Free Storming the Kingdom by Jeff Dixon Page B

into place.
    It’s kind of fun to do the impossible
    He inserted the third bar into the mechanism.
    If you can dream it you can do it
    The last of the bars slid into place and the red light began to blink even more rapidly. Hawk crouched down to get a better look at the thirty-six-key pad. He found and pressed the letter N . The letter immediately lit up in place on the display screen. Then he pressed the numbers 2, 3, 4 in sequence. They also appeared on the screen pad. His friends leaned in and watched as he pressed the last two letters, M , M , instantly causing them to appear on the screen. The light went out and then flashed green as the door released and automatically swung open. Hawk motioned for them to enter; and as they did, he removed the four silver bars, returning them to their case, and the key. All of them disappeared into his pocket, and the door closed behind them.
    “After I originally solved the puzzle, I did what we just did right now. And I probably felt like you are feeling right now. I was wondering where I was and what was going to happen next.”
    “So each of those silver bars were hidden for you to find, and they’re part of a lock?” Jonathan clarified.
    “And the N234MM is the code you needed?” Juliette added. “Which is the tail number of Walt Disney’s personal airplane, right?”
    “Yep.” Hawk smiled at his friends and their growing excitement.
    “So, this is what people have been trying to steal from you the past few years?” Jonathan wondered.
    “Yes, and the journal of Walt’s that George Colmes had hid for me to find,” Hawk answered. “But what the pieces together were for is something only Farren and I knew about, until just now, when I showed you. So, it goes without saying that this is something you can’t tell anyone else about. Agreed?”
    His friends all nodded their agreement, which Hawk had known they would do. He trusted them completely, which is why he had taken them into his confidence with these secrets. They now stood in a reception area with plush carpet with a single oversized chair sitting in the middle of the room facing an enormous glass wall. The attention of the group turned toward that wall as the lights slowly began to brighten the room and shadows were chased away, lighting a familiar figure seated behind a desk, staring at them. Juliette, Jonathan, and Shep all watched in stunned silence as the man rose to his feet, placed his hands on his desk, leaned toward them, and said, “Glad you made it.”
    The man who had spoken those words to them was Walt Disney.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Six Days Ago
Night
    T he office where Mr. Disney now stood was a replica of his office in California at the Walt Disney Studios. It was created exactly like the replica in the One Man’s Dream attraction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World. A small stuffed Pal Mickey sat on the edge of the desk. Hawk smiled as he noticed it once again. It was that Pal Mickey, a high-tech interactive souvenir designed especially for him by Farren Rales, that had given him the clues he had needed to discover this very place.
    “They look like they are in shock, Hawk,” Walt Disney said. “You better help ’em out a bit.” He sat back down behind the desk.
    “I’d like for you all to meet the one and only audio-animatronic Walt Disney.” Hawk waved his hand toward the man behind the desk. “There is not another one like him. The most advanced audio-animatronic anyone else has ever seen is the A-100 Audio-Animatronic figures in the theme parks. Jack Sparrow, the Wicked Witch of Oz, and Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story Mania. Walt is an entirely different level of technology. He is so lifelike that he actually has an artificial intelligence built into his programming. He can remember, process, and respond in ways that are as close to lifelike as you can get.”
    “Pretty impressive, isn’t it?” laughed the rich and familiar voice of Walt Disney. “In these parts, I am