by Chuck Dixon
Samuel reached the head of the bank of descending escalators. All three stairs were clogged at the center with the passengers who had exited the train. He changed direction and made for the ascending escalators. They were closed for the night, as this was the last train arriving until morning. He vaulted the barrier and lost his footing on the slick metal steps. He tumbled down a few painful steps, then gripped the handrail to right himself.
The watcher was stepping under the raised barrier and trotting down the steps toward him. Samuel rolled over the balustrade separating his current flight from the next. The watcher raced down the steps to catch him. Samuel leaped the next balustrade and landed hard on the escalator steps, to find that the steps on this flight had been collapsed for the night, leaving a smooth, uninterrupted slide to the bottom. He released his grip and allowed gravity to carry him toward the street exit. He felt an impact beneath him relayed through the metal plates. The watcher was on the slick, inclined surface with feet sliding as he gripped the handrail like a drowning man. His feet gave way, and the watcher crashed to the ramp and began a toppling descent in Samuel’s wake. The heels of his shoes yipped in protest as the watcher tried to control his slide.
Samuel gave in to the downward momentum, tucking his knees to his chest and slipping down the final length of the four-story grade at an alarming speed. He left the watcher behind, but at a cost.
He reached the bottom of the escalator and skidded under the lower barrier to a painful stop against a wall. He hobbled toward an exit arch, only to see a guard vehicle parked at the curb. Two guards, in their indigo uniforms and face-concealing helmets, stood by the armored truck in idle conversation.
Samuel’s abrupt arrival and disheveled clothing would be certain to draw their attention. He quickly stepped back into the arch and made his way along the wall toward a row of dark stores within the station. He made it into the shadows just as he heard the squeaking of the watcher’s heels come to a stop on the escalator ramp. Samuel broke into a run. The watcher was sure to alert the guardsmen, who would call for backup and seal off the station area.
The entrance to a pedestrian subway opened before him, and he raced down the stone steps into greater darkness. He heard no outcry and no pursuit. Down in the subway, he could lose himself in the great mall that lay beneath Blue City. The mall came to life each winter when the deep snows came to the city above. It was high summer now, and the place would be mostly deserted, its shops and eateries shuttered. From the mall, he could take any number of paths and lose himself in the maze of tunnels that ran in every direction under the streets to every corner of the metropolis.
He slowed to a casual walk. These passageways would be patrolled by night, and a running man would draw suspicion. There was enough risk that some bored guardsman might stop him to answer questions simply because he was alone and abroad so late at night.
Samuel was almost to the mall when he heard the scuff of a shoe. Behind him, black shadows pooled between the intermittent electric lanterns mounted on the tile walls. The hard man from the train could be standing in one of those dark places watching him.
Continuing on at a pace that Samuel hoped would make him look like nothing more than a man in a hurry to get home, he trotted into the mall. No footsteps followed.
There were voices from somewhere off to his right. He could not see their source through the forest of support columns spaced across the area surrounding the mall’s central rotunda. They were male voices, and he heard a tinny electronic response.
Guardsmen.
He slowed to a walk, keeping the columns between him and where he thought the voices were echoing. The words weren’t decipherable. One still sounded professional but not urgent. Routine communications, perhaps.
Samuel let out a breath and slowed his walk to a deliberate but unhurried stride. He was almost to the exit that would take him up to street level close to his target point. The voices grew fainter behind him, the cavern of the mall swallowing them up.
The man from the train stepped out from behind a column just in front of Samuel. He was smiling easily now. From within his coat, he drew a pugio, a broad-bladed dagger. Its steel gleamed like quicksilver in the artificial light. A ceremonial weapon given for meritorious service to the empire, no less deadly for its beauty.
The hard man stepped forward, blade held low and free arm up to shield himself. He moved like a man who had been in knife fights before. As he closed, Samuel could see the crisscrossed white of scar tissue across the backs of his hands. This man had survived many encounters like this one. That meant Samuel could expect to bleed. The first rule of fighting with blades was, expect to be cut.
Samuel did not break stride or even slow. He walked to meet his attacker. If this were to end well, it would have to end quickly. One outcry and the guards would come running. They were not yet out of earshot. The squawk of the radio voice reached him as a distant echo.
He raised an arm in defense, and the watcher stabbed. The tip of the blade caught metal beneath the fabric of the sleeve and slid off to slash a long tear in the flesh to Samuel’s elbow. Before the other man could bring the blade back for a return slash, Samuel ducked under the defensive arm. He drew his own weapon at the same time, a needle-like rondel with a triangular blade, a favorite among Gaulish assassins.
Samuel drove the blade up in a short piston movement to puncture the soft flesh behind the point of the other man’s jaw. He could feel the impact, then the yielding through the ivory handle as the force of the point punctured the man’s palate and drove into the soft meat of the brain. Samuel gave the dagger a savage twist. His opponent went limp. Samuel embraced the man to take his weight and lowered the corpse to the tiles without a sound. Even in death, the man kept a grip on his own blade so that it did not fall to create a clatter on the tiles.
He wiped his blade on the dark fabric of the man’s clothing and returned the rondel to the scabbard cleverly concealed in the lining of his jacket. He then plucked the pugio from the man’s dead grip. Standing astraddle the corpse, Samuel thrust the point of the pugio into the man’s throat to follow the path of the wound made by his own weapon. It might appear to be a suicide long enough for Samuel to accomplish his business in the Blue City and move on.
Taking the dead man beneath the arms, Samuel dragged him into a shadowy recess between two shop fronts and propped him against a wall. He made a quick search of the body. The man wore a medallion beneath his shirtfront, a golden bull on a chain. A former soldier, and probably a guard when his service was done. He stuck the medallion into the man’s slack mouth and left the chain dangling from the teeth. The final gesture of a man faced with no other escape from dishonor.
Samuel stood and inspected himself. There was no blood on him but his own. The other man had died too swiftly to bleed. He took his jacket off, draped it over the wounded arm, and continued on his way toward his appointment.
As he exited the mall, he was joined by the first of the commuters making their way toward their places of work or stops for surface transit. The sun was just beginning to show over the surrounding mountain peaks. A shaft of sunlight found the head of the massive brass eagle that towered ten stories above the central plaza.
Samuel imagined that the gargantuan bird had its predator gaze on him alone as he crossed the broad space. There were others walking here as well, and he lost himself among them on the way to an appointment he was already thirty years late for.
12
The War Room
Time meant everything when you moved in it. It meant nothing when you moved through it.
The Rangers would get there when they got there. They picked a date of September 1, 16 AD for their arrival target back in The Then. That was the Nones of Sextilis by the lunar calendar that the Romans used. That was two weeks ahead of the abduction of the Nazarenes and enough time to get ashore and cover the ground they’d need to cover to set up an ambush along the road which the slave caravan would travel. Jimmy Smalls argue
d for more time in-country but Dwayne and the other nixed the idea. The less exposure, the better. For once Morris Tauber agreed with the Rangers’ consensus.
That was the last time they’d all agree.
They gave themselves thirty days in The Now to plan, prep, and deploy.
Lee handled procuring all the ordnance expect for body armor. Jimbo said he had a guy for that. Boats charted a course for them using their standard bullshit excuse of the Raj being a science vessel involved in a study of ocean temperatures. Dr. Tauber managed to locate Parviz and Quebat in Copenhagen. He asked if they could cut their vacation short by a week and return aboard the Raj to look after “the baby.” The infant in question was the nuclear mini-reactor concealed and shielded in the hold of the container ship.
Boats offered a two-week leave to his crew of Ethiopians. To a man, they opted to stay on. The pay was good and in cash. They all preferred to stay on and build their bankrolls doing needed maintenance on board. His first mate, a wiry man of indeterminate age behind a black hedgerow of beard, was named Geteye. He made sure all hands earned that pay. Every ocean-going vessel had an endless chore list and the Raj was not a new ship by any means.
Dwayne and Lee worked up a rough timeline for the mission and presented it to the team for suggestions.
“Not to take a dump in your chili,” Boats broke in on the presentation in the Raj’s chartroom. “But we’re going to have to anchor in deep water, guys. The Israelis are all over the Med in the region you want to go into. They’re going to be on us at the first sign of fireworks.”
“How far offshore?” Lee asked the red-bearded former SEAL.
“Twenty miles or more. And that’s cutting it close.”
“The surge needed for manifestation looks like a natural weather event for the most part,” Morris Tauber offered.
“Those Jews are twitchy, Doc. And they have every right to be,” Boats said. “They’ll use any excuse to board us, and you can bet your ass they’d sweep us for any kind of threat including radiation. And all the explaining in the world wouldn’t get our asses out of that.”
“We’ll make it thirty miles and you can take us in on the motor launch,” Dwayne said.
“That means I go with you? Back with you?” Boats said.
“I don’t see another way,” Lee said.
“I’m not waiting with the fucking boat,” Boats said. His usual smile was gone.
“No. You’ll be on mission with us. You up for that?” Dwayne said.
“Shit, yeah!” Boats said, the grin returning.
“That will make us five,” Chaz said.
“Four,” Lee said.
“How do you figure that?” Dwayne said.
“Because you’re not going,” Lee said and looked at Dwayne flatly. The others shut down to let those two sort it out.
“Bullshit,” Dwayne said.
“Caroline will be having the baby between now and mission start. She needs you there. And we would need all of your head in the game, but your head will be with her and the baby. And there’s another reason,” Lee said.
“Can I ask what that is?” Dwayne’s face was dark.
“If Boats goes back to The Then with us, we’ll need someone on this side who can go tactical if the shit hits the fan. That will be you.” Lee said.
“Makes sense, D,” Jimbo said.
“Yeah. It does,” Dwayne said. “That’s the way it has to be.”
But it hurt.
The meet went on for another hour or so with Morris giving his usual warnings about maintaining temporal integrity and the Rangers pushing back with the needs for objective priorities.
“You can’t be polluting the past with current technology,” Morris urged. “You’ll be entering an age closer to our own and possibly be encountering literate inhabitants. Any anachronistic technology you expose them to could be recorded. Dwayne and my sister had a few close calls on their last outing. All risks have to be minimized.”
“We tried it your way once, Doc. We got our asses kicked,” Chaz said, referring to their first trip to the past when they went with eco-friendly weaponry that failed against an army of man-eating proto-humans.
“The more gear we carry, the more chance of success and the least exposure time. The best way to go is to go hard and fast and get the hell out,” Lee said.
“Trust us, Mo. We’ll take every precaution,” Dwayne said, putting a hand to Morris’s shoulder.
“Every precaution that doesn’t add to our personal risk,” Lee added.
13
A New Member of the Club
A week into mission prep, the Raj had moved into an anchorage off of Limassol on Cyprus. It was a nothing-special port of call with the usual half-moon of blockish white condos and hotels standing along the shoreline. The container ship sat at anchor in the azure water away from the approach lanes of the big cruise ships that crawled in and out of port daily.
Even though they were not seeking a berth in the harbor, there was business to attend to. Boats paid a premium to have a tanker come out to them to top their reserves off with diesel. Customs came aboard and the ex-SEAL sent them away with a few cartons of Marlboros, a case of Ron Rico, and some folding money.
Since the skipper was occupied, Lee Hammond went ashore on the motor launch with a couple of his crewmen to restock their food and freshwater stores. Dwayne Roenbach tagged along to catch a shuttle to Athens and then continue to Berne to join Caroline.
Lee returned in the late afternoon with Parviz and Quebat and their luggage. There was another passenger aboard. Lee was at the gangway with a bag under each arm as Bathsheba Jaffe climbed the ladder to the sally port. The crew lined the rails to watch the raven-haired beauty in tank top and cargo shorts come aboard.
“Who’s this?” Jimbo said.
“Our Hebrew teacher, bro.” Chaz grinned.
“We figure our Arabic will get us by for the most part,” Lee said to the Rangers and the SEAL as they shared beers in the captain’s quarters with the AC on full. “But some Hebrew would come in helpful. Just a few dozen phrases we can memorize. Directions. Trading. Greetings. Just general tourist stuff.”
“I can do that,” Bat said. “But you guys don’t exactly look like you’re in the tribe. And a little of the old language does not go a long way. When things get tight, you need to let me do the talking.”
“Wait, what?” Lee said.
“I think the lady thinks she’s going with us,” Chaz said.
“No. Fucking. Way. Ain’t gonna happen,” Lee said.
“Hold on now. She knows everything?” Jimbo said.
“You mean all about your Wayback machine?” Bat said. “Uh-huh. Your boy here likes to talk after sex.”
“Shit, Hammond!” Chaz slammed his bottle of Luxor on the table, creating a geyser of beer.
“She’s all right! I vouch for her!” Lee shouted back, a rare display for him.
“You thought I was going to come out here and hold shul for you guys and not ask any questions?” Bat laughed.
“That didn’t include an invite to the mission,” Chaz said.
“I’m going. You need someone fluent. If you run into serious trouble then ‘where is the nearest bathroom’ is not going to be much help,” Bat said.
“It’s not all talk, baby. We’re there to run and gun. Can you hack all that?” Chaz said.
“I’ve got seven years with the IDF. I’m a trained sniper with a Galil and an M14. I’ve been in combat, and I know the country we’ll be crossing better than any of you.”
“Combat? So you’ve heard some hostile fire. You have any kills?” Chaz said, locking eyes with her.
“Three confirmed. Lebanon.” She met his eyes unblinking and with no resentment. They had a right to know her bona fides.
“And if we don’t take you along?” Jimbo said.
“What? I’ll tell the world about a bunch of vets traveling through time making trouble in the past? Try to turn you in to the time cops? And ha
ve everyone think I’m nuts?” She laughed.
“But we make you stay here and no more sugar for Hammond, right?” Chaz smiled, showing plenty of teeth.
“You can bet on that,” Bat said, returning the feral smile with gusto.
“Guys...” Lee was not enjoying the confrontation. He felt like the table had turned against him and he was outnumbered.
“I vote for Bat.” Chaz raised his bottle. Jimbo and Boats raised theirs as well. Hammond shrugged and raised his.
“You’re going to need a membership card, girl,” Chaz said.
“To your little group?”
“To Jews for Jesus,” Chaz said and clinked a bottle with her.
They took stock of the ordnance they had on board. The last mission was a clusterfuck despite its positive outcome but had required no firepower in the end. They still had more than enough small arms and case lots of ammo for each. Jimmy Smalls had a second Winchester Model 70 to loan to Bat. She could familiarize herself with it when they put back to sea. They’d all be putting in some range time then.
The team took to the common room to do regular maintenance on their armory. Bat impressed the guys by stripping down the gifted Winchester, oiling it, and reassembling it within ten minutes. Not bad for her first time with the weapon. She stripped down a Sig P-226 she’d be using as a sidearm. She also picked a 380 Colt snubby from the collection on the long table. A stainless job with no hammer.
“This anyone’s?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Mine,” Chaz said. “My pocket rocket for party night. It’s yours if you want it.”
“A girl can’t have enough surprises,” she said.
“I have a strap holster for it somewhere,” Chaz said and sorted through a plastic tub of accessories.
They were all sharing Irish coffee and bullshitting over a table lined with a row of oil-slick rifles and shotguns when Morris Tauber walked in with an empty carafe. He went to the counter and emptied a pot of coffee into it, followed by a long stream of sugar. Morris looked like he’d combed his hair with a pitchfork and he had a week’s growth of ginger on his chin. He rarely came topside, and that was usually at night. He was the only one in the room without a deep tan.
