One Helluva Bad Time- The Complete Bad Times Series

by Chuck Dixon

  Boats barked a gruff obscenity and returned to the bridge where he made an all-hands announcement over the loud hailers in Amharic and English. The crew mumbled regrets but moved from their perches to go inside.

  “Everything cool?” Jimbo said.

  “We’re good to go.” Morris grinned and gave them a thumbs up.

  “Where do you need us?” Dwayne said and nodded to Jimbo.

  “I need Caroline in the control shed. But you’re wearing rubber soles. You’re free to stay on deck and watch the show. Just don’t touch any metal,” Morris said.

  “You mean we could get electrocuted?” Jimbo said.

  “The danger of that is minimal. It will be a low-ampere background pulse,” Caroline said. “Nothing will happen beyond your hair standing on end, most likely.”

  “Theoretically,” Jimbo added.

  Caroline smiled and followed her big brother below decks to their control room.

  PARVIZ AND QUEBAT were suited up in their Tyvek bunny suits down in the reactor control room. They were connected to Morris and Caroline in the Tube chamber by a hard-wired speakerphone.

  “We are at half power,” Quebat announced.

  “That’s enough for a jolt,” Morris’ voice came through the headset they each wore.

  “Activating in three,” Parviz said and worked the mouse at his workstation.

  At the count of three, the reactor fired a megajoule charge down the lines leading to the junction box at the bow and down the cables leading to the water and up to the balloon hanging above in the windless sky.

  Dwayne sensed a change in the air. He could feel the crackle. There was an invisible molecular reaction going on all around Jimbo and him. The oily odor of ozone filled his nostrils and mouth. He was having second thoughts about being exposed out here.

  The balloon’s sheath began to glow all around with a blue-tinged light bright enough to throw shadows across the deck. The glow increased in intensity and fingers of an azure field of static raced down the cable. Worms of coruscating electricity flashed up from the weighted cables. The twin charges met at the junction box. Dwayne’s short cut hair bristled on his head. Jimbo’s longer hair stood up in an Afro that made Dwayne laugh out loud.

  A soundless explosion, with the balloon as its source sheathed the ship in a sudden brilliance from stem to stern. It was gone in the blink of an eye. The frisson that animated the air vanished as the night closed in again.

  Down in the Tube chamber, the steel rings were bleeding off billows of frigid air. Caroline stared into the mist with wide eyes. She took a deep breath and could smell the rich tang of salt air coming from somewhere within the Tube. She turned to Morris, and he glanced up from his screens to flash her a broad grin.

  They’d done it. Through that chilling fog and down that ice-rimed walkway lay a world that was the same as theirs but so very different. It was the world as it was. Before Christ. Before the printed word and before an airplane ever crossed the sky.

  “WHAT THE FUCK is going on?” Boats demanded the next morning.

  He stood at a rail on an aft deck of the bridge tower and looked down at Dwayne and Jimbo on the sunken deck. The Rangers were zeroing in rifles and sharing a tub of iced beers. There were plastic barrels bobbing in the creamy wake of the Raj. The ship was underway north for the island of Nisos Anaxos. The barrels were tethered to the stern rail by a couple hundred yards of line. The pair was punching through the heavy plastic with their Winchester Model 70s. The plastic drums were getting heavy with all the water they were taking in through the holes shot in them.

  “What’s your point, Boats?” Dwayne called up.

  Boats vanished from the rail and reappeared, storming toward them along the port rail.

  “The crew’s busy, and it’s just you and me, soldier. What in the name of Jesus was that show last night? My boys are cool as ice in thirty-foot seas, but they nearly took a collective dump when the decks went neon last night.”

  “We told you what we were doing,” Dwayne said and wiped sea spray from the Winnie with an oiled cloth.

  “Don’t even try giving me that ‘environmental study’ shit,” Boats said. He was standing inside Dwayne’s space.

  “I told you, Dwayne,” Jimbo said, and jacked the last round from his rifle.

  “Told Dwayne what?” Boats said.

  “Jim said you were smarter than you look,” Dwayne said.

  Boats’ eyes narrowed. He wasn’t sure how to take that.

  “Tell him the whole thing,” Jimbo said.

  “Why?”

  “I want to see the look on his face.”

  Dwayne laid it out for Boats. He told him about the Taubers’ very special device and the trip they had taken to a lake valley in prehistoric Nevada, and all the wild shit they saw and experienced there. He shared how they lost Rick Renzi. He told him about the golden idol. He laid out the whole Sir Neal Harnesh scenario, and why they needed to stay on the move. He explained to Boats about why they were in the Aegean and where they planned on going and what they hoped to find there.

  Boats took it all in. When Dwayne was done, Boats poked through his pockets for a crumpled pack of Marlboros. He lit one with a gold lighter engraved with the SEALs eagle. He took a drag and let out smoke that trailed away astern in the wind their forward progress was making.

  “Bring me back something,” he said at last.

  “Like a t-shirt?” Jimbo said.

  “No, you dumb pogue.” Boats grinned. “A sword, or something cool like that.”

  “Not a problem,” Dwayne said.

  24

  Left Behind

  MORRIS NEEDED SLEEP, only he knew it would not come. Instead, he was sitting in front of his computer array down in the Tube chamber. He wore two sweaters and had a blanket over his shoulders. The rings encircling the walkway were coated in inches of ice that had condensed on the steel like a skin. The temperature was just above freezing and the air painfully dry. He scrolled from screen to screen with red-rimmed eyes.

  It was always like this when he had an unsolved problem. Sleep was pointless and restless and ultimately futile. His mind could not rest while any detail was left inconclusive. The first trial of the Tube was aimed at a random day in the past. The return trips used that first foray as a base point—a benchmark. For this new expedition to work, he would need to reach a certain date in a certain year. The insertion team had to manifest to a designated day in the past with perhaps a forty-eight-hour window of error.

  Technically, theoretically, the problem had been solved for him by the Vestergaard Equation. It was an obscure algorithm worked out a decade before by an even more obscure Danish mathematician named Bode Vestergaard. It sought to create a workable equation that could be applied to the concept of, then strictly theoretical, time travel. The Dane theorized a device much like the Tauber Tube and created a series of equations that was broken into twelve sub-formulas and included thousands of symbols. It made the quantum field theory called second quantization look like high school algebra.

  Morris applied the equation when he created his Chronus program for tuning the Tube’s field intensity to reach desired targets in the past. It certainly worked out in rough results. He aimed for exactly one hundred thousand years in the past and was only off by a year and four months. That would not do here. He would have to punch the hole for a manifestation in May, 240 BC. He could shoot for earlier and use that as a kind of milestone. Then adjust back closer to the optimal date. That first shot would have to land before the first day of May. If he miscalculated and the team manifested later than May there would be no second shot. The test shot they made was set for 1000 BC to reduce any possibility of an error that would make their hunt for Praxus’ treasure impossible.

  For reasons he and Caroline had yet to work out, each trip back created a barrier that could not be crossed. Once they had manifested at one date, that date became a boundary that prevented any further sojourns to periods deeper into the past. That was
the reason Caroline chose the earliest date for which she could find chronological references this exact. There would be no travel past that point. It was the fatal flaw in their miraculous device—each usage limited their scope. They were shrinking their options toward the present with each implementation.

  To Morris’ mind, it was all worked out. But that was only numbers and models. It was all headwork and keyboard time with no fieldwork. He could be off only a few days, and all of this was for nothing. Caroline’s theories weren’t theories anymore. They worked. God, did they work. Now it came down to Morris’ skills to conjure the desired results.

  The screens before him weren’t telling him anything. The longer he stared at them, the less sense they made. Would he even notice an anomaly or missed symbol if there were one to be seen?

  The hatch in the wall behind him swung inward with a muted squeal. Caroline entered wearing a parka.

  “Chilly,” she said.

  “I made hot chocolate, but it goes cold before I can drink it,” Morris said. He turned in his chair to look at her. He welcomed the interruption. His little sister would break him out of this intellectual loop that was chasing its own tail in his mind. But she looked more troubled than he was.

  “I heard from Jane in London,” she said. Jane was a friend Caroline made at college. She took a teaching position and was now a professor in... was it archeology? Anthropology? Morris could only remember that she was a chubby girl who came from money of some kind.

  “Oh, the bones,” Morris recalled.

  “Jane emailed me a full report on her findings. She’s a dear and didn’t ask any questions, though I know she’s dying to.”

  “She found a cause of death, then.”

  “Yes,” Caroline said quietly. “How old a man would you say Renzi was?”

  “I’m not very good at that.” Morris shrugged. “I’d say about my age. Thirty or thereabouts. He was a heavy drinker, so maybe younger.”

  “Jane studied the ossification of his skull sutures; where the plates come together. She also examined his cortical bone structure and degenerative changes in his joint sections.”

  “Sounds thorough.”

  “Rick Renzi was sixty years old when he died,” Caroline said.

  “WE CAN’T GO back,” Morris said. He stood behind Caroline, who had taken a seat at the computer station.

  “I know.”

  “The last test. We set a barrier point we can’t go past.”

  “I know that, Morris.”

  “Have you told Dwayne?”

  “I can’t. I can’t tell him his friend lived into old age waiting for someone to come for him. He lived out his life just waiting in that horrible place.”

  “Then we carry this with us. It’s just another secret to keep.”

  “I know I have to,” Caroline said. “But I’m not sure I can.”

  25

  Ojos Verdes

  THE MAN AT the door had eyes as green as a summer pond.

  “Lynn Renzi?” the man said.

  “Are you from the school?” Lynn said, standing at the partly open front door. He had not knocked or rung the bell. She only sensed he was there when his shadow crossed the windows that faced the front walk.

  “I’m not from the school,” the man said.

  “Because I sent a note with my daughter. Ricky hasn’t gotten over the flu, so I’m keeping him home until Monday.”

  “I’m not from the school,” the man said again. He leaned forward, and she opened the door to allow him into the living room. Lynn got no vibe off this guy. He was well-dressed and professionally polite. He might be one of those guys Dwayne Roenbach told her could come around asking questions.

  He didn’t take a seat. His eyes roamed the room, taking in the toys on the floor and the magazines and catalogs in messy piles on the sofa and coffee table. The sound of TV cartoons came from a room somewhere deeper in the house.

  “Is your husband home?”

  “My husband is dead.”

  The man stood silent.

  “Who are you with? Can I see some ID? One with a picture?”

  “I don’t carry pictures of myself.” The man was regarding her now; not looking away, not blinking. He glanced at her protruding belly. She was five months along.

  “I’m going have to ask you to leave,” Lynn said.

  “I’ll leave when you’ve answered my questions,” he said. There was no change in tone. He was stating a fact, and she had to accept it.

  She eyed the cell phone on the side table. She thought of the pump shotgun leaning in her bedroom closet. She thought of Ricky Jr. watching Disney on the TV in the family room. She did nothing.

  “When did your husband die?”

  “A couple of months ago.”

  “Did he know a man named Lee Hammond? Or Dolan Carter?”

  “He was in the army with a guy named Hammond.”

  “Did you ever meet this guy?”

  “No. Ricky would tell me stories.”

  “Stories. What kind of stories?”

  “You know, the kind of stories guys tell. Bullshit stuff. I didn’t believe half of it.”

  The man stood considering that.

  “Did he tell any other stories? Maybe stories about other men he served with?”

  Lynn tried not to react, but her fingers clenched.

  “Have any of them been to see you? Any of your husband’s army buddies?”

  “Are you IRS?”

  “I am not with any government agency.”

  “You aren’t allowed to lie about that, right? If you were with the tax people, you’d have to tell me.”

  “I am free to lie with impunity.” The man did not smile, but Lynn sensed this was some kind of joke on his part. She felt uneasy but not frightened. She sensed he wasn’t going to harm her as long as she answered honestly. Unless he asked about the money. Then she’d lie her ass off.

  “Dwayne Roenbach was here. Maybe six weeks ago. He hasn’t been back.”

  “Do you expect to hear from him again?”

  “I don’t ever want to see that son of a bitch again,” Lynn spat. She wanted this guy and his creepy-ass eyes out of her living room.

  “Can you write down a phone number?”

  “Sure.” She picked a Barbie coloring book up off the sofa. She reached over the cell phone to get it and, for a second, thought of trying to palm it. But this guy seemed like he was on his way out.

  She leaned on an end table and took down the number the man recited on the cover of the book.

  “This number doesn’t look right,” she said. “It’s right. Read it back to me.”

  She did.

  “If you hear from Mr. Roenbach or any other man your husband served with, would you promise to call me?”

  “Yes, I will. Who do I ask for when I call?”

  “I’m the only one who will answer at that number.” He stood to go but did not move to the door. She stepped past him to shove the screen door open.

  When he was gone Lynn sank onto the sofa with the coloring book clutched in her hand. She could hear Ricky’s giggle over the squeaky cartoon voices in the other room. The green-eyed man didn’t ask if she had a phone number for Dwayne Roenbach. She wondered if she would have lied about having it. He didn’t ask about the money. This was all about some guy named Hammond.

  It wasn’t until later that day that she realized that the visitor hadn’t touched anything with his hands. He dictated his number rather than writing it for her or handing her a card. He waited until she held the door for him to leave.

  RICHARD RENZI WAS dead. That came as a surprise to the man with the pond-green eyes, but he didn’t show it. Surprises were so rare for him that he didn’t know how to react to them.

  He eased onto the highway and drove across the border into Kentucky toward the airport. He drove the speed limit, gloved hands at ten and two o’clock on the wheel. He called ahead on his SAT phone. The charter jet was waiting.

  Everything
on Hammond turned up a dry hole. The man had simply vanished. That wasn’t an easy thing to do these days where everyone on the planet left a dense trail of data behind them as they moved through life. It was especially difficult to hide from anyone with the resources the green-eyed man had. Endless resources. Deep resources. He turned to Hammond’s history and began looking into past associations. Hammond had no family and no record of employment after his discharge from the Army. It was if he had walked through the gates of Fort Bragg and disappeared.

  But Hammond’s military records were public, for the most part. It was no problem to work up a list of the men he had served longest with. Hammond was part of a Ranger unit that had seen deployment after deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. The same dozen or so names kept appearing in his records.

  The man with green eyes visited the widow of Richard Renzi. He had Renzi’s histories at hand, such as they were. In every scenario, the official connection with Hammond ended when Renzi left the Army. But now he had another name. Roenbach.

  Like Hammond, Renzi’s current public record ended six months ago. He held no job. He paid no bills. He did not use his credit card, or even his car. There were no phone calls from any numbers associated with him. His wife said he died. There was no record of that either. No obituary. No church services. No hospital or insurance records and death certificate. Renzi had a life insurance policy, but the company had not been notified. His wife mentioned money—money from Roenbach.

  He left the rental on the tarmac and boarded the waiting Gulfstream. They were wheels-up within fifteen minutes, and the man opened a laptop while a dour steward set a drink in a heavy tumbler by his hand. The gloves stayed on.

  A cursory search on Dwayne Roenbach turned up a recent history similar to Hammond and Renzi’s. Six months ago, he dropped off the grid. He checked out of a motel in Las Vegas and was never heard from again. It was easy to assemble a list of former US Army Rangers with a similar recent history or lack thereof.