off, John Doe would reason with him, cajole him, remind him just how huge his cut of the take was, show him the fallacy of his fears. And Barksdale would realize the man was right. Perhaps, when it was all over, he’d find a way to contact Sarah, to explain. Perhaps—he liked to believe—he could even convince her to join him. Madeira was a beautiful spot, a green nugget of paradise in an azure sea, and…

  But here the train of thought grew very painful. Barksdale shook his head, resumed his pacing.

  He’d almost told her, back there by Georgia Warne’s bedside. He’d come within a heart’s beat of asking her to forgive him, come with him. But now, here in this stark cell, he realized he’d been deluding himself. Sarah would never be able to forgive his betrayal: of her, and perhaps to her mind even worse, of her Park. He could only hope that she’d be able to find happiness elsewhere—perhaps, despite her denials, with Andrew Warne.

  He thought back to what she’d said about John Doe; about the way he seemed to see into her soul, say precisely what she wanted to hear. The same thing had happened to him. John Doe had appeared as the well-bred Britisher Barksdale had always secretly ached to be. His credentials had been impeccable. He’d treated Barksdale as an equal, in social class as well as intelligence. How surprised Barksdale was to finally learn th
at this chameleon-like performance was as fraudulent as the credentials were genuine.

  Other surprises were to follow. The boy who got hurt on Notting Hill Chase—that wasn’t supposed to happen. John Doe had been contrite, assuring him no other such glitch would occur. But the biggest surprise of all had come today, when Andrew Warne showed up a week early.

  Warne’s arrival was a given, of course. The very nature of the plan assured he’d show up, sooner or later, to debug the Metanet. It had been Barksdale’s idea: to use John Doe’s team, posing as KIS operatives, to insert rogue software into the Utopia Net. And John Doe had come up with the clever scheme of having Cracker Jack pose as an outside hacker, feeling around Utopia’s firewall, trying half-heartedly to break in. His attacks had been unsuccessful—of course—but they’d had the desired result of a sudden demand among Utopia’s board for instant action. That had allowed Barksdale to involve KIS—or, rather, the phony KIS—at somebody else’s behest. It kept him above suspicion. And the board’s habitual secrecy allowed him to make all the necessary contacts himself. Utopia had a ten-week billing cycle, and eventually somebody would question why KIS never sent a bill for their services. But by that time the operation, and Barksdale’s own role in it, would already be well known. And Barksdale himself would be far, far away.

  Warne was supposed to arrive a week from today. But instead, he’d shown up this morning, the very worst time for a surprise. And that was when the first feelings of real foreboding had begun to crawl up Barksdale’s spine. But by now, of course, John Doe was alternating his affable reassurances with rather terrifying threats. He made little attempt to disguise, any longer, his true contempt for Barksdale. Even the man’s own allusions to Shakespeare had taken on a cynical, taunting edge. So there was nothing for it but to continue the operation, despite his feelings of…

  There was a noise in the hallway. It was Cracker Jack, on his way back from the bathroom. Spent quite some time in there, Barksdale thought disinterestedly. The key rattled in the lock, the door opened. Barksdale turned to see Lindbergh framed in the doorway, one hand on his billy club, the other grasping the door handle. Beside him stood Cracker Jack. This time the hacker’s hands were not in front of him, but behind his back.