by Bob Mayer
What comrade? Roland could see a door behind the throne dais, but heavy bars had been laid across it and hammered into place.
Beowulf slid off the table. “A name, stranger?”
“I am Roland the Slayer.” His earlier mission with the Vikings was coming in handy, although that had occurred four hundred and fifty years before now, or a few weeks ago, in Roland time. He hoped none of the others had already laid claim to the Slayer add-on, like one of the Vikings had. The reality was that Roland had slain quite a few in his own time; and other times.
“Well met, Roland the Slayer,” Beowulf said.
There was an edge to the way he said it that bothered Roland. He ignored the feeling and continued to look around. The large, double wooden doors at the front of the hall had a bar carved out of a single, large tree across it, sealing the entrance. That would take several men to remove. Roland wondered if they had things like fire exits in these old halls, given that they used a real fire and they probably needed one. He was more concerned, though, with a monster breaking in, than getting out in case of fire.
“Why did you volunteer to join us?” Beowulf asked. “In all the excitement and ceremony, there was not time to talk.”
A good question, Roland thought. For lack of a better answer, he said, “My God directed me to.” He hoped Beowulf wasn’t an atheist, but so far, the God thing had seemed pretty popular and much more literal in ancient times.
“Which God?” Beowulf asked.
Roland noticed that the watcher was scanning the room while also listening. The download throbbed in his head, trying to alert him to something. Reluctantly, he allowed it access. There were a couple of Christian references in the epic poem, but it was speculated they were added later. And Beowulf’s question didn’t seem to lend itself to the one God thing, whatever that was, and the download provided the term: monotheism.
Roland grabbed the first Norse god that popped up in the download. “Hel.” Roland wanted to smack himself as soon as he uttered the name. Seriously, Edith?
“Why would Hel want you here?” Beowulf demanded of Roland.
“I don’t question the ways of the gods,” Roland said. “I do as I am bid.”
Beowulf appraised him. “You appear to be a fierce warrior.”
“I’ve done my share of”—Roland had to think, grasp, improvise—“warrioring.” Not his forte.
“The monster is mine,” Beowulf warned, “if it dares show. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Roland said.
“And what is your name?” Beowulf challenged the watcher, who had not spoken. “Are you a slayer, like your fellow hunter?”
The watcher uncrossed his legs and stood. He was tall and lean, with a narrow face. His eyes were sunk deep under thick eyebrows. His hair was dark, unevenly cut. Unlike Beowulf and the thanes, he didn’t sport a beard, although dark stubble shadowed his face. “I am just a Jager. My name is unimportant.”
Roland recognized the term without the help of the download: a Jager in his time was a member of a special operations unit for several different Northern European countries. Here and now, it meant Hunter.
“Most names are unimportant,” Beowulf said. “But my name is well known.” He walked forward toward Roland. “What have you heard of me?”
Now that Roland could see him better, Roland gave Beowulf some points. The guy had some serious size and muscle. And scars. He was Roland’s height, not quite six and a half feet. He wore a pair of leather pants, boots, and that was all. Roland felt positively overdressed for this party with his Naga, leather tunic, and pants.
Roland accessed the poem to answer his question. “That you are the one who defeated Breca and slew the sea monsters.”
Beowulf stood a little bit taller as he came up to Roland. “I did. I fought for three nights in the chill water. In the end, I dispatched five of the creatures with my sword.”
Five nights and nine monsters in the poem. Reality was a bitch.
“And what have you done to earn the attention of the gods?” Beowulf challenged.
“I slew a prince of the Britons,” Roland said, “when he was guarded by an elite force.” Technically, Roland kept the prince from being conceived, but he was using poetic license, because, well, he could. “I killed the great warrior Ragnarok Bloodhand.”
Beowulf cocked his head. “I have not heard of this Ragnarok Bloodhand.” Sort of.
“It was a long time ago,” Roland said. “I have also killed monsters. Some sea serpents.” Roland still hadn’t spotted an unsecured way of getting in or out of the hall other than the front doors. Breaking that wood bar would take quite an effort and cause a racket, which partially explained why the men were sleeping. “I have battled kraken,” Roland expanded, feeling a smidge cocky since his tale wasn’t an ancient poem embellished over the years, but hard reality. Plus, Beowulf was irritating him.
“I have heard of kraken,” Beowulf grudgingly allowed.
“Fierce sea creatures with many tentacles,” Jager said, staring at Roland, seeming to have no interest in Beowulf at all.
“And I’ve killed Valkyries,” Roland said, then realized he had once more stretched past the limits of poetic, but now he focused on Jager.
“They take the bodies of the dead,” Beowulf said. “Why would you fight one? You’d be fighting the will of the gods.”
“It attacked me,” Roland said.
“Then perhaps you should be dead,” Beowulf said as if it were a real conundrum. “Perhaps you are already dead, which would explain why you do the bidding of the Goddess Hel.”
The hair on the back of Roland’s neck tingled, a warning he’d learned never to ignore. He looked at the double doors. “Is there another way in here?”
Beowulf shook his head. “Only the front can be opened from the inside. We sealed every other door.”
Too late, Roland realized his mistake as the monster dropped from above and landed on the floor with a solid thud, right next to the fire pit, cracking the flagstone beneath.
Nobody ever looks up.
Roland spun to face the monster as it shredded two of Beowulf’s thanes before they were awake, blood, viscera and flesh splattering about.
With his first glimpse of Grendel, Roland realized this was a lot worse than he had imagined it could be.
The monster was just that: twelve feet tall, humanoid, but with green scales covering his body. Massive hands ended in five fingers, with thick claws that came to a sharp point extending four inches. Grendel’s eyes were set deep and far back in the sockets. They glittered with yellow malice as he searched for his next victims. He didn’t appear to have a neck, just shoulders bulging with muscles, sloping up to the broad head that existed mainly to house a very wide mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth and four large fangs, two up, two down.
The better to kill you with.
Kala Chitta Range, Pakistan, 6 June 1998 A.D.
Doc wasn’t there and then he was there, but he’d always sort of been there. Unfortunately. It was the best way to explain how he arrived, becoming part of his current time and place without fanfare or excitement or notice of the other man sharing the hide site with him. He was in the bubble of this day, not before, and hopefully he wouldn’t be here afterward.
If the world made it to an afterward.
“Into the valley of death we go. Message decoded, sir.”
TASK FORCE KALI A GO
VIA PRESIDENTIAL AUTHORIZATION
CODE FOUR KILO NINE NINE ECHO TERMINUS
REPEAT GO
VERIFY
CODE FOUR KILO NINE NINE ECHO TERMINUS
KALI WHEELS UP IN THREE ZERO MIKES
TIME ON TARGET FOUR HOURS ONE FIVE MIKES
INITIATE CLOCK AT MESSAGE TRANSMISSION DATE TIME STAMP
MAY GOD BE WITH YOU XXX
Lockhart ripped open his envelope containing the authorization code, checking it against the one in the message.
“Crap,” he muttered. “Yours, sir?”
Doc retrieved his.
Identical.
“Ours is but to do and die,” Lockhart said. “And I’d put my money on the dying part.”
Doc wouldn’t bet against that most likely possibility.
“I’ve already synced and started the clock,” Lockhart said. “I’ll get the drop zone beacons and laser designator ready.”
“Hold on a second, Sergeant,” Doc said. He was stalling, confused. He’d thought he’d appear at the Forward Operating Base in the Arab Emirates. Dane hadn’t been exaggerating when he said there was no ‘close’ mission, and that they weren’t too sure about the data.
It is 1998. The shuttle Endeavor launches with the first American component for the Unity Space Station; the genome of syphilis is sequenced (over half a millennia after Columbus’ crew brought it to the Old World from the New World); the Second Congo War begins. It will claim 3.9 million lives before it ends five years later, making it the bloodiest war since World War II, and it barely makes a headline; Titanic wins Best Picture at the Oscars (spoiler alert: Jack dies); in St. Petersburg, Nicholas II and his family are finally buried, eighty years after their deaths, which is where Doc visited them again about two decades from now.
As if that isn’t enough to confuse Doc.
Some things change; some don’t.
Lockhart was peering out the observation slit. Doc noticed there was a bright glow out there, and he joined Lockhart, their shoulders pressed together in the tight space. Below and to the right, on the side of a tall mountain ridge, the area was bathed by bright searchlights, highlighting a road winding up from the valley and ending at a large tunnel opening: the Kala Chitta Nuclear Weapons Depot. In Doc’s estimation, there was no way a handful of Special Forces soldiers was going to take that place.
Then he remembered Moms, Nada, Roland, Eagle, Mac, Scout, and the Nightstalker missions he’d gone on, and now, the Time Patrol missions, and he knew people like that didn’t believe anything was impossible. The same for people like Sergeant Lockhart, and the Task Force loading out in the FOB, to attack on a mission they all knew was most likely a one-way trip.
They were coming, no matter what.
Doc slumped back, trying to organize his thoughts. The hide site was a seven-by-four-foot wide, six-foot deep hole, chipped, dug, and constructed out of the side of a steep mountain with the addition of PVC pipe and some tough sheets of shaped plastic. It was crowded with their gear: weapons, mission equipment, food (not much), and water (critical). Doc also saw several small baggies in one corner, and it took him a moment to realize they contained body waste.
Everything that came into the Hole came out of the Hole.
Doc knew Hole was a word to be capitalized in his thoughts because that’s the way the men who rotated through on their fifteen-day shifts viewed it. It was their entire world for those long days and nights. They never left it, except at the end, to climb over the mountain to the landing zone on the other side, to meet the helicopter bringing their relief team.
Or, on certain evenings, to prepare the way into the Depot.
The download filled in other data: the Hole was at nine thousand feet, while the Depot was fifteen hundred feet below. The observation slit was four inches wide, just enough for a telescope and night vision devices. The Hole was covered with specially made camouflage netting and thermal blankets, in case the Pakistanis decided to take a look with heat-sensors.
“Sir?” Lockhart stared at him, puzzled and concerned.
“Sync the clock,” Doc said, trying to buy time with time.
Lockhart held up his wrist, pressing a button on the side to light it up and show the countdown. “I’m already synced, sir. They’re loading the Combat Talon at Al Dhafra right now. They’ll be airborne in twenty-one minutes.”
A modified C-130, the Talon was the Special Ops version of the venerable Hercules transport plane. The download laid out the plan: the Talon would be packed full of Special Operators who would implement the assault plan. The plane would fly wave-top level across the Gulf of Oman, go “dry” over southern Iran, continue NOE—nap of the Earth—across Iran, penetrate into Afghanistan airspace, and fly along the border with Pakistan. Then it would turn east, punching into Pakistan to deliver the troops via low-level parachute right on top of the facility.
Lot of ifs there: if the Iranians didn’t spot it and shoot it down, ditto for what passed for a government in Afghanistan, and then, the much more capable Pakistani Air Force and Army awaited.
Then there was getting inside the most secure facility in Pakistan.
Which meant Doc and Lockhart had to go to down there and open the front door before the Task Force arrived.
That part of the plan was there, too, in questionable detail, a best-guess plan based on the available intelligence at the time.
It was supplemented in the download by the intelligence the Time Patrol had gathered two decades from now, which was much more extensive. That new intelligence indicated the current plan was doomed.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Doc muttered as he realized what was expected. He looked out the slit, then checked his watch. It was just after dark, around ten P.M. local time. Given the Talon’s air speed, the distance, the low-level route, and the requirement for an in-flight refueling, the countdown made sense; it would be over four hours before it arrived.
And in those four hours, he and Lockhart had to get from here, into there. Doc could see numerous guard posts facing the road. The download confirmed other observation points, motion detectors, trip wires, video cameras, night vision cameras, and a slew of anti-intrusion devices planted by the Pakistanis surrounding the entrance.
Lockhart was next to him. “Yeah, I know. Remember, nothing is impossible to the man who doesn’t have to do it.”
Doc was startled. “Nada used to say that all the time.”
“Who’s Nada?” Lockhart asked.
“Someone I served with,” Doc said. “He was killed on a mission.” Years from now. In Afghanistan.
“That sucks,” Lockhart said. He pulled back, and Doc heard him organizing gear, getting ready to move out.
Doc closed his eyes, analyzing the infiltration plan, using what Mac had taught the team about the CARVER target analysis formula and his own scientific expertise. The download had data that the planners of the mission in 1998 hadn’t had access to. Back then, they worked off satellite imagery, scant intelligence from the CIA, and the observations from the hide site and recon missions down the mountain to prepare the way. Intelligence after the fact was something every analyst would give anything for, and it was a critical advantage of the Time Patrol.
After September Eleventh, 2001, the United States had worked out a complicated arrangement with Pakistan regarding its nuclear materials. The fear was that Islamic fundamentalists would make an attempt to seize nuclear warheads, so the United States provided over $100 million in assistance a year to help secure them; in essence, bribery. But the Pakistanis refused the offer of PAL (Permissive Action Link) technology, which the U.S. and all other nuclear powers used. PAL was a system of sophisticated checks and balances on the release of nuclear weapons. Doc smiled grimly; the reason for the refusal had been obvious. The Pakistanis had been afraid the Americans would hide dead switches in the technology, insuring the weapons could never be activated.
They were most likely right in that fear, since it would be the logical thing for the U.S. to do. The U.S. had put worms in whatever computer gear they “gifted” the Pakistanis, and more intelligence had been gleaned from that. Through Foreman, their CIA contact, an urgent request for intelligence regarding this Depot, abandoned by Doc’s time, had been sent out to the field. What came back had been included in the download.
“It’s not going to work,” Doc said.
“What?” Lockhart asked, looking up from the rucksack he was closing up.
“The plan,” Doc said. “They didn’t have all the intel.”
“They never do.” Lockha
rt was next to him.
“There’s early warning radar on the other side of the ridge. It will pick up the Talon coming in from Afghanistan.”
Lockhart frowned. “Satellite imagery doesn’t show that. Intelligence didn’t report any.”
“Two arrays are positioned in caves, not visible to overhead imagery.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know,” Doc said.
“But if you knew it, why didn’t you tell anyone before we came here?”
A good question that Doc couldn’t answer.
Other problems were coming to the forefront as Doc compared the intelligence in the download from a couple of decades in the future to the plan based on the now, in 1998. One glaring problem was that here and now, no one had known the design of the interior of the complex. The Kali plan worked off of a best-guess as to how such a Depot should be designed, with a Containment Facility and a fissionable material Core deep inside.
Doc knew Nada had a saying about should.
Doc shook his head, not just over the impossible and suicidal plan, but for remembering Nada’s sayings more often now than he had heeded them when he was alive.
Except Nada was alive now. Doc didn’t want to pursue that line of thought.
Instead, he checked the design of the facility from the download, and it was more sophisticated than the plan had anticipated. Futile piled on top of futile. If they tried to implement Kali as planned, it would be a massacre of every member of the team.
“What the hell is going on?” Lockhart demanded with an edge of something else in his tone that Doc had heard before; a precursor to taking action, most likely of a violent nature. “We’ve got a lot of men inbound. We got to get down there and open the door.”
“We won’t be able to,” Doc said. He turned around and found what must be his rucksack. The SOP packing list for this unit’s backpacks was in the download, so he was able to get what he needed by feel.
He heard a slide pull back on a pistol and turned. Lockhart had his sidearm in hand, although he hadn’t raised it. “Sir, we have to do our duty. The team is relying on us.”
