Portals in Time 1

by Michael Beals

  Kat counted to ten, not making it past two. “Well, bring it on! The SIS can afford some pretty fancy lawyers of their own, I’m sure. Let the duke sling as much mud as he pleases, I’m going to enjoy testifying against him. Maybe you could get me on his firing squad.”

  “You poor, naïve thing. You deserve better.” V rubbed his eyes and drummed his fingers on the desk.

  One missed the top and tapped something on the underside.

  “What the fuck is this, sir?”

  Lyon clenched his fists and spun on his heels. Four agents rushed through the door, each with their sidearm high.

  V cradled his chin in his hands and growled. “Katelyn, you don’t work for MI6 any longer. As far as the records will show, you never did. The royal family and Scotland Yard know your face, and nothing else, as far as we can tell. Although the duke is quite incessant that you must be some type of spy. We have no choice except turn you over before they turn this whole agency inside out. Wouldn’t that be quite a coup for the Abwehr, eh? For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Lyons, stay behind for a chat.”

  The section chief cracked his neck and shuffled to the room’s lone window, turning his back on her. One of the guards jangled a pair of handcuffs.

  “Katelyn Wolfram, you’re under arrest for sedition against the United Kingdom and the attempted assassination of the Duke of W—”

  Lyons uncoiled and pounced, while two .45 barrels tracked him. “Fuck you, V! We always handle things in house. And we never leave a man behind!” He pounded the aluminum desk hard enough to bounce the microfiche reader off, shattering it across the concrete floor.

  Kat collapsed to the deck, sobbing into the broken machine. Two suits cuffed her wrists behind her back and hauled the terrified girl to her feet. The oldest agent snickered and stuck his palm in front of her chin.

  “You ought to be in Hollywood. Spit it out. I know the game.”

  The waterworks shut off instantly. Kat grinned back and hacked a metal clip out, just the right size to jimmy the handcuffs. Lyons snorted. “Mate, you don’t have any idea who you’re screwing with.”

  Three weeks later…

  “Wow, the Tower of London. Complete with shackles and everything. Rather dramatic, wouldn’t you say?”

  Kat froze on the bottom rung of her pushup and arched her back.

  “Yeah, gotta love the view.” She finished her set and snagged a towel from the far corner of her windowless basement cell.

  The chipper man on the other side of the bars leaned in and draped an arm through the feeding slot. A black-suited King’s Guard cracked a club against the bars, an inch from Captain Lyons’s balding head.

  “Arm’s length, Captain! I don’t know what strings you pulled to get in here, but inside these walls, I call the shots!”

  Lyons jumped back and dipped his brow at the hulking guard, always at his elbow. “My apologies, Sergeant. I’m just happy to see she’s not sealed in an Iron Maiden.”

  The soldier turned up his bushy chin and twirled his Billy club. “Unfortunately not. Everything has gone downhill since we began letting traitors have lawyers.”

  “Fat lot of good they did me.” Kat moved a little too fast and tripped over her leg manacle. “From arrest to trial and execution in less than a month. Isn’t it all so efficient? So bloody civilized.”

  Kat propped against the wall and folded her arms, returning Lyons’s naughty grin.

  “Anyway, thanks for dropping by. So, boss, I’m afraid I’m a little short on gossip. What’s new with you?”

  “Nothing much.” Lyons clucked his tongue and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m resigning first thing in the morning. Head on back to the regular army, where things make sense. It’s only a matter of time until Hitler makes his big move. I’m sure it’ll be this year. Big money’s on later this summer. I’d rather be on the front lines where the enemy wears a uniform, know what I mean? Of course, it sure would be great to have a friendly, if only homely face watching my six. If you’re interested in changing careers, I could get you a cushy job as a civilian translator in a field headquarters.”

  “Homely!” Kat wagged her finger. “Aren’t you a peach. But my bum is in high demand, sweetie. So let’s start a bidding war. Just this morning, the chaplain offered me my last rites. The warden sweetened the deal with a last meal. What did you bring to bargain with?”

  Lyons deflated. “I’m so sorry. I don’t think even V expected them to push for the death penalty. Even in rehab off in the countryside, this duke holds some serious sway.”

  He tugged off his bifocals and massaged his brow. Kat’s eyes twinkled as she swept her gaze over to the hawkish guard, perched behind Lyons’s shoulder.

  The Captain had never worn glasses before.

  Kat shuffled as close to the bars as her ankle shackle allowed. “Hey, can he at least give me a goodbye kiss? You understand, right? From the looks of you, I bet you could appreciate the magic of a hot kiss from a cute guy.”

  “No touching, convict. He can kiss your cold lips in the morning!” The guard bared his teeth, prying his eyes off Lyons for a good three seconds to stare her down.

  Lyons puffed out his cheeks and set his spectacles back on his nose, minus the steel lower lens frame.

  “Relax, please. How much time do we have left?”

  The soldier fumed and craned his neck to the wall clock behind him. Lyons shuffled his feet.

  His left boot shot out in Kat’s direction.

  “Five minutes, but I’m going to round it off. This skirt’s always talking shit. Let’s go.”

  “Don’t leave me!” Kat collapsed to her knees, wailing and beating a fist over the floor. Her temper tantrum faded as fast as it came. A second later, she scurried to her feet and stuck her closed palms in her pockets. “Well, Jack, I guess I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Lyons sagged his shoulders, shooting her a wink with his back to the guard. “It’s at midnight, right? Hanging, I assume? That’s the way traitors always went out. Well, I’ll be in the abbey saying a prayer for you as soon as the sun goes down. Then I’m shipping off to Egypt first thing in the morning.”

  Kat purred. “Africa in the summer, huh? And I thought it was hot where I’m going!”

  A few minutes after sunset, Kat slid her untouched plate of sauerkraut, potatoes, and eisbein against the bars. “Go ahead and get this crap out of here. In a just world, you’d be hanging the chef!”

  “Shut up and assume the position. You know the drill.” Two guards rapped their clubs on the bars.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Kat squatted down and faced the wall. Both hands slapped against it. She twisted her head a tad, but not far enough to break the rules and let the guard entering her cell, see the whites of her eyes.

  “Figured your shift would be over with by now, Sergeant. Come to see me off? Knew you were a big softy.”

  The junior man scooped up her dinner and brought in a fresh chamber pot, always keeping a shoulder on the right wall. Just outside and against the left wall, a grinning noncom leveled his machine pistol through the iron rods.

  “The warden doubled up the duty roster for tonight. Someone up above seems worried you have an ace up your sleeve. Even issued the inner guards firearms. Never seen that before. Part of me almost wishes you were half as dangerous as they think you—ah, shit, mate!”

  The moment maid service hefted the old pot. The sheared-off bottom popped open like an inverted tin can—one brimming with a day’s worth of the worst brine. The private sprang back inside the cell on reflex, blocking his superior’s line of fire for a heartbeat.

  Just about his last one as Kat snagged her free-hanging ankle chain and kicked off from the wall, plowing into the back of his knees. She tucked and rolled with the hit, his somersaulting body blocking the Sergeant’s swaying muzzle for a second longer. Between the private’s knees, Kat shot her chain underhanded into the open doorway.

  “Gawgg!”

  The Sergeant raced his machine pisto
l to the frigid stone floor while clutching his collapsing windpipe. Kat scooped up the gun and leveled it on the private with one hand while tilting the Sergeant’s chin up with the other.

  “Drop that silly club and hold him steady. If he doesn’t get a tracheostomy right now, I’ll live longer than him. Move, boy!”

  After a glance at his Sergeant’s blue face and the eyes rolling back in his sockets, the youngster conceded and followed the only person who seemed to know what to do. While the kid kneed on the dying man’s flailing arms and held his head back, Kat whipped out Lyons’s present. She flipped the lock pick over and found her patient’s Adam’s apple, then ran her fingers down a tad. With a flick of her wrist, she sliced the scalpel across his trachea. It was dull from carving open the chamber pot, although it still got the job done.

  Kat gripped the private’s hand and forced his index finger into the hole she made, before giving the Sergeant a couple of quick breaths directly into his throat. His chest rose a smidgen.

  “Ok. Do not take your finger out until the medics take over. Keep his head tilted back and give him a breath every five seconds, and he should make it. Ah, ah. Shhh.”

  She stuck a finger to his quivering lips. “Don’t yell for help, or I’ll take you both with me to hell. Just wait here. Trust me. The alarm is going off soon enough.”

  After ransacking the Sergeant’s belt and hefting her trusty shackle chain, she flittered out of the cell, not bothering to shut it. Twenty meters down the corridor of empty tombs for traitors past, she skidded to a stop.

  The steel hatch leading upstairs had no lock to pick.

  “Fellas, I’m trying to go easy. Why do we always have to do things the hard way?”

  Still chuckling, Kat rapped on the door three times like the soldiers favored. Someone slid open the viewport inside.

  “Shit! Sound the alar—aack!” The guard dropped as he stared cross-eyed into a gun barrel, the floor offering little safety. The tear gas grenade Kat cooked off through the hole landed right in his lap.

  Huffing and slinging snot, he punched a big red button on the wall and skittered across the security station floor. The guard racked the slide on his submachine gun and slapped his coughing partner huddled behind the desk.

  “Lock and load! Kill that bitch!”

  They both spun around different sides of the desk and covered the door.

  That was already open.

  A set of shackles dangled from the viewport and wrapped around the inside handle.

  Something clanked off the metal desk between them, followed by a thud. The first guard blinked through the searing tears and swung around.

  “Now, ugh, is that any way to talk about a lady?”

  The coughing yet grinning banshee sprang off his unconscious partner. His finger grazed the trigger before she double clapped his temples, shutting off the lights.

  She ransacked the keyring on his belt before charging the staircase. Flinging open the ground floor’s steel hatch, Kat popped her ponytail out for a quick look.

  Tat-tat-tat-tat

  “Whoops!” Kat jumped back from the twin Thompson guns zeroing in on her nose and skipped up the tower’s stairs. One flight up, though, someone leaned over the railing and blazed down at her, as another kicked open the ground door and sprayed up at her.

  Without breaking stride, Kat skipped to the narrow stained-glass window in the turret wall and buttstroked it into oblivion. She shimmied through the minuscule slat, biting her tongue as shards carved up her ass and chest.

  At long last, she tasted fresh air. She hopped the single floor down into the courtyard, landing with a whoop on her feet.

  “Oh, am I early?”

  A dozen Royal Guardsmen in a circle around the courtyard unslung their rifles at the same time. A rotund gent in a dark robe and a black hood in his belt hollered from a wooden platform straight ahead. He waved a thick rope noose her way.

  “That’s—”

  The fat executioner disappeared under a sulfuric haze of acrid white smoke. Same as everyone else. Ten more smoke grenades sailed over the walls in as many seconds and blanketed the field in a putrid fog. At the same time, the well-lit fortress plunged into darkness as a small blast in the distance shut off the power.

  The men fired blindly nonetheless, but Kat resisted the urge to make things easy by returning the favor. Instead, she crouched and ran headlong towards the outer wall. Her outstretched fingers smacked it hard. Kat kept groping around. She ignored the gun sliding away from her bleeding knuckles and scraped along the jagged stone wall, not making a sound until she hit an aluminum tube.

  Kat monkeyed up the modern drainpipe bolted onto the ancient wall, not seeing much after popping her head above the clouds. A generator-powered searchlight raked the yard, but not a single light flickered on the south end of the complex.

  The wall just meters away from the Thames.

  With the pipe screeching and sliding between her knees, Kat leaped the last few feet in the air and slapped the top of the battlements with both hands.

  She never got a grip on the well-worn medieval stone.

  “Took you long enough! Are you getting rusty?”

  Lyons heaved the girl by her slim wrists over the ledge and tossed her on top of the Traitor’s Gate, ten minutes after the sun went down.

  “You know me, always fashionably late.” Kat grinned at the tied and gagged Guardsman with the bag over his head. Behind him, the driver from that fateful night a million years ago hissed.

  “Let’s go, you crazy bastards!”

  He looped a grenade launcher over his back and snatched a bar hanging off the outer wall. Lyons shoved her against the ramparts and stuck a zipline in her hand. Kat couldn’t tell where the line ended, following the two men without comment, for once.

  Fifty meters later, she bounced off the deck of The Abbey and flittered below deck. A second overpowered motorboat nearby roared east, out to sea, spraying a fountain in its wake. Lyons’ boat trolled along to the west at port speed.

  She hugged both of the guys while punching the first aid kit in half. “I cannot begin to thank you all, but what the hell? The team shouldn’t have blown their cover to save my ass.”

  Lyons and the other agent chuckled.

  “You’re just a ghost.” The brother in arms, whose name she couldn’t recall, reached into a cupboard and tossed a newspaper in her lap. One stamped with the next morning’s date.

  Under the FASCIST ITALY INVADES ALBANIA headline, a grainy picture of a girl only vaguely similar to her was shown in the bottom corner.

  “Traitor shot trying to escape? They couldn’t even get my name right. Damn, you’re good, sir.”

  Lyons leaned back and fired up his pipe. “Even I can’t do that. No, I think the royals are just happy to put this whole fiasco behind them. Lord knows they have bigger problems. Speaking of which, I can understand if you aren’t chomping at the bit to serve again, especially in the desert. So tell me which country you’d like a passport from.”

  Kat chewed a handful of aspirin-like candy. “You really think the NAZIs are coming?”

  “You know them better than me. What do you think? The oil fields in the Middle East are the most valuable possessions the UK has. Cut the Royal Navy and Air Force off from our only oil supply, and the whole Kingdom and Commonwealth will be squirming under SS jackboots within a fortnight.”

  Kat ground her teeth. “You think too much. Let’s go kill some NAZIs.”

  “I’m not talking about spy stuff. This is going to be a full-blown war. Make the Great War seem like a schoolyard scuffle.” Lyons bit his lip.

  Kat rushed over and kissed his frowning head. “Really? All right, you silver-tongued rogue. It’s a date!”

  Part I

  Germany sowed the wind,

  and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.

  – British Air Marshall “Bomber” Harris

  By spring of 1941, all of mainland Europe bowed to the Third Reich and he
r puppets. Russia was still blissfully allied with Germany while the United States busied themselves with staying out of this budding world war.

  England and the Commonwealth stood alone against the Fascist menace—the last ember of liberty flickering through the worldwide monsoon of tyranny. Having just barely survived the apocalyptic Battle of Britain, the outnumbered and outgunned Allied forces are finally striking back in North Africa…

  7th Armored Division “Desert Rats”

  Field Headquarters

  El Agheila, Libya 1941

  K atelyn leaned back and uncrossed her burning jade eyes. Chucking the binder of endless Wehrmacht intercepts back on the lopsided desk, she ran both hands through her fire-red ponytail and shook out a couple of pounds of fine Libyan sand. The raggedy old Command Tent’s side flaps were rolled up to let some air into the oven. It did little more than keep the battered aluminum desks, endless stacks of ammo cans, and sweating staffers inside coated with sand. A deep, arrogant voice purred behind her as she drained her canteen.

  “So anything else hot in here, Kat?” Colonel Lyons perched on her desk and rifled through the endless radio intercepts, never taking his hungry eyes off the long legs lancing out from her khaki service shorts.

  Kat blew his cocky grin a kiss and tossed her crossed feet into his crotch, hard enough to make him grunt and jump. “Nothing big, sir.”

  Lyons leered even harder, carefully edging back a few feet. “You saucy little wench. I’m going to wear you down one of these days.” He cleared his throat and shook off his perpetual smile. “What say you tell me some good news? Are the Germans at least having as many supply issues as us?”

  Kat sat up and patted his thigh. “Come on. You’re asking me how a watch works. For now, let’s just keep an eye on the time.”

  “Babe, I don’t keep you around for your charm.” Lyons leaned back, hands behind his head, and hummed a raunchy island tune. “Help me save the day, and I’ll make sure to bring you with me on my next assignment. I’m thinking Bora Bora. Need someone to do all the work while I interrogate the native girls, after all. Oh, how I miss the sight of a real woman.”