As Barksdale watched, Cracker Jack quickly swept his arms forward, raising them above Lindbergh’s head. A thin piece of metal wire was stretched tightly between his hands. It glistened briefly in the light, as if it had been freshly washed. Staring, time suspended, Barksdale had the sudden clear realization that he did not want to speculate on where the wire had been hidden.
And then Cracker Jack’s hands jerked downward and the wire disappeared into the flesh of Lindbergh’s neck.
The guard instinctively raised his hands, rasping and choking. His baton fell to the floor, rolling across the tiles and coming to rest half inside the cell. Barksdale watched in frozen horror. The guard lurched one way, then the next, but Cracker Jack stayed close behind him, one palm crossed over the other as he sank the garrote deeper into Lindbergh’s neck.
Then he eased back on the pressure slightly. The guard’s fingers dropped and he gasped for breath, coughing and retching.
Keeping his hands against Lindbergh’s neck, Cracker Jack leaned in toward the man’s ear. “Where’s my duffel?” he asked.
“Locker…” Lindbergh wheezed. “Locker.”
“Where?”
Lindbergh rolled his eyes toward the end of the corridor.
“Locked?”
The purplish face nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Keys?”
“…Pocket…”
“Take them out.”
The guard lowered one hand toward his pocket. He was unable to look down, and it took him a moment. Barksdale watched, thunderstruck, as the fingers twitched and jerked their way along the line of the belt. Fresh hope, all the sweeter for being unexpected, surged within him. He was going to get away, after all. He was going to make it.
Lindbergh had found his key chain, holding it out between his thumb and index finger. The keys rattled noisily in his trembling hand.
“Which one?”
With an effort, Lindbergh raised the chain to his eyes, sorted through them, held up a small, bronze-colored key.
Cracker Jack took a good look at it. “You wouldn’t be bullshitting me now, would you?”
The guard gave his head a single shake.
“Good.” And with a grunt of effort, Cracker Jack tightened the garrote once again.
Lindbergh began struggling wildly, his hands tearing at his neck, his feet skidding across the floor. Cracker Jack fought to keep himself level, arching the guard’s body backward under the pressure of the wire. The air was filled with a terrible wet rattle.
Barksdale stared, rooted in surprise and horror. “No,” he murmured.
Cracker Jack tightened relentlessly, his face contorting with the effort. Lindbergh had jerked himself around now to face the open door of the cell. He looked in, mouth open and full of blood, eyes wide and pleading.
“This isn’t right,” Barksdale said, more loudly now.
Lindbergh’s eyes rolled up into his head, ghastly white within crimson sockets.
“No!” Barksdale shouted. And barely knowing what he was doing, he leaped forward, grasped the baton, and, rising, sent it on a long, looping swipe across the side of Cracker Jack’s head.
There was an ugly noise of wood against bone, and the baton shivered out of Barksdale’s hands, clattering to the floor. For a terrible moment, Cracker Jack’s grip held tight. Then he slumped to the ground. Lindbergh immediately collapsed on top of him, arms sprawled out, fingers twitching spasmodically.
Barksdale knelt beside the guard, rolled him gingerly to one side. The garrote had sunk so deeply into the guard’s neck that it had remained fixed in place even after he fell. It was slippery with blood, hard to get a grip on. Barksdale peeled it away, loosened the man’s collar, stroked his forehead.
“Come on, old fellow,” he muttered, shaking him gently. “Come on. You’ll make it.”
There was a sudden blow to the small of his back, and pain exploded in his spine like a mortar round. Barksdale fell to one side, crying out. Cracker Jack was getting to his feet, a little unsteadily. The man looked around. Barksdale followed his glance, but by the time he realized the hacker’s intentions, Cracker Jack had already spotted the billy club. He dove for it, pushing Barksdale’s reaching hand out of the way. Then he rose a second time, much more quickly now. He glanced down at the guard, spotted the keys, moved to scoop them up.
Barksdale took a scrambling step backward, across the floor. At the movement, Cracker Jack turned toward him again. He lifted a hand to the side of his head, winced. Barksdale saw the man’s knuckles whiten as they gripped the baton.
“Motherfucker,” he muttered, stepping quickly toward the retreating Barksdale.
AS THE ARMORED car and its escort sedan ground up the long approach route to Utopia, the exit traffic slowly increased. Huge semis, tall-sided refrigerated vans, and produce trucks shot past them, lighter now, their loads ferried away into the endless warrens of the Park’s underbelly. The trucks were soon joined by a procession of cars, SUVs, and pickups: Red-Shift Utopia cast and crew, leaving for the day. The faces looked happy, unfettered, heading back for the north Vegas suburbs or the nearby party community of Creosote.
Now, as the last curve was turned and the massive rear wall of Utopia came into view, the line-haul driver glanced at his watch: 4:12. Right on the money.
He reached into a reinforced compartment and pulled out a radio. One eye on the road, the other on the radio’s keypad, he punched in a descrambling code, then lifted the transmitter to his lips.
“Prime Factor, this is Candyman, do you read?”
He let his finger slip from the transmit button, listening. After a moment, a voice replied, reedy and artificial through the wash of static: “I read, Candyman. Do you have a visual?”
“Coming in sight now.”
“Excellent.” The reply was still faint, but it would soon get stronger. “Proceed with contact. We’ll meet you at the rally point.”
“Out.” The man put the radio to one side. For a moment, he consulted a small list of typewritten commands that had been taped beneath the dashboard. Then he pressed his other hand to a button on his radio headset. “Utopia Central, this is AAS transport Nine Echo Bravo, over.”
A very different voice came crackling over the headset. “Utopia Central.”
“We’re on final, requesting an entrance authorization.”
“Nine Echo Bravo, stand by.”
The headset went silent and the driver slowed, working his way down the gears. The shift change was over now, and the procession of cars was ebbing. Ahead, past the guard station, the road widened into an endless ocean of blacktop. The vehicles of Utopia cast and crew stood to one side, in long, shining, unbroken rows. To the other was a motley assortment of trucks and other service vehicles. Far to one side sat a windowless van, brown against the pitiless sun. Exotic Bird Trainers of Las Vegas had been painted on its side in palm-leaf letters. As if in advertisement, a large buzzard sat on its roof, wings outspread and drainpipe neck erect. Once or twice it tapped its beak, inquiringly, against the van’s roof.
Beyond the staff parking and the maintenance ports rose the endless bulk of Utopia. Officially known as the Service and Administrative Zone, it was a sight not shown in any tourist brochures or videos, and only occasionally seen in covert pictures taken for fan magazines and websites. Yet it was awe-inspiring in its own way. The Park’s rear facade curved gently from one canyon wall to the other like the face of a vast dam, unbroken save for a scattering of tiny windows. Above it arched the graceful lines of the dome, glittering in the late afternoon sun. Its monstrous shadow was just beginning to fall over the leftmost edge of the lot.
“Utopia Central confirms,” came the voice over the headset. “You may proceed. Approach corridor being cleared now.”
“Nine Echo Bravo confirms,” the driver said. “Thanks. Out.”
At the checkpoint, the lone guard waved the armored car through. The driver responded with a chuff of air brakes, then trundled across the tarmac towar
d an oversize bay set into the base of Utopia’s main structure, between twin loading docks. The letter B was stenciled above it in ten-foot-high black paint. Though the bay was large enough to fit the truck easily, it looked like little more than a mouse hole in the wall that rose above it.
The escort sedan peeled away from the truck and drove to one side of the bay, where it waited, engine idling, amber blinker on its roof turning idly. The line-haul driver looked in his rearview mirror, caught the eye of the messenger guard in the rear compartment. The guard returned the glance, grasped his shotgun. Nodded.
This entrance had to be done right the first time: any mistakes or deviations from the norm would be immediately noticed. But it had only been eighteen months since he’d stopped driving armored cars for the company, and it had become second nature again very quickly. Besides, the maneuver had been practiced dozens of times, between lines of cones in the arroyos and dry washes of Esmeralda County, and there was no hesitation. The driver approached the bay, then pulled the wheel over hard and brought the big Ford into a slow turn. Then, sliding the transmission into reverse, he smoothly guided its rear toward the bay. As the end of the truck slipped into the belly of Utopia, the growl of the engine, the insistent bleat of the backing tone, grew harsh and echoing.
Slowly, the blue sky disappeared and the roof of C Level came forward to take its place. Now the armored car was fully inside, backing carefully down the wide, gently curving passageway. As the driver passed by the guard station, the man inside nodded.
“Check the oil and tires, willya?” the driver shouted through the gunport.
The guard smiled, gave him a thumbs-up, and gestured him on.
THEY HALF WALKED, half ran through B Level, Sarah striding forward, Warne struggling to keep up. Sarah looked straight ahead, mouth set, eyes rarely blinking. A radio, appropriated from Carmen Florez in Imaging Fabrication, swung in her right hand. Approaching cast and crew, catching sight of the expression on her face, gave the Park chief a wide berth.
“Tell it to me again,” she said brusquely, over her shoulder.
“There’s no more to tell,” Warne panted. “I don’t have all the answers. I just knew that, with that disc you found being blank—”
“How do you know?”
“Terri told me.”
“Well, Terri must be mistaken.” The confused, uncertain look he’d seen on Sarah’s face in the pale glow of the Holo Mirrors was now gone.
“If she’s right, that means John Doe already has one disc. Why would Barksdale give you a blank disc—especially since he’s involved? That’s when it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t just another disc John Doe was after. It was you.”
“Me?” Sarah’s voice was tight, laced with skepticism.
“He clearly needed you, for some reason. You’re the Park chief, after all. No doubt he intended to kidnap you—or worse. A confusing place like that, a maze, was the perfect spot. Why would he let you see him, face-to-face, up close, in your office? He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to leave such a loose end behind.” This conversation wasn’t going the way he’d planned. Warne realized, with an uncomfortable hollow feeling, that he had been acting impulsively; that, really, he couldn’t prove any of this at all. But nothing else made sense.
“And why now, of all times?” Sarah asked skeptically as they turned down a new corridor.
“Maybe this is a critical point in their plans. Something must be happening we don’t know about. They must need diversions. Why else would they damage that ride—what’s it called, Station Omega—after you’ve agreed to deliver the second disc?”
“Yes, why would they?” The way she put it, it didn’t sound like a question. “After we locked up one of their crew, thanks to you? That’s where I should be right now, by the way: Station Omega. Instead, I’m on this wild-goose chase.”
Warne felt agitated. Until this fusillade of questions, Sarah had said little since they left Gaslight. “Why do you call it that?” he asked.
“Because that’s what it is. Your little theory has one problem: Fred’s guilt. Without that, everything falls apart. And I don’t buy it. Not for a minute.”
“But I explained about KIS, about how there was no—”
“Yes, yes. I heard. I could see you were jealous of him, Andrew, but this is completely unacceptable.” She quickened her pace. “I’m going to stop by Security just long enough to hear Fred’s explanation. And then I’m going to order him released, of course. And get back to what I’m supposed to be doing: running this Park. In about five minutes, Chuck Emory will be phoning the feds. And when they get here, all your little theories are going to become academic.” She gave Warne a brief, baleful glare.
Warne’s agitation deepened. He’d been feeling relieved, even—if he dared admit it—a little pleased with himself. He’d figured it out, unraveled the knot. He’d saved Sarah from an unknown fate at the hands of John Doe. The only concern he’d felt had been over Georgia’s and Terri’s whereabouts. This withering blast of anger and disbelief was the last thing he’d expected.
Ahead, the double doors of the Security Complex had come into view. She’s in denial, he told himself. She can’t accept what Barksdale’s done. But there was that other voice in his head, quieter, but colder and more insistent: What if you got it wrong? What if there’s some other explanation you’ve been missing? Did you let your feelings cloud your judgment?
Sarah pushed through the doors, stepped inside. Then she stopped, frowning.
The anteroom was empty. The brightly colored plastic chairs were unoccupied; the long front desk, polished and gleaming, was vacant. A strange, watchful stillness seemed to hang over the room. In the distance, a telephone was ringing.
“What—?” Sarah began. She stepped forward, looking around.
Warne followed. Where was Poole? Why hadn’t Terri returned here with Georgia? Was it possible they were all waiting in one of the rear offices?
He opened the door beside the front desk and looked down the corridor beyond. No sign of anyone, no sound or movement. Mystification began to turn to alarm.
He started down the corridor. Still nothing. The tick of a clock, the low rumble of air-conditioning. The phone began ringing again. At the far end of the corridor, one of the doors was open. Inside, Warne could see a bank of large steel lockers. One had swung open, key dangling from its lock.
Then Warne stopped moving. It had been instinctual, that sudden halt.
On the wall of the corridor, something glistened. He approached it cautiously. It was a spray of blood, still wet, bright red against the gray brick.
Heart thumping in the back of his throat, Warne crept forward, peered into the open area ahead. There was more blood here, spattered across chairs and a duty desk, climbing the walls in narrow traceries.
Had John Doe come for the prisoners? What terrible thing had happened?
Still, no sound. And then, the pattering of feet from behind.
Warne had forgotten about Sarah. He turned, saw her approach quickly.
“Sarah!” he said, trying to keep her back. “No!”
Ducking around him, she ran into the open area. She stopped when she saw the blood.
“Oh, Jesus,” she muttered.
Warne looked around once more, struggling to master himself. His eye landed on the door of the holding cell. It was ajar. Blood was pooled before it.
Slowly, almost mechanically, he approached, put his head to the security window, gazed in.
Two bodies lay motionless, facedown, on the floor. Through the window he could see heads, shoulders, little else. They both wore the black blazers of security guards.
They’ve escaped, he thought. Both of them, Barksdale and the hacker. They killed the guards and escaped.
But Poole? Was his body stashed elsewhere? And where—he felt a sudden, terrible chill—where were Terri Bonifacio and Georgia?
Suddenly, he felt himself pushed to one side. Sarah peered through the window. As she did
so, Warne could hear her gasp. Then she threw open the door and went inside. Immediately, she cried out in what sounded like physical pain. Without another thought, Warne ducked around the door to follow.
Sarah was down on her knees beside one of the guards. Only now, Warne realized the man wasn’t a guard. He was wearing a light-colored suit, but the top half of the jacket was so darkened by blood it looked black. Sarah leaned forward to cradle the figure and a blond head lolled back.
It was Barksdale.
For a moment, Warne stood still, rooted in horror.
Sarah turned toward him violently. “Help me, for God’s sake!” she screamed. “Get some water, get a cloth. Call Medical!”
Stung into action, Warne wheeled away, running down the corridor toward the front desk.
In the anteroom, he saw movement. It was Poole, arm around Terri. He was leading her gently through the double doors with one hand, guiding a wheelchair with the other.
Warne’s gaze fell on the wheelchair. There was Georgia, eyes closed, a hospital blanket around her shoulders.
For a moment, relief overwhelmed all other emotion. Then Warne looked at Terri. She was pale beneath her bronze skin. Her eyes caught his, darted away. And then, with an effort, returned. Her right hand was slick with blood.
“Are you hurt?” he asked instantly.
“She’s okay,” Poole said. “There was blood on the radio she used to contact me.”
“What happened?”
“We were hiding,” Terri said. “In the closet.” There was a tremor in her voice, and she struggled to maintain her composure.
“We’ll get to that later,” Poole interjected. “I think it’s more important you tell me what’s going on here.” And, significantly, he let his gaze fall toward the ground.
Following it, Warne saw that his own shoes were covered in blood; that a bloody trail led back through the door and down the corridor. He motioned Poole to one side.