D-Day

by Bob Mayer

  The terrain became treeless, a moor that extended to the horizon. Jager suddenly halted, holding up a fist. Roland stopped, providing security.

  “In there,” Jager said, indicating a dark pool. The surface was black, with even darker swirls in it, as if a painter had dipped a brush into deepest shadows then spread it. “They build hollowed-out lairs in places that are only accessible via water. In the beginning, the kraken would guard the water. That should have been something we considered more carefully. What it meant. But we killed all the kraken. And we’d killed almost all the Grendels. What we didn’t know was there were a few lairs we didn’t get. That’s where the mothers were. Everything else was all a great diversion, and it worked quite well. When the spawn burst forth from the dark waters, they overwhelmed us.”

  Roland didn’t like getting in water. He’d had a brutal time passing the various swim tests his military schooling had required him to take. He’d always felt if he wanted to swim, he’d have joined the Navy, not the Army. He was a rock, muscle-bound and solidly built; there wasn’t much buoyancy built into his body.

  Jager walked around the edge of the pond, kneeling occasionally. He stopped at one point. “It’s down here.”

  “How do we do this?” Roland asked.

  Jager smiled sadly. “This is my hunt. We have a tradition in the Jagers. Had a tradition. Every hunt is remembered by a trophy. Thus, every Jager is remembered by his trophies. My lodge, my home, is long gone, along with my trophies. And this will be my last. Promise me to take my trophy with you.”

  Roland thought of the walls of the Den back at the Ranch, where the Nightstalkers had hung their forms of trophies from various missions. “I will.”

  “Good.”

  Roland looked at the water with some apprehension. “Should we tie off so—” And then he was stunned as Jager slammed the haft of the Naga staff into the back of his head.

  Roland fell to his knees, dazed. He heard a splash and knew that Jager had gone in. He tried to stand, but his head was spinning, and he fell backward, hitting the ground hard. Roland had been caught on the edge of an IED blast early in his career while on a tour in Iraq, and this was a replay, his mind trying to process, to get his body to move, but unable.

  Roland heard distant voices approaching. Men. Afraid. Questioning.

  He carefully sat up, wincing at the pain in the back of his head. He looked at the dark surface of the pool. There was no sign of Jager. Turning his head, he could see a party of warriors tentatively approaching in the full moon, their weapons at the ready, torches held by young thanes to light the way. Beowulf was in the lead.

  Ripples began to disturb the surface of the pool. Roland stood up, spear at the ready, hoping to see Jager appear, ready if it was Aglaeca.

  “What are you doing?” Beowulf demanded as he arrived with the other warriors.

  “Jager is in there,” Roland said.

  The water was frothing as if the entire pool were boiling, air bubbles bursting, but no sign of either man or beast.

  “Then he is a dead man,” Beowulf said. “We will wait until the monster emerges and slay it.” He didn’t sound overconfident.

  Roland was watching the water. “There is blood.” At least, he thought so, but the water was so dark and foul, it was difficult to discern. “Jager will prevail.”

  The download was intruding: according to the epic poem, Beowulf dove into the water after making a brave speech about who should get the treasures he’d just received from King Hrothgar if he didn’t return. But the warrior didn’t look like he was getting wet any time soon.

  “I’m going after him,” Roland said.

  “You’re mad,” Beowulf said.

  Roland graced him with a smile. “I am.”

  He took a deep breath and—

  Aglaeca’s hand broke the surface. Beowulf and the other warriors took several steps back, but Roland raised the spear over his head, ready to strike. Aglaeca’s head appeared, mouth wide open, fearsome fangs exposed, but the eyes were vacant, dead. The body floated, then rolled over, facedown, the Naga buried deep into the base of the skull.

  Jager burst to the surface, gasping for air, his face streaked with dirty water and blood. He was next to the monster, thoroughly spent. Roland grasped Jager’s hand, pulling him ashore.

  “You’re wounded,” Roland said. “I’ll—”

  “No need,” Jager said.

  Beowulf and the warriors were coming forward, emboldened by the death of the beast.

  “Get it out of the pool,” Roland ordered as he was pulling aside Jager’s tunic. Puncture wounds were spaced across the right side of his chest. Aglaeca’s claws had struck home at least once. Air bubbled out of two of the wounds.

  “You got a sucking chest wound,” Roland said to Jager. “I can—”

  “No.” Jager’s voice was low, but firm. His head was up for the moment, looking down at his own body. “There is poison in their wounds. When they are that many and that deep, there is no recovery.”

  Beowulf and several warriors had managed to loop a rope around the Aglaeca’s body. They pulled it out of the water onto shore.

  Jager’s head slumped back. “It is my time.”

  Roland gently moved Jager’s body so that he could hold his head off the ground. One of the warriors pulled the Naga free from the body. He looked at Beowulf, then at Roland and Jager, and carried it to them, an offering of respect.

  Roland took the Naga and placed it across his lap. Then he looked down at Jager. “If it is to be your time, then let me send you off with an epic tale, my friend, of a mighty hunter.”

  Roland had Jager’s head gently cradled in one hand, as he began to speak in a soft but powerful voice:

  “‘They praised his acts of prowess

  worthily witnessed: and well it is

  that men their master-friend mightily laud,

  heartily love, when hence he goes

  from life in the body forlorn away.

  Thus made their mourning the men of the Jagers,

  for their hero’s passing his hearth-companions:

  quoth that of all the kings of earth,

  of men he was mildest and most beloved,

  to his kin the kindest, keenest –’”

  “That is beautiful,” Jager said. “The way the words play. It is—” He died.

  And then, Roland was gone.

  Kala Chitta Range, Pakistan, 6 June 1998 A.D.

  Two more explosions had rocked the vault. Doc checked his watch. He’d been here seventeen hours.

  Doc had turned off the computer after Zoreed was killed. The phone hadn’t rung, which he hoped meant General Raju had run out of leverage and was waiting for his engineers to finish their job. Which they were pretty close to achieving ,with just the one pin remaining.

  He was staring through the observation window at the rows of warheads. Billions of dollars worth of research and development and graft, all to be able to destroy an enemy while also being destroyed.

  The phone rang. Hamid grabbed it before Doc could stop him.

  “Yes, sir.” Hamid hung up. “The General insists we contact him via the computer. He says there is something both of us need to see.”

  He didn’t wait for permission. He turned the computer on. Doc headed over, but Hamid gasped in anguish before he could get there, staggering back as if shot.

  Doc looked at the screen. Two bodies lay on the floor, pools of dark blood haloing their heads on the polished wood floor: a woman and a teenage boy.

  “Ah!” Hamid cried out. “That is my wife! My oldest son! Why, General?”

  “Because you are in there with him,” Raju said. The camera panned back. Raju held a pistol in his hand, which he waved. “If you are not an ally of his, then you most certainly did not give your life defending Pakistan’s greatest treasure. I do not think you understand how serious this is, Ghatar.”

  Hamid staggered back, then slumped into the chair. He put his face in his hands and moaned
in grief.

  “He had nothing to do with this,” Doc said.

  “You did not open the door when asked,” Raju said. “Their blood is on your hands.”

  “You are evil,” Hamid said.

  Doc assumed he meant Raju, but when he looked over, Hamid was glaring at him from the chair.

  Hamid’s grief quickly shifted into anger. “You are evil to just watch that and do nothing. You have cost me my family.”

  “And if these weapons had been released and used?” Doc asked. “How long do you think your family would live? How many millions would die?”

  “You are evil,” Hamid said.

  “I am doing the hard, right thing,” Doc argued. “He”—Doc pointed at the image on the screen—“killed your family. He is holding the gun.”

  Hamid looked from Doc to the screen, then back at him. “You are all crazy. All of you soldiers.”

  General Raju’s voice intruded. “Doctor Ghatar. I told you one of my officers was tracking down Zoreed’s children.” He gestured to the right, and the camera turned that way. A boy and girl stood between two soldiers. The floor beneath their feet was stained with their mother’s blood. Doc wondered if they knew she was dead.

  “Twins,” Raju said. “How sweet.” He fired, and the boy’s head snapped back, and he tumbled to the floor. The girl screamed and tried to run, but the closest soldier grabbed her.

  Hamid stood up. “Do not shoot her, General.”

  Raju laughed. “And why not?”

  Hamid slowly walked forward, leaning on his cane. “There has been enough death.”

  “Not nearly enough,” Raju said. He focused on Doc. “I no longer care if you open the vault door, Ghatar. My engineers say it is a matter of minutes. I gave orders for you to be taken alive. You will experience a long time dying.” He gestured, and the soldier shoved the girl away.

  Raju fired, hitting her in the shoulder, knocking her against the bookcase. He fired again, a headshot, and her body tumbled next to her brother.

  “I told you not to shoot her,” Hamid said.

  The general looked at the camera. “You do not speak to me. You are nothing. You will die before the American.”

  “That is what I knew,” Hamid said. He slammed his fist down on the keyboard, and the computer went dark.

  “What are you doing?” Doc asked, utterly confused, stunned by the blatant murders.

  “We are dead men,” Hamid said. “We can simply be dead and forgotten, or we can be dead and remembered as men who stood for something.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Peace.”

  Hamid limped away.

  Doc followed. “What are you going to do? We’re trapped.”

  Hamid stood at the door leading into the Core. He typed on the keyboard next to the shielded door that led inside. With a brief whoosh of atmospheres equalizing between the observation room and Core, the door swung open.

  Doc followed Hamid inside. The Pakistani physicist typed on the inner keyboard, and the Core door swung shut.

  “This will gain us time,” Doc said with approval. “It’s not as secure as the vault door, but it will—” He paused as Hamid opened a cabinet and pulled out a cordless drill and a hammer. He tossed his cane aside. With one tool in each hand, he headed for the closest warhead, limping badly.

  Doc intercepted him, putting an arm out. “No.”

  “We’re dead men,” Hamid said, pushing past. “You were the one lecturing me about nuclear weapons. Let’s end this here. Now.” He smiled grimly. “This death will be swifter than the one Raju has in mind for you. I am the one sacrificing the quick mercy of the bullet. I am doing this for my wife. For my son. For all Pakistanis. For all Indians. For humans.”

  He put the tip of the drill to an access panel on the side of the warhead and turned it on.

  Doc remained still. How much time did he have left? According to his watch, he’d been here over twenty hours.

  But had he accomplished his mission? Did the bubble depend on that? The fraking vagaries of the variables.

  “You can help,” Hamid said. He had the access panel off. He pointed toward the locker. “There’s another drill and hammer in there.” He raised the hammer over the warhead’s core.

  “Hold on,” Doc said. “We’ve got some time. Let’s access them all first.”

  “We don’t need to access all of them,” Hamid said. “Several will do the job. Everything in here, including us, will become so irradiated, nothing in here will be touched for generations.”

  Belatedly, Doc checked the download for data on why the Kala Chitta Range Depot had been closed.

  Classified. Even those who’d been paid off had said nothing.

  A secret, even in time.

  But Pakistan had nukes in Doc’s time. He had no doubt of that. They wouldn’t be destroying the capability to make more, the knowledge or technology. What would be accomplished here?

  Hamid was staring at him, hammer raised.

  The answer was here. Now. If they didn’t do this, and Raju got access to these weapons, he would use them. It would take time, months, if not years, before Pakistan rebuilt its arsenal. Doc thought of the twins. “Just wait on that a few minutes.”

  He went to the locker and retrieved a drill and hammer.

  An explosion rocked the Core.

  “They are in the Observation room,” Hamid said. “I do not know how long the door will hold. It is built to keep radiation in, not intruders from entering.”

  Doc looked over at one of the observation ports. A cluster of faces was peering in, soldiers. Mouths were opening, yelling, but it was utterly silent in here until the sound of a drill penetrated the quiet.

  “Tickling the dragon’s tail,” Doc said as he walked over to a warhead.

  Hamid laughed for the first time. “Ah, yes. The first lesson every nuclear physicist must learn. Never play with the dragon. It has been a long time since University. Who said that? Was it Fermi?”

  “Richard Feynman was the one who said messing with any core was tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon.” Doc removed one of the screws on the access panel.

  “The Demon Core,” Hamid said. He’d put the hammer down and was opening the next weapon, giving Doc a reprieve. “How many did the Demon Core kill before they used it in a weapons test?”

  They never used it in a weapons test, Doc thought. It had been used to open the very first Rift at Area 51, and had been drawn through to the other side. But it had killed a lot of people over the years via Rifts.

  “I wonder,” Doc yelled over the noise of their drills, “if Slotin subconsciously tickled the tail out of guilt. After all, he assembled the core for Trinity, the first nuclear weapon.” He was referring to Louis Slotin, who’d played with the Demon Core, made the slightest mistake with a screwdriver, and died twenty-five days later from the radiation that had blasted him.

  Not a good way to die.

  As Doc moved to another warhead, he paused. The pitch of the drilling from outside changed.

  “There can be no more delay,” Hamid said.

  Before Doc could say anything, Hamid smashed his hammer down on the core inside the warhead in front of him. Then he waved the hammer at the men observing through the thick glass.

  All the faces disappeared.

  The drilling stopped.

  Doc could swear he felt a wave of warmth wash over him.

  Hamid smashed another core.

  Doc raised the hammer above the core in front of him and—

  Delphi, Greece, 6 June 478 B.C.

  Scout shifted into the ready position, the double-edged dagger in a reverse grip as she’d been trained. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pandora also going on guard.

  Legion didn’t do any of those spinning knife things so popular in movies in Scout’s time as he pulled his weapons out. He had a blade in each hand, held about waist-high, and his eyes shifted back and forth between Pandora and Scout, as if deciding which entrée to dine on
first.

  “I had thought one of you would have dispatched the other by now,” he said as he shifted his feet slightly.

  Scout felt a chill slide though her body. He was deadlier than Xerxes Dagger; it wasn’t just Pandora’s warning. She could feel it. He had only one purpose: killing.

  “You tried,” Pandora said. “But you people have never understood the power of our sisterhood.”

  “It’s not that powerful,” he said. And in the midst of speaking, he lashed out, so fast Scout barely had a chance to attempt a defense.

  The tip of one of his blades sliced along the forearm of her knife hand, peeling skin back.

  Scout hissed in pain and started to take a step back, felt Cyra’s body behind her heel, and held her ground. The cut wasn’t deep or disabling, but it hurt like hell and, worse, was bleeding freely.

  Pandora had not moved during the attack, seeing no opening.

  Legion lifted the blooded blade to his lips, and his tongue darted out, much like a snake’s, tasting. “Very nice.”

  “What did you offer the Oracle to set me up? To set us up?” Pandora asked. She took a half step away from Scout, trying to widen the distance, forcing him to commit one way or the other, and in doing so, expose himself, if only for an instant.

  “What everyone wants. At least, what every human stuck in this existence wants.”

  “Life,” Pandora said.

  “Time. More time.” Legion cocked his head. “I thought the girl would be faster. She’s not very well-trained.”

  “I’m getting real tired of hearing that,” Scout said.

  His blade struck Pandora’s before Scout was even aware he’d attacked and she’d defended. Sparks flew as metal hit metal. Pandora danced away as his other blade sliced through her billowing tunic.

  Scout belatedly attacked, but he was already facing her, blocked her thrust, then flicked the tip of his blade at her face. She felt a sting above her left eye as she jerked back, trying to avoid the counterattack.

  In her rush, she forgot about Cyra’s unconscious body and fell backward. Scout scrambled, terrified he would press the advantage and finish her.

  But he’d gone back to his ready position and was looking at Pandora. A thin, horizontal line of red appeared in her white tunic.