Jack Be Nimble: A Lion About to Roar Book 4

by Ben English

“Seconds?” Then she remembered. Individual DNA blueprints were the same in every cell; if several cells were penetrated at the same time, there would be an equal number of nanodevices reading the same blueprint at the same time, like a million people reading different parts of the Encyclopedia Britannica at exactly the same moment. Personal genetic information would read just as fast, or faster.

  “Once the devices are activated, we can do nearly anything. Tell the cells to behave in any manner we see fit. Change the human body on an individual, customized basis.” Raines paused, letting the implications speak for themselves.

  “So you can do away with nearsightedness,” she said. “Cure chronic halitosis. Change eye color from brown to green. Increase breast size, sharpen IQ, teach the body to create muscle out of junk food. Cure cancer.”

  He didn’t even nod. “Already done. This is what we want to offer to a world in need.” He looked over at Marduk, and back again. “But not this one. Not quite yet.”

  Mercedes looked carefully at them both. “And the shot they gave all of us on the plane?” She blinked in realization. Turned to stare at the display screen above the operating table. The text-based information appearing and vanishing on the readout was indecipherable, but she recognized the silhouette. She tapped the screen, spinning and magnifying the view until it displayed a tight close-up of the woman’s stomach. There were nearly-invisible surgical scars tracked along the inside of the navel; ghostly, light marks through a thin layer of fat and a thicker sheaf of muscle.

  She forced her hands to her sides, kept them away from her midsection. The surgeries had begun when she was seventeen. All the incisions for the endoscopic procedures had been made in a very specific place. The doctors had gone in through her navel.

  The heartbeat of the woman on the monitor jumped, matching beat-for-beat the pounding in her own chest.

  “You’ve taken care of yourself over the years,” said Marduk. His fingers danced across the flat hard keyboard of his computer. “Would you like to see what President Espinosa had for dinner last night?”

  “You can see that from here?”

  “Espinosa’s had the devices in his system for several hours. His signals are coming to us through his cell phone, personal anti-kidnapping device, and the wireless network in his house.” His eyes dropped to his computer for a moment. “Your signals are easier to pick up because you’re physically present.”

  He must have misinterpreted her look as one of disbelief, for he added, “Hey, we sat in your dad’s classes year after year, the old man telling us that one day this would be possible and we—our generation—would engineer it into reality.” Marduk raised his eyes to the screen, then dropped them to look at the empty operating table. “The world won’t need these anymore.”

  “The next world,” Raines said.

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that.” Mercedes was relieved to look away from the gurney and screen. “What’s this business about a next world?”

  Before Raines could gather breath to speak, Marduk shook his head and pointed at something on his computer screen. Raines nodded, tapped the screen, and relaxed visibly. All the tension evaporated from his shoulders and neck.

  “I know, it’s such a trite phrase. Perhaps you can help me with that.”

  Two technicians stepped into the room and made their way straight to Marduk. They acknowledged Raines’ presence without actually looking directly at him.

  Marduk shot Raines a curious look before departing with the two men. As he moved behind her, Mercedes couldn’t help notice how he scrupulously avoided physical contact, yet glanced hungrily at the readout of her vitals on the large screen. She tracked his reflection in the window; Marduk walked backwards out of the room, his eyes roaming up and down her back.

  She didn’t need to read microexpressions to decipher Marduk. There was nothing micro about his intentions. She remembered his interest from when she’d been a teenager.

  But being left alone with Raines was no relief. He still seemed to respect her father. What would he say right about now? “So you power the nanodevices on the molecular level?”

  Raines shook his head. “Subatomic.”

  “If you’re tapping into that kind of energy . . . you can run forever. And also tip the balance of the electrical field of the host’s body. So all that talk earlier about activating human potential wasn’t just some kind of new-age metaphor.”

  He spread his fingers.

  “You can turn people on and off like a switch. How many people, Aleks?”

  His eyes glittered. Raines nodded at the display. “Unfortunately we haven’t injected your friend Jack yet with the devices, otherwise I’d be able to show you his profile. You’d see the full measure of his potential.”

  “Jack? Jack Flynn?”

  Everything in her field of vision jumped slightly, as though Mercedes were watching an old-fashioned film and the strip had slipped in the projector for a slim fraction of a second.

  Was this an aneurysm?

  “You’d be better off if he were dead,” Raines said. “We all would.”

  A large, invisible, warm hand squeezed her heart. She needed to touch something solid, unsure why. Balance, perhaps.

  “Miklos briefed me on your involvement with him.” His voice took on a slightly sad note. “I saw video footage of the two of you in the airport earlier this evening. His left a short time after you stowed away on the jet bound for my island.”

  Mercedes spoke rapidly, fighting an unexpected panic. “His plane. He has a plane.”

  Raines nodded, consulted his computer. “He and I own the same model, in fact. It landed in Southern California a short time ago, and he checked in with gate security at one of the studios soon after. He’s there now.” Raines probed her with a stare. “With a little effort, I could have George tap into the live shooting feed from the movie set, or one of the security camera feeds. Conjure up Mr. Flynn on this display right here, if you like.”

  Mercedes turned away, feigning interest in the busy lab workers (not convincingly of course, but she didn’t care) beyond the observation window. Her expression must have been something like Marduk’s, when he’d seen her from the top of the stairs.

  She choked. Jack’s alive? God! Jack is alive?

  Jack is indeed alive. She couldn’t help herself. The idea shot through her with as much certainty as anything. She knew it with every piece of herself.

  “And yet,” Raines spoke to her back. “I can’t help wonder why he’s not here, right now, with you? Why is he thousands of miles away?”

  When she faced him, he added, “Why are you smiling like that?”

  Mercedes almost trusted herself to speak. “You don’t know—”

  “Do you know him? Do you think you do?”

  Raines smiled eerily and walked out of the room. The lights turned off the moment he stepped past the threshold. She had no choice but to follow.

  They rode an elevator to the third floor.

  “Jack is less of a paragon than he’d like the world to think. Lacking in several ways. For instance, did you know he cheated his way into his film career? He hacked,” here Raines let the word drop off his tongue with as much scorn as she’d ever heard from anyone, “Hacked into a private internet forum used by the Hollywood elite—directors and such—and impersonated a number of them. He was offered his first substantial role this way. Nice bit of self-promotion. That he actually knows how to act is beside the point; his professional career began with a lie.”

  The suite of rooms at the top of the building was nearly what she expected of the personal quarters of one of the world’s leading technocrats. Clean, modern lines, embedded computers everywhere, and a 360 degrees’ worth of floor-to ceiling windows. The circular, sunken sitting area surrounded a bottle of something expensive and a pair of elegant glass flutes arranged on a crystal-topped pedestal that was lighted from within and beneath.

  “He’s much worse than a fraud, Mercedes. Jack Flynn and h
is terrorist cell have done more harm than you could imagine. You see, he built his team very, very carefully. Picked a certain set of skills. They’ve destabilized small countries, broken entire economic systems. How do you think he finances his little adventures?”

  Raines called up a new file on his computer, and showed Mercedes a picture of one of the women on Jack’s team. “This is Nicole Bonneville,” he began.

  “We met. She got an elbow in the eye during the riot your men started at the reception last night. She’s a—”

  What was her specialty?

  “She’s a psychologist,” Raines finished. “To put it in her words, Jack is not rational. His mental instability forces him to employ a psych specialist as a member of his team. She’s on-call without rest, primarily to deal with his psychoses. George showed me an old email where she advised him to write fiction to “flush out” the mental and spiritual demons he deals with on a day-to-day basis. He writes when he’s nervous, scared, or anxious in any way.” Raines frowned. “While I can’t claim to have read any of his books, the overall body of his work as a writer is extensive.

  “He’s an obsessive. The team blew up a bridge in Finland a few years ago, Jack planted the explosives himself. He had to spend a great deal of time working in the water with his arms above his head.” Raines leaned forward. “In preparation, he tread water in a swimming pool for an entire day, without stop, without rest. These are the symptoms of a man who is desperate for a way to still his beating mind.”

  The wind rattled the glass behind them.

  Raines brushed his fingers across the face of his computer, and the lights began to dim. The curtains swept back, exposing them to the night beyond the glass. “Let me help your night vision,” Raines said, and the light from the crystal pedestal took on a ruby tint. “The red light helps. Give it a few minutes, and you’ll be able to see quite well in the dark.”

  Mercedes found her voice. “Jack’s a good man.”

  “He’s a moral extremist,” Raines replied, forceful and soothing in the same breath. His confidence was a physical thing. Mercedes couldn’t shut out the sound of his voice. She tried using her own.

  “There are things a man does well to take to extremes.”

  “Fine, call him a social fascist. Take your pick. He tries to re-order society according to his own ideas. For all his talk of free will, whenever Jack ‘steps in to help’, he violates the rights of others—and without authority to act as an agent of the law. He certainly doesn’t place individual rights and the law before justice and order—and he’s got a very rigidly defined personal view of reality, this one. Nearly psychotic. You couldn’t have known him as a youth, but Flynn has always been a loner, a borderline case.”

  Mercedes approached the window. The night began to take form.

  “Take his writing, for instance. He writes whenever he’s got a spare moment. Can’t seem to stop. Reams and reams of purple prose. Why?”

  The physical effects of the wind were surprising, setting the trees to roil. Brush and loose branches whipped by outside, drawing long, dry fingers across the glass. Below, the gusts pushed the sea to alternately flatten and warp.

  “The writing may have started as a coping mechanism, but it’s become a symptom of his psychosis. Consider this: Flynn knowingly throws himself into horrific situations, the likes of which none of us are meant to experience, and needs to either carry the damage or externalize it somehow. Writing is how he copes with the reality of the monster that he is. Writing is the cork in the bottle.”

  Raines’ voice floated around her, sourceless. “He possesses a pathological need to validate his ideas of right and wrong, and bystanders are killed when they get in his way. I could show you pictures, but they’re horrible, horrible. He makes widows. He kills, without remorse. Has a real creative gift for it, too. The business partners of a Japanese industrialist who Jack decided was a criminal—drained of blood, and not just the men.”

  More and more details began to emerge from the night. Another large branch flew past the window. She looked around for a clock. Shouldn’t it be dawn by now?

  “On the roof, back in Havana,” said Raines, “Just a few hours ago, he promised to tell you everything.”

  He hesitated, and Mercedes took the opening to press him. “You had us watched?”

  “My people were there, close by. Of course, I had no idea you were there, else I’d have rescued you from him myself. No, Flynn promised to disclose everything to you. And has he?”

  “Jack—”

  “Did he tell you he let his wife be killed?” Raines searched her face, settled on her eyes. “She was allowed to die so that he could live. Continue his little crusade. And now?” He shied away from her, crossing the room to the other window. “His crusade has put you at risk, and I won’t stand for it.” His voice quailed, just a bit.

  Raines cleared his throat immediately, and continued to stand with his back to her, facing the onrushing clouds. Bits of moonlight peeked around the running clouds, sending pale ghosts chasing across the light tile floor around his feet.

  “But thanks to him, you are here, now, with me. On the day the world becomes ours.” He looked back, brightly. “The old world, unchanged, would not have been good to you, Mercedes. It would have been such a great sacrifice for you to be his friend. An unthinkable inconvenience.”

  Beyond Raines, the windstorm grew. She’d never seen thunderheads like these. Backlit by sparks of incandescence, given shape and cruel mass by the lightning licking up and across its face, the storm was a vast, horizon-wide devourer of worlds. Miles and miles wide. The sea seemed to flee before it. The moon was nearly gone.

  Surely it must be dawn by now. She decided the air outside was a few shades lighter than when the two of them had entered the building.

  “The ‘old world’,” she asked. “What are you going to do, Aleks?”

  Raines smiled. As he was about to speak, his computer chimed.

  “We have an incoming aircraft,” announced Marduk. Raines was instantly attentive.

  “The signals team picked up a helicopter on an inbound approach. It’s not on the schedule, and has deactivated its navigation and anti-collision beacons.”

  Raines nodded, ruefully. “I’m surprised any of the governments have responded so quickly. Are they American? Cuban?”

  “Can’t say. They’re not broadcasting a signal of any kind.”

  “Run the live image to me. I’m in the tower, should be able to handle the video.”

  He held his computer vertically, as if staring through a pane of glass at the storm outside. Standing behind and slightly to the side of him, Mercedes saw the screen jump with color and detail, showing a close-up, illuminated view of the storm front.

  Raines shifted slightly, and the image shifted with him, jumping further towards the clouds. Mercedes involuntarily swayed. A small, man-made object hung in front of the advancing tempest, battered by the elements behind it.

  Led by a guide on the screen, Raines carefully aimed the computer. “Magnify. Process.” The computer responded to his demands, and the image of the helicopter—for that’s what it was—immediately lit up. Diagrams and schematics appeared onscreen next to the tiny, swaying aircraft. Mercedes had seen augmented reality before, but nothing so detailed.

  “It’s the aircraft we sent to Havana,” said Raines.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Marduk. “You don’t think they’re betting that we’ll think some of our men got away, do you? Escaped from Havana and are returning to the island?”

  “The man is not that stupid, and he’s in California.” To Mercedes, he added, “Isn’t this amazing? Something else I’ve been dying to show you. The system touches thousands of databases, allows you to see information on nearly anything you point it at.”

  Mercedes was curious despite herself. She could almost make out faces of the passengers. The pilot fidgeted. Alonzo. “How does it pull in such a fine, clear picture?” That side of the device had
no camera. The ‘moving window’ was quite a trick, but she realized the computer had internal positioning sensors—an accelerometer, at least—and enough processing power to relay its orientation to another computer with enough horsepower to process the original image.

  The image of the helicopter was uncannily steady and crisp. She said as much.

  Raines allowed himself a moment to preen. “I was saving this to show you later. As a photographer, you’ll appreciate this.” He swiped his finger across the screen, changing the image on the screen to a view of the outer grounds, beyond the wall. “All the images we receive through the cameras on the island are digitally enhanced. The visual data is crunched by a program I designed myself. An algorithm scrubs any imperfections in the image and augments everything. You should see what it does to satellite video. We’re going to be using that a lot over the next few days, to monitor the effects of the change.

  “These are my eyes.”

  “Mr. Raines, there is a problem.” The voice belonged to someone new, an underling by the tone. “Several of the sensors on the beach have been damaged by the wind. We’re going to lose coverage for fifteen seconds or so, until the aircraft comes further inland or enters another sensor grid.”

  “Have Miklos meet me in the operations center,” said Raines. “And alert security.”

  “Already done, sir. Mr. Nasim is here already, and the hosta—ah, guests are sheltering in the reinforced greenhouse.”

  Raines considered. “As soon as the system has enough data to extrapolate facial recognition, run it.” He looked at Mercedes and sighed happily. “I wonder who it could be?”

  “Let’s go find out,” she said.

  Any Landing You Walk Away From

  A whole lot of stupendously complicated stuff was happening, everywhere and all around, the logistical intricacies of which would no doubt intimidate a more intelligent man. Alonzo thanked God he wasn’t all that smart. He could focus on one thing and one thing to the exclusion of every other thing that wasn’t the One Thing. Land the damn helicopter.