Fires of Midnight (31 page)
Authors: Jon Land
The first rescue team arrived in helicopters that could land no closer than a mile from the remnants of the facility due to the still scorching heat. Ten men began the difficult trek through air choked with smoke, following its thickening clouds north toward the rubble.
S
usan Lyle held the cellular phone blankly against her ear for several moments after Killebrew’s recorded voice had completed its message. She could have replayed it but there was no reason; she had heard his words clearly enough. She just didn’t want to believe them.
usan Lyle held the cellular phone blankly against her ear for several moments after Killebrew’s recorded voice had completed its message. She could have replayed it but there was no reason; she had heard his words clearly enough. She just didn’t want to believe them.
“You said someone blew up the containment facility,” she posed to Belamo.
“In a big way.”
“Was there … a fire?”
“Still burning, last I heard.”
Susan pressed a number of keys on the cellular and then handed it to McCracken. “You better listen to this.”
T
he rescue team was passing through a blanket of thick, coarse smoke within sight of the containment facility’s remnants when those in the lead suddenly clutched their throats. The men further back could barely even see them through the daytime darkness and didn’t realize anything was wrong until the first ones in their party dropped and began to roll downward, writhing and twitching.
he rescue team was passing through a blanket of thick, coarse smoke within sight of the containment facility’s remnants when those in the lead suddenly clutched their throats. The men further back could barely even see them through the daytime darkness and didn’t realize anything was wrong until the first ones in their party dropped and began to roll downward, writhing and twitching.
The men bringing up the rear were the only ones to catch a glimpse of their friends’ bodies shriveling up in front of their very eyes before they turned and tried desperately to escape. One managed to yank his walkie-talkie free and was halfway through the word “Mayday” when he heard a sound like paper being crinkled. He realized with cold terror that it was coming from inside him. He started to scream but his mouth locked open in the middle of trying, and he dropped to the ground in spasm, tumbling to his death with the others.
“I
f Killebrew’s findings were correct, that fire will have brought CLAIR back to life,” Susan said, when the message he had left on her voice mail finished playing in McCracken’s ear. “Released it to spread unchecked.”
f Killebrew’s findings were correct, that fire will have brought CLAIR back to life,” Susan said, when the message he had left on her voice mail finished playing in McCracken’s ear. “Released it to spread unchecked.”
“Can it be stopped?”
“If we can find Joshua Wolfe, there’s a chance. He’s the only one who understands how CLAIR functions intimately enough to stop it.”
“Then it doesn’t matter if the kid mixes CLAIR with whatever he created in Group Six once he gets to Disney World,” Blaine concluded. “You’re saying the Fires of Midnight have already been released.”
“And right now that makes Joshua Wolfe the only one who can put them out.”
“M
ister, I really wish somebody would tell me exactly what the hell is going on,” Turk Wills snapped. He was in the Magic Kingdom security office located above an old-fashioned ice cream shop on Main Street U.S.A. Six A.M. on the Fourth of July, Wills hadn’t been through his coffee yet, and here he was talking to a tense man in a crisply pressed business suit that looked all wrong for the day.
ister, I really wish somebody would tell me exactly what the hell is going on,” Turk Wills snapped. He was in the Magic Kingdom security office located above an old-fashioned ice cream shop on Main Street U.S.A. Six A.M. on the Fourth of July, Wills hadn’t been through his coffee yet, and here he was talking to a tense man in a crisply pressed business suit that looked all wrong for the day.
“It’s ‘Colonel,’ if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind. I mind you army types coming down here and telling me how to do my job without telling me what you’re really here for.”
Fuchs rolled his neck, searching for comfort in civilian clothes. “You know what you need to know, Mr. Wills. I believe Washington was very clear on that point. Have you circulated the pictures?”
“Sure, of the kid and—”
“Stick with him first, please.”
“All my people in the Kingdom got the shots. Be nice if I knew why it was so important that we find him.”
“What’s important is that your people simply report in if they spot him. They are not to approach on their own. Is that clear?”
“Crystal. Now what about the other picture, the bearded guy?”
“Same rules apply.”
“If he represents some sort of danger to the park, I want to know about it.”
“What he represents is of no concern to you.”
And with that Fuchs turned away and took a long, slow look at the setup in the security center, getting his bearings. A bank of television monitors filled a large portion of the far wall. Manned by a single technician, the touch of a few computer keys could bring up any of nearly one hundred sweeping shots of the Magic Kingdom. The closed-circuit cameras broadcasting them were hidden atop buildings, trees, even rides, providing a complete view of what was happening outside.
“Somebody much higher ranking than colonel got me on the phone yesterday and told me you and the other suits would be coming down,” Wills persisted. “Most of them been in the park since last night and it’s pretty obvious they were looking for something they must not have found. Now, what I’d like to know is what it is and how it ties into this kid.”
Fuchs gave him a long, hard look and spoke in a tone so deliberate it sounded caustic. “Mr. Wills—”
“It’s ‘Chief,’ if you don’t mind.”
“
Chief
Wills, the Magic Kingdom’s scheduled to open in roughly three hours’ time. A hundred thousand people expected, I’m told. Your best bet to keep them all safe and sound, so they can leave with their thirty-five-millimeters, their kids and their wallets all fully exhausted, is to do just as I say.”
Chief
Wills, the Magic Kingdom’s scheduled to open in roughly three hours’ time. A hundred thousand people expected, I’m told. Your best bet to keep them all safe and sound, so they can leave with their thirty-five-millimeters, their kids and their wallets all fully exhausted, is to do just as I say.”
Wills glanced at one of the black and white pictures every on-duty Magic Kingdom staffer throughout the day would be given. “I got a grandson almost as old as this.”
“Congratulations,” Fuchs said, and then turned back to the action unfolding on the constantly shifting screens. “Just do your job, Chief Wil—” He cut himself off when his eyes reached a screen almost dead center on the bank, widening in disbelief. “Are those …
dinosaurs
?”
dinosaurs
?”
“Yeah,” said Wills, smirking. “We’re just full of surprises here at Disney World.”
“L
ooking good, Stace,” one of her coworkers complimented Stacy Eagers as she completed yet another test run of the Tyrannosaurus rex’s primary programming.
ooking good, Stace,” one of her coworkers complimented Stacy Eagers as she completed yet another test run of the Tyrannosaurus rex’s primary programming.
In addition to herself, there were four others working in the room they called Mission Control. Located beneath the Magic Kingdom along one of the sweeping corridors composing the tunnels, they had named the room for its resemblance on a smaller scale to the NASA version. Television monitors enclosed their every move, the dull glow off their screens capable of providing all the light they needed to perform the myriad of commands required to make the creatures come alive.
And that was what Stacy Eagers had come to think of them as: creatures, not robots, actual breathing monsters brought back from the world before man. And why not? So precise was their replication—every movement, gesture and mannerism—that they might as well have been
real
. Stacy Eagers was a thirty-year-old woman who had started out as a computer hacker at age twelve en route to becoming one of the country’s most talented programmers. She had never had a boyfriend, couldn’t remember if she’d enjoyed her last date, and never even considered exchanging her thick Coke-bottle glasses for contact lenses.
real
. Stacy Eagers was a thirty-year-old woman who had started out as a computer hacker at age twelve en route to becoming one of the country’s most talented programmers. She had never had a boyfriend, couldn’t remember if she’d enjoyed her last date, and never even considered exchanging her thick Coke-bottle glasses for contact lenses.
The Disney people had come to her after three others had failed in their assignments to write programs to make dinosaurs come to life robotically. Forget animation. Disney had built dinosaurs to scale. Not puppets made from papier-mâché or plastic, but creatures with skeletons formed of steel beams six inches in diameter. State-of-the-art hydraulics allowed for full articulation of the joints, eyes, teeth, lips—everything. But Disney wanted to go beyond the animatronics that drove comparable beasts at a theme park in Osaka, Japan, and soon would at the rival Universal Studios in California and Orlando. The problem wasn’t in the hardware; the problem lay in developing software that could make these magnificent machines come alive.
And that’s where Stacy came in. Disney had built creatures capable of a complete range of motion. Stacy’s job was to give it to them. The dinosaurs couldn’t move, roar, walk or interact until a computer program told them to. But every separate action, every lift of a foot and flap of a reptilian eyelid, required thousands of bits of information and hundreds of commands carried out in a millisecond. Stacy estimated that it would take six programmers four years working twenty-four hours a day to write the necessary programs for a minimum of three multimillion-dollar supercomputers. Not exactly what Disney wanted to hear until she told them the alternative:
Artificial intelligence.
Program the creatures with a series of rudimentary commands from which they would develop their own evolving progressions of activity.
Teach
them to learn to do things on their own within prescribed parameters. Even program them to remember and repeat those sequences which generated the most positive responses from spectators. Disney liked that touch most of all. They would still need one supercomputer to manage the effort but, considering it could handle the entire planned thirty-creature population of Dinoworld alone, the investment was considered worth it.
Teach
them to learn to do things on their own within prescribed parameters. Even program them to remember and repeat those sequences which generated the most positive responses from spectators. Disney liked that touch most of all. They would still need one supercomputer to manage the effort but, considering it could handle the entire planned thirty-creature population of Dinoworld alone, the investment was considered worth it.
Stacy wasn’t crazy about unveiling the first of the creatures so early, especially in the limited confines of the Magic Kingdom. The park had no open stretch of land big enough for the T. rex and the Steg to really do
anything big, just move around a little, do some roaring and make eye contact with the patrons. The site they’d settled on was a barely wide-enough strip of grass on the lagoon bank to the left of Cinderella’s Castle. Not a whole lot of room for viewing, but then the creatures were just going to be standing there on display for most of the day. She intended to run a few simple programs at regular intervals; that was it.
anything big, just move around a little, do some roaring and make eye contact with the patrons. The site they’d settled on was a barely wide-enough strip of grass on the lagoon bank to the left of Cinderella’s Castle. Not a whole lot of room for viewing, but then the creatures were just going to be standing there on display for most of the day. She intended to run a few simple programs at regular intervals; that was it.
The row of television monitors immediately above Stacy allowed her to follow every programmed move the creatures made and to make the called-for adjustments. Another pair of monitors featured the view from the creatures’ perspectives, thanks to minicams that had been positioned behind their eyes.
“Okay,” she said, zooming in on the T. rex, “let’s try one more runthrough before we give the world its first peek.”
T
he bearded man pushed the woman’s wheelchair closer to the fence as the Tyrannosaurus rex’s jaws widened for another gurgly roar.
he bearded man pushed the woman’s wheelchair closer to the fence as the Tyrannosaurus rex’s jaws widened for another gurgly roar.
“Is that what they really looked like?” Blaine McCracken asked Susan Lyle.
“Dinosaurs were never my specialty but, yes, I think this is pretty damn close.”
The T. rex sank back to its time-honored hunker and, stretching its neck, scanned its huge head across the gallery viewing it. A few of the kids shrank from their perches. Adults laughed. Fifty feet away, on the opposite bank of the lagoon, the Stegosaurus gazed up from its make-believe munching of grass.
“We’d better have a look around the rest of the park,” Blaine suggested, and pulled Susan’s chair backwards, their cherished fence-front spots gobbled up instantly.
The Magic Kingdom’s official opening time was nine A.M. But guests at Disney resorts could enter an hour before that and so, Blaine learned, could the handicapped. By using the wheelchair he hoped that he and Susan could remain together without attracting undue attention. The remainder of her disguise consisted of sunglasses and a soft, wide-brimmed straw hat that slouched low over her brow. She had also trimmed and colored her hair during a brief stop in a motel room thirty minutes from the park.
Blaine’s disguise was equally effective. His goal was simply to mix in amongst the other thousands of park patrons and toward this end he, too, had donned a sun hat. But that was where the obvious ended. McCracken hoped to draw attention to certain features of his disguise, including a belly hanging well over his waist courtesy of a thick motel-room pillow. He had used paste and talcum powder to color his beard gray and then let Susan cut his thick wavy hair short enough to brush straight back. Finally
he had added attention-getting sunglasses to the mix, featuring one colored lens and one clear lens, evidence of an eye disorder. Anyone looking at him would take note of his glasses and likely stop there.
he had added attention-getting sunglasses to the mix, featuring one colored lens and one clear lens, evidence of an eye disorder. Anyone looking at him would take note of his glasses and likely stop there.
“Where to now?” Susan asked Blaine, after they had extricated themselves from the crowd struggling for a glimpse of the first exhibits from Dinoworld.
“A spin around the park. I need to catch my bearings.”
McCracken eased her chair along the road that curved left from Cinderella’s Castle and banked toward Frontierland. He had never been to the Magic Kingdom before and could only imagine what it would be like jammed with people milling everywhere. Not ready to consider the prospects of that yet, he busied himself with an analytical consideration of the logistics they were facing.
The Magic Kingdom was divided into seven different theme parks he preferred to think of in terms of grids. As such, Sal Belamo had been assigned several in the north and east, including Mickey’s Starland and Tomorrowland, while Blaine made himself responsible for the four concentrated to the south and west. They would continue to make sweeps throughout the day in search of Joshua Wolfe, maintaining contact with each other as well as with Johnny Wareagle, who would confine himself to the labyrinth of tunnels that ran beneath Disney World until his services were required. No disguise, it was deemed, would be enough to hide Johnny from Fuchs’s troops.
From the moment Blaine eased Susan off the Disney monorail and down the ramp for the entrance onto Main Street U.S.A., the scope of the Magic Kingdom—the countless roads which weaved and sliced through it—left him awestruck. On the one hand he took solace in the fact that such a massive facility would make it all the harder for Fuchs’s men to find him. On the other, it would be equally hard for him to find Joshua Wolfe. A barbershop quartet had greeted their entry and now he could hear a marching band approaching.
“Do you think he’s here now?” Susan asked as Blaine kept sweeping and cataloguing with his eyes.
“I wouldn’t be. Not enough people to use for cover yet.”
“When would you come?”
“Late this afternoon, when the really big crowds arrive. Maybe even tonight, when darkness makes it all the harder to find me.”
“And yet you wanted to be here as early as possible.”
“Because I can’t be sure, and because I wanted to get the lay of the land.”
She could feel McCracken’s hands suddenly tighten on the handles as the chair rolled slowly across the litter-free road. Two men ambled by, looking from side to side, and kept going even after their eyes had crossed Blaine and his wheelchair-bound charge.
“Another pair of Colonel Fuchs’s men,” he said after they were well past.
“How many does that make?”
“Enough to make the odds of us finding Josh before they do lousy at best.”
“Y
ou on today?”
ou on today?”
Johnny Wareagle looked quizzically at the man wearing the cowboy outfit.
“Injun Joe, right?” the cowboy continued. “Tom Sawyer’s Island. Live characters today.”
“Oh,” Johnny said softly. “Yes.”
“Should be fun.”
Wareagle had crossed paths with the cowboy at a bend in one of the corridors that ran beneath the Magic Kingdom. Located beneath the glitter and crowds, this subterranean maze contained the bulk of the park offices, storage areas and its electronic nerve center as well as access points to virtually all the rides’ movable parts. No gears or grease, in fact, were ever glimpsed because they were all contained in “the tunnels,” as they were commonly referred to. Problems were accordingly often repaired before anyone noticed anything amiss. Ride stoppages were unheard of at Disney. Nothing slowed the constant flow of people determined to have a good time.
So, too, security guards were a rare sight in the Magic Kingdom. If any needed to get from one spot to another in a hurry, they almost invariably used the park’s subterranean world to reach hot points whenever trouble arose. There was no place in the park that could not be reached via these tunnels, which were often used by Disney characters to delight kids by seeming to pop up anywhere without warning.
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