by Ben English
Jack Be Nimble: A Lion About to Roar
Ben English
Copyright 2011 by Ben English
Jack Be Nimble: A Lion About to Roar
By Ben English
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead, undead, or wandering the streets of San Francisco, would be pretty amazing, now, wouldn’t it?
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Copyright © 2011 by Ben English
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
Published in the United States of America.
Cover art modified, original photo property of Mercedes Adams. Bronze lion along the Paseo del Prado in Central Havana, Cuba.
Visit the author’s website: www.BenEnglishAuthor.com
The Jack Be Nimble Series
Gargoyle
Tyro
The Crystal Falcon
A Lion About to Roar
Table of Contents
Foreword
Augury
Not Yet
Provocateur
First
Marduk
Motion, Captured
The Prayer of Ajax Was For Light
The Falcon and the Falconer
Any Landing You Walk Away From
Ascendance
Under the Banyan
From a Long Way Off
Miles To Go Before I Sleep
Vantage
Zeroed
Caramel Apple
For Want of a Nail
Trail of Breadcrumbs
Gravity
Born and Bred in a Briar Patch
Contingency
The Story About the Well
Share of Patience
Temple of the Pagan God
A Place to Stand
Not His First War
Treehouse
What Raines Wrought
Slips Past
The Verge
Vertical Sprint
Second Set of Eyes
Sirena
Marionette
Grandfather’s Cello
The Center Cannot Hold
In the Air
Meet Me at the Well
Flanked
Buried
The Prayer of Ajax and the Song of Achilles
Further Up and Further In, Part 2
Beacon and Memory
The Only Cure for Grief
Archimedes’ Principle of Buoyancy
The Signal
Jack Be Nimble
Epilogue
End Notes
This one’s for Stephen Victor English
my son
Who is a lion about to roar.
Foreword
Written on the back of a rain-spattered, unfinished form requesting fuel for a Bell 430 helicopter, flying out of Havana.
No flight plan was ever officially filed for this aircraft.
It was all supposed to be so simple.
Jack’s not here to set this up for you, and Alonzo’s getting the helicopter ready, so it looks like this Foreword business falls to me. He’d better remember to fuel up.
My name is Ian Whitaker, and in my regular day job I usually preface that with Special Agent. Then I flash my shiny badge.
I’m not carrying a shiny badge today. And today is turning out to be anything but simple.
The papers and TV newsboys are calling what happened last night in Havana a “drug-related terrorist attack.” Bottom line is, we won—or thought we won—and Jack and Mercedes were headed back to southern California. He’s obligated to work on a film today, but the real idea was to get Mercedes home where she’d be safe while we mop up what’s left of the mess in Cuba. Then, as soon as Jack gets back, we go after Raines.
My official report hasn’t been written yet, but Alex Raines, the technologist, is the architect behind more than his share of the chaos you’ve seen in the headlines over the past week. He and his private army / assassins / whatever you want to call them have led us on a not-so-merry chase from Paris to London to California to Cuba, and now, finally, toward one of his island research stations in the Caribbean. There’s a supply ship headed there now, loaded down with a shipment of his favorite food. Thanks to this sort of detective work, and quick thinking by Mercedes, we pretty much know where Raines is. A few of his men destroyed the airport on their way out of town, and she got aboard their plane. Doesn’t sound like the brightest idea, but she’s carrying Jack’s phone and knows we can track her location.
Mercedes and Jack. They were only together a short time last night, but you should have seen them. Doesn’t take an FBI profiler to figure out what’s going on there. She was the one who put two-and-two together and figured out that the real purpose of the “terrorist attack” last night was to get the world’s political leaders and celebrities to all move through a narrow hallway where they were hit with some sort of airborne tech agent—nano-devices. We found something similar on another island run by one of Raines’ companies. He’d used the native population as guinea pigs for his medical and social experiments, many of them involving nano technology. Most of them in vitro. All I’m telling you is laid out pretty well in the last book, The Crystal Falcon.
Matter of fact, while you’re at it, you should read all three previous books in the series, beginning with Gargoyle and following up right away with Tyro. What you are about to read will make a whole lot more sense if you have those under your belt already.
We’re out of time. Alonzo wants to take off before the storm gets any worse, and the fuel truck hasn’t even arrived yet. Hope you’re ready for this.
I’d still feel better if Jack were going in with us.
Jack Be Nimble Book 4
A Lion About to Roar
Ben English
The prayer of Ajax was for light;
Through all that dark and desperate fight,
The blackness of that noonday night.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Give me a place to stand and with a lever
I will move the whole world.
- Archimedes of Syracuse
Augury
The Island
He awoke hours before dawn on the last day of the world, tempting a grin. Raines always slept where he could see the sky; no dark bedchambers for him. The bedroom in the master suite had more window space than solid wall; vistas looked out and down on both the rainforest mountain and the sea. The clouds hadn’t obscured the moon, and the sea stood revealed. The surf was vexed; waves muttered and quarreled without direction or meaning under the wind. Bright light from the
moon and stars fell, colorless, everywhere. The storm was nowhere near them yet, but the water already churned as though the forerunning masses of air and energy extended below the surface, agitating from beneath.
For a long time he watched the moonlight reflected off the water below, looking for patterns to assert themselves, finding none. This pleased him.
To say such things made Raines happy would reveal a lack of complexity. Happiness was a simpleton’s abstract; either something was or it was not. A ball is round. The sky, under a certain wavelength of light and burden of atmospheric pressure, was blue. Raines felt deeply that to associate value to a concept like joy was a basic waste of economy. He’d sooner feel sentimental about a telescope or a weatherglass.
He certainly didn’t require a barometer to feel the weight of this particular day. It would be the last of its kind. Tomorrow was a world in need of a new name, and he would think of something suitable. The new society required a proper term.
Trees on the mountain slope danced under the masterless wind, as given to chaos as the surface of the sea. Meadows of long grass danced as the air corkscrewed across them. Raines fancied he saw a helix pattern.
The atmosphere immediately around his home and property seemed a touch calmer. This did not surprise him. Blossoms torn from the garden below drifted past his window, red, white, yellow, blue.
He’d find a name for the new society very soon, perhaps today. The universe had a habit of bringing him answers, as long as he framed the question properly.
Reluctantly, he turned from the storm-to-be and took up his computer. Marduk was online and checking progress on the various projects in the engineering labs which adjoined the house. The air mass to the southeast was about to be upgraded from a tropical storm to a full hurricane. His shipment of foodstuffs was due to arrive at the leeward dock well in advance of the weather. Havana was reeling. According to the press, terrorists had disrupted the Goodwill Games opening ceremonies and destroyed more than sixty percent of the airport. Off-islanders were fleeing discreetly, and the games would be delayed, possibly discontinued altogether, depending on the severity and duration of the storm. A U.S. Navy ship in port, Bata’an, had already run electrical lines into Havana’s barrios; the ship’s nuclear reactor ensured power to hospitals and local clinics during the storm.
Good for them, thought Raines. One of his companies provided the Navy with the components necessary to serve the Cubans in such a manner. Electrical power would keep the locals connected to the internet, radio, and television. The news stories which would flow during the next few weeks were an invaluable ingredient to the birth of his new society. People everywhere needed to know what was happening to the world. His plan counted on this.
Most people, probably everyone on the planet, thought they needed a steady feed. Constant input was as dear as physical nutrition, and the denizens of the tarnished new Millennium demanded it. These people loved their vicarious experiences. Loved their politicians, televangelists, and gameshow hosts. Adored music videos and games which glorified the most vicious brutality. Thrilled to watch someone else a world away do anything remotely interesting. Cooking shows. Gossip. Bowling. The crucial human need to expand and improve was sated by these secondhand experiences. Raines counted on this.
He loved seeing headphone cables at the train station—everyone plugged in—or live sporting events where everyone in the stands paid more attention to the outdoor digital display than the flesh-and-blood action on the field. His plan depended on the planet staying drunk on such baseline stimulation. Ever learning and ever unable to come to a knowledge of the truth.
He sighed, contented. Raines himself was partial to Superbowl commercials. He often took a hand in selecting the ads representing his consumer businesses. He did not consider this a vice. Vice, like happiness, was an abstract.
Miklos would be arriving soon. He had taken hostages, which provided an entertaining choice. There was more than enough food and other supplies, but Raines hadn’t planned on feeding extra people during the next few weeks of chaos, panic, and destruction. The island’s security force needed live targets, and the island had enough space and varied topography to make the chase interesting.
Still, as master of the island Raines could allow them life, or a semblance of it. Miklos reported than everyone on board had been given an injection already, so killing them outright might be an economic waste. They’d been brought over; they were now part of the experiment.
He decided to ask the question and allow the universe to bring him the answer. Perhaps someone on board would provide a name for his new society.
Raines breathed again, satisfied with the idea. He dressed quickly, and informed the morning chef he would prepare his own breakfast. Such an auspicious day, he needed to celebrate, and Raines knew of no better way than to prepare a meal. An auspicious day. The last, in fact.
He felt fit, fully alive, a part of the moment, in a world that had always seemed to be just barely the wrong place for him but now was filled with mysterious portent. Alex Raines stood at the window and drank in the last of the moonlight, pleased to find himself here, at the right time, on the brink of an age of confusion, directionless violence, and unimagined butchery.
Not Yet
Mercedes screamed when the needle went in. Miklos pushed it in deep, working the plunger as the needle strove for the center of her neck
Whatever was in the syringe was cold, and somehow, soft. A feeling as though rats were capering though her on feathery, cool feet. Thousands upon thousands of rodents, tiny enough to move through her veins, scampered through the narrow steel needle and carried a measure of cold from the metal into her blood. Not just cold: ice. Microscopic shreds of glacier flew about within her, a legion, knifing about deep inside. The ice bloomed when it reached her heart, and Mercedes screamed again, losing the sound of her own voice in a sudden roaring in her ears.
She had the sensation of hands on her body, and Miklos dumped her without grace into a chair. Mercedes reeled against the flight cushions. Gradually she became aware of the general tumult around her. The other passengers wailed, shouted, cursed incoherently. Everyone seemed to be experiencing different degrees of the same internal assault; some shook and trembled violently, others ground their fists into their eyes, pressing hard against their foreheads.
Abruptly, the internal glacier receded, leaving a tingle and a faint warmth in its wake. Mercedes gathered herself to rise, and an immediate hand on her shoulder pressed her back into her chair. Miklos stood there, holding a small device in his hand—a computer? Had he stood there long? The plane felt like it was in motion. Mercedes struggled to breathe normally.
The rest of the passengers had quieted down. Some cried quietly.
Miklos lifted his hand, looked at her wordlessly, and walked to the front of the cabin. They were in the air. A guard followed the tall man, and Mercedes noticed they both had changed clothes. The terrorist now wore a grey suit, tropical weight, with an open collar. She fantasized briefly about driving a syringe into the pale skin at the top of his chest.
Miklos did something with the computer he held, and everyone quieted at once. Mercedes felt it, a charged shudder, a frisson, moving immediately through the crowd. Someone a few rows over was noisily airsick, and somewhere a man wept, helplessly. She felt it as deeply as they did—the hard panic at the lack of control—but Mercedes was buoyed above them somehow. She supposed she was far more accustomed than they were to the idea that her body would eventually betray her. Thank God for small blessings, she thought wryly.
Mercedes wondered again how much time had passed. The cabin lights were on and the window-shades closed. Her watch was gone, and as far as she could tell, their captors had removed everyone else’s timepieces as well.
She shifted in her chair, arranging Jack’s coat around her. For a moment, she panicked, then felt the pressure of his phone against the corner of her back. Mercedes wished she could examine it, make sure it was still in one
piece—she had a vague memory of thrashing against the seat and armrests—but it was enough to know she still had it with her.
She still had it with her. The image of Jack diving under the train sprang unbidden into her mind, and Mercedes' heart began to pound. The jacket smelled like him. Her next breath was a sob, and Mercedes felt her heart stutter and begin to break.
A tiny hand pulled at her arm. “It’s going to be okay.”
The speaker was a tiny girl, not more than six, with large, grave eyes and a t-shirt from the Disney resort island. She patted Mercedes' arm and smiled sadly. “My Mom was scared too, but now she’s just sleeping.”
The woman at the window seat indeed appeared to sleep, but Mercedes checked her pulse anyway. Her shirt matched her daughter’s. Though belted in, she lay in disarray.
A red mark showed where she’d been injected in the arm. There was no blood on or near the mark, and Mercedes felt her own neck. Nothing. The effects of the injection lingered in tingling waves, but her skin bore no soreness from a needle.
The girl next to her didn’t appear to be marked, either. Aside from dried tears and red-rimmed eyes, she seemed fine. “Did they give you a shot?” Mercedes asked.
“Only the grownups.” She paused a moment, still solemn. “When you were asleep, you were talking to Jack. Is he your friend?”
There were no guards nearby. Mercedes reached past her again and brushed her mother’s hair away from her face. Then she leaned a bit further and flicked the window shade up nearly an inch. Still dark beyond. The airplane beacons on the wings were weak, filtered through clouds laden with tears.