One Helluva Bad Time- The Complete Bad Times Series

by Chuck Dixon

  She studied his face in the hazed moonlight. Black soil highlighted the lines Dwayne’s face. There were more there than she recalled. What she thought was weariness in his expression she now recognized as age. Cold spiked up her spine with the realization. This man was older than the man she said goodbye to in Berne, considerably older. The gray at the temples was not discoloration from ash. The hard lines about the mouth and eyes, the sag of the lids. Twenty years had passed since their last meeting. She touched his sleeve, and he lifted his gaze from the cooing infant.

  “Dwayne,” she began again.

  “I wish I could explain, Caroline. There was no other way. You need to leave here now. Tonight.”

  “For where? For when?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, his expression softening. “No time will have passed for you. Or for me. You’ll see me again just like you left me.”

  She was speechless, not something she could ever recall being.

  “I can’t tell you anything else. Don’t ask me, Caroline. Samuel would be here, but it didn’t work out that way. One thing I’ve learned is that you can make almost any mistake right if you try hard enough. But you can never make up lost time.”

  He handed the baby back into her arms and embraced her once again.

  “We’re in no rush. Harnesh’s people can’t open a window until sometime tomorrow local time. Still, it’s a good idea you two leave now.”

  “Aren’t you leaving too? I mean. With us?” she said, swallowing tears. She wanted to cry like a child and could not focus on one single cause for it.

  “I’m good. I’m safe here for now. Invisible to them.” He pulled back a ragged sleeve and showed her a gleaming steel wristlet like Samuel wore. He smiled that wolfish grin of his. “Besides, I’m kind of looking forward to seeing their faces.”

  She smiled back. Her mind was swirling with questions that he forbade her to ask. The questions themselves terrified her. This was a man who shared a life with her that she had yet to live. His memories were her future—hers and Stephen’s. She fought down her anxiety and a crushing sadness that would overwhelm her if she gave it a second’s consideration.

  “Then we’d better move along. There’s still a curfew in effect,” she said and was surprised when he picked up the carpetbag and took her arm in his.

  “We always said we’d do a real tour of Paris someday,” he said casually.

  “Not like this,” she said, and they moved through the gloom, the city silent but for the ring of tramping boots moving away along the cobbles of an adjacent street. After a bit, she recognized the route they were on.

  “You’re taking me back to the place where Samuel and I came through the field,” she said.

  “It’s still in place and programmed to open. We have some wiggle room. Like I said, no crazy need to rush, but we’re still on a timetable.” He gripped her arm closer. She looked up at him, but his eyes were fixed on the path ahead.

  She had questions, but they were all about events to come.

  “Harnesh’s man, the one with the white hair, he’s dead,” she said.

  “Madeline Villeneuve wrote about it. You were quite the woman of mystery for a while there, babe,” he said and turned to smile at her. “You did good.”

  “It was for Stephen. I’d die for him, you know that.”

  He said nothing. His smile faded and he looked away. The chill from earlier returned deeper than before.

  They stayed to the shadowed side of a broad boulevard. Tramping feet echoed toward them and Dwayne pulled them into the deeper darkness under a tattered storefront awning.

  They watched a troop of soldiers tread by in formation, an officer striding before them with a sword on his shoulder. They wore Uhlan-style helmets and trousers with the stripe down the leg; cavalry who’d been reduced to infantry after their horses went to the butcher.

  Dwayne and Caroline waited until they were out of sight around a turn in the avenue before continuing on. A building in their pathway had collapsed in the recent shelling to block a street. Dwayne took the baby and helped her climb over the hill of rubble. They came down the slope of bricks and broken mortar to the garden area and the alley where she and Samuel had entered only a bit more than a week ago. They stopped at the mouth of the narrow passage and he gently returned Stephen to her arms.

  He took a slim black case from his pocket and placed it in the carpetbag.

  “Everything you need is in here. A throwaway cell phone, an American Express black card, passports, visas, and driver’s license.”

  “Who am I now?”

  “Mrs. Sydney Jean Hochheiser of Calgary, Alberta,” he said and smiled at her wince.

  “Well, I’ve been pretending to be Canadian anyway. What about the clothes?” she said, glancing down at her voluminous brocaded skirts.

  “There’s plenty of period reenactors walking around Paris these days. No Frenchman is going to risk losing his cool by reacting to you. Use the card to buy some casual clothes and whatever else you need and take the train to London. There’s already a suite there in your name at the Marleybone. It’s a four-star. When you get there, call me.”

  “And say what exactly?”

  “That you and the baby are fine unless...”

  “What?”

  “You might get there a little sooner than anticipated.”

  “Like our six-month vacation from the world?” she said.

  “It shouldn’t be that far off.”

  “I hope not. I wouldn’t want Stephen to be walking the next time you see him.”

  Dwayne laughed then started to say something. He bit off the words as well as the laughter. He looked past her with hard eyes. She turned to see the first tendrils of white mist forming.

  “Wait until it fills the alley,” he said.

  “Once more,” she said and stepped to him. He took her and their child to him and held them as though they contained a healing power to make his world right again. Her tears came then, and he crushed her closer.

  “One thing,” he said, no louder than a breath in her ear. “Tell Hammond, ‘the oracle at Joppa.’ Just that. He’ll know what it means.”

  “The Oracle at Joppa,” she whispered back against his neck.

  “You have to go. Now,” he said, releasing her. The baby in her arm and the carpetbag in hand, she walked away from him into the engulfing mist. “Don’t look back,” she heard him say. It sounded like a warning he’d often repeated or even a statement of philosophy rather than a timely thought of the moment.

  Caroline did not look back. She only walked into the alley back toward her own present and his past.

  47

  Caesarea Redux

  “We’re exposed here. We can’t keep waiting,” Bat Jaffe said.

  Lee Hammond said nothing in reply. They were hiding in plain sight on a terrace above the walled harbor. It was the oldest part of the city. The pillars were green with age, the tiles cracked and weed-choked. For three days they’d been living like the rest of the town’s homeless in whatever nook or niche they could find to get out of the weather. They were starting to draw attention from the locals. Lee stood with a foot on a curtain wall, watching the boats coming and going over the sun-dappled water.

  “Boats needs real medical care. Antibiotics. Surgery,” she said.

  Lee spat. His eyes were locked on the broad stone pier where their raft lay concealed in ten feet of water.

  “We can come back, Lee.”

  He turned to her then back to where Chaz sat by the wounded SEAL in the shade of a tattered awning. Boats was conscious but in pain, even if he’d never admit it. They were keeping him hydrated and doing their best to drain the pus from the swollen wound in his thigh. There was nothing they could do to stop the fevers he was spiking more and more frequently.

  “We can come back,” Chaz said.

  “And where do we look?” Lee said.

  “Jimbo will make it to the exfil point. He might have to take his time, but he
’ll make it. He’ll leave a sign. You know he will,” Chaz said.

  Lee scanned the pier again.

  “Are we in range of the field?” he said.

  “For a text message,” Chaz said.

  “Text Mo Tauber,” Lee said. “Give him the date. We leave tonight.”

  Chaz retrieved the transponder from his pack and booted it up.

  Lee walked away down the terrace. Seabirds parked there fluttered and skittered from his path. Bat followed.

  “It’s the only option,” she said.

  “It’s still fucked up.”

  “No argument there.”

  “Jimbo will make it. That Indian can make it out of any tight spot. He made it out of one carrying me on his back once.” Lee looked away from her.

  “We get Boats away safely and come back,” Bat said.

  “And sit and watch this shithole? For how long?”

  “Maybe we can get a timeline. Some kind of fix on when Jimmy might make it here.”

  “How’s that work?”

  “I have to think that the contact we had with the Romans will wind up in their history somewhere,” she said.

  “That’s what happens? You guys rewrite history, right? That’s what we came back to do, am I right?”

  “You think we can rely on retro-intelligence. That’s never as reliable as you make it sound,” Lee said.

  “It’s something, isn’t it?” she said.

  As it turned out, Marcus Rupilius Pulcher was illiterate.

  He would never have written an accurate report of the events leading to the destruction of five centuries in any case. The optio who served as his scribe was dead, his head ripped off by one of the killing bolts of lightning that fell upon them in that draw.

  The centurion knelt in his tent, draining his second skin of wine. It did not improve his mood. It did nothing to quell the screams of the wounded lying outside in the rough camp laid by the few survivors. The remaining men of his formation, those who had not already run away, were so small in number that a proper sentry could not be posted. There was no relief for those who suffered from injuries. They could only shriek until their throats were raw. They would lose consciousness and bleed away until they were lifeless, still and pale.

  Pulcher’s own wounds were painful, but he would live. His right arm and leg were scored with gashes made by tiny bits of wire that had appeared there instantly with the clap of thunder that had reduced his forward century by half The same scraps of metal gutted the horse he was riding. He’d fallen hard from the saddle, narrowly missing being brained by the kicking hooves of the dying animal.

  Here in solitude, he removed his armor and tore his clothing into strips to bind his arm and leg. His body broke out in a chilled sweat from the pain. The binding cloths were swiftly soaked black with his blood.

  For all the sacrifice of his men, there was nothing to show for it. They never even saw their attackers. It was as if they were struck down by a force of nature. They had drawn the ire of some dark and vengeful god. There was no opportunity to draw blood, to sink their blades into the flesh of their enemy, to hear his cries for mercy.

  It was his command. All fault would be his. All shame would be upon his name.

  He regarded the gladius that lay before him in its scabbard. The sword was purchased by him in Damascus. The blade was the finest steel. The hilt and tang were polished brass worked with a clever skein of oak leaves. The grip was red oak stained dark with his sweat over the years. The pommel was the head of a roaring lion, its mane worn smooth by his resting palm. It had cost him nearly a year’s pay, and he never once regretted its purchase.

  He unsheathed it and admired the gleam along its razor edge. There was a nick in the blade back near the hilt where it had once caught the blow from a Parthian ax head. One of the many times it saved his life. One of the many times it drank deep of the blood of the enemies of Rome.

  Pulcher set the lion-head pommel in the loose dirt before him and rested the tip of the blade against the soft bone where his ribs joined. He wondered idly who might own this blade after this day. It did not matter now. With a violent exhalation to empty his lungs, he drove himself forward onto the sword with all his weight and force.

  He was dead within seconds with little pain but for bitter memories fleeting past.

  With him died history.

  48

  The Ocean Raj

  “Caroline? What’s this number? It’s not the Bern exchange or the burner I gave you.”

  “I changed phones after you left, Dwayne. I thought it was safer.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Miss me?”

  “I’ve hardly had time to, babe. Been busy as hell since I got back. Your brother just got the guys through the field. I was gonna call you.”

  “You would have missed me anyway. I’m not in Bern anymore.”

  “What are you saying? Why not? I just left you there yesterday. Is it the baby?”

  “Stephen’s fine. It’s kind of a long story, and I can’t go into it now.”

  “Is that him I hear?”

  “Yes. We’re both safe. Samuel came and got us. Something came up.”

  “Samuel? What was it, Carrie? What came up?”

  She sighed.

  “All right, I’ll come get you and Stephen.”

  “No, Dwayne. We’re good here. We really are. Morris needs you there.”

  “All right. I’ll come get you when this op is over. You can tell me all about it then.”

  “Listen, Dwayne, when Lee gets back, you need to tell him something.”

  “What?”

  “Tell him, ‘the oracle at Joppa.’ He’ll know what it means.”

  “That’s it? What’s it mean?”

  “I wish I knew. I wish to God, I knew.”

  “You sound tired, babe.”

  “So do you. We should both get some sleep, right? Love you.”

  And the connection was broken.

  Dwayne Roenbach pocketed the sat phone. That was his infant son he heard in the background. He readily admitted he knew jack shit about babies, but he was damn sure three-day-olds couldn’t say “Mama.”

  He had a lot of questions but could tell by the tone in Caroline’s voice that she didn’t want to hear any of them right now. It wasn’t irritation he heard at the edges of her answers. It was more like a despondency. She was probably just tired as she said. Both she and Stephen were safe. That was enough for now.

  Dwayne thought about leaving the bridge area to look for Morris Tauber to update him on his sister. But he didn’t feel like a lot of questions either, especially ones he had no answers for.

  It was two days later during a routine opening of the field that the text message came through.

  PREPRED TO EXFIL—SND CRRNT

  POS AND EST WINDOW

  MEDEVAC NEEDED SRGRY

  RESPND—RESPND—

  SPRRW

  A detailed star fix was attached, setting the time of transmission as 20 September 16 at 02:56:17:01.

  SPARROW was their personal code for any kind of urgent request. It was from the Rangers’ days in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was taken from one of Chaz Raleigh’s frequent quotes from scriptures. “His eye is on the sparrow.”

  To Chaz, it meant that whatever happened next was God’s will. The others took it up as a more poetic way of saying, “Fuck it.” It translated into their unit distress code.

  Dwayne figured it was Lee sending the text. If Hammond thought they were in deep shit, then they were. He called down to Mo to come up and join him on the aft deck where there would be no distractions.

  The scientist came out of the hold blinking like a mole in the sunlight. The resemblance was made even more accurate with the fuzzy ginger beard Tauber had grown either out of neglect or intent. Maybe he thought he looked piratical. The horn-rimmed glasses spoiled the effect. He looked more like a nearsighted haystack.

  “I’ll get with Parviz and Quebat. See if I can
get them to goose us to a forty-eight-hour opening,” Tauber said after Dwayne filled him in.

  “Tap the brakes, Mo. Us going into panic mode doesn’t help them. Take your time and fine-tune the Tube to make the through field open as close to the window we give them as possible. And to hell with a medevac. They need a surgeon. Let’s take a week before the next opening and bring a doctor here.”

  “You’re right. You’re right. But we still need to make a brief manifestation to send our return text. A minute or two at the most. The guys can get that up in twelve hours.”

  “I’ll get the response together.”

  “After that, the best we can do is create a field opening twenty-four hours or more relative from their last text even if we waited a year. I can dial it close but not that close, Dwayne. They’ll have some hang time on the water waiting.”

  “The waiting on this end is a bitch too,” Dwayne said.

  “Welcome to my world,” Morris said, turning to climb back down into his universe beneath the waterline.

  Dwayne met with Geteye, the Ocean Raj’s first mate and acting skipper in Boats’ absence. They went up to the bridge where there was privacy. With the Raj at anchored in calm seas, there was no need for anything but a skeleton watch.

  This guy certainly knew how to grow a beard, Dwayne thought. It was thick as carpeting from his eyes to the base of his neck, complimented by a bushy untamed afro atop his head. The only revealing feature on the man was his eyes. They were deep brown with scarred lids. The man had seen his share of fights in his time. There was a keen intelligence there and an easy grace to his movements that someone ignorant would mistake for idleness. Dwayne knew a professional soldier when he saw one. Geteye was the perfect complement to his blustering and garrulous captain.

  They talked about the risks and advantages of pulling the Raj closer to shore to shorten the row time for the team when they made for the field opening.

  “I follow the news on the wireless, Baas,” Geteye said, eyes on the charts spread on the scarred metal table between them.