by Chuck Dixon
“If you wish. Though how far will you get? There is no record of you entering China. That’s going to be hard to explain at the airport.”
“I’ll go to a consulate,” Morris said as he stood up from the sofa section.
“Which one? The American consulate as Dr. Morris Tauber? Or maybe the Canadian embassy as Kenneth Armbruster of Halifax?” Taan said with the smug assurance of a man laying down a royal flush.
What now, Mr. Bond? Morris sat back down.
“All I’m asking of you and your group is a little bit of your time. And you are in the unique position of having all the time in the world at your disposal,” Taan said with a candid and earnest note in his voice.
How candid and how earnest Morris could not discern. “And you will be compensated. Richly compensated. It’s all business. I am not asking for something for nothing, Dr. Tauber. That’s not how I operate.”
“Why should I trust you?” Morris said.
Taan picked up the stone tile from where it rested beside him. The record of a fleeting, inconsequential moment that occurred millennia ago. He lifted his hand and brought it down on the edge of the occasional table with some force. The tile shattered into a thousand pieces. A cloud of dust settled on the tabletop as a fine powder.
“Is that a good start, doctor?”
27
The Honeymooners
“You sure you don’t want to stay, Ricky?” Lee said.
“No fucking way.”
“Wasn’t it you who always said you’d rather reign in Hell than be just another asshole in heaven?” Chaz said.
“I used to say a lot of bullshit. But tomorrow me and Neeta are coming back with you to the land of cheeseburgers and cold beer.” Rick drew N’itha closer to him. He whispered, his lips close to her ear. She lowered her eyes and shared a shy smile with them.
“Say what now?” Chaz said.
“She can’t come back with us,” Lee said, nodding toward N’itha.
Rick was suddenly sober and up on his feet.
“You brought him back!” Rick pointed at Byrus crouched among some of the hominid kids, pulling faces for them and making them fall around giggling.
“Bruce is different. He saved my life,” Jimbo said.
“Who’s he? Some Spartacus looking hippie motherfucker? You think Neeta didn’t save my life? You know how many times I thought of hanging myself or drowning in the lake? You know what it was like thinking I was the only man on Earth? You left me behind, brothers, and you can leave me behind again if she doesn’t come with me.”
Rick paced before his fellow Rangers spitting the words at them. The skinnies around the fire were hooting and baring teeth.
The team felt several hundred pairs of eyes fixed on them. They were messing with the man-god of a half a thousand man-eaters.
“Stand down, bro,” Chaz warned with open hands held up.
“You know she may not even be human,” Bat said. Rick jerked to a stop and turned on Bat Jaffe. N’itha’s wide eyes went from her mate to the strangers and back.
“And where’d they pick you up, honey? Who the fuck are you, bitch? Neeta’s human. She’s probably the most human human I ever met. You think she’s one of these monkey motherfuckers? You think she’s got a tail?”
Rick stepped closer to Bat. Lee Hammond stood to block his way. The hooting grew louder. Male skinnies stood up, barking.
“You need to step it down,” Lee said low. “You may not have as much control over this little clubhouse as you think. I’d hate for us to have to kill all your new friends.” He stood to block Rick but did not raise a hand to him.
“Okay. Okay.” Rick lowered his voice.
“We’ll talk it over. We’ll work it out. You know we will.”
“Talk all you want. I’m not coming back without her,” Rick said, eyes locked on Hammond’s.
“I know that, you boneheaded son of a bitch,” Lee said.
“Okay,” Rick said after a tick.
They shook hands, and the skinnies settled back down to their places. All was right in Heaven and on Earth once again.
All but N’itha, who left the light of the fire to move silently into the shadows. The party broke up early with the first sign of silver moon over the trees. The Rangers were beat, and looking forward to their first full night’s sleep in what felt like forever.
“Weird shit. This was the scariest place I could ever think of. Now I feel safer here than any place in the world,” Chaz said, bedding down by the fire.
“Let’s hope they don’t change their mind by breakfast time,” Jimbo murmured, rolled over on his side, and was asleep in seconds.
But no one was having breakfast.
Hours before dawn, Rick Renzi woke with a fiery headache to find his second wife was gone.
28
The Ocean Raj
Taking Stephen for a walk was a twice daily tradition that served as a welcome distraction for both of them.
Caroline and Dwayne took turns pushing their son in a stroller on a circuit around the main deck once in the morning and again in the early evening, taking advantage of the cooler air at those hours. Dwayne’s ribs were mending, and all signs of concussion were gone. He was anxious now to get on with what came next.
“Four days back to the extraction point for the team. Maybe one more if Renzi’s not in top condition,” Dwayne said. They stood on the aft deck, listening to the slap of water on the hull far below. The sun was dropping below the horizon, turning the sky orange, then pink. Stephen was asleep. The walks knocked him out every time. The regular roll of the deck worked like a lullaby.
“He’s never going to get seasick being raised out on the water like this,” Caroline said.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I’m avoiding the subject. There’s a difference.”
“I thought you’d be anxious to get this latest operation over with. We have to deal with whatever Morris has gotten into.”
“Of course, I’m worried. But these walks are a reprieve from that. Taking care of Stephen is relief from thinking the same thoughts over and over until I can’t sleep or think of anything else.” Caroline sighed.
“Sorry. I can’t help talking shop,” Dwayne said.
“Of course, you can’t. You’re a man. You’re a fixer. You’re focused on challenges and solutions. There’s nothing I can do to get the team back any faster or bring my brother home. So I’m treasuring these little moments.”
“I’ll shut up then.”
“You can do better than that. You can hold me.” She leaned against him, so he could put an arm around her, each of them with one hand to the bar of the stroller in which their son napped.
On the way back to their cabin, a figure stepped toward them along the deck. The crew was down to bare bones, and they seldom saw their fellow shipmates except at meals. As the man approached from the evening gloom, they both recognized that he was not Boats or Geteye, the pair of Iranians or any of the crewmen.
“Caroline. Dwayne,” said Samuel Renzi, stopping before them.
They invited their friend into their cabin, but he wished to speak to them on the open deck. He gave no reason, but they had long ago stopped asking questions of Rick Renzi’s mature son who visited them from the past or future at times of crisis.
“Your father is alive. The team found him. They’re heading back with him,” Caroline said.
“I’m grateful. I wish I was here only to express my gratitude,” Samuel said.
He looked older than the last time Caroline saw him in Paris only a few months ago and, before that, in the same city more than a hundred years prior. Rick Renzi’s son lived through time, not in time, as he’d explained to her. His life was not lived in a linear fashion. This visitation was from a Samuel in his late forties. There was a touch of steel-gray to his hair, and lines were beginning to form around his eyes and mouth. He stood apart from them, never touching them or any object. His hands were always gloved, and he wo
re his customary black-on-black clothing, fashioned to allow him to travel without drawing attention to himself from one time, one world, to another.
“So you’ve got bad news,” Dwayne said.
“I’m here to guide you and warn you,” Samuel said.
“Tell us what you can,” Caroline said.
“The capture of your brother will take you into the past once more. He is your brother, and so you must deliver him from his abductors. I understand this. Only take caution with these men. They are rivals of Neal Harnesh, and he seeks what they seek.”
“We’ll be running into Harnesh again?” Dwayne asked.
“He will have agents in place where you are going. Do your best to avoid contact with them. Stay wary. And it is vitally important that you travel there with as little impact on the technology and culture as it is possible to be. It is a time closer to your own, and therefore more fragile to any interference from your era.”
“Where is it? When is it?” Caroline said.
“China, during the later years of the Qing Dynasty. The city of Nanjing in the year 1864.”
“Another treasure hunt?” Dwayne asked.
“It is more significant than that, but, essentially, you will be seeking a great treasure.” Samuel looked away for a moment regarding the dark stillness of the sea all around them.
“This is all kind of vague, Sam. Can you give us a little more than that?” Dwayne said.
“I do not mean to be obtuse or mysterious. As you already realize, there is a great deal of flux in these matters. Suffice it to say that, if you succeed you will foil another of Neal Harnesh’s schemes to reshape a future where he determines the course of human events.”
“Well, there’s that, right? But what about Morris? Does succeeding mean he goes free?” Caroline said.
“You will need him with you to perform this task. You must convince his captors of this. And he must stay with you when you make your escape. This is vital. He’s already gained knowledge from the writings and files I gave you. He will use this knowledge to create the means of your escape.”
“That’s all you can give me?” Caroline said, masking her impatience.
“You know that time is malleable. Morris must think outside of the limits he has placed on his work and on his thoughts,” Samuel said and turned his gaze to the child breathing softly in the bed of the stroller.
“Damn it. We need to know what you know,” Caroline said and reached out to grip Samuel’s wrist. Her hand passed through his forearm as if it was smoke. He raised his gaze to meet her eyes. Those peculiar eyes, green as aged copper. She felt a cold shiver rise up her spine as she jerked her hand back through a translucent field that shimmered and rippled and once again took the form of Samuel’s arm.
“Well, that answers a lot of questions I had,” Dwayne said, eyebrows raised.
“Any more information could prove misleading. I will try to return as I gain more exact data to share. If I cannot, it is of paramount importance for you to remember that you must get free of your brother’s captors upon conclusion of your mission. You must distance yourself by any means. Any means.” Samuel said the last with an uncustomary degree of emphasis.
With that, the man in black vanished into the gloom as if he were never there.
29
Farewell Bedrock
A search of the skinny settlement and the near shoreline of the lake turned up no sign of N’itha other than a line of petite footprints in the sand that led into the tree line to the west. That trail soon died on the needle littered floor of the deep woods. They gathered back by the communal fire.
“She was running when she left,” Jimbo said. The Pima had learned tracking from the elders in his tribe. He’d hunted in the Arizona desert from the time he could walk.
“She didn’t just go for a walk?” Chaz offered.
“A walk? A fucking walk? You’ve been in that bush? Would you take a walk by yourself ? And she took all her shit with her. It’s like when Lynn left me, only she took my car,” Rick shouted at everyone and no one.
“Why would she leave? Could she understand what we were talking about last night?” Jimbo asked.
Rick lowered his voice. “I don’t know, Jimmy. She knows some English. Maybe enough to get an idea of what we were saying.”
“She ran away because we were arguing over her. She heard her name. She saw your face,” Bat said.
“Yeah. And you suggesting she’s some kind of animal didn’t help, honey,” Rick said. He glared at Bat.
“Where would she go?” Jimbo said.
“Back to her village. Where else? We can catch up to her if we move now,” Rick said.
“You know where the village is?” Lee said. “Somewhere over that way.” Rick waved a finger north at the hills turning purple in the pre-dawn light on the other side of the lake.
“We’re not doing this. It’s still dark, and she’s got hours of head start on us over strange country,” Lee said, stepping up to within arm’s length of Renzi.
“I told you, I’m not leaving without her.”
“You’re leaving with us if I have to drag you by your balls the whole way.”
“You don’t understand. She’s engaged to some dickhead over there. He takes a new wife every year, and when spring comes, they kill the new wife to help the crops grow or some shit. If Neeta goes back there, they’ll marry her to the fucker then fucking kill her.”
“If that’s true, then why would she go back, Renzi?”
“Because she heard us talking. Because she knows I won’t go with you guys without her. She did it for me, man.”
“Then that’s on her,” Lee said.
Rick stepped forward to move past him. Lee grabbed a wrist and yanked him around and slid an arm around his throat.
Choked out, Rick dropped to the sand unconscious. “Secure him, Chaz. He’ll thank us for this when it’s all over,” Lee said.
“You know that’s bullshit. He’s not big on forgiveness,” Chaz said.
“Poor baby. Let’s get a few more hours’ sleep then get the fuck out of here.” Lee moved off toward the camp the Rangers made at the base of the cliffs.
Chaz wrapped lengths of duct-tape around the unconscious man’s wrists and ankles. He hoisted Rick up in a fireman’s carry to follow Lee.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Jimbo said.
“We did bring your buddy back,” Bat said, nodding at Byrus.
“Are you saying that was a mistake?” Jimbo looked toward Byrus who was running on the beach growling and play-chasing some hominid kids.
“Hey, I’m on your side. Take the prehistoric princess back with us. True love and all that.” Bat shrugged.
“Yeah. Doesn’t feel right,” Jimbo said.
“It’s not right. But Lee’s calling the shots.”
“Is he? Your man is solid on tactics. No one better. But he has a problem with strategy.”
“I see what you mean.”
“He’ll be pissed,” Jimbo said grinning.
Bat returned the grin with gusto. “Let him be.”
“Lee. You need to get up. Now, soldier,” Chaz said, sitting at a safe distance from the sleeping Ranger.
Lee Hammond sat up, fully awake. He rubbed his legs, still aching after the punishing week-long hike. Getting older was a bitch. The mileage of eight deployments as an Army Ranger and the weirdness with the Taubers didn’t help.
“Rick’s gone,” Chaz said. Strips of neatly cut duct tape lay in the sand near them.
“Shit! That one-eyed Apache motherfucker. It was him, right?”
“Yeah. He’s gone, too.”
“And Bruce, too, right?”
“Roger that. They took the drone with them. Your girlfriend, too,” Chaz said.
“Shit!” Lee roared.
30
Late Intel is No Intel
“This is where I first found her,” Rick said.
They were standing at the edge of a marsh after an hour of ha
rd pushing. The sun was up. Mist rose from the forest of reeds before them. Birds screeched from within the tangle. Bigger creatures splashed away upon their approach. They were armed and rucked up. Rick had an M4 he’d managed to maintain and a hundred rounds for it. Byrus carried the drone case strapped on his back.
“How deep is it from here?” Jimbo said.
“The marsh runs right into this part of the big lake. It only gets deeper from here. And there’s gators. Big ones.”
“So she probably came along the bank. We find a game trail and follow it north to the hills. If the settlement is big enough, we’ll find more trails as we get closer.”
“And cook fires. We’ll see their smoke in the sky,” Rick said.
“I’m hoping we catch up to her or cross her path long before that,” Jimbo said. “She was lost when you found her. Chances are she has no more idea of how to find her village than we do.”
“Did you know there were people here before you found her?” Bat asked.
“We suspected,” Jimbo said. “The gold artifacts we found were too advanced for the skinnies to make. There was no evidence that they had any interest in gold, let alone the means to render it. They had it because it was shiny.”
“Like pack rats,” Bat offered.
“The little fuckers used to raid when there were a lot more of them. At least I think that’s what they were trying to tell me. They brought that big gold mama back with them a long time ago,” Rick said.
Bat asked, “Do they paint themselves blue? Neeta’s people. Do they cover themselves in blue paint?”
Jimbo and Rick turned to look at her.
“I saw, I think I saw, a man painted blue watching us as we got close to the village,” Bat said.
“And you’re mentioning this now?” Jimbo said.
“I wasn’t sure I really saw it. He was there, and he was gone. I know there are people here now. I didn’t before.”
