by Chuck Dixon
The Raj had taken on over twenty thousand gallons of potable, saltless water, more than enough for the journey ahead. To be doubly certain, Tauber put samples of the Precambrian water through a battery of tests and found it to be Ph neutral and free of all sediments or pollutants either mineral or organic.
Their next meal featured a rarity, a non-alcoholic toast. They filled their glasses with water from the dawn of Earth’s existence.
“Not bad,” Bat said after a tentative sip.
“But it needs a little something,” Boats said. He poured a generous dollop of Maker’s to top off his glass.
21
Exfil
The holy city was asleep. Sated with food, beer, peyote, and sex, the privileged citizens who lived in the shadow of the great pyramid were down for the night. Even the fire tenders had forgotten their duty, and the place was murky dark under a moonless sky. The lanes between the huts were draped in pitch black shadows.
A single guard stood watch over the sacred calendar. He was the only waking sentry near the entrance to the priest’s quarters. He might have been the only waking person on the entire islet of partied-out fanatics. A single guttering torch threw a nimbus of golden light up the wall of the pyramid. Carved faces leered down, eyes and mouths alive in the shifting shadows from the flaming pitch.
Dwayne and Wahid crouched in a patch of rushes watching the guard leaning on his spear by the calendar. Every now and then the man, one of the beefier of the goons, glanced at the sky as if wondering if the gods were watching. After a while, it appeared as though he decided the gods had better things to do. The goon left his post and walked to the base of the pyramid, stopping at a pile of broken pottery heaped there. He reached into the pile and pulled out a gourd capped with a wooden plug. Uncapping the gourd, he raised it to his lips and took three long swallows.
The guard was getting his drink on. Dwayne turned to Wahid who shrugged. They could wait for the man to get good and hammered or rush him while his back was turned.
The goon recapped the gourd and placed it back in its hiding place. He stole another look at the stars before starting back to his post. Dwayne rushed up behind him and clapped a chokehold on him. The goon was smaller than Dwayne but muscled. He struggled and clawed, feet kicking for purchase in the dust. Finally, he went limp. Dwayne maintained his hold, crushing the vessels in the man’s neck flat, starving the brain of blood. Eight-ball hemorrhages in the man’s eyes turned them crimson. He was dead.
Together, Dwayne and Wahid dragged the goon’s body to the rushes and hid it there.
“We go now,” Wahid said.
“No. I need my bracelet,” Dwayne said.
“You can get another.”
“Not like this one. Get that boat ready. I’ll be right behind you.”
Wahid’s face creased in a deep frown. But he nodded and trotted off toward the piers.
It was darker inside the entrance at the base of the pyramid. Dwayne paused outside to remove the torch from where it rested in a stone niche. Holding it before him, he felt along a stone wall, following a corridor into the heart of the temple. The smell of rotten food, sweat, and smoke was rich on the air. Under his fingers, he could feel the unfinished stone turned to bas-relief sculptures polished smooth over the years. The floor beneath his feet shifted from stone flags to mosaic clay tiles. He came to an opening in the wall, the scent of human habitation even stronger here.
He held the torch low to his side and bent to look into the chamber. Two old men lay inside, one on the tiled floor where he’d passed out in a puddle of beer. A shattered clay jar lay beside him. The other was insensate on a bunk, mouth open and snoring like an open drain. There were stone idols and more jars against one wall. Dwayne couldn’t see any of his belongings here.
Moving on, he checked more of the rooms set either side of the corridor. He found much the same thing, passed out old guys lying singly or in groups wherever the party had ended for them. He saw some faces he recognized but not Eagle Head. It figured that the high priest would have hogged any goodies for himself. Dwayne knew that he’d find the bracelet and his other stuff in the old guy’s chamber.
He came to a set of steps that led down to a lower level and a broad chamber with only one exit. The curved walls were stacked floor to ceiling with human skulls secured in place with mortar. Thousands of empty eye sockets stared at him in the wavering glare of the torch. The exit was an arched doorway guarded either side by a pair of sculpted jaguars in human form. A source of light danced within. Dwayne laid the sputtering torch on the tiles before creeping in under the arch.
Dwayne’s goodies weren’t the only thing Eagle Head was keeping to himself. The old goat lay sprawled back on a sheep-skin mat under a blanket of a half dozen of those temple slaves, the girls who wore the white loincloths. Only the loincloths were gone now. All were unmoving and soundly sleeping. In addition to the psychedelics, Dwayne thought, these guys must have come up with a pre-Columbian Viagra concoction.
The room was dimly lit by a pair of stone braziers in which some kind of oil fed a wick. The glow cast a bronze-colored light over all the exposed asses heaped on the bed. Dwayne crept past them toward a shrine set between the braziers. The shrine was piled with statuettes, strings of beads, a gold-plated skull, and coins that bore the profile of a European looking guy. And, prominent amongst this collection of junk, the needle gun, his revolver, and the 1911 automatic. The pistols went into his waistband. He found one of the ladies’ discarded loincloths and tied it into a kind of sack into which he scooped a healthy share of the gold coins. He tied it off with a thong he used to secure it to his belt.
One thing was missing, the key to Dwayne’s escape from this place and time, the silver bracelet. He turned to the bed where he could see the bracelet gleaming on the old man’s wrist. With as much stealth as he could manage, Dwayne placed a knee on the bed between two of the sleeping girls and reached for Eagle Head’s spindly arm. He was just slipping the bracelet over the wrinkled hand when he heard a gasp.
A girl had awakened next to him and stared at him with widening eyes. Her pupils were enormous black dots, made wide by ingesting the kind of drugs needed to do the nasty with the ancient bag of bones lying under her. Her lips parted to take in a lungful of air. It would come out as a scream.
“Sorry, honey,” Dwayne whispered.
He struck her hard with the heel of his hand just between her rising brows.
The girl dropped back to the bed, limbs limp.
He freed the bracelet off Eagle Head’s hand and snapped it in place over his own arm. He considered planting a needle in the old bastard’s skull, weighed the risks, and passed. Armed, wealthy, and potentially time-travel capable, he ran back the way he came and out into the star-lit night.
Down at the piers, Wahid had already cast off in the punt Dwayne had chosen. He was poling away toward deeper water.
“You son of a bitch.” Dwayne secured the sling of the needle gun over one shoulder and dove from the pier.
Wahid was all apologies and reassurances once Dwayne had reached the narrow punt and rolled aboard.
“I thought you had been captured. Had a misadventure. You were inside a very long time.”
“I am sure that was it, you lying motherfucker,” Dwayne said. The last was in English.
“You have the things that were taken from you.” Wahid was trying to change the subject.
“And I mean to keep them.” Dwayne took a seat at the stern of the punt, the needle gun trained on Wahid.
“As you wish.”
“You know how to row, Wahid? To use an oar?”
“I do.”
“Then get to work.”
Wahid set the pole aside and sat down to take up an oar. He turned his head toward Dwayne with a sullen expression.
“You do not row as well?” Wahid said.
“Gods don’t work. They only mete out justice.”
“Remember, I was a god too, my friend.” The Arab wor
e a brittle smile as he shifted the oar to the opposite side.
Dwayne pressed the trigger on the needle gun. With a hiss, a shining silver shaft appeared in the wood of the gunwale near Wahid’s hand.
“Well, you just got a demotion. Now row,” Dwayne said.
22
Graceland
They were looking at a week or more of sea travel. Even the frequent sightings of prehistoric monsters broaching along the hull became tedious. The Rangers turned to a favored game of theirs.
If you could go back in time, and they could, who would you kill?
They’d been all through the obvious ones. Hitler. Bin Laden. Manson. Mao. Jimbo’s favorite target was Sigmund Freud. Lee wondered what that said about the Pima.
“Colonel Tom Parker,” Chaz said.
“Who’s that? You mean that dickhead at Bragg? The one who canceled our Christmas leave?” Lee said.
“Naw, man. This guy wasn’t Army. He was a bullshit colonel. Like Colonel Sanders,” Chaz said.
“Hold on. You’d kill Elvis Presley’s manager?” Bat said.
“Bet your ass. What that man did was a damn crime against humanity,” Chaz said.
“He kill someone?” Jimbo said.
“Only the King’s career. That fucker ran Elvis’ life. Most famous man in the world and the dude treated him like a slave,” Chaz said.
“Come on, Raleigh. Elvis had half the money and all the pussy. You feel sorry for him?” Lee was laughing.
“The colonel made him make all those dumbass movies. Elvis hated that shit. Except for the gospel albums, he never let him into a recording studio for ten years. Ten fucking years!” Chaz was only getting started. “And while he’s making all those shit movies the whole sixties are passing him by. The Beatles. The Stones. Marvin Gaye. Aretha. All that’s happening, and Elvis is MIA singing about Hawaii on some goddamn phony beach in Burbank. That’s all the colonel’s doing. My boy did whatever that man told him to do.”
“It is what it is,” Boats said.
“Asshole was the one put Elvis on diet pills. Man killed my boy. No question.”
“You’ve done some thinking about this,” Bat said.
“Damn straight. I’d catch up with that cracker before he ever met Elvis. Back when the King was still at Sun Records. Slit his throat and watch him bleed out.”
“Well, if we ever get out of here maybe we can make a side trip to Memphis sometime,” Lee said.
“Naw. Can’t start playing that game. Where’s it end?” Chaz said.
“Yeah. Where’s it end?” Bat said. She turned to lean on the rail and watch rows of scaled spines creaming the water along the hull.
23
Survival Mathematics
“Here! We’ll go in here,” Dwayne said.
They were both working an oar to maneuver the punt around the edge of a forest of tall reeds. The sun was over the horizon by the time they found a stretch of open shoreline. They rowed for a section of muddy bank.
Dwayne got out to guide the punt forward through the shallows. He turned to look back the way they’d come. The city on the opposite side of the lake was invisible in the dense haze rising off the water.
His feet anchored in mud; Dwayne held the boat in place. “Get out. And bring those canteens with you,” he said to the Arab.
Wahid clambered out with a bundle of gourds in his fist. He waded to shore. Dwayne shoved the punt away to drift into the lake. No sense letting pursuers know where they made landfall. He waded from the water to where the Arab waited. The mud along the shore was dimpled with the prints of all the animals that had come here to drink since the last rains. The split prints of deer and the paws of big cats. No sign of men.
“Fill the gourds,” Dwayne said as he reached the beach.
“I am not your slave,” Wahid said. But he stooped to hold the gourds down to raise bubbles in the water.
“I prefer it when your hands are busy.”
“You fear betrayal.”
“I am just remembering that you killed a brother Arab.” Wahid spat into the water.
“He was no brother to me. I hated him. I have no cause to hate you.”
“Not yet.” Dwayne gestured toward the trees above the shore with the end of the needle gun.
Wahid capped the gourds and slung them from his shoulder. He walked ahead up the gentle slope of a game trail. Dwayne followed at ten paces distance.
The land sloped upward to level out once more. Ahead lay miles of cholla, spiny maguey, and jacaranda trees. Trails worn into the sandy soil wound between the wickets of spiny cacti. As Dwayne and Wahid walked farther from Tenochtitlán, they could hear movement all around them. Deer and big jackrabbits fled from the unaccustomed scent of man. Or tigres on the hunt, circling for a kill. Dwayne kept his head on a swivel, eyes on the vegetation to look for flashes of spotted fur. Their arms and legs were crusted with blood from encounters with the long spines of cacti that grew either side of the path. That smell of fresh blood would lure predators into having a peek at the newcomers.
“Have we walked far enough?” Wahid said, out of sight around a curve in the trail.
Dwayne turned his attention and the barrel of the needle gun to the sound of the Arab’s voice.
“No. We’ll go until the sun is more past its high point.”
“They can never find us now. They will be ill from last night’s revels. And they have no cause to believe we have escaped.”
“Except the stuff I stole back from the high priest’s room.” Dwayne regretted not putting a needle in the old bastard’s head.
“You must be thirsty.” The Arab was still invisible around the turn.
Dwayne stooped low to creep into the shade of a jacaranda that grew close to the right-hand side of the trail. He dropped to hands and knees to crawl past the spiky bowers of the cholla, following the Arab’s voice where it came from the other side of the wicket of thorns.
“Verangi? Are you still there? I have the water if you wish to have a drink.”
The Ranger was belly crawling now, the needle gun resting in the crooks of his arms. His eyes scanned the sand ahead. All he needed now was to run into a rattler sunning itself on a rock.
“We will need each other’s help in the days ahead. I will need you, and you will need me. We must regain the trust between us.” Wahid was close, just the other side of a clump of maguey, bladed leaves reaching up to the sun.
Dwayne crept out behind the Arab and rose to one knee. Wahid crouched in the trail; head craned to where he expected the Verangi to approach. The water gourds lay in the sand by his side. The Arab held a rock the size of a softball in his fist. He blinked through sweat running from his brows, a feral grin of anticipation fixed on his face.
Two needles to the back of the skull dropped Wahid to the sand. He lay twitching for a second or two, his legs moving in a parody of walking, before going still. The rock was still clutched in his fist.
Dwayne took up the thong holding the gourds. He uncapped one and took a long swallow before slipping them back over his shoulder. He considered burying the Arab. Buzzards would swarm soon and might draw pursuers his way. He chose distance over caution. He broke into a trot, keeping the sun at his back, wending his way eastward. He could move faster now without the burden of caution, of having to watch his former partner. And he doubled his water supply in the bargain. Probably the same calculation Wahid had come to when he made his unfortunate decision.
Behind, carried on a zephyr of wind off the lake, came the sound of hunting horns.
The Ranger doubled his speed, chasing his own shadow through the forest of blades.
24
Fish Story
The Ocean Raj crossed the Pacific at a steady twelve knots in order to conserve fuel. They cut back to essential power only across all decks.
Parviz and Quebat suggested rigging the air conditioning so that the nuclear reactor could power it. They stressed the health benefits of providing relief from the crushing
heat. The reactor was creating super-heated water and live steam that was only going into the sea to no purpose. Wadji, the ship’s engineer, did better than that. With the Iranians’ help, he put together a makeshift steam turbine. It was the size of a compact car. The shell was taken from a rusting industrial heating unit discarded from some past voyage of the Raj. The rest was built from parts cannibalized from all over the ship.
Working in the furnace heat of the aft hold, Wadji and some crewmen installed the crude but functional turbine. They ran steam lines from the reactor room under the Tube chamber to the turbine feed. The live steam lines were opened, and the unit hummed to life, powered by the cast-off heat of the reactor. It generated a steady flow of wattage. Enough to run the AC and the ship’s cold storage.
Jason Taan’s remaining bodyguards were given parole during the weeks they’d be at sea on the open ocean. The four men were rewarded free run of the Raj with the understanding that there was no upside to a mutiny or escape. They were every bit as stranded in the past as their captors. Taan spoke to them, ordering them to stand down and behave. He promised them a huge bonus when they returned to Shanghai and the 21st century. They gave their word. But the Rangers still kept a wary eye on them at all times.
To pass the time and add to their food stores, Boats and Chaz rigged up a fishing line on the aft deck. Instead of a rod and reel, they used a boat crane and winch wrapped with three hundred yards of ¾ inch swaged steel cable.
“What are you using as bait?” Shan asked.
“Some chickens went bad when the freezer drawer in the galley thawed,” Chaz said.
“They stink to high heaven.” Boats was grinning as he crouched to impale chicken carcasses onto barbed hooks connected to the cable with chains.
