Going Back

by Gene P. Abel

  “I could hit the explosive,” he called back to Agent Hessman, “maybe get the detonation cap and take them all out.”

  “But if that sets off the plastique, then we do their job for them,” Agent Hessman replied.

  Everyone ducked in response to the next shot, and Agent Hessman made it the last few feet and swung around behind another girder next to Agent Harris; there he took out a gun of his own. This left Ben and Claire to take up position behind them, with Ben clinging desperately to a vertical girder and Claire clinging mostly to Ben.

  “I never thought I was afraid of heights until now,” she remarked nervously.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to her. “Heights aren’t really a problem.”

  “They’re not? How can you say that? We’re fifty feet up, perched on a steel beam with no railings.”

  “Still not technically a problem. The problem is the stopping if we ever fall.”

  It took Claire a second or two before she stopped her fearful shivering and glared straight at Ben. “Was that actually a joke? Up here?”

  “I thought it worth a try,” he admitted. “Take your mind off things a bit.”

  Another gunshot echoed off one of the girders‍—which one they couldn’t tell, nor was it that important. The wounded man was shooting, and in that brief instant in which he exposed his location, Sue, Lou, and Ernst all fired their guns at once, hitting him enough so he stumbled even more into the open. Then, as his feet were slipping from their precarious hold on the girder, the next round of shots spilled his jerking body over the edge with a final cry.

  Everyone watched as he fell the fifty feet to the ground below, but from the number of holes now in him, he was clearly dead before he hit the ground.

  “Give it up,” Agent Hessman called out. “We’ve got three guns to your two.”

  The gunfire stopped temporarily while the Japanese man and Major Greber discussed something; then the Japanese stepped partially into view. He didn’t hold a gun, but something smaller in the palm of his hand, from which a pair of wires led to the explosive package at his feet. “I release this button and the explosive detonates,” he announced. “Now go while you can; history is already rewritten for us all. You will see: it will come out far better.”

  From his position, Agent Hessman had a good enough view of the highway leading to the bridge entry behind them to see the flow of traffic. Cars that had paused from their previous firefight were being ushered out of the way by a group of local police riding motorcycles some distance behind them. The line of cars approached from a side street, the first car waving a tiny United States flag from the front hood ornament.

  That’s the motorcade, Agent Hessman realized. We’re outta time. “Sue‍—‍”

  “Working on it now.” She was leveling her gun with both hands, taking careful aim as she shut one eye and squinted through the other. “Just keep him talking and out in the open.”

  Ernst, meanwhile, saw what Agent Harris was doing and lined up a shot of his own, leaving Agent Hessman to call out to the man with the trigger, “Don’t do it. History will be worse off, and Major Greber there has other designs of his own. Or did he already tell you that he is the one who’s been killing both your team members as well as his own?”

  “You will say anything to keep me from my mission, but the stain of the past will at last be removed. Once that motorcade crosses over‍—‍”

  “Got it,” Agent Harris said under her breath.

  She carefully squeezed the trigger, but she was not aiming at either the Japanese man or Major Greber. The wires leading from the trigger in the Japanese man’s hand snapped free, dangling uselessly from his hand, no longer connected to anything vital.

  The bomber looked confused for a moment before Ernst pulled off his own shot. He had been aiming for the man. The man tumbled to the water far below.

  Major Greber did not wait for the other to finish his fall. The second he noticed the wires had been cut, he leaped for the bomb, abandoning his rifle in favor of the explosive package. He deftly rewired the package.

  “Give it up, Greber,” Agent Hessman now addressed him. “You’re outgunned and outmanned.”

  “Am I?”

  He stepped partially into view with a wide grin across his face. Held between his hands was the explosive package, only now with a trigger directly on it. Greber firmly held the button down. Agent Harris slipped back into the shadows, visually surveyed her options, and began climbing up into the higher levels of the latticed superstructure.

  “No wires to shoot out,” the man called out. “Just my finger on this trigger. A dead-man switch. Kill me and my hand releases, detonating this bomb, and I take you people with me. When the motorcade passes above, I leave behind a large gaping hole in this bridge.”

  “Günter,” Ernst called out to him, “why? We had a mission, but this . . . it won’t turn out as we thought. I have consulted with their history expert.”

  “Won’t it?” Major Greber grinned. “Of course, you’re assuming that your mission was the same as mine. Hitler was right. The German people are the chosen race; we deserve to be the rulers of the world. The current leadership would see us do it economically, but that is the coward’s way out.”

  “You’re a neo-Nazi,” Ernst realized.

  “I am a loyalist! I want to see Hitler win the coming war, a victory the German people were denied.”

  As the man talked, Harris crawled furtively through the latticework. Carefully she snaked along one horizontal beam above their heads, one eye on the streets and the motorcade now pulling onto the main highway that would lead to the bridge. There wasn’t much time left, but one slip and it was all over for her and the mission.

  “The president’s motorcade will soon cross this bridge,” Major Greber continued. “And when he does, I will complete the mission that I started on, even if I have to become a human bomb to do so. President Wilson will be killed and the League of Nations will never form, leaving Germany in a far more favorable position at the start of the Second World War. With my sacrifice I will give my Führer the world!”

  He’s rogue, Agent Hessman thought, not state-sponsored. That’s what I wanted to find out.

  Major Greber looked ready to launch into what some might term a typical villain’s laugh at impending victory, when an unexpected voice called out.

  “Uh, excuse me. Claire Hill, reporter, here.”

  She poked her head out from behind the girder she and Ben were clinging to, timidly holding up a hand for attention.

  “What is this? I don’t do interviews,” Major Greber snapped.

  “No, it’s just I thought you might want to get the facts straight. I’m not from the future like you people, but I do know a few things. Like for instance that President Wilson’s convoy will not be taking this bridge.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  Agent Harris was nearly above him in the steel rafters, while the parade of dignitaries’ cars was turning onto the ramp leading up to the bridge. She searched for something in particular while the others kept Major Greber distracted. Agent Hessman had one eye on Greber and one on the motorcade as he motioned Claire and Ben out to him. Major Greber no longer had his rifle in hand, so the pair stepped out into the open as the reporter continued to speak.

  “It’s just that—President Wilson will be taking another route,” she explained. “I don’t know which one; that’s a secret.”

  “But the motorcade,” Major Greber snapped. “I can see it from here!”

  “That’s the convoy of dignitaries that the president is going to speak to,” Claire explained. “They’re the ones about to cross this bridge on their way to meet with the president.”

  “Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge,” Ben now called out, “leader of the opposition to the league in this country. General Tojo of Japan and chief engineer of Jap
an’s involvement and strategies in the war. And your own Gustav Noske, the man who made Hitler. They’re the ones in that convoy, not Wilson. Kill them and you might actually guarantee the league’s formation.”

  “No,” Major Greber said, shaking his head, “you lie!”

  “Without the congressman, the US joins the league,” Ben iterated. “Without Tojo, Japan never enters the war and Germany is deprived of a key ally. And without Noske, there is no one to mentor Hitler and he never rises to power in the first place. What happens instead, we have no way of knowing, but it won’t be the Nazi dream world that you’ve envisioned.”

  “No . . . you lie.”

  “Why do you think the Japanese were trying to blow up the convoy?” Ben asked. “Their mission was to kill Tojo and stop the war, the same mission the rest of your team had. They certainly wouldn’t be trying to blow up the president!”

  For a moment Major Greber stood in confusion, his left hand wrapped around the package with his finger on the button, his right hand moving uncertainly to a bulge in his pocket. Then, in a single swift motion, he reached in with his right hand and pulled out a small handgun. The weapon was not as deadly as his abandoned rifle, but at these ranges, deadly enough. He leveled the revolver in Claire’s direction. In that motion his coat opened enough for Agent Harris to spot what she was looking for; now she just needed the opportunity.

  “Try to lie to me now, you American bitch!”

  “No!”

  Ben stepped in front of her. Then from another beam came a shout from Ernst: “Günter!”

  Major Greber turned to see Ernst boldly presenting himself with his pistol in hand. He fired the shot intended for Claire at Ernst, hitting him full in the chest and knocking him off his girder to fall to his death, while the bullet he’d fired at Major Greber narrowly missed. The major hid again behind a tall girder.

  Now the major was directly below where Agent Harris had been waiting. As the motorcade of dignitaries started its escorted journey up the bridge, she leaped down, one hand aiming for his coat as the rest of her body slammed straight into him. With a cry she tackled him straight off his perch, his hand releasing its hold on the dead-man switch precisely as hers found what she’d been looking for: his recall beacon.

  They were caught in a midair fall as the explosion began, but in that instant, the familiar appearance of spinning lights surrounded them both as she activated his beacon. Major Greber and Agent Harris both lit up, as did the explosive and the bright flare now loose from the major’s grip. Suspended in flight, a small star gave birth to itself in a storm of racing colors before the star collapsed in on itself, gone in a wink.

  No explosion, no Major Greber, and no Agent Harris.

  “Sue,” Ben gasped.

  Directly overhead, an important parade of official cars sped by, escorted by a combination of local police and military soldiers. Away to a meeting with history while the three beneath them let out a collective sigh of relief, then bowed their heads out of respect for another lost teammate and friend.

  35

  Cleanup

  For a moment they watched the lingering afterimage of the ball of light that used to be their friend fade away, while from overhead they could hear the official convoy rumble its way across the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Claire was the first to break the silence. “Sue. Did she . . . ?”

  “She activated Greber’s beacon,” Ben quietly replied, “and was taken away with him by the German time machine.”

  “Then she’s back in the future?”

  “Along with that explosion,” Agent Hessman stated. “It would have detonated right in the middle of the German time chamber. No telling how much damage it did to the facility, but as for the major and Sue . . .”

  He let his statement linger, nothing more needing to be said. Claire stared at the empty spot in space that was the last place she had seen Sue, while Ben reached an arm around her to hold her close. After a silent moment to give their respects, Agent Hessman made his way across the girders to where Major Greber had abandoned his rifle. It still lay on the wide beam waiting for him to retrieve it. He rejoined Ben and Claire a couple of minutes later with rifle in hand.

  “Come on,” he said quietly. “We have some bodies down below to send back. We must not leave behind any sign that we were ever here.”

  The team walked solemnly back along the catwalk, then down the steps and out into the night to retrieve the fallen. Ernst’s body had landed on the other side of the fence enclosing the bridge’s foundation, and the two Japanese somewhere over by the riverbank. They left through the open gate and reached the German first.

  Ben finally spoke as they neared the body. “We never had a chance to get to know him all that well, but he seemed like a fairly honest and upstanding guy.”

  “A man of character,” Agent Hessman agreed. “That’s why he didn’t hesitate to draw Greber’s fire when a distraction was needed.”

  The three stood around Ernst’s body, heads bowed, for a moment. Then Agent Hessman laid the rifle he had retrieved down the length of Ernst’s body, bent down, and proceeded to search him for his beacon.

  “When he died, do you think his mind snapped back to his original body, or . . . ?” Ben asked.

  “Not for me to say, save for this,” Agent Hessman replied. “He would have appeared in the same facility as the explosion that Greber took back with him. Same facility, in a pod right next to his. No matter if his mind made the trip back after this body died, there is no chance that he survived in the end.”

  Agent Hessman pulled what had been made to look like a large pendant out from the dead man’s jacket, laid it on Ernst’s chest, pressed the button, and stood back. In silence they watched as the body dissolved in upon itself, until nothing was left but a vague imprint in the dirt where he had landed.

  Next they reached the river’s bank and the first of the two Japanese bodies. As Agent Hessman bent down to retrieve and activate the first one’s beacon, Ben said a few words. “They were trying to save the world from suffering through a very ugly piece of history. I have nothing but respect for the attempt and the courage it took such a man to stand behind his honor to the very end.”

  Once again they watched in silence as the flare of speeding photons lit up the night, too quickly gone from sight.

  “I’m getting kind of worried,” Claire remarked once it was done. “I’m starting to get used to seeing that.”

  Then last they repeated the procedure with the second Japanese body. They located the beacon, lowered their eyes as it was activated, and watched as the body proceeded to sizzle away.

  “Do you think they might try this again?” Claire asked as they left the empty riverbank. “I mean, how many time travelers do we have to worry about?”

  “I don’t think they will,” Ben assured her, “at least not back to this same time and place. I am sure that Sam, were he here, would say something about risking too many causation loops or some such. History will go about the way it was meant to go‍—for good and bad.”

  They returned to the park and for a moment simply looked out across the river. The Brooklyn Bridge sparkled with light while a smattering of wheeled and foot traffic crossed its length, and beyond that the view of the nascent New York skyline completed the perfect evening. Claire even dared to lean her head against Ben’s shoulder, his arm finding its way around her waist.

  “Will it still be here in a hundred years?” she finally asked.

  “The bridge?” Ben asked.

  “All of it. The bridge, the city.”

  “All of it and far more,” Ben assured her with a smile. “It suffers through some losses, but there remains no finer bridge on the entire East Coast.”

  “Just the East Coast?”

  “There’s a little something that gets built over in San Francisco a few odd years from now. But let’
s not worry about that right now. In the years to come, the New York skyline will evolve to something that no other city on this planet can boast of.”

  “I’m glad . . . It’s just a pity I won’t be here to see it.”

  Agent Hessman let them stand together for a few minutes undisturbed while he silently reviewed all the team’s movements and anything they might have left behind. He briefly combed the area beneath the bridge for any pistols that had fallen out of the grips of the dead and pocketed what he found. Beyond that, however, he found nothing.

  He finally went back over and gently tapped Ben on the shoulder. “It’s time to go. Our mission is at an end, and the future awaits us.”

  “Yeah . . . I know.” Ben sighed. “But Lou, there’s one little detail that I’ve been thinking over.”

  “Something we missed?” Agent Hessman asked. “We’ve stopped both other teams, and the secret meeting will go off as it once did.”

  “No, nothing about that, it’s just that . . . when Sue activated Greber’s beacon, the German time machine looked like it took the both of them away at once.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Then . . . once she was back in her proper time, did Sue really end up in the German time machine or back in her body in our own?”

  “Hmm . . . well, reasoning logically,” Agent Hessman began, “her projection would have appeared in the German facility along with Greber; then, once the bomb destroyed that and her beacon, she would have been snapped back into her original body in our facility. But if you’re looking for a chance that she might have somehow survived‍—‍”

  “No, that’s not it.” Ben remained motionless, his gaze distant as he held on to Claire. “The point is that Greber was able to being someone back with him.”

  It took Agent Hessman only a moment to realize what the professor was getting to. “Ben, no. We can’t alter history in the slightest.”