This was an entirely new game. Not only did the lives of his family hinge on his success, but now the lives of countless men, women and children would end if he couldn’t find a way to prevent this unreal disaster in time. Holloway had changed his plan after implementing the explosive and Charlie had no idea whether he had since disarmed the bomb or simply abandoned it, leaving it to explode when the timer ran out. Hundreds of innocent lives depended on him. He could not fail them.
It took him a few minutes to come to terms with this shocking realization, but finally he stood and checked his watch. He had only a couple of minutes left before he needed to signal Victoria. Quickly, he pulled the syringe from his pocket and turned to face Jeremy.
“I assume you recognize this,” he said, showing Jeremy the small instrument; the barrel filled with a dark amber fluid.
Jeremy remained silent, but his eyelids seemed to grow heavy with defeat—he knew that he had no further part to play in this drama. He smiled, sadly.
“It probably looks a lot like the ones you assholes must have used on my wife and daughters last night. Anyway, this one’s meant for you. I trust you’re not going to fight me on this?”
Jeremy cocked his head to the side to allow Charlie to give him the injection. Wasting no time, Charlie stuck him roughly with the needle and depressed the plunger hard. It must have hurt, but the big man betrayed nothing and within seconds was slumped against the wall.
Quickly, Charlie hurried out of the stall and grabbed a paper towel. Stepping outside, pretending to dry his hands, Charlie hoped that Victoria saw the signal. After a four-count, he returned to the restroom to wait for Victoria’s response. While he’d been outside, the area had still been mysteriously clear, but he’d seen nobody preventing guests from entering; they’d simply stayed away. These CIA spooks were scary good. He made a mental note never to underestimate a Company man.
After just a few seconds, Charlie heard heavy footsteps entering the restroom mixed with what sounded like heavy wheels rolling over the tile. When he looked up, he saw a gigantic man of Pacific Island descent wheeling in a large trash cart piled high with black bags. Admittedly, the cart was the most bizarre part of the scene, since you rarely or never saw them in the park due to the underground AVAC trash disposal system.
The man behind the cart was impressive, to say the least. Charlie stood a solid six foot tall, but this man must have been six-five, minimum. He was one of the most heavily muscled people that Charlie had ever seen. He guessed that the man weighed roughly three-hundred pounds—without an ounce of fat. He wore a dark gray T-shirt under a flamboyant green Hawaiian shirt that fit him extremely tightly over his massively muscled arms. Charlie noticed that the shirt was unbuttoned, hanging loose to accommodate his shoulder holster. His arms were almost fully covered by intricate tattoos. When Charlie looked up at his face, though, he saw nothing but kindness and warmth. The man smiled at him from beneath his close-cropped black Mohawk.
“Detective Walker?” he asked, smile plastered on his face.
“That’s me. You one of Victoria’s guys?”
“Yep. Name’s Kalani. Good to meet you, braddah. Heard a lot about you.” Kalani offered his hand and Charlie shook it, finding it surprisingly gentle.
“You must be the team’s muscle,” Charlie implied, jokingly.
“Nah, I’m a scientist. Computers and crap,” Kalani shot back, followed by a big, booming laugh. He slapped Charlie on the back and stepped past him, headed for the back of the room. “So where’s this big, scary Jeremy moke, eh—he somewhere back here?” he asked, pointing toward the handicap stall then quickly poking his head into the others to make sure they were empty.
“Yeah—in the handicap stall,” Charlie agreed with a nod, watching the big man struggle to fit into the small space.
“Good God, haole! You really fucked this big-timer up, didn’t you?” Kalani asked rhetorically, with a sharp whistle of appreciation. He leaned his head out of the stall, “What’d you hit him with, a wooden bat?”
Charlie smirked, holding up his bruised right hand. Kalani’s eyes widened and he smiled.
“Much respect for you, braddah. Remind me not to get on your bad side,” he offered with another quick flash of a smile, disappearing back into the stall. “Would you mind grabbing those trash bags out of that cart, detective?”
“As long as you promise to call me Charlie from now on.”
“You drive a hard bargain, haole. But you got a deal,” he said, chuckling to himself.
Charlie grabbed the trash bags and threw them on the ground just as Kalani approached, dragging Jeremy’s unconscious form by the leg as if he weighed nothing. Kalani leaned over the side of the cart to check that it was empty and, once satisfied, lifted Jeremy like a ragdoll and tossed him haphazardly inside. Without even a second glance at the unconscious man, Kalani started piling the trash bags on top of him. Charlie decided to help.
“So, Charlie, you get some good information out of him?” Kalani asked.
“I got info,” he acknowledged. “But none of it is good.”
“No worries, braddah. We’re going to get your girls back.”
“That’s the least of our worries right now, Kalani.”
“Is it that bad?” asked the big man with genuine concern on his face.
“It’s worse,” Charlie admitted, truthfully. Kalani lowered his eyes and respectfully decided not to say anything. “So what’s the plan? Are we going to meet with Victoria?”
“Yep. My partner, McCoy, is outside. He’ll take out the trash while you and I go see Victoria and the rest of X-ray Team.”
Charlie nodded. “How many of you are there?” he asked.
“Me, Victoria, McCoy, Mason and Jen-Jen. So, uh...five.”
“Thought you were the scientist?” Charlie joked, razzing him on the slow count.
“I do not consider math a science,” he stated as he threw the last of the trash bags into the cart.
“Six of us against fourteen of them. I don’t like those odds,” Charlie told him.
“Six of us equals sixty of them,” stated Kalani, confidently. “I love those odds.”
Charlie couldn’t argue with that logic. If the rest of the team were as capable as Kalani seemed to be—and Victoria definitely was—then Holloway’s men had their work cut out.
Charlie followed as Kalani wheeled the large cart out of the restrooms. Guests were beginning to return to the area and it looked as if nothing strange had occurred—as if this piece of Tomorrowland had been vacant merely by chance. It was bizarre, but effective and it spoke to the level of orchestration and skill displayed by Victoria’s clandestine unit.
A short, well-built, red-haired man with a thick beard, who was no doubt McCoy, stood just outside the entrance to the restroom. He was dressed similarly to Kalani—unbuttoned shirt, shoulder rig and loose cargo shorts—but his shirt was a more modest dark brown. He nodded to the pair of them and took over the cart without a word, swiftly pushing it away until he rounded a corner and disappeared from view.
“McCoy’s a quiet character, eh?” Charlie asked as he walked casually through the park with Kalani.
“He sure don’t talk much,” Kalani agreed. “But he’s a good guy and he’s always got my back in a fight.”
Just then, a detail struck Charlie that he couldn’t help but remark upon.
“Kalani, what if Holloway’s got his men in the park watching me?”
“No doubt he does. But it would be hard for them to believe you were getting help from a big-ass Hawaiian scientist like me. I’m just too good looking for them to think I’m anything but a cool cat on vacation. Hell, they can think whatever they want. It doesn’t matter.”
Charlie laughed at Kalani’s jokes, but the thought of being watched as he trudged along with a CIA operative made him uneasy. Still, there was nothing he could do about it, so he shelved the thought and walked on with his new companion. After a while, Charlie found himself following Kalani into the Liberty Tree Tavern.
The restaurant was a colonial-style eatery that reminded Charlie of the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot. The atmosphere was quiet and private, and Kalani led him to a table in a dim corner where Victoria sat with two other members of her team. Kalani pulled out a chair and lazily threw himself down before kicking the final chair toward Charlie.
“Take a load off, braddah. Meet the family,” he said.
Charlie took his seat and looked around at the others. To the left of Victoria sat a rail-thin man named Mason that had slicked back hair and thick-rimmed glasses of a Hubble telescope prescription. He nodded politely but nervously as he was introduced to Charlie.
On the other side of Victoria sat a woman who looked more like she belonged on a beach volleyball team rather than a highly specialized team of CIA operatives. She was very attractive, with golden blonde hair and a deep almond tan. She was almost the polar opposite of Victoria and her raven black hair and ghostly pale skin. Charlie assumed that this was Jen-Jen.
The blonde offered her hand and Charlie gently shook it. “Jennifer Jennings,” she stated. “My parents had a sense of humor. But these idiots call me Jen-Jen, which I guess is okay by me.”
“And what should I call you?” Charlie asked, releasing her hand.
“Anything you want...” she replied, alluringly.
“Stow it, Jen-Jen. This one’s happily married,” Victoria said, backhanding the blonde lightly on the shoulder. Jen-Jen looked mildly disappointed. “So, Charlie, now that you’ve met my weird little family, we can get to work. What did we learn from Jeremy?”
Kalani cut in, “We learned that this haole has one wicked right hook! You should see the other guy. Look at this monster’s hand!” He grabbed Charlie’s battered right hand from the table and shook it at the rest of his team. Victoria and Mason looked impressed. Jen-Jen looked infatuated. Charlie felt self-conscious.
“Thank you, Kalani, but I meant what did we learn about the situation?” Victoria said, smiling at the massive Hawaiian.
Charlie laughed as he heard Kalani mumble in mock-sadness under his breath, “That was part of the situation.”
Charlie recounted the conversation he’d had with Jeremy in the restroom, finally revealing the existence of the key and the location of the door that it unlocks. He expected his revelation to be earthshattering, but it surprised no one at the table. Mason even looked a tiny bit excited.
“This doesn’t surprise you?” Charlie asked, trying to mask his own emotions so that he wouldn’t be the odd man out.
“Bombs never really surprise us,” Victoria claimed. “In a post-9/11 world, assholes with bombs are as common as assholes with guns or assholes with knives. We see them all the time. In fact, we see them so much, that Mason’s main role is being a walking Bombcyclopedia. He knows all there is to know and if someone can build it, he can disarm it.”
That explains why he looks so damn excited by a bomb in a fucking theme park, Charlie thought. “So what’s the plan?” he asked.
“First—give me that key you found.”
Charlie took the key out of his pocket and tossed it to Victoria. She caught it and inspected it closely, turning it over in her hands. After a short while, she spoke.
“This key is not for the door you saw in the picture.”
“What?”
“Who’s the famous super-detective here, you or me?” she joked. “From what you’ve told me, that door has an exit sign above it—what does that tell us?”
“Damn,” Charlie said, recognizing his own ignorance. “It tells us that we’re looking at an emergency exit.”
“Or a door that leads to an emergency,” Victoria added. “Which means that, by law, it cannot ever be locked. Therefore, this key belongs to another door—one that no doubt leads to the tracks or somewhere equally vital. Dear old Dad didn’t mislead you, but he did rely on you figuring this out at some point.”
“I should have known right off the bat,” conceded Charlie, frustrated that he’d overlooked so huge a detail.
“Don’t kick yourself—it’s a stressful situation. Anyway, I’ll have McCoy look into it and tell us what this key really unlocks. In the meantime, we’ve got to get your girls.”
“No,” Charlie said.
“No?” Victoria asked, taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“Not yet. We’ve got to deal with the bomb first. Like you said earlier, your old man won’t touch my family unless he knows I’m dead, right? Well, that buys us the time we need to take care of the bomb.”
“Charlie, I’ve got some bad news,” she said, with a somber tone. “We may have to make a choice. If we disarm the bomb, it’s possible that my Dad will kill your family. Alternatively, if we go for your family and he or any of his men spot us before we get to them, it’s possible that he will detonate the bomb. I hate to say it but we might be forced to make that decision.”
“Maybe not,” Kalani offered. “We can hit them both at the same time.”
“He’s right, Vee,” added Mason, doing his best to convince Victoria that an alternative was possible. “McCoy can handle the rundown on the bomb by himself and, as long as there’s no heavy resistance, he and I can disarm it. That leaves the four of you to assault the Tower. Depending on if you’re successful or not, we can disarm the bomb or boogie out of there.”
“A head-on assault?” said Jen-Jen, licking her lips. “I fucking love it.”
Victoria sat still for a moment with her palms on the table, lost deep in thought, and Charlie watched her closely. Finally, she spoke. “It might be possible,” she admitted cautiously. “But not in a full-frontal assault. Sorry, Jen-Jen. We’ve got to be smart about this. We need to even the odds. My Dad has still eight of his operators unaccounted for, and four more at the Tower. We’ve already removed Jeremy from the equation, but if we can’t locate these eight unknowns, then we won’t be able to confidently pull this off.”
“What do we need to do, wahine?” Kalani asked Victoria.
“I hate to say it, because we’re in such a beautiful and happy place, but there are twelve hostiles that need to not be alive anymore.”
“I’m still loving it,” Jen-Jen added.
“Charlie, did you get any names from Jeremy? Anything that can help us find out who these assholes are?” Victoria asked.
“No, it didn’t really occur to me at the time to ask,” Charlie replied. “You don’t have access to a list of your Dad’s known associates or any of that other spy stuff you see in the movies?”
“We might. Maybe I can trade it to you for coffee and donuts,” she shot back.
“Point taken,” Charlie laughed. “I do have two names for you to run, though they’re only first names and I don’t think they’ll turn out to be legit.”
He gave her the names of Brody and Brent, the two clowns who had picked him up from the Wilderness Lodge the night before.
“It’s a start,” she said. “We can run a search similar to your Hollywood-style approach. Even with first names alone, we can cross-reference them with my Dad and see what comes up. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a connection. Mason, get on that, will you?”
“Aye,” he grunted and pulled a small laptop from a bag hanging on the back of his chair.
“I can almost guarantee that these two idiots were ex-military,” Charlie added.
“Good. Mason, add that to the parameters and try to refine it,” Victoria ordered.
“On it,” was Mason’s reply, as he began rapidly tapping keys.
Charlie turned to Kalani, “I thought you were the scientist, big guy,” he joked.
Kalani leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, and smiled. “Nah, you pegged me right off the bat, braddah. I just hit things and shoot things.”
“You had me fooled; you CIA spooks are excellent actors,” Charlie grinned.
“You think I’m good, you should see some of Jen-Jen’s...acting,” he quipped.
Jen-Jen simply smiled, winked and shrugged.
“Ease up, kids. Did you forget we have a situation?” Victoria prodded.
“Just blowing off some steam, boss,” offered Kalani.
Mason’s eyes narrowed as he leaned in closer to his screen. All attention was on him. Everyone waited for the little man to speak.
“Fucking bingo!” he blurted.
“What is it, Mason Jar?” Victoria asked, using the pet name she’d created for him. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Brody Kinney and Brent Masters. They used their real names. Fucking morons!” He laughed loud, drawing glances from other patrons.
“These your guys?” Victoria asked Charlie.
Mason turned the screen so the rest of them could see.
“That’s them, alright,” Charlie confirmed.
Mason brightened. “This is big.”
“Elaborate,” Victoria ordered.
“This is it, Vee—the key to everything. Check this out. These two bozos have been seen with your father not once, not twice, but on six different occasions over the past five years.”
Victoria whistled.
She gestured toward Charlie and together they leaned in to look at Mason’s display.
“It gets better,” Mason promised. “Charlie was absolutely correct: they’re both ex-military, alright. And I can do you one better.”
“Hit me.”
“Kinney and Masters belong to a rogue unit of Blackwater mercenaries. A unit of twelve men.”