by Chuck Dixon
Another saving grace was the lushness of the air they breathed. Sure, it stank like a dumpster behind a sushi restaurant most days. But it was also far richer in oxygen than what they were used to. Doc Tauber had explained to them all that these conditions, the heat, and atmosphere, made the giant life forms possible. But it wasn’t the giants that were troubling them now. It was the little things, trilobites, clams, jellyfish, and smelt the size of a pinky nail. These were clogging the intakes the Raj would normally use to provide the water needed to cool the reactor. And that precious little mini-nuke was their only hope of ever seeing the 21st century again.
“We’re gonna need to find a source of fresh water,” Jimbo said.
“What you mean ‘we,’ Tonto?” Chaz said.
“I mean, me and some palefaces, including you, are gonna go in-country and find ourselves some agua.”
“Don’t include me with the palefaces, bro.”
“Some palefaces and a brother then.”
“That’s better. So, what do we do then? Just run around out there with a bucket?” Chaz pointed a fresh longneck at the shoreline. A thunderous bellow echoed across the water to further make his point for him.
“We’ll scout ahead with a drone.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Then we’ll go ashore with lines and pump.”
“Sounds like a shitty plan.” Chaz swung his arm and a second empty sailed into the night to land in the water and sink to the oozy bottom ten fathoms below.
A beer shortage wasn’t the only supply problem they faced.
The Raj was at seventy-five percent fuel, and the nearest gas station was a long way off. More than one wit pointed out the irony that they were surrounded by critters whose essence would one day be coming out of a pump as unleaded.
Food was a lesser problem but still posed a challenge. There was plenty of protein everywhere. The water around them was populated with sea life that would make record-breaking trophy fish look like guppies. Along the beach were single animals who could feed the crew for years.
But, as Doc Tauber informed them, nothing like any kind of fruit or vegetable they would recognize had evolved on the planet yet.
A meeting was held around the big table in the chartroom. Boats made the coffee. Two creams and sugar for Doc Tauber. Black for Lee Hammond. A dollop of honey and a splash of Maker’s Mark for himself. The Navy man was known by the Rangers only as “Boats.” No Christian or surname. SEALs take their secrecy seriously.
Bathsheba Jaffee joined them as well. More from boredom than anything else. Bat was the sole woman aboard and keeping house with Lee in a cabin they alone shared. The other men aboard knew to look but not touch. And that wasn’t just because Lee Hammond would twist their heads off and shit down their necks if they so much as thought of Bat as anything other than a team member.
No, the lady was a former Israeli Defense Force sniper and was capable of Krav Maga-ing any man on board into a body cast. She might look like a swimsuit model, but she was all badass and combat-trained. She sat at the end of the table, nursing a Bud and working on a Sudoku book.
“Then what are all those plant-eaters eating?” Lee Hammond said. He pointed at the bulkhead in the general direction of the river bank where they’d seen long-necked saurian feeding in the muddy shallows. A herd of a hundred or more were munching away on long, ropey vines growing under the water.
“They’re eating plants. Ferns and conifers, mostly. They eat leaves, twigs, bark, cones,” Morris Tauber said.
“All those trees and there’s not a single apple? Not one fucking banana?” Boats said.
Lee’s face creased in a broad smile as he thought of the big red-headed sailor picking apples in a forest filled with king-sized man-eaters.
“No fruit. No vegetables. We’re early in this period, so there aren’t even flowers yet. No flowers, no fruits, and veggies,” Mo said.
“No grains? Rice even?” Lee said.
“No wheat. No corn. No barley. There’s not even grass out there. There won’t be for tens of millions of years.”
“What the fuck?” Boats said. “I like steak as much as the next guy. But I need my greens. This shithole’s got nothing I want. No lime for my tequila. No donuts, and no pussy.”
Lee asked, “If I had a box of Krispy Kremes and a bikini model here right now, Boats, which one would you want more?”
“I could fuck the donuts and wouldn’t have to share them with some hungry bitch,” Boats said.
The Rangers snorted, as did Bat. Mo blushed deep red, which set them to howling. Boats poured a generous shot of Maker’s in each of their coffees.
“The challenge remains for us, guys,” Mo said when the two Rangers had recovered. “We can’t leave, and we can’t stay here. This ship and the crew are threatened by almost every aspect of this environment.”
“I figured this was a one-way trip, Doc. We jumped back here to get away from those Chinese pricks,” Boats said.
“The Tube is still intact. We could open a field and escape back to our own time period. The crew could slide life craft down the tube and manifest back into friendly water near the time we came from.”
“That would mean leaving the Raj behind. Leaving all of yours and Caroline’s work behind,” Bat said.
“And, believe me, I hate to even think of what my sister would say about leaving a cargo ship and nuclear reactor back in the early Cretaceous.”
Caroline Tauber was Mo’s sister. Together, they’d created the Tauber Tube, the electromagnetic field that punched holes in time. She was the genius theoretician. He was the genius engineer. Their intellects and talents meshed like fine gears, and the end product was the complex device that rested beneath the deck plates at their feet, deep in the hold of the Raj.
“Maybe we don’t have to leave it behind,” Boats said. “The Raj can’t make the jump on its own. We need a tungsten, carbon steel super-structure like the one they built for us in Shanghai. And we don’t have anywhere near the capability to mine for ore and refine steel. Even if we did, we couldn’t get it to the level of tensile strength and composition integrity needed to hold the level of field energy required to shift something the size of this ship.”
“But we could if we knew where there was a cage already set up in The Now,” Boats said. The Now was their reference to whatever year they’d departed from.
“And there’s only one of them. It’s back in Shanghai. You want us to pop right back into the arms of the assholes we just got away from?” Lee said.
“What if there was another cage? Somewhere else?” Boats said. Even his thick red Viking beard couldn’t hide the grin building on his face as he spoke.
“And you know where to find something like that?” Mo said. He was starting to feel the nip of bourbon in his coffee.
“Nope. But we have someone on board who can build one for us.” Teeth showed through the SEAL’s ginger bush.
4
Mexico Lindo
Moths bumped against the flickering fluorescents that hung over the pumps at the Pemex station. For some reason, it reminded Caroline Tauber of snow. That made her think of Paris. She turned her thoughts away. It was night on the desert beyond the lights of the gas station. The cool air felt good as it blew across her sweat-stiff blouse. She loved the clean, crisp smell of it. A hint of jacaranda on the breeze.
She leaned against the side of a battered Chevy Tahoe and held the lever pressed down on the gas nozzle. They’d traded their rental car and some cash for the Tahoe at a car yard in a little flyspeck town called La Yuta the day before. Through the dusty rear window, she could see seven-month-old Stephen, her son, asleep in his car seat. Curled by him slept N’itha— the world’s most dangerous babysitter, Caroline thought. It brought a smile to her face.
“The only thing I recognized in there was Coca-Cola,” Rick Renzi said. He hobbled toward her from the garishly lit market at the back of the gas station lot. He was making the best time he could with a h
ip-to-ankle cast on his leg, a plastic bag swinging from the same hand that gripped the crutch. A cigarette waggled in his lips as he spoke.
“I know the signs are in Spanish, but you know better, right?” Caroline nodded toward a sticker on the side of the pump. NO FUMAR.
“Shit. Can’t smoke near the baby. Can’t smoke near the gas pump. I might just have to go to the patch,” he said. He crushed the butt out on his cast and limped closer.
“Should you be walking on that leg?”
“Look, Carrie, I know you’re a mom and all, but I can look after myself.” He leaned past her with a grunt and held the bag open for her. It was packed with sodas and brightly colored cellophane packages.
“Is there anything Stephen can have in there?” she said. “Beats the hell outta me.” Ricky shrugged. “I can’t tell if this shit’s candy, cookies, or chips. I think one of these might be condoms.”
“We still have the fruit we bought at that stand earlier. I can mash it up for him. But he’ll need a protein.”
“They had chicken inside.”
“Is it chicken, though?”
“Good question. Looked like chicken.”
They stood in silence for a while. Caroline watched the empty two-lane that ran by the Pemex, not certain what she was watching for. Ricky stared sullenly at the Marlboro butt he’d dropped on the gravel.
“What are we going to do, Ricky?”
“I’m sure there’ll be like a Gordita’s somewhere between here and Hermosillo.”
“I’m not talking about Stephen now.”
The fuel pump clunked shut. The Tahoe’s tank was full. “Christ, I need a smoke.”
She hooked the nozzle back in place and followed him away from the pumps. Ricky lit up a cigarette and blew a lungful of blue smoke at the stars.
“There should be a bank in Hermosillo. I mean, one you can make a cash transfer at,” he said.
“Won’t he be monitoring things like that?”
He was Sir Neal Harnesh, the multi-billionaire. Harnesh had sent the men who were hunting them across Mexico. The men who, even now, might be holding Dwayne Roenbach, Caroline’s husband, prisoner. N’itha had escaped the encounter with Harnesh’s mercenaries to come back and warn Caroline to flee. That’s what they were doing now, trying to stay ahead of pursuit or, as Caroline feared, running straight into a trap.
“Lee Hammond’s good at all that sneaky shit. He’s been hiding guns, cash, and who-knows-what from the government for years. I’m sure your accounts are safe,” Ricky said.
“Our accounts.”
“Yeah, I keep forgetting I’m rich now.” Ricky’s laughter carried smoke across the lot.
“Will there be questions at the bank?”
“It’s Mexico, Carrie. Hell, we’re in Sinaloa. Slip the bank manager a few grand, and the transfer never happened.”
“How much will we need?” Caroline said.
“Enough to charter a plane for all of us. And a pilot who doesn’t ask questions.”
“To where?”
“Anywhere but home.” Ricky flicked the spent butt over the gravel, a tiny rocket glowing red into the dark.
The black ribbon of road ran straight east toward hills turned ghostly white in the moonlight. The traffic was light at this hour. Mostly trucks, their lights making star patterns in her eyes.
“Damn,” Caroline said to herself. Her hand was fisted atop the wheel.
“You tired, Carrie? You need to pull over a while?” Ricky sat sideways in the backseat; his leg stretched over the hump.
“I’ll be fine.” She felt like she was choking.
“You been driving sixteen hours,” Ricky said.
“Maybe you teach me to drive,” N’itha said from the passenger seat.
“Hell, babe, I let you use the microwave, and you almost burned the house down,” Ricky said.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Caroline said.
She jerked the wheel and took them off over the shoulder. The Tahoe came to a shuddering halt in a cloud of dust. Caroline rested her head on an arm across the steering wheel. And the tears came.
“I miss Dwayne,” she said between gasping sobs.
With a grunt, Ricky leaned to reach past the headrest and put a hand on her quivering shoulder.
“It’s gonna be all right,” he said.
N’itha slapped his hand away.
“When woman cry, you let woman cry,” she said.
It was coming up on sunrise when she recovered enough to drive. The hills ahead glowed like embers, the stars vanishing in a lightening sky. Her eyes were dry now. But she felt the need to talk.
“The worst thing? You know the worst thing? I’m not sure if I’ll ever see him again. That’s what’s so messed up. I keep thinking I’ll never see Dwayne again. But he got to see me one more time. It was in Paris. He came to me for a while. He was older then, from some future time, I guess. So, I got to see him a century and a half ago, but that’s in his future and my past. That’s so screwed up. It’s all so screwed up.”
Stephen was waking now and made a raspberry noise from his car seat.
Caroline burst into laughter. N’itha joined her.
“He’s calling ‘bullshit’ on me. Just like this father,” Caroline said.
They rode on toward dawn, the anvil of the asphalt highway heating up under the hammer of the sun.
5
The March South
They shared some camel meat with him, along with a thick slice of cactus. He washed it down with a nasty brew with corn pulp in it. From the aftertaste, he recognized it as some kind of beer. Easily the worst he’d ever had.
It wasn’t until they cut his leg bonds and helped him to stand that Dwayne realized how much taller he was than his captors. He had at least a foot of height over the tallest of them. A few, mostly the women, looked at be well under five feet.
He was shoved from behind and stumbled forward on numbed legs. The men laughed as he fell to his knees. No one helped him regain his feet this time. Instead, they busied themselves breaking camp. The men prepared the camels to ride. Two of the women wrapped what was left of the camel meat in broad leaves tied with vines. Three other women returned to the camp laden with skins loaded with fresh water they’d found somewhere. It was all done without commands or direction beyond a few grunts and gestures. Within minutes, they were de-camped and moving down into the trees.
The man with the mask of black grease led the way, mounted on a camel. Most of the men rode behind, the big animals picking their way down the stones to where the forest began. A half-dozen of the men and all of the women followed behind on foot. The sensation had returned to Dwayne’s legs and feet. But for the incessant throbbing pain in his head from the blow of the club, he was fully operational.
One man, a guy with an ugly set of teeth and a greasy mop of matted hair that nearly covered his eyes, was assigned to keep an eye on Dwayne. He was a few inches shy of five feet and armed only with a wooden club that looked like a cricket bat sanded with a fine edge all around. Dwayne could have dropped him easy and run into the woods on either side of the trail. Only how far could he get without that bracelet? If he could get it to work again, it was his only way out of this time and place. He’d go along with the caravan until he saw an opportunity to get the device off Black Mask’s arm.
The trail dropped level in the trees and went on that way until the lengthening shadows told Dwayne that it was afternoon. Even though it was cooler under the trees, he broke into a sweat in the damp, unmoving air. Clouds of biting flies landed on every inch of his exposed flesh. Within an hour, his arms were smeared red with his own blood from crushing them against his skin. The blood only drew the bastards in greater number. He was the only one being tormented. The flies avoided his captors.
The girl from the night before touched his arm to stop him. She exchanged a few angry words with his snaggletoothed guard, who stood watching with a sullen glare. The girl removed a clay jar with a wood stopper from a wo
ven basket she wore on a strap about her shoulder. She unplugged the jar and dipped her fingers into a gooey mess inside. She smeared a thick glaze of some kind of evil-smelling goop down Dwayne’s bare arms. He stooped so she could slather some across the back of his neck. He smiled at her, showing teeth. She recoiled as though stung. She turned her eyes from him to return the jar to the basket and trotted away after the others making their way deeper into the trees.
Snaggletooth growled and gave Dwayne an ungentle push with the tip of his club to get the bigger man moving. The rest of the caravan was now out of sight in the forest gloom. The big Ranger was alone with his guard. He could beat this guy senseless and vanish. He knew how to run, and he knew how to hide. He was schooled in it.
And what then? Trapped in a world he had no place in and didn’t understand a word of the language?
“I’m gonna shove that bat right up your ass,” he said.
Snaggletooth couldn’t understand the words but knew the tone. The little man had grit. Didn’t back up a step from the bigger man looming over him. He barked a string of words and held the club back as though for a swing at Dwayne’s ribs.
“But not today,” Dwayne said.
He turned to follow the caravan, the smaller man grousing behind him as they walked.
The trees thinned as the ground rose throughout the afternoon. Dwayne’s training on countless route marches left him with an intuitive ability to count miles. By his guesstimate, they’d covered twenty-five miles since breaking camp that morning. That was without a break except for sips of water for the entire party. No one showed signs of tiring. As the trees gave way to greasewood and rocks, the camel riders dismounted to lead their mounts by the reins.
