The Traveler

7

The old and shattered camp was the fifth one Everett had come across since he had found himself hundreds of thousands of years in the past. Military equipment that should not be here was strewn haphazardly around a small clearing. Vines and other vegetation had grown around and through the rusty and shattered tools of military conquest. This camp was far different from the four he had discovered in the days before. This was what he knew to be a Roman stockade. He had done his Annapolis dissertation on Roman tactics during that empire’s reign throughout history. Everywhere there were rusty and broken swords. Spears with their shafts shattered. Helmets, rotted red cloaks, and the remains of many campfires. But strangest of all was the semi-modern Japanese equipment lying about, intermingled with ancient Roman gear.

“What the hell was this?” he asked himself as he examined the two very different sets of finds. He checked the more modern Japanese rifles and saw that none of them had ammunition, a sorrowful discovery that lessened his chances of living through this. He tossed a broken bolt-action rifle down and then looked around the eerie setting. No remains were evident as he scanned the area with his bow at the ready.

Suddenly a memory occurred to him that had skipped his train of thought. He now remembered Sarah’s discovery during the search for the alien power plant that the Iranians had conducted experiments with the dimensional wormholes and had disrupted time to the point that they had succeeded in snatching Roman, Japanese, and even Chinese troops from their own planes of existence. These must be the remains of those lost souls. As he looked around the stockade he came to the conclusion that these differing warring entities came together for a common cause called survival. And from the looks of the stockade that mission failed and failed big time.

His boot kicked at a small bush that had entwined itself around an object that was solid. He reached down and cleared away the undergrowth and then his eyes widened in surprise. He lifted the heavy piece and examined it with a smile, knowing that the theory about the Iranian experiments were accurate. In his hands was that proof. The large golden eagle was ornate and tinged with mold but was otherwise intact. The shaft that once attached the eagle had long since vanished but the object was as familiar to Everett as his own flag. The Roman numeral for nine, IX, marked the eagle as the standard for the famous and very much ancient Ninth Legion of the Roman Empire. The very same legion that had mysteriously vanished during the occupation of Britain.

Carl allowed the eagle to slide from his hands as he felt the shudder of the earth beneath his feat. As he looked around at the growing darkness, the ashfall began in earnest.

The rumble of Mount Erebus proclaimed that if the animal life in Antarctica didn’t get him, the volcano would.

Carl Everett knew that he and the last continent on earth that wasn’t frozen over were now living on borrowed time.

Antarctica was beginning its death throes.

Jason Ryan tugged at the loose-fitting desert BDUs he was issued. Colonel Collins had issued orders that any field teams would go in the guise of Army Corps of Engineers as their cover, thus the desert BDUs with their computer-designed camouflage. He saw his reflection in the white plastic wall of the curving hallway as he made his way to the cafeteria. As well as the blue and red tattoo that seemed to make people, women especially, step a wide path around him, the new military clothing line did not meet with his approval.

He was about to step into the large eating area when he saw something that made him stop at the entrance and watch. The three women moved as if they were in the midst of a prison break. He shook his head as he watched Alice Hamilton, Sarah McIntire, and Anya Korvesky turn a corner heading for the bank of air-cushioned elevators. He started to walk in for his lunch and then decided what he had seen didn’t quite look right. He turned away and followed. At the corner he saw them enter the elevator and he watched from the rounded corner as the doors closed. He watched the elevator’s annunciator as it traveled down only two levels to nine. He went to the second lift and followed.

The knock on the clean room door brought Xavier Morales’s head up. He closed the electronic pad he was using and then looked at Charlie. He shrugged.

“If they don’t have clearance they will go away,” Ellenshaw said as he turned back to his own electronic pad and perused an old geology report on back-scanner results from the Antarctic.

Suddenly the door buzzed and it slid open.

“I guess whoever it is has the clearance,” Morales said as he watched the doorway.

Alice Hamilton smiled as she, Anya, and Sarah walked into the clean room. They had the required antistatic clothing and hairnets, which made them look like nurses. Xavier had reinstituted clean room policy until he got the kinks worked out on the nervous breakdown, as he called it, of Europa.

“Mrs. Hamilton, ladies, what may I help you with?” Xavier asked politely, not liking the smile on the older woman’s face.

“Uh, Niles would be hard-pressed to know why you’re here,” Charlie said timidly.

Alice only smiled and looked at Ellenshaw until he swallowed and turned away. Then Alice placed a hand on Charlie’s shoulder and leaned in.

“How many field assignments did I okay with your name on them when you weren’t cleared to go?”

Charlie looked at Xavier and half smiled.

“A few,” Ellenshaw said.

Alice squeezed a little on his shoulder. “Charlie, how many?”

“Six… uh,” he said as she squeezed again, the way Garrison taught her a million years before, “Ah, ah, okay, nine, nine.”

Alice looked at the two women with her. “Charlie’s adventures, I call them.” She turned and looked at Xavier. “Hello,” she said as she rolled a chair over and sat next to Morales’s own wheelchair.

“Mrs. Hamilton, I can guess why you ladies are here. And I have caught up on not only these members and their personnel files, but yours also. ‘Perused’ may be a better word. But on the advice of Director Compton I spent an inordinate amount of time on your particular personnel file, Mrs. Hamilton.”

Alice kept the smile on her face but inside she cursed Niles for his vision.

“What you have done for this agency and her charter is nothing short of amazing. You and former Director Lee, you could field volumes of adventure novels, but what you came for today cannot happen. I can guess, from listening to other Group members, and from your file that you are here to represent these ladies and argue that they should be listed on any field team action. That, I dare say, is out of my control.”

“We have a large stake in this mission,” Anya said, but then stopped when she saw Alice look her way and then imperceptibly shake her head. Anya got the hint. Sarah knew enough in her years at Group to let Alice handle the subversion tactics.

“You want Europa to insert your names into the mission profile if anything is found, right?” Charlie asked, and then looked away when Alice raised her beautiful eyebrow at him. He decided to allow Xavier to try to stop the unstoppable force of the Event Group.

“I believe both Anya and Sarah will complement any field team if and when they are a go,” Alice said as she eyed the young Morales. “There was one reason I was onboard when your name came up as a replacement for Pete, and Niles and Jack both agreed.”

“Because I’m handsome and the best computer man in the world?” Xavier asked with a wink and a smile.

“No, because you have a soul. You think outside of the box, as they say, as recently demonstrated by your unadvised foray into the world of worldwide drug cartels. You do what you think is right, no matter what the personal danger is to yourself.”

Xavier felt the trap as it slowly closed.

“And these ladies have the same right as yourself. They want to be on this mission, but Jack won’t allow it because, to tell you the truth, it’s just far too hazardous. We feel you can work your way around that stipulation somewhat.”

Xavier produced a list from his shirt pocket and then wheeled his chair around and handed the list to Anya. She looked it over and Alice and Sarah both saw the smile start to form on the young Gypsy’s mouth.

“What is it?” Sarah asked.

“It’s the mission roster that Europa recommended to Niles over an hour ago.”

Alice again raised her brows and then accepted the list from Anya. She looked down at the bottom.

“Dr. Morales, Europa has a certain protocol in her system that is basically a countersign to warn someone if the order actually originated with the Cray system.” She held out the list and pointed to the lower right-hand corner. “If the recommendation originated with Europa, there would be a series of numbers and code right here.” She tapped the lower right-hand corner with an elegant red nail. She looked at Xavier and returned his wry wink.

“It seems I’ve been caught,” Xavier said as he turned toward the glass and the visage of Europa beyond. “You could have said something about the code, Europa,” he said, shaking his head.

Europa didn’t respond. It sat silent with its billions of bubbles slowly rising and falling in their elongated acrylic tanks.

“What does that mean?” Anya asked as Charlie grimaced.

“It means that our new friend here manually entered the mission roster,” Charlie said, knowing what Xavier had done. “If you’re caught, Niles will forego the welcoming party for you and turn it into a necktie soiree. He will hang you, Doctor.”

For once Alice agreed that Charlie had the right call. Her plan was to seduce the young whiz and then if caught do what she always had, pull rank and then take the responsibility. She handed the mission roster back to Xavier and smiled.

“I’ll correct this immediately,” was all he said.

“As of this minute, if asked, you will say you were coerced into issuing the roster by me… understand, young man?”

Xavier looked at Alice and then just nodded. Anya for her part was more of a romantic and leaned over and pecked the computer genius on the cheek. He smiled in embarrassment.

“Yeah, you’ll fit in just fine with us Group of pirates,” Sarah said as she, Anya, and Alice left the clean room.

“You may have gained the respect of Alice, Anya, and Sarah, but if Niles finds out you falsified a Europa recommendation, even for Alice, oh, mama!” Charlie hissed.

“In my short years of life on this messed-up planet I have come to one resolute conclusion: never, ever allow rules to get in the way of discovery and investigation. They deserve to go.”

Charlie looked at Xavier and had to admit that he might be the answer to the absence of Pete Golding, after all. Pete would have done it without having to be asked by Alice, just as the kid had just done.

“Uh, you didn’t falsify my spot on the mission roster, did you?” Ellenshaw asked.

“No, of course not. Dr. Compton specifically called for you to go.”

Charlie smiled, feeling his worth.

“He may just be wanting to get rid of you.” Ellenshaw lost the smile and then looked toward Europa, unnerved by the comment.

Morales smiled at his small joke.

The three women had stopped just outside of the clean room when they came face-to-face with the tattooed Ryan. He saw the guilty look on Sarah’s and Anya’s faces but only a wry smile from Alice.

“All right, what’s going on?”

“Absolutely nothing, Mr. Ryan,” Alice said as she stepped to the side and tried to pass, but Jason stepped to his right and blocked the escape, forcing Anya and Sarah to bump into her backside.

“You’re kidding me, right?” he asked as he took a step back so he could see all three faces. “After all of these years you’re going to claim that, to me?”

“Mr. Ryan, I assure you that—”

“Save it. Now, what are you doing? Does this have something to do with you three being left off the duty roster?”

“I can most assuredly say not,” Alice said as she stared Ryan down.

“Liar, liar, culottes on fire.”

“Okay, Mr. Ryan, I want these ladies to have a spot on that roster. They need to be there. Anya in case Carl is not found, Sarah because she knows it’s in all probability that Jack won’t be coming back. They can handle the danger.”

“Alice,” Jason said holding his ground. “I was recruited into the Group by men who I respect above all others. If they say to keep something to a minimum, like personnel on a mission, I do it. I found out the hard way that going against the colonel’s recommended manpower structure tends to get my ass chewed on, so this is self-preservation.”

“Jason—” Sarah started but then stopped when Ryan became angry.

“Listen, the mission will be hazardous enough, and no matter what coercion you just used on the new kid in there, it won’t change anything. Dr. Compton will see right through it, and if for some far-out reason he doesn’t, Jack will. The answer is no.”

“Damn,” Alice said as she turned to the two disappointed women.

“He’s turned into a snitch for the director,” Sarah said, aghast that Ryan, a usual conspirator in crime with the rest of them, had turned his back on the two women.

“It’s not Jason, it’s Jack.” Alice looked at them and then waved them onward. “Come on, ladies, we’ll be expected in the director’s office at anytime for our royal ass chewing.”

“Great,” was all Sarah said, knowing Jack would be informed of her crimes against his orders.

The three bodyguards had waited inside the outer office area. The visitors to the doorway had not taken the time to examine the equipment in the PIT, even though the gruff little man with the cigar had thrown a fit when his boss told him to wait on someone named Virginia. The large man, Julien, waited by the doors of the elevator as his cell phone chimed.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said as his eyes watched the annunciator above the large elevator rise. “They what? Ma’am, I warned you, the world will find out if we allow this. I will try, Madam.” He closed the cell phone and then looked at his two companions and with just a flick of his eyes they knew they had problems. “Madam is about to be taken into custody by federal authorities.”

The two men immediately spread out just before the elevator doors opened. The large Julien pulled a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson from his shoulder holster and waited in front of the doors. They opened just as he cocked the weapon.

It was empty.

He felt the brush of cooler air from behind as the pistol cocked. He felt the pressure of the weapon against the back of his head.

“Now what were you planning to do with this?” the voice said as a hand reached around and removed the nine millimeter from his beefy hand. Will Mendenhall tossed the weapon back to Collins as Henri Farbeaux finished disarming the other two bodyguards.

“We didn’t have orders to harm you,” Julien said as he was quickly frisked by Will and then pushed over with his two companions.

Jack looked at the weapon Will had tossed to him and ejected the ammunition clip from its handle, but remained silent.

“Madam does not deserve this,” Julien said as he lowered his hands when he realized they weren’t going to kill him. “She is one of the greatest women of all time, and you have her arrested?”

Jack and the others could see the passion these men had for their matriarch and he respected that. He still remained silent as he studied the three men. After all, this Julien fellow seemed very talkative.

“We were going to ensure the doorway did not fall into government hands. We cannot allow that.”

At that moment Jenks stepped through the door that led to the stairwell that the others had used to sneak back up to the main floor when Jack’s hackles had risen. He suspected a trap after he had informed Niles to take Moira Mendelsohn into protective custody.

“Oh, so your guesswork paid off. They were going to plant one in our heads.”

“No, that is not true. Our orders were to dismantle the laser system, that’s all.”

Jenks snorted. “Son, it would take their people all of five minutes to design a replacement, a far better one than the original, so what did you hope to accomplish?”

Jack could see the man was caught off guard. Moira and her cohorts never expected the doorway to be discovered, thus their laziness in dismantling it. Now the question was why they were so determined to not only protect the doorway, but the extent they were willing to go to protect Moira Mendelsohn.

Black sedans and vans of every size and shape burst through the Brooklyn Navy Yard gates simultaneously. The guards at the main entrance off of Flushing Avenue caught the civilian guards completely unaware as their cars skidded to a sliding stop. The same happened at the gates fronting the Sands, Cumberland, Vanderbilt, Clinton, and Clymer streets. The entire Brooklyn Navy Yard was secured in less than three minutes. The buildings on the north side of the yard were evacuated and told by the FBI that a major drug raid was in progress.

The men heard the cars as they surrounded the building they were in. Jack looked at Mendenhall and then nodded. Will ejected the clips on the two weapons he had taken from the two other bodyguards and then handed the nine millimeters back to them. Jack did the same with Julien’s weapon. His raised brows was the only indication of his confusion.

“Put those away and keep silent. We don’t wish you or your employer any harm or legal entanglements. We work for the government, but are not the government.”

Confusion masked the bearded man’s worry.

The door opened and the civilian security guard was moved into the room ahead of three men in navy blue Windbreakers.

“Which one of you is Colonel Collins?” the first of the FBI agents asked, pushing by the guard.

“That would be me,” Jack said, turning away from a startled Julien.

“Sir, Special-Agent-in-Charge Williamson is outside and needs a word.”

Jack eyed Will and Henri and then made sure they understood that no one, especially the federal agents, would have access to the lower levels of the building. He moved to follow the agent.

“Colonel, how are you?” Special Agent Williamson asked as he stood in the rain with an umbrella over his head.

“Jim, long time,” Jack said as he stepped to the nondescript sedan. “All secured?”

“For the moment, until some of these tenants start screaming bloody murder to the NYPD. I figure you have about an hour before lengthy explanations are in order.”

Jack nodded and started to explain. “Allow tenants in every area of the yard to return to work, but everything north of Clinton Avenue belongs to us. How much trouble will you be in over this?”

“We had a tip on interstate meth exchange with a possible manufacturing point here in Brooklyn, all a false alarm. I figure you can have the northern area for about forty-eight hours before some serious people start frowning.”

“That’s all we’ll need.”

“Good, because the bureau would come down pretty hard if they knew who I was really working for.”

Collins laughed. “It all depends on who you fear more, the President of the United States or Dr. Niles Compton?”

“Forty-eight hours, Jack.”

“Got it.”

Special-Agent-in-Charge James Williamson had been recruited by Jack personally ten years before upon his graduation from Quantico. The agent was just another of the cards Jack and Niles held up their sleeves that no one knew about, not even the president and his constitutionally guaranteed oversight.

The agent whistled and all fifteen of the securing agents left the area and secured the perimeter a mile around building 117.

The Wellsian Doorway was now secured and in the hands of Department 5656.

The countdown against the presidential edict had begun.

The Event Group now had one hundred hours of undisturbed oversight to complete the most amazing mission in world history before the rest of the American federal agencies became aware of some strange goings-on within the borders of the United States.

8

The bodyguard stepped away from the building when he saw the big man move off to confer with the FBI teams that were heavily deployed around not only the building but also the dock area. His eyes easily picked up this man’s companions. They were conferring underneath an umbrella as they talked. The black man turned his way and then back. That was when he quickly brought out his cell phone and punched a number he thought he would never use. It was answered on the first ring.

“I think Madam’s judgment is in question. Building one-seventeen is—”

“Yes, I have that information already. If I had relied solely on you I am afraid I would have been caught unawares.”

“You said this would come about.”

“I assume the FBI has fabricated some sort of cover story for the raid on Madam’s property?”

“Yes, I heard drug manufacturing,” Julien said worriedly.

“That would never hold up to scrutiny,” the man said on the other side of the cell. “I understand they are preparing Madam for transport.”

“Oh, God, where to? They wouldn’t dare arrest her?”

“That, I would welcome. No, from our intelligence inside the house, our federal friends are taking her to Brooklyn.”

“Have the rest been notified about Madam?” Julien asked, lowering his voice when he saw the black man look his way once more. He held the cell closer to his body to protect it from the increasingly violent rain.

“No, and they must not be. They are only students who don’t understand the dangers of what could happen if the world learns the truth. No, they are not to be notified.”

“But Madam? What is she and these men up to?”

“Tell me of these men who confronted you and Madam at the Grenada.”

“I don’t have a clear picture of who they are. Two, maybe three look military. The shorter, bear of a man was babbling on in scientific terms, so I can’t really rule out any agency at this point.”

“That is not what I was hoping to hear. If this is military we could lose the security of the doorway and many, many secrets would be spilled, which is unacceptable as more people other than myself have plenty to lose if this technology is compromised.”

“Maybe Madam has reasons for sharing the information. Maybe they don’t know what the doorway is.”

The silence on the other end of the line sent a chill down Julien’s spine. He knew this man and a few others like him did have plenty to lose if a spotlight were shined on them. Maybe even more to lose if Madam had knowledge of what they had been doing. The pay he received to inform on the household goings-on was not enough for this.

“Listen, stay close to Madam,” the voice said.

“What are—”

“Shut up and listen. Stay close, I will have to deal with this myself with outside resources.”

“I will not allow Madam to be harmed, we would defend her to the—”

A large hand reached out and gently removed the cell phone from Julien’s hand. The black man was there and he immediately hit redial. He saw the number and noted it. He shut off the glass-faced phone and looked at the very much larger Julien.

“All information coming and going is to go through either the FBI or one of these fine gentlemen,” he said, indicating Jenks, Henri, and Jack. “Clear?” Will Mendenhall said as he walked away toward the building and then tossed the confiscated cell phone to the man they referred to as the colonel.

Julien swallowed as he now feared what he might have unleashed in making that call. There were no limits as to how far certain men would go to protect their secrets, and Julien now feared he had unleashed a tornado and placed his beloved madam right in its path.

Alice Hamilton stood next to her desk and watched the door to Niles’s office and the conference room. She had her arms crossed over her chest and she tapped her heeled shoe on the carpet. She felt the eyes of the three assistants on her back as the two men and one woman looked on nervously, as they had never seen Alice Hamilton so worked up about anything.

The pneumatic elevator chimed softly and the doors parted. Alice raised a brow when she saw it was one of the kitchen stewards. He had a tray with a covered dish and coffee cup and carafe. As the steward walked in Alice went to him and quickly relieved him of the tray. She nodded for him to open the director’s door and he did so after a warning look from the female assistant. Alice walked into the office and then instead of waiting for the steward to close the door she reached back with her shoe and closed it for him. With a frown and a worried look the steward left the outer office.

“Just sit the tray over there, Josh, thank you,” Niles said as he studied an Antarctic field summary. He had a frown on his face at the incompleteness of the report issued through Charlie Ellenshaw’s crypto department.

Alice turned and placed the tray on the credenza and then removed the cover from the plate containing the egg salad sandwich. She took it and placed it in front of Niles, who looked up when the dish landed a little hard.

“I know we’re shorthanded, even in food services, but having the director’s assistant delivering meals?” he asked as his smile stayed put, even though he had to swallow as he faced Alice.

“I’ve been delivering meals to directors around here for over sixty years, I imagine one more won’t kill me,” she said as she sat down in a chair facing his desk. “By the way, I believe your doctor’s prescribed diet doesn’t allow that sandwich. I believe there was a bowl of soup and a salad mysteriously canceled at the last minute.”

“Nothing has ever gotten by you, has it?” Niles asked as he closed with tired resignation the file Charlie had sent him.

“No, I pretty much hear and know most everything.”

Niles felt the twinge of his headache returning and he took a breath and waited for what he knew was once more coming his way.

“You just missed Mr. Ryan,” Niles said as he ignored the headache as best as he could and reached for his sandwich. He started to take a bite and thought better and placed it back on the plate and looked at Alice. “With the report that Charlie just delivered, if and when we send a team in they are more than likely going to be confronted with wildlife that has been extinct for a minimum of ten thousand years.”

Alice waited patiently as Niles had to think every comment out carefully before committing to an answer about anything. It would take the average man more than just a few minutes to coordinate this in his head, but for Niles it was milliseconds. She reached over and set the saucer that was covering Compton’s coffee off to the side and she slid the China cup closer to the director. All the while her eyes never left his.

“In other words, Alice, we just don’t know what will be waiting for them when, and if, they get there.”

“These two Group members deserve to go, not only for their personal connection to the mission, but because they are qualified to go. You see, Niles, I’ve been conducting my own research and it clearly indicates the need for Sarah’s expertise in geology. The world they will be traveling to is most likely on the verge of destroying itself due to what we know is an historical eruption of Mount Erebus. Sarah will be able to give a precise time frame of that event if she is there to witness the conditions. She is needed.”

Niles stirred sugar into his black coffee and patiently listened to his conscience as she spoke. “And Anya? I don’t know of any situation in Antarctica’s past that would justify sending in an intelligence agent with the mission team. Do you?” he asked as he eyed Alice over the cup of coffee he sipped from.

“Nothing, other than the fact that she’s good with a gun.” Alice finally committed fully to her guilt-driven attack. “And for the deal you had me make with General Shamni and his Mossad offices.”

Niles placed the cup of coffee down and shook his head, angry that this was going to be Alice’s arguing point. She was feeling guilty for the secret pact between him and the head of the Mossad.

“What I offered was a deal to assist us in getting a very valuable member of this Group home again. I would have signed away my own mother to get that done. After all of these years in this facility and the deals that you and Garrison brokered to protect your people, you now have the gall to question what it is I’m willing to do?”

Alice lowered her head. She knew that the remark was too much and was hard on Niles. After all, it was true, she had done far worse to protect their people in the past. Maybe she was finally too damn old for the intrigue of today’s “game.”

“So we send her off on a mission that has a very low rate of probable success, just so she can possibly die with Carl. That’s her reward? No, the mission roster is set.” He sipped his coffee but kept his good eye on Alice. “I would warn you about sentiment, but then again that would make me out to be a liar, something I’ve never done. Sentiment is exactly why we are attempting to do the impossible. But that same factor can get my people killed and thus I can’t allow it to interfere with Jack’s mission plans. Sorry.”

Alice nodded her head and stood.

“And tell Dr. Morales, nice try. But I’ve been doing this for years now, and I have learned a few things over those years and I learned from the best, Pete Golding.”

“You knew we would ask before he even decided to help us, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, Alice, because it’s exactly what both Pete and I would have done.”

Alice started to turn and leave, defeated for the first time since her arguments with Garrison Lee. Just as she closed on the double doors Niles stopped her. He was busy writing something and when finished held it out to Alice. She read it.

“I take it you heard from Jack?” she asked as her mind went into preparation mode immediately upon reading the action order.

“Yes, our one-hundred-hour window has been opened and we have to go through it very soon or we’ll get it slammed down on us.”

“I’ll call it.”

All thoughts of mission team members went out the window as Alice was now in full Event mode as she hurried from the office. Niles turned and watched the doors close and then he grimaced as if his coffee was bad. He shook his head and wondered if he was doing the right thing. He had traded Anya Korvesky for the mere chance of getting the file on this Traveler, and now he refused to even allow her a chance at seeing the man she loved one last time. He felt the guilt as it coursed like the bitter coffee down his throat.

He heard the tones that sounded loudly throughout the massive complex. His people were going to do what they did best — fight the impossible odds.

Alert tones sounded throughout the Event Group facility and sixteen departments, totaling 512 civilian men and women, with their military contingent of 212, went into action.

The Group had just declared an Event.

Jack stood over a map spread out on a desk in the upstairs office area that once fronted as a furniture repair warehouse after the Department of the Navy had started selling off the property in 1966.

“Okay, when our people get here, we secure the inside of the building and the FBI the exterior and surrounding grounds.” He looked at Mendenhall, who was taking notes on the electronic pad he had been issued for this particular op. “No one who isn’t Group gets inside for the duration of our time on station.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll coordinate with Mr. Ryan when he arrives with Assistant Director Pollock and her nuclear sciences team.”

“Good.” He looked at the master chief, who turned somewhat pale when he heard that Virginia would soon be on station. “You okay, Master Chief?”

Instead of telling the truth, he grumbled and then stabbed his cigar end at the map.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Colonel, but do you see these power lines here and here?” The cigar stabbed at the two locations nearer the street.

“Yes,” Jack confirmed.

“If we are able to somehow get this ass-backward contraption runnin’, those lines won’t carry any sort of load close to what we would need.” He looked up and placed the cigar back into his mouth. “Not if the wattage we need is to carry the transformers I saw down in that pit. The old woman said she used bribes in the old days to get her power, but she didn’t explain it well enough. I’m sure the Borough of Brooklyn won’t be happy when we blow every electrical transformer from here to Bay Ridge.”

Collins looked at the map again and the eight-hundred-foot space where the old dry dock used to be. It was sitting dry as the riverside gate was closed.

“Yes, I did notice and have informed Virginia about the power problems we could be facing. She said that she has a plan for that and she wanted me to inform you that she needs your naval expertise to work out a few minor problems. She said to gather everything”—Jack looked at his pad and the notes he had written—“on the power output for either the Maitland, or SSN-688. I assume you know what that first name refers to?”

Jenks removed the cigar once more and shook his head as if in wonder.

“Smart lady there. I didn’t think of that,” he mumbled. “Yeah, I know what she’s referring to. Ballsy, I must say.”

“Yeah, we’ve noticed that about Virginia,” Jack said, wondering to what level Jenks’s real fear of Virginia extended. “It must be all of those letters that follow her name and title, huh?” Jack smirked at the master chief. “Well, she said she’s also studied the aerial photos from Boris and Natasha and suggests you may want to get a start on—”

“Hah! Filling the dry dock area,” he said triumphantly. He looked from Mendenhall to Farbeaux. “See, I can think just as fast as her.”

“Oh, yeah,” Will said as he turned away and laughed.

“Okay, you get on that, Master Chief.”

“And myself? Am I to run out for coffee and doughnuts?” Henri asked.

“No, we’re going out in the rain and assisting Madam Mendelsohn inside for our meeting with Xavier, Niles, and Europa. It’s time to see if we have a chance at using this”—he looked at Jenks—“half-assed-contraption.”

“That’s ass-backward contraption,” Jenks mumbled as he corrected Jack with a disgusting smirk.

“And I’m included here because…?” Henri asked as he straightened from the map of the navy yard.

Jack smiled as he put his coat on. “I like to have a man know just what it is he’s volunteering for.”

Colonel Henri Farbeaux lowered his eyes and wondered when and if his time in hell would ever be served. He watched Jack as he held the door open for him, intentionally not answering Henri’s question but avoiding it with another mystery.

“Did you ever catch on that I really don’t care for you, Colonel?” Henri walked past Collins and then out of the office.

“Really. But I thought we were actually getting to be friends.”

Moira Mendelsohn sat in her chair and looked out from the glass-enclosed gallery at the doorway laboratory. She adjusted the quilt on her legs and then looked away.

“I didn’t think I would ever lay eyes on that damnable thing again.”

The doorway was sitting silent without any power in the semidarkness of the spotlights. Moira looked around the gallery.

“I remember looking up through a glass wall very much like this one. That is why I have always told my scholarship students not to lie to their children.”

“Concerning?” Jack asked as he and Henri sat in the gallery seating section, flanking either side of the woman they knew as the Traveler.

She smiled and looked at the colonel.

“Why, that there really are monsters in the world.” Her smile became a conspirator’s smirk. “I know, I’ve seen them myself through glass walls just like these.” She gestured to the seats and the gallery glass separating the viewers from the time machine that sat beneath them.

Jack remembered her file. He looked at Henri and knew he was thinking the same as him. Moira had really seen monsters in the flesh and most had red and black swastikas on the sleeves and death’s-heads on their caps. The tale she related in remembering her concentration camp debrief told the bizarre story of Heinrich Himmler and his plan. Yes, she had seen monsters. Jack studied the tired face of the woman who sat before him.

“I trust you want to use the doorway for something of your own design?” She looked from Jack to the doorway below and the shiny instruments that gleamed in the sparse lighting.

“Is it still possible?”

Moira Mendelsohn snorted and chuckled, worrying both Collins and Farbeaux, but Henri far more since this was a machine owned and possibly once operated by her, so he hoped her insanity was a recent development.

“Oh, yes, I imagine it is.” She used the chair’s toggle to turn her chair to face Jack full on. “But why would you wish to go there?”

“Go where, ma’am?”

“Germany in 1943, of course.”

“We wouldn’t wish to if at all avoidable,” Henri said chiming in.

“Then I suspect you have a Wellsian Doorway at the selected location?”

“Not following,” Jack said, feeling his heart skip a beat.

“My dear, you have to have two doorways for the system to work. Didn’t you read my dossier and specs thoroughly?” She managed to actually look sad at the way Jack’s face dropped. “The only other doorway is in the Germany of the past, 1943. There is no other.”

Collins stood and faced away from Moira. He saw the look from Henri. While not at all sad about hearing the news, he did feel for these people, for when the news broke that what they wanted to happen was now an impossibility, their hope would be dashed. The Frenchman had read the entire dossier and understood far better just how devastating this new information was.

Jack opened the door. “Master Chief, come in here, please.” He then turned to the monitor that had been installed by Mendenhall. “Dr. Morales, are you with us?” he asked as Jenks entered the gallery and saw the long faces and then sat down. He removed his ever-present cigar and then nodded a greeting at Moira.

After a few seconds the young face of Morales filled the screen. Jack knew he would have to eventually get used to the new kid running the most intricate computing and AI system ever designed. He just hoped the young man was up to the task. They would soon see if the moniker that had been bestowed upon him was accurate… that of genius.

“We are here, Colonel, and we do have some information. Professor Ellenshaw—”

“Doctor, we may have a problem that will take priority over everything else. And note, Doctor, we are not secured on this end, we have a guest. May I introduce Ms. Moira Mendelsohn.”

The old woman smiled when she saw the youth of the man on the monitor. She nodded.

“Ma’am, it’s truly an honor,” Morales said with something close to awe.

“He’s so young,” she said through the side of her mouth, and then nodded and smiled again at the young man blushing on the screen.

“Doctor, listen to what Ms. Mendelsohn has to tell you. Then I want you to use some of that brain stuff we rescued you for. Find an answer. Master Chief, help fill him in.”

“Europa is just now getting her act together, so I’ll do my best.”

Jack excused himself and gestured for Henri to follow. They stepped out through the gallery and then took the elevator up to the old office area. Will was there figuring out a duty roster for his men when they arrived from Nellis.

Jack opened the door with Will and the Frenchman in tow and they stepped out underneath the old and tattered awning that covered the front stoop.

“My God, how can we pull this one off?” he asked.

Will was filled in by Henri and could see that the colonel was feeling physically ill being defeated at such an early point in the Event call.

“What now?” Will asked.

Jack just shook his head and then stepped out from under the awning and walked down the steps. He raised his face to the sky and allowed the rain to cool his face.

Will and Henri watched a man realizing defeat and it was something they could both see didn’t sit too well with the former Green Beret.

The ruse had taken two and a half hours to formulate and execute. The van was actually stolen from the federal building parking lot in Brooklyn near the courthouse area and now sat idling at a closed and deserted gas station on Flushing Avenue. The driver of the van eased himself from behind the wheel and then joined the three men watching the main front gate of the navy yard.

“That is one drive I don’t want to make again. I must have passed a dozen cops on the way here,” the man said in Russian. “I didn’t know if any of their radio signals would set that shit off. It would have blown half of the neighborhood straight to hell, not that it would be missed.”

The smaller of the three men turned and faced the driver. “The explosives are detonated on a sealed circuit, you idiot, I have told you that. Radio signals cannot set them off.”

“If you have to explain to your men their duties more than once, I wonder how well mine and my colleagues’ money was spent. Perhaps we chose the wrong organization to handle our problem?”

The small man turned and faced his contracted employer. “Have we yet to fail you and your… colleagues in any capacity?” He snorted with a chuckle at the euphemism this dark-haired man insisted on using.

“I fear there is always a first time,” the man said as he pulled his expensive coat closer to his throat. He hated dealing with these Eastern Bloc idiots. But they were the only people brave, or foolish, enough to take on the hard jobs called for to help him and his associates from time to time. These brutes had their own business concerns, but did this kind of work on a contractual basis and the Russians and the services they provided were not known to come cheap.

“If there is failure the first time, there will be a second, a third, even a fourth attempt until you are satisfied our contract has been fulfilled.”

“As long as you are aware of the situation and the people you’re putting into harm’s way. That’s the FBI over there. You may get through the civilian guards at the gate with your falsified van, but not them.”

“Obstacles to be swiped aside like dirt.” The small man laughed. “The FBI has been trying to shut us down for many years, my friend, yet here we are.”

“Have your people compensated for the design of the building and the fact that your target is in the subbasement?”

“How did you get into the position you are in by worrying about such small details, my friend? You should know that with enough explosive you can do anything.” The man turned and watched as the civilian guards started their shift change. He faced the driver. “Once through the gate you will get out at the first blind corner; my men will take it from there. Just be sure to turn on the remote device before you leave the van.”

The driver nodded in understanding. He turned and went to the van and carefully eased out of the deserted gas station and crossed over Flushing Avenue and into the navy yard without a second look from the harried guards at the gate. With a flash of the FBI magnetic lettering on the doors and the government-issued license plate, the dark-haired man watched the most powerful explosive ever to be used in the borough of Brooklyn on its way to kill the Traveler and any evidence of their past crimes.

He placed a hand on the Russian’s shoulder. The sleeve of his expensive coat was pulled back and the contracted killer looked down at the man’s exposed arm.

“Let’s hope we don’t have to try this again.”

The Russian watched the dark-haired man of forty lower his hand and turn toward his chauffeured car, which waited in the back of the station.

The Russian was left wondering about the strange numerical tattoo on the man’s forearm as he stepped into the old station’s store area that had not seen a customer or worker in over eighteen months. His men were there and as he looked at the bespectacled Russian sitting at the small desk, the contract killer could see by the red flashing light on the boxlike detonator that the remote system was indeed operational.

The driver slowed his beating heart as he passed through the main gate with nothing more than a cursory wave from the oncoming shift of civilian security guards. He drove slowly, obeying the posted limit of five miles per hour as he watched the deserted and rain-swept road near the back of the navy yard. The pulsing of the windshield wipers lulled him as he pulled around the blind corner. He immediately saw the bright lights that had been installed around building 117. He looked around as he placed the van in park and then allowed the van to idle. He didn’t wonder how the men who had hired him rigged the van, he just wanted out of it. He reached for the door handle and then he remembered to set the remote system on the dashboard. He took a breath and then flipped the small toggle switch. A small red light illuminated, indicating the arming of the system. Little did he know that it had also armed far more than the remote control. He pulled on the door handle — nothing.

“What?” he said as he felt the first stirring of fear down in the pit of his stomach.

He pulled on the handle again and the door still didn’t open. He put his shoulder to it and still the door remained locked and closed. Suddenly he heard the gearshift move from park to drive and his eyes widened. He hurriedly reached out and hit the toggle switch again. The light remained brightly lit. He repeated the same action with the same result. He yelled an obscenity and then slapped at the small radar-looking device, sending it crashing to the floor. Still the van moved forward toward the first taped-off line where two agents of the FBI waited in the rain. He hurriedly tried to shut the key off. It turned but the engine didn’t stop. He tried desperately to slam the gear lever into park but the van was moving so fast now that the transmission just clicked loudly as he sped onward.

The accelerator pedal magically went to the floor and the unsuspecting patsy was thrown back in the driver’s seat as he realized the ruthless Russian mob had murdered him for their own ends.

The FBI van hurtled toward building 117 with over a thousand pounds of the hybrid mix that crystallizes conventional plastique to HMX, the most powerful military explosive in the world.

In a combat situation, Colonel Jack Collins was an unparalleled warrior as far as instinctual awareness was concerned — unparalleled with the exception of a man who not only was trained the same as Collins, but one who also had the instincts of a developed criminal mind — Colonel Henri Farbeaux.

Before the two FBI field agents jumped free of the path of the rampaging navy blue van, which the newly installed Krieg lighting illuminated clearly, Henri had his nine millimeter free of its shoulder holster and had fired six times before Jack had even reached for his weapon. Soon he added his and Mendenhall’s firepower at the onrushing target.

The van careened wildly as if the driver had no control. The two agents had barely avoided being crushed as the van sped past their checkpoint and the wooden barriers that the FBI had installed. The wood shattered and the two men rolled free. Bullets slammed into the windshield as the van cleared the security checkpoint a hundred yards from the building. Henri had already expended a clip and had placed a new one into the Glock and continued his rapid fire at the oncoming threat.

Collins lowered his weapon to reload but before he did he could see the dark shape of the driver as he fought the wheel of the van. The man was wide-eyed and terrified as the van hurtled beyond the running FBI agents as they piled from their field vans and into the rain.

“Wheels!” Jack yelled and immediately Henri and Will adjusted their fire. They were satisfied to see the bullets striking the old and broken asphalt that lined the waterway. Rubber was starting to shred from the front right tire and sent the van careening to the right. It bounced off an old pier piling and then rebounded back into the roadway. The van rode on two wheels as the force of the turn threw the screaming driver to the floor of the van.

Finally the right front wheel sheared off the front axle and the van screamed past the three men after hitting the crumbling facade of building 117. Jack jumped free as Will and Henri kept firing into the glass and engine compartment of the FBI van just as it zoomed by. The engine compartment exploded in a gouge of flame as the van careened back away from the building. The van then hit a pier piling and jumped into the rainy night air. The van struck the water and immediately started to founder. The spew of water into the broken windows sent geysers into the air.

As FBI field agents started running forward as Jack was just standing after throwing himself onto the ground, when he was once again knocked off his feet and flipped over until he slammed into the redbrick of building 117. The detonation was so powerful that Farbeaux and Mendenhall were tossed from the stoop of the old building until they too were slammed into the old facade. The wall of water inundated the building, pier, and dry dock area of building 117. The wave hit Jack and he was washed away like he had been caught in a flash flood. The two FBI operation vans were caught in the artificial tsunami and slammed into the vacant building 115 where they were crushed underneath tons of water from the river. The running field agents were caught just as the wall of water slammed into the protective river-wall that lined the roadway. Parts of the old building started crumbling into the white water as the river started to calm.

The geyser that erupted from the water traveled seven hundred feet in height before the wall of water had started to expand, freeing itself from the cold waters of the East River. Collins was washed backward toward the still roiling river and when he thought he was being whisked into the water, hands grabbed him and pulled him to safety. Jack spat foul-tasting water from his mouth and then looked up and saw Will Mendenhall with a serious gash on his head, and the arm he had broken in Antarctica was hanging limp at his side. Henri was spitting blood as he made sure Jack was breathing and then he ran to help some of the field agents as they struggled to stand. The rain masked the sounds of men moaning in pain from the underwater concussion that had rent the air around the oldest section of the navy yard.

Will pulled Jack to his feet and he shook out some of the cobwebs.

“That was one hell of a punch,” Will said as he pulled Jack to higher ground as the waters receded back into the East River. His bad arm was now working again as the injury was only temporary in numbing his extremity. He rotated to make sure he didn’t break it.

“What in the hell was packed into that damn thing?” Collins asked as he felt for the nine millimeter that was no longer there. He angrily pulled his sport coat free and tossed it onto the top step of the stoop. Then he heard the sirens. He took Will’s arm and pushed him toward the door. “See if Jenks and the Traveler are okay. Then lock up and allow no one inside. We’ll get the fire and police departments looking in the wrong place for now, but they’re not stupid, they may believe that building was the intended target.”

“Right.” Will quickly entered the broken building.

Henri and the FBI agent-in-charge, Williamson, the Event Group operative, quickly formulated a plan just as the navy yard fire brigade showed up and were quickly followed by both the FDNY and NYPD. The place was starting to look like ground zero and that was attention Jack and his team had to avoid at all costs. They just didn’t have the time for lengthy national security debates. Jack allowed the FBI to taint the trail and explain that a van filled with methamphetamine liquid exploded after trying to get by the FBI investigative team. The hard part would be getting Williamson’s own field team to go along. Thus far the Event Group plan was in shambles. No second signal for the original doorway to lock on to, and now there was someone who wanted the Wellsian Doorway kept on a more private basis and was willing to kill fifty federal agents to do it.

Jack ran to the river and looked at the settling water and saw the bodyguard Julien as he stood wide-eyed in the rain where he thought he was unobserved. The other two were busily speaking beside him. They were animated as the larger man stared out at the spot the van had exploded. Then he saw Jack looking at him and before the colonel could move, Julien and his two companions turned away and vanished into the night. Jack turned and then headed for the heavily damaged building 117.

Jack found Will tending to a gash on Jenks’s head as he avoided the smashed and shattered glass from the viewing gallery. Mendenhall nodded toward the Traveler, who was looking through the broken window frame at the water that had cascaded into the PIT from the river. The explosion had ripped a hole in the seawall that protected the navy yard from the raising and the lowering of tides. The base of the building had survived two hundred years of rot and decay only to be smashed by what amounted to an underwater depth charge that smashed the ancient wood and concrete pilings. Collins could see that Moira Mendelsohn was in shock as the water bubbled and rolled over the equipment it had taken her a lifetime to design and build.

Sparks momentarily flew from a bank of old computer panels and several of the old spools of magnetic tape blew free from their cabinets and splashed into the rising waters.

“I am sorry.”

Jack heard the words and he felt the woman maybe wasn’t sorry for the loss of the doorway, but for the lost chance at helping them get their man back from the past. Even though she had informed them that the doorway needed that second signal to lock on to, she had not given up on the vast possibilities. She took a deep breath and it came out as a sigh.

“Ma’am, are you hurt?” the colonel asked as he leaned over for a look. He reached down and retrieved her blanket and spread it over her exposed legs. Jack’s eyes locked on the numerical tattoo that had been brutally applied in greenish-blue ink. She saw him looking and she slowly pulled the shawl closer to her body. She nodded, indicating that she was all right. Her eyes went back to the rising waters covering her life’s work. “You need to tell me who your enemies are.” Jack saw the stunned look on Jenks’s face as he removed the cigar from his mouth and stopped Will from tending his cut as he strained to hear what the woman had to say.

“I have no more enemies, Colonel Collins. A woman my age actually becomes more secure the older she gets simply through the assault of time. Old age makes for an exceptional ally in avoiding enemies from the past.”

“How about out of time?”

She smiled. “I am not following you, Colonel.”

“Who doesn’t want this machine falling into hands other than yours?”

Moira turned her chair and then faced Jack. She watched his eyes for a moment and then shook her head. “Perhaps you should check your end of that equation, Colonel, not mine.”

“Your bodyguards mysteriously vanished after the attack — why?”

“Julien and the others have left me?” she asked, a momentary look of panic filling her expression.

Jack remained silent as she thought and he realized that the information had truly stunned her. She looked away and Collins saw the tough old woman’s lips tremble. He placed a hand on her shoulder and then moved off to Will and Jenks.

“Look, can you duplicate that design if you had all of the specs?” he asked Jenks in a low tone as he watched Madam Mendelsohn move back to the broken viewing glass and stare down at her submerged doorway.

Jenks also watched the Traveler and then placed the cigar back into his mouth as he allowed Will to apply a gauze pad and tape to his cut.

“Yeah, if I had ten years and about three billion dollars, you bet,” he growled, and then tossed the cigar stub away. He stood and went to the viewing window and looked out. “No, our only shot was right there,” he said, pointing to the rising waters. “So I suggest you get some pumps in here and some engineers and get that leak sealed up tight. Me and Ginny will figure something out after we dry everything off.”

“Ginny and you will figure what out, Harold?” The voice made Jenks turn. He smiled and then quickly caught himself and spat onto the wet carpet. “Classy as always,” she said as she saw Jack and Will and nodded. Then her eyes fell on the Traveler and she quickly made her way to the electric wheelchair.

“That we maybe can salvage…”

Jenks’s words trailed off as Virginia Pollock kneeled down on the wet floor and faced Moira.

“Dr. Mendelsohn?”

Moira looked up and her smile grew as this was the first time in her life that someone from the outside world had addressed her as “Doctor.”

“Yes,” she answered as Virginia took her old and silken hand into her own.

“I have read your thesis on the alternating poles of influence in regards to ion particle research — an amazing piece that I use quite often in my courses on light-emitting and amplification lenses.”

“I didn’t think anyone had access to my old work.”

Virginia looked up at Jack with a questioning look. “She hasn’t met Xavier and Europa as yet?”

Collins shook his head. “Just Dr. Morales, not Europa.”

“Well, suffice it to say I can’t wait to get into your head about certain things regarding your research and the practical application of your work. I need to know so much. The mission into the past, I would love to see the records on those.”

The smile vanished from Moira as she eased her hands free of Virginia’s. The move was caught by all. Jack suspected Moira was hiding something huge but for now his only concern was the repair of the doorway and its application in assisting them getting Everett back home. And in the middle of all of that they now had a mystery concerning who would be willing to kill federal agents to stop the doorway from being compromised.

“All of my notes have been lost over the years. I’m afraid the only record of mission parameters is in here,” she said, pointing an old finger to her temple.

“Master Chief, get the assistant director up-to-date. Moira, you and I need to speak after we get this thing moving. Right now I have to see how much of our cover story has bitten the dust.”

“Do you mean the problems outside?” Virginia asked as she straightened up and looked around at the devastation caused by the suicide attack.

“Yes,” Jack answered.

“Well, it looks like the FBI is under attack by the civil authorities representing the Borough of Brooklyn. Agent Williamson said to tell you they are being pulled off the detail and turning the investigation over to the NYPD vice squad, ATF, and the DEA.”

“Damn, I have to speak with Niles. We’re going to need some special interference ran for us.”

“You mean we’re going to add another criminal charge to our growing list?” Virginia asked.

“Something like that, yeah. Now, we need your teams to get in here and start cleaning this mess up so we can see just how screwed we really are. Then the priority is to get the linkup with Morales and Europa up and running on a dependable basis. We need her computing prowess here ASAP. Will, get Ryan to grab us six field security teams out here from Nevada, I want our own people managing security from here on out.” Collins looked at his watch. “We have ninety hours left before the president will have to explain to a lot of angry agencies and cities why he is acting so slowly on this. And it’s now a lot larger problem than it was just an hour ago.”

Jack turned and left the gallery and caught the lift to the top floor. All the while he felt a helplessness he hadn’t felt since he saw Everett push him away and then vanish into a wormhole.

The Event Group was losing its race with time and technology.

9

The Russian didn’t exactly feel out of place in the financial district as he rode the plastic-lined elevator on his way to the thirty-fifth floor of the Halas building, as money never, ever, frightened him, nor did the men and women who had it in droves. The fortress of glass, white marble, and steel ugliness set itself apart from the gleaming spires that replaced the old World Trade Center, which had come to an abrupt end on September 11, 2001. He looked at the three Wall Street types next to him as they stepped off on the floor below his destination. He knew very few people ever rode the elevator to the topmost floor. He smiled as the doors closed at the haughty mannerisms the departed men had about them, which he found distinctly funny. After all, he mused, we are practically in the same business—the procurement of money and the acquisition of power. He punched in the private code on the keypad and the elevator continued upward one more flight.

The doors opened and the small Russian stepped free of the richly paneled car and saw the two security guards flanking either side of the double glass doors. The first rose from his small desk and confronted the visitor. He held out his hand and the Russian smiled and held open his black coat and sport jacket to show the guards that he carried no firearms. He smirked at the naiveté of the investment firm. He lowered his hands and the second guard issued him a visitor’s pass. The small plastic card was computer coded and it allowed him access to the thirty-fifth floor of one of the most advanced and profitable investment firms in the financial world.

“Mr. Frisch is expecting you. His assistant will escort you. Sir, your visiting privileges extend only to the boardroom.”

The Russian smiled at the seriousness of the two guards. He had seen no less than three alternate ways of entering this so-called secure haven in less than the two minutes it took to ride the elevator to his richly appointed destination. But that was information he would file away for another day.

“Mr. Jones, please come with me,” said a matronly woman in a gray suit. He smiled at her overstated manliness and at the tie she wore. American women in their struggles to be competitive drove them to extremes, in his humble opinion.

The Russian saw the boardroom he had been in many times. He was the only person inside the vast organization to actually see and have an audience with the men behind the curtain, the wizards, as he liked to refer to them. He stepped inside and saw the lone figure of a man sitting at the head of one of the longer boardroom tables the immigrant Russian had ever seen. The gray-haired man looked up from the newspaper and nodded that the visitor should sit.

“Ask Mr. Jodle to join us please, Mrs. Abernathy.”

“He has been notified, sir.” The woman closed both doors as she backed out with a hard look at the man visiting her boss. She obviously knew of his special talents.

The older man, in his late fifties, looked up and then slapped the morning edition of The New York Times.

“Care to explain this failure?” the man asked as he stood and went to the sidebar and poured himself a cup of coffee. The Russian noticed the coffee service was probably worth all of the meager salary he ever made inside the Moscow Police Department. He also noticed coffee was not offered to him. The Russian sat down with a smirk. The chairman of the board noticed but chose not to say anything as he returned to his expensive high-backed chair that appeared to have been custom designed to look down at the other eighteen chairs around the table.

The door opened and a well-dressed man in an expensive three-piece suit strode in and without a greeting to the visitor sat down next to the chairman of the board. He folded his hands in front of him and then glared toward the small man at the end of the long table. Another sniff of humor from the small man as he noticed how much the well-appointed man acted like a schoolboy in front of the gray-haired chairman.

“Failure?” he asked, hinting at confusion.

“The police have already cleared the navy yard and proclaimed a major victory in the war on drugs inside the city. And yet, the building still stands. Madam is still breathing.”

The Russian stood and made his way to the coffee service and poured himself some coffee without invitation. The younger partner was about to say something but the older man placed a hand on his and stilled him from the complaint. The Russian went back to the far end of the expansive table after pouring an inordinate amount of sugar into the china cup.

The visitor sipped his coffee and then placed the cup down on the polished surface. He reached into his coat pocket and produced something he placed on a water tray after removing the empty carafe, and then slid the items and the tray down the long table where it came to rest in front of the two men.

“It seems I was not told the exact situation by your young colleague.”

The older man picked up the photos from the tray. His eyes went from the Russian to the photos. They were in night-vision format and the man could see that the photographer had used a long-range camera to take the shots. They showed three men in civilian dress as they fired upon the van as it hurtled toward building 117. The other men and women in the photo all wore the distinctive FBI Windbreakers that were so recognizable to the world.

“You were told enough to complete the contract you agreed to. Now, what is so amazing about these photos?” The older man passed them to his younger partner, who had been at the attack at its outset.

“Who are those men?” he asked as he lifted the china cup to his lips and blew lightly to cool the liquid. He sipped and waited.

“FBI? How in the hell are we to know?” the younger man named Jodle said with indignity as he tossed the photos back onto the silver tray.

The Russian laughed as he set the cup back onto the table. “No, I’m afraid all of the local field agents within the five boroughs have been tagged by my people. These men are not agents of that particular law enforcement group.”

“Local police, possibly agents from Washington, who in the hell cares? Your job was to permanently shut that building down and to eliminate any possible contact between Madam and the federal authorities.”

The Russian was growing weary of the answers he was receiving. “Your man inside Miss Mendelsohn’s sphere of influence, this Julien, says that these strangers are military.”

“So, what does that have to do with this?” the older man asked as he leaned back to hear the answer. “And where is Julien? We wish to speak to him at the soonest opportunity.”

“He was rather shocked at the extreme measures for which I was contracted.” He sipped coffee and then smiled. “He’s what you would call ‘disillusioned’ at your harsh tactics. He and his men are currently under my care.”

“Bring him and the others to us. We would like to question them ourselves,” Jodle said as he tried to look intimidating but failed miserably.

Silence.

The two investments men exchanged worried looks when the Russian said nothing. But his grin said everything.

“Secrets, secrets, secrets. Some are good at keeping them, others good at learning them.”

Both men got the same gut-wrenching feeling in their stomachs at the exact same moment. The visitor pushed the coffee cup aside and then leaned forward in his chair. He fixed the two men with a knowing look.

“I guess it was divine providence that these men you so casually shrug off as FBI field agents shot the tires out of that van, otherwise we might have destroyed one of the most valuable pieces of equipment in the history of the world, and the person responsible for its construction in the same process. Leaving us poor working peasants wondering just why you gentlemen wanted to permanently stop the advancement of science. Could it be for other than humanitarian purposes? Shame on you.”

“You have been contracted to complete a job, this was not done,” the older man Frisch said with as much indignity as he could foster.

“The conditions settled upon in our previous agreement will have to be reworded, I’m afraid.”

The statement was met with shocked silence.

“My organization has decided to wait and see just what is planned for that old building.” He stood from his chair and then buttoned his thick coat over the sport jacket. He smiled at the two men who sat looking white-faced. “Oh, and we have decided that it would be far more beneficial to speak with Madam Mendelsohn ourselves to understand better just what an amazing piece of equipment she has in her control.”

“Look, we can work out a much better and safer conclusion to this small problem.”

The small Russian fixed Jodle and Frisch with a look that now lacked the good humor of his smile.

“Safer for whom?” The look was one filled with disgust at the two very rich men. “Betrayal of one’s savior, it seemed worth far more than forty pieces of silver for some.”

The two men watched the Russian mobster leave the boardroom. The older man closed his eyes as he was seeing the secrets that drove his world come crashing back into his life. He turned to the younger man.

“You brought this man to our attention, and now he threatens blackmail at the very least, and what is far more terrifying is that now, thanks to that fool Julien, he has knowledge of the one thing that cannot ever be brought to the attention of the authorities.”

The younger man felt his prestige within this firm being driven from him.

“I will—”

“Fix this, Jodle, fix it or we all go down, and we cannot allow that.”

The young partner watched the chairman angrily rise and leave him sitting there. He looked up as the senior partner turned and faced him.

“There is no telling what that Russian is thinking. Blackmail may be the least. He may try for something that may be far more profitable than that.”

Joshua Jodle felt his heart fall to his gut as he turned for the double doors of the boardroom as the old man angrily called after him.

“He’s going after the doorway.”

Jack saw the last of the FBI close up shop and leave. Special Agent-in-Charge Williamson apologized to Collins, but there was nothing he could do since the locals claimed jurisdiction when it was proven that drug manufacturing was not the reason behind the FBI involvement. The remains of the van, very little to speak of, were raised by the NYPD and FDNY just as dawn broke over the city. Jack watched it all from the privacy of the office windows. The last of the police also finally finished after a brief inspection of the surrounding buildings. The PIT inside building 117 was closed and the fire department skimmed right over it in their perusal of the building. A sigh of relief could be had by all.

An hour after the overcast skies allowed enough light in to see, Collins saw the long line of vans as it progressed through the spot where the stolen van had crashed through the FBI barricade the night before. Jack walked down the steps and waited.

Niles Compton was assisted from the lead van and Jack moved to meet him.

“Quite a night in old Brooklyn, I understand?” he asked as he settled the crutch under his arm. Collins took him by the elbow for added support.

“More than we ever bargained for.”

“How bad is it?” Niles asked briefly, stopping as the other white vans pulled in behind the first.

“The explosive, an exotic one at that, took out the electrical lines under the river. No power to six of the seven buildings, including ours. But that’s the better part of the news,” Jack said as he shook his head at the devastation of learning what he had in the hours leading to Niles and the Event Group technical team’s arrival. “The attack also took out the base foundation of the building, flooding the PIT where the doorway was secured. Virginia said it looks hopeless, at least until she can get her full nuclear forensics and Jenks’s engineering teams in there.”

“Well, maybe I can help with that part at least.”

Jack saw the technicians as they started unloading material and boxes from the inside. That was when he saw Sarah and Anya. His eyes went wider when he saw Alice Hamilton giving instructions to the more than seventy engineers. He looked questioningly at Compton, who smiled and shook his head. Jack knew Niles would be inundated with the requests of at least two people who wanted to be included on the field teams and he knew they had forwarded those requests through the office of one Alice Hamilton. Jack knew without being told that Niles had held his ground but caved in at least allowing the two women on site during the mission.

“I knew you were afraid of Alice. You traded her their mission status to be on the home team in Brooklyn, didn’t you?” Jack said as Niles turned and started for the door.

“Yep.”

An old meeting room originally intended for naval engineers in the previous century had been cleaned and a dozen large monitors installed. Three of these monitors had a view of the PIT, which had been opened since the all-clear was given by the FDNY. The silent men and women sat around the elongated and very chipped-up Formica table and stared at the water-damaged devastation below their feet. Men and women technicians had pumped the remaining water from the PIT but most could see that the doorway would never function again in the shape it was in.

“First order of business,” Niles said as he rapped his knuckles on the table to get everyone’s attention. “Securing this site, Jack?”

“I assigned Colonel Farbeaux to that task.” Jack looked across the table at the Frenchman, who had conveniently arranged his seating assignment to sit between Anya and Sarah. He smiled at Jack for only a brief moment. He pulled up his notes on the electronic pad. “Henri?” Collins looked questioningly at Sarah, who shrugged her shoulders and then winked at Jack, which got her a return frown.

“With the assistance of Dr. Morales, I have learned that we may have a break in who was responsible.” Henri tapped another button on his pad and a monitor came to life. “This is a Russian immigrant whose real name is a mystery, but the NYPD has dubbed him the ‘Bolshevik.’ Goes by the name of Jones. Not very original, but most Russian mob types aren’t known for their originality in any areas except murder. That is this man’s specialty.”

The picture on the monitor was of a man with a black beard and one who seemed very jovial in the surveillance clip stolen by Europa from the NYPD.

“What led you to him?” Niles asked the Frenchman.

“Probability. Nothing happens in Brooklyn without this man knowing or being responsible for it. He is a former police captain with the Moscow Metropolitan Police. Very skilled. I once read a dossier on him back in the good old days when intelligence services could track him. As corrupt a lawman as there ever was. The man is a killer and is known to use nothing but military-grade weaponry and explosives.”

“But you’re not a hundred percent sure that he’s responsible?” Compton persisted.

“I know you people would like absolutes, but you’ll have to trust my instinct on this. This was well planned and very nearly flawlessly executed. Yes, I’m sure he at least knows about it and who did it.”

“I concur with the colonel,” Jack said as he studied the face on the monitor.

“Why?” Virginia asked out of curiosity.

“Let’s just say I believe he has insight to men like this, at least from Henri’s unique perspective.”

Chuckles sounded from around the table.

“Okay, get our friend here a link with Europa and get this man found and out of our way. I don’t give a damn about his reasoning for now. I just need this project secured. Needless to say the president was briefed this morning on what happened here last night and knows we are involved. He is still allowing us his new leeway time for oversight, so let’s not waste it. The directors of the FBI and CIA will soon start adding the two plus two here and begin asking questions the president could never begin to answer.”

Henri nodded and then shut off the program from his electronic pad.

At that moment the door opened and a Marine allowed Moira Mendelsohn into the room. The motorized chair stopped just inside the door. Niles, with difficulty, limped over and stood in front of her and introduced himself. Jack and the others were clearly seeing the respect Niles had for the Traveler. When Niles moved back to allow the Traveler inside several others, including Anya, stood to greet the great mind in the room. Moira’s inquisitive brown eyes went to Jason Ryan and she had to hang on to his hand a moment longer to examine his tattoo better. He half smiled and then pulled his hand away and sat next to Mendenhall, who held back a snicker at Jason’s facial design.

“What do you have, Virginia?” Niles asked as he watched Moira move in next to Jack and Charlie Ellenshaw.

“Professor Mendelsohn inspected what’s left and even with Europa’s help, as it was explained by our host, it would take at least seven months for her to reprogram the system and repair the water damage.”

“Not knowing just what this Europa is and its limitations, I would have to stick to my estimate,” Moira said as she took in the people around the table.

Virginia lowered her head and Jenks patted her leg, which elicited a kind look. The room was silent. Jenks slid his estimate for the loss of power lines and other damage to the local grid supplying power to the building as also a cause for concern, but now it seemed a moot point so he remained silent.

“Even if the doorway were operational and the power supply problem sorted out, we have no connecting doorway for our signal to lock on to,” Virginia said with a nod toward the Traveler.

“If I may ask a question that I am sure is readily known by most in this room,” Moira said as she faced the Group, “but if you had a repaired doorway, or maybe even a duplicate, second doorway, how far back, dimensionally speaking, are we talking about?”

Looks were exchanged and the room became just as silent as before. Niles cleared his throat and then nodded for Virginia to answer the question.

“Approximately two hundred and sixty-five thousand years. Exact location, unknown, the location we have — Antarctica.”

Moira was silent as the outrageous answer stunned her. She did notice the young dark-haired woman lower her head and then the smaller woman saying something to her softly, both expressing the bad news on their faces.

“Considerably further back than I have traveled, my dear. The astronomy calculations alone would take a supercomputer a full three years to even get a bearing on a location that far back.” She shook her head and then used her wheelchair’s toggle to turn away from the group of curious eyes as she thought about the difficulties involved in a dimensional transfer that far back.

As for the group, none wanted to say they had the most powerful supercomputer ever devised at their disposal, but what would that serve? What the Traveler was trying to explain went over the heads of most everyone in the room. “I hope someday you will allow me to know how the subject of this far-flung dimensional jump managed to achieve this.”

“It happened during the recent war.”

She turned in her chair and looked at Compton with excitement on her face.

“The wormholes?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I knew that would be the only way they could get here from such a distance. They actually time-warped here?”

“Yes,” Niles said. “Is that helpful to you?”

They all saw the sadness in the Traveler’s face. She shook her head. She looked at the fallen face of the woman with jet-black hair as she swallowed hard and then held the smaller woman’s hand tighter. Moira wanted to reach out to the young woman but held back as she knew she had not delivered the news that was so badly needed to be heard.

“We did uncover something concerning our Traveler friend here,” Master Chief Jenks said, shrugging off the warning elbow poke he received from Virginia.

“What is that?” Niles asked, not wanting any more bad news at the moment.

Jenks tossed a small device onto the table with a clang. The wires leading from it looked like it was attached to a bomb, but then most saw the old clock face and digital readout were blank. Jenks quickly connected the wires to an adapter and then plugged the device in and the clock face flared to red and blue brightness. Moira was the only person in the room besides Jenks and Virginia to know what it was.

“The time stamp,” Moira said as she eased in closer to the table as Jenks picked up the small timepiece.

“Time stamp?” Niles asked.

“Yes,” answered the Traveler. “It records the date and time of the displacement jump.”

“Do you remember the very last date of your final dimensional shift?” Virginia asked, now curious to hear her explanation.

“Of course, September 25, 1973. The time should be frozen at zero three forty-five hundred hours and fifty-one seconds on that date.”

Jenks held the recorder up so all could see: 05/17/1987 0120 hours and 22 seconds.

All eyes went to the Traveler, who was in deep thought as she read and then reread the numerical display.

“That cannot be correct. Maybe the water damage?”

“It’s a sealed unit, ma’am, you know that,” Jenks said as he sat back in his chair, not feeling too good about confronting the Traveler with a false statement on her last use of the Wellsian Doorway.

“I have no explanation for that.”

They could all see the consternation that Jenks and Virginia’s revelation had caused the old woman. She lowered her head in thought.

Niles was about to speak when the main monitor that had been installed flared to life. On the screen was Xavier Morales as he sat in the clean room in Nevada.

“What have you got, Doctor?” Compton asked, knowing nothing could assuage the news they had already received.

“Europa may have something, a little out of the ordinary, but you may wish to investigate on your end.”

Moira looked up into the young face of the man she had met earlier.

“We were poring over the original blueprints for the Brooklyn Navy Yard buildings. It took Europa to uncover the original specs for the renovations made during the sixties and seventies. It seems in late 1985 building number one-fourteen was purchased. No design specs were ever turned in by the contractor other than a sprucing up of the building. Janitorial reports mostly and some asbestos removal, nothing major.”

“What has that to do with this building?” Jack asked.

Xavier looked sad for a moment as he looked at the people gathered in Brooklyn. “It seems the building was purchased by Grenada Holdings.”

Everyone looked over at a stunned Moira Mendelsohn.

“Ms. Mendelsohn’s own corporation,” Morales finished.

“I don’t have a second property here,” she said in her defense.

“Signed by your corporate board, a Mr. Joaquim Wachowski. Europa says he is a former associate of yours, ma’am,” Xavier added, still not feeling good about placing the old woman in a corner.

Moira Mendelsohn felt physically ill.

“My God, they constructed a second doorway.”

“Who?” Niles asked as he was sorely tempted to stand and shout the question.

“Some very unscrupulous men with whom I once trusted with far too many secrets”—she looked away—“and lives.”

Questions stirred and hopes were raised, for how long this saving grace would exist, none of the Event Group knew.

“May I suggest you get someone over to building one-fourteen?” Morales said as he watched the stunned inactivity on his own monitor from Nellis.

Before anyone could issue orders, Jack had assisted Henri from his chair and along with Will and Jason, hurriedly left the room.

“Now, perhaps we better go into a little more depth on your past financial partners.” Niles was watching her as Jack and his men exited the makeshift conference room.

An angry look crossed the Traveler’s countenance. “Yes, let’s do that.”

10

Collins checked with his outside security and found that the last team of news vans and reporters had left the navy yard twenty minutes before. Jack, Will, Jason, and Henri all stood underneath the pewter skies as they examined building 114 from a distance. The 150-year-old redbrick building had its facade renovated in the eighties to make it aesthetically in line with its occupied neighbors. The owners of the property spent money on the outside to keep the navy yard development people in check, but according to Europa and Morales, refused to refurbish the inside. Europa unscrupulously uncovered the plans from the city building inspector and saw that no refurbishment of the interior was ever ordered, or at least reported. It was purely a real estate investment for the Grenada Holding Corporation and their extensive real estate portfolio.

“You say the last reporters left some time ago?” Jack asked as he took a step toward building 114 situated across from the newly flooded dry dock that separated building 114 from its sister, 117.

“According to Lance Corporal Ramirez, yes, sir,” Will answered.

Collins glanced at the rain clouds above them and acted as casual as he could.

“Well, someone with a camera seems to be lost,” he said as he walked toward the building and then stopped. The others stopped with him. Only Henri knew why. “Mr. Ryan, eleven o’clock, building one-eleven, rooftop, two men, one with a camera and one observing,” he said without turning to look at the abandoned ghost of building 111.

“Correction, three men total, two of them are armed with more than a camera,” Henri said as he reached down and acted as though he was looking at something.

“Jesus, how in the hell can you two see that far?” Will asked as he was always amazed at Jack’s prowess in spotting danger. Needless to say Henri’s ability came as no surprise at all.

“Be careful you two,” Jack said as he finally saw the third man that the Frenchman had seen. “I need answers, not dead men — well, if they’re reporters, that’s a judgment call,” Jack said with his wry humor due to his experiences with reporters.

“Right,” Jason said as he and Will left Henri and Jack and made their way to the back of the old buildings and then quickly vanished.

“Shall we?” Jack said as they made their way to building 114. Henri gestured graciously for the colonel to lead the way.

Collins felt the weight of the nine-millimeter weapon in his shoulder holster but knew as long as they were being observed he wanted no obvious intelligence for those watching. They would have to guess at their armed or unarmed status.

As they approached they saw that the building was actually in far worse shape than its neighbors. The bottom row of windows were completely lined with broken safety glass and the brick had not been sandblasted since 1984. Large and flowing rust stains scarred the facade and weeds grew between her brick-and-mortar foundation and entwined the wooden structure above. Henri didn’t feel it, but Jack took an exasperated breath when he realized they were probably barking up the wrong tree. He made his way up the crumbling concrete steps leading to the front offices that had once witnessed the launch of the USS Arizona from the very same dry dock facility fronting the five buildings on this end of the yard.

“I do not believe this is much of a going concern,” Henri said as he walked through the shattered front door with Jack in the lead. Once out of sight of any onlookers on rooftops, Jack pulled out his pistol and Henri, with raised brows, followed suit.

Collins eased over a fallen file cabinet and saw papers and old files scattered across the floor. In the far corner Farbeaux was startled by a large wharf rat that scurried across the debris on the old green-tiled floor. Jack saw a place where a secretary and several others worked that looked as if it hadn’t seen a live person since the 1960s. Jack lowered his weapon and then looked at Henri with concern as he holstered the Glock.

“Seeing as how the design of the two buildings in question are so similar, it would stand to reason they would secure anything they were trying to hide just as they did in building one-seventeen.”

“Covertly speaking, is that what you would do, Colonel?” Jack asked, knowing how Henri’s criminal mind worked.

Farbeuax also holstered his weapon and then smiled. “No, if I were to build a second doorway that I wished kept secret from my benefactor, I would have built it in Wyoming.”

“I guess they are not quite as accomplished as you,” Jack said, and then made his way over the trash of the front offices and walked out through the door marked MANUFACTURING DEPARTMENT in chipping red paint.

“No one is as accomplished as myself, my dear colonel.”

The hope Jack had been feeling a few minutes before was quickly dashed when he saw the empty space where you could fit an old World War II battle cruiser. Rats scurried hurriedly from one place to another as the weak light filtered through the dirty and painted-over broken windows.

“Colonel?” Henri said as he nodded to the darkened far corner. Jack saw the heavy elevator lift with several old wooden filing cabinets overturned and resting in front of the old gates. “It only makes sense that if one doorway is closed, go to another, in the exact same place the first one was hidden.”

Jack nodded and they both started moving the detritus from the floor in front of the lift. Henri reached out and flipped the light switch two times with no result.

“Afraid of the dark?” Jack quipped as he slid the old-fashioned wooden gate up and then the steel screen aside as he stepped into the lift.

“No, I’m afraid of what’s hiding in that darkness, Colonel. That is how I’ve managed to stay alive for so long in a business that does not encourage active and peaceful retirement.”

Jack pulled out his gun again and waited for Henri. “I see your point.”

“Well, no power, let’s hope this thing still has gravity brakes.”

Jack reached out and lowered the wooden gate and then slid the steel doors closed. He found the elevator’s annunciator handle and then pushed it forward. Henri ducked when a loud clanking sound was heard and then the sound of a hundred pigeons below alighting as the noise drove them to flight somewhere in the abyss below. The lift started to gravity-descend to the basement area. Both men flinched when the elevator became bathed in white, clean light from the fluorescent tubes lining the elevator shaft. Collins was suddenly feeling better about their odds.

“The building has its own power source. This one should be as dark as building one-seventeen,” Henri said as he eyed the passing concrete of the reinforced shaft. “The explosion from the attack severed all of the conduit lines coming in under the river.”

“This is considerably deeper than the first,” Collins said as he watched the hundreds of feet of reinforced concrete slide by as they continued down.

Finally the huge car started to slow. Jack knew that the lift was governed by something other than gravity as the car sensed it was close to the bottom of the long shaft. Henri looked at Jack and he nodded at the Frenchman as he pulled open the gate and then slid the wooden doors up. He scanned the area in front of them and saw an exact duplicate of the viewing gallery that now lay smashed in building 117. The only difference between the two was the plush design and creature comforts. Two wet bars sat at each end of the gallery and would serve the twenty seats that sat arrayed over the gallery’s clamshell floor below them. Henri smiled and then looked at Jack and holstered his own Glock.

Collins examined the gallery that looked as if it came out of a gothic novel where doctors sat observing a world-famous surgeon strut his knowledge below them upon the surgical stage. But who was it that occupied those chairs to watch the world of the impossible as it unfolded in front of them? Jack saw the plastic cover on one of the observation seats, which was different from the first in building 117. This button was situated on the arm of an ornate chair as if whoever sat there was in total control and wanted the others in the gallery to know it. Jack sensed power there. Whoever they were dealing with was smart and resourceful. As he approached the gallery the dim mood lighting came on and the soft hum of power generation was somewhere below their feet. Jack stopped and looked at Henri, who pointed at the walls and the glass-enclosed sensors there.

“You tripped the motion detectors.” The Frenchman raised a brow as he studied the sensors after standing on a chair. “Not only did we switch on the power”—he tore the darkened glass fixture from the wall and tossed it to Collins—“we have alerted whoever is responsible for this. It’s also a silent alarm.”

Jack shook his head and then placed the sensor in the chair. He quickly raised the plastic cover on the arm of the chair and with one last concerned breath he hit the switch.

The lights dimmed and the silent world around them was shattered by an alarm that blared like a diving submarine. They both cringed at the loudness of the machinery hidden somewhere in the depths of the building. It was obvious someone had lied to the building planners, inspectors, and navy yard development corporation — this was most definitely renovated far beyond anything in the ancient shipyard.

“Please stand away from section twenty-three,” a mechanical voice sounded from the speakers overhead. The announcement made both Henri and Jack momentarily believe they had been joined by the very men who had built the facility. “Please stand away from section twenty-three.”

Suddenly the floor below them started turning like a record on a player. Jack smiled as he knew exactly what he was seeing. The floor turned and they heard another motor kick in somewhere and then the floor started to separate and begin to corkscrew into the depths of building 114.

“All technical staff please initiate shielding procedures. Set condition Blue, nuclear safeguards are now in effect.”

“Oh,” Henri said as he and Jack exchanged worried looks. Jack stood at the glass and saw the spotlights as they illuminated the descending floor below the thick viewing window. As they became exposed, the walls were lined in white plastic much like the Event Group complex interior. Collins knew that plastic was the best electrical grounding you could get out of most building materials. The walls were also lined in blue-colored fluorescents, which illuminated as they became exposed. What worried him were the nuclear triangular warning symbols that lined the shaft as it went lower into the bowels of Brooklyn.

“My God,” Henri exclaimed when he saw what was buried underneath building 114.

Jack smiled for the first time in what seemed like days as he took in the scene. He removed the secured cell from his jacket and then punched in only one number.

“Boss, it looks like we may be in business. Start Dr. Morales and Europa on finding that second signal we can lock on to.” Jack shut the phone down and then looked at Henri.

Farbeaux watched as the world of tomorrow’s science came into its full glory. Glass, steel, and white ceramic glass gleamed in the controlled atmosphere of the laboratory. Row upon row of consoles sat silently waiting for orders that would send a traveler through to a past that had long vanished.

Then Collins and Farbeaux lost their approving smiles almost as quickly as they had appeared.

“Shit,” Jack mumbled as the lights came to full illumination below.

“May I suggest you inform Commander Ryan and Captain Mendenhall the situation has become much more serious?”

Collins reached for his cell phone as his eyes scanned the console stations below. Each station had a white lab — coated technician sitting at it. For his part Henri looked around and his weapon was no longer held without killing intent.

The gleaming white skeletons stared at consoles that had been the last thing any of the twenty-six technicians would ever see again.

Only the gleaming surfaces of the duplicate Wellsian Doorway that sat before them in all of its gleaming glory had been witness to their sudden and brutal execution.

Julien felt his bladder release in a flood of wetness that he could not hide. Thus far the five men had not laid a hand on him, but their mere presence made him wish he were safely in the company of Madam Mendelsohn. He twisted the plastic tie that bound his hands behind him and felt the slicing pain as the sharp edges cut into his wrists. The five brutes watching him had nothing to say to his protests over his treatment. He knew he should never have trusted the men Madam Mendelsohn had expunged from her business and her life.

He heard a door open behind him and the five men stepped away from the man in the wooden chair. He looked around but his view was limited. He saw beer kegs and other items associated with a drinking establishment. He twisted but could not see who entered the room. He heard a chair as it was moved behind him and wondered if he was about to receive a blind-sided blow he wouldn’t soon recover from. He was far more worried when he saw who had the chair.

The man known as Mr. Jones, or more precisely, the man Julien knew as Alexi Doshnikov, turned the old wooden chair backward and then sat down. He smiled as he looked at the frightened Julien and then placed his crossed arms over the back of the chair and smiled. The Russian reached out and patted his right leg as he calmly and slowly lit a large cigar.

“Why am I here? I told you everything you wanted to know.”

The small Russian kept his smile and then removed the cigar. He slowly blew smoke into the frightened man’s face. His smile grew and then he looked up and gestured for one of his henchmen and he was handed a bottle of spring water.

“You must try this water, it’s from the Ukraine. Artisan.” He clenched the cigar in his teeth and then uncapped the green bottle and held it to Julien’s lips and he drank. “Yes, that’s good stuff, isn’t it?” He pulled the bottle away, spilling a little on Julien’s shirt. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said as he handed the bottle back to the bodyguard. He used a silk handkerchief to wipe the water from the shirt. “I do have one more inquiry for you, my friend,” he said as he removed the kerchief and then tossed the just-lit cigar away. Doshnikov leaned over and pulled up the man’s left shirt sleeve. He saw the numbers on the forearm and smiled. He lowered the shirt sleeve and then fixed the former bodyguard with his most disarming smile.

“I don’t know anything else,” Julien said as he watched the Russian start to place the handkerchief back into his coat and then thought better of it and threw it on the floor in mock disgust.

“I can see by your numerical artwork on your arm that you have been through some hard times. I do not wish to add to those… distant memories.” He held a hand out and then one of his men placed a photo into it. The Russian held the picture up so Julien could see. “Which one of these five men can operate the machine you have dubbed the Wellsian Doorway?”

Julien looked at the picture and then at the Russian. “The chairman placed the responsibility for the doorway into the hands of that man.” He nodded at the photo, making the Russian lose patience.

“There are four men, which one?”

“The younger man, Jodle.”

“Aw, this makes sense. I find that man most disagreeable, but one who would protect a valuable asset with fevered purpose. I know the type. I have been surrounded by them my entire professional career.”

“Most do find him dissagreable,” Julien said with a faltering smile, hoping the comment would assuage the Russian. He felt better when the forced smile was returned, he just hoped it was more genuine than his own.

“Yes, you understand completely.” He turned to the five other men lining the basement of the Russian’s nightclub and handed the picture back. “You see, I told you these people are far more cooperative than any of you would believe.” He patted Julien’s leg once more and then stood up and twirled the chair around and moved it aside. He buttoned his sport coat and smiled down at Julien. “And you have actually witnessed this machine in working order?”

“Yes, it is an exact model of the first doorway. It works, I know.”

The Russian smiled wider as he rubbed at his gleaming black beard. He knew the large man was telling the truth because he had seen something few ever saw — he saw the tattoo. This time he patted the man on his shoulder as he made eye contact with one of his men.

“I admire you, my friend, to overcome so much and to be so forthcoming in regard to my inquiries. I salute your past, and I have planned for you a brighter and far less frightening future.” With one last smile the man known as Mr. Jones, aka Alexi Doshnikov, left the basement as he whistled an old Russian folk song.

Julien watched him go and was expecting his bonds to be cut. That was why he wasn’t expecting the send-off that he did finally receive. The plastic bag fell over his head and face and was pulled tight.

The last thing Julien ever saw was the light dimming as the world slipped away in the distorted and obscured view of the plastic bag.

At thirty-one years of age, one of the youngest survivors of a cursed event that claimed the lives of over six million members of his race, had finally succumbed to time and the new brutality of the modern world.

Will eased the picked lock from the back of the old building and pushed the door open. He stopped and listened for movement and heard none. His eyes went to the front and he saw Jason Ryan as he advanced into the darkened warehouse. In the diffused light entering the renovated building from the outside, both could see the hundreds of pallets of plastic-covered, newly made boxes. They were flat and the area must have housed over a million of them.

Jason used the muzzle of the Glock to indicate a stairwell. Will saw one also on his end. Both men made their way to the stairs opposite each other and eased themselves into the darkness. Mendenhall reached the top and saw the trapdoor. The broken lock was a clear indication that the men on the roof more than likely didn’t lease or own the property. Will used his elbow to ease the trapdoor up, hoping a loud squeak didn’t follow its opening. His eyes quickly fell upon the two men standing at the false facade of the building and they were not even attempting to hide their presence. The colonel and Farbeaux must have disappeared into building 114 and that was the reason they were so casual and indifferent.

Before Mendenhall could react, the door was pulled from his hand and the muzzle of a small automatic weapon was pressed against the top of his head.

“Tell me, little groundhog, do you see your shadow?” the voice said with a thick Russian accent.

“God, I hate smug assholes with witty little sayings,” Will mumbled as he was roughly pulled out of the trapdoor space by the collar. He straightened and saw the stockless version of the world-renowned AK-47 leveled at his chest with two unnaturally large and bearded men smiling at him.

“Oh, look, little groundhog has a roommate,” said the second man as he nodded toward the far end of the green-painted roof. Will frowned as he saw Ryan, who was also being pushed out of that side. He was then poked in the liver and pushed toward the two men taking pictures with a telephoto lens. “You may stop that, Victor, we may have another source of information — well, two actually,” the man said as he nodded at the weapon-wielding man and Will was pushed toward the skylight where he met Ryan. “These two don’t seem to be very good at their jobs,” the man finished and the other seven men who had appeared on the roof laughed. The man examined the intruders’ two Glocks, and eyed closely the strange cell phones. He pocketed the phones and handed another man the weapons.

“This is embarrassing,” Jason said as he counted his way to the conclusion that they stood no chance at fighting their way out of this one. He looked down and over the side of the building and saw that there were no witnesses on this side of the navy yard. He felt his hope dwindle further when he saw Flushing Avenue on the other side. No, the only way was to jump over the side and fall into the busy street, dodging a fifteen-foot-high fence in the process, only to die in the street below instead of on the roof.

“Well, you’ll have to excuse us, we’ve had a hard few months,” Mendenhall said as his eyes fell on the fifteen-foot elongated skylight. His eyes went from there to Jason, who also spied the escape route. He closed his eyes and shook his head as he tried to remember just where the warehoused pallets had been stacked.

“Call down and have the van brought around.” The man in charge gestured to Will and Jason. “We have some questions to ask. You don’t mind coming with us, do you?”

“Actually, we’d rather not,” Will said with his hands raised as he stepped forward at the same moment Jason did, and then they both high-stepped into midair and gravity did the rest.

The eight Russians were so stunned they actually laughed for a moment at the stupidity of the two Americans. They briefly exchanged looks and then stepped to the broken glass and looked down in time to see Ryan and Mendenhall scrambling from the palletized boxes far below, hopping from one stack to the next lowest. The small man with the horrid face tattoo stopped, looked up, and shot the men the finger. With a wide smile he saluted and jumped to follow the black man, but not before finding out that he had hurt his backside when he jumped. He cursed and limped after the black man yelling and asking a running Mendenhall, “How come you never hurt yourself?” The Russians broke for the trapdoors on both ends.

Before, the Russian leader, who was still standing and watching his men scramble after the two escapees, didn’t realize anything amiss. The cell phones they had taken from the two Americans that he had placed in his coat pocket became a reason for major concern as both cell phones simultaneously, and on orders from Europa 1,700 miles away, issued a destruct order to the phones after she had received alternate DNA prints on the Event Group — issued cell phone marvels. The internal charge was not enough to cause an explosion, but plenty large enough to burn through the memory card and the processor. Both phones immediately started to melt inside the man’s pocket. He hurriedly ripped the two phones free and tossed them onto the roof of the building. He hissed as melted plastic stuck to his hand. The brute in charge of the surveillance detail angrily looked at the man who had the camera around his neck.

“Get that to Mr. Jones,” he said in angered Russian. Then he jabbed a finger into the chest of one of the larger killers. “Get the ground team and bring them back!” the leader called out.

The cell phones had melted to an unrecognizable glob of black plastic and the man angrily kicked at their smoldering remains.

Will smashed through the front doors with a limping Jason close behind. They both felt naked without their pistols as they frantically looked around for an easy escape route back to the main drive of the shipyard.

“Look, that van!” Jason said as he and Will broke for the white-panel van sitting in the small drive beside building 111.

They were fifteen feet from the van when its sliding door opened and three more men spilled out of the interior and each had a large handgun.

“Jesus, what is this, the Kremlin parking lot?” Will said as he skidded to a stop.

“Through the fence,” Ryan yelled when his eyes fell on a break in the chain-link. He pushed Will forward toward the bushes that covered most of the fence. Both men vanished just as four of the eight Russians broke through the front and back doors of the building and gave chase.

Jason was almost struck by a passing car that honked and swerved out of the way at the last second as they crashed through the fence and bushes. Will let go of Jason’s collar and they both saw that backtracking to the safety of where their people were was impossible from this side of the fence.

“In there, we have to get to a phone,” Jason yelled as he started running, favoring his bruised ass. Will saw the sign above the doorway of the small and nondescript building.

“Brooklyn Social Club,” Will read as he ran after Jason.

The three men and the bearded brute from the roof broke through the bushes and the fence in time to see the two men scramble into the small establishment on a smaller side street off of Flushing Avenue. The four men split up with two going to the front and the other two to the back of the small, nondescript white building.

Jason and Will had trouble adjusting their eyes to the darkness of the room. They saw several round tables with older men sitting at them. Some were playing cards, others just sitting and speaking in low tones. Jason, out of breath, turned and saw the bartender standing and staring at the two harried men. The bartender concentrated his glare on the smaller man with the sickening tattoo on the right side of his face.

“This is a private club, gentlemen.” The emphasis had been placed on the last word.

“We need your phone.”

The eyes went to the larger black man. “You don’t hear so good?” the bartender asked in his Brooklyn accent.

Several men at a nearby table were younger than the older ones they had first seen inside. The older men in the darkness in the back of the room continued to play cards without much notice to the visitors. The younger men in running suits and others in nice sport coats took another view entirely of the interruption to their day.

Will swallowed when he realized just what sort of club they had stepped into.

“Boy, you just have a sixth sense for getting us into this stuff, don’t you?” he said to Jason out of the side of his mouth just as the front and rear doors opened and their pursuers joined them.

The younger men at the farthest tables tensed but remained seated when the four dark-haired men came in. Some of these young Turks looked to the back and the others at the front of the club. All eyes watched the confrontation without comment, with the exception of the burly little bartender.

“As I told these two, this is a private club.”

The man leading the well-dressed charge into the club turned at the front door and smiled at the bartender. He was also out of breath.

“We have no wish to intrude,” he said as he dismissed the bartender and approached Mendenhall and Ryan, who stood their ground defiantly. “We just came in to help you with your vermin situation. We shall remove them and be on our way.”

All the men, twenty plus of them, with the exception of the nine old men who continued to smoke cigars and play cards, along with another two who sat in the far corner playing checkers, exchanged looks at the funny accent of the bearded man in the black silk suit and shiny shirt. The gold chains around his neck were fully exposed to show off their glory.

“You do that outside,” the bartender said as his right hand vanished beneath the counter.

“Gentlemen, I am Captain William Mendenhall, United States Army; this is Commander Jason Ryan, U.S. Navy. We really need to use that phone,” Mendenhall said as he looked from the men sitting at the tables and then back to the bartender.

“Now, now, does this man look as if he’s in the U.S. Navy? Has the navy’s standards fallen so low as to recruit men such as this?” the Russian said in perfect English as he slowly advanced on the two men in the middle of the room. The men at the tables remained silent as they took in the situation. “We will not bother you further,” the man said, slightly turning his head toward the beefy bartender as he gestured for his three men to take the two outside. “Come, we have much to discuss.” He tried to take Mendenhall’s arm and the captain pulled away.

“Don’t touch me, Russian.”

This caught the attention of the men in the room. Even the older men stopped playing cards and looked up at what was happening. Several of their eyes went to the older men playing checkers. Even they had stopped and were watching the scene unfold.

“Come, come, let’s not make a scene. We have a few questions and then you can return to your commander, whoever he is.”

“Thought you said these men wasn’t in the army or the navy?” the bartender asked.

“Friend, please mind your own affairs, before something bad happens to you,” the Russian said as his three men encircled Ryan and Mendenhall.

“Something bad?” the bartender asked with a wry smile etching his face.

“Do you have a hard time understanding English, my friend, or do you only understand that lost tongue of Mama Mia Italiano?” The man laughed and looked at his men as they joined him.

Before the Russians knew what was happening every younger man had risen and had produced handguns before the Eastern Bloc mob could even blink and drop their silly grins. The bartender charged the sawed-off twelve-gauge pump shotgun and leveled it at the bearded leader. The bartender looked to his right at the table where the old men sat playing cards, and then finally to the two gentlemen who sat and watched from their interrupted checker playing. All sets of eyes were on the Russians, who had suddenly started to deflate. An old man in a green sweater and old fedora placed his checkers down on the board and then slowly nodded at the bartender.

“As you can see, Russian, we speak both languages rather well. And while we have no love for some of our more aggressive federal authorities, never think that relates to boys in uniform, ever.” The bartender pointed the barrel of the shotgun directly at the Russian’s head. Will and Jason had to admire the fact that the bearded man never blinked; instead he looked bemused. “You two better make for the door before these boys and us have a serious disagreement.” The bartender nodded toward the front of the building.

“You don’t know what you’re involving yourselves in,” the leader said as his men wondered if they stood a chance if they resisted the Italian’s orders.

“We know exactly what it is we’re involved in, Russian,” the bartender said as if the word was a bad-tasting cheese. “For years we’ve noticed. You boys go about things in a not very professional manner.” The shotgun became the main focus of the Russian’s attention. “Now you two get to runnin’, these boys are going to sit and have a drink while we explain a few rules we have in this particular area of town.”

Will and Jason exchanged looks and with a nod at the men in running suits and sport coats, they ran through the front door and vanished.

“Now, what will you gentlemen have — vodka?” he asked as the young bucks of the Gambino crime family gathered the handguns of the arrogant new kids on the block, who were finding out that old grudges never really vanished with certain families.

The bearded man looked at the men disarming them and smiled — if only briefly.

“Yes, vodka will do.” He gestured for his men to sit.

The bartender’s eyes flicked to the old men at the table who had resumed playing cards. One of then looked up and raised his gray-colored brows. The man took a dusty bottle from the bar and came around with glasses and approached the angered Russians. He placed the glasses down with the bottle of vodka.

“On the house.”

The bearded man looked up as a small shot glass of clear liquid was placed in front of him. He raised his glass in toast and turned to the old men at the card table and then finally at the two men playing checkers in the far corner. The oldest man was recognizable as Paul Gazza, the head of the Gambino crime family. The man posed no threat to the power of the Russians, at least according to Russian sources.

“To old times,” he said with a sad smile, and then drank and slammed the glass down.

The men looked up and their silence made the Russians feel uncomfortable. The old man in the hat nodded his head as if in agreement as he smiled at his friend across the table and jumped several red checkers over black ones.

“Ah, checkmate!” he said with a laugh.

“You’re playing checkers, old man, not chess. There is no checkmate in checkers,” the Russian said with a bemused smile.

The old man in the moth-eaten fedora looked up and his smile vanished as his eyes narrowed. “There is always a checkmate, no matter what game you play.”

The Russian mobsters never knew what hit them as several silenced weapons thudded in the darkness of the social club on a small side street just off of Flushing Avenue.

The card game, among other more dangerous games in New York, continued within the Brooklyn underworld as if nothing extraordinary had just happened.

11

As Virginia’s nuclear sciences team and Jenks’s newly aquired engineering department examined the doorway like ants crawling on a hill, Anya sat next to the Traveler, Moira Mendelsohn. The old woman looked at the sad countenance of the young raven-haired woman. Her eyes would wander back to the activity below in the newly discovered PIT where a machine she never knew existed sat in its sparkling glory as the Group went over it with all the advanced science at their disposal — equipment Moira had never seen before. Soon the old woman’s eyes were back on Anya, who felt her gaze. She faced the smiling Traveler.

“You keep looking at me as if you have something to say,” Anya said not unkindly.

Moira smiled wider and then fixed her with her brown eyes.

“You were the young lady who stole my debrief file from the Mossad?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Dangerous games. Very dangerous.”

“Yes, I hurt someone very close to me to get that file.” Anya smiled as she looked away and watched the technicians below. She felt Moira studying her once again. “For a deed that I will eventually pay heavily for.” She gave the Traveler the briefest of sad smiles. “Deals with the devil and so forth.”

“But then again you would still go about hurting anyone to get back what was lost, yes?”

Anya looked at the Traveler and she could see the woman was speaking from a past fraught with the same sort of decisions.

“Yes, a million times over.” Anya turned away and looked at her watch. “If you’ll excuse me I have a meeting I’m late for.” She started to rise as Moira placed a hand on her wrist.

“You are a Gypsy?”

Anya stopped and looked down at the withered but elegant hand and then into the Traveler’s eyes. “Yes.”

“I knew many Gypsies in the old days,” she said as she looked away momentarily, and that was when Anya saw the tattooed number on her forearm as she absentmindedly adjusted the blanket around her legs. Moira looked back at Anya as she released her wrist. “I hope your quest turns out far better than my own.” Moira used the wheelchair’s motor and turned away to concentrate on answering Dr. Pollock’s technical concerns.

Anya watched her a moment and wondered what quest the Traveler had referred to. She thought a moment and asked herself just what secrets did this brilliant woman possess that she wasn’t mentioning.

Anya Korvesky knew she had to dig a little bit more into the Traveler’s past before men and women risked their lives for her and Carl.

Xavier took a long swallow of Mountain Dew and then looked at the sandwich the mess steward had delivered to the computer center where he and his newly acquired staff were looking for any avenue that would allow the Wellsian Doorway to lock onto the correct time frame. Thus far there was nothing that could duplicate the signal from the second doorway. They had hit a definite dead end. He pushed the plate with the sandwich on it away from him in frustration. He placed the plastic bottle of soft drink down and then spun his chair to look down onto the floor where most of his techs were working with Europa to find a solution. They looked almost as frustrated as himself. His eyes scanned the monitors below and his sight caught something that made him think.

“Uh, Mr. Styles, is it?” he said into his microphone at his personal station, which overlooked the extensive computing floor below.

The tech was leaning over a station where another worked. The tall, thin technician looked up and back at his new boss. “Uh, yes, sir,” he said.

“What is that on your monitor?”

The technician looked up and saw what the youngest and newest department head in Department 5656 history was seeing.

“Oh, we were just going over the supply situation Mr. Everett would have had in the escape pod. We have come to the conclusion that he would have run out of supplies a month after crashing. If that long. His ammunition supply was—”

On the monitor below there was a schematic that showed the small escape pod that was used on the battleship HMS Garrison Lee.

For no apparent reason Xavier smiled and then slapped his hand down hard on his leg, not feeling the impact due to his paralysis.

“Transfer those specs to my station immediately, please. Join me up here, we have some work to do. Europa, I need everything that you have on escape pod design number 22167.”

Energy started to fill the computer center as an avenue for science had just been opened and they now had a chance at answering the question for how they would lock on to the correct time frame for Everett’s rescue. The Event Group came alive with a small thread of hope.

Collins, Mendenhall, and Ryan were the last to be seated in the overcrowded upstairs office. The space had been cleared of the window-dressing mess that had camouflaged the true intent of building 114. The main addition to the room was the large eighty-eight-inch monitor against the far wall. Xavier Morales was on the screen and all but Mendelsohn knew Europa was there also.

Niles Compton sat at the table’s head and Alice Hamilton was on his right as was customary with Virginia next to Alice. Jack was directly across from Sarah, Charlie Ellenshaw, and Anya. The rest of the various departments that had something to add to the meeting were present. Jenks was in a hurry to get back to the newly discovered PIT to reverse-engineer as much as he could as he still wasn’t that trusting of Madam Mendelsohn. Jack looked at Sarah and let her know with his eyes that he didn’t like the fact that she and Anya, with Alice Hamilton’s help, had tried to sidestep his mission parameters and insert themselves into the field team. Sarah knew Jack wasn’t happy.

“Okay, Colonel, are our two adventurers unharmed?” Niles asked as he looked over the wire-rimmed glasses that covered not only his good, but also his patched eye.

“Aside from needing a refresher course on covert egress of an enclosed facility, they’re fine. Although two DNA-coded cell phones will be coming out of their pay,” Collins joked without a smile at Ryan and Mendenhall.

They would both thank Collins later for the public shout-out.

“Commander, you reported that the men who accosted you and Captain Mendenhall were Russian speaking?” Niles asked as he continued to look at the two men at the end of the table. His good eye kept wandering to Ryan’s facial anomaly that was unavoidable, thus it was hard not to smile at the young naval officer’s discomfort.

“Well, I wouldn’t say we were accosted exactly,” Jason started to protest.

Niles waited patiently even though time was short — but even the director couldn’t waste an opportunity jabbing a teasing blow at Jason and Will.

“Yes, sir, definitely Russian. From the sounds of it, maybe organized crime, not sure.”

“Yes, sir, it seemed the Italian gentlemen who assisted us”—he looked at Collins—“in our egress from that particular enclosed facility”—he then looked back at the director—“didn’t seem too fond of them. It seemed those gentlemen might have been organized types also.” Ryan shot Collins a look.

Jack smiled, knowing he had angered both of his men and knew they deserved the return strike. He shook his head and then looked at Henri.

“Okay, we don’t have the luxury of time to go out and hit these bastards first, and we’ve used our monthly quota of FBI assistance to find out exactly what they want and how they fit in here. You turn this thing over to our organized crime fighters, Will and Jason.” He faced both Mendenhall and Ryan. “Get a Europa link and get as much as you can on this Russian outfit.”

Will and Jason knew Jack was forgiving their small failure by not berating them further.

“And me?” Henri asked as he wondered how long his term of servitude would be — if he survived, that is.

“We stick as close to that machine as humanly possible. It seems Madam Mendelsohn’s little invention has suddenly become very popular at the oddest of moments.”

“‘Oddest’ being the operative word, I assume?” Farbeaux sniped.

“Par for the course around here,” Jack replied with a wink.

“Okay.” Niles nodded for the navy communications man to allow Moira into the room. He hadn’t wanted to be briefed by Ryan until he knew who they may have been dealing with. The Traveler still caused many a person at this table major concern for not knowing her greatest achievement had been compromised, stolen, and then duplicated. She wheeled in and nodded to all those around the table with her eyes settling on Anya for only a brief moment. “Virginia?” Niles finished as the room quieted.

“In consultation with Dr. Mendelsohn, we have come to the conclusion that the Wellsian Doorway looks intact and fully functional. But that has not been confirmed as yet by our teams. The damage to the power lines coming into these buildings has not allowed us to bring the doorway online nor even her peripheral systems. The building has a small supply of power coming through its own generating system, which we have fully refueled, but not anywhere near the power we would need to get the doorway operational.”

“Are we working on an alternate power source?” Niles asked Jenks.

“Not yet, we need—”

“Yes, we are covering that,” Virginia said as she cut off the startled master chief, who looked as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

“We have?” he asked with a grumbled look.

“Yes, I have,” she said, looking at his confused face.

“Okay, what should the priority be?” Compton asked only for the benefit of others around the table.

Virginia turned to Xavier, who nodded his head at the camera view supplied by the supercomputer.

“Thus far I have nothing on how to gain signal acquisition without the second receiving doorway being in place. The science just isn’t there. An attempt made without a corresponding doorway, as I am sure Madam Mendelsohn will tell you, is quite impossible. At least according to theory.”

“According to my engineering specs, Einstein may have come up with this theory, but I don’t see how this thing actually works, and sending people through that damn thing without knowing the exact science behind it is damn well stupid.”

Compton ignored Jenks’s outburst and turned back to the large viewing screen. “I sense a ‘but’ in there, Doctor,” Compton said, watching the young man and how he handled the pressure of research on an emergency level.

“That there is, Director Compton. In my briefing by Europa and reading the final after-action reports by Colonel Collins, I may have a lead on something that may help. It’s a long shot but I do think it’s worth looking into. I just need some information from the master chief.”

“Master Chief?” Niles asked looking to his left.

“Go for it, young Xbox jockey.”

Compton frowned at Jenks.

Morales smiled at the intended slight of being called an Xbox jockey. “I understand this entire operation was started when Admiral Everett vanished in an escape pod from HMS Garrison Lee, and then into the unnaturally generated dimensional wormhole, is this correct?”

“Yes,” Niles answered quickly just to keep Jenks from doing so.

“And the government of Great Britain recovered that same escape pod two hundred thousand years, give or take fifty thousand years, after it crashed into the historically and speculated inland sea on the continent of Antarctica. Is this also correct?”

Silence as the room waited patiently, knowing the new man knew nothing of how Niles ran his meetings.

“Master Chief, you designed those very same escape pods, am I correct?”

“That’s right, the escape pods and the assault craft used in the operation.”

“Brilliant designs, I might add,” Morales said. “But I digress. Master Chief, I need the escape pod design specs. Europa may have come up with a solution. As I said it’s a long shot, but it’s better than what the alternative would be.”

“What is it?” Jenks asked as he looked from Virginia to the screen.

“The pod was designed with a global positioning locater, correct?”

“Yes, it acts as a homing beacon upon ejection for search and rescue. All of the pods had them.”

“Completely waterproof?” Xavier continued.

“Yeah, it’s a sealed unit,” Jenks grumbled as he wondered if the kid was questioning his design.

“This is important, Master Chief: What is the life span of the locator beacon?”

“Six months, maybe seven.”

Morales looked away for a moment and his face was lost in the large monitor. He reappeared.

“Europa may have found a way to bypass a second doorway signal. She may be able to lock on to Admiral Everett’s search-and-rescue marker if you can get this doorway open to allow her signal to get through to search for the correct frequency.”

Anya felt her heart skip a beat. All others looked into the monitor absolutely blown away by the young Morales and his obvious and immediate connection with the supercomputer, Europa.

“Dr. Mendelsohn?” Compton said, looking toward the woman.

“I would need to know the frequency of the rescue beacon for the initiating doorway to lock on to, but this may be promising if the beacon is still active.”

All eyes shot back to Niles.

“Virginia, you and Master Chief Jenks are excused. Get with Dr. Morales and see if we have something here.

“Professor Ellenshaw, I need the report by you and the anthropology department on the primordial situation we could be walking into on the continent of Antarctica two hundred twenty thousand years ago, give or take two thousand years. Lieutenant McIntire, the same goes on the geologic front. I need answers, people, on what sort of environment we will be walking into there. I also need the zoological department along with anthropology to get us a read on possible animal and humanoid life, and I need all of this yesterday. Alice will coordinate.”

Niles conferred long distance with the other department heads sitting in the conference room in Nevada as Sarah and Alice both watched Anya eyeing Moira suspiciously. Both women knew Anya had discovered something about the Traveler that had disturbed her. As Moira explained some technical detail or other to Virginia and an attentive Jenks, Anya finally made eye contact with Sarah and nodded toward the door. Sarah looked at Alice and excused herself. Jack eyed the two suspiciously for getting up without comment. He looked at Henri and his head tilted ever so slightly in question.

As she stepped out of the office door, Sarah saw Anya looking out of a filthy window at the overcast and defused light outside.

“Alice and I wondered when you were going to let us in on what was bothering you,” Sarah said as she laid her electronic pad on the table lining a stained wall and then sat on its edge, waiting as Anya slowly turned to face her and the inquiry.

“She is hiding something,” Anya said, biting her lip.

“We all hide things, Moira probably more than most,” Sarah countered.

“My brother,” the voice said from the doorway.

Anya and Sarah turned and that was when they saw the Traveler sitting in her chair with her hand still on the old brass doorknob. She had been sitting there silently.

“Moira, I—”

The wheelchair slowly moved into the room and Moira examined the two women.

“I was searching for my brother. Sixteen times I made the transition through the doorway, and sixteen times I failed to find him.” The old woman advanced into the old outer office where shipyard accountants and naval engineers used to sit huddled doing their jobs of long ago. The wheelchair was silent as she moved it across the floor. She stopped next to Anya and she too looked out at the dreary day over Brooklyn.

“The brother who was used as a hostage while you traveled?” Sarah asked, remembering her file.

“Yes. Joseph.” She smiled at the mention of the name as she recalled his precious face to mind. She turned and took in both women as if she wanted them to understand. “I called him Flea, he was so small.”

“You had to have known the doorway was destroyed behind you. You said it yourself in your postwar debrief to the allies and then again to Israeli intelligence. So why would you make an attempt at something that was now clearly impossible?”

Sarah saw the answer first as her training dictated she would. “The first Wellsian Doorway from the previous year, the first built in Germany,” Sarah said as she watched Moira for the truth of her educated guess.

“Yes, the first doorway, built and unused for anything except for me and the initial experiments, the Nazi’s own Traveler.” She looked at the two women and smiled, a sad attempt. “The experiment was a closed one. That meant that when the bunker was evacuated after the construction of the doorway in 1942, it was left unguarded and in pristine condition for their test rat to emerge from that very first, abandoned machine. I would eventually use that first doorway and I and my team would attempt to bring my brother out of 1942 Nazi Germany. An impossible task, which was hard learned. We would go in two-week increments and search for him. First in Dortmund, and then at Bergen-Belsen, where we were all kept before the experiments had begun in 1942. We found nothing.”

Sarah was more interested in Anya’s reaction to Moira’s explanation than the Traveler’s words. Anya raised the black brow over her alternating blue-green right eye.

The door opened and Charlie stuck his crazed white head of hair inside and found Moira.

“Dr. Mendelsohn, Director Compton is ready for you.” He looked at the serious expressions in the room and immediately ducked away. After all, Charlie had been receiving dirty looks most of the day from Ryan and Collins every time they saw him. The door quickly closed. He was beginning to think that the music fiasco would kill his chances at coming along with the mission group.

Moira looked at Anya and then Sarah before she turned the wheelchair for the door where Sarah held it open for her. Without a look back or another word, Moira went back into the meeting.

“Well, you’re the Gypsy — is she lying? I thought she spoke the truth. Of course my instincts are based on nothing in particular… what does the spy in you say?” Sarah asked as she walked away from the door and faced Anya.

“No, she’s not lying, Sarah.” The former Israeli intelligence agent bit her lip once more and then looked at the door and the meeting beyond. “But she’s not being straightforward either. She’s not letting us completely inside yet.”

“Dr. Morales said that when Moira covered her tracks in the sixties and seventies she did it better than anyone he had ever seen outside of black operations people. He said it will take him and Europa months to uncover her true past. He said he will eventually dig it out, but she was that good at covering and hiding her intentions to the world in general.”

“Look, I know Jack and the security department have their hands full at the moment with this Russian mob aspect, but can you shift your duties to your assistant in geology? I think we girls need a trip into Westchester.”

Sarah looked surprised.

“What’s up in Westchester?” she asked as Anya faced her at the door.

“That is where the private home is located that our Miss Mendelsohn used as an orphanage. It’s closed down after all of these years but it’s still there. We need to see about these two hundred and thirty-seven orphans she supported. Let’s see if we can track someone down who can tell us just why Miss Mendelsohn was so generous of not only her money, but her time.”

“I’m not getting an evil, or even a bad vibe from Moira, and I usually get them from people with less-than-honorable intent.”

“Yes, but as you so brashly pointed out, Sarah, I’m a Gypsy and a spy.”

Sarah raised her brows and smiled as Anya opened the door to return to the meeting.

“Well, Jack’s already pissed at me, so, what the hell, I guess we’ll take a drive to Westchester County.”

The younger man watched the CEO place the silk scarf around his neck and then pull on the slightly heavier coat over his two-thousand-dollar British-made suit. Joshua Jodle watched the old man with ever increasing contempt. After being assisted with his coat the CEO faced the younger man. The ever-present smile was in place where it always has been. He handed him his expensive briefcase as they stood before the private elevator.

“Look, Jodle, I want you up at Lake Champlain no later than eight o’clock tonight. We have to get this ugly business sorted out soon before everyone from the FBI to the Securities and Exchange Commission starts a witch hunt.” The dark eyes warned Jodle that if he wasn’t part of the solution he could easily be made part of their problem-solving efforts in the next few days.

“Yes, sir, the helicopter will return for me as soon as I find out the disposition of our eastern friends.”

“You do that. Now, the other members of the board are already onboard.” The elevator doors opened and the CEO allowed Jodle in first simply because the chairman was just too important to push the button for the roof. Jodle did and then watched as the older man stepped inside. The doors closed and the elevator climbed to the fiftieth floor in silence.

The wind had picked up and the night had some bite to it as the elevator doors opened onto the roof of the expensive apartment building — one of the most exclusive in the city. The helicopter’s rotor started to turn as the executive Sikorsky made ready for its run to the Lake Champlain meeting house where the entire board of directors would decide on how to handle the Moira Mendelsohn problem that seemed to be getting larger the longer they waited.

“Find out what that fool Russian is playing at. We need the details so we may respond appropriately.”

“Yes, sir,” Jodle said as the old man turned and walked briskly to the idling helicopter where the other six men of the board of directors waited inside the plush helicopter. Jodle even managed to wave his hand at the pilot, who nodded as the door closed. The idling engine went to full power for its liftoff from Manhattan. The gleaming Sikorsky lifted free of the helipad and slowly started to climb. It peeled off as soon as it cleared the roof and rose even higher over the East River. Jodle watched as his left hand held the elevator doors and his grip was pure white as he waited.

The explosion was bright and reflected off the heavy rain clouds covering the skyscrapers. The Sikorsky disintegrated and the pieces floated easily toward the water far below. The last to strike was the twirling rotor blades that hit with a spectacular wash of spray that shot high into the sky. Jodle closed his eyes when he knew he wasn’t alone.

“There, that was a simple solution to a sticky problem, wasn’t it? Now look who gets to take over the firm in the number one slot.” There was laughter. “You can thank me later.”

Jodle turned and saw the hand on his shoulder as the Russian stepped free of the shadows. Three of his bodyguards were with him.

“It was a risk to take them out before we are assured of Madam Mendelsohn’s full cooperation.”

“That’s why we have you, my young friend. You were the last one of her orphans through the doorway, we just need you to turn it on for us.” Mr. Jones, as he was called at all times, smiled and slapped the younger man hard on the back. “Besides, with the stolen list of your madam’s children, the task of gaining her cooperation is made that much easier.” The Wall Street trader grimaced as the blow to the back the Russian had administered a moment before almost made him lose the air in his lungs.

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Jodle said, hoping to dampen the high spirits of the cold-blooded killer.

He faced Jodle and the smile was gone.

“Let’s hope it is not, for your sake.” The Russian turned and started for the closed elevator doors and then waited on the younger man to catch up with him.

“And what do we do about those people at the navy yard?” The tall man waited for the Russian to acknowledge his concern. The bell chimed and the elevator doors slid open to reveal three of the mobster’s men waiting inside. He hesitated before climbing into the car. He turned with his black-gloved hand on the doors, halting their closing cycle.

“As of now I have four missing men who were conducting surveillance on these strangers. It seems whoever these people are”—he looked up into the trader’s face—“are very resourceful. That scratches most of the NYPD and federal authorities off the list. Especially since most of this borough’s uniformed men work for me in one capacity or another.” He stepped into the car and raised his dark brows until Jodle joined the four men inside.

“Regardless of who they are, they will nevertheless dismantle the doorway and remove it. And I assure you, Mr. Jones, the process cannot be duplicated. Times have changed and getting the necessary technology for duplication is highly illegal and, I might add in most cases, impossible to acquire. So if I may ask, how do you intend on getting the only working doorway out of the hands of these people?”

That irritating, knowing smile etched the Russian’s face as the elevator doors started to close.

“We do what any civilized gentlemen would do: we ask politely.”

The doors closed on the shocked face of the stockbroker.

The families were gathered to celebrate the birth of their first granddaughter. The proud parents held the newborn as the grandparents beamed while taking photos. The young woman was the only child of the couple who came to be parents a little later in life than usual, even for New York yuppies.

The grandfather had recently retired from a construction firm where he had served as an engineer for forty years. He and his wife considered themselves young and vital and prepared for the challenges of the second half of their lives. They felt it was all well deserved for the horrid first few years they had suffered. Benjamin and Natalie Koblenz were now complete and had guaranteed themselves that their strange legacy was going to continue in the grinning face of the newborn baby they now watched in their daughter’s arms.

The house was quiet as the grandmother and daughter began to place dishes on the table for a late supper after the long day checking out of the hospital.

The light knock on the back door caught the two women unawares as they exchanged curious looks.

“The back door?” the daughter asked.

Just as the grandmother turned, the door opened and three men stepped inside. Her eyes widened when she saw the guns in the men’s hands. The young woman gasped and before the strangers could react ran into the living room. She came to a sliding stop when she saw the second set of three men in the hallway holding the same menacing weapons as the ones at the rear door. Her eyes frantically went to the living room where she saw her husband standing with their newborn and her father staring wide-eyed at the intruders.

“Benjamin Koblenz?” the only black-clad man without a handgun asked politely.

“Yes,” answered the silver-haired man, who took a step backward to shield his son-in-law and new granddaughter. He turned when he saw his daughter standing in shock and then suddenly run to be with her husband and daughter. His wife was moved from the kitchen to the living room with a gun politely sticking in her back.

“And this must be Mrs. Koblenz, the former Natalie Freiburg.”

The husband remained silent as his wife came to his side. She was shaking and this infuriated the older man.

The talker placed a piece of paper into his coat pocket and then nodded to one of his men.

“My associate will assist you in gathering anything you may need for your child. Dress her warmly, we have a bit of a drive ahead of us.”

Panic spread rapidly across the daughter’s face like a wild flowing river as she removed her daughter from her husband’s hold and sat hard on the couch, holding her child tightly to her heaving chest. “You can’t take my baby,” she cried as her frightened husband tried his best to shield them as he too sat.

The man shook his head. “We are not in the habit of killing children,” the man lied as he had done just that a few months before with a freeloader and his family in Staten Island. “We need twenty-four hours of cooperation and then we will return you and your family to your home.” He smiled. “Completely intact and unharmed.”

“Who are you and why do you need us to go with you?” the grandfather asked as a diaper bag was tossed to him by one of the intruders.

“I will let Miss Mendelsohn explain that to you.”

Both Benjamin and Natalie Koblenz exchanged worried looks.

“Who is that?” the daughter asked as she and her young husband were brought to their feet.

The silence that greeted the question was unnerving as the six men went about preparing to abduct the entire family.

A small portion of the Traveler’s secret and extended family was being rounded up.

The darkness had eaten most of Sarah’s enthusiasm as she thought about how Jack and Niles were going to fly off the proverbial handle when they learned that she and Anya were in the process of going rogue on them. All of this after the director had allowed them all back in after being caught trying to manipulate the young Morales. No, this was not going to sit well at all.

“There it is,” Anya said as she saw the address and the name on the black gate and the surrounding brick masonry that guarded the monstrous Gothic building.

Sarah slowed the car down and stopped at the chained gate and looked at the large mansion beyond. The darkness was complete. “Well, it sure as hell looks abandoned,” Sarah said and then nearly screamed when a knock sounded on her window. Embarrassed, she turned her head and saw the uniformed security guard standing just outside of the car. He had tapped on the glass with a flashlight. The man stood straight when the car’s dome light came on when Anya stepped outside and walked to the side of the car where the old man waited.

“You young ladies know this is private property?” he asked as he watched the gorgeous woman with jet-black hair approach. He was appreciative of her figure as his locked and loaded eyes made obvious.

“We just need some information,” Anya said as she stepped closer to the older security guard, whose frame looked as if it hadn’t missed any meals of late. “How long has the”—she looked at the brass name on the gate—“Briarson Home for Children been closed?”

“Oh, gosh, even before I got out of grade school. The town was sad to see it go, I do know that. The firm that supported the school and home was very generous to the local community. Let’s see, 1983, maybe ’84.”

“Wow, that has been awhile,” Anya said with a quick look into the driver’s side window at Sarah. Then the plastic Taser came up and into the man’s large belly. His eyes went wide and he became rigid as the electrical charge coursed through his body. “Sorry,” Anya said as she tried in vain to ease the unconscious guard to the ground but cursed when he crashed anyway due to his unexpected weight. She quickly rummaged in the man’s pockets and then stood and looked at a shocked Sarah McIntire. “We don’t have a lot of time here for Q and A,” she said as she turned and ran for the locked gate. She quickly had the chain removed as Sarah jumped out and started dragging the moaning security guard through the now open barrier.

“I think Carl and Jack are a bad influence on you,” Sarah said as she used the officer’s handcuffs to secure him to the inside bars of the ornate gate as the semiconscious man kept mumbling incoherently. Sarah reached down and removed the guard’s radio and threw it five feet away into a stand of overgrown bushes lining the gate. Both women went back to the car in silence and then drove through and closed the gate to keep outside curiosity to a manageable level.

The mansion was large and only a few lights burned purely for fire department safety. Moira, through her management firm, had kept the grounds immaculate and they hoped the same could be said for the interior. They parked the car in the front and used the large set of keys stolen from the guard to open the double front doors. The dreams of finding the inside as glorious as the outside were quickly and distinctly quashed.

“Boy, the housekeeping staff must have been the first employees let go when this place closed,” Sarah said as she ran a hand through thirty years of dust on a sideboard table near the front door. Sarah started to reach for the light switch and Anya stayed her hand. She just shook her head. She clicked on a flashlight and gave it to Sarah.

“The guard may have a few friends.”

Sarah nodded and they started looking — for what, they didn’t know.

The machine up close was gorgeous in its design if not daunting in its construction. Virginia, Jenks, and the entire nuclear sciences and engineering departments were crawling all over the doorway and its support systems. With the assistance of Europa they had devised that the time machine was in complete working order even though Europa was having a hard time saying the apparatus would or could actually work. The science was just too impossible, even for the Cray system as she was also having trouble without the right programs on quantum physics.

The daunting problems remaining were not in the control of Jenks or Virginia, but mostly fell to the responsibility of Morales and Europa in finding a corresponding signal from what might be as far back as 250,000 years, that coupled with the fact that they could not even power up the Wellsian Doorway without blacking out the entire eastern seaboard. Moira had explained that exact same thing had happened causing the famous 1969 New York blackout. She had even smiled when recalling the debacle she had spent millions upon millions of dollars to cover up.

The Event Group’s duplicate, reverse-engineered, and far more portable Wellsian Doorway was now under construction next to the existing one. It would be able to be broken into components for transport to Antarctica to be reassembled there for the team’s dimensional return — if there was one.

“Yeah, well I can’t see anything working until we get some electricity in here that has enough umph to fire this damn thing up,” Jenks said as he removed the stub of his cigar and nearly spit the foul taste from his mouth until he saw Virginia waiting to pounce on him for doing so. He swallowed instead. “Well, are you going to let me in on your little secret on how you plan to accomplish that particular electrical miracle since the portable power unit we have at the complex has to go with the field team into the past”—he smirked at Virginia—“if that’s even possible.”

The look down at Moira by an unbelieving Jenks was unmistakable as she sat and smiled at the master chief and his continuing doubts about the sciences involved. Moira knew engineers had very small imaginations.

“Look, there is only one portable power unit in existence capable of generating the output of the hundred and fifty megawatts we need. Bringing in the power lines from the city will cause a lot of eyes to look our way and even then we would probably blow every circuit from here to Montreal in doing so. So, maybe you should let old Jenksy in on your solution, huh, Slim?”

Virginia shook her head while she used a nonconductive acrylic wrench to twist a bolt on the old doorway as they were now in the process of adding their own features to the technology. “I’m working on that, Harold.”

“What did I tell you about calling me—”

“Virginia, you’re needed outside, the harbormaster is waiting on you.”

Both Virginia and Jenks stopped bickering and turned to see Niles Compton and Jack Collins standing by the wheelchair of Moira Mendelsohn, who was looking up at them.

Virginia looked at Jenks and gave him a smug smile and then stepped down from the top of the doorway where she had been analyzing the lens cuts on the eighteen laser apertures in the rounded circle of the door’s opening.

“Unlike engineers, my people know how the world really works,” Virginia said as she hopped down the last few steps of the erected scaffolding.

“Smart-ass,” Jenks grumbled as he snapped the last laser lens into place.

Niles watched the assistant director exit the platform area and then waited as Jenks climbed from the erected scaffolding and confronted Moira for further instructions on how the doorway operated. Niles then pulled Jack aside.

“I had to bring the president in on this request from Virginia and I’m guessing the Department of the Navy and General Dynamics are going to start asking some serious questions soon.”

“We knew it wouldn’t last as long as we needed. Do we still have the eighty-eight-hour window the president promised?”

Niles pursed his lips and then limped to a chair and sat, staring up at the Wellsian Doorway and its newly born and much smaller reverse-engineered sister rising next to her.

“Yes, and those remaining hours are ticking away fast,” Compton said as his eyes roamed over the most amazing machine he had ever seen outside of the magical Leviathan, the futuristic submarine they encountered during a harrowing field mission a few years back that was so appreciated by the members of the Event Group.

“Has Morales and Europa had any luck with the escape pod signal?”

“He seems convinced if we can get the doorway up and running he and Europa can find a corresponding signal from Mr. Everett’s escape pod. Pete Golding Junior says that according to Professor Mendelsohn’s figures, Europa should be able to shoot signals into every dimensional plain, no matter how many that may be.” Niles smirked. “Hell, I don’t know if the kid knows what he’s talking about. I’m like Jenks there, this is so far beyond me that it hurts my head thinking about it.” Niles smiled and looked up at Jack. “Europa was right in her choice of her new boss, our Dr. Morales seems more than capable despite his youth. Pete was right to want him on his team.”

Jack knew discussing the replacement for Pete Golding always put the director in a funk. Pete was not only close to Charlie Ellenshaw, he had also learned most everything from the man sitting next to him — Niles Compton. Collins placed a hand on Niles’s shoulder and then looked around the PIT and the hundred technicians who sat at consoles and had wrenches and welders in their hands.

“Have you seen Sarah and Anya?”

12

The many upstairs rooms were divided into boys’ and girls’ dormitories that were appointed in richly woven carpet and had the finest built-in woodwork. Sarah and Anya could see that this was not your ordinary home for abandoned or orphaned children. The house was empty and as lonely a place as either woman could ever remember seeing before. The once childish laughter of its residents echoed in empty corridors and rooms. Not one stick of furniture was left behind and the office areas had been cleaned out of all paperwork and sent to the state offices of child welfare when the house closed its doors in 1982. With the last place they had to check being the basement, they were fast losing hope as to just what the Traveler had hidden from the Group, and for that matter, the world.

The stairs were steep and treacherous and by the looks of the gathered dust and mouse droppings, it had not had a cleaning visit in many years. The dampness was cloying in smell and in feel. Anya reached the bottom and Sarah joined her, adding both lights to the cluttered scene. There were a few boxes but it was mostly made up of stacked mattresses and old bedding that was piled everywhere.

“Boy,” Sarah said as her light picked out the shambles of the cavernous basement.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. If Moira is as smart as we all believe, she would never have left anything behind she didn’t want found.”

Anya slowly moved back to the stairs and Sarah was about to follow suit when her light briefly caught a water-worn box that had collapsed, spilling its contents. Sarah walked the few steps over and then lightly kicked at the spilled contents that were near ruin after years of water damage. She kneeled down and saw the names on the old assignment papers. She read names like Phizinberger, Rabinowitz, and Wachowski. There were more names as she scanned the old math pages. She looked up and that was when she saw the long dead incinerator. She stood and walked toward its open doors. Her light had spied something white inside.

“What is it?” Anya asked halfway up the stairs.

“Incinerator,” Sarah said as she pulled the right-side door all the way open, allowing the smell of old trash and smoke to fill her nostrils. She waved her hand in front of her face to clear the air as she leaned in.

“Hope you don’t find any bodies in there. I don’t think I could handle that in the dark.”

Sarah reached in and pulled out several pieces of half-burned paper. She shined the flashlight’s beam on the first and she almost dropped the small, half-ashen bundle to the damp floor. Sarah swallowed and then looked at the graphic charcoal art. The disturbing work had possibly been done by a young, although talented artist. Her face screwed up into a mask of horror as she studied the drawings on page after page of heavy paper. Sarah reached into the gaping maw of the long-dead furnace and brought out even more of the heavy art paper.

“What is it?”

Sarah stepped away with her light’s beam shakily illuminating the blackest, most disturbing artwork she had ever seen. She had heard the descriptions but had never imagined seeing anything like these in person. She looked from the names on the old math pages and then at the horrid bundle of half-burned artistry.

“No, no body, but definitely some old skeletons.”

The dark and overcast skies had given way to fog, which suited Virginia and her team just fine. Mendenhall and Ryan had very nearly emptied out the security department with the exception of a bare minimum team at the complex and they were dangerously short on security requirements until they heavily recruited from the military, which is a very time-intensive process security-wise. The result was that they had shortcomings at both ends and Ryan took it upon himself to take both security gates at the complex off line until it was prudent to open them again. He didn’t know if the colonel was going to gig him for that mission choice, but it was his decision to make. The word had gone out about their afternoon visitors and now the twenty-seven security men and women had M-4s, the very much smaller version of the venerable M-16, to accompany their sidearms.

Virginia stood with the general manager of the Navy Yard Development Corporation as he complained about the closing of the waterway, which was slowing water traffic. Ships were waiting to enter the river. The man was about to voice his second argument of inconvenience when Mendenhall approached with two plain-clothed security men, who carried their weapons at port arms. Will didn’t have to say a word. He wanted this man out of the way before Virginia’s surprise for Jenks arrived on station. The navy yard manager saw the weapons and then with narrowed eyes he turned and stormed back to his Mercedes and left.

“Signal the harbormaster that the dock has been cleared,” Virginia said to one of her assistants. “Will, you can inform those boys from Groton their prized possession has arrived.”

Mendenhall nodded and then used his radio to inform the men that stood just outside of the entrance to building 114. Six men in overalls and rain gear came into view as they lined the dock, which had been drained, cleaned, and then refilled with water. They waited.

Virginia greeted Niles and Jack as they escorted a grumbling Jenks to the quay lining the expansive dry dock area.

“Okay, we’re here. I see Slim and a bunch of idiots standing in the fog. I’ve got simulations I need to run. In case you haven’t noticed I still don’t have any damn power. And thus far in simulations we have killed everyone on the team sixteen times before they even step through the gate. Those damn lasers will cut people to shreds if this thing doesn’t work to everyone’s expectations. Remember, Slim, these are Argon light-emitting lasers, the most dangerous light outside of the sun.”

Niles smiled and then shook his head as if he were listening to a complaining school child. Engineers, he thought.

“Harold, will you shut up while we take care of that power problem you keep going on about?” Virginia said as she stepped closer to the river side of the dock and looked as if she was waiting for something. She raised a radio to her lips and the elegant woman half turned and saw Jenks looking on curiously. She smiled. “Harold, what were you before you became our worst nightmare and an engineer?” She spoke softly into the radio to someone, and then turned and faced the three men on the dock. She saw Henri join the group with a questioning look on his face. Jack nodded toward the confrontation between Jenks and Virginia — a confrontation Dr. Pollock was about to conclude rather dramatically.

“You know damn good and well what I was,” Jenks said as he chewed on the cigar and stared down the smiling nuclear scientist.

“Oh, yes, that’s right, something about a career navy man, wasn’t it?”

A sour look from the master chief answered for him.

“Then I hasten to question, sir, why in the hell did I have to think of this for your power solution?”

“What solution?” Jenks asked, spitting the cigar out and walking forward to join Virginia. Niles, Jack, and Henri followed. Will Mendenhall hung back grinning, knowing the master chief had finally met his match, of which said information would be spread throughout the Group in a matter of minutes.

Virginia touched his whiskered cheek and then took hold of his chin and forcefully turned his head toward the fog-enshrouded East River and the entrance to the navy yard.

“This is why the president is now murderously curious and worried beyond measure that our little mission is spreading out rather wide. The Department of the Navy is going to start throwing a fit when they find out what it is we have stolen,” Niles said as he leaned on his crutch. “A lot of strings were pulled. I only hope it’s not enough string to hang us all.”

Suddenly Jenks saw the waves of rolling fog pushed aside as a hulking black form slowly emerged from the white undulating veil. Jenks heard commands being given as the giant sail and conning tower eased slowly out of the river proper. The giant moved as gracefully as she ever had. The maneuver was dangerous in the darkness and fog without a large naval docking team. However, Virginia, who had been employed by the General Dynamics Electric Boat Division in the early eighties, knew the skipper well and knew him to be the best retired boat captain in the U.S. Navy.

“I’ll be damned and go to hell,” Jenks said as he slapped Virginia on her backside, making her jump and yelp.

“You people never cease to amaze the unenlightened,” Farbeaux said as he showed his shock at what was slowly approaching like a monster from deep-sea lore. He looked at a worn and tired Niles Compton. “Kudos, Mr. Director, I’m sure you made one or two enemies with this little party favor.”

“Colonel, you have no idea.”

Out of the fog came the black silhouette of one of the most famous vessels in the history of the U.S. Navy. Jenks smiled at the white numbers on her enormous sail tower. Her rounded bow moved the dark water out of her path with ease and efficiency. This was the class of boat that had scared the old Soviet Union to disastrous decision making in the seventies and eighties, and this was the lead boat in that particular class. Jenks smiled as the USS Los Angeles, the matron of her submarine class, eased into the softly moving waters of the docking area as the men on shore grabbed lines tossed to them by the civilian crew of the fast attack submarine. The numbers on her towering sail claimed that SSN-688 had arrived at her temporary berthing station.

“The old girl looks good, don’t she?” Jenks said, and then slapped Virginia on her ass once more as he paced forward to watch the old lady tie up. He was joined by the others.

Gone were the massive sail planes that once shaded her deck from the enormous conning tower. The finlike diving planes had been replaced to make the boat more streamlined, but other than that the 688 lead boat had not changed in outward appearance since her deactivation in 2010, until she was finally decommissioned on February 4, 2011.

“Why is she out of her retirement barn?” Jenks asked.

“She was turned back over to General Dynamics for use as a test platform.” Virginia turned and faced Jenks. “As a naval engineer I thought you would have been in the know.” She smiled and then turned to watch the crew tie up the 362 feet of rolled steel. “But I guess some things slip by the old master chief, huh?”

Niles looked down to keep Jenks from knowing that Virginia had set him up from the beginning. His doubting her engineering prowess was starting to get on his assistant director’s nerves.

“Okay, give,” Jenks said as he looked from the men who seemed to be in on this little joke to Virginia.

“That, Master Chief, is your portable power source.” She turned to walk away but stopped and faced Jenks once more. “Since her retirement she has been fitted with a new General Electric S6G reactor, capable of generating 242 kilowatts of power in an experimental power source scenario for disaster relief. She is now back in the hands of the men and women who had built her and is privately owned, and no one from the city power grid”—she looked at Niles—“or the president’s other curious agencies will ever be the wiser. At least until General Dynamics reports her missing and overdue.”

“Son of a bitch,” Jenks mumbled as electrical cable started to be strung from building 114 to the submarine’s engineering spaces. Others of Jenks’s staff had been ordered to start spreading camouflage netting over the giant boat. He was too taken aback to face Virginia.

Each man turned from the boat and then Niles walked past the master chief first. “Yes, sir, that is one brilliant lady.”

Then Jack walked by. “I knew I liked Virginia from the start.”

It was Henri’s turn. “What she sees in you, my salty old friend, I know not.”

Will just stopped and looked at Jenks, who stood waiting.

“Now you see what us everyday mortals face around here.” He laughed and then walked away.

Jenks lit another cigar as he saw Charlie Ellenshaw walk up and stare at the large submarine and the crew scrambling over her blackened deck like ants. He smiled.

“Great idea, Master Chief.”

“Is that what you think, Nerdly?” he grumbled at a shocked Charlie and then turned and left. No one saw the gratified smile on his face as he thought about the woman he called “Slim.”

The meeting started without Virginia Pollock, Anya Korvesky, or Sarah McIntire. While the master chief explained that Virginia was with Madam Mendelsohn working on the new power grid, the whereabouts of Sarah and Anya were yet unexplained. Will Mendenhall had reported that even though the two had not answered their cell phones, Europa narrowed down their geopositioning markers as somewhere between Brooklyn and Upstate New York heading south. Will could see by the looks on the faces of Niles and Collins that the two men were not amused in the least that two members of the planning staff were not present for the final Antarctica brief before powering up the doorway.

“Okay, I was expecting the geology report from Lieutenant McIntire, but it seems that she and our new head of foreign intelligence decided to head north of here for some unknown reason,” Compton said as he looked at Alice, knowing she knew something about the disappearance but was being mum on the subject.

Charlie Ellenssaw spoke up from his spot at the far end of the table. “I have been in contact with the geology department at Sarah’s request and have combined the zoology report and the geological reports. If I may?”

Everyone saw the scar rise above the eye patch covering the damaged right eye of Compton. He took a deep breath and then nodded at Ellenshaw.

“I will start with what we know zoologically. For that it would be best to hand it over to Dr. Morales and Europa.”

“Doctor?” Niles said, looking over at the large monitor where Xavier Morales sat waiting to divulge everything they had come up with. The technical genius had finally moved permanently from the clean room and privacy and into the far more expansive computer center to be with his tech people. He could see the young Morales was starting to feel at home.

“Yes. With direction from the natural history museums in Denver, Oslo, Denmark, and several more in the United Kingdom, we can honestly say with any certainty that we know absolutely nothing about the animal life at that time on that particular continent. It’s hard to survey prehistoric remains when most are situated under two miles of solid ice. We can assume that at the time of the separation of the supercontinent eighty million years ago, that a mass abundance of animal life went with Antarctica when she decided to head south. From the time frame we can almost guarantee”—he almost looked sad upon delivering the news—“that if Mr. Everett survived the wormhole transit he would be faced with unknown and terrifying animal life of that time.”

“Humanoid factors?” asked Dr. Dwayne Anderson of the anthropology department.

“Unknown. Europa has not come across any evidence on the current fossil record from the region. Again, two miles of ice is a deterrent to discovery. Europa has made an ‘educated guess’ as to the migratory pattern of early man and the odds are that Mr. Everett will more than likely run into humanoid life. What kind? We can’t say.”

“You have Europa making guesses?” Jack asked as he tried to keep his worrying mind from thinking about what Sarah was up to.

“Her educated guesses are like those of Mr. Spock, she’s usually never wrong.”

“Doctor, go ahead and give them the good geological news,” Ellenshaw said as he pushed his own written reports aside.

Everyone in the room watched Charlie for a brief moment. He had been acting strange since the loss of Pete Golding. It was as if the good humor had gone from the man and he was no longer the easygoing and friendly crazy Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III.

“The use of the words ‘good geological news’ was obviously an attempt by Professor Ellenshaw to lessen the dangers to anyone on that continent at that particular time,” Morales said as he sat in his old-fashioned wheelchair in Nevada.

“I appreciate the attempt to soften anything you have to report, but we are precariously short of time, gentlemen,” Compton said as he rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Yes, of course. It seems Mr. Everett may have far more trouble than originally thought, if that’s possible,” Morales said. “Europa, report number 45454, please.”

On the second largest of the newly installed monitors a map showed the current status of Antarctica. Europa then focused more specifically on the southern region of the frozen continent.

“Ross Island, its current state. Home of Mount Erebus, an active volcano.”

“Yes, it’s been active continuously throughout recorded history,” Niles said.

“Yes, it has, but very active since 1972. The problem here is”—he looked away momentarily—“Europa, next slide please.” The picture changed to show Ross Island without the ice covering. All eyes saw immediately that Mount Erebus had been joined by three other volcanoes.

“Four volcanoes in the same area?” Mendenhall asked from his chair next to Jason Ryan.

“Yes, and through deep ice core drilling and back-scanner ice intrusions we are more than sure these four volcanoes were extremely active during the time frame we may be looking at. So much so that three of the volcanoes, Mounts Terror, Bird, and Terra Nova, vented so heavily they became extinct. Mount Erebus is the only one to survive and live on.”

“What are you saying, Doctor?” Niles asked, becoming increasingly angry at his head of the geology department for not reporting this herself. Yes, he was angry with Sarah just as much as Collins.

“Europa estimates that all four volcanoes were in eruption in the same time frame as Mr. Everett’s disappearance.”

“How does this affect the survival possibilities for a man?” Jack asked.

“Not very good,” Morales said, and they could all see he was a patient and knowing teacher who answered in a way that the simplest mind could understand. The Event Group would have to be patient with the new man. “Europa does not agree with the proposed speculation of other noted geologists. She believes this eruption of four volcanoes simultaneously brought on a massive ice age the world over. The world as we know was mostly a barren landscape of ice and snow. What Mount Erebus did was deliver the coup de gras to not only the more exposed northern land masses, but effectively killed the entire continent of Antarctica. This killer eruption was the death sentence for the continent and its overabundance of animal life, which conservative estimates place at ten thousand times the amount of life in Africa at its height.”

“Jesus,” Jenks said, whistling.

“The air will become poisonous and the world will turn freezing if it hadn’t already by the time of Admiral Everett’s arrival there. We just don’t have enough information to go on.”

“So, if Carl survived the exit through the wormhole, and also the reentry of the escape pod, his chances of surviving the animal life and the eruption of these four monstrous volcanoes are not very good.”

Morales nodded sadly into the television monitor at Compton. “Europa estimates the odds of survival at”—Morales changed tack when he saw the expectant and knowing faces around the table—“well, you said it yourself, Director Compton: not very good.”

The room was quiet enough that most could hear Alice Hamilton as she tapped her notes on her electronic pad.

“Colonel,” Niles said, trying to get the room back to some form of activity to keep them from thinking about the possible horrible fate of their friend, “how are you and Colonel Farbeaux coming with your team?”

“They’re assembling now,” he said with his eyes carefully avoiding Jason and Will, who exchanged concerned looks. Was the colonel really considering leaving the two men behind on this one?

“Master Chief, are the components ready for the portable doorway?” Compton asked, knowing Collins had some explaining to do to his security department over the choices for the doorway mission team.

“Two complete sets. I have to admit that Slim’s, er, uh, I mean, Dr. Pollock… her division has been pretty damned impressive as far as reverse-engineering that damn time machine. Of course, it was my newly acquired engineering staff that pieced the portable doorway together in record time. But that is not my concern.” The master chief pulled the unlit cigar from his mouth and looked at the director. “I’ll say this, though, if anything happens to our only portable power unit, we’ve all had it. We’d end up dining with the cavemen if that power generator is lost”—he looked over at the monitor and Dr. Morales—“and I guess choking on volcano farts also.”

“Well-worded, Master Chief,” Morales said with a smile.

“That cannot be helped. The only other portable power generator is owned by the Russians and I don’t think they have a current superpower loan department,” Compton said, losing patience with the same arguments from the master chief.

Jenks was about to say something when he saw Collins lightly shake his head, telling Jenks that he had said enough for the time being.

“Niles,” came the voice, and the image of Virginia appeared on the monitor next to Morales. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be for the power-up and test. Europa has reworked the old programming and brought it into this century. We are now completely digital. Power source is hooked up and the Los Angeles is capable of giving us one hundred and fifteen percent of her reactor power.”

“Very good.”

Niles stood with difficulty and then placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder and with a final look at Mendenhall and Ryan, nodded his good luck.

“Let’s adjourn and see if we have a mission or not, shall we?”

As the group filed out to witness history, again, Jack waited on Will and Jason as he gathered his notes.

“No,” was all he said when they approached him. He finally looked up and into the angry faces. “The team has been set and you two are sitting this one out.”

“Look, we—”

“Sitting it out,” Collins said with a stern look at Ryan.

“No disrespect, Colonel, but we have a right to go,” Will said.

Jack placed his case down and then fixed the men with the look that said, “The order has been given, and that’s that.”

“If no disrespect is intended, why are you doing it? You have your orders, both of you. You will secure the building and the grounds. If that’s too much then I’ll assign Sergeant Rodriguez to the job and then send you two back to Nellis.”

“Sir,” Mendenhall said when he saw Ryan was too angry to say anything.

“Look, the odds are not that good for a return trip on this one. You two are not essential to the team and will therefore stay behind. We’ll only be risking personnel that we feel can be lost without it devastating the Group.”

“And just who in the hell would that be?” Ryan asked not too politely.

“Dismissed, gentlemen.”

“Jack—” Ryan said, but stopped when Collins turned back to face them.

“We’ve already lost too much. You two are far more than just men in my department, you’re my friends, and Carl would never allow that friendship to be placed in jeopardy to get him home. This is my job and yours, gentlemen, is to make sure everything you have learned from the both of us is carried on at Group. We’ve come too damn far to lose what we’ve learned over our years together. I’m sorry. And, Jason, you were right the other day, you did exactly as I would have done in Mexico.”

They watched Collins walk from the room, leaving them standing and looking like schoolboys who had just received corporal punishment.

The same question came to each man simultaneously. Just who did the colonel think was expendable?

13

As the nonessential personnel gathered inside the observation room, Virginia went from one of her nuclear science technicians to the other, making sure their safeguards were in place. In case of any power fluctuation, especially when high-powered lasers were concerned, she wanted the ability for each team member to have the wherewithal to shut the test run down. The last item on her list were the power couplings that snaked in through the exterior conduit through the basement. The four-inch thick cables were strong enough to carry the current that would illuminate all of Chicago. The three power lines hummed with power from the nuclear plant generated by the USS Los Angeles.

Master Chief Jenks sat at the main control console with Moira Mendelsohn. The old woman was excited and near giddiness to see her doorway once again becoming ready for operations. She received the old butterfly feeling as she thought about her own heady and far-too-adventurous transports back into a world that no longer existed. With eyes smiling the old woman lifted a cigarette to her mouth and lit it. Just as one of his staff was going to inform Madam that there was no smoking, Niles shook his head. He was not about to tell one of the most brilliant people in world history that she couldn’t smoke a cigarette — it was time to stop being ridiculous.

“It amazes me that anyone would have trusted this thing enough to go through it,” the master chief mumbled.

Moira, with the cigarette dangling from her red lips, reached out and brought down the intensity of the floodlights that illuminated the large doorway. The ceramic composite material used in this second doorway was an advancement that Moira was unfamiliar with but she immediately saw the benefits of the material. Whoever the traitorous element in her company consisted of they had done a remarkable job duplicating her original doorway. She could not fathom how they reengineered the Welsian Doorway in the first place, but she did have suspicions that she kept to herself for the time being.

“This new material will have a far better effect at conducting the electrical charge suffered by the Traveler through their system without the pain associated with entering the field. Marvelous engineering.”

“Painful, was it?” Jenks asked as he watched the Traveler sitting as calm as if she were at the opera. “The early experiments, I mean?”

She smiled and turned the rheostat for the lowest lighting mark. She turned to Jenks. “It was as if someone were drilling into your bones with a red-hot poker. And you asked why would someone go through an untested apparatus such as the doorway. Some of us had very little choice in that decision.”

“Nazis, huh?” Jenks asked with an admiration he had yet to show for the woman.

“Yes, Nazis.”

“Now those are some fellas I would have liked to meet up with.”

“No, Master Chief Jenks”—Moira turned away—“you would not.” She stubbed out her cigarette and then faced the doorway once more.

Jenks was about to say something when Virginia nudged him aside as she slid into her chair.

“Excuse the hell out of me,” he said.

“Is he bothering you?” she asked Moira.

“No, just answering some of the master chief’s naiveté.”

“God, we’ll be here all night,” Virginia said as she hurriedly spoke into her walkie-talkie before Jenks could retort with something idiotic.

“Los Angeles, let’s start off with only fifty percent power profile. We’ll start here at twenty-five percent.”

“Reactor is at redline — fifty minus.”

“Thank you Los Angeles. Emergency shutdown on my command.”

“Roger, control has the scram call.”

“This is so far beyond my basic understanding of the universe and how it works,” Ellenshaw said as he watched the glimmering square with the ceramic doorway in its circular form in the middle. The doorway was capable of fitting six men side by side and large enough for a tracked vehicle to traverse.

“Don’t feel alone, Professor,” Compton agreed.

“In essence the lasers engage a form of disintegration on the subject matter?” Charlie asked.

“It’s a form of light transfer of solid material. The subject is basically sectioned by Europa. Back in 1942 it was a program that guessed at the reconstruction of the Traveler upon arriving in the chosen dimension and then reformed the subject, or the Traveler. The applications for this technology are far more than just dimensional shifting,” Niles said as he watched below as a technician adjusted the focus of the sixty-five laser apertures lining the doorway.

“Are you talking about transport?” Jack asked as he watched Jason and Will walk in and set down at the far end of the room. They had just checked on security but he knew they were far from happy with him and his decision making of late. When the door opened he had hoped it would have been Sarah and Anya.

“Yes, real Star Trek stuff, I know, but there you have it.”

“Doctor, we have discussed this before in our ‘what if’ sessions. This technology cannot be allowed to—”

Niles held up a hand, staying Jack’s argument before it could be voiced, only because it was his own argument to begin with.

The lights dimmed and then flashed on and off as the Los Angeles sent the small percentage of power coursing through the building’s old wiring system. The test was starting.

The protective glass shield below that fronted the technician’s consoles that fed telemetry to the doorway’s geopositioning system, a program hurriedly designed by Virginia and Jenks with the assistance of Europa, slid up from the rubber-lined flooring. The specialized glass was treated with gold shavings that assisted the electrical charge to disburse more evenly to protect the control personnel. As Moira watched on she saw many of the same design characteristics of her own doorway in building 117. But whoever built this had spared no expense, which gave her pause as she thought of possible suspects in the copying of her technology. The prohibitive cost alone eliminated most everybody in her sphere of influence — almost.

Moira looked over at Virginia, who stood leaning on the console as she looked at the Wellsian Doorway. She shook her head. “Incomplete science,” she mumbled under her breath.

“I heard that,” Jenks said as he reached for the ever-present cigar stub but forgot about the clean room protocols — with the exception of the Traveler, evidently. He looked at Virginia. “If you have doubts about this hunk of science fiction, you damn well better say so now,” Jenks said as his eyes went to a smiling Moira Mendelsohn.

Virginia Pollock looked down at the master chief and allowed her thumb to lightly play at his hand and then she smiled.

“Sometimes, when you’re desperate to help a friend”—she glanced at Moira—“you do it not just because you can, but because you have already lost far too many friends. Sometimes, Harold, you take risks.”

“You said it yourself, it’s an incomplete science. We don’t know enough about this. What long-term effects will there be on the Traveler?”

“I daresay, Master Chief, that I will outlive you by a goodly margin,” Moira said as she turned and looked at the copy of her creation. She thought inwardly, Thomsen’s creation is more accurate.

Jenks took in a deep breath in anticipation of countering Virginia when she cut short the debate on the morality and safety issues.

“Initiate power sequencing.”

Jenks was caught off guard as he saw the glass wall that had appeared in front of the station turn a darker shade as it reacted to the electrical charge coursing through it. This was another engineering feat coordinated by the Group. The brightness of the doorway’s discharge could blind those watching from their tech stations.

All the technicians felt the flow of power as the energy supplied by the S6G power plant of the Los Angeles announced its arrival at the doorway. The LED lighting lining the rectangular outer frame flared to life, informing them they had acceptance of the electrical flow from the Los Angeles to the doorway.

“Initiate surge protection for Los Angeles,” Virginia said into the extended and flexible microphone. “Okay, let’s bring lasers one through seventy-eight online.”

The room was illuminated as not quite half of the powerful lasing system became active. The straight lines of bluish-green light slammed into the lead-lined wall at the back of the test area. The soft metal started to melt as the light beams began to heat up.

“Master Chief, how is the propellant element in the collider?”

Jenks leaned over his console and studied the interior-mounted camera and spied the most precious part of the collider — the basic element in the universe — electrons.

Jenks leaned back. “Europa says the collider is online.” His eyes went to Virginia and it told her that the master chief was still not comfortable. He understood the design and the theory behind it, but for some reason Jenks was terrified of this machine. Virginia knew he had good reason to fear not only the technology, but the philosophic ramifications.

“Coolant charge?” Moira asked, trying to get Virginia’s attention away from the doubting Jenks. Moira was watching the glass above them and the people in the observation room. She locked eyes with Colonel Collins, who was watching her closely, enough so Moira felt pressed. Since the disappearance of young Ms. McIntire and the Israeli woman Anya she had felt the pressure to assist while she still had the credibility to do so.

“We changed out the coolant lines inside the collider. We installed the much more efficient heavy metal coolant. The collider should never reach beyond critical mass as long as the metal cools the system. Nothing to leak.”

Moira was amazed at how efficient this group was in understanding a science it had taken her thirty years to comprehend. These people took the technology in stride without missing a beat. If she had had people such as these she would have succeeded with her true goal years ago. The Traveler shook her head in amazement.

Virginia took a deep breath. “Europa, are we ready to initiate revolutions?”

“Power at thirty-four percent. Test initiated at zero one twenty-six hours and thirty seconds. Ready to begin, Doctor,” said the sexy voice, who seemed to be back to her old self thanks to Morales.

“Thank you.” Virginia turned and looked up at the observation suite and the face of Niles Compton, who nodded that she had the go-ahead. Her gaze lingered for longer than necessary as she wondered for the thousandth time if what they were doing was morally right — they already knew it was highly illegal. She nodded and then turned her attention back to the console in front of her. She looked at the plastic cover over the start button and she reached out and lifted the clear protector. Without ceremony or another cautious thought, Virginia slammed her hand down on the switch.

“Initiating revolutions. Europa, power to remaining lasers, please.”

“Power initiated, Doctor,” Europa said, and then went silent.

The air was immediately sucked from the room and for just the briefest of moments it was as if the staff on the main floor felt the vacuum of space erupt inside. It passed after only a moment and then the world of building 114 exploded with bright blue and green light. The spinning doorway started revolving at tremendous speed as one magnet sent power to the next, creating a speed that only Europa could keep up with. The cylindrical light formed into a solid tunnel of blue and green and the doorway’s opening slammed into the lead-lined wall in the back and then an incredible thing happened. It was like a wave of water breaking upon a surf wall. The light actually bent, straightened, and then settled. The magnets inside the cylindrical collider screamed as the air inside was pushed aside at light speed. Finally the mercury coolant was sent into the collider and the loud scream was silenced.

Every hair on every head and arm shot straight up before settling.

The Wellsian Doorway was now open, to what dimension was anyone’s guess.

Eyes went wide and just as Henri Farbeaux entered the room the very air beyond the window came alive with energy. The effect was so powerful that Farbeaux felt the tug as the magnetic field momentarily gave all men and women in range a fit of anxiety the likes of which had never been experienced.

The flickering light beyond the glass had a surreal quality to it as Jack and Niles stepped closer to the glass. They heard Virginia call for an increase in electromagnetic flow to the collider as it started to spin faster and faster as the magnets started firing, forcing the tungsten steel that made up the walls of the collider to send the spinning doorway from one magnet to the next, firing at incredible speed so fragile that the timing had to be controlled through Europa for the instantaneous calculations that had to be made in microseconds. The laser system created a funnel that hit the lead-lined wall, but due to the low flow of power at only fifty percent, reaching arms of the doorway were held captive inside the confines of this dimension. The effect was spectacular and one of the more frightening either Jack or Niles had ever seen. The lasers created a tunnel-like effect that painted a bright picture of spinning fluorescent lighting. The tunnel would pulse every ten seconds and a bubblelike sphere would slam into the reinforced wall as it sought to break free of the power restraints forced upon it by Europa. This was a caged animal that did not like being controlled.

“We have a power loss on magnet’s fifty-six and seventy-one. Europa is compensating with power to magnets fifty-seven and seventy-two,” Jenks called out as the effect of the open doorway started to change the very air around them. Papers rustled and the flooring shook and then stabilized as the collider brought itself back into balance with the assistance of Europa.

“You must explain to me about this Europa someday,” Moira said as she listened to the Marilyn Monroe voice synthesizer.

The rattling of equipment stopped as the doorway settled into a steady hum and the artificial wind calmed to a light breeze as if the air conditioners were on.

“What is the main core temp?” Virginia asked.

“Collider housing is at three hundred and forty-five degrees and holding, far below minimum safe.”

Jenks heard the technician say “safe” and he huffed. “That’s a hopeful euphemism.”

“Knock it off, Harold,” Virginia said as she tried to concentrate on the doorway and the effect it was having on the immediate environment. She did not care for the instability of the air near the spinning doorway. It wasn’t just the effect of the powerful collider spinning in the opposite direction of the particle accelerator creating the false wind they were feeling, it was the smell. It was like they were breathing old, very damp, stale air from some place other than their immediate atmosphere.

“Status by station,” Virginia said into the microphone as she slowly lowered herself into her chair.

“Los Angeles, engineering, reactor is optimal and power cables are holding, Doctor,” came the calm voice of the civilian propulsion specialist onboard inside the old submarine’s engineering spaces. “Power output at forty percent and holding.”

“Electromagnetic halo is holding, two units down, and the compensation is holding,” called out one of her nuclear specialists monitoring the power flow through the hundreds of magnets lining the collider.

“Damn right it is,” Jenks said, as the new design was his contribution to what he now knew was madness.

“Go or no go is an acceptable turn of phrase, I believe,” Virginia said without looking at Jenks. His being unnerved by a scientific experiment was starting to get to Virginia’s psyche. It was the master chief’s natural engineering skills and his inability to respect a very dangerous science that made her apprehensive.

“Collider is functioning at expected parameters,” called out a nervous female technician as she monitored the X ray — like view of the spinning particle accelerator that enhanced the magnification inside the round collider by ten thousand power. The view was controlled through Europa and her electron microscope underneath Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

“Dr. Morales, are you ready to initiate signal search?” Virginia asked.

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Morales said from his monitor.

Virginia Pollock tried to swallow her fear as Moira saw her face as she studied the spinning blue and green lasers as they created and animated a circle of spectacular light against the lead-lined wall. She closed her eyes and spoke. “Initiate power upgrade to sixty-five percent, please. Okay, let’s target our initiated point for dimensional signal disbursement.”

“What is that?” Jack asked Niles as they watched from above.

“In order to disburse the signal into as many directions and dimensions as possible, Europa will bounce the signal off the surface of the moon and have it bounce back to Earth; after all, we can narrow one parameter down as to where Mr. Everett is: Earth. Once the signal is brought home, so to speak, it will again disburse into all dimensions and start its search for the corresponding return signal from the escape pod.”

“Right, I should have figured that out myself.” Jack smiled and looked at Niles, who only nodded in appreciation of Jack’s limited imagination when it came to quantum physics.

Inside the engineering spaces of the USS Los Angeles the propulsion engineer from General Dynamics, although he didn’t know what was going on inside the building, frowned as he eased the power setting forward on the reactor core.

“Sixty-five percent power flow.”

“Thank you, Los Angeles.” Virginia, for one last time, turned and looked at Niles Compton. He looked at Master Chief Jenks and saw his frown. “Permission to open the doorway for signal acquisition search?” Niles nodded. “Make sure your target settings are at zero. Contact satellite transfer and get them our signal net. Let’s slam this baby into the moon and see if this dog will bark.”

“Doorway signal has satellite acquisition. The transfer is in motion, dimensional shift is bouncing off the surface of the moon at its equator. We now have a return from the moon, it is now in active search mode according to Europa.”

The specified tone, an exact match to the rescue beacon’s frequency that came in one-second intervals from the sealed unit inside the escape pod, shot free of its invisible cage and shot up into the sky, where it connected with the Group’s own KH-11 satellites, Boris and Natasha. From there Europa sent it slamming into the moon for its return trip, almost like a radar wave. Europa had stolen the frequencies of no less than sixty-one communication and broadcast satellites around the globe. Europa had picked these orbiting relay stations to cover the entire surface of the planet with the signal as it searched for its mate through time and space. The real secret of the Wellsian Doorway was its power to send and receive signals that cannot be contained. Like water overflowing a glass, the wave of energy would cover the world and then start expanding outward as the Wellsian Doorway opened up to the many dimensional walls it breached. At the same moment the doorway came online, millions of television viewers the world over watched their screens go dark and then suddenly pop back on. The signal went out on a wave riding the coattails of the regularly scheduled programming and those late-night viewers never realized that their favorite shows had just burst through the time and dimensional barriers that only existed in the mind of a brilliant man named Albert Einstein.

The room once more exploded into light as the lasers rose to over half of their efficiency. The lasers slammed into the wall and then bounced back toward the glass wall protecting the technicians. It hit like a wave, the laser light actually bent as the particle accelerator created a dimensional shift that snatched the straight line of spinning light to rebound, and then it happened — the vortex started to take shape as the tunnel formed once more, only this time it was almost a solid field of light.

Jack and the other veterans of the space battle over Antarctica recognized the dimensional wormhole, which evidently was a form of nature that did not change from one application to the next… nature’s own design of power and differing dimensions. The multicolored spin of the tunnel was creating its own weather system inside the building. The vortex of spinning laser light widened and then settled into a round spinning wall of waterlike illumination that approached the speed of sound and vanished after only a few feet, ending in a sparkler-type fountain that flew to nothingness. The doorway to other dimensions was now open. All they had to do was find the right corresponding doorway to catch the broadcast of Everett’s escape pod geopositioning system and transponder beacon.

The room settled and the doorway became a steady hum of light and power. The artificial winds had calmed. Virginia took a deep breath. “The doorway is open, Dr. Morales. You and Europa can start your search.”

In Nevada, Xavier Morales patted the console in front of him and then smiled at his new department personnel and up at Europa’s enormous main monitor sitting in the middle of the main wall.

“Okay, Europa, old girl, let’s start making some calls and see if anyone answers.”

Xavier’s new computer department watched as he gave Europa the order and they all heard the search-and-rescue tone burst from the speakers. Morales smiled as his searching signal went out into the newly expanded multi-universe.

“All right, Admiral Everett, I hope you didn’t leave your phone off the hook.”

14

The New York City police captain wore civilian clothing as he always did when meeting with his financial partners. The large man was sitting in the back room of Kellum’s bakery, a shop that used to be owned by his family in what seemed like a million lifetimes ago. Now it belonged to the man he was there to meet. The precinct captain was in serious debt to the man known around legitimate police officers as the “Bolshevik.” Alexi Doshnikov had originally agreed to finance a failing bakery in a run-down section of Brooklyn — a bakery whose livelihood was threatened not by economic downturn, but by its resurgence. The fashion was now to buy, renovate, and then sell to the highest bidder for homes and businesses that once made Brooklyn work. It had taken an unsavory alliance for Captain Kellum’s family to keep their business. An alliance with the Butcher, and the bill was coming due big time. The captain had managed to save his family from being run out of their home and business, but the cost of that was his soul.

He poured himself a glass of cold milk and then sat and waited by the stainless-steel table. As he did he removed the thirty-eight snub-nosed revolver from his ankle holster and then placed it on the shiny tabletop. He sipped his milk and waited.

He heard the back door open and the footsteps approach from behind him. He was tempted to finger the loaded weapon on the gleaming tabletop but instead took another swallow of cold milk and waited.

“It seems you caused my brothers in blue in Manhattan to work a little overtime tonight in the East River,” Kellum said as he placed the glass down. He heard the refrigerator open and then close. The man known as Mr. Jones sat next to the captain and poured himself a glass of milk. He held the glass up in a toast and then drank deeply. The Russian smiled and smacked his lips.

“There were times a few years back something as simple as a cold glass of milk was nearly impossible for my family to grasp. Everything our region had in dairy was sent straight to Moscow and the rich bastards that ran things back then. We were lucky if we were allowed to keep the cow manure from the very dairy herds we tended to night and day.” He drank again and watched the police captain. He set the glass down.

“We all have our hard-luck tales. It was no picnic growing up here either. Our stories aren’t that much different.”

The Russian eyed Kellum and then smiled. “Someday I will explain to you the difference, my friend.”

Kellum didn’t care for the smile.

“Now, as to the aerial mishap you mentioned with that business helicopter, tragic.”

Kellum watched the man closely, knowing he had ordered the assassinations of the entire board of directors for Mendelsohn’s company. However, he didn’t want the mobster to know just how much of this he really knew or was guessing at — it wasn’t healthy. He decided he would leave it alone.

The captain reached into his breast pocket and brought out a small notebook and opened it. “Your four missing men? Well, we just found two of them. They were fished out of the water near Coney Island two hours ago. Single tap to the head for each. I suspect we will find the other two in the same mint condition.”

Doshnikov capped the bottle of milk and then looked Kellum over. He shrugged his shoulders. “No loss. If they were foolish enough to get taken out by the federal authorities, they’re not meant to be in my employ.”

“Well, there is a funny little wrinkle there on two fronts, Mr. Jones,” Kellum said as he thumbed through a few pages from his notes. “It seems whoever is occupying those buildings in the navy yard are not the federal authorities. I can’t get one single thread on who and why they are there. But I have been told by my superiors that it is none of my concern. The second matter is that you may have a sort of resurgence on your hands.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” the Russian asked, bemused.

“One of my C.I.’s in the neighborhood says the buzz on the streets is that your men were taken out not by these strangers in the navy yard, but by the Gambinos. And that, my friend, means you have a growing problem if they moved on your men, for whatever reason. I would say they showed very little respect.” The police captain closed his small notepad and raised the glass of milk to his lips and made a silent, but mockingly irritating return toast.

“Gambinos.” The Russian mobster smirked, his disdain for the Italians showing clearly on his face. “Your confidential informant should have told you that the Gambinos and all of those old men that call themselves the mob are nothing but ghosts from the past. Tales to scare little children at night.” He eyed the captain as he finished his glass of milk. His look was one of fury for the briefest of moments, and then the facial features relaxed once more and he smirked. “Please, you know as well as I do that all the New York families are dying off one old man at a time and the men who will replace them are morons.” He smiled and slapped the captain on the shoulder. “Besides, with what I have been working on the Gambinos can have Brooklyn after tonight. I’ll be moving on to far greener pastures, as the Cossacks used to say.”

Kellum just raised his brows. “And just how many people will be killed to get you to those greener pastures, comrade?”

The Russian laughed at the captain’s little barb. “Possibly just a few of those people your police force cannot identify now occupying those buildings at the navy yard, maybe a few others, but then again the latter of those have died before, or at least should have… so no great loss.”

Kellum saw that the man was wild-eyed with some scheme that seemed to make him oblivious to the dangerous situation he had entered into with the Gambino family and whoever those people were that had taken over the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“Now about this request of yours, I don’t—”

“It was not a request.”

The smile was gone and the black eyes told Captain Kellum that the man was truly on the edge of sanity.

“Your order for me and my men to seal off that end of the navy yard from all observers, well, it will all depend on—”

“You. It’s that simple. At two a.m. not one person is to be allowed into the navy yard. Interference for three uninterrupted hours. No one in, or out.”

“Look, I can’t control the damn fire department, the federal authorities, or whoever those people are who have credentials that would scare Comrade Stalin.”

“Three hours and the building and the business you are now sitting in is yours for your family to do with as they please. Your obligation to my organization will be complete as will your loan debt. All cleared for a mere three hours of work. Not even Comrade Stalin could be so generous.”

Kellum heard what he said but could not believe it. Russians never allowed any agreement to lapse. That was the difference with the Russians over the American mob — there was truly no getting out from under their dirty thumbs.

“Three hours. I can give you that.”

“Then I can give you your family’s livelihood back with a significant real estate investment to boot.”

Kellum stood and buttoned his sport coat and retrieved the pistol from where it had been prominently displayed. “Just what in the hell is so important about three hours?” he asked as he turned to face the smaller man.

The Russian smiled again and then stopped at the back door. Amid the smell of baked bread and muffins, he said, “That’s the time it will take for me to become the richest man in the world — legitimately. Imagine, me, legitimate.” He laughed and then left.

Kellum had a bad taste in his mouth as he took a deep breath and then suddenly flung his empty milk glass against the door as it closed. It was then that the police captain swore that if he could he would find some way to go back in time and change how he saved his family business.

But he knew there was no such thing as a time machine, much to his regret.

As Jason Ryan and Will Mendenhall secured the electric rolling supply trailer that would accompany the team into the doorway, Ryan turned and looked at Mendenhall. He sat heavily on a large plastic crate that contained a lasing system invented to protect a perimeter in the field.

“I’m sorry, I guess I screwed not only me, but you in the process.”

Mendenhall placed a rolled tent onto the small trailer and then sighed. Mendenhall sat down heavily next to Ryan.

“Look, you did nothing that Jack or Carl wouldn’t have done. How many times would the authorities have thrown both of those nut jobs into jail for the things they’ve pulled off?” Mendenhall slapped Ryan on the back. “No, you got the job done and that’s just what the colonel looks for.”

“Then why would—”

“Because I need you two here. The odds against us pulling this H. G. Wells crap off is just about a billion to one and I don’t care what Albert Einstein Mendelsohn in there says.”

Both men turned and saw Collins as he stood in the shadows watching them. He finally stepped into the light with a small case and placed it on the trailer. Ryan stood and faced his commander. Mendenhall pursed his lips and waited.

“Then why are you even attempting it?” Ryan asked, braving another confrontation.

“Why did you allow Charlie in on Morales’s prison extraction?” Jack leaned against the trailer and looked up into the foggy night. “Why did you go back after Will in Chato’s Crawl when you knew the Destroyer was in those tunnels? Hell, for that matter, why didn’t you return to naval aviation after the board of inquiry cleared you in the incident over the Pacific?”

“Because Will and Charlie are friends; I know what they can do. As for naval aviation, I found out I care for the people at Group and didn’t want to leave.”

Jack smiled and looked at Ryan and Mendenhall. “That is why I’m going. I have a friend out there somewhere who’s lost and I intend to try to bring him home. No matter how crappy the odds.”

“Then why are you pissed at me?” Ryan asked, wanting the truth.

“Your performance during the prison break was outstanding. You took the people you trusted, and as things do with good people, it worked out. I wasn’t mad at you, I was mad at me because I saw myself in you and our shortcomings. We truly respect, admire, and trust the friends we have around us and that is why I am going after Carl. I sat back and allowed others to seal his fate. The fate he encountered doing what he did when any one of a thousand men could have done the same. When you take this department over, and someday you will because I saw what you are capable of, you’ll know what you have to do at the most horrific of times — protect the people under you. I don’t intend to lose one more person on my watch if I can at all help it. So, you stay, I go.”

“But you just said that friendship—”

“You stay, I go. Someday you’ll understand, Jason, believe me.” He smiled and then slapped Mendenhall on the back on his way by. “I figure if the worst happens, I could be leaving the department in far less capable hands than yours and Will’s.”

The two watched Jack vanish into the fog. “I absolutely hate his object lessons.”

Will Mendenhall had to agree.

On the large monitor situated above the dimensional collider, as Jenks liked calling the doorway, was a strange graphic supplied by Europa and Morales. It was a multiplaned series of levels. They undulated, changed positions, and then re-formed. In between these colored planes a single line of light emerged, vanished, and then appeared on another multicolored level. Morales had explained that each line represented what Europa was reading as dimensional planes. She was able to track the light source as it split among different forms of atoms that made up the universe. Differing atomic structure that could only be seen by Europa and her wide sweeping band of sound waves. The signal reached out, penetrated, and then wormed into another level searching for its sister signal on the escape pod. The doorway had been searching and listening for the better part of two hours with no return bounce of the pulsating rescue beacon.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Jenks said louder than he wanted to. The noise of the open doorway made communication without headsets impossible. He found it hard to communicate with Virginia sitting right next to him. “Morales and that damnable computer are speaking a language never taught at MIT or the navy. Give a call out to Stephen Hawking or Einstein, maybe they can explain this differing planes of existence crap. I sure as hell can’t. I see a bunch of lines and then another bunch of lines and I only have Europa’s calculations that it’s even feasible for us to locate that beacon.”

“My God, how many different planes of existence can there be?” Virginia asked, mostly to herself as she studied the animation on the screen. It looked like a sewing needle as it thread from one line to the next, sometimes up and then down.

“Just think of it as a universe that has expanded beyond the control of its creator. With no more universe, it has to expand in some direction. Same space, multilevels of that space. It’s trapped in a way. Without the dimensional planes our universe would die.”

Both Virginia and Jenks turned to see Moira Mendelsohn sitting in her chair, watching the undulating lines on the monitor. He adjusted the small mic on her headset. “If only I had had access to this marvelous machine you call Europa, oh, what I could have done.”

They saw the wonder in the old scientist’s face as she studied the graph on the monitor.

“And just what would you have done?” Jenks asked as he removed the cold cigar and looked from the Traveler to Virginia with worry.

A faraway look came into the gray eyes of Moira. “I could have maybe—”

“We have a bounce back!” A technician said excitedly into his mic.

“Yes, confirmed at zero two ten hundred hours and forty-six seconds we have a return signal. Muted, but sustained. A little weak, but it’s there,” called out a female voice on all receivers.

On the overhead speaker and over the noise created by the false wind of the doorway, they heard it: the steady beeping of Everett’s transponder. Smiles were exchanged all around the technical area at the surreal spectacle of the windblown doorway and the haunting signal that pulsed through the air.

Moira looked at the monitor and there it was. Sandwiched between a red line and a green. The monitor changed views and a series of numbers started to be placed on the screen by Europa, who was calculating longitude and latitude of the signal. The amazing Blue Ice system of Europa started to use her NASA and European Space Agencies star charts and her own time and distance tables to calculate where and when the signal originated. She accomplished this by using strength of signal versus known star positioning and then she figured the closest area by mere inches as to the location of the pod. Finally the coordinates appeared and steadied. All eyes went to the second monitor and the view of the computer center in Nevada. Morales was there and he was smiling.

“The odds just went down… it’s Antarctica calling back. She’s calling collect, but she is calling!”

A cheer erupted and even Niles Compton smiled through his discomfort, and then he realized that the science fiction of the past had become a sudden reality. Most stomachs in the room rolled as they realized what a potential world changer this could become.

The Einstein-theorized time machine became operational at 0210 hours and forty-six seconds.

The presidential protection clock was still running. And that was one thing the machine could not control.

Jenks tried his best to inventory the team’s supplies and at the same time avoid the accusing eyes of Virginia as she glared at him from the sealed-off area where the extraction team prepared. The master chief finally huffed and then removed the cold cigar stub and returned the look.

“You’re the one who brought me into this historical menagerie, and now that I might get a boo-boo you want me to back out?”

“You’re too damned old for this crap and you know it,” Virginia said as she picked up a case of MREs and handed it to a questioning Jenks.

“So you want me to stay behind with the broads and the geeks and let you go in my place?”

“I am more capable of getting the doorway in Antarctica up and running far better and faster than you.”

“Well, that dog just won’t hunt, Slim. Call me all the names you want, but I will not let someone who I care”—Jenks stumbled—“I won’t stay behind and let you go in my place. I don’t care if it’s what you call, ‘not very PC,’ but you can go to hell.” He angrily placed the stub of cigar into his mouth and then reached past Virginia for the illuminating signal devices and plopped it hard onto the trailer transport. “I suppose you have a retort or whatever you eggheads make for an argument?”

Virginia was silent as she stared into the eyes of the graying master chief. She nodded just once and remained quiet.

“I’m sorry I was too much of a caveman to make it work with us, Slim,” Jenks said as he kicked at an invisible object and then angrily tossed the dead cigar away.

The assistant director was taken back by the hastily worded comment. The master chief lowered his eyes and then reached quickly for the next set of signal devices that were wrapped heavily in the manufacturer’s packaging. Virginia placed a thin fingered hand on Jenks’s own, stilling his movement. He looked into her green eyes and held them for as long as he dared.

“After all of the degrees I have gathered, the accumulated knowledge of centuries, I have come to one immutable fact of life, Harold, and that is that you are allowed two great loves in the span of one’s life. We just happened to be two people who loved not only each other but also the work we do. No ones’ fault, but the love is still there regardless.”

“I… I…” Jenks stalled.

“When you get back to this dimension, we’ll have to make a choice, Harold.”

“But—”

Virginia leaned over and kissed the gruff old master chief.

Jenks watched as Virginia turned away but then hesitated.

“Besides, I want to see if you can follow the directions on the doorway’s instruction manual. I personally think you’ll be like a father trying to put his son’s bike together on Christmas Eve.” Virginia waggled her fingers behind her in farewell as she left hurriedly.

“Damn, she always has to have the last word.”

The master chief continued to load the transport but at least for the time being the gruff old engineer was smiling.

“Will we have any problem maintaining a locking signal on the beacon until the doorway is constructed in the past?” Niles asked for the second time. He was showing his doubts and concerns in the past twenty minutes by grilling everyone in the conference room. Asking the same questions over and over to the very same people.

Virginia looked at Niles and simply shook her head as her thoughts remained on the master chief and his age. This mission was not for him and she knew it. SEAL instructor or not, he was just too old and too damn stubborn to admit that fact. Morales answered for her when she remained mute.

“The signal as of this moment is very strong.”

“Target area — they aren’t going to be put down in the water or released twenty thousand feet into the air, are they?” Niles asked as he was furiously writing down notes.

Morales again spoke up from Nevada. “The comp center has pinpointed the exact location and according to the British geological survey of 2014 it’s right on the edge of the newly named Durnsford Sea, approximately six hundred and twenty feet from the suspected edge of the inland shore. We’ll compensate by a mile east of the sea; that should be a safe guess as to a landing area. Equipment and men will be prepared for a mis-landing regardless. Heady, especially since the sea level landing is at this moment two miles below the surface of the ice. Europa says she can do it plus or minus one millimeter in height.”

On the large monitor Europa was projecting the star chart used to determine the exact time and location of the jump. Niles reached out and struck the button that activated the installed holographic system. Around the conference table the room illuminated with a ceiling full of star constellations. They revolved, stopped, and revolved again as Europa triple-checked her own figures. It was like the Event Group was sneaking a peak at the supercomputer’s arithmetic. The stars would expand outward from the time they suspected Everett had disappeared into the wormhole until they settled into their current position. Again and again Europa ran her model and she came up with the same results.

“Europa knows that lives are on the line,” Morales volunteered from the desert.

“Excuse me?” Niles said with a jolt, looking from the simulation and into the large monitor.

“Europa has learned the hard lesson of human loss. It had never been explained to her that her work could possibly send men and women to their deaths. I have since explained it to her. She knows what’s on the line now; she never did before.”

Niles thought that their new personnel move might have come a little too hastily as he listened. It was Alice who reached out with her hand and placed it on top of Niles’s and stilled him from questioning the new computer genius too harshly. He relented and moved on.

“Now, where is my missing geological specialist and our little Anya Korvesky?”

Coincidentally timed, a moment later the door opened and standing there were the two missing women. Sarah’s eyes went to Jack and then to Niles as she started to apologize for her sudden departure. She had several items in her hand as Anya accompanied her inside the conference room. They all noticed the way both Sarah and Anya made eye contact with Moira before sitting down.

“You know we are desperately short on time and you decide to take off without so much as a good-bye. You broke protocol by shutting down your cell phones’ geo locator. If you think we—”

Sarah cut Niles short. “I think we should get the entire story from Madam Mendelsohn about just how many people know about the existence of the doorway.”

Niles looked from Sarah toward the Traveler. He refrained from saying anything more about broken procedures as he studied the old woman. He didn’t have to broach the subject of security to a woman who had understood the need for it since 1942.

Sarah slid the disturbing charcoal drawings she had found inside the incinerator to the middle of the table. Charlie Ellenshaw stood and spread them out so all could see. Before Charlie realized it his hand moved quickly away after seeing the drawings in their half-incinerated state.

Niles raised one of the drawings and examined it. The depiction of children inside a concentration camp was vivid, unlike most camp drawings Niles had ever seen before inside the Holocaust museums. The detail was as if the artist was picturing the scene from memory. The one problem with that was the dates were handwritten by the artist in the lower right-hand corner.

“Nineteen seventy-one,” Niles said aloud.

“Nineteen sixty-seven here,” Charlie said as he was unable to touch the drawings again.

The images were stark and black. Children crying. Other children being led away to their deaths made most wince at the scenes all done in very disturbing charcoal. Anya turned away, knowing that this was her heritage being shown to her by the memory of some child who had lived through the nightmare.

It was Jack Collins who stood and turned the pictures over on the tabletop. Jack was one of those soldiers who found anything concerning the holocaust far beyond the imagination of a professional American soldier. The images always made him furious as to how a modern society or soldier could ever allow that to happen.

“How many did you bring back, Moira?” Anya asked. “How many children did you smuggle out when you couldn’t find your brother?”

Moira smiled as she looked at the faces around her. “All that I could. I know I changed the destinies of so many, but then again, Albert Einstein never had to look into the eyes of children on their way to mass slaughter. Yes, hundreds.” She braved the shocked looks of those around her. She saw no meanness in those looks, but one of awe and understanding… to a point.

Niles swallowed and calmed his scientific wariness at her actions but it was then that he realized the Event Group was about to attempt the same thing, on a smaller scale perhaps, but no less guilty of changing the destiny of one of their own.

At that moment an Air Force sergeant walked in and gave Niles a message and then made his way out. Compton read the note and then his good eye found the Traveler.

“This is from our contact in the FBI. It seems your entire board of directors has had a mishap over the East River tonight. They were all killed.”

Moira stared at Niles for the briefest of moments, not really understanding.

“How many of your board of directors were children of the Holocaust?” Virginia Pollock asked.

Moira didn’t have to answer as all of them saw it in her face. She lowered her head.

“They all grew up at your privately funded orphanage, didn’t they?” Sarah asked.

“Yes.” She looked up and the briefest of sad smiles crossed her lips. “Can you imagine the magic they believed brought them out of those camps? We intercepted the largest contingents from transports, but most had already seen the insides of smaller camps, so they knew for the most part what the Nazis had in store for them. As I said, most were very, very bright.”

“Now some of those brightest are dead. Perhaps you better enlighten us as to why and who would want that,” Jack said as he waved Ryan over and told him quietly to make sure the outside watch was aware of the situation. Ryan quietly left.

“I don’t know who this could be. The board always had complete autonomy to act in the best interest of the children and their security.”

“We’re not real big believers in coincidence,” Niles said as he turned to Jack. “Colonel, I’ll leave it up to you for a go, no go. This was clearly an assassination at a very inopportune moment in our plans. This could bring those other sister agencies charging in and I don’t think the president can stop the avalanche.”

Collins looked at Moira and decided she didn’t know anything more than what she had said. The only thing Jack figured her guilty for was being human enough to save kids from a fate worse than what history had planned for them.

“Master Chief, Henri, Charlie, I can’t order you to go.”

“I didn’t bust my ass building that thing and then nearly come to blows with Slim, er, uh, Dr. Pollock here, not to go. I figure whoever is out there threatening this thing is going to act regardless if we go or not,” Jenks said as he avoided the stark eyes of Virginia.

Ellenshaw looked up from the table and then slid the glasses back up on his nose. He looked directly at Niles. “I have to go.”

“If this is the only way I can get out from under the thumb of this Group, what choice do I have?” Farbeaux said as he shook his head at Ellenshaw and his weak answer to a life-or-death question.

“If it’s a question of volunteers, I don’t—” Sarah started to say but Niles cut her off as he examined the clock on the wall.

“It’s not. Dr. Morales, is Europa ready?”

Sarah angrily looked from Niles to Jack, who just shook his head, angry that once more she tried to bully her way onto the team. He was going to have to put her in the same drifting lifeboat as Ryan.

“Okay, Jack, get your team ready, we go in thirty.”

The meeting broke up with the individual departments crowding around Jack, Henri, and Charlie as they sent a myriad of intelligence on ancient Antarctica their way. No one approached Jenks as he stood with Virginia. Instead of barraging him with warnings she simply placed a hand on his broad chest and patted him lightly.

“Keep an open mind out there, Harold.”

“I’ll just be another old fossil where we’re going, Slim. Besides, my carcass is too tough for anything to chew on for too long. I’ll just wait them out.”

“Listen, animal life back then is probably a little more patient than any current species.”

Jenks winked and then looked over at Collins, who was shaking hands with Niles.

“Good luck, Colonel. Bring him back if you can, but lose no one else, or this whole thing is for nothing.”

Collins nodded. He had no intention of losing anyone else. He turned and he faced a smiling Henri. He half turned to Compton as he was about to say that he couldn’t guarantee all of them were coming back, but just smiled back at Farbeaux instead.

“Jack, er, uh, Colonel?”

Collins and Farbeaux stopped and turned and saw Sarah standing with Anya.

“You two are on my shit list… again,” he said as he eyed McIntire exclusively. “Now, I have given orders to Ryan to beef up outside security. Since you two don’t seem to perform a duty around here, and have time to saunter off on a Nancy Drew mystery tour, you will be assigned a post by the commander. We’re a little shorthanded. I hope it’s not too boring for you amateur sleuths.”

Sarah fumed but turned and left with a stuttering Will Mendenhall close behind.

Anya stood her ground. “Thank you for doing this, Colonel.”

Jack stared at her before edging past the former Israeli agent. “I’m not doing it for you, Anya.”

Henri smiled at the dark-haired woman and nodded. “Complicated, isn’t he?” Farbeaux left the office.

The activity inside the newly and hastily renovated conference room slowly drizzled to nothing until only Alice Hamilton and Niles were left inside. Compton looked up into the large monitor and saw Xavier Morales looking at them. The activity around the computer genius was bustling as the comp center made ready for the dimensional shift of the doorway. Niles reached out and studied one of the disturbing pictures in charcoal. He let it slide through his fingers. Alice remained silent as she knew the director was debating something in his thoughts. It was these meanderings that etched a sad crevice of doubt on his lined face.

“A morality play is at work.”

Compton and Alice both looked up at Morales, who continued to see them from Nevada.

“The right to change one’s destiny. I suspect that is what the director is concerned with.”

Niles shook his head. “You would have liked Pete Golding,” he said with a small but sad smile. “You’re a lot like him.” He then looked over at Alice. “Only far less timid about voicing his opinions of my psyche.”

Morales smiled. He knew some thought him far-thinking beyond his years, but he knew it was nothing more than a young man’s exuberance in experiencing everything he could inside of his limited and paralyzed world.

“Sorry, but you never asked my opinion. I thought I would voice one.”

“Voice it, everyone’s opinion is valued here,” Alice said as she was curious as to what someone so young could think about the changing of destinies.

“Morally, I think we’re wrong. Just because we have the power to change things, do we have that right? Don’t we learn from the harsh realities thrust upon us through adversity? I believe deep down that we could very well lose our humanity if we allow this as a viable practice beyond this one experiment. When I saw what those children had survived through those horrible pictures, I, like most in the room there or inside the comp center here, wanted to save them all. We have the power as I said, we could go back and stop it from ever happening. Colonel Collins seems like he would be more than capable of going back and placing a bullet into that maniac Hitler’s computer, simply avoid it all. But what will we have learned from that barbaric little man? After all, we have the power to do that, don’t we — the very power to change the world forever.”

“Thank you, Doctor. What would you do in my place?” Niles asked as he slowly stood and with the help of Alice limped to the large observation window and the active scene below.

“I’m easy, Director Compton, my world consists of this chair and my work. I would go in a split second if I could, morality play or not. I would go and get our man. That is why I disqualify myself from the problem of morality plays and leave it in your capable hands.”

“Yes,” Niles said as he glanced up at the monitor before returning his good eye to the rush of personnel on the floor below, “you’ll fit in nicely round here.” Niles turned and limped from the room.

“I will?” Morales said as Alice gathered her paperwork. She paused and looked at the monitor.

“Yes, you fit in because you, like everyone else in our Group, would do anything to get into the field.”

“He’s right on that point.”

Alice smiled. “Thus the morality play in full bloom, Dr. Morales.”

“What do you mean?”

Alice placed her paperwork in her case and then looked up one last time. “Pete Golding was killed in the field, but Niles knows he cannot save him, even if he could. He’s not lost, Carl Everett is. Morality plays are a little more hellish and real than you thought, aren’t they, Doctor?”

Xavier Morales watched Alice Hamilton leave. He now understood better just why the director of Department 5656 had slumped shoulders — he had the weight of all world history upon them.

Jack checked out Henri’s suit and helmet. Charlie was already wearing his and Jenks looked him over.

“Now don’t worry here, Nerdly, if we walk into a pocket of methane or somethin’ as delectable as that, your environment monitor in your sleeve there won’t allow your helmet to unlock. The colonel issued you this.” He held up a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and slammed it home into a holster that stretched across Ellenshaw’s back and covered the front of his jumpsuit. “Guess he doesn’t relish the thought of a nerd with an M-4. You have extra ammo in the packs. Just remember to point it at anyone but me.”

“Got it,” Ellenshaw said as he was tempted to pull the weapon and examine it, but saw the master chief looking at him to see if he would make that kind of stupid decision.

Jack turned and made sure the packs were secured properly to the trailer and then checked if the four-wheeled John Deere tracked vehicle was ready. The rugged all-terrain vehicle was pulling six of the five-by-five trailers. The secondary doorway was safely ensconced in shrink wrap and boxed inside of protective polyurethane containers. The power source was bolted to the second trailer. If they lost any one part of either the doorway of the portable power storage unit they wouldn’t be coming back from this little jaunt. The rest of the team was issued tents, camping gear, signal devices, and defensive measures that were top of the line. Altogether they were taking over a ton and a half of supplies with them. Jack then adjusted his helmet as the sliding door started to rise and they heard the spinning doorway for the first time. The light changed inside the ready room as the door exposed the Wellsian Doorway. Each man looked at the miracle of quantum physics and were frozen to the spot for a moment.

The last thing Jack thought about before entering the large chamber was the fact that he had left Sarah behind and his angry last words to her rang in his memory. He wished he had said good-bye but he just couldn’t face seeing those eyes and their accusing glint. Everyone would sit this one out. He looked at Charlie Ellenshaw, the only member of the team who was there for purely psychological reasons — he had to save Carl for the simple fact he hadn’t been able to save his best friend Pete Golding. He hoped this would help the old cryptozoologist to return to the Charlie they knew and loved.

The loudspeaker came to life.

“Return signal is holding strong. Doorway is at fifty percent power and is also holding at nominal levels. The Los Angeles is reporting her reactor board is in the green.”

In front of Jack, Jenks, Henri, and Charlie, the Wellsian Doorway spun in its revolving arc and the colors were brilliant as they reflected off their visored helmets. The activity of personnel heated up as technicians started to clear the platform floor.

“Time till displacement, ten minutes and counting.”

15

The cleaning crews were just finishing the long night of clean-up after a raucous concert earlier that evening. Many of the concertgoers were still mingling around the exterior of the new arena. Most didn’t pay any attention to the step van that eased into the loading dock at the back of the large venue. It backed in and several men emerged and started using a bolt cutter to snap the exterior lock on the roll-up door.

“Hey, there’s no deliveries this late, it’s nearly two thirty in the morning, you need to—”

That was as far as the security guard and his partner got in questioning the delivery drivers. The silenced weapon was quickly put away and then two bodies unceremoniously moved to the side as the large loading gate slid up. The brand-new soda machine was quickly wheeled inside. The five men vanished into the darkness and then returned a moment later. With one last look around they entered the step van and then they slowly pulled out.

The second set of guards had just come from the front where they had tried to get the early-morning concertgoers to move along when they spied their two downed brethren. The first started to raise his radio to his mouth but the words were never allowed to escape his lips. The bomb hidden inside the soda machine detonated. The two guards were blown free of the loading dock and tossed like rag dolls into the alley beyond.

The rear portion of the brand-new arena blew outward and flames erupted into the night.

Ten minutes later the parties responsible made their announcement to the news media. It seemed terrorists had made a statement in the heart of Brooklyn and soon every policeman and federal agent in the five boroughs was rushing there. The Russian ploy to isolate the doorway had successfully diverted police and federal attention from other areas of Russian concern.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard was now fully exposed and the Event Group was on their own.

Alexi Doshnikov pulled up the sleeve of his expensive coat and looked at his watch. The frightened family watched his lips move as if he were counting down the seconds. After a few tense seconds a deep rumble was felt through the thick frame of the limousine. The night sky was illuminated to the east and that was when they saw their Russian abductor smile. He lowered his arm and looked at the family. Benjamin and Natalie Koblenz, their son-in law and daughter next to them with a sleeping baby in the mother’s arms, and he smiled. His bearded face held no humanity for the frightened family.

“It seems our little road show is officially open.” He looked at the family across from him and then looked at his man in the seat next to him, and nodded. The bodyguard picked up a phone and spoke into it. The large limousine started to move forward with no less than six Ford Explorers following.

“Why are we here? Where are you taking us?”

“A poker game. And you five are the chips that will allow us a seat at this very exclusive table.”

The four frightened members of the kidnapped family saw the gleam in the man’s eyes. He looked at the oldest member and smirked.

“Your Madam Mendelsohn is about to make me a very, very wealthy man.”

The earthquakes, other than a few stomach-rolling tremors, had subsided as the brief glimpses of the fantastic starfield showed itself for one of the few times since his arrival. Carl was resting his back against the small cave opening that he was currently calling home. It was elevated and looked down upon the game trail three hundred feet below him. He had traded in his homemade bow and arrows for the rigid Roman bow and iron-tipped arrows of the old Ninth Legion. He had to string new rabbit gut for a bow string, but other than that he had far more confidence in hitting something with the meticulously designed weapon. It and the large quiver of arrows sat beside him as he stared up at the brilliant star-strewn sky. Then his mood changed when the rolling ash cloud once again covered them and the large rising moon of the distant past. He felt his confidence shake everytime he lost sight of something familiar such as the night sky.

Sleep was hard to come by as the night sounds of prehistoric animals came alive as the ash cloud once more covered the central plain of Antarctica. He had watched for the past several days the run of animals big and small from the growing danger of the volcano. Erebus had put Carl on notice that there was not much time left. He once more looked at the sky and then closed his eyes.

“Anytime, Jack,” he said as he drifted off to sleep.

He didn’t know how long he had been asleep. He knew he liked dozing outside the cave during the nighttime hours for the simple fact the former SEAL hated to be caught in a dead end if a wandering animal was also seeking shelter for the night. He also didn’t know what it had been that made his eyes flutter open. He lifted his head from the rock facing and looked around. His fingers touched the Birchwood bow and he waited for the noise to come again. Carl saw that dawn was getting ready to break over this savage land. He adjusted his back and stretched without any noise. That was when he heard the screeching of an animal below him. He looked down into the diffused light of the day. Falling ash obscured a lot of the game trail below. It was because of that whitish-colored ash that he saw what had awakened him. His eyes widened and he inched back closer to the cave’s outer wall.

“What the—” he started to say, and then stopped short when the feathered creature broke cover. It was soon followed by two more from opposing directions. The three animals had cornered a fourth. The frightened creature at the center looked like a small tree sloth that had wandered too far from its home. His eyes widened when he examined the three feathered birdlike animals that had its prey surrounded.

The three birds were lizardlike in movement. Their two arms were long and feathered and what made Carl’s breath catch in his throat was the fact that these creatures had articulated hands and fingers. They were outstretched as they circled the sloth. He saw the yellow eyes as they watched every slowed movement of the fur-covered tree dweller. The animals were large, standing just about four and a half feet. The feathers along their arms were sparse but brightly colored. These feathers were long while the light down feathers covering their muscular bodies were short and moved with the rising breeze. Instead of the hard beaks of the feathered world, they had lizard snouts, and he could see even from that distance that they were filled with small, sharp teeth. The heads were clean of feathers with the exception of the bright red and blue ones crowning their heads and ran from their crown to the tips of their tails, which moved in dragonlike slowness as they forced the sloth into the center of the game trail.

“Holy shit,” Carl mumbled as the hunters and prey squared off. The sloth with its elongated claws used for climbing sliced the air in front of the three Velociraptors, keeping them at bay with loud hissing and squeaks. The three prehistoric carnivores circled, infuriated that the small koala bear — looking sloth was actually going to put up a fight.

Suddenly a thing happened that blew Carl’s natural world to bits. The larger of the three raptors moved quickly off into the bush. This animal was far more brightly colored than its two smaller compatriots. It vanished as the others continued to keep the sloth in check. The lead raptor reappeared and this time it held a long stick in its flexing hand. Everett’s hackles rose as he was witness to an animal using a tool to possibly kill with. The leader squawked out orders, which scared Carl even more than the makeshift spear that the beast carried. The alpha raptor hissed and barked again and the circling animals stopped. The leader slowly raised the long stick upward and then jabbed at the frightened sloth.

“Run, damn it!” Everett hissed from his high perch.

Without notice the activity stopped. Carl knew he had voiced his concern too loudly when the leader looked around and its scaled muzzle went into the air and it sniffed. It turned. Its yellow eyes, with quick, jerky motions, looked up and saw the man high in the rocks. It hissed.

The sloth, seeing its break, ran off to the nearest tree and vanished. The other two raptors joined the first as they all looked up at the man. They were quiet as they examined this new element in the morning’s hunt. The alpha raptor barked three times and then it seemed to shake its makeshift club at the man who had so interfered with its breakfast.

“Uh-oh,” Carl said as he gathered up his bow. He started to stand up but his boot caught on some loose rock and he slipped. He thought he could catch himself before he came too close to the edge but his other foot got caught up in the quiver of arrows. He knew he had lost and started a fast slide down the incline that had protected him from the night’s terrors. He slid down until the breath was knocked from his body as he finally came to rest just off the game trail. He shook his head and then looked around him. His bow was broken in two and his arrows were still in their quiver fifty feet above him. He quickly scrambled to his feet as he saw the stunned raptors looking at him.

“I know, not very graceful, was it?” Carl said just to hear the sound of his voice over the three intakes of breath from the birdlike creatures. Everett slowly withdrew his sheathed survival knife. He eyed the birds as they didn’t exactly know what to make of this large animal that had intruded. The two lesser raptors looked to the alpha for guidance. The eyes and head flicked about as the raptor studied Everett. Then it barked twice and its two companions broke and ran to either side of Carl. The surround game was on again. Carl held the knife out to the leader and spoke. “Well, asshole, let’s do this,” he said as the raptor eyed him with fast blinks and head tilting when he spoke.

The alpha raised the large stick and that was when Carl knew that it wasn’t just a club. The raptor had altered the broken limb for combat. The sharpened end was as pointed as anything he could have whittled. Suddenly the game was changed and Everett knew he was looking at something that shouldn’t be. The animal barked again and then stepped toward the larger human. The spear was held out as it started poking it toward Carl. He heard the other two raptors behind him in the bush. Their ragged breathing was almost as frightening as the vision of these out-of-place animals.

One of the smaller Velociraptors charged Everett from the rear. Carl spun as fast as he could and caught the raptor in the throat and then he cut left to confront the other one hidden behind him. That was when the alpha charged with its spear out in front. Everett slammed the knife down deflecting the weapon as the raptor’s momentum swung it wide of Carl. The second raptor surprised him and came on from a direction he didn’t suspect. It jumped from a tree and then its weight slammed Carl to the ground and that was when he knew he was in trouble as he heard at the same moment the alpha recover from its aborted attack and turn. The one that had knocked him from his feet recovered and then turned, hissing on Everett. He brought the knife up just as Carl raised his weapon. He didn’t realize until later that he wasn’t using the knife to kill, but merely to use as a shield against the snapping teeth. The animal’s jaw came down on the blackened steel of the K Bar knife. It hit and the animal screamed. Then Carl saw his chance and pushed the knife down the half bird, half lizard’s throat. The animal tried to scream again but managed only to spill hot blood down Everett’s arm as it stumbled backward. It fell and then started its death spasms as Everett tried to stand. He was too late.

The alpha broke from the brush once more, this time with a powerful leap into the air with the spear raised high. Carl tried to bring his arms up for some sort of defense but knew his move would be too late and the knife would never stop the weight and height momentum of the raptor before it sunk the makeshift spear deeply into his chest.

As Everett braced for the searing pain he knew was coming, a miracle came from the same area where the tree sloth had disappeared to. The raptor’s flight toward Carl’s prone body was snatched away at the last moment by a blur of white, yellow, and red feathers. He rolled away and saw that the raptor’s trajectory had been altered big time. He shook his head and then focused on the commotion in front of him. The alpha leader of the Velociraptors was in a quandary as it it hissed at the large roc confronting it. The great bird was now the one doing the circling. Its small wings flapped as it cawed and screeched at the raptor, daring it to charge. The large talons of the roc were scratching away the undergrowth as it was preparing to charge like a bull. Still the raptor held its ground as it hissed out raptor epithets at the large chickenlike bird.

“I’ll be damned,” he mumbled when he saw that it was the same roc that he had saved the previous month. The deep scratches that the giant panther had etched into its large beak were the telling factor in his identification. The deep gouges were now a blur as the beak opened and then the roc screamed and attacked.

The raptor knew it was outmatched fighting alone. It threw the spear like an Olympic athlete and, like the terrorists of Everett’s own time, it ran away from superior firepower — that being the enormous, sharpened beak of the roc. The large chicken knew not to press its luck with pursuit. It had the instincts to know that the alpha raptor had many friends in the jungles and one roc against a flock had no chance. The roc skid to a stop as the raptor vanished into the bush lining the game trail.

Everett had a hard time getting his heart to slow after the close call. He watched the roc as it scratched the earth with its giant talons as it mocked the flight of its mortal enemy. The giant turned to face Everett. Its yellow eyes blinked in rapid movement. The long neck of the bird craned higher to get a better look at Carl. The rooster took a few tentative steps toward the man who had saved its life. The small wings flapped twice as it stopped only feet away. Everett sheaved the knife and then ventured a step closer to his savior. He stopped when the roc suddenly chirped. Everett’s eyes went wide for a moment as he didn’t know if that was a greeting or a warning that he was getting too close. The long legs and powerful thighs of the roc remained still as Carl held out a hand toward the scarred beak. The roc leaned over and Everett gently touched the deep gouges that had been close to a death sentence from the earlier confrontation with the large panther. The roc blinked its yellow eyes as Carl’s hand came into contact with the hard surface of the beak.

“Well, I guess thanks are in order,” he said as his large hand slid easily over the rough surface of the roc’s large and menacing beak. It opened its mouth and then it squawked lightly as its head bent lower at Carl’s touch.

Erebus took that moment to awaken from its nightly slumber and announce that it was now fully awake. The explosion of ash and rock flew from the mouth of the crater, and three other smaller mounts close to Erebus did the same. The ash cloud formed immediately and slid down the facing of not one, but four volcanoes. The earth moved and then quickly settled as the ashfall became heavier.

The large and curving beak of the roc nudged its equally large head against Everett’s hand. The man smiled and then patted the giant on its head as the world became darker around them. They heard other frightened beasts of the eastern and southern plains as they stampeded away from the death and destruction falling from the skies over their heads.

“Looks like we won’t have very much time to sort out this new friendship we have here, my friend.”

The roc squawked again and then nuzzled Everett’s hand even harder than before. Then, as the ash cloud grew heavier, the giant raised its head to the sky and screeched. The sound initially came out high-pitched, but ended in a deep bass sound that reverberated against the stark skies. Carl smiled as the roc looked back at him, its red-feathered head dipping to his hand once more.

“You sound like an old-fashioned foghorn, you know that,” he said as he scratched at the roc’s feathers on the side of its head. He laughed when he realized he had just come up with a name for his new friend. He pushed the roc toward the game trail.

Erebus rumbled and her three sisters did the same.

“Come on, Foghorn Leghorn, let’s find some cover.”

Xavier Morales watched as the tractor slowly moved onto the floor of the makeshift laboratory. He saw Jack Collins and Henri Farbeaux at the front as Collins controlled the tractor and its six-trailer load by remote control. Henri stood opposite him with Jenks and Charlie Ellenshaw bringing up the rear near the first trailer. He saw that all but Ellenshaw had M-4 assault rifles slung on their packs. Their white environmental suits gleamed in the multicolored brightness of the powered-up doorway. The procession halted as they came within fifty feet of the doorway. The steel door slowly closed behind them. He watched as Collins looked first at the large monitor and Morales as he viewed from Nellis, and then he glanced up at the observation room where the gathered department heads watched on nervously. He looked but knew Sarah wouldn’t be there and his hindsight regrets doubled. Niles nodded and Alice gave them a small, sad wave of her elegant hand.

“Los Angeles, this is Group control, we’re ready to power up to one hundred and fifteen percent. Are we a go?” Morales asked as his team of technicians excitedly watched from Nevada.

“Group, we are green across the board, ready on your command,” came the reply from the submarine laying tied up at the dock.

“All observers, please lower your eye protection,” Xavier ordered. Sunglasses were placed on faces throughout the observation room and the platform area. “Dimensional Raiders, lower your visors and prepare for power-up.”

Collins shot a look at the monitor and Xavier at the mention of the moniker Raiders, but lowered his visor anyway. Charlie smiled as he secretly loved the new nickname.

“Inject the nitrogen into the doorway,” Virginia ordered from her station as her eyes settled on Master Chief Jenks, who glanced over at her and then nodded his helmeted head. That was when they all heard a frightening sound as the large pumps injected liquid nitrogen into the spinning doorway. The noise was overpowering as the coolant spread through the system to cool it while the lasers cut a dimensional path through time and space. Without the coolant the team would walk into the power of the sun.

“Begin collider sequence, five thousand RPMs first.” Alice closed her eyes in the scientists’ silent prayer of, God, I hope we know what it is we are doing.

Inside the large spinning wheel of the doorway the trapped atoms started racing around the interior of the wheel and then another from stream of protons from the opposing end. Both came on at the speed of sound as they passed each other. With every revolution the two particles came closer and closer together. It was only the sheer brilliance of Europa that timed the sequence perfectly and kept the two from colliding before the doorway was fully open. They needed the power of the colliding atoms and protons to punch a hole large enough out of this time dimension and into the desired target of Antarctica of 227,000 years ago.

Inside the observation room some of the department heads turned and they had to smile as Will, Sarah, Anya, and Jason entered. The director looked their way and nodded. He knew he would never be able to keep them out anyway. They had to know if their friends made it through the doorway and he couldn’t blame them in the least. He turned and saw Jack and the others looking up at him. Collins saluted and then nodded that they were as ready as they would ever be.

“Dr. Morales, you have my permission to initiate sequence. Note that it was upon my order. Log it into Europa that I am solely responsible for the parameters and of the results of this mission.”

“Noted, Doctor,” Morales said with a faltering smile as he turned to his technicians. “Gentlemen, let’s open the door. Colonel Collins, good luck to you and your team, sir.”

Jack and the others braced themselves. Henri felt the reassuring weight of the mini M-4 on his back and was sorely tempted to unsling it and be ready for a charging rhinoceros or whatever terror was waiting for them.

For the first time since she had known him, Alice watched as Niles Compton offered a silent prayer as he closed his good eye and lowered his head. The director had never been a religious man, but she knew that after the recent war he had changed — they all had.

“Los Angeles, one hundred and fifteen percent power. Europa, expand the bandwidth and lock doorway on to target area. Let’s bring the particles up to light speed.”

They all felt and heard the electrical whine coming from the outside as Los Angeles ramped up her powerful and highly experimental reactor. The power coursed through the thick lines and soon they all heard the particle accelerator inside the doorway start to charge with an ear-splitting whine.

Virginia Pollock sat down at her station as Jenks looked over at her through the protective glass. Even with her goggles on he could tell she had been crying. She smiled and then started her procedure.

“Injecting the core material. Bring revolutions to five hundred thousand RPM, please.”

The doorway started spinning faster. The noise was tremendous and then the sudden heavy vibration almost knocked Jack and the others from their feet. Up above Moira Mendelsohn had never beheld such raw power before. She had had a limited supply and had to use it very judiciously back in the day.

Virginia found she couldn’t give the last command. The lights in the room dimmed as the doorway brightened as the opposing particles of atoms and protons finally achieved the speed of light inside of their protective cocoon. The colors were swirling faster than they could track. It was Xavier Morales who noticed her dilemma.

“Heat is holding, start the laser system,” he said from the large monitor overhead, knowing Virginia was hesitant to send the team off.

Ringing the doorway’s frame, the 162 lasers fired. The green and blue beams of light cut a swath of brilliance through the darkness until it struck the lead-lined wall beyond. The rounded sphere of laser light held steady.

“Europa, please bring lasing system to full power — watch your eyes, gentlemen,” he called out as Jack and the others lowered their gaze from the doorway. Suddenly, the intensity of the green and blue lasers heightened to where no one could view them until their eyes adjusted. “Okay, final RPM boost in five, four, three, two, one, initiate power surge.”

The scream of the revolving Wellsian Doorway cracked the viewing glass in the observation deck from the audible assault from the platform, forcing those inside to back off nervously with not just a few nervous chuckles. Sarah gripped the windowsill that much tighter as she watched Jack far below.

The doorway hit its revolution limit and a powerful roar filled the air inside the room as she came to full power-up. Europa sounded a warning tone that pierced even the noise of the doorway.

“Collider is at one hundred percent,” Europa said with her Marilyn Monroe voice as calming as ever, and believe it or not to most that was comforting to them. “Matter infusion in three, two, one, infusion initiated.”

Inside the rapidly spinning doorway the world exploded outward as the atoms and protons inside the collider mated at the speed of light, the collision producing the power surge needed to penetrate the dimensional rift and exploit it. Before anyone realized it, their world of knowledge and theory flew from their minds as the most amazing thing they had ever witnessed began. The laser lights started to bend backward toward the doorway as if a powerful suction were bending them. A human-made black hole was forming, powerful enough to bend light. At the speed of light the lasers shot back and into the Wellsian Doorway and at that very moment, the impossible happened. Never again would the Event Group doubt any science that Albert Einstein had theorized.

The lasers penetrated the doorway and the room exploded with the fantastic spectacle of light as the pressure wave of lasers sent back a hot, humid shot of air. Inside that brief moment of converging times all of the eyewitnesses would later say they all smelled another world as it invaded their own.

Before them, Jack and his team saw the lasers vanish over and around them until they were covered in a tunnel-like corridor. The lasers vanished into a swirling vortex of bright white light. They had their external air valves shut down and were on their limited thirty-minute supply of suit oxygen; if not, Jack Collins would have smelled the ancient savagery of the strange world they were about to step into.

“Tone signal has locked, you will be entering at ground level one and half miles east from the rescue beacon.” Xavier Morales could say no more as he anxiously watched the brave men almost two thousand miles away. It was now up to the team leader.

Below, Jack started the tracked vehicle. The train of men slowly and hesitantly entered the Wellsian Doorway and vanished.

The age of time travel had officially arrived for the United States.