by Ben English
Quick oath-taking ceremony, partly in Latin for some reason, and more applause. Newly-President-again Espinosa, leading his cabinet and advisors, marched to the top of the steps, thunderous applause. President and Company joined by most of government, even more applause—and this is where Alonzo would normally have entertained thoughts of the politicians locking arms and breaking into a high-kicking chorus line, but he was suddenly on high alert, straining his senses, scanning the crowd for anything remotely resembling a weapon or a detonator, looking hard at the movements of everyone on the edge of the crowd, and in general, ready and willing to shoot pretty much anyone.
This long moment was the most dangerous span of time in Cuban history. The entire acting government physically standing close together. It was the time to strike, if ever there was one. It seemed to stretch on and on and on, while the flashbulbs burst. Get in the damn building already!
Jack stood at the edge of the crowd, facing Alonzo, his back to the podium and the President. Smiling, but not with his eyes, which were everywhere. Hands on his hips, but one hand back a touch farther than the other, just far enough to grip a pistol at the small of his back. It was a trick they’d picked up as kids, watching Magnum, P.I. Jack was such a tool.
The moment passed, and Alonzo found he could breathe again. Espinosa entered the Capitolio, sans kickline, appearing for the cameras of the world like he was getting right down to business. Alonzo wondered what sort of cool drinks they were serving on the other side of those doors.
The team remained alert for several more minutes, but there really wasn’t much more to expect. Jack and the Hollywood crowd had vanished. Alonzo made a show of scanning the dissolving horde with his field glasses, but really just used them to watch Mercedes. She quickly disassembled her cameras and tripods.
Alonzo watched her, and wondered.
Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall
The duty officer outside the FBI mobile lab was very interested in Jack’s access pass, but obviously expected him. The antiseptic, frigid space was packed with scientific tools. The American Feds got all the nice toys. Jack found Irene in the morgue with her safety glasses on and hair pulled back severely, so as to not dangle in the viscera. She looked up from a splayed ribcage, twin scalpels in hand.
Her eyes were bloodshot. “You just get married?”
He hadn’t changed out of the tuxedo. “Cuba’s got a new president,” he said, brightly. “How are your five new friends doing? Telling you anything new?”
Irene gestured with a scalpel. “This one would sue you for assault, if he could get representation. You broke two ribs.”
“Occupational hazard. The police report said they all died at roughly the same time.”
“And yet all the injuries they sustained were ante mortem. Nothing you two did to them should have resulted in death. Just like the other victim in California, there were trace elements of iron in the blood, but that was about it.”
“Some kind of poison, then? Something untraceable, like a binary?” He suspected a binary poison; two ingredients that were harmless while apart, but once combined inside a body became lethal. Something like an evil peanut butter-and-chocolate cup.
“Grow up, Jack. There is no such thing as an undetectable poison, if you have the right equipment and somebody like me working for you.”
So Jack waited. Irene had a habit of letting news trickle out.
“Here’s the weirdness. I can’t tell how old they are, and their muscles and internal organs are all nearly identical. Wherever these guys came from and whatever they’ve been doing for the past several years, they’ve been eating an identical diet and performing pretty much the same physical labor.”
“Soldiers?”
“No. If I just take their musculature into account, they were skilled heavy laborers. Problem with that theory—and maybe Whitaker can help me here—I can’t tell from the wear on their bodies what they’ve been doing. Aside from calluses and minor skin issues—scratches, small bruises, the scores of little scars we all pick up over time—I can’t find any proof that they’ve worked a hard day in their lives. If I didn’t know better, I’d say these guys were in their late teens or early twenties.”
Two of them had grey hair. “Not likely.”
Irene was just getting warmed up. “Their telomere degradation is extreme. I thought maybe I made a mistake on the chromosomal test, so I ran it twice more and got the same results. I need to verify this with different equipment, maybe back in the States.”
Jack understood where she was going. “These are old men, you’re saying.”
“But they are in fantastic shape. No arteriosclerosis, no muscle loss.
“Look, usually the most common external signs of aging involve the skin, hair, and nails. Over time, the skin loses fat layers and oil glands, causing wrinkles and reduced elasticity.” She prodded one of the bodies. “Not the case here. Hair loses pigment; okay, we’re seeing that. But the fingernails tell another story altogether.”
There was a lighted magnifying glass positioned near a hand. “Usually, nails become thicker due to reduced blood flow to connective tissues in the fingers.” She showed him a row of perfect nails. Again, aside from the calluses, the hand could have appeared on a billboard over Times Square.
Irene swayed a little, and Jack steadied her. “You about ready to take a break?” he asked. She didn’t drink much coffee, and Irene had been on her feet the better part of nine hours already, practically since alighting from the plane. “You need dinner.”
“Let me show you the best part first,” she said.
A long row of slides lay arrayed next to a microscope. Jack peered into the eyepiece. “Fresh blood,” he said, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Now look at this one,” she said, almost grinning.
He looked. Looked for a difference, unsuccessfully. Tried to think of something clever to say.
Irene practically punched him in the arm. “They’re the same,” she said. “No, they’re really the same.”
“That’s fresh, whole blood,” said Jack, looking about for a blood bag.
“Those are samples taken from the syringe that Al filled up after the fight. I’ve been sampling the original syringe every half hour for the past nine hours, and the blood is still fresh, just like it pumped from the heart a few minutes ago. You just looked at the latest sample from a few minutes ago, and the first sample, nine hours old.”
Jack turned this thought over in his head a few times before asking the obvious question. “What else was in that syringe?”
Irene snapped her gloved fingers with a rubbery pop. “See, I thought the blood sample became contaminated by whatever had originally been in the syringe when Alonzo took it from the attacker, but something in the syringe is keeping the blood viable. No separation of serum, no clotting.”
“Irene. What is in the syringe?”
She licked her lips. “Two things: first, a neutral agent that actually functions as a sedative. That’s why the guy folded so quickly when Al injected him with his own syringe.
“Second, and I’ve got to do some work on this, I found two kinds of microcapsules in the blood. You know what that is, right?”
“Microcapsule? That’s how everyone takes their long-term meds or vaccinations these days.” Jack nearly shrugged, then thought a moment. Once injected into the body by a physician, they stayed in the body indefinitely, releasing their drug cargo only when exposed to ultrasonic waves or another external trigger. Ingenious, really. They allowed drugs to be released at a specific time or location within the body. “But they need an external trigger, like a specific ultrasonic tone.”
He watched her eyebrows jump skyward. “Don’t look so surprised. You think you’re the only person from Forge who went to college? I almost got a degree in chemistry.” He wished he had a camera to capture her expression. If only he had a photographer handy.
Even fatigued, Irene was quick on the uptake. “There are two kinds of microc
apsules in that blood. I can tell you that both were manufactured by PicoMorph. And whatever is keeping the blood alive was in the syringe before Alonzo plunged out that guy’s heart.”
“You’re amazing, Irene.”
“I haven’t even gotten started. Going to take me another day, at least, to figure out what was in the microcapsules, and why one type triggered and the other didn’t. And if there wasn’t poison in the capsules, then what?”
“What do you need?”
She chewed her lip. “Can you get me half a day with the University’s chem lab and microscope array? I need a closer look.”
“We’ll make it happen.” Classes were suspended during the entire run of the inauguration and the Goodwill Games.
Jack waited until he had her full attention. “There’s something you’re going to need first.”
“Deodorant?”
“I was going to say dinner and sleep, but okay, that works too.”
The More Complex the Mind
The crow’s nest would have to get along without them for a few hours. As he locked the doors and activated the burglary countermeasures, Alonzo felt like a kid on the first day of summer vacation. He’d be giddy if he weren’t so exhausted. He felt almost as bad as Irene looked. Sure didn’t envy her spending so much time with the insides of dead people. By all accounts, she hadn’t rested since arriving.
She kept pace with the rest of them, though. He didn’t think she’d ever seen Havana.
There was still plenty of light in the cool, early evening. From the roof of the Parque Central they had a beautiful view of the Capitolio, and it looked even more like an exact replica of Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.
“That seems a titch out of place,” said Griffin, looking toward the Capitolio and the string of buildings that butted up against it at the end of the block. She dipped her hand into the pool. “Can we swim later?”
Alonzo smiled. “Don’t tell me Major Allison Griffin of His Majesty’s S.A.S. owns a bikini? And brought it along on a mission?”
Funny though, he hadn’t seen Jack in the water. Not like a curved pool lent itself to swimming laps, but still. Jack stood with his back to them near the edge of the roof, leaning up against a red-domed cupola.
He turned abruptly, and favored them with a little boy’s grin.
Alonzo knew what was coming next. “The more complex the mind…” he began, and waited.
Jack took it up. ““The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.’”
Steve and Irene applauded.
Allison nodded. “Plato.”
“Better,” said Ian. “James Tiberius Kirk.”
“Who feels like playing tourist?’ asked Jack. “Ladies pick dinner, wherever you want.”
That suddenly seemed like a very good idea indeed.
So for a few hours, they’d be the best-armed group of tourists on the island.
The team strolled down the hotel steps into la Habana Vieja, into the narrow, weather-worn avenues of palaces and plazas from the 16th and 17th century. Alonzo never failed to be surprised, if not actually shocked, at the effect the city fashioned in him. Especially now that he was allowing himself to relax a bit.
It should have been just another place, another mission scenario, but he always felt at home in Havana—they’d done some good work here over the years, and Alonzo found he was oddly proud of the city. Maybe this is why Jack spends so much time in Paris, he thought.
He liked that the major was new to the city—he pointed out the Teatro Nacional and Plaza de la Catedral. Alonzo felt oddly pleased that Griffin spoke a bit of Spanish, enough to recognize things by name. When she started to drift into the nearby open-air market, Alonzo pulled them all toward Cuatro Caminos, the real farmers' market. The signs of the island’s emerging economy were evident in the visual riot of colorful fruits, flowers—
—and a long, hanging row of fly-covered goat heads.
Allison shrieked.
Jack shook his head. “You did that on purpose,” he said to Alonzo.
The shorter man grinned back. “She’s going to be a part of the team, she’s going to get hazed, eh, amigo?” The colors and scents invigorated him. Alonzo felt (if he darkened his hair a bit) he could stroll right down one of these narrow, loud, beautifully grimed alleys and simply vanish. He certainly spoke Spanish well enough, though his accent was different and his slang three years old.
Alonzo answered a few of Allison’s questions about the market, then said, “If anyone asks you where you're from, just smile and say, ‘Soy Yuma.’ Lots of people here use it to describe anything good, especially good Americans.”
She raised her eyebrows dangerously. “I need to pretend to be an American?” Her accent was an unfortunate cross between Bronx and Redneck South.
Irene drew her eyes away from the goat and pig heads. “What’s Yuma mean?”
“I’ve asked, but nobody’s quite sure. Jack?”
Absently Jack said, “1957 western, 'Three-ten to Yuma', with Glenn Ford. Popular show here, back in the day. Not so much with the remake a few years ago.”
Alonzo shrugged. “Just use it, you’ll get a smile back.”
It looked as though Griffin actually wanted to buy a goat souvenir. Too bad he’d left his camera in the hotel. A stray thought found its way out, and he turned to Jack: “Doesn’t this remind you of Manila?”
Jack blinked and kept walking, looking up innocuously, the sun and shadows on his face. “Yeah. Or New Orleans.”
He wasn’t relaxing. What you need, my friend, is a good kick in the head. Figuratively speaking. Alonzo tried again. “Just like New Orleans. Gorgeous city. If only we knew a good photographer. This place is a photographer’s paradise.”
This time he got even less of a reaction. Jack had smoothed over. “Too bad we can’t have contact with the media.”
Alonzo had the glimmerings of an idea then, but he pushed it back, pushed it down, and filed it away. Irene and Allison gave up on the goats, they probably didn’t have enough local currency. Animatedly talking, they were about to pass a mojito stand.
“Hey, you guys have to try this.” Al handed a few small bills to the girl behind the counter. “You can’t come to Cuba without having a real mojito.” He handed them each a cup, then took one for himself, and left the girl the change.
“Rum and mint,” said Griffin. Steve coughed and took another sip.
Alonzo let the taste run around his mouth before swallowing. “I’ve tried to mix these myself and always get it wrong.”
They followed Jack’s meandering course through the market, out into a park. He appeared oblivious, absent, buried in thought, but Alonzo knew the opposite was true. Jack’s dull expression masked senses that were dilated, as completely open as force of will would allow. He drank in the city, the sounds of the rumba and children playing stickball, the shades of green under the banana leaves. Let the mind rest and the imagination play.
What the hell, they deserved it.
Something shifted in the angle of Jack’s shoulders and sight lines, as if he was slipping back in time down the old, old street.
A few of the streetside vendors recognized them from last night’s affair in the night market, and friendly eyes followed them as he passed. The group walked far enough behind Jack for Alonzo to hear the whispers of yanqui and vaquero that surfaced in his wake. Occasionally Jack would turn with a smile and respond softly, astonishing the shopkeepers. So much for Americans only speaking one language.
They found the edge of the bay and walked along the Malecon, the old seawall pitted from the attention of the wind and waves. Fishermen stood on the exposed rocks and coral below. A few looked up, and Jack waived at them, jauntily.
“You seem to be relaxing at last,” Allison said to Jack as they admired the green, scalloped waves.
“I was just thinking how nice it is when nobody asks for your autograph,” he replied.
A tall, squarish grey mass stood at
anchor across the bay, near Morro Castle. Jack indicated it. “Al, did you know the Navy had a boat in during the Games?”
“Call it a boat again and I’ll kick your ass.” Alonzo grinned back.
“What’s all this?” Allison asked.
Alonzo looked over at the ship. “Major, I thought you had files on all of us. Don’t you have a list of all my previous known addresses?”
Steve joined in. “That’s the Bata’an. Amphibious assault ship.”
Jack pointed. “See the dry well at the waterline, on the end? The spot for SEAL teams to disembark? He flew right in there once, put me in the ship’s hospital for a week.”
“It was a controlled landing,” Alonzo responded, rankling.
They continued down the esplanade, the smell of the ocean heavy, thick as they passed under the trees. Allison Griffin seemed a little close. “The Navy?”
Alonzo looked from her to his former ship, and back again.
“Marines, actually. My dad bought me the whole, illustrated Time-Life series on World War Two when I was eight,” he explained. “Got me started on things military.” The last two words came out very distinct, over-pronounced for some reason.
She smiled. “I read your file, but there aren’t any pictures of you. I’m having trouble picturing you with a—what do Americans call it? A crew cut. Following military orders. Obeying a chain of command.” She paused. “Why?”
“Getting away from my parents. Being on my own. Being a stupid kid, mostly. I thought it would help me figure out who I was. I needed to be a part of something bigger than myself, a – oh, I don’t know, a humanitarian effort.”
Steve sniffed. “Looks like a baby aircraft carrier.”
“It’s not a carrier,” Alonzo said, still defensive. “Bata’an is 850 feet long. Strictly vertical takeoff-and-landing.”
There was a mixed bag of aircraft on the flight deck: a few AV-88 Harriers, a Pave Low looking like a tired locust, and four sleek Ospreys, odd for their large, upright rotors. Alonzo’s eyes lingered over the Ospreys.
