by Chuck Dixon
The walkway led fifty feet to where the rank of coils ended at the rear wall of the big room. Vapor bled off the framework. They were rimed with some kind of ice or condensation. The whole coil array and walkway sat on a framework atop a poured concrete slab. The big room was a deep freeze after the desert heat. There was a chemical tang in the air.
“I walk through those Freon tubes, and I could meet Cleopatra?” Dwayne said.
“Conceivably,” the doc replied. He was pleased that Dwayne was getting it.
“I rode all the way out here with you,” Dwayne turned to him and spoke without inflection. “I may as well hear the rest.”
“Without going into the physics or resorting to equations, the Tube creates a field that halts and then reverses the flow of time,” Tauber said. “This requires a tremendous amount of power which we get by amping up the tower with a surge. That creates a mega-joule response from the tower, which increases the power of the initial jolt exponentially. There are limitations, of course. We can only crank up the necessary wattage once in a forty-eight hour period and then for only a thirty-minute window.”
“You must get a hell of a bill from Nevada Electric,” Dwayne said. He noticed his breath came out as vapor.
“Oh, we’re off the grid completely,” the doc said. “We can’t have anyone asking questions. That’s why we have a nuclear reactor.”
“Where?”
“Inside one of the Q-huts. A generation four reactor. No waste. Totally shielded, very little spike in the background radiation. Just a small unit, really. Smaller than the one on a submarine.”
“Run by your Iranian pals who are on a terror watch list,” said Dwayne. He knew the first phone call he’d be making when he got back to Vegas.
“Yes. Parviz and Quebat are very proficient. Tehran’s loss is our gain. The Tauber Tube would be impossible without their contribution.”
“And you named this mother of all refrigerators after yourself?”
“Oh no,” the doc said. “It’s named for my sister Caroline. She made the calculations and developed the science that made time travel a possibility. My area is engineering, mainly.”
“So, where’s your sister, Doc?”
“She’s somewhere out there,” said Tauber. He gestured down the walkway into the coils.
“About one hundred thousand years ago.”
Dwayne was seated in one of the Q-huts now with a Dos Equis tallboy in his fist. He hated Dos Equis. But it was ice cold and wet and the only brand in the house. The hut was drywalled inside with a carpeted floor and furnished with stuff from Walmart. Futon sofa, particleboard kitchen table, and lawn chairs. It reminded him of the dorm he lived in during his one semester at State before joining the army. All but the poster of a teenage Leonardo DiCaprio on the wall. That was a touch from the two Iranians who were in the next room. Sounds of Wii tennis came from within punctuated by laughter and curses in Persian.
Doc Tauber sat across the table from Dwayne and fidgeted.
“I know this is hard to grasp at first,” Tauber began.
After a mouthful of beer, Dwayne raised a hand for silence. He swallowed.
“Your sister and two other guys—”
“—Dr. Miles Kemp and a grad student from UC Davis named Phillip,” the doc said.
“They went into this coil for a trial run about a week ago, and they didn’t come back,” Dwayne said.
“We can open the field for thirty minutes once every forty-eight hours. We’ve done that three times since they went through and none of them have returned back through the Tube. Something has to have gone wrong on the other end.”
“What’s on the other end, Doc?”
“Nevada, as it was one hundred millennia ago. Where we are now would be on the shore of a shallow sea almost a thousand miles across. The geologic record for this period gives us a reasonable amount of certainty on that, for this exact location. You see, though the Tube allows travel through time it doesn’t—”
“—take you through space,” Dwayne said. “I saw the movie, Doc. And you want me to go through the Tube and rescue your sister.”
“And Dr. Kemp and Phillip.”
“Rescue them from what, Doc?”
“Well, the time period is teeming with dangerous lifeforms. Basically, giant versions of animals familiar to us today. Giant bear. Giant beaver. Giant moose. Even elephants at that period. There could also be violent storms or floods. It’s impossible to know what conditions are on the other side without going through the Tube.”
“People?”
“No indigenous people,” Tauber said. “The oldest known human habitation is 60,000 years ago at the outside. And that’s the Topper site on the Savannah River in South Carolina. We chose our target destination because of the total lack of Paleo-Indian habitation. You’d be outside that window.”
“So.” Dwayne set down the empty and popped another open. “I go back there and find out your sister and her pals were eaten by a giant squirrel. Or they went through and wound up at the bottom of the sea. Or inside a mountain. Or that they were just vaporized by your machine as soon as they stepped inside. And that could happen to me if I go on this snipe hunt.”
“No!” said Tauber and stood up. “I had momentary contact with them on the other side. A signal, using the Tauber Wave Generator Transmitter. Some clear transmissions ending in a garbled one. They arrived in prehistoric Nevada alive and intact.”
“Tauber wave generator? Your sister’s a busy gal,” Dwayne said and took a long pull of the tallboy.
“The transmitter is my invention,” the doc said.
Dwayne set the beer down and stood up. “Okay, take me back to my motel. Drive me back or I’ll take the Rover myself in exchange for the time you wasted.”
“You’re walking away from three people in danger? You’ll just let them die?”
“I’m supposed to believe this bullshit?”
“So, you’re leaving?” Tauber said. His eyes were pleading, his lips a quivering line. “I was told you were suited for work like this. High risk. High reward.”
“Did Mulroy mention that I’m not crazy? Or would you know the difference? I wouldn’t stay for a million bucks, Doc,” said Dwayne as he made for the door.
“What about ten million?”
Dwayne let the screen door swing closed. “We talking before or after taxes?” Dwayne said.
“We’re talking cash. What you tell Uncle Sam is on your conscience.”
“Break it down for me,” Dwayne said. “The events leading up to the last time you saw them.”
Tauber was nursing the same beer at the table in the kitchenette. A one-beer guy at most.
“It was just a trial run, or that’s what it was supposed to be. Caroline, Phillip Worth, and Dr. Kemp would go first. They didn’t carry much equipment other than the wave transmitter and some calibration gear. No recording devices or cameras. There were no weapons because they didn’t expect that kind of encounter. They wore the same clothing I can supply you with: organic, decomposable materials that would leave no trace for archeologists should something go wrong.”
“No prehistoric Izod labels, right?” Dwayne said.
“Right. We adjusted the power levels for the time period we wanted. The Tube takes forty-eight hours to create the desired field, which we can hold open for thirty minutes or less. The three of them walked down the tube, and within minutes, they were transmitting text back to me.”
“What kind of messages?”
“Just that they had made it through the field safely and to confirm that they were in the target era.”
“How could they know that, Doc?” said Dwayne.
“The plant life. The topography and, most accurately, the position of the stars.”
“It was night when they arrived?”
“Sometime after midnight. August 11th, 104,987 BC. I calculated that with a program from Caltech using the position of Orion relayed through the transmissions. The last messages we
re about the climate and then a long period of silence. Just before the field closed, I received this text message. That’s the last contact I had with them.”
Tauber held up a sheet of hand-printed notes. The line at the bottom of the page read:
HNTGHRNS MST HDE
“What does it mean?” Dwayne said.
“I have no idea. It could be a panicked typo or someone’s hand on the transmitter when they moved it.”
“How many days ago was this?”
“Seven days. But for Caroline and the others, only a few hours will have passed if I can send a second team through. I thought of going myself, but I’m the only one who can run the programs for the Tube. If I went through, I would be dooming all of us to remaining in the past forever.”
“What about your Iranian friends?” Dwayne asked. The sounds from the other room had turned from digital tennis to muffled exchanges of dialogue from a television. The boys were watching their shows.
“They’re here only to maintain the reactor. They weren’t part of the theory work. They have no real interest in the core goals we were working toward. This was a closely held project. Very secret. You can understand.”
“You said you can open the field to just hours after their first arrival,” Dwayne said. “Why not open it to before they get there?”
“There are reasons not to do this. Involved, hard-to-explain, dangerous reasons. But, trust me, attempting to overlap openings past our initial arrival point would be unbelievably bad.”
“So, bottom line,” Dwayne said. “What do you need from me?”
“I need you to go through the Tube, kick any ass you have to, and bring my sister back alive. And Phillip and Miles, of course.”
“I might need some help to do that. Get me back to Vegas. I have some people to see.”
“Would a cash advance help?” Tauber asked.
“That would go a long way, Doc.”
2
Chaz Raleigh
The pull order said 2011 Cadillac. But it was an Escalade that sat in the driveway roundabout in front of the Florida-ugly mini-mansion. Tinted glass. Spinners. Vanity plate, G8TRS.
“I do not like Escalades,” Chaz said with a sigh. He threw the clipboard up on the dash of the tow truck. Chaz was sitting shotgun.
Fat Paolo Diaz was driving and peered from the clipboard to the black SUV across the street.
“Most brothers dig Escalades,” Paolo said. “Well, not this brother,” Chaz said. “This black man has honor. That ride is for pimps and middle-aged real estate agents.”
“Tags match the order. Don’t see no club on her,” he said. “She’s a driveaway, not a tow.”
“Escalade,” Chaz said. “A car for agnostics. People who can’t make up their mind. Do I want a pimpmobile or a whoopie war machine? Oh, I’ll get both. An SUV all pussied up with wood-grain dash and seat warmers and more cupholders than a multiplex. Shit.”
“Uh-huh,” Paolo said. He yawned and covered his mouth with a chubby hand.
“And the house,” Chaz said. “Bet this clown bought at the top of the market. Now he’s underwater and can’t make the nut. Car’s in the drive ’cause the garage is full of the jet skis and a fan boat and all the other shit he bought with equity loans.”
“You good, then?” Paolo said.
“Yeah. You shove off. Krispy Kreme ain’t heard from you in an hour, and they’re getting worried,” Chaz said. He climbed out of the airconditioned cab into the wet Tampa heat with the paperwork and a master key in hand.
“Fuck you too,” Paolo said and put the tow in gear and pulled away.
The key slid into the driver’s door lock, and when Chaz turned it, something went woop woop woop under the hood and a recorded voice (it sounded like Lee Majors) said, “You are not authorized to enter this vehicle.” The wooping continued between cautious reminders from the bionic man as Chaz slid his weightlifter bulk behind the wheel. Tight fit. The owner must be a damn midget. And there was no adjusting the seat until the engine turned over. He couldn’t even get the door closed and rested a Timberline on the chrome step rail.
He cranked the master key in the ignition, and the big eight roared to life. All the exterior lights went on all around the house. The front door blew open and a pit bull charged out growling low. A rail-skinny dude wrapped in a Sleeping Beauty beach towel and nothing else stormed onto the lawn. Nothing else? Does a 12-gauge pump count?
Chaz tromped the accelerator and reversed the Escalade through some hydrangeas, leaving parallel black patches on the green-painted driveway. The front windshield starred as he fought the wheel and did a Brody over the neighbor’s sprinkler-slick lawn. Double-aught punched the suicide door glass in as Chaz got the luxury-priced beast straightened out and off the curb, snapping off a cast-iron mailbox post on his way. He settled down on the pavement and slammed the lever to D, but the pit bull was on the hood now, nails making squealing sounds on the finish as it fought to stay on board. The mailbox was caught under the trannie and throwing sparks behind the SUV all the way down the block.
The owner was in the street now, and the beach towel left behind on the lawn. Bare-butt naked, he emptied the shotgun at his own sweet candy-ass ride with a howl of fury. But Chaz was flying. The buckshot took off a rearview and sent some chrome trim flying. Finally, the car had some character.
The dog wasn’t giving up though. It frantically scratched at the starred windshield until it collapsed the glass and followed a storm of crystalline beads right into Chaz’s lap. Man and dog crammed in the close space. All Chaz knew was that he wanted to bail. Let the bank deal with this asshole and his asshole car and his asshole dog.
Out the door and rolling just like the jump instructor at Benning taught him. Hurt just as bad, too. He wound up flat on his chapped ass and watched the Escalade roll to the end of the block and into a pond.
Sirens. And the paperwork was in the car. This was no place for a black man in the middle of the night.
He trotted away down the street with the dog barking at him from its perch on the Escalade slowly sinking in the dark water.
He hiked to a Shell station off Linebaugh and called a Rainbow Cab to take him back to the garage. His cell phone was ringing the whole way, Suncoast Tow and Storage wanting to know where he was. They’d already heard from the sheriff. Maybe animal protection, game and wildlife, and the homeowners’ association, too. He was sure of that. Chaz had a story. He just was too damned tired to tell it right now. At best he’d lose his job. At worst, his bond.
“Tell you what,” Chaz told the Haitian driver. “Take me to Jalisco Pines instead.”
A ten-minute ride in the opposite direction and he climbed out at his condo and paid the driver.
“You have glass in your face.” A man, a big man, was stepping from the shadows under a clump of date palms as the cab pulled away. Chaz’s hand moved toward the .38 snubby he kept in a clamshell holster in the waistband of his jeans under the muscle shirt.
“You’re not gonna need that,” Dwayne Roenbach said. “Not unless you’re still sore over Manila.”
“That bitch?” Chaz said and brought his hand out to grip Dwayne’s arm. “Can’t even remember her name.”
“Sure, you do.” Dwayne grinned.
In the kitchen, Chaz poured them both a few fingers of J&B. Dwayne looked around at the boxes piled against one wall and the TV sitting on the floor in front of a folding chair.
“I see you settled in,” Dwayne said.
“Unless they were born here, everyone in Florida thinks they’re leaving someday,” Chaz said.
“How about tonight?”
“You got something up, bro?”
“Crazy money for a little job right here in the good old USA.” Dwayne drained the jelly glass.
“What kind of time we talking about?” Chaz said.
“Well, as I’ve come to learn recently,” Dwayne said. “Time is kind of relative.”
3
James “Jimbo” Small
The hide was broiling hot all day long. Now the sun was going down and the cold already setting in as the rocks bled their heat into the dark. Jimbo was set up under a shelf of rock below the crest of a hill with a Ghillie mat draped over him. The fat barrel of the Winchester 70 was wrapped in burlap to hide its shape.
Below him, a row of steel posts and drooping mesh topped with coils of razor wire were all that separated his hide in Arizona from a field of fire on the Mexican side. He pressed a sweaty brow to the 30x scope and the shitty little fence leaped into view. He could see the broad gully that was carved under a section of the fence by some long-ago washout. The footprints left by sneakered and sandaled and cowboy-booted feet were clearly imprinted in the dust at the floor of the gully. All going one way. All leading into the land of the Big Promise.
“International border my red ass,” Jimbo said to himself.
But no action so far today. The tip called into the sheriff at the reservation wasn’t playing out. Some mules carrying mucho bundles of primo shit up from Nogales were supposed to cross here and follow the deer trails north through the Pima reservation land. Hot lead, no lie.
No show either. But there was weather south of here earlier. He watched the dark clouds build on the horizon on the Mex side all afternoon. It might have held them up. He’d wait until full dark before calling it a day.
Jimbo slowly drew in the Winchester and put it aside. He skinned the nylon case off the Armalite. It was a sniper model with a NOD night vision scope in place atop it. He snapped open the bipod, wrapped it in burlap sacking and set it snug in place aimed down the hill toward the fence line.
The fence line jumped into sharp focus in a monochromatic view that made the scrub and scree look like the surface of the moon. He didn’t want to look through the Starlite too long and lose his own natural night vision. Lots of guys he knew, used to know, got kakked because they were night-blind from staring into the scope for too long. Hadjis crept right up on their ass with them nearly sightless from long hours looking downrange in the artificial daylight, counting on their spotter to watch over them. Spotter goes down, and where are you? Blind as a newborn kitten.
