and wearing a wife-beater T-shirt.
“Well, yessir, that’s kinda hard to say. They shut her down for a while is what I heard. Some kind of malfunction with the Invisible Staircase, I reckon. I guess somebody fell down the stairs or something. Said it wouldn’t take long to fix, though. I’d stick around, line moves purty quickly once she gets going.”
A fter a few rides without further incident, the Marley family was more than ready to head back to the Wilderness Lodge for a nap and the special dinner with all the characters. Apparently Mickey was going to join them for dinner along with Goofy and Snow White. Aurora, most tired of all, was ready to call it a day. But Daddy had promised Aubrey Space Mountain, and Daddy always kept his promises. They headed for Tomorrowland.
The line was short because the sun was setting and many families had begun leaving the park at five. No one save Aubrey had the slightest intention of riding a roller coaster in the dark. So the boy joined the queue while the family went to a nearby ice cream parlor, took a table where they could see the ride, and ordered banana splits all around. The ride looked more like a futuristic white football stadium than a roller coaster, but of course the tracks were all inside in the dark where you couldn’t see what was coming next.
The line moved quickly and Aubrey got closer to the front.
“Sorry, son, full up. Have to wait for the next one. Won’t be long,” a guard said.
Aubrey waved at his parents and climbed up on the rail to wait as the cars left the station. There were video games for people waiting, but he wanted to psych himself up for his ride.
The first indication he had that something was terribly wrong was the kind of screaming he heard coming from inside. It wasn’t excited screaming; it was terrified screaming. And there was an awful smell coming from inside, like burning wires and rubber and something else, that smelled like-and then he saw the flames filling the tunnel and heading straight for the station. There was a roaring fire inside Space Mountain and people were being burned alive. He ran for his parents, ran for his life really, because he’d no idea if the whole thing could explode or not, and when he reached them he started crying.
“There’s a fire in there, a f-fire in there, Dad,” he sobbed. “Inside the mountain. Those people, they thought it was going to be fun and now-they’re dying!”
At that moment there was the gut-wrenching and ear-piercing screech of torn metal coming from high above.
The Marleys looked up to see an entire section of roller-coaster cars, still full of screaming, wildly gesticulating people, some of them on fire, come flying through a rip in the rooftop, soaring at least a hundred feet above the ground. It was too horrible to grasp. Marjorie turned away just before the flying death trap slammed into a large crowd waiting to enter Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin.
Christopher and Marjorie each grabbed a child and began to run maniacally toward the park entrance. The screams and yells coming from every corner of the park told them Space Mountain wasn’t the only ride that had malfunctioned so horribly. It seemed that everywhere they looked there was death and destruction: black smoke and fiery orange flames were rising throughout the park, and mobs in a high state of panic were clawing and trampling one another in an effort to escape this nightmarish Kingdom of Death.
Christopher Marley shouted at his wife and suddenly detoured toward the scene where the flying cars had landed on top of the waiting crowd, leaping over the fallen bodies of his fellow citizens. He did the best he could, balancing on his one good leg, using his crutch to pull as many of the injured from the tangled wreckage as he could before EMS and park security forces arrived en masse.
Hugging his daughter to his chest, running toward his wife and son, he had a terrible premonition.
This is no accident.
One
Hawke had been in the bloody thick of it all his life. When not engaged in fighting for his life, he dreamed about it. But this hellish nightmare was all too real to be any dream. Surely near death. It felt so very close now, the cold hovering all around him; some vast, grinning blackness, a protruding bony finger beckoning, urging him to surrender. How much longer could he run? He was spent. He could hear his wild heart screaming, begging his body to stop. Grievously wounded, he was shedding blood from countless gaping rips in his flesh, suffered when first trapped by the wild ones of the forest.
Somehow, he’d lost his bearskin coat in that last fray. Nearly naked in this freezing, bone-chilling cold, his clothes mere scraps of rags. He looked down at his feet, shocked at the stinging pain of each step in the crusted snow. He’d lost his boots, too, both feet shredded and weeping blood. He heard something, low and wolfish, rapidly gaining ground on him. He looked over his shoulder, shocked at the bright red path he’d made through the woods. How could he lose these beasts when his own feet were leaving a bloody trail in the snow! Still, he crashed through the forest, the sound of thundering hooves behind him. A hideously grinning cavalry, gaining on him, swords flashing as they ran him to ground.
Wild Cossacks on horseback, fierce, bloodthirsty creatures who wanted only to slice the flesh from his bones; why, they’d skin and eat him alive they’d said, dragging him toward their fire. Why had he even entered this wood? He’d known certain death was lurking in the forest, but he’d stupidly ignored that certainty, leaving the vast whiteness of the endless tundra and venturing into the dark wood.
They were closer! He could hear their howls of impending victory, the hoofbeats of their black, red-eyed steeds nearer now, great snorts of frozen breath steaming from their flared nostrils, the riders calling to him, laughing at this helpless victim who could run no longer. His legs had turned to stone and every step in the deep snow felt like his last.
They were upon him then, stallions wheeling, rearing up, encircling him. He heard the whisper of steel slicing through air, felt the tip of a Cossack sword nick his throat, another burn his ear. They were all around him, dismantling his body bit by bit, but he knew if he could just keep his head, just keep his head away from the whispering blades, just keep away long enough to Hawke gasped for air as he came fully awake, sitting bolt upright in his lice-infested berth, his face drenched in cold sweat, the fear still real, even as reality swept the lingering remnants of terror from his brain. Another nightmare! Gazing out the train’s window at the white tundra and the solid black forests beyond, he knew why he’d had the dream, of course… because it was no dream.
He was riding, eyes wide open, straight into a death trap, deliberately embarking upon a doomed journey into the blackest black heart of darkness. And there was a very distinct possibility he’d never get out of Russia alive.
T he sun rose over Siberia, ascending into the blue heavens like a shimmering ball of blood. Lord Alexander Hawke, lost in thoughts of his impending death, leaned forward and peered through the grimy, ice-caked windows of his tiny compartment. The old Soviet-era train lurched and creaked, traveling at the speed of a horse and wagon as it approached yet another desolate station where no one would be waiting. Unthinking, he dabbed mentholated gel under each nostril.
It had become a constant habit.
His grubby kube compartment shared a wall with the foul lavatory right next door. In other words, he’d grimly decided soon after boarding, he had shit for neighbors.
Hawke had taken what he could get, a third-class car, dimly lit, overheated, humid, and, after numerous early stops in the countryside, overflowing with drunken farm workers who smelled like a concoction of damp earth, sour garlic, and grain alcohol. The incessant singing, shouting, and fighting were well nigh unbearable. He had fled immediately to his boxlike refuge, locked his door, only coming out when he developed severe cabin fever or was “in extremis.” The noxious lavatory boasted a commode commodious enough to accommodate a circus elephant, sitting, but the toilet seat wouldn’t stay up.
The train was hell on wheels, all right. All he could hold fast to was the memory of Teakettle Cottage, the beauty and tranquility of his secluded little “hideaway” house on Bermuda’s north shore. Situated atop a high bluff, it looked down over a small banana plantation, a fringe of pink sand, and the glittering turquoise sea. How he longed now for that quiet and languid life. The soothing balm that was solitude.
He supposed his friend Ambrose Congreve was right when he’d accused Hawke of having a “violent addiction to being left undisturbed.” If so, so be it.
The British Intelligence officer’s normally strong blue eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, his cheeks
