Fires of Midnight

by Jon Land

  “I know what you’re thinking, son. I know I’ve gone about this the wrong way. My apologies. Mistakes have been made. The excitement of what you had to offer us got the better of me, I’m afraid. So let’s discuss new terms. No more threats, no more ultimatums. Come back to Group Six. Work on any project you want. If you choose to help us in our pursuits, splendid. If not, I will support your decision.”

  “I’ve mixed them together, Colonel!”

  “Son—”

  “I’m not your son! Dr. Haslanger’s maybe, but not yours!”

  “Josh, calm down, I beg you. I know you hate me. But the action you are considering is worse than any deed I could ever perform. So what does that make you?”

  “As full of shit as you are,” Josh said over the fort’s top, letting the wind take his words.

  “The world needs me, Josh. It needs Group Six. As unfortunate as that may seem, it’s true. I did not make this world and I do not control it. But with your help we can make things better. Come back to Group Six and refine CLAIR. Figure out ways to feed the world and power the vast machines which have multiplied out of control. Accept the challenge!”

  “Go to hell.”

  “You think giving up is the answer? It’s not. You have my word, Josh. No more games. Keep the formula with you if you so choose, but come with me. I can take you away from the madness. Group Six can lift the burden that is tearing at you. You belong with us. There is no other alternative.”

  “You’re forgetting one.”

  “Let me come in. Let us talk face-to-face.”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “I’ll give you a few minutes to think about it. Relax a little.”

  “I’m giving you ten minutes. If you and your men aren’t gone, I’m going to release the formula.”

  “Of course, young man. Of course.”

  Fuchs turned away from the fort and raised the walkie-talkie to his lips. “Do you have a clear shot or not?”

  “Affirmative, sir,” replied one of the three snipers in position in the trees overlooking the fort. “But he’s still holding the vial. If we shoot him and he drops it …”

  “Damn.”

  “He’s not going anywhere, sir.”

  “But we may have to, unless, unless …”

  “Sir?”

  “If I can’t talk him down, maybe there’s someone else who can,” Fuchs said, formulating a new plan as more fireworks burst through the air.

  The party in the temporary Dinoworld control room had been going full blast since dusk, when the robotic T. rex and Stegosaurus had been shut down for the night. Even Stacy Eagers herself could not believe how smoothly things had gone. Not a single glitch over the twelve-hour shift, and crowd excitement had exceeded even her expectations.

  Totally oblivious to the chaos that was occurring above them, her six-person staff was in the midst of drinking yet another toast to the massive creatures when Stacy noticed a stranger had entered the room, a short, sinewy man with a bent nose and callused ears.

  “You ask me, they don’t pay you people enough. Great work, let me tell you.”

  “How’d you get in here?” Stacy wanted to know, trying to steady her thinking.

  “Negotiated with the guard,” Sal Belamo replied, producing a pistol.

  “He lent me this.”

  Stacy suddenly didn’t feel drunk anymore. “What’s going on?” “What’s your name?”

  “Eagers. Stacy Eagers.”

  “Mine’s Sal.”

  “What are you doing here?” Stacy Eagers asked the little man who looked like a piece of chain mail with eyes.

  “Rescue mission,” he answered, keeping the gun poised toward the workers holding drink cups for weapons.

  “Nobody down here needs saving,” she said.

  Sal pointed to the ceiling. “Somebody up there does.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  The Group Six troops had pulled back somewhat, allowing McCracken and Harry to rendezvous with Captain Jack, Johnny Walker and Jimmy Beam.

  “You can make it out now, Captain,” Harry told him, gnashing his teeth together. “Lemme go back for the kid.”

  “Not your style, Harry.”

  “Never had any style, you know that.”

  “But you had a plan and that was what you were best at. This is my game.”

  “Let me go back for the woman, at least.”

  “Get your men and yourself out.”

  “No can do, Captain. I helped make this mess. I got to help clean it up.”

  “Then watch my back and follow me to the ice cream parlor,” McCracken said. “We’ll split up and go after the kid.”

  He could hear sirens wailing in the distance now that the ear-splitting roars of fireworks had ceased. Fifteen minutes had passed since the explosions during the Spectromagic Parade. Orlando and Florida State Police authorities must have finally called up sufficient numbers to chance an approach. Blaine let himself wonder briefly about Johnny Wareagle’s fate. He took considerable solace in the sight of the large gaps in the American flag’s final, lingering design. Obviously not all of the fireworks had been fired and that could only be the result of the Indian’s work.

  As for the fate of Joshua Wolfe, Blaine could only guess. If the boy had managed to flee, or if he had ended up in Fuchs’s hands, the chances of stopping the spread of the reactivated CLAIR in the Ozarks would be virtually nonexistent. Moving swiftly, but taking nothing for granted, McCracken darted down Main Street and ducked into the ice cream parlor to get Susan.

  “I’ll take a chocolate chip,” he said at the counter, leaning over it and expecting to see her still hiding there.

  She was gone.

  Blaine turned slowly, gun leading.

  “McCracken!” a voice called from the street. He dropped low and steadied his weapon for where the windows had been. “We have her, McCracken!”

  Blaine peered outward and saw Susan standing between two men, one supporting her, the other holding a gun at her head. Four others stood on both sides of her, widely spaced to preempt any thoughts he might have entertained of shooting them all.

  “We will not harm the woman. We will not harm you. Colonel Fuchs wishes to speak with you. Come out into the street unarmed with your hands in the air.”

  McCracken thought quickly. If all they wanted was to kill him, he reasoned, they could have tried for an ambush as he made his way back here. There must have been some truth in what the man was saying, then. And if he chose to ignore the words, Susan would certainly be killed even if he managed to triumph against however many awaited him in the street. He wasn’t alone, after all; Harry would already be moving into position, waiting for Blaine to provide the proper cue for him to spring.

  “We’re waiting!”

  “What does Fuchs want?” Blaine shouted into the street, wanting to give Harry Lime and the other Key West Irregulars more time to move into position.

  A pause followed, the question obviously being relayed. Then the man’s voice returned.

  “There is someone he wishes you to speak with.”

  “Who?”

  “The boy,” the man returned, adding, “before it’s too late.” McCracken rose and threw his rifle to the floor. “All right. I’m coming out.”

  The little man limped about the control room. He seemed honestly impressed with the setup, definitely knew quite a bit about computers. Maybe it was the booze, but Stacy didn’t feel threatened by him. Behind the two of them the rest of her staff was clustered in a tight group, having lost interest in their drinks.

  “What exactly is it that you want?” she asked him.

  “Already told you: some help. Hey, you got any idea what’s going on up there?”

  “What’s going on up there?” she repeated.

  “Just trust me. Today’s your chance to play hero.” Sal’s eyes fell on her keyboard and control console. “How much can you make those monsters do? I mean, I saw ’em walk, move.”

  “
Anything.”

  “Huh?”

  “They can do anything. They have full joint articulation and mobility. They behave—I mean, er, perform—exactly as the creatures they are replicas of.”

  “Anything,” Sal repeated.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Sal held on to the gun, even though he was starting to figure he didn’t need it, that this woman was going to like what he wanted her to do.

  “Prove it,” he told her.

  Seven men surrounded Blaine in a circle while one searched him. When the search turned up nothing, the man in charge motioned him to start walking. He caught up with Susan and extricated her from the grasps of the man on either side. She embraced him and Blaine could feel her trembling as he hugged her back tighter.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

  “My fault. I should’ve anticipated—”

  “Keep walking!” the leader ordered, and a pair of M-16s prodded them on.

  Before they could obey, staccato bursts of fresh gunfire made Blaine take Susan hard to the ground. Around him a number of Fuchs’s men dropped where they stood to the gunfire of Harry Lime and the rest of the Key West Irregulars. The four surviving members charged down the street in assault fashion, zigzagging, rotating point.

  Not yet, Harry, not yet, Blaine thought to himself, watching Harry’s floral shirt flapping in the breeze as he slid partway off Susan to reach for a downed man’s rifle.

  He had just closed his hand upon it when gunfire from the hidden positions he’d feared along the street cut Lime, Captain Jack, Johnny Walker and Jim Beam down in their tracks. He gave up trying for the gun and rushed to Harry instead, leaning over him even as a dozen guns steadied his way.

  “I guess I really fucked things up this time, Captain,” Lime managed between gasps. “Don’t tell the kid I was here. Don’t tell him I was … part of it.”

  Blaine nodded and squeezed Harry’s hand. Suddenly Harry lurched upward and grabbed him by the lapel, eyes pleading.

  “Take care of him, Captain. Whatever happens from here, promise me you’ll take care of him.”

  Blaine nodded deliberately. Two of the gunmen hoisted him away just as Harry’s grasp went limp. The others who’d been in concealed positions were emerging onto the streets. If Harry had suspected they’d been there to start with, he could have baited a much better trap, drawn them out before launching a direct assault. But subtlety had never been one of Lime’s more noteworthy traits, Blaine reckoned sadly as the men marched him back to where Susan was standing.

  Surrounded again, the two of them were led on past Cinderella’s Castle and the Dinoworld exhibit on the grassy bank adjacent to it, no one noticing the T. rex was twenty feet closer to the fence.

  “Shit,” Sal Belamo muttered, peeling his eyes away from the screen that showed a captured Blaine McCracken being led through the center of the Magic Kingdom. The picture came courtesy of dual cameras mounted in the T. rex’s eyes. “I want to see where they’re going.”

  “No problem,” Stacy Eagers told him, and she worked the controls to move the dinosaur farther forward.

  Another camera showed it taking one lumbering step and then another, its head positioned for a clear view of the men advancing forward. Sal returned his attention to that screen and followed the group onto a small keelboat that disappeared into the darkness of the man-made river.

  “What’s on the other side?” he asked.

  “Tom Sawyer’s Island,” Stacy replied.

  Sal was staring at the T. rex again, amazed by its lifelike stature. “Can this boy swim?”

  “So nice of you to join us, Mr. McCracken,” Fuchs said when McCracken reached the outskirts of Fort Samuel Clemens.

  “The kid in there?” he asked, gesturing that way.

  “He’s being rather stubborn. Doesn’t want to leave. Prepared to do a very naughty thing if we act rashly.”

  “Maybe I should let him.”

  “Destroy the world? I think not. That’s not an option you would favorably entertain.”

  “What do you want, Colonel?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I want the boy.”

  “As a possession.”

  “I’d call it a resource. Come now, are we that different, you and I, in what we seek, what we pursue?”

  “Considerably.”

  “I’m talking about safeguarding the interests of our country.”

  “So am I.”

  “Joshua Wolfe can help us do that job.”

  Blaine shook his head. “You’re not up to that job.”

  “Regardless of tonight, you and I fight many of the same battles. Often we are on the same side, though our approaches may be different. But if this boy exposes the contents of his vial to the air it will be a very bad thing for both of us. Talk him down, Mr. McCracken. Bring him out.”

  “You don’t know what’s going on out there, do you? I’m talking about the world, Colonel, or what’s soon to be left of it.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” Fuchs said, disinterested.

  “Joshua Wolfe never created CLAIR in the first place, at least not the CLAIR you want. You can blame a splinter group of the CIA that’s a rival of yours for that, fat man named Livingstone Crum in charge. Ring a bell?”

  Fuchs’s mouth dropped just a little. McCracken didn’t let up.

  “Crum’s group picked up Operation Offspring when Haslanger dropped it. They monitored the boy all his life and when he came up with something they liked, they took advantage of it. Tinkered with his formula. Killed seventeen hundred people. It’s them you should be after.”

  “But it’s the formula I’m after and that’s what the boy has with him inside there. I’ll send Crum a thank-you note.”

  “I’m not finished. See, the fat man tried to cover his tracks and ended up reactivating CLAIR in the process. It’s loose, Colonel, and it’s spreading and Joshua Wolfe is the only person who can stop it.”

  Fuchs looked interested in the prospects. “And I’ll be glad to supervise that process once you deliver the boy into my hands.”

  “I’m supposed to trust you on that?”

  Fuchs glanced around at the force encircling the area and smiled confidently. “I don’t think you really have a choice.”

  “It’s Blaine McCracken, Josh,” Blaine called from just outside the gate. “I’m coming in.”

  When the boy made no protest, McCracken swung open the wooden door and entered the fort. He did not think for one moment that Fuchs was going to let him walk out of here, but he also recognized this was the only way he could buy himself time. Sal and Johnny were still out there somewhere, after all, and sooner or later they’d be coming.

  “Josh?” he said, moving slowly, making sure his hands were in evidence.

  “Up here,” the boy returned.

  Blaine looked up at the rampart ledge and saw him there cradling something in his fingers. “Bad idea.”

  “Why, because they can shoot me? Fine, let them. I want them to.” He showed the vial. “I’ve got this just a twist away from opening. If I fall, that’ll do it.”

  “They know that.”

  “Good.”

  “Can I come up?”

  “Do what you want.”

  McCracken moved for the ladder.

  “He’s climbing up,” one of the snipers reported. “Got him in my sights. Dead on.”

  “They’ve got to be taken out together,” Fuchs ordered. “But not until we’ve got the vial. Understood?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Josh was leaning against the top of the facade, knees curled to his chest, trembling and still soaked from the swim that had brought him to the island.

  “You should go,” he said when Blaine joined him on the ledge, tone softer and not threatening anymore.

  “I’m stuck here, just like you.”

  “Fuchs sent you.”

  “Right.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “Right again.”


  The boy almost smiled, then shook the gesture aside, along with his hair. He moved to bring his hands to his face, then remembered the vial clutched between his fingers.

  “You didn’t kill anyone, Josh.”

  The boy looked back up at him.

  “It wasn’t your original formula for CLAIR you released in Cambridge. Someone added something to it in the lab, the same people behind the Handlers. You came up with a delivery system for a weapon they’d been itching to try. That’s all.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Think, goddamnit! You told me that’s what you do best. Well, do it now, kid. You ran all the tests, correlated all the data. Everything checked out and still seventeen hundred people died.”

  “Because I made a mistake!”

  “Same one I’ve been known to make: you tried to help people. You wanted to help them so much you forgot to watch your back.”

  “I … didn’t kill anyone?”

  “Closest you came was putting Sal and Susan to sleep with that GL-12.”

  The boy leaned back, feeling suddenly light. “Wow.”

  “Don’t relax yet, kid. You’ve still got your work cut out for you … .”

  “What are they doing?” Fuchs demanded.

  “Still talking.”

  “Can you see the vial?”

  “Kid’s still holding it.”

  “Don’t let it out of your sight. Do you hear me? Don’t let that vial out of your sight!”

  Blaine could see it in the boy’s eyes, his mind racing as he listened to the story of what had happened at the Mount Jackson containment facility.

  “Any deaths yet?” Josh asked.

  “Undoubtedly. But nobody’s about to report them.”

  “CLAIR will spread on the winds. But up in the Ozarks this time of year, they tend to shift and swirl. That gives us some time.”

  “Can you stop it?”

  “Relatively simple proposition if we get to it before CLAIR spreads outside of those mountains.”