Jack Be Nimble: A Lion About to Roar Book 4

by Ben English

  He spun lazily in the current, splayed. Couldn’t see the dark expanse below anymore, just the bright pretty bubble above. He wondered how deep he was. Probably could make it up, if he tried.

  There’s air up there, you know, said the dispassionate voice.

  Jack mentally tipped his hat. Thanks for all the good advice over the years.

  And a thousand thousand things you haven’t seen yet.

  That sounds nice.

  Was there a decision he needed to make? He couldn’t put it off much longer. This body would die, if it wasn’t too far gone already.

  Will I be able to fix other things that are broken?

  There was no response from the voice, only a vaguely warm feeling, a knowing nod, a tip of the hat back at him.

  The pressure on his head increased suddenly, and changed. It felt for all the world like someone set their palms on the crown of his head—

  And jerked his hair really, really hard. He gasped in shock, losing even more bright bubbles of oxygen. The hands on his head twined their fingers through his hair, and jerked him unceremoniously toward the bright, shining surface.

  *

  Mercedes yanked Jack by the scalp, conquering the last few meters up by willpower and anger alone, and broke through the thin bubble into clean air. She breathed, sobbed, and took a wave in the face. Then she remembered Jack, found his hair again, and hauled him to the surface.

  He was heavy. Dead weight. She floated on her back and pulled him over on top of her, then held him tightly from behind with one arm. She had to drive hard with her legs and free arm to push her hips into him with enough force to keep his head and chest above water.

  “Damn it, Jack! Breathe!” Not the right time to be stubborn.

  The waves came on, giants. The island was nowhere in sight. Mercedes struggled through the mountains of endless falling, yelling at Jack, pleading with him, threatening—

  What was that?

  “Let me go,” he said. “You have to let me go.”

  She didn’t dignify that with a response. Mercedes shifted her grip, cradling him now even more with the long curve of her own body, and stroked with her free arm in the direction she guessed lay dry ground.

  You keep this up long enough, said the voice, you’re bound to hit land eventually.

  A deep shadow rolled over them, and a darker, demanding roar. She looked up to see twin rotors supporting a y-shaped aircraft. A few moments later, Navy rescue divers thundered into the water all around them.

  The Signal

  Harvey Elementary School in Hamlin, Ohio, was built in such a manner that all the classroom windows faced south. The idea behind such an extravagance, in the minds of the original Teutonic town fathers, was to expose children to as much light as possible while facilitating the lowest possible cost for heating any part of the school.

  By early spring, Hamlin was subtropical.

  Miss Curran’s class of third-graders had already undone their top two buttons and opened the transom windows as far as they could without voiding the manufacturer’s warranty. Curran herself was immeasurably grateful the dress code didn’t require her to wear stockings after spring break.

  The room was decorated with the usual accoutrements of third grade: posters of Gandalf extolling the virtues of the library, a glass tank housing the tarantula mascot, and a wall lined with computers that had been state-of-the-art during the previous Millennium.

  “And can anyone tell me what Alexander Graham Bell said to Mr. Watson?” Curran asked. Hands went up at nearly every desk.

  This was an easy one. She picked out a boy at the back of the room, the little guy who almost never raised his hand for anything.

  He started to answer, and his face went empty. At first she thought his bashfulness was coming to the forefront, but as the various expressions dropped from her students, Curran realized it was something else.

  As one, they turned their heads toward the window and stood. As they rose, they dropped whatever they’d been holding. Erasers, pencils, and a stray marble hit the floor.

  “Okay everyone, what—” And she almost heard it. Some kind of sound, maybe just above or below the audible range. That’s what it had to be. It clamored for her attention from a point in the southern sky.

  The children gathered along the window, as close to the glass as they could press. What was out there to captivate them?

  The windows looked out on a playground; past that was the soccer field, then a wide, thick sprout of trees of the sort the local farmers could find no use for and wanted to bulldoze, and then a row of cell phone towers, and then nothing but cornfields all the way to the edge of Sandusky township.

  Perfectly quiet, the children listened. Curran found herself straining to hear.

  One of the girls sighed and rubbed her nose. Another sneezed. A few of the boys began drawing shapes on the glass with their fingers.

  “Alright. Everyone back to their seats. Almost time for recess.” As her charges returned to their desks she noticed they all wore broad, unselfconscious smiles.

  “That was interesting, wasn’t it?” she said. The sky remained a faultless, flat blue.

  Even more curious was the way she felt. Maybe the kids’ attitude was more infectious than usual, but Curran felt, well, lighter somehow. As if she’d carried a weight long enough to forget about it, and suddenly that burden was lifted. A great, clean bubble of peace was rising up inside her.

  “Are you okay, Miss Curran?” asked the boy from the back.

  With a start, she realized she was weeping. “Fine. I’m—I’m fine.” I don’t know why, but I’m fine. “Can we just sit here and enjoy it for a few minutes?”

  The recess bell rang, mechanically faithful to an automated system and a master timepiece kept hidden away somewhere none of them would ever see.

  No one went outside. They all stayed in their seats, marveling together at the mysterious relief washing over them all.

  Jack be Nimble

  The sense of motion, and the realization you exist. Flashing upward, through the brilliant green—

  Jack snapped awake, and found himself unexpectedly dry, curled around a pool of warm light. He was on a miniature bed in a space capsule. No—a Navy ship, big enough to ignore the pitch and roll of the open water. Bata’an. Squarish yellow operating lights ringed his bed, which was one of several dozen lined up neatly across a broad blue-and-white speckled floor. They’d put him in one of the central medical bays this time, not like after Iran. The brig wasn’t nearly this spacious.

  Jack was alone.

  He carefully stretched everything he could think of, and ran through a breathing exercise. There were a few other meditative and isometric processes he should run through to make sure his body was okay, but, well. “To hell with this,” he said, and threw patience and his blanket to the wind.

  The closet was full of clothes of various sizes, mostly Navy Working Uniforms in the blue-and-grey pixilated digital print pattern the Navy borrowed from the Marine Corps combat uniform. Jack found a simple khaki-brown service uniform shirt and married it with a pair of like-colored pants. Get him the right hat and a corncob pipe, and he could pull another Doug MacArthur impersonation.

  All the black, round-toed boots were impossibly small. He left them and dressed on his way across the ship, barefoot on the steel deck.

  There was another medical bay on this floor, and six operating rooms besides. Bataan’s hospital was built to handle multiple medical emergencies at the same time, up to six hundred patients in need of beds. He thought it a sign of optimism that he decided to check the recovery room first.

  A hospital corpsman showed him to Allison’s bed. She lay asleep, clean, with an IV in her arm. Alonzo and Nicole sat facing her on the next bunk. Alonzo’s bruised face wore the expression of a man determined to wait a long, long time.

  They both smiled upon seeing Jack. Nicole embraced him, quietly.

  “She’s going to make it,” Alonzo whispered. “Sh
e even came out of the anesthesia during surgery to criticize the doctor.

  “The signal went out, Jack. Steve thinks we made the window, but the team is out of touch with each other. No info on the consequences yet.”

  He had a Hello Kitty band-aid on his neck.

  “That the new regulation dressing?”

  “Mercedes stuck this on me,” Alonzo replied. “After we pulled you both out, she made sure everyone was taken care of before she went to the infirmary. She’s pretty bossy, Jack. The Navy has no idea who she is, so they’re keeping her by herself in one of the operating rooms on the starboard side until they sort things out.”

  Jack looked at Nicole. “Can you get us an interview with the commanding officer?”

  “Already in the works. Figured we’d share the story with the Navy first. They’re still busy securing the island, and want to debrief you as soon as possible.”

  “What about Steve and Ian, and the brothers?”

  Nicole smiled. “They’re all over in the galley, eating. Kids are together with their parents. They’re dying to meet you.”

  “That might have to wait.” He looked at Alonzo. “Can you get me a ride back to Havana, ahead of the ship? After the debrief I want to high-step it out of here.”

  “By yourself?”

  “This isn’t her world, Alonzo. I won’t impose it on her. Nobody should be burdened like that. These people are the ones we defend. The ones who get to live a normal life while we’re doing what we do.”

  Alonzo spoke back with more verve than Jack expected. “She should be more than just a memory, Jack.”

  Nicole frowned, and he read her microexpressions in an instant. There goes Jack, exit stage right. Alone. He decided to cut her off before she had a chance to say what was on her mind. “Did you bring what I asked?”

  She sighed and handed it over. “Irene sent it to the hotel, like you asked. She thinks you’re nuts, by the way.”

  Instead of taking it, he said, “I want you to give it to her for me, after I’m gone.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” said Alonzo. “Nic and I are both staying right here. Allison’s going to wake up, doc says any minute.” He smiled, and rested his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I’ll get you a ride off the ship. But you’re going to have to give it to her yourself, brother.”

  Jack looked at Allison and understood. “You’re going to ask her the Golden Questions, aren’t you?”

  That was very good.

  Jack carefully took the package from Nicole. It was about the size and heft of a serious loaf of bread, wrapped in an overnight express pouch. The newsprint might still be warm.

  A group of Navy kids loitered outside the medical bay—or did a reasonable imitation of loitering. They weren’t very good at it. Wordlessly they formed up around Jack, guessed where he was headed, and with a nudge or a whisper to their fellows, pulled together a quick phalanx around him.

  This was a custom he remembered from previous visits to Bata’an, designed to both honor the guest and protect the sensitive areas of the ship. As he stepped through a hatch nearer the front of the ship, Jack paused.

  A passage on the right led to the starboard side, where lay more operating suites and single-occupant rooms. If he turned instead to the left, he would go up a ramp to the flight deck and upper levels of the ship, towards the executive officers waiting for him and, eventually, escape.

  Jack hesitated a moment more, and went to the right. The sailors around him never broke stride.

  As they walked, Jack matched their cadence and stride, blending himself in with them. It was almost unconscious, and by the time they reached the long hallway that doubled back toward the rear of the ship, he could almost pass for one of them, assuming no one looked too closely at his bruises or his feet.

  “Just be quick,” he whispered to his escort. “No need to stop.” But they all slowed as they passed the open door to a starboard operating room.

  It was a smaller version of the room where he’d woken. No windows, but a circle of nine yellow surgical lamps bolted to the ceiling, all shining down on her. She sat cross-legged, swinging one foot off the end of the bed. She looked right at him. Her smile was bright, girlish, but with a knowing angle that spoke confidence and intelligence and shared grace. Men had long gone to war for such a smile.

  Jack stopped and his lookalikes filtered past. He didn’t bother to watch them go; they might as well have been ghosts.

  Bata’an was turning, so slowly he’d never have noticed save the tug of gravity pulling him further into the cabin. Jack wanted to say something in the worst way.

  Let her speak first.

  He had a dim sense of great gears turning, of invisible machinery moving slowly into place. Like the uncountable pieces of the broken world were slowly spinning, rotating towards one another. A few more seconds and he’d know what it meant. Patience. Whatever it was, it would all come together in a second.

  *

  Mercedes saw the sailors walk by, and there was Jack, right in the middle of them. What a relief. She’d been alone since the Chief Hospital Corpsman stitched her hand.

  He looked good. “Hey buddy,” she said. “Nice to see you.”

  Jack nodded.

  “Not even twenty four hours,” she said. “Hasn’t even been a day since Havana. What do you suppose we’re going to do tomorrow?”

  When he spoke, he spoke quietly. “You found me—in the middle of the ocean.”

  “Really, it’s just a sea.” She raised her eyebrows menacingly. It took an effort. “You’d better think twice next time about trying to give me the slip, buster.”

  “I wanted to say thanks. Got to go give a report about what happened, but I wanted to see you first.”

  He had a tube under his arm. “Is that a present for me?”

  “Sure.” Inside was a newspaper, tomorrow’s edition of the Los Angeles Times. All of a sudden, LA seemed a distant, exotic land, and she scanned the headlines hungrily. It was nice of Jack to remind her of home. It gave her a—

  The third subheading from the top caught her eye. ‘Son of Local Business Leader Foils Domestic Terror Attack.’

  Bryce Westen, son of Daniel Westen, chairman of the board of the Westen Group, single-handedly thwarted what appeared initially to be a random home break-in. Additional evidence has been brought to light, revealing the attack was motivated by a combination of industrial espionage and domestic terror, local officials are praising the Good Samaritan efforts of the younger Westen.

  The article went on, using such terms as ‘hero of the highest order,’ and ‘right man in the right place’.

  Mercedes carefully folded the paper around the article. Good for him. Maybe she’d read it later.

  She looked up in time to see sadness at the edges of Jack’s eyes. A new expression. It vanished so quickly she wondered if she’d imagined it.

  Mercedes thought about what he’d said in the cave, with all the elements roaring in behind him. About ripples and imperfections in water that grew, under the right conditions of time and pressure, into mighty waves. Such potential energy.

  “I hope you know what you mean to me,” she said.

  “You hardly know me.”

  She shook her head. He wasn’t getting off that easy. “I knew you years ago. You’ve shown me enough in the last day for me to see that I still know you. I’ve always known you, Jack.”

  Her next words popped out, surprising her. “I love you, too.”

  *

  Jack found himself at a point of great calm, as though he stood over a balance point, a fulcrum, while the entire universe around him lifted and pivoted slightly, changing angles and distance. The colossal, incomprehensible universe rotated, ever so slightly. Click.

  Something broken, now fixed, eh Jack? Just the start.

  *

  She saw conflict cross his face. Unexpectedly, Jack forced himself to take a step towards the door. “They really need me,” he said. His eyes flickered down to
a spot next to her.

  The newspaper. He was looking at the article. The paper had been sealed when he brought it to her. Mercedes took a leap of faith.

  “Jack, do you think I’m still married to Bryce Westen?”

  His eyes widened a fraction of an inch. “Well I—what? If you—what did you say?”

  “I haven’t been married to Bryce in almost a year.”

  His eyes reeled. “What?” It was obvious that idea hadn’t occurred to him. So this is what Jack looked like, surprised. Flat-footed. Flummoxed, top to bottom. He stood before her, completely speechless and registering shock with every part of his body. It made her heart sing to be the source of his absolute confusion.

  Eventually he mustered the resources to say, “Really?”

  “Pretty sure,” she said. He stood near the doorway, his body still in the act of walking into the hall. It hadn’t caught up with his brain.

  He took a deep breath, and looked at her curiously. “I’ve, ah—I need to ask you a few questions.” He spoke deliberately, adding a friendly weight to his words. “This might sound strange.

  “Mercedes, have you ever had the feeling that you were meant to do something extraordinary?

  “There’s more, but please think carefully about that. Can we talk more when I get back?” He looked at the doorway. He looked back at her, flushed.

  “They need you?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll be here.”

  When he reached the door, she called his name.

  He turned at the threshold.

  “Jack. Be quick.”

  Before she could fully smile he crossed the room and was right there, enveloping her in strength, lifting her in his arms. Laughing, he embraced her, and the world went away.

  Mercedes smiled through the kiss, and returned it, cupping herself around him, her arms tight around Jack as though abiding forever.