by Chuck Dixon
“Then your brother will like it, too,” Dwayne said, standing by her and holding her hand.
“You’re sure? You don’t want to make a suggestion?” she said.
“I thought maybe Richard for his middle name.”
“For Rick Renzi?”
“Yeah,” he said and squeezed her hand.
They both thought that fitting. Rick Renzi was one of the Rangers who went with Dwayne and the others through the Tauber Tube to prehistoric Nevada to find Caroline and return her to the present. Renzi stayed behind to man a machine gun and cover their escape against a horde of blood-mad cannibals. But, as Caroline learned from a study of his ossified remains, Rick Renzi did not die that day long ago. He lived on for another forty years, trapped in the alien world of the distant past.
“It’s good. Stephen Richard...” Caroline trailed away.
“We’re going to have to do something about the last name,” Dwayne said.
“He can take yours.” She shrugged. “Only if you take it first.”
She looked at him, brows knitted. “Well?” He smiled.
“Of course!” she said and clutched his arm to draw him closer to share a kiss while their son suckled away.
“It will have to be between the two of us until we can use our own names again,” he said when they broke the kiss. “I mean, we can take the vows in our own name, but the paperwork is going to have to be...”
“Shut up, dummy,” she said, placing her fingers on his lips. “You’re spoiling the moment with operational details.”
They sat quietly and enjoyed the quiet, appreciating that it was fleeting and therefore precious.
After a while, Stephen Richard Roenbach broke contact with a look of sleepy contentment. He needed to be burped. Dad took the chore on like a champ, and soon the little guy was asleep in his father’s arms.
“We need to get one of these,” Dwayne said, rocking the dozing infant in the glider chair by the bed.
“For our nursery on the Raj?” Caroline smiled weakly.
“We’ll have a house. We have the cash. We’ll move anywhere you want.”
“Or anytime. Maybe Louis the Fourteenth would like some house guests for the summer.” She levered herself from the bed and stepped into slippers. “Mommy has to tinkle.”
“When can you and junior here move to the hotel?” He began to stand to help her but she waved him back down.
“Please don’t call him ‘Junior.’ Mo is the one who called me ‘Sis’ and it stuck.” She shuffled to the bathroom. “And I guess we can be discharged tomorrow.”
“I’ll make sure you’re settled in before I head back to the guys.”
“No need for that.” Her voice echoed off the tiles in the bathroom. “I have a live-in nanny arranged and a concierge doctor on call.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“The team needs you. And I know Morris is losing his mind. He’ll need you to hold his hand when they manifest.”
“I hate leaving you like that.”
“Leave me like what?” The toilet flushed, and she was back in the room and taking her time getting onto the bed. “A five-star Swiss hotel with twenty-four-hour room service and a small army of staff members to take care of every little thing? You make it sound like you’re abandoning me in a trailer park.”
“You’re spoiling our son already.”
“Damn straight, I am,” she said and bent to kiss the baby’s forehead, then Dwayne’s.
“All right. I’ll book the evening flight to Athens,” Dwayne said.
19
Forward into the Past
The manifestation went smoothly.
The weather was cooperating with an overcast sky and gathering thunderheads out on the Med.
The Ocean Raj had been custom-fitted to transform much of the superstructure and the entire engine deck into a Faraday box. Electronics and radio equipment were shielded from the powerful electromagnetic field that would soon engulf the ship and surrounding water.
The ten-foot-diameter balloon was inflated and rose on a nano-carbon cable high above the deck. It climbed into the night sky, dully reflecting the roiling clouds on its ebon surface. The line grew taut as it swayed at its maximum height of five hundred feet. Weighted cables, secured to davits port and starboard, were thrown into the water.
Below decks, in their shielded control room, Parviz and Quebat waited in Tyvek bunny suits for the signal that all was green for go. With the “all ready” sign from above, they fired a megajoule charge down the line. The cables in the water crackled. A blue field of incandescent electricity climbed the balloon cable into the sky, singeing the air with fingers of sapphire flame. Within a second the balloon was swallowed up in a wriggling mass of static power drawn from the air around it. The coruscating field raced down the cable and along the deck of the Raj. Within seconds the entire ship glowed in a ghostly blaze of cold fire.
Down below the main deck, in a chamber built of, and concealed within, a five-story stack of Conex containers the titanium rings of the Tauber Tube bled frozen sheets and filled the chamber with a carpet of dense, chilled gas. Four men and one woman rushed through the mist, pushing before them a Zodiac inflatable boat loaded with gear. The boat trundled easily on the rollers of the loadmaster platform installed on the floor of the ramp. Pushing the Zodiac ahead, they vanished under the rings and into the fog and were gone.
The team leapt into the boat as one and clung to any handhold they could find. The raft was momentarily submerged in salt water end-to-end, then surfaced in broad daylight under a cloudless sky. The boat swayed in the light chop, adding to what the guys knew as the Tauber Effect: disorienting nausea that momentarily left travelers through the tube as helpless as kittens. The guys knew what to expect. As a manifestation virgin, it struck Bat harder. She fought to maintain consciousness after spewing the contents of her stomach onto the rising deck.
“Sound off!” Lee said.
The count was complete at five. All present and combat ready if still a bit puke-y.
They were in the Aegean on the open sea with no indication that they had fallen back millennia in time. Not a sail on the horizon. The mist still bleeding through the open field hung on the water behind them. That meant the rip in time was still there with the day and time they left in the future still accessible on the other side of the drifting cloud.
Using the transmitter, Lee sent a text back through. He confirmed that they arrived safely along with the estimated time of day. Three in the afternoon. They would establish the exact date later when they could take a star reading. He received an acknowledging text from Dwayne before the mist evaporated, leaving them alone on the sea.
Boats made an inspection to make certain their vessel was intact and the gear still securely dogged down. The center of the boat was piled with waterproof gear bags. They were made of oiled leather and bore no markings and closed with straps and standard steel buckles. Theoretically, they would not draw the attention of the curious.
“Well, skipper, what are our orders?” Jimbo asked. Boats stood on the deck and dropped the pair of electric outboard motors into the water. He then scanned the uninterrupted horizon all around.
“We have a few more hours of light. I say we make for the mainland at quarter speed to get there at last light. There’ll be more traffic closer to the shore. Best we weren’t spotted.”
He started the engines up and turned the tiller to point the bow dead east. The twin ELCOs purred, pushing them through the water at ten knots. Just a goose on the throttle and Boats could bring enough horses online to have them skimming over the water at sixty. The humble little raft was the fastest vessel in the world right now—land or sea.
The sun was sinking in a magnificent burnt orange sky behind them as they sighted the shore as a darker line along the horizon. They had still not seen another sail on their entire trip.
“Shouldn’t we have seen something?” Bat asked. “These ancient mariners were pussies!�
� Boats proclaimed. “They didn’t like to sail far from land or at night. They probably all put in somewhere by now. We have the sea to ourselves.”
“Are you sure we didn’t go back too far?” she said.
“If a dinosaur pops its head out of the water, then we’ll know,” Chaz said.
The only animal life they saw was the growing number of gulls and terns in the air. A long flight of herons skimmed the water near them, heading for their perches on land before the sky grew full dark.
“I don’t see a beach,” Jimbo said, standing at the prow.
“Shouldn’t we hear breakers by now?” Bat said.
Boats stood and raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” Lee asked.
“There ain’t no beach. No surf. It’s a tidal marsh,” the SEAL said with disgust.
They rode swells to where the water shallowed. Boats tilted the motor shafts from the water as the bottom was thick with vegetation. The shoreline north and south was a thick forest of mangrove alive with clouds of mosquitoes and biting flies. An impenetrable tangle of roots grew into the black water.
“This was all a beach. I’ve been here,” Bat said.
“The topography changes,” Jimbo said. “Especially near the water line.”
“Change of plans,” Lee said. “We’ll have to make landing closer to the port than we planned. We follow the shore north.”
“And we’ll do it deeper waters,” Boats said. “Grab an oar, everyone. We need to paddle clear of this shit before I put our screws back in.”
Two to each gunwale, the team stroked away from the shore and the nasty fog of stinging insects until they were free of the undertow. Boats dropped the motors and steered them north, the dark mainland rolling along to their right.
Within an hour, they saw a wooded headland rising from the shore. The scopes showed a narrow beach at the foot of a steep bluff choked with scrub pines and brush. No place to conceal the raft.
Boats gave the headland a wide berth, and they came around it to find the city of Caesarea, the seat of power in Roman Judea, rising from the curve of a sheltered harbor. The full extent of the city was lost in the gloom of the moonless night. The structures they could see were mostly dark with only the soft amber glow of lanterns from within some of the buildings. Smoke rose from cook fires.
A lighthouse of sorts sat at the end of a long jetty that bowed out from the headland to enclose the harbor. A fire burned in a large brazier atop a stout tower to provide a beacon. It was more symbolic than anything else. Few sailors in this age sailed by night. No torches lined the jetty.
“There’s no sentry posted,” Lee said, scanning the jetty with a night vision scope.
“What’s in port?” Jimbo asked.
“I see masts. Tall ones. There’s a few big ships in there,” Lee said, shifting his gaze to glass the long waterfront. There was a forest of shorter masts swaying at one end of the harbor. “Looks like a fishing fleet. Maybe some merchant vessels.”
“We need a place to get our feet on land and hide the Zodiac. Do you see anything like that?” Boats asked.
“You’re the specialist here,” Lee said, handing off the NODs scope to the SEAL.
After a quick study Boats suggested they paddle into the harbor and scout for a place to hide the raft where they could find it again but no one else would be snooping. By unanimous agreement the team got the paddles out again and rowed inland.
They drifted silently past the base of the lighthouse and around the jetty toward the wharves lining the harbor. The large masts that Lee spotted belonged to a pair of Roman warships that towered over the smacks and barques anchored up and down the pier. The masts on the Roman ships were clewed up tight to their cross spars. The decks were dark and the hulls lined with the openings for four rows of oars. The ships were quiet. The only movement was the shadows from the lines swaying in the wind. Otherwise, the men and woman on the Zodiac might be the only living things in the city.
“They must all be at the orgy,” Chaz whispered. Boats shifted the tiller and they veered to starboard, toward a place where an embarcadero followed the curve of the shoreline. There were broad archways in the face of the harbor wall between stout stone supports that seemed to grow from the water. The rowers lifted their oars, and the Zodiac drifted under one of the arches into a dark enclosure that ended in a wall forty feet within.
“Is this some kind of boathouse?” Chaz said.
In answer, Boats took a waterproof lantern and slipped over the wale into the black water. They watched over the sides as the glow of the lantern shifted back and forth beneath the Zodiac. The light died, and Boats resurfaced seconds later.
“It’s a good twenty feet deep here with an upward sloping floor,” he said. “We can hide the Zodiac here.”
“With a triangular structure of stone and iron?” Jimbo asked.
“Yeah. How’d you know that?” Boats said.
“I saw it on Wikipedia. These alcoves are where they stored the rams for their warships when they weren’t needed.”
“Then the Romans might be using them,” Lee said.
“This structure is too old to be Roman,” Jimbo reached out and ran a hand down the stones. “It was built before them. Phoenicians. This port was theirs once.”
“You did a shitload of research for this op,” Chaz said.
“I read up to prep for the last trip back. The one I had to bail on,” Jimbo said. “Got back into it when we started this one.”
“Ancient trivia for two hundred, Alex.” Bat grinned.
“We’ll offload the gear and Boats can hide the raft,” Lee said.
They paddled from the alcove and followed the wall to where it was joined by a broad set of stone steps rising from the water to the embarcadero. Forming a chain, they removed the oiled leather gear bags from the Zodiac and stacked them. Dark buildings lined the wide quayside. Nets were drying on racks. There were no sentries patrolling. A pair of turbaned drunks approached them with palms out. Chaz told them to fuck off in Arabic and they scuttled away muttering slurred curses.
Jimbo paddled, and Boats steered the raft to the eighth alcove along the sea wall and entered. They removed the outboards and wrapped them in heavy plastic and sealed the bags with duct tape. Any remaining gear was strapped down tight and Boats released the cocks to allow water into the air cells inside the rigid hull.
The raft sank lower in the water. The SEAL had modified the Zodiac for this purpose. He installed compressed air tanks so the hull could be re-inflated in minutes. Even with the hull flooded with water, the Zodiac’s closed-cell foam inserts kept it at neutral buoyancy.
Jimbo and Boats dropped into the water and swam below to run lines from the raft through encrusted iron rings set in the ram carriage. They braced their feet on the floor of the alcove and pulled on the lines. As the raft above them lost buoyancy, they pulled it under the water until it was suspended a few feet from the bottom.
Two minutes was all Jimbo could do underwater. He resurfaced three times to gasp in a lungful of air. Boats came up only once. The guy was part fish. Jimbo dog-paddled while Boats secured and tied off lines fore and aft as well as on either side. The Zodiac’s black hull was invisible against the dark floor of the alcove. They swam for the steps to rejoin the others.
The five travelers each hefted a seventy-pound gear bag and humped them into Caesarea and the land of the prophets.
20
Things Change
The only thing missing was Dwayne.
All Caroline had to do was rest and nurse little Stephen. The rotating nannies did the rest. And anything else she wished was a phone call away. The Villa Kummer Grand had a full spa, in-room massages, and a kitchen of top chefs capable of preparing anything from haute cuisine to New York-style pizza. There was a sixty-inch TV in a private media room that was part of the suite.
Caroline felt guilty as she thought of how much Dwayne would have liked th
at feature. She spent much of her time reading from some of her books and the huge selection she’d downloaded onto her Kindle in anticipation of the downtime. The rest of her days were spent sleeping and admiring the miracle that only days before was an uncomfortable bulge in her midsection.
The baby was a marvel. The emotions she felt for it surprised her. She understood it had everything to do with hormones, but she felt it had to be more than that. Giving birth to a child of her own opened a new world to her every bit as surprising and enveloping as her trips into the past. Dwayne was part of both, and she wondered about that.
Was the Army Ranger a true partner or just part of the adventure? When she was with him, she didn’t question what they had. When they were apart the analytical side of her kicked in hard. They had nothing in common but their experiences. Dwayne was smart, but not an intellectual. He was a doer. And that appealed to her as she was impulsive herself. But she couldn’t help but ask if they were right for one another in the long term. He would always be a chance-taker, and now that she was a mother, she was looking to conserve risk and live whatever a “normal” life was supposed to be. At least that’s how she felt right now. Tomorrow might be different.
Caroline put down her book, a favorite volume of Richard Feynman essays she was reading for the umpteenth time when she heard the baby crying in the next room. She rose and entered the master bedroom, where she found the nanny had arrived before her. Greta was lifting the squalling and kicking bundle from the bassinet. Caroline held out her arms.
“He needs to be changed,” the nanny said.
“I have to start sometime,” Caroline said, taking Stephen in her arms. “You can supervise.”
Together they cleaned, ointmented, and slipped the infant into a brand new diaper.
