Jack Be Nimble: A Lion About to Roar Book 4

by Ben English

  The details were more distinct than the usual image. The man still stood with his back to the viewer, but lines of fatigue were clear in the angles of his shoulders. His head was beginning to bow, and his clothes hung on him unevenly. Though his eyes were on the hooked beak and talons of the flying beast above him, the expression of his body was not one of mastery, but of the mastered.

  Few noticed that the binding traces, which normally would have bound about the bird’s leg, hung only from the man’s open grasp. The inscription of poetry below explained it all.

  Marduk didn’t have time to read it tonight.

  When he wasn’t in such a hurry, he occasionally permitted himself to stop and read the verses at the base of the almost-statue. As he circled up the stairs to the second floor, he settled for brushing his fingertips along the edge of the falcon’s wing. Time pressed.

  He used the machine he carried to send a message ahead to the main lab, telling the floor manager to clear a desk for him. Marduk needed a much faster computer for what would come next.

  Their computer network was under attack.

  All public-facing web servers were experiencing intrusion; batches of different hacks were coming in every few minutes, increasing in complexity. Attacks by themselves were normal, even typical for a company of their size, which used a widely distributed network of servers spread around the globe to run most of their internal and external business processes. This batch of attacks was odd: the IT department could not isolate any of the attacks by geographic area or signature, which was itself a sort of signature. Marduk looked at the server log data scrolling across his screen as he climbed. At first blush it looked to him like a government had singled out Raines’ Capital and a few public subsidiaries to probe, but he couldn’t be sure.

  There were always cyber attacks occurring against the various bits and pieces of the Raines empire. They rarely had anything to do with one another. Marduk had always wondered what would happen if someone with the proper resources mounted a concerted attack on all the servers at once, but that would require a perfectly coordinated strike against all sixty servers on five continents, using new variations of old attacks—this was the typical hacker approach—to guarantee that a proper defense had not yet been added to the system. The NSA had the computer power and the know-how to pull off such a feat—but his mind was wandering. Such a thing would be unlikely. But it would be interesting to watch.

  Speaking of interesting, it looked like Miklos brought back some souvenirs from Havana. Hostages. Meatbags. Marduk expanded his video window to fill the screen, and panned around the group until he found Raines, smiling, speaking animatedly with one of the woman passengers. He wondered what use Raines would find for them. They certainly didn’t need hostages. Might be efficient to simply return them to civilization. Even if the passengers told anyone about the island and the report worked its way up a bureaucratic chain of command, passed through the digestive tract of a government decision-making machine high enough to catch the attention of someone with enough power to do anything about it, they would be too late. The Signal would overtake them on their way to the island. And once the Signal went out, the island would be the only truly safe place on the earth, at least for a few months.

  He switched to another live video feed, this one depicting Havana’s harbor and the U.S. Navy ships at anchor there. Even if Bata’an weighed anchor immediately and came for them at flank speed, the Signal would overtake them.

  Marduk left the shining falcon and falconer behind. Everything was already in high spin, and the future would not be stopped. Anyone with the power to do so was already on this island.

  Motion, Captured

  He flew directly to the Burbank airport. It was the closest landing strip the studio could arrange on short notice, and he was uncharacteristically impatient. Besides, he had no desire to drive through downtown L.A. at night. It was a dead zone, emptied of humans like some post-apocalyptic metropolis where someone had forgotten to turn off the power.

  Southern California was warm, even after midnight. Almost enough to make one forget that spring was a temporary situation, part of a greater cycle.

  The car rental at the airport held a Tesla Roadster reserved in the name of Jack Flynn. Alonzo had obviously called ahead. It was even the same color as the one he’d driven a few days ago.

  Whoosh. Two visits to L.A. in the same week, he thought. Falling back into bad habits, old man.

  The speed of the aircraft amazed him. The supersonic QSST actually gained him a bit of time on the clock, even accounting for the 3 hour time difference from Havana. Nevertheless, he drove faster than common sense dictated.

  A business complex rose a few blocks from the studio. He’d never noticed it before: the distinctive, lighted logo outside proclaimed it as an outpost of Raines Digital. The stylized falconer and hunting bird were formed by a series of tiny display screens. Interesting. It didn’t escape him that the building shared space with a branch of Westen Corp.

  He decided not to think about Mercedes’ husband. Save that for later.

  The guard at the gate recognized him. “Great car, Mr. Flynn.” He wore a bright green tie under his security jacket, and sported a large gold tooth. “Early call this morning? They working you too hard.”

  He nodded back. “You’ve got no idea. Hey, you and me, we should swap jobs one of these days.”

  The guard thought this was hilarious. Obviously an early-caffeine guy. “Maybe April Fool’s day. Can you imagine that? Roll of a lifetime. You could probably pull it off, too.” He chuckled. “I bet I know what you’re doing today. They’ve got Stage 4 all rigged for performance capture. You remember where to park?”

  He did indeed. The crew was already setting up for the first and second shots when he walked in. The room was more like a giant warehouse than a sound stage; bits and pieces of crude furniture and shaped pads were laid out in a grid pattern, and bright tape on the floor showed his marks, the different places where he’d stand during the scene. There were easily over a hundred digital cameras pointed at the stage.

  Performance capture was still new. Scenes were acted out on a simple platform, relying heavily on an actor’s imagination—it reminded him of the minimalist, “black box” stage plays from college—and the actors wore clothing designed to capture the most minute actions.

  Donning a performance capture bodysuit was definitely easier than sitting in makeup for three hours. A production assistant stood ready with his suit, and showed him where the sensors were woven into the fabric. Green pants, black belt, and a bright orange top. “You look like Aquaman,” she said.

  “I get that,” he started to say, but it was time to put on the camera head rig. It was a tight-fitting skull cap, originally made from a cast of his head, designed to fit comfortably but not shift or chafe. As soon as it was velcroed into place his assistant attached a dual strut which resembled a microphone, but held a cluster of tiny cameras. The system would reveal the subtlest movement of his face, eyelids, and pupils. Every nuance of his performance would be captured and sifted through software at an incredibly high computational speed.

  Someone had printed a name on the main head rig camera, at the end of the tiny strut in front of his face. “Jack / Douglas.”

  Somewhere nearby was a server room nearly as big as the soundstage. It would handle the heavy lifting of designing a realistic 3D world around him as he moved across the bare boards. The computer would also act as a real-time virtual camera, allowing the director to walk his actors through computer generated scenes just like he would a live-action scene. The director could see his actors performing in character, occupying a realistic-looking world, and would be able to remotely adjust the cameras to match their performances. Thanks to the internet, the director could physically be anywhere on the planet.

  As a point of fact, nearly all of this could be done remotely, though it was hell on bandwidth and computer processing power.

  The production crew was on edge
. Rumor on the set was that The Great Zanfino, Marty Zanfino, the studio head himself, would be watching tonight’s real-time feed. This probably wasn’t true. The Great Zanfino seldom stayed up past ten o’clock. Solid fifteen hour stretches spent shouting at other people at the top of one’s lungs tended to demand huge amounts of energy.

  He found the director, a younger guy, oddly tall, with luxurious eyebrows and sideburns cut to match those of Captain Kirk (original series). He was looking over the script, including the new pages sent from Cuba a short time ago.

  “Hey, good morning Aquaman! I hear we’ve got to shoot and get you out of here quick, so you can catch an early flight out of Burbank.” The director shook his head. “Not sure we can do that, my man. These rewrites mean we have to reposition the cameras for the other scenes. Can’t use the same angles for everything. I don’t see us getting out of here before noon.”

  He waited until the director made eye contact, and said. “Maybe we should shoot the new material first.”

  “That’s fine by me. New material first. Alright everybody,” The director raised his voice. “Picture’s up! I want to see movement.”

  *

  As long as they stayed in motion, they were okay. Alonzo occasionally whispered to the flying machine, gently coaxing the instruments, and in return the helicopter kept just ahead of the storm, its bow tilted at a steep angle toward the frothing waves. The aircraft knifed through the clouds, the wind directly behind.

  Allison tapped a gauge on the panel before them. “You have a plan to deal with this?”

  The fuel indicator stood shy of the halfway mark.

  Alonzo shrugged with his face. “It’s all the jinking around in this storm. Worst case, we put down on an island along the way and get picked up by the Navy. Nicole should have Bata’an following us soon enough.” He looked across at her. “You didn’t happen to pack that swimsuit you were bragging about the other day?”

  She ignored this. “What of your man, Peter Dalton?”

  “He’ll come through. He’s never let Jack down.”

  The wind beat a fusillade against the Plexiglas nose of the aircraft.

  Allison shivered. “Were I in his position I’d half be tempted to steal away somewhere down here, find a little island of my own. Snorkel. Enjoy the beach.”

  “I love the way you think,” Alonzo said. “That’s not Pete, though. Not a real fan of the beach.”

  The Prayer of Ajax was for Light

  Death itself might not be so restful.

  Yet he could not rest, and he was something other than dead.

  He lay in repose, in total darkness, hands folded neatly against his body. Occasionally an indistinct sound, muffled by the close, padded walls, reached him. The creaking and shifting of other containers in the cargo hold, or the shouts of men fighting the storm. He felt neither hot nor cold. There was little sense of motion, other than the occasional sense of falling which accompanied the internal shift of his organs reacting to gravity and tide. He wondered if these were dreams.

  The only other constant was the dank, steely smell of the ship’s hold.

  If he moved his arms slightly, they would find the walls and close-pressed ceiling. There was no need to do so. He was bound by circumstance.

  The trip was only supposed to take a few hours. He wondered if he’d have enough time to take care of everything before daybreak. It was a race against sunlight. Should the light of dawn catch him, it was over.

  He’d fail them all.

  He would not fail them all.

  So he waited, physically relaxed, mind racing. If true sleep were only possible.

  Eventually he sensed another change in motion, and voices nearby, louder than before. The ship no longer rode the mountain waves, that much he could tell. The workers moved quickly around him, hastening to offload the entire contents of the cargo hold, cursing at each other in Spanish and other tongues. He supposed they wanted to beat the storm, and halfway expected them to skip through the incoming inspection procedures.

  Raines and his people were meticulous, that much was sure. Dockside rumors in Havana told of x-ray scans and physical sampling of each container. This was a large shipment, and the men were in haste, so with any luck they’d forgo the examination of every single barrel, case, and package. Nevertheless, he found himself tensing again and again as the crates and other containers around him moved. He felt a lurch, and readied himself to spring forth if the lid was breached.

  The sounds died away, and he allowed himself to count to a thousand. Slowly. Then he gathered his equipment.

  The construction of the container allowed him to exit from three directions in the event anything was stacked around or above, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. The outer air was cooler than he expected, and though the storage room beyond was unlit, his eyes were accustomed to a more absolute darkness. He could see well enough.

  Other containers of various kinds, mostly foodstuffs, filled the room. He became aware of a deep humming, and realized there must be at least one walk-in refrigerator nearby.

  It was dim beyond the door; the kitchen was empty. He felt a burst of relief; the estate had two kitchens, a small one in the main house and a large facility, left over from when it had been a working casino and hotel. It was now used to mainly serve breakfast and lunch to the small army of technicians and security personnel living on the island.

  A long row of windows revealed that it was still, technically, night. A sufficient amount of the planet’s mass lay between himself and the sun that he could still take advantage of the deep darkness.

  A combination of cyclone fencing and thick walls circled the compound. Across the gardens and other buildings, a dim orange light winked. Someone—a guard, obviously—walked the wall, enjoying a cigarette.

  He checked the time. Alonzo and the others might have been delayed by the storm, but still. As it was, he’d have to run across the island in order to beat them to the landing zone. There wasn’t time to find the woman, search for Raines, or even deal with the guard on the wall. The most difficult aspect of the next ten minutes was that he had to avoid killing anyone in the compound. Silence and control. He ghosted through the building, finding the darkest shadows and the connecting points between them. There were men all around, preparing for the storm.

  They could all feel it coming. The storm clung to the horizon, but that would change. He felt the static charge in the air. Wondered if it was a full hurricane yet. Whatever message the storm had for the inhabitants of the island, it was about to share. And he still had to get to the other side of that damned guarded wall.

  It was a good thing the island had her own secrets. He wondered how well she’d kept them.

  The wind eclipsed all sounds of walking men, but he spotted two guards patrolling the inner garden as he exited the kitchen. He observed them for a moment, then ran smoothly to the center of the quad, taking care to keep a large ceramic pot between himself and the nearest guard as the other man strolled slowly about the manicured paths.

  A stone well stood at the very center of the garden, complete with a winch and bucket. Old stories of the island told of a group of Dutch colonists who managed to hold out against a pirate siege, thanks to this well. Knowing such things made him feel like an old man.

  He sprinted to the well, low, and rolled over its pebbled lip. The inside curve was worn but made up of individual mortared stones, with sufficient space between each to work his fingers and the occasional edge of a shoe. The stones were wet from rain. He did not hesitate, but worked his way downward a dozen feet, deeper into darkness.

  The ledge was right where he expected it to be. A tunnel lay beyond, worked and mortared by Dutch hands more than three centuries previous. It was light enough below to see. Soon he could stand. Then he could run.

  The tunnel underneath the well became a cave, and the cave opened out abruptly above the roaring ocean. Fresh puddles, birthed from spray born by the wind, stood in the mouth of the cave. Gouts
of froth and spray fell far short of the cave, though the surfaces of the puddles rippled with the rhythm of the workings of the sea below. Kinetic energy worked this place, his bones shook with it, and that worried him more than anything else. The hammering of the surf had changed this section of the cave. It should have run on another fifty yards. The old maps were wrong. Things had changed.

  He’d expected to find a mortared staircase, a trapdoor, and a lighthouse. Instead . . . the monstrous waves rushed in below.

  Pieces of the buildings lay below, no doubt, but no remnant showed. The black water was impenetrable, even after each wave receded.

  This was not an omen.

  If he fell into that inky, roaring churn, it would be over. Falling into the water equaled a true death. His body would be broken up by the dark sea below, torn apart in all that blackness. He would die alone.

  The mission would fail.

  But the mission would not fail. He climbed. It required all his skill and self-control.

  The cliff face trembled under the waves and wind, and more than once a great handful of rock came away in his hands as he climbed. “We get through this, I’m going to punch Alonzo right in the face,” he said to himself, but at last he transcended the cliff. Large sections of an ancient wall lay scattered about the little hill at the top. It stood clear of vegetation, and provided a sloped vista of the mountainside, hills, and the massive house across the hills. He’d come further than he thought.

  The beach was half a mile away, an easy downhill run through the jungle. A narrow, paved road led around the island’s perimeter, but he didn’t trust it. Not enough protection, too easy for the guards to monitor.