Jack Be Nimble: A Lion About to Roar Book 4

by Ben English

  “And to kidnap Mercedes.” There was a dangerous glitter to Raines’ eyes. “She’s a special case. Carried the nanodevices for years. When the next signal goes out,” he lifted the computer, “She’ll have to do everything I say. Anything I say.”

  “Knowing her,” Jack said. “I have a hard time imagining that.”

  “Doesn’t matter, it’s still true,” said Raines. He indicated the injector. “Use it on yourself. Embrace the change and I can help you, Jack. She’ll be yours forever. Think of what the two of you can accomplish, with forever.” He smiled warmly. “I’m the only one who can give you that.”

  Jack fixed him with a canny stare. “It’s like you can read my mind.”

  Raines agreed. “Let me help you, Jack. You deserve this. She’s worth it.”

  Ian rose to his feet at the periphery.

  Jack took in a deep breath, and smelled apples and pears. Apples and pears. Without turning, he knew she stood behind him. He found himself smiling, as though the day was already won.

  Strength flooded him. It felt like the sun rising behind him—within him, brilliant and masterful. He bristled with smooth, gathered strength. Like a lion about to roar.

  Raines filled his vision, computer and gun and all.

  Jack picked up the injector. By weight, he guessed it held more than one dose.

  A nice weight to throw. He low-tossed it to Ian and set about enthusiastically violating Raines’ personal space.

  Isolate the weapon. Jack used a simple wristlock to make sure Raines’ gun hand led the way as his body tumbled back under Jack’s blows. The man stumbled through the wreck of a console and Jack stayed with him, pushing him backwards toward the smooth brink.

  Ian caught the injector one-handed and dove over them, plunging it into Raines’ chest.

  Raines’ finger jerked against the trigger, spilling fire and noise into the room.

  “Jack!” Mercedes screamed.

  “Go back for the kids! Get out!” he shouted. His hold on Raines was slipping. They both scraped toward the edge of the platform.

  Raines released the computer and struck at Jack, who used his knees and elbows on the other man. But the computer—

  Slid off the platform. Jack swore and dove headfirst after it.

  Ian landed hard on Raines’ arm, fighting him for the MP9. Soon as he had it, he rolled away, coming up unsteadily as Raines gained his feet.

  The growling crackle was louder now. Several of Raines’ bullets had found the pillar behind him, and splinters and spikes of light flexed around a new network of fissures across its surface. Ian blinked at the sudden incandescence, and looked for Raines. At the center of white fire blazed the nuclear silhouette of a man, and the light grew to embrace them both.

  *

  Mercedes jerked the wheel, fighting the slipshod steering of the electric transport. It was made to traverse the underground corridors, but still drove like a bus full of angry clowns. That’s something Alonzo would say. She’d have to remember it so she could repeat it to him, later.

  The guards hadn’t moved. She ignored them both, braking at the last minute next to the transparent wall.

  Several of the children waved and clamored to the wall, anxious to be heard.

  She had to use the horn to get them to quiet down. “Now, do any of you have a key to this door?” It wasn’t an internal lock, the only steel part of the plastic wall. Designed to defeat children, not determined and highly pissed-off adults.

  Mercedes used the horn again. “Everybody, get back. All the way back against the wall, behind the furniture.”

  They seemed to get it. The big one, the twelve-year old, picked up his sister and a smaller child and hiked right over a couch.

  Mercedes reversed a hundred feet or so down the hall, and thumped the gearshift into low. The wall came up fast. Roaring past the shocked face of the guard, she realized belatedly the transport had no windshield, seatbelts, or protection whatsoever for the driver. If she made it through the barrier, if she couldn’t duck under the seat in time, beheading was a very real—

  *

  Jack arrested his headlong plunge with difficulty, snaking his arm through a loop of dangling cable.

  Light blossomed above him and Raines shrieked. Or maybe it was Ian. The lighted pillar at this level seemed stable enough.

  His feet hung a scant few inches above the wreckage of the lower platform. What an unholy mess. Most of the broken electronic guts from the consoles above lay about in pieces, having fallen through the floor due to a combination of plastic explosive, dismantlement, and annoyed FBI man wielding a hammer.

  Parts of the floor had lost their ceramic covering, and the metal panels underneath were clearly electrified. Whole sections of the main electrical conduit lay exposed and dangling—sparks snapped and cracked the air when they swung too close to each other.

  All the hairs on his arms slowly rose.

  “I think you’ve voided the warranty,” said a ragged voice. Miklos waved tiredly from where he sat, back against the curving wall at the center of the platform. His body lay folded and heavy, either relaxed or exhausted.

  Oddly enough, Jack was glad to see him. “You are amazing, Nasim. Look at you. Resilient as hell. Took a giant tree full in the face, spent, what—an hour?—outside in a full typhoon, and then get blindsided by an overclocked computer.”

  “You forgot about the caramel apples. I ate two of them.”

  Now Jack almost did laugh. He kept his eyes open, though. Miklos Nasim at the edge of his strength was still the most dangerous natural force on the island.

  “I don’t understand you, Flynn. You and I should be fighting right this moment, tooth and claw, here at the end of the world, but for some reason I want to understand you first.”

  “Thanks for your honesty,” Jack said. “But it’s not the end of the world just yet.”

  Miklos shrugged. “The window of action is upon us. Raines’ entire system is synchronized, ready to send out his instructions to the world. On the other hand, if we do nothing, we live with much worse.”

  The computer lay flat, on a clear section of the floor. Live wires trailed through the air above it, a handbreadth from the screen. Rivulets of electricity played amongst the wires, snapping upward in a half dozen Jacob’s Ladders. Between the sharply sloping wall and the writhing cables, there was simply no way to get close to the device.

  “Go ahead,” said Miklos. “Take it. Reach right out. Do you know what he’s planning to do to the children? All of them, everywhere, save for a few who will be kept in something like a zoo?”

  “A zoo is still a cage,” said Jack. He examined Miklos closely. “What did the Soviets do to you, all those years ago?”

  Miklos stood. “I’ve rested enough. Come, we have both been waiting. Time for tooth and claw. As Raines said, the center cannot hold.”

  Jack picked up the largest hardcover book he could find. Tested its weight. “Miklos, there’s a girl waiting for me. She’s never been particularly patient.”

  A terrific grinding sound filled the air. Definitely mechanical.

  Lightly as he could, Jack tossed the book at the wall behind the computer. It hit, flat, and swept down the curved surface, sliding under the cables to strike the computer, which wobbled across the ceramic far enough for Jack to reach it.

  Miklos blinked.

  “Come with us,” Jack shouted to the other man, but he barely heard himself over the noise. Jack pushed the computer under his waistband and clambered upward far enough to reach the underside of the gangway. Miklos was shouting something he couldn’t quite make out.

  *

  He lived yet, for some reason. Raines didn’t fully understand until he saw the injector, empty, still protruding from his chest. He opened his mouth as if to pour out the pain, but it was too much to share. The pain was unbearable, incomprehensible, and as he fell further and further into it he expected to lose consciousness, but in fact found the opposite. His ability to feel exp
anded, and the magnitude of the pain blossomed as well. It increased without measure or plateau. He realized in terror that his thresholds were gone, that there was no limit to what he could feel, and there was no hiding from such uncapped misery and torture.

  The agony was beyond anything he could compare it too; he was aware of every single piece of himself dying. The white fire behind him did more than burn, it pulled him apart by the smallest degree imaginable—and yet: he looked at his hand, and as fast as the skin flayed off the bones, it rebuilt. He doubted anyone ever experienced this degree of suffering—no, according to the stories his mother told him, one person had mastered it, two thousand years ago. But that was a tale for children. There was no such man. With all his will, he wrenched his mind away from the thought.

  The FBI man fought through the light, attempting to pull them both to safety, but as the light from the pillar behind Raines died, the brilliance of the other two pillars increased. One already was riven with deep cracks across its surface; it creaked like an ice flow about to break, releasing a river. The floor bucked, and the FBI man fell back as the lighted pillars warped and popped.

  Pain. Pain, and complete awareness. Alex Raines knew what was coming next. The devices, spurred on by the incredible energy, were reconstructing him. They were designed to operate in environments of extremely broad energy quantum, and with the energy of the generator unleashed, the devices reached critical mass. They would continue to function as long as there was matter to convert. The pain was a part of him now, an intrinsic weave in his pattern. The other two conduits would soon burst, and everything he felt in the past few seconds (eons?) would only serve to establish a baseline for him to compare the agony. Alex would feel it all.

  Through the curtains of misery, he heard it, clearly. Music.

  *

  Ian had never seen a more wretched expression than that of Alex Raines. Dark, symmetrical sections of the ceiling began to descend, accompanied by a grinding rumble, and Ian attempted one more rescue of the man before abandoning him to the wreckage of the consoles and instruments.

  All swirling light within the conduits had ceased all motion. The half-glimpsed shadows within seemed to gather themselves, poised.

  The thick, clean slabs descending from above enclosed the conduits and entire center section of the room, and appeared to be made from the same black, light-eating substance as the mountain itself. From beneath, identical slabs rose out of the floor, shaking everything to hell and gone.

  Ian thought of his wife, and ran.

  From the gangway, the last he saw of Alex Raines was the man transfixed by three streams of light. The sections of black volcanic stone closed from below and beneath, in an instant swallowing the full measure of the light and his screams as if they’d never existed.

  The strength went out of Ian’s knees then, just for a moment, and he took a breath for himself.

  “Steady,” said Jack. “We’re not out of this yet.”

  Ian looked wildly around and found Jack hanging beneath the gangway.

  “Give us a hand, will you?”

  Ian pulled him up, and they both looked back at the shining black monolith. The lights in the white room were failing, sparking off one by one. “What happened to Raines?” asked Jack.

  “Cask of Amontillado.”

  “Ah.”

  They heard a deep, quick thump from the center of the room, accompanied by a flash of green light which illuminated every seam in the shielding stone.

  Light from the elevator lobby was fast becoming the only source of illumination, and they made for it as the steel blast doors began to close.

  In the lobby, Mercedes waited for them behind the driver’s seat of a six-wheeled transport, full of kids. Her co-pilot, the twelve year-old, gave up his position to tap the elevator call button.

  Mercedes grinned broadly when she saw Jack, and made to get out of the vehicle.

  “Can you drive?” Jack asked. “We need to get this computer to Steve, fast.”

  The front and sides of the transport looked like someone had beaten them with an ugly stick. The hood was almost completely smashed in. Good thing the engine was in the rear.

  “We’re taking the elevator?” asked Ian.

  “How do you think they got this beast up here in the first place?” she said.

  The doors pinged and she eased the transport in. “Hit the button for sub-floor two.”

  Jack did so. “How do you know that’s where—”

  “There’s a floor map in the glove compartment.” She twisted her hair up and out of her eyes with one hand. (How did she do that?) “Honestly, you men and your directions.”

  As they passed each floor, Ian leaned hard on the ‘close doors’ button. He saw Jack tense at each level, as if expecting the doors to spring open on a room full of guards.

  The children eyed them cautiously. Jack sought out the calmest among them, a little girl nestled under the wing of the twelve year-old (her brother, if the dark eyes and strong jaw were any indication) and extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Jack.”

  “Ryan,” she replied, and shook his hand.

  “That’s very pretty. It’s an Irish name for girls, right?”

  She rolled her eyes and looked at her brother.

  Overhead, the intercom crackled, causing them all to jump. It buzzed, played a few bars of Girl from Ipanema, and crackled again.

  “How do you like that,” said Steve’s voice. “It’s a digital-to-analog system. Weird.”

  “Steve?” said Jack.

  “Yeah! Hi Jack, can you hear me?”

  Ian let all his breath out in one convulsive heave. “Of course we hear you!”

  “Cool. They’ve even got their intercom system encrypted, you wouldn’t believe what I had to do to deal with the bit-level—”

  Ian wished he had a weapon in his hands. For a split-second, he actually considered taking off one of his shoes and hurling it at the loudspeaker. “Look, that’s really neat. You’re just awesome. Now, get us out of here!”

  “Sure thing. You’re going to come out on the level that Jack and Mercedes started on.” The sound of quick keyboard work carried into the elevator car. “There’s a team of three—no, four guards setting up some kind of heavy weapon in the hall. They’re on to you guys. I think when I was using the computer to find you, I might have showed them exactly where you are.”

  “No harm, Steve,” said Jack. “We’ll exit the elevator at an angle, right? We have to drive around a corner before we get to the tunnel?”

  “Right. They’re putting a big gun together on a tripod right around the corner from the elevator.”

  “What about after that?” asked Jack. “What’s the next roadblock?”

  “That’s it as far as security, until you come out of the tunnel into an underground garage. Assuming the doors are open, you could just drive right out.”

  “Okay.” Jack’s eyes glittered. “Can you spoof the elevator floor counter on their level? Make them think we’re still five or six stories up?”

  “Yes, but they’ll still hear the elevator doors open.”

  “Any edge we can get.” Jack traded a look with Mercedes. “More importantly, we’re coming to you with one of Raines’ trigger devices. Need you to uplink to Raines’ communications network. We’re going to send out another signal on the system.”

  Ian watched the floor numbers dwindle. “Our stop’s coming up, Jack.”

  In the Air

  Marduk was drenched by the time he reached the little valley near the beach. For all the time he’d spent hiking the island, he’d never gone out immediately after a big storm. There was no way for him to know that jungle leaves posses a habit of bending and cupping rainfall for hours, only to release great gallonsful when someone blunders along near the base of their tree.

  He was a bit resentful that the two technicians who met him weren’t half as muddy. “You can both fly, correct?” he said by way of greeting. “Rated for the Bell 430?”
>
  “’Rated’ isn’t exactly the right way to say it, but yes, we can fly,” said the first technician. Marduk took an instant dislike to him. Technician One also carried a firearm openly, which Marduk found offensive.

  “Fine. You’ll prepare the aircraft while I stand guard. Give me your gun.”

  The Bell was snuggled down tightly in a clearing nearby, just where mathematics and probability told him it would be. The intruders had seen to it that their escape route was secure: plastic covered each rotor tip and moorings held the aircraft to the ground. Aside from some branches and long clumps of weeds lodged by the storm, it was ready to go.

  Technician One and Technician Two busied themselves with the preparations for takeoff, and Marduk busied himself with their backpacks. As instructed, they each packed enough provisions for one man for a week, along with a brick of several hundred U.S. dollars. He found Technician Two’s gun in his backpack. That was sloppy.

  The engine caught immediately, and the rotors began to spin.

  “Is it hard to fly one of these?” he asked, when they returned for their bags.

  Technician Two answered first. “Not at all, sir. With enough fuel we could reach either North or South America, possibly even Mexico. Where would you like us to take you?”

  But Technician One raised his hand dismissively. “That’s exactly the problem. What you don’t under—”

  Marduk shot Technician One in the chest.

  As the leaking mess of chemicals and weakening electromagnetic fields that made up the body of Technician One slumped to the ground, Marduk turned to the remaining man.

  “I just feel more confident dealing with you,” he said, and picked up the spare backpack. He kept the gun visible. “How long do you suppose, before we’re in the air?”

  Meet Me at the Well