Lethal Velocity

by Lincoln Child

  “Not to worry,” John Doe said. “We’ll give Water Buffalo a few minutes more. Then we leave.”

  “Shall I get out, open the hood?” Crowe asked.

  John Doe shook his head. “Don’t bother. The cameras are neutralized. Right?”

  The driver looked out the transparent armor of the window. He peered into the oversize rearview mirror, then into the convex mirror on the cowling above the front wheel well.

  “That’s affirmative,” he said. And then he looked away again, glancing back toward the scanner monitoring Utopia’s security traffic.

  As a result, he did not see a man—little more than a youth, really: freckled, scared, with rheumy eyes and a nose almost as red as his hair—creep nervously out of an emergency exit behind the truck, affix something resembling a watchband to the underside of the rear bumper, then creep back out of sight once again.

  WARNE MOVED DOWN the corridor as quickly as he dared. Beneath one arm, he held half a dozen empty mortars: resin-bonded black tubes, with stenciled numbers on their ends designating charge capacity. Beneath his other arm were a variety of aerial shells, encased in their clear plastic wrapping. He hugged them protectively against himself: Smythe had warned him, in unpleasant detail, about what could happen to Goex powder or flash composition if it was rudely dropped onto a concrete floor.

  Behind him came Smythe himself, arms full of bulky, brown-wrapped maroons and a variety of other things Warne didn’t recognize. And behind Smythe came Wingnut, moving forward with short, swift jerks. Four heavy salutes had been taped to his locomotion array, long fuses of tightly wrapped tan-colored paper trailing away behind.

  The corridor was deserted. In an absent, detached kind of way, Warne noticed that the doors they were passing—props for seasonal performances, holography and video storage, water filtration substation—were all infrequently visited areas not inconvenienced by being sealed off during the weekly armored car runs. Since the vault tone had sounded, Smythe’s high-security passcard had allowed them access to the restricted area. But it wouldn’t be until the all-clear was given that the bulk of Utopia’s cast and crew would be allowed back into these corridors.

  “You’re sure this is the way?” Warne called over his shoulder.

  Smythe, who was out of breath and struggling to retain a tight hold on his burden, did not reply. Warne glanced back. The pyrotechnist’s face held a variety of emotions: dismay, disapproval, concern. He wondered what the guy would have done if he’d explained his plan in detail. Would he have agreed it was the only possible way? Or would he have refused point-blank?

  As they ran, an odor was gradually introduced into the cool, normally unscented air of the Underground: the stench of diesel fumes. Are we too late? he wondered with a sudden spasm of anxiety. Too long a time had passed, the all-clear should have sounded. John Doe and his boys would have been eager to leave. If they already had the money, why would they still be here?

  And then he heard something over the echoing clatter of their footsteps: the sound of an idling diesel. It was a low, throaty growl, intensely out of place in these concrete corridors. He remembered what Amanda Freeman had told him during his entrance processing: The only nonelectric vehicle allowed is the armored car that makes a weekly pickup.

  Warne slowed. Up ahead, the hallway dead-ended in another, wider corridor that ran away in opposite directions. To the left, Warne saw, or thought he saw, the faintest hint of daylight illuminating the concrete walls.

  He turned back toward Smythe, pointing, asking a wordless question. Smythe nodded in reply. That was it: the access corridor.

  Warne continued toward the T-intersection at a much slower pace. The idling of the diesel was clearly coming from the right side of the access corridor. That meant the armored car would have to pass directly across Warne’s line of sight in order to exit the Underground.

  A strange rush of feelings passed through him. One was relief: against all hope, they’d arrived in time. Another was naked fear. And still another: what was he—rebel theoretician of symposium and laboratory—doing here? Right now he should be trying to resuscitate a sinking career: writing for a scientific journal, doing lab research. Why was he here, of all places?

  He’d asked himself the question before. And again, the same answer came back. He shouldn’t be here. But there was nobody else. He was the only one who had any chance of stopping these people from imploding the dome. And to do that, he had to keep them from leaving the Underground.

  A hundred feet from the intersection, he stopped. Kneeling, fingers trembling slightly, he set the tubes on the ground. Wingnut waited nearby, his normal seesaw motion subdued. He seemed to be still trying to adjust his movements to the added weight of the four large cakes of black powder, wrapped in cartridge paper and strapped to his back. If he could have looked unhappy, he would have.

  Warne placed the shells beside the mortars. “What comes next?” he asked Smythe as calmly as he could.

  The little man was placing his own burden carefully on the ground. “Well, in a manually fired show, you’d sandbag the mortars. Check each shell in the display for loose powder. If there are broken suspenders, you’d need to repair them so the lead is secured to the end of the shell.”

  Warne listened, gritting his teeth. The stink of the diesel exhaust, the growl of the invisible truck, seemed to intensify. And yet he sensed there was no way to rush this: Smythe had to explain.

  “And how do you angle the shell?” he asked.

  Smythe looked at him, smoothing his tiny mustache with the fingers of one hand. “Pardon me?”

  “I said, how do you angle the shell? Say you want to shoot it horizontally, not vertically.”

  “But that’s just not done.” Smythe looked surprised, almost affronted, as if the idea had never occurred to him before. “These shells have propelling charges that lift them hundreds of feet in the air. That’s the equivalent of several sticks of dynamite. No fire marshal would allow it. Why, the separation distance, the fallout area, would be exponentially greater than a normal—”

  “Mr. Smythe,” Warne interrupted. “We’re not dealing with anything normal right now. Tell me how it’s done.”

  Smythe’s fingers froze, but the look of surprise remained. “Well, I suppose the procedure would be about the same. Lower the shell into the mortar, make sure it slides freely. Make sure the shell rests squarely on the bottom. Then you would—” Smythe stopped, and a sour expression came over his face. “Then you would place the mortar on its side. Not directly horizontal, of course. That would…” He shook his head, clucking to himself at the thought.

  “I see.” Warne pointed to one of the largest shells. “Show me, with that one there. The—”

  “Golden willow.”

  “Golden willow, right.”

  Smythe carefully tore the plastic wrapping from the shell, checked the heavy lifting charge fixed to its base, untied the twist holding the quickmatch fuse, unlooped it. And then, holding the shell by the end of its fuse, he lowered it gingerly into one of the large black mortars, raised it again, lowered it. Satisfied with the fit, he draped the end of the quickmatch over the side. Then he took one of the smallest mortar tubes, lay it perpendicularly on the ground, and—much more slowly—lowered the charged mortar so it was resting at an angle atop the little tube.

  Warne nodded. “I see. Now, how do you light it?”

  “Light it?”

  Warne nodded. The roar of the diesel was louder now, the driver revving his engine.

  “Why would you want to know?”

  “Because I’m going to fire it, Mr. Smythe.”

  The pyrotechnist’s look of surprise deepened abruptly. “Fire it? But why?”

  There was time only for a brief explanation or a threat. Warne chose the former.

  “Because some very dangerous men are about to come down that passageway. In an armored car. If we let them escape, they’ll blow up the dome over Utopia. Destroy the Park. We’re not going to let them
escape.”

  Behind them, a maintenance hatchway opened and Peccam appeared. He glanced down the hall in both directions, then came forward to join them. There was dust on his knees and a hunted look in his eyes.

  Smythe didn’t bother to look over. “You’re going to fire a golden willow—in here?”

  “If I have to, Mr. Smythe. That, and the, the whatever you call it, the double chrysanthemum, if necessary. But first I’ve got Wingnut here, loaded to the gills with black powder, as you can see. I’m going to send him into the truck.”

  Smythe’s eyes had grown wide. “So you mean…” he began. “You mean that this might be dangerous?”

  Warne shut up. The look of shock and disbelief on the pyrotechnist’s face was ludicrous, indescribable. Perhaps the man had been fooling himself into thinking this was all some kind of emergency drill. Or maybe he thought it was some undercover test by Utopia management. Whatever the case—with his heart hammering double time in his chest, the stink of diesel fumes swirling around the exhaust vents, the grinding of the truck around the corner—Warne suddenly began to laugh. He laughed until the sound echoed off the walls of the Underground, drowning even the noise of the idling diesel. And then, as the laughter died away, a single, choking sob took its place.

  “Yes, Mr. Smythe,” he said, dabbing at his eyes. “I guess it might be dangerous, at that.”

  Peccam came up behind the pyrotechnist. “Just show him how to light these before you run away,” he said.

  Smythe looked back at Peccam, then at Warne. He nodded quickly several times, wordlessly, then removed his glasses and began wiping them unsteadily with his shirttail.

  “You okay?” Warne asked Peccam. “The echolocator’s in place?”

  Peccam nodded.

  “Okay.” Warne moved toward Wingnut, flipped a battery of switches on the robot’s processing panel. Then he stepped back. “See those buttons on Wingnut’s upper housing? When I give the signal, press the second switch from the left. Normally, he’s programmed to follow his avatar. That’s me. But I’ve just modified things so that pressing that switch will override the programming, go right to the firmware. He’ll home in on the echolocator, wherever it is. Those heavy charges on his back are what will take out the armored car; we’ll just use the fireworks to keep anybody inside from escaping. Got it? So when the car—” He stopped as he noticed the expression on Peccam’s face. “What is it?”

  Peccam gestured down the corridor, toward the intersection. “It won’t take that armored car more than a second or two to pass by our field of view. How are you planning to do all this in such a short space of time?”

  Warne stared back, aghast. In the frantic burst of planning, he’d never even stopped to consider this.

  “We’ve got to find some way to stop the thing, then,” he said. “Make it stop for a moment when it reaches the intersection.”

  But, with a rising despair, he realized there was no way to make it stop. Poole’s words came back to him: I’m not throwing my body down in front of an armored car in hopes it’ll stop. He’d been right. There wasn’t any—

  And then, suddenly, he remembered something.

  “Stay here,” he told Smythe. Then he turned to Peccam and beckoned urgently. “Come with me.”

  Warne ran back down the corridor, Peccam at his heels. He came to a stop before the door he’d noticed earlier: Holography and Video Storage. He grasped the knob. It was locked; Peccam swiped his passcard through the nearby reader and the door clicked open. Warne darted inside, flicking on the light and frantically scanning the crowded storage room. They’ve had the upper hand all day, he thought. We’ve never had a chance. Once, just once, cut us a break.

  There it was: the low black cylindrical housing he’d hoped to find. It was sitting in a far corner, beside two others just like it—a portable holographic display unit, like the one Terri had demonstrated to him in her office that morning.

  He ran up to it, then rolled it forward on its large wheels. Peccam watched him curiously, eyes narrowed. They widened suddenly as understanding dawned.

  “Do we have time?” he asked.

  Warne stopped to listen. The diesel was fainter here, but he could hear that it was still idling. “We’ve got to try,” he said.

  “But if that truck starts to move before—”

  Warne made a silencing motion with his hand. “One thing at a time. Let’s go.”

  And, pushing the low cylinder ahead of him as quickly as he could, he led the way out of the room and back down the corridor.

  TERRI PACED THE small front office of the Security Complex. She realized that, unconsciously, she was clenching and unclenching her fists. She forced herself to stop. Where was Andrew? What was going on? Was he all right? It was agonizing, this waiting, this uncertainty. She glanced out of the office, over the front desk, toward the door leading out into the corridors of C Level. The doctor had left it wide open when he’d come rushing in a few minutes earlier. She felt her fists balling again. Then she glanced back at Georgia, stirring restlessly in the wheelchair.

  No matter what, she reminded herself. No matter what.

  A minute before, maybe two minutes, the crying had started. It was faint, muffled by the intervening walls. Although Terri could not picture the Park chief shedding tears for anyone, she knew the voice could only be Sarah’s. Her agitation increased, and she quickened her step.

  There was a rustling behind her, and she looked over. Georgia was standing up, supporting herself with the wheelchair. The girl blinked once, twice, stupidly. Still groggy, Terri thought. Whether from the sedative or the shock of the day’s events, she didn’t know.

  Georgia took a shuffling step forward, then another. She was headed toward the door of the office. Toward the sound.

  Terri put a gentle hand on her arm. “Where are you going, Georgia?”

  “I’m looking for my dad. I thought I heard his voice.”

  “Your dad’s not here right now.”

  Georgia looked at her for the first time. The eyes were growing clearer, the fogginess beginning to lift. “Where is he?”

  Terri licked her lips. “I’m not sure, exactly. He—he’s gone to take care of something.”

  Still looking at her, Georgia blinked.

  “He left a message for you. He said he’ll be back soon. He said that we’re supposed to take care of each other until then.”

  Suddenly, Sarah’s voice cut through the dead air: “Freddy, you can’t leave. Do you hear me? Stay, Freddy. Please.”

  Georgia’s head perked up. “Who is that?”

  Terri was silent as the crying recommenced.

  “It sounds like Sarah.” Georgia turned back. “Is that Sarah? What’s the matter?”

  Still, Terri hesitated. What should I say? She had no idea how Warne would have responded, what he’d want her to do.

  If it was me, I’d want to know the truth.

  With a slight pressure on the girl’s forearm, she turned Georgia toward her. “Do you remember that meeting this morning, with the other grown-ups?”

  Georgia nodded.

  Terri reached out for Georgia’s other arm. “You remember the man, the one with the accent?”

  Georgia nodded again.

  “Well, he’s been hurt, badly. Sarah is upset. She’s trying to take care of him.”

  “Shouldn’t we help them?”

  “I think Sarah needs to be left alone right now. But it’s nice of you to offer like that. I know she’d appreciate it.”

  From the rear of the Security Complex, the crying increased. It was a harrowing sound: inconsolable, utterly alone. Georgia listened a moment. Then she turned back, raised her eyes to Terri’s, alive with a look Terri did not fully understand. Slowly, her eyes dropped toward the ground.

  Through everything, even the ordeal in the medical laundry, Georgia had maintained an outward stoicism. But now, the beautiful face suddenly crumpled. Her lips trembled, then parted. Tears welled in her eyes.

>   Impulsively, Terri drew the girl close—much as Warne had done for her, in this same spot, not long before. And then, abruptly, Georgia dissolved into tears. It was as if a dam, long under pressure, had finally given way. For a minute, perhaps two, she simply let Georgia sob, stroking her hair lightly.

  “Grown-ups aren’t supposed to cry,” the girl said at last.

  “Grown-ups cry, too,” Terri replied, still stroking her hair. “Haven’t you seen—I don’t know—your dad cry?”

  Georgia answered with more sobs. “Once.”

  The room fell silent, save for Georgia’s slowing sobs, the distant crying.

  “Do you have any sisters?” Georgia asked with a sniff.

  The question was so unexpected that, for a moment, Terri stopped stroking Georgia’s hair. “Nope,” she said after a moment. “I’m an only child. Not too common in a country as Catholic as the Philippines, either.”

  “I always wanted to have a sister,” Georgia murmured.

  Terri’s only response was to resume stroking her hair.

  “What was it my dad told us to do?” Georgia asked a few moments later.

  “To stay here. Watch each other, stand guard. Protect Sarah.”

  Georgia pulled away. “Stand guard?” The fear had come into her damp eyes so quickly that it could never have been far. “Do you think he’s going to come back—that man with the gun?”

  Terri drew her close once again. “No, honey. I don’t think so. But we need to stand guard, just the same.”

  Georgia stirred in the embrace. “Don’t you think we should close the door?”

  Terri glanced over. In her own lingering shock, she had forgotten the doctor had left the main entrance to Security open.

  She nodded. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

  Gently, she detached herself from Georgia, made her way out into the waiting area.

  “Maybe…maybe you should lock it, too.”

  Terri walked across the sparkling tile floor of the anteroom, stuck her head warily out the door, glanced up and down the corridor. It was deserted. Somewhere far away, an alarm was ringing. She closed the door, locked it carefully, made sure it was secure.