by Chuck Dixon
“War is hell, but your mileage may vary,” he said as he settled in.
“I don’t have the same experiences you guys have. My time in uniform was different,” she said.
“We were far away from home. Far away and for too long.”
“I think that’s the difference, Lee. I was at home. My second home anyway. I was in streets I was familiar with, shooting people who looked just like me.”
“Regrets?”
“Not a one. They took a wrong turn in the desert a long time ago. Doesn’t give them the right to blow up schools and hospitals and pizzerias,” she said.
They sat quietly for a while, sipping tea and watching the lantern lights of boats crawling past on the surface of the river, golden under the light of the setting sun. From one of the boats, an armored gunboat came the tones of an accordion playing a sad song for the crew.
“It’s pretty here. Once you get some distance from the misery,” Bat said as the ironclad drifted south, the music fading away in the distance.
Lee snorted. “This is the worst shithole I’ve ever been deployed in. Neanderthal Nevada was better than this. Iraq was better than this.”
“Jimmy seems to be enjoying it.” She laughed.
“Jimbo is turning into a history nerd. It’s killing that Indian that he couldn’t bring a camera. He’d be taking pictures every couple steps.”
“I admit the place smells. The river is like a toilet. And I think they put garlic on their garlic.”
“And other stinks. Smell that? Take a good whiff.” Bat filled her nose.
“Sweet. Like caramelized sugar and... oranges...” she said. “Black tar opium,” Lee said and nodded to where their bearers sat about their own fire. Smoke drifted from their faces. They spoke in low languid tones to one another.
“So, we hired junkies.”
“Beginner junkies, at least. Jimmy says they all still have their teeth. He told me the whole damned country’s nothing but addicts. The Brits fought their way up the rivers, fighting the emperor’s army the whole way just to keep the market open.”
“That’s horrible,” she said.
“Same in Afghanistan. They smoked that shit like Marlboros. The stuff our coolies are smoking probably came from the same valleys me and Jimmy and Chaz humped chasing Taliban.”
“It’s always about war, isn’t it? It’s how we measure man’s progress and mark history.”
“It’s a business, honey. Our business. And business is always good.” He set his mug aside to lay back on the soft grass to listen to the wind through the leaves above.
They took four two-hour watches through the night. Two guns to a watch while the others rested and slept.
There were bandits roaming the surrounding country, taking advantage of the general chaos that war always brings with it. Lots of refugees on the roads carrying all their worldly goods, ripe for robbery. With the Taipings facing the end, there would also be renegade units and deserters prowling around. And the relationship between western troops and the Imperials was uneasy at best. They could just as likely get jumped by their presumptive allies. This was not the time and place for relaxing their guard.
Their position was on high ground with the river to one side and open grassland behind. They opened the rifle and ammunition crates, so they were each armed with a long gun in addition to their revolvers. They wore belts and bandoliers holding a hundred rounds of ammo each. There were an additional five thousand rounds packed in the crates along with the two repeating rifles and revolvers that had been meant for Wei and Shan.
A white mist rose off the river, and they could hear the blasts of steam horns echoing out of the fog below. They ate the leftovers from the night before, downed some coffee, and rucked up for the next leg of the hike to the west.
“Hey, is it me or do our carriers look different?” Chaz said, standing to watch Yahoo gesturing and squawking at the coolies to get the crates packed and on the road.
“You want me to say they all look alike?” Jimbo said.
“I mean it; they’re not the same guys. Except for Yahoo.” Jimbo stepped closer and saw that his friend was right. He recalled one man from yesterday, taller than the rest, his long queue of bound hair secured with a strip of yellow cloth. He was not among the men lifting the crates now. There was another one, always smiling, who had a dark port wine stain down one side of his face and neck. He wasn’t here either.
“I think you’re right, bro,” Jimbo said, stepping back.
“And look, they all have the same black sash now,” Chaz said, pointing.
Yahoo noticed the attention of the two Rangers and approached them, grinning and bowing.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, head bobbing.
“What the fuck, Yahoo? Where’s the guys from yesterday?” Chaz said.
Yahoo blinked at them in a pantomime of complete incomprehension.
“You switched on us. When the hell did you do that? These are different men,” Jimbo said.
“Not. The. Same. Asshole,” Chaz growled.
“They are much better,” Yahoo assured them with hands clutched together before him. “Trusted men. My cousins. All good and excellent men. Much better. Most excellent.”
Chaz jacked a round into his rifle and held it to Yahoo’s belly. The man’s chubby face grew pale; his eyes stared at the weapon in the big black man’s hands.
“Your contract is up, fucker. You and your cousins move your asses down the river and don’t let any of us see you again,” Chaz said in a deeply dangerous tone that crossed all language barriers to leave no room to mistake his meaning.
Bowing and cooing, Yahoo backed away to where the coolies stood watching with blank faces. He yelled a stream of curses at them, stopping to pick up handfuls of dirt to throw at them. The others dropped the crates to the ground and fled down the slope to the river path with Yahoo chasing after, kicking and shrieking.
“Now we have to carry this shit ourselves.” Chaz sighed. They turned toward the team to share the good news.
“Better than a knife in the back,” Jimbo said.
When told of the change in personnel, Boats said, “I know sure as shit I didn’t fall asleep on sentry last night. How the hell did they make the switch?”
“I have a better question,” Lee said. “What happened to the guys they replaced?”
They learned the fate of the missing coolies when they reached the pathway along the river’s edge. Seven corpses floated in the murky water, bobbing in an eddy swirling around partly submerged deadfall. Jimbo saw a length of braided hair coiling and uncoiling like a serpent in the sluggish current. The hair was bound at the end with a strip of bright yellow cloth.
18
Baja Joyride
The Toyota moved slowly on the pitted surface of a winding two-lane. The headlights were shut off, leaving Dwayne only the light of a full moon in a cloudless desert night. He picked his way around cavernous potholes and areas where the crushed gravel roadway had been washed away. The light of the moon turned everything silver and black all around them. The desert appeared to shimmer like the surface of a vast sea dotted with islands of rocky spires and towers of cirio cactus.
“We would pick the longest, narrowest peninsula in the world to hide on,” Dwayne groused.
“Shh,” Caroline hushed him from the passenger seat, speaking low so as not to awaken the baby in her arms or N’itha sleeping in the back seat, cradling Rick Renzi in her arms. Nothing was going to wake up Renzi, zoned out on the painkillers they gave him to allow Dwayne to shoulder-carry him to the SUV.
“We can go east or north. Three options,” Dwayne said, quieter this time.
“East and north is two options,” Caroline said.
“Option three is finding a place to hide and wait them out.”
“Is waiting really an option? Time doesn’t mean anything to these guys.”
“We’re sure that’s who this is? They could have been someone Ricky pissed off. We’ve a
ll wanted to kill him sometimes. You’ve met him.” Dwayne eased the Toyota onto the loose sand to skirt a crater in the road.
“Samuel’s warning?” Caroline said, head cocked and eyebrow arched.
“The guys who went after Ricky were local talent, not hitmen from the future. They weren’t wearing those freaky bracelets.”
The two men killed by Ricky and N’itha didn’t wear the wristlet of seamless black steel that they’d seen on Samuel Renzi as well as other men who came to kill or abduct them across the centuries. The wristlets were transmitters that could be used to open rifts in time, personal control devices that activated advanced versions of the Tauber Tube situated in the future of a parallel timeline.
The pair lying dead on the floor of Ricky’s hospital room were sicarios, hired gunmen. Dwayne found tattoos affiliating them with the Zetas cartel. He’d searched them while N’itha used a knife to cut Ricky’s traction cables free.
“Sir Neal didn’t see the need to send his own men.” Caroline shrugged. “He’ll send them now. They have a time and place for Ricky, and, by now, they know you, and I are here, too. And we’re stuck here, in this time and only space to move in.”
“And no way to contact Lee or the guys. And nothing they could do if we could. How’d Harnesh do this? How’d he zero in on us?”
“We may never know. Samuel told us they have massive search programs seeking anomalies in the timeline. They’re alerted to any change. Then they draw lines right to us.”
“Something the guys did on the current op?”
“Could be.”
“Does that mean they’re in trouble back in The Then? We need to get to your brother somehow. Let him know to give them a heads up,” Dwayne said.
“They won’t have a transmitter this trip. Too much risk going back to a time that close to our own. That kind of tech would alter things irreparably if it was left behind or taken from them,” Caroline said.
“Shit,” he said, banging a fist on the steering wheel.
“The best we can do is stay off the grid and hope Samuel contacts us again,” she said.
“Who wants to go camping?” Dwayne asked with a wry smile.
The Toyota moved on toward the mountains in the distance, a black smudge on the horizon like the shoreline along a sea of silver sand.
19
The Ever Victorious Army
Their column, smaller now with the loss of the bearers, continued west along the river path. They’d consolidated the load into two crates. Each walked with a rifle slung ready and bandoliers of ammo across their chests as well as shoulder bags of gear. Byrus walked free, carrying the two extra rifles and their canteens. Bat took point, eyeing the banks above, the river edge below, and the foot traffic approaching from down range.
“They killed those guys for their shit jobs?” Chaz said, sweating under the shared burden of one the wooden crates containing ammunition. He’d stripped off his tunic. His long underwear shirt was sodden.
“We’ve seen men killed for less,” Jimbo said, following behind, a hand in the other rope handle.
“It’s more than that. Where did Yahoo’s cousins turn up from all of a sudden?” Lee said, trailing behind with a crate he carried with Boats.
“You think he’s a spy? For who?” Jimbo said.
“Or a thief. Who knows? A reminder that we don’t have any friends here,” Lee said.
“We need to find some pack animals,” Chaz said, grunting as he shifted the load to his other arm.
“Or a boat or raft or something I can pilot,” Boats called. Punts and smacks moved on the current close to either shore. Center current was taken up by a big side-wheeler belching black smoke from twin stacks, creating a rippling wake that swayed the reeds along the bank.
“Shut up and hump the load,” Lee said.
A half-day’s march ahead, the river widened and turned north in a hooked bend. On the opposite bank, inside of the curve of the river’s turn, squatted a fortress. Gun ports along stone walls atop sloping earthworks covered in grass. The guns were trained on the river and could cover any ships trying to round the bend from either direction. There was a pair of towers with tiled pagoda roofs and a gateway of the same design. A Union Jack flew from the peak of one of the towers. From the other, a yellow banner with a Chinese dragon snapping at a red sun.
“That’s an imperial fort. But it doesn’t appear to be in the hands of the Manchus right now,” Jimbo said, lowering the Whitworth rifle. He’d been studying the fortress through the scope, weak as it was.
“I see the Brit flag. What’s the other one?” Lee had an eye to a telescope of his own.
“The Manchu banner. That would be the Ever Victorious Army posted there. Mercenaries working for the emperor. Started by an American named Ward. The Chinese called him the White Devil,” Jimbo said.
“We need to watch our step if he’s in command now. Last thing we need is to be questioned by a ‘fellow” Yankee,” Lee said.
“He’s been dead for a year or so by now. The EVA is under Charles Gordon at this point, an English mercenary adventurer who’s going to go on from here to become a big deal in the Victorian era,” Jimbo said.
“Yeah? Well, let’s try not to become part of that legend, all right?”
“There’s bound to be a marketplace near the fort. Maybe we can pick up some help with the crates.”
“So long as it walks on four legs.” Lee collapsed his telescope to step back to the others taking a meal break along the side of the path. They chewed jerky and cold rice, and Jimbo purified some more water for the canteens before they set out again.
A mile down the trail, they came up on a squat stone building by the roadway at the apex of the river bend. Bat stood on the shoulder of the path to allow the others to catch up.
“Looks like a checkpoint to me,” Bat said, without pointing at the soldiers in buff-colored uniforms with red cuffs and shoulder boards, leaning on rifles by the stone building.
“We go around?” Chaz said.
“No. They’ve seen us,” Lee said.
“They’re probably collecting a toll,” Jimbo said.
“Then we pay it and move on,” Lee said, picking up the rope handle and lifting his end of a crate.
The men at the checkpoint regarded the approaching column with casual interest. They were barely as tall as their Enfield rifles. Buff tunics and pants with soft-soled shoes. They wore brown turbans and were clean shaven. Each was armed with a broad-bladed cane knife that hung from their belts in a wicker scabbard bound in wire. The knives were a nasty cross between an ax and a short-bladed machete.
“They’re Ever Victorious Army,” Jimbo said as they neared. “They don’t look Chinese,” Chaz said.
“They’re not. Filipinos. The EVA is a kind of foreign legion,” Jimbo said.
The checkpoint created a bottleneck on the road, slowing the passage of pedestrians. The soldiers seemed content to watch the passing parade, allowing traffic to move past them without remark. Carts and sedan chairs crept past. Two silk-dressed women under parasols and behind fans kept up a tittering exchange from a pair of open litter chairs. A tiny boy, near-naked, led an enormous bullock by a ring through its nose.
The team picked up the pace, confident they were going to make it through without being challenged.
An officer in a powder blue uniform and clay-white belt and matching pillbox hat strapped on a shaven skull stepped from the shadows within the sentry building. He stood with hands at hips and examined the approaching soldiers through pince-nez specs perched on his nose.
He stepped into the roadway and spoke to Bat who was still on point.
“Who are you? What army? What peoples are you?” he demanded in accented English.
Bat turned with a helpless look on her face to the others.
“Who commands here? You will speak!” the officer thundered.
He was shorter than Bat, who stood five foot six in bare feet.
“I’m the officer
here,” Lee said, setting down his end of the crate to step between Bat and the officious pipsqueak with the crimson face.
“What army? I do not know this uniform. You are captain?” The officer, outraged, reached a hand out to touch the bars pinned to Lee’s collar.
Lee grabbed his wrist with a snake-fast move. The officer’s eyes widened, his mouth twisted, and his lips turned white with rage.
The lounging troops didn’t need an order. They came alive to stand with rifles braced and bayonets pointed. There were a dozen either side of the path with more trotting from within the sentry house. The officer’s expression of rage turned to a contemptuous smile as he pulled his wrist from Lee’s grasp.
“You will surrender your arms and come with us,” the officer said, voice cool now.
“But we have urgent business upriver in Nanking,” Jimbo said, dropping his load to hold his hands with palms open.
“I suppose that may be true. And you may continue your journey when the Pasha is satisfied,” the officer said and waved a hand. Some of the soldiers broke from the wicket of blades to take the offered rifles and gun belts from their captives.
Carrying the crates, the team was led off the pathway at bayonet point down to a wooden bridge that crossed the river to the fort on the opposite bank.
“Who’s this pasha we have to see?” Chaz asked.
“Pasha Gordon, I think. If I’m right ,we’re about to meet an actual legend,” Jimbo said, though he didn’t sound thrilled about it. The bridge ended on the opposite bank at another checkpoint with firing positions either side. They were constructed from stacked gabions, wicker baskets loaded with dirt and rocks. Jimbo saw rifles and lance points poking from atop the ramparts as well as the business end of a Gatling gun. The officer in powder blue was speaking to a big bluff character, two heads taller than him. A guy in mutton chops and a cork helmet wrapped in white linen. He wore a powder blue tunic like the smaller man, except his had sleeves and front heavily embroidered in ropes of gold braid. In one enormous hand, he held an incongruous china teacup decorated with blue and pink flowers. A silver tea set rested atop a rolling cart manned by a perpetually grinning coolie who looked to be a thousand years old.
