Flashmob

by Christopher Farnsworth

  At least it’s quiet now. Most of the people in first class have pulled down their shades, put on sleeping masks, and taken drugs to knock themselves out. Something happens when you yank a human being thirty-two thousand feet into the air. At some deep, almost cellular level, everyone in a plane knows their fate is no longer in their hands. For at least a couple of hours, they are free of gravity and all the cares and worries back on the ground.

  Sara’s still waiting for an answer.

  “Too much going on,” I tell her. “One guy trying to get my picture, dealing with the gate agent—”

  “Oh sure.” She’s smirking. Amusement dances in her mind.

  “There was a crowd too. I’ve told you I’m not great with crowds.”

  “Right, it’s like your kryptonite.” Now she’s smiling.

  “I’m not offering excuses here.” I try to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Just reasons.”

  “Of course not,” she says. “It was a fluke thing. I’m sure it happens to a lot of guys with psychic powers and Special Forces training.”

  I just scowl at her and turn away, which nearly makes her laugh out loud.

  “Well. We know Godwin is aware of what we’re doing,” she says. “That was tailor-made to get you attacked.”

  “You think?” I pick up my drink again.

  I’m on my fifth Scotch. It still barely takes the edge off what I caught from that crowd—from the mob. They chose to let go, and let the primal, animal part of their brain do the driving.

  They never see it like that, of course. That’s the excuse we always use. When the bodies are on the floor and the damage is done, people like to say that they lost control. “I didn’t know what I was doing.” “It just happened.” “I just saw red and it was over in a flash.”

  Bullshit. I’ve been inside your heads. I have seen how it works. I know. And so do you, if you’re honest with yourself. When you’re about to yell at your kid. Or right before you step on the gas to cut off that car in traffic. Or you pull back your leg to kick the dog. There’s always a second when you can stop, when you teeter on the edge of a decision. I have watched this, in real time, seen the thoughts form and freeze, seen the pathways emerge in your neurons before they fire. For that instant, you’re like someone at the top of a cliff, looking down at the ground, far below. You know what will happen, just as surely as you know how gravity works.

  It doesn’t matter. Almost all of you choose to jump anyway. You are choosing to do the wrong thing. And you are so grateful, because most of the time you have to smile and say please and thank you. You have to drive between the yellow lines and follow the speed limit. You have to be patient and tolerant, or at least fake it. Until, finally, when you’re tired, when you’ve had a bad day or a bounced check, something happens. Your kid breaks the rules one more time, or someone cuts you off, or the dog pisses on the rug. And you’ve finally got a reason. You are justified.

  You let go. For that moment, you are flying free, doing exactly what you wanted to do, without restraint. I’ve seen it. Your minds are filled with what can only be called joy. You get to lash out, and for that microsecond in your brain, you bathe in happiness and pretend that you live in a world without consequences.

  Then your child cries, the dog yelps in pain, or you hear the crunch of plastic and metal as your car collides with another.

  You come crashing back to earth. And you say, “I just lost it.”

  But I know the truth. There’s always a choice.

  Sara seems to realize that we’re not bantering anymore. I feel a wave of genuine concern. “Hey. You okay?” she asks.

  “I’m fine,” I say, a little more sharply than I intend. She recoils, looks back at her iPad. I’m glad. I don’t want to talk right now. Because, of course, I am lying through my teeth. I am pretty far away from fine.

  I am shaking a little, and doing my best to hide it. My life depends on control. And everyone in that mob, everyone who attacked me—they chose to surrender control.

  My kryptonite, Sara just called it. She doesn’t know how right she is.

  We’re going up against someone who can manipulate crowds of people with my greatest weakness—who could tip me right over the edge, into madness.

  I didn’t tell Sara this, but as soon as the police were done with us, my phone buzzed.

  It was a text. Godwin, of course.

  I warned you, it reads. That’s not even the worst I can do to you. That’s just the beginning.

  I shut the phone off, as if that would help. And I’ve spent all the time since thinking about running away and hiding, just so I do not have to look over the edge at what I saw in those people’s minds again.

  But I can’t.

  I can say this job is for Kira. Or for the paychecks from Armin or Stack, or even the promise of whatever money Godwin’s got piled up in his secret hideout.

  The fact is, I have to stop him now. Because I cannot have someone out there who can do this to me.

  I will not have it.

  16

  She’s Not Supposed to Tell Anyone It Was Jay-Z. But It Was Jay-Z.

  We land at Keflavík International Airport, which is blindingly clean, all high-polished wooden floors and chrome. It’s like the best-managed IKEA store on earth.

  Everyone is polite. Iceland is basically a small city with an entire country around it—330,000 people on an island about the size of the state of Virginia. So almost everyone knows each other, or knows someone who knows someone. It’s like a very large extended family.

  We have a hired car and driver to take us to the hotel. The temperature outside is in the forties and the sun is high in the sky. This is as good as the weather gets here, and people are still moving around on the streets, headed for Reykjavík’s clubs. But we just spent eight hours inside a metal tube after dealing with a screaming mob. That’s worse than your usual jet lag. We head to our rooms.

  I am a little worried about Sara. My talent will wake me up if anyone tries to break into my hotel room. I’ll get the warning from their bad intentions in plenty of time to be ready.

  She doesn’t have that luxury. In the hallway, before she heads into her room, I turn and ask her, “You going to be okay tonight? Alone?”

  She gives me a look.

  “I’m not hitting on you. But after what happened before, we might have visitors.”

  She’s not sure she believes that. I’m not sure I blame her. I can’t resist chasing that thought. She doesn’t have many relationships. She’s usually with Stack 24-7, because he doesn’t trust anyone else, and because she doesn’t trust many other people to watch him either. Her last boyfriend was a year ago, and she thinks of him now. A tall, dark cipher. Useless for pretty much anything but occasional physical relief. His features are blurry. She doesn’t really remember what he looks like.

  So for a split second, she considers it. I’m pleased to see I’m not completely repellent to her after all.

  But then she remembers she’s a professional.

 

  She decides she’s too tired to think about any of this anymore. She shows me her handbag, which still holds her Smith & Wesson.

  Iceland allows tourists to bring in their own firearms with a special permit, and Sara had Stack’s attorneys grease the process for us before we arrived. I probably could have picked something up or just used my talent to smuggle our weapons in—but it’s nice to have permission.

  “Thanks for asking,” she says. “But I’m fine. And I’m sure you can take care of yourself.”

  She heads into her room, the door closing behind her with a firm and final click.

  The next morning, I head to the hotel gym.

  I don’t really enjoy sweating next to business-class travelers desperately trying to work off their hangovers and expense-account dinners. But unlike those guys, I’m not on the elliptical trying to run away from an upcoming heart attack. I’ve
got people waiting to end my story a lot quicker than that.

  And I’ve found, as I’m rounding the corner on thirty, that the condition I earned in basic training requires more and more upkeep. If I don’t invest at least an hour every day in routine maintenance, I get slow, and there have been too many times when a second or two is all the advantage I get. So I figure I can put up with the barely functional equipment and CNBC’s morning blather on all the TVs.

  Eventually, of course, it won’t be enough. I’m going to get old, and it won’t matter how many reps I do, or miles I run every morning. I’ll be too slow at the wrong time. I won’t react quickly enough, even with my talent, and there will be someone waiting to take advantage of that. It doesn’t take a psychic to see that coming. The question is, am I going to know when it’s time to quit, or will I fool myself into thinking I’ve got just enough luck left for another job?

  I’d like to think I will walk away voluntarily before that happens, but right now the signs aren’t encouraging.

  Sara is already there when I enter. She’s running on the treadmill, moving like a machine, cool and smooth and relentless. She’s barely breathing hard.

  Her mind is almost as perfect—calm and empty of everything, except for brief flashes from the outside world: the early Mozart symphonies coming through her headphones, the time remaining on the display, and an occasional word that blurts out from the talking heads on the TV.

  Then she notices me. She has a small surge of happiness at the sight, an uncomplicated moment of joy, like a kid who’s just seen a friend in the school lunchroom. She smiles and waves.

  I suddenly feel better than I have in weeks. I tell myself not to be an idiot, but it’s still a better high than the pill I took to deal with my usual morning headache.

  I take the treadmill next to her and I try to match her pace for a while before giving up. She’s faster than I am. She could keep going at that rate for another hour, easy.

  There’s a surge of pride inside her head—small but unmistakable—when she sees me adjust my treadmill to slow down. She likes winning. She’s used to being underestimated. Executive protection—or let’s call it what it is, bodyguarding—is an alpha-male, testosterone-soaked business. On the job, she’s met a lot of ex-military, ex-cops, ex-FBI. All guys. All who think she’s inherently unqualified for her job.

  And it’s not just men in the business. When she tells people what she does for a living, even the fat slob who services her car—the guy who hasn’t done a sit-up since high school, who’s never been in a fight in his life—figures he could take her.

  She’s gotten that same attitude ever since she walked into her first firearms certification course. The instructor looked her over before saying, “What are you doing here? You’re a girl.”

  The other people in the class—all men—laughed. Truth be told, she didn’t really want to be there. She was sixteen. Her dad, an army vet, insisted she know how to use all the guns he kept in their house, and signed her up for the course. It wasn’t how she wanted to spend her Saturdays, so he bribed her with the promise of buying her a used car.

  But once she heard the meatheads laugh at her, she got pissed. She must have spent a thousand pounds of brass that summer. By the time she was target shooting for her final evaluation, she was hitting her targets inside the ten ring every time.

  There was no moment of respect from her instructor. He never gave her a high five or told her she was the best he’d ever seen, or even that she shot pretty good for a girl. He just scowled and marked her off, her dad bought her the car, and that should have been the end of it.

  Instead, she realized she had a talent, that the idea of protecting people spoke to her, and so she got her criminal justice degree and applied for the New York Police Department. She earned top marks on her entrance exam, and she was photogenic, so she was quickly shuttled over to the security detail as a trainee. She was supposed to follow the mayor, the commissioner, and other top brass around in public, to keep them safe at high-profile events. She was supposed to balance out the uglier, older veterans on the squad—represent a little diversity for the cameras.

  I can see a clear memory, never far from the front of her thoughts, of how that went down on her first day on the job. Some of the older guys from the NYPD’s elite detective division objected to her presence. One in particular, a big fat guy with a thick Bronx accent, squared off against her. At six feet four inches, he had eight inches and maybe a hundred and fifty pounds on her. He lifted weights and worked out twice a month with a former MMA champ. “Suppose I’m the man, and I get shot,” he asked, “how’s a little thing like you going to move me?”

  Sara looked up at him and told him, “Believe me: if I need to get you out of a room, one way or another, I will get you out of that room.”

  He laughed at her. He put one hand on her shoulder and pulled her close. He asked her again—breath tainted with burned coffee and cheap bourbon: “How’s a little thing like you going to move me?”

  She locked her fingers around his wrist and fired her knee into his groin. He went white and curled in half. She ducked under him and lifted with her legs, and fireman-carried him up and down the room while the rest of the cops laughed.

  Nobody gave her any crap after that. She knows she’s not supposed to be too proud of that moment. But it shines in her head with its own special light.

  Most of the time, however, Sara found she was more like a mom with body armor than a hired gun. Just getting the mayor or a city councilman in and out of a boring two-hour luncheon speech took about sixty hours of prep work. She had to check the venue, including the bathrooms, for bombs, cameras, and listening devices. She had to watch the people entering, not just for weapons, but for glitter and cream pies in case they wanted to be YouTube heroes. She had to run deep background checks on the entire catering staff to make sure none of them had a mental imbalance that would cause them to put laxatives in the soup.

  She began to work a lot with private security companies, alongside former Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and guys who’d been on the FBI’s special response teams. They lived to kick down doors and crack heads.

  That was how she learned that bodyguarding isn’t about being the biggest swinging dick in the room. The SEALs and the other action figures were bored out of their minds. They got sloppy. Made mistakes. Several of them quit. Bottom line, they were not people trained to keep people alive. They were trained to kill. There was a small part of each of them that was looking forward to a fight.

  Sara figured out that if you’re ever caught in a situation where you have to pull your gun to keep someone safe, you’ve already failed. Ninety percent of the time, protecting someone is about knowing where the nearest exit is. By the time trouble hits, you should already be long gone.

  Which isn’t to say she was above the occasional action-hero moves herself. She was working a detail alongside the mayor during a music festival in Central Park. Private security was there too, protecting the headliner. (She’s not supposed to tell anyone it was Jay-Z. But it was Jay-Z.) They were moving together, quickly, out of the park and toward a waiting limo when a crowd of fans went nuts and broke through a barricade and headed right for them. They were cut off from the limo, and half the mayor’s detail and the private guys were swamped by the crowd. Sara was left alone with the mayor and Jay-Z. She grabbed them both and shoved them along, running for a police cruiser with the doors open, blocking an access road.

  She pushed them inside, got behind the wheel, and jumped a lawn and a sidewalk getting them out of the park, then headed the wrong way down a one-way street to get them to the closest police substation, which was standard protocol.

  Jay-Z laughed most of the way. The mayor checked his phone for messages like it was any other day.

  Her supervisor wasn’t thrilled when she reached the station, but the head of Jay-Z’s detail—a guy who ran a multinational, high-security client protection service—handed her his card.

 
That’s when she learned that some private protection consultants could make over $100,000 a year to start. So she got a job with that firm and immediately went to work, mostly guarding C-suite execs from Fortune 500 firms.

  Not long after that, Stack hired her. He heard some people from Amazon singing her praises, and his fortune had just passed into ludicrous territory.

  He needed her to feel safe. And she needed to believe that she was doing something more important than just keeping a rich guy from getting mugged. Stack told her his plan to make the world a better place through technology, and she was sold.

  Now, when Stack goes out for a meeting or to make a speech—it doesn’t happen much these days, but it still happens—they assume she’s his assistant or his PR handler or his girlfriend. She fades into the background. Becomes part of the scenery. No one sees her. So they never see it coming if she has to pull her Glock from the concealed-carry holster in the back of her skirt.

  She’s still willing to show off on occasion, however. Like now, she just turned the treadmill up as high as it can go and finished her morning run at a sprint, while I’m still trying to catch my breath.

  She’s only lightly glowing with sweat as she steps off the machine. The gym has a free weight set. “Spot me?” she asks. I help her rack a bar. She’s able to keep talking while pressing nearly twice her body weight.

  As usual, she’s got an agenda on her mind. She tries to sound conversational when she begins speaking, but I can see she’s going down a list in her head.

  “A lot of people thought you were retired when I started asking about you,” she says. “Hiding out on your own private island off Seattle, watching the seagulls, catching fish for your supper.”

  “I didn’t catch any fish. But other than that, yeah, that was my life. I’m surprised people cared.”

  She gives me a look from under the bar. “It’s not that big a community. You know that. You’ve got a reputation.”