Jack Be Nimble: A Lion About to Roar Book 4

by Ben English

  Too many details, Jack. Break it down.

  Generally, Bad Guys with a simple plan were the most difficult to overcome, but the team pulled it off. The loose end was the removal of a two hundred pound brick of explosive from the central cave. Piece of cake. It was a mixture of 46 parts polystyrene, 33 parts gasoline and 21 parts benzene.

  Break it down further.

  Napalm. With a timer attached. He didn’t have to guess how much time was left on the clock.

  Further.

  The brick was attached to a line, which was attached to his harness, which was attached to Alonzo and Solomon and Toria, who weren’t attached to anything as far as he was aware. The brick was wedged below, not moving, caught up in a vee of rock. He even backed down the cliff a few feet, but the slack did nothing to free up the dead weight.

  Too far to climb down to before it went off. Couldn’t turn around and cut the napalm free, because of the damn harness. And they were still close enough to the radioactive junk in the caves to cause a bad day for everyone downstream.

  The irony was, if he could just kick the brick loose and let it fall into the river below, they’d probably be okay. The blast wouldn’t destabilize the cave system.

  “Jack?” Alonzo was braced at the lip, grinding his teeth.

  Toria squeezed his arm. “Don’t ever let my man down, Al.”

  She came down the rope headfirst, gripping the rope with hands, knees, and feet. Neat trick, but Jack didn’t have much time to admire the view before she reached him, reversing herself and planting a kiss. She slithered around him and further down the line. He couldn’t turn and see what she did, but the tension in the line suddenly lessened, and Jack practically ran up the rock face. He found Solomon and Alonzo sprawled backwards in the fine dirt, their hands and arms bleeding where the rope had cut them.

  The rope. There was no tension on the line. She was still down there, hanging off the rock. Probably working to free up the brick. Jack turned back to the edge—

  The distant flash of light reached him an instant before the thunderous clap and pressure wave rolled up, throwing him back several feet onto his butt. The ground shook, but held.

  Alonzo and Solomon scrambled to the cliff’s edge. Jack found himself holding his breath for some reason. He slowly coiled the line hand-over-hand, watching the edge for her to appear. Seemed to take forever, but he eventually pulled up the entire line. The very end of the rope was not frayed.

  Ah.

  The sky over the cliffs was tinted with a pale green luminosity. At first he took it for the city’s glow, then remembered he was dreaming. Dreaming a memory, but still.

  The blackness around him began to fade into motion. He moved upward along with it, not flying upward so much as expanding in that direction; the movement had nothing to do with any of Newton’s laws.

  Dream or memory, he rose out of an ocean of anguish into a brilliant, liquid green light. Time compressed, he heard rain playing the heavy rhythm it only knew in the tropics, and Jack knew exactly where he was.

  Mercedes’ head was nestled into his chest, her hand over his heart. He recalled now where he first saw that shade of green, but her eyes were closed.

  She was breathing against his chest, and her hair tickled him. Apples and pears.

  The buttons on his chef’s jacket had all come undone. Moving carefully in the confined space, he removed it completely. Trying not to jostle her. Listening all the while for any sound from outside their hiding place, any sound at all.

  Born and Bred in a Briar Patch

  Mercedes woke to the pop and sizzle of someone using the kitchen. The lid of the crate was partially ajar, and Jack was nowhere to be seen. In his place lay her clothes from the dryer, folded. He’d wrapped his chef’s jacket over her at some point.

  She lay there a moment, wiggling her toes and stretching. Felt good to catch a quick nap; absurdly, with a little imagination, all might seem right with the world.

  Her clothes were still warm from the dryer. She dressed quickly and used the adjoining bathroom.

  Jack operated a series of pans and skillets in the kitchen, working rapidly up and down the long steel counter. Whatever amount of time he had been up, he’d made use of it. One end of the counter was taken up by a complete table setting—cloth, silverware, fine china—that definitely wasn’t there before. The other end, at first glance, appeared to be a technology graveyard.

  “Hey buddy,” said Jack, in his careless, offhand manner.

  “Breakfast?”

  “That was the plan, right?”

  The effects of the brief sleep showed in his movement. He kept the outer door in his peripheral vision, yet brought a fine and abiding focus to whatever his hands touched. He actually whistled quietly as he flipped a pancake. Jack did not radiate tension, as she expected—in fact, he spared enough concentration to smile at her. “Sorry about the mess.”

  He had disassembled the kitchen computer, his phone, and the back panel of Raines’ computer. “They keep a soldering iron in the kitchen, can you believe it?” Cables and connectors, most of them makeshift, linked several of the circuit boards, and Jack finished daubing solder on a wire before turning to her. “No idea what you like to eat, so I cooked you one of everything I could find. Just had time for the basics.”

  He cocked his head and touched the screen of Raines’ computer. “Groucho, tell me you have access. It looks like you’re in. Good.”

  The screens of his phone and the computer changed, synchronously. Untouched by Jack, the computer displayed its contents, shuffling section by section through the file structure and copying a file here and there. She understood. Someone was using Jack’s phone as a modem to remotely access Raines’ machine.

  He returned to Mercedes. “This might seem odd, but the place is still deserted.” He pulled a tray of plates from a warming oven, and deposited them before her. “Couldn’t let this food go to waste.”

  Two kinds of omelet, toast, a platter of small hotcakes, and a tiny log cabin made of sausage links. To that he added a pitcher of juice and a bowl of cream.

  She was impressed, and said as much. “If this is your idea of a basic breakfast, I’d love to see what you do with dinner.”

  Jack shook his head, taking up a knife. “I’m afraid breakfast is all I can really pull off.” With the same uncanny efficiency of movement he cut a kiwi, a mango, and an apple into thin slices, and fanned them out on an empty plate in front of her. “Attempts at other meals usually turn into soup.” The kitchen lights were bright against the quick blade of the knife. He grinned and slid a bowl of prunes to her.

  “Feels like we’re getting away with something here, yeah?”

  “Sneaky,” she said. “Sneaky, but good. Like when you go to an old boyfriend’s house for a party and accidently find a bunch of his new girlfriend’s clothes, and notice you have a bigger bra size.” She pinked. “I don’t believe I just told you that story! Rewind and delete, Jack.”

  “That’s just not how it works.”

  While he fiddled with the exposed communications gear, she ate. It was surprisingly good.

  “Thanks,” he said. “There’s this place where Al and I eat a lot, near where I live. I got the recipe from the owner, she’s—”

  Alonzo abruptly sounded from the phone’s speaker. “How the hell did you get the ingredients to Mama Spiranza’s omelettes?”

  Jack relaxed at the sound of Alonzo’s voice. If she hadn’t been watching, she would not have noticed the difference.

  “I asked her nicely,” he said. “Okay, educate us. What’s the situation report?”

  Alonzo sounded exhausted. “The brothers started their run for the hostages when you grabbed the computer, but the Colombians were too active. For a merc army, they’re pretty motivated. Anyway, good thing we didn’t pull the civilians out where they’d be exposed to the weather, because the storm hit and knocked all our tactical plans to hell. The plan is off the rails, Jack.”

  “Off the
rails. How bad?”

  “Like a burning train filled with pantsless clowns. Let me lay it out for you. I underestimated the defensive force of the island. Burned through almost all the fuel in the helicopter. No idea how to move the hostages out of the line of fire. The Colombians have been after us nonstop, even during the storm. They know most of this place really well. You can tell they’ve been training here for weeks, maybe months, right alongside Raines’ private security team.”

  “Have you seen much of them?”

  “Raines’ men? No. Assume they’re inside, looking for you two.” It sounded like he was sprinting through a very wet area, maybe a swamp.

  “Good news is the jungle. The mountains are really overgrown, and even if the Colombians have home-court advantage, they don’t like to come into the deep jungle. The coverage on the slopes is a lot like what you and I saw growing up back home.”

  “’Born and bred in a briar patch,’” Jack said. “What about the weather?”

  “Could turn again, or could be volleyball time on the beach in an hour, who the hell knows? We only got the comms back up a few minutes ago, so we missed the check-in time with Curly.”

  Nicole, Jack mouthed to Mercedes.

  Alonzo sneezed. Listening to him out in the rain, Mercedes put down her fork and pushed her plate away. She felt guilty, the food tasted so good.

  Jack noticed. Instead of commenting, he asked, “How do you suppose we’re going to get all those people off the island?”

  Mercedes said, “The pilots have to be kept with everyone else. And don’t we have a pilot of our own?”

  Alonzo sneezed again. “Only helicopters.”

  Steve joined the conversation. “This is Groucho. I’ve scanned Raines’ machine, and we have a problem.” He hesitated. “The first signal’s already gone out. Raines broadcast it right about the time we landed on the island. We’re too late.”

  Shouting filled the comms channel. Mercedes couldn’t follow any single voice, and Jack, well. Jack just stood there, thinking.

  Finally he said, “First of two.”

  Alonzo had just taken a breath and was the first to respond. “Say that again.”

  “Raines sent out the first of two signals. Remember the tests we did in Cuba? Two signals are sent out, the first acts as a sort of primer, to activate the nanodevices and get them scanning the cells. The second signal—the second set of tones or frequencies—is the trigger. Groucho, can you tell how he’s delivering the signal to the final targets?”

  “They’re set to go out over—holy cow. They’re set to go out at the same time over regular media and advertising networks. TVs and cell phones, radio, sms messaging, bluetooth—”

  “Is there any way to get in front of it?” Alonzo asked. “We’ve got his computer, can’t we just shut it down?”

  Jack leaned against the counter and did nothing but breath.

  “CastleBreaker,” Ian said. “Better run CastleBreaker against it.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Steve said. “He’s encrypted the trigger program by itself. It’s amazing.” His voice took on a note of wonder. “Someone has encrypted it with a 3072-bit key. The best code breakers in the world, assuming current technology and a generous ramp of technological evolution, won’t break that level of encryption for at least 400 years. Barring the invention of quantum computers, assistance from an alien race with advanced technology, or time travelers bringing tech back from Earth’s far future (in a DeLorean, of course) nobody’s breaking this thing.

  “And from what I can see of the non-encrypted bits, the signal was never intended to be stoppable. There’s no ‘do over’ button. The instructions have gone out.”

  Ian made a disgusted sound. “So all this effort to get the computer was for nothing.”

  “You’re not hearing me,” Steve’s voice held a note of terror. “I can’t stop this. There’s nothing I can do. It’s like trying to catch a pop fly that’s suddenly become eleven billion balls up in the air. Do you know how many digital screens and sound points there are? The average small-screen advertising company—malls, gas stations, dentist’s lobbies—has a network of at least twenty six thousand screens. Worldwide, Raines has access to something like eleven billion digital endpoints, and all of them are going to broadcast the second signal at the same time.”

  Jack leaned over the phone. “We’ve still got an advantage. Eleven billion, you said? He’s got to coordinate all these endpoints to send the signal at the same moment. That has to buy us some time.”

  She could almost hear Steve shake his head. “Not much. The first signal synced and broadcast to all the endpoints about twenty minutes after Raines sent it out. He could have sent the second signal already, but he hasn’t.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “He sent it from the machine you’ve got me plugged in to, so yeah, I’m sure.”

  Now Allison spoke up. “Why is he waiting?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t need to send out the second signal,” offered Ian. “What happens if he doesn’t send out additional instructions?”

  Steve answered. “We tested that, too, back in Havana. After around three hours, if no second signal is sent, the nanodevices shut down the host system by either dumping all the cell energy or triggering a submolecular event. Poof. It’s a kill switch, a failsafe in case something goes wrong.”

  “Just like a scientific experiment,” said Jack. “But everyone carrying the devices dies either in fire or ice.”

  “That’s not the plan,” Mercedes said. “He’s not going to just let everyone die. He kept mentioning a change, a great change, something that would make the world new.”

  “How many people are we talking about here?” asked one of the Tanners.

  Mercedes thought about that. All the adults on the plane. For sure, many who’d been at the celebration in Havana last night, all the dignitaries and heads of state that had used the service hallway to evacuate the ballroom—they’d all passed through the machine embedded in the door frame. There were surely others.

  She thought of something else. “What if he can’t send it for some reason?”

  Jack locked eyes with her. “He can’t send it yet. The trigger program is built into this computer. Marduk’s computer probably had a trigger, too, but I broke it. What does Raines need to rebuild the program?”

  “It’s simple,” Steve said. “He could rewrite the code himself, maybe from scratch. There’s no hardware requirements, so—”

  “But there are, at least for Raines,” said Jack. “Look; when I took his computer I replaced it with the one he was carrying in London. He’s going to rebuild the trigger on his old computer.”

  “Why would he do that?” Allison asked.

  “Because this type of computer is familiar,” Jack said. “It’s a known quantity. Look, we’ve given him a bloody nose today. His castle’s been invaded, he’s feeling vulnerable, at least on some level. In times of stress we regress to the familiar. Raines will use a device he can trust.” To Mercedes he added, “You saw the way he grabbed his computer in the operations center.”

  It did sort of make sense. “You read him that fast?”

  “With some people you can just tell, you know?”

  “So,” said Alonzo, “Raines is off somewhere now, squirreled away, writing code. We let him finish it, then we steal his computer before he can use it to send the second signal. Then we change the second signal to something benign. Damn, that’s weak.”

  “It gets better,” said Jack. “We’ll find him as soon as he uses the computer to access their network. And he won’t encrypt the new program; that kind of thing takes time. Groucho, do you have the equipment to send out the second signal, if we can get control of the trigger program?”

  “As long as the wind doesn’t come up again. We barely got my antennae down last time. You should know, if they’re on to us, the transmitter on the mountain can be used to drown our signal out.”

  “Never mind the tower,” sa
id Jack. “We neutralized it in London and we can take care of it now. Until Steve finds Raines and the computer, the hostages and the tower itself are our highest priority targets. Leave the tower to me. Larry and Moe?”

  The Tanner brothers were listening.

  “Make your play for the hostages, as planned. Meet at the hill. Harpo and Shemp will assist.”

  Alonzo didn’t sound convinced. “The Colombians, Jack. They’re too well trained for a frontal assault. And they’ve got a mortar on their side. We need one hell of a Dumont.”

  What’s that?” asked Mercedes.

  “A Margaret Dumont,” answered Jack. “A distraction.”

  “Why not just say, a distraction?”

  Alonzo answered. “A Dumont is a very specific kind of distraction. Usually falls on the side of the bizarre and overwhelming, and involves a person.”

  “It originally had a different name,” said Jack. “Alonzo wanted to call the technique, ‘Wonder Woman’s Bustier,’ but he was voted down.”

  “It was way too long to say fast,” amended Alonzo. “Anyway, one of us usually takes the role of the active target. The Marx Brothers’ movies wouldn’t have been the same without Margaret Dumont as a pincushion.”

  “A foil,” said Ian.

  “A straight man,” added Allison.

  “Spot on!” For all the exhaustion evident in his voice, Alonzo suddenly enthused. “Guys, I’m beginning to fall in love with this woman.” Before anyone could respond, he added, “I think this is what they call Stockholm Syndrome.”

  “All right,” said Jack. “Keep the teams of two. Everything goes south, we meet at the hill. Set it all up, get in position, and call in again in twenty minutes. Chico?”