At ten minutes past seven PM, Charlie and Kalani met up with Victoria and the rest of X-ray Team inside Tomorrowland, near a few benches that had a good view of Space Mountain’s entrance. Their fruitless search at Hollywood Studios had frustrated the detective, and Kalani had been required to crack a handful of bad jokes before he could finally snap Charlie back to the present. The big Hawaiian was absolutely brimming with positivity and was relentless in his quest to infect everyone else with it.
Charlie sat down on one of the benches, taking an open spot between Victoria and Mason, who had a satellite laptop resting on his thighs.
“What’s going on?” Charlie asked Victoria.
Without taking her eyes off the entrance, Victoria told him, “They’re just finishing up the evac. If you take a look at the entrance, you can see it’s already chained off. There should only be a handful of guests left inside and we should see them exit the arcade any second now.”
“That’s a relief,” Charlie agreed. “What about the bomb—do you think he’ll blow it?”
Victoria didn’t hesitate before answering.
“I don’t think so. The old man is definitely pissed off, but I don’t think he’s that petty or spiteful. The bomb is useless now and I don’t think he’d waste his time just to force Disney to fix a section of track. I’d say the bomb is safely neutralized.”
“What about disposal?” Charlie asked, concerned for any maintenance workers who might come across the explosive.
“I’ve notified Langley and Disney of the threat, as well as its current status. Disney has agreed not to reopen the ride, and to remove all personnel from the vicinity until further notice. I’ve also warned them to keep everything else operating as usual—with the exception of the PeopleMover due to its close proximity. They were hesitant, so I had to tell them the truth. They’re definitely worried—a bomb on an attraction is no laughing matter—but I think I’ve made them understand that the threat is confined to the Mountain and that evacuating the entire park would be an unnecessarily dangerous decision. A Company disposal crew is en route and, after the old man is taken care of, they’ll head inside and dismantle the weapon.”
Charlie nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed as if he’d been holding his breath for the last day and he was finally able to breathe again. It was a great relief to know that the bomb was no longer a threat to anyone. He felt reinvigorated, able to devote all of his focus, effort and brainpower to saving his family. The threat of the bomb had torn him, and he’d been forced to spread his resources thin in an attempt to solve both problems simultaneously, but now he could breathe a little easier knowing that his focus was whole once again.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked, eagerly. Normally, Charlie was the decision maker, the master planner, the chief tactician and the bloodhound, but he was absolutely fine with letting this remarkable woman take the reins. Victoria was beyond intelligent, and Charlie was thankful for her support.
“Let me expand a little on what we talked about on the phone,” she began, finally taking her eyes off Space Mountain and turning to face Charlie. “The way I see it is this: when the ride went down, my Dad must have noticed. A standard Code V doesn’t take long to clean, so he put two and two together and figured out that we’d taken the ride offline. I’m guessing that as soon as he saw that his bomb was useless, he recalled his dogs to the Tower. He knows we’re coming, and he’s setting up one hell of a welcoming party.”
“What kind of resistance are we looking at?” Charlie asked.
“Mason, laptop,” Victoria requested, extending an open hand across Charlie, toward Mason. When the thin agent handed over the computer, Victoria moved closer to Charlie to allow him to see the screen. “When I said they’ve turned Bay Lake Tower into a fortress, I meant it quite literally. My Dad and your family are on the fourteenth floor, occupying two large villas.”
Involuntarily, Victoria glanced in the direction of the Tower while she absently pulled up a floor plan of the villa. Returning her attention to the screen, she went over the layout of the rooms with Charlie and showed him a few interior pictures so that he knew what to expect when they finally made their way inside.
“He’s rallying his knights and barricading himself in his castle,” she continued. “I assume he knows that we’re prepping to hit him hard, so he’s trying to use his Chaos boys to stop us before we can reach him.”
“That’s either a hell of a gamble, or some epic confidence,” Charlie offered. “Why not just cut and run?”
“Because I have him and he knows it,” Victoria stated, directly—the most intense Charlie had ever seen her. “If he bugged out now—sure, he would survive the day—but I have his scent and I’d follow it to the ends of the Earth to find him. He knows that I’ve picked up his trail and that it would only be a matter of time before I followed it straight to him.”
“But that would mean...” Charlie began, absently making the obvious connection.
“Yes. He’s going to be gunning for me too. He knows he’ll never be safe until all of us are dead. While the old man seems to be on the defensive, he is very much on the offensive.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I know. It’s hard to come to terms with, but this is the way it has to be, Charlie. I can’t let him go, and he can’t let you or I live. We are far too great a threat to each other. This ends here, one way or another.”
Charlie nodded, slowly. He knew that the end was near, and he’d been steeling himself for the inevitable showdown for the better part of the day. He now found himself looking forward to the moment in which he would stand toe-to-toe with the enemy. It was sure to be dangerous, and a detective against a unit of militarized special operatives didn’t seem like a promising scenario, but he now had a clear path to his objective. These mercenaries stood between him and his family and, for that, they’d signed their own death warrants. Charlie wondered if Victoria and her team felt this way before every operation. In the short time he’d known them, he couldn’t imagine Victoria or Kalani actively looking forward to the things they had to do in the line of duty. He attributed his uncharacteristic feeling of malice to the fact that this situation was deeply personal. Holloway had transformed him from a lawman who took pride in his job to a vengeful entity that would do anything it took to save the ones he loved. It would be the last mistake that Spencer Holloway would ever make.
“We need to plan,” Charlie stated.
“That’s why I called you here—this is your operation, now,” Victoria stated.
“What?” Charlie exclaimed, taken aback. “I’m a detective, not an operative. I don’t know the first thing about planning something like this.”
“I think you do, Charlie. You know the layout of the entire Disney property better than anyone on my team. You know the inner workings of an evil mind better than detectives twice your age. You’re a genius,” she winked. “You are absolutely our number one resource right now, whether you like it or not.”
Charlie took a deep breath, considering what she’d said.
“Where do we start?” she asked him.
“The monorail,” he said.
“Is it safe?” Victoria asked.
“It’s the best option,” Charlie told her. “If the Chaos guys are in Bay Lake Tower, then they’ll be lax on security at the main Contemporary building. The resort loop heads from just outside the Magic Kingdom to the main building of the Contemporary. From there, we have the best chance of making it to Bay Lake Tower unseen. Any other approach is too exposed; they’ll literally see us coming. There’s a bridge between the two buildings, though it seems like an excellent place for an ambush—or at least a sentry—so I think it would be safer to avoid it.”
Victoria took a moment to consider Charlie’s suggestion.
“Smart,” she agreed with a shake of her head. “You seem to have a knack for the subtleties of covert operations planning. Beginner’s luck?” she joked.
“I read a lot of books,” Charlie said with a shrug.
Victoria let out a light laugh before moving on. “So, we have a way in. What else do we have?”
“We know our enemy,” Jen-Jen offered.
“Bingo,” Victoria said with a snap of her fingers. “We know exactly what we’re up against. There aren’t going to be any surprises on the personnel front. Jeremy is done for, and all that remains are twelve idiot mercs and my Dad. We’ve been up against worse.”
“Prince Edward Island!” Kalani blurted, with a pump of his fist.
“Prince Edward Island, indeed, old friend,” Victoria acknowledged with a slight bow of her head. “We’ve eliminated two variables—Jeremy and the bomb—but many remain, so it’s important that none of you let your guard down.”
Just then, Mason spoke up. His eyes were locked on his laptop, which Charlie had returned to him moments earlier.
“Vee? I just noticed something...uh...not good.”
“Hit me,” she ordered, with a sigh.
“Cameras have stopped picking up Chaos Squad.”
“What?” Victoria asked. “Why? Figure it out.”
“Already did. The cameras are being looped. It was a well-done job, but they can’t slip that shit past me. The feeds are all running in a constant thirty-second loop. I spotted the seam where the loops restart. Smart, because the shots are either devoid of people, or contain stationary people who don’t move enough to ruin the continuity.”
“Does this mean what I think it means?” Victoria asked, looking irritated.
“Yes,” Mason said. “It means that we don’t know where these fuckers are anymore. They could be anywhere.”
“Goddamn it!” Victoria barked. “Well, at least we still have the photographs. We’ll just have to memorize them and do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Uh, Vee?” Mason asked, apprehensively.
“What.”
Not a question.
Mason sighed and swallowed.
“Those are gone too,” Mason said, holding up his phone, the screen displaying just one terrible number and a single word:
0 images.