by Ben English
Steve answered. “We’re receiving. I’m using Raines’ server to buffer the video. No telling how long before they notice.
“We have a bigger problem. The satellite signal is good so far, but the storm is going to shut us down eventually. Nothing I can do about the electrical disturbance in the atmosphere. Probably going to kill our local communications net before too long.”
Jack’s voice suddenly rose over the connection. “Then we’d better get started. This is Ollie, ready for check.”
“Groucho, in,” said Steve.
“Chico in,” said Ian.
“Harpo, here, along with Shemp,” said Alonzo. Allison rolled her eyes.
Mack: “Larry, here.”
“Moe, in position,” said his brother.
They all heard the quiet, winking humor in Jack’s voice. “Going to be a beautiful sunrise.” He was composed, utterly serene. Alonzo stifled a retort, but the two groups of enemies below were drawing near. This was fine for Jack, since he was well and away from the center of the bullseye.
Alonzo wet his lips, and settled for speaking softly. It didn’t sound nearly as menacing when whispered. “We get through this alive, Jack, I’m going to punch you right in the face.”
Allison looked at him and grinned. “Here we go,” she said.
From a Long Way Off
“Full magnification. There, there it is, sir. Do you see it?”
The technicians in the operations center hunkered low over their computer screens. Several glanced up at the main display; fewer and fewer returned to their work.
Mercedes looked at the same giant image as Raines, but saw nothing. Dawn was beginning to peek over the horizon, lighting the hillsides in crimson. All the colors sprang into existence, suddenly, beginning with red.
The direct light was fleeting, at any rate. As soon as the sun fully surfaced from the ocean it would pass above the lowest clouds, and the storm would interpose itself. The air directly above the island remained black, lit by lightning.
Raines made a little sound of discovery, and leaned forward. Everyone followed his eyes.
“I see him,” said Raines and Miklos, simultaneously. Mercedes looked—there.
Something caught her eye against the lower slope of the mountain. Something moved upright against the deep, textured green. As she watched, a shape grew out of the crest of the hill. A man alone, walking, rising from the far side, now transcending the rim, always advancing towards them. The figure was still too distant to make out any detail, but something about it struck her as peculiar. The others felt it, too. Just something familiar in its movement. There was nothing to do other than watch the form grow out of the lush landscape.
The figure moved down slope into a cleft between two folded hills and vanished for awhile. Then it reappeared over the next rise, larger, more distinctive. All other activity had ceased in the command center by this time. They all watched the slowly growing image on the screen. Miklos seemed to pace without moving his feet. He scowled at the approaching man, looked away, and looked back. Even Raines stood rapt, an unlit cigarette in his hand.
The lone man progressed across the hills, passing now through an open field of shining grass several hundred yards wide. He was dressed in brown military clothes, that much was clear, and he was not armed. The tall grass whipped at his waist and shoulders, and washed in behind him. He left no wake, and carried no burden.
Blossoms and smaller bits of flower petals blown from the jungle carried past him, floated past as if he were stationary and the world shifted around him. Indigo, orange, red, yellow, and more colors than she had words to describe them. He ambled through the deluge of color, walking calmly, in no hurry.
He wore a hat. Some sort of battered, old-fashioned military headgear. Like a pilot might have worn.
Everyone stared intently at that single figure, the solitary individual. The slow accretion of detail and significance as he grew larger, and the dawning landscape around him and the shining field of grass and flowers that seemed alternately to submerge and bear him up as if he floated on a swelling, breathing ocean. Growing closer, closer, taking so long to cross the shining green. How he commanded their attention, utterly, as if they were the members of a religion awaiting at the End of Days the returning focal point of their mythology.
The jungle swallowed the hill near its base, a good fifty yards from the edge of the compound wall. As he drew even with the top of the wall, more or less at the same height as the camera, he stopped.
Fully visible, he nodded and seemed to look directly at them.
Miklos spoke softly into his microphone. “Units 1 through 4, the target is at your twelve o’clock, positioned in the clear near the stand of trees. Flank the target but do not pursue. Repeat, do not pursue.” To Raines and Marduk, he added, “This is patently a trick. Lure our men into following him into a minefield, or some such. We’ll force him into close quarters combat in the thickly forested area just downhill from his current position, and—”
“—and then what?” Marduk demanded. “He’s just one guy. There’s a basic equation here you’re not getting.”
The figure on the screen moved. Reached up and tugged on his ear. A moment later, one of the desk phones rang.
“What is he doing out there?” Raines asked. A technician picked up the phone, put his ear to the receiver.
“Doesn’t he realize we can see him?” said one of the lab workers. The technician holding the phone coughed.
“It’s for you, Mr. Raines. It’s him.” He looked at the screen. Mercedes realized the cause for the man’s tight enunciation. He’s afraid, she thought. “How is he—”
“He’s using a local communications net, probably military-grade.” said Miklos. “We’ll jam the frequency when we take him.”
“Send the call to the room speaker,” said Raines. “This is Alex Raines. Are you sure you—”
“Hello Mr. Raines. We didn’t get a chance to meet properly in London. My name is Jack Flynn. Please send Mercedes Westen out as quickly as possible, along with the other passengers from the plane that Miklos Nasim took in Cuba.”
“Why are you dressed like that, Jack? Is that a turtleneck? Not terribly practical, considering the latitude.”
“Mr. Raines, let me be clear. You have my word that no harm will come to you or your employees if you surrender yourself, George Marduk, and Miklos Nasim, along with the codes and instructions necessary to shut down the devices you’ve implanted in the people who were at the ceremonies last night in Havana.”
Miklos spoke again into the microphone, softly. If she hadn’t been standing next to him, Mercedes never would have heard the order to “Units five and six, stand close. Get as far up the hill as you can, stay in the cover of the trees.”
Jack looked directly at the camera. Waved.
Miklos continued. “Let me know when you’ve gotten behind the target. Be prepared to fire on the target from his ten o’clock and two o’clock. He’s going to run up the hill, attempt to lure you into a trap. Prepare to fire on him, but maintain your position. Do not pursue.”
Mercedes felt a tingle at the base of her spine. It stopped. Then again. There it was again, an inaudible growling next to her lower back. Of course; Jack’s phone.
Raines set his computer down and leaned forward. “Perhaps you should come inside. We can discuss it over breakfast.”
Jack smiled and nodded. “I already have a date for breakfast.” He touched his ear again, and the line went dead.
Marduk breathed vigorously, and forced himself to sit in a vacant chair. “What’s that he’s holding? A gun?”
“No,” said Raines. “It’s a pipe. A Missouri Meerschaum corncob. I thought he doesn’t smoke.”
“Herbal cigarettes,” said Miklos. His gaze wandered. “How is it that I’m the only one who has seen his most recent cinema?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Marduk.
Miklos pointed at the screen. “That is not Jack Flynn
.”
The figure onscreen waved again, jauntily. Touched his ear, whereupon the phone next to Raines immediately rang.
Raines himself activated the speaker.
“Hello again. This is Jack Flynn.”
Marduk exploded out of his chair. “We know damn well who you are!”
Jack continued, as good natured as before. “Please send Mercedes out, quick as you can. Have her bring the deactivation key or code, whatever form that may take, when she comes.”
“Keep him talking,” said someone Mercedes did not recognize. His close-cropped silver hair was his most distinctive feature, until you noticed the eyes. He had the look and bearing (and camouflage khakis) of a man accustomed to giving military orders. He took the microphone from Miklos, who stood, musing.
Jack’s phone, lodged in the inner coat lining at the small of her back, vibrated again. Mercedes was sure someone was bound to notice. She began to work it toward the hole she’d made in the inner pocket.
Raines addressed the viewscreen. “No, I really feel you should come inside and join us for breakfast.”
The barest measure of tension rippled through the figure before them. If the computer-aided imaged hadn’t been so clear, they might have missed it. His smile hardened slightly, slipping several degrees toward the predatory. “Are you inviting me in?”
The sunlight was failing. Too many clouds between the island and the sun. In a moment, the light shining underneath the clouds would be gone.
Mercedes palmed the phone. It no longer vibrated. Words appeared along the bottom edge of the screen, but she couldn’t chance looking at them without being seen.
Onscreen, Jack Flynn rolled his shoulders and began walking again, downhill, vanishing below the treeline.
Raines terminated the call. “Have your men pick him up immediately. Take no chances. Strip him naked and keep him facedown in the mud. It’s going to rain any second; I want him good and cold before we speak.”
Miklos shrugged and looked at the security chief, who still held the microphone. The chief repeated the order. “Sir, we are prepared to move on the other positions.”
Now it was Raines’ turn to shrug. “At your discretion, Michael. George?”
Marduk came to his version of attention.
“Prep a syringe for Mr. Flynn.”
Onscreen, the camera tracked Jack until it lost him in the trees. A few of the technicians returned to their work. The one nearest Mercedes bent very close to his computer screen. Enough of his mouse-colored hair stood in the way to block her view of whatever he worked on.
Miklos left the room. Marduk watched him go. “He looks disappointed.”
“Understandable,” said Raines. “This is going to be over too quickly to satisfy Miklos. He’s built Flynn up in his mind as something more than a man. Probably even started to respect him.”
“Sir, we have a problem.” It was the security chief. “No one has eyes on the subject. He entered the woods, but hasn’t come out.”
Raines blinked. “Send someone in at the point where he entered.”
The chief hid his discomfort well. “That’s another issue, sir. No one on the ground outside observed him go into the woods. They weren’t in position. We only ever had eyes on him from here, inside the operations center.”
Raines looked to the door, but Miklos was long gone. “Michael. You have several options, naturally. Which do you suggest?”
Now it was the chief’s turn to blink. “Search the woods in a grid pattern, pull additional men from the internal patrol, pull some back from the strike teams—”
“No, leave the strike teams where they are,” said Raines. He smiled. “Put a heavy weapons teams in the field. If you don’t find him in five minutes, burn the forest down.”
Their eyes turned again to the overhead screens. Mercedes took the opportunity to look at the phone in her hand. Its screen had come alive. She thumbed the message symbol, and a short snatch of text expanded for her to read:
Well, Stanley. Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.
Followed by a smiley icon.
Outside, the weather was turning again. Lightning backlit the low-flying clouds, which parted and re-formed and parted again, gaping wide enough to reveal hints of the great black mass behind and above. The sunlight vanished, casting a shroud of ice-blue light across the landscape. The sky was free of birds.
Stan, pls do exactly this: when you feel the phone ring again, kneel down as low as possible, close your eyes tight, cover your ears, and open your mouth as wide as you can. Nod if you understand.
Great. And hey, thanks for hanging on to my phone.
The small screen went dark.
“Right there, there he is! Track him!”
The view screen shifted as the camera panned quickly, coming to rest on a dark figure moving through the trees. The longer the camera stayed pointed at one area, the more detail emerged: fissures in bark, gradients of green in the moss, edges of rocks. The sprinting figure remained in silhouette, always at the edge of the camera, leaping down the hill from bole to bole. In a moment he would reach the treeline by the wall.
All the desk phones in the operations center rang at once. Mercedes jumped, along with everyone else, but the phone in her hand remained dark and motionless.
“How is he doing that?” said Marduk.
Before anyone could react, Jack’s voice echoed from each phone. “Last chance. All hostages and the kill switch to your device.” He didn’t sound winded from his headlong run.
Raines face twisted. “Burn him out of there.”
The security chief spoke into the mike, and his order was shortly followed by an enormous whoosh-thud and a vertical explosion just inside the trees. The camera view shook, but quickly re-established a view of burning foliage and upwardly-raining debris.
Another thudding launch, and this time Mercedes heard the passage of the shell through the air before it hit, next to the first. A third shell impacted immediately, casting rocks and earth high into the air. The third strike defined a straight line. They were marching a row right through the center of the woods. Nothing could survive that.
Five or six great trees, beyond the blast radius, groaned and fell inward towards the flames. Gouts of heavy black smoke rolled out of the wrecked forest as more shells fell. The smoke itself shook from the impact of the artillery.
The camera zoomed back, showing a large section of the treeline and wall. Three guards on the wall slowly rose from behind the battlements and peered downward. Curling fingers of dirty smoke drifted up from below.
The security chief spoke again into the microphone. “Dial in secondary targets, fire at will.”
Without warning, two of the guards toppled backward off the wall. The third began to react, lifting his weapon, but collapsed also.
Two hands gripped the parapet, followed by a man. Jack looked to be in a tremendous hurry. Without surveying his surroundings he rolled over the near side. The camera panned, but only captured the edge of a lower roof. A technician swore and rapidly swapped camera views. The screen lingered on the base of the outside wall, where Raines’ men still combed the smoky ruin of the forest.
The security chief bellowed into his microphone. “He’s on the grounds! Reform inside the gates. Reserve units, to the garden. Interpose yourself between Flynn and the main building!”
The view of the base of the wall cleared as men scrambled to obey orders, but new figures almost immediately moved against the obscuring screen of smoke.
“I have movement,” said the technician controlling the camera. “Enemy troops, sir. Definitely combatants, not wearing our insignia.”
“Show me,” said the chief. He’d apparently all but forgotten Raines.
Rifle-bearing figures moved through the tangled confusion of the fallen trees. Half-glimpsed, they wore identical dark uniforms and metal helmets with a broad, flat brim. There were at least a hundred.
“Why on earth is he wearing those cloth
es?” said Raines, to no one in particular.
The chief took a deep breath and began issuing orders. Onscreen, most of Raines’ men reformed inside the main gate, taking cover in the stands of trees and rows of vegetation. Only a handful peeled off from the main body and approached the inner buildings.
The view screen split feeds to follow multiple groups of soldiers. One of them held a radio.
“Route that man’s audio through to us,” said Raines.
“Mr. Raines, Michael, sir. Our men from the wall. They were killed at distance, sir. Most likely by sniper fire. Confirmed.”
“That makes sense,” answered the chief. “We didn’t see Flynn carrying any weapons. The battalion behind him must have at least a few long guns.”
“Battalion, sir?” The camera found the speaker, he was standing near the gate.
“The squads back in the forest, where Flynn came from. Tactical computer counts at least five hundred.”
Two more men fell to the earth, one screaming. The soldier took shelter at the base of the wall. “Sir, not to contradict, but we have no indication of any action on the field or in the forest. This is the work of two or three sniper teams, at best.”
The chief was incredulous. He lapsed into Spanish. “What are you talking about? They’re massing right in front of you! Don’t wait for the smoke to clear, form up and hit them now!”
The haze was rapidly clearing. Rain fell, soft but insistent. As the man-made clouds blew from the field, more and more the scattered giants of the forest stood revealed. They could see no soldiers wearing the strange, wide steel helmets.
Raines reached into his jacket for a cigarette. “What about Flynn?”
“Every external opening to this building is secured by a team of two,” said the chief, eyes on the screens. The enemy force was invisible. “Could they have all taken cover?”
There was a sound like a deep base drum taking a solid beat. Then another. Belatedly, the walls shuddered as a shockwave spread through the structure. In its aftermath, Mercedes became aware of the sound of rain against the roof.