The Traveler

16

The pain, though less than the unprotected nonceramic construction of the earlier German and Mendelsohn doorways as reported by Madam herself, was still enough to make Collins and the others bend over. It was as if their very marrow were being assaulted by molten lead. Farbeaux would worry much later about the long-term effects of such substantial exposure to neutrons, protons, and atoms that flew through air at the speed of light. If it were not for the tractor and its ability to continue to transit the corridor between dimensions, they all feared they would have faltered and stumbled inside the hurricane of light and sound. Charlie closed his eyes against the pain and nearly crumpled to a knee. The light was blinding and it seemed the very atomized particles of this strange transitioning passed directly through their suits and bodies — which in actuality did just that. The team was essentially disintegrated and then their own DNA was reconstituted as they entered the dimensional plane of a new time.

Jack and Henri were the first to feel the sudden difference in their footing as each halting step brought them even more of the assault to their pain centers. The hardness of the old concrete floor of the naval warehouse was gone as their specialized boots were now walking upon a soft, spongelike footing. The pain eased and the team slowly recovered as they walked, each step more pain free. They thought they were through the worst of it when the wave of nausea gripped each man. It quickly passed but was replaced by dizziness that threatened once more to send them sprawling. A blinding flash of light illuminated the air around them and then the brightness vanished and the sound exited the new world with it. They soon found themselves in utter darkness. Charlie clicked on the light that was affixed to his right shoulder and his helmet.

“Shut it down, Charlie,” Jack said through his com link just as he raised his tinted visor. He looked skyward and the night slowly started to take shape around him. “Your eyes will adjust. Look up and concentrate on the stars. You can see a few of them through the canopy and the—”

That was when they all noticed the heavy fall of black and gray ash as it fell upon them. Even as they looked the dark ash cloud blotted out the remaining stars. Charlie still did as Jack had ordered and shut off both lights.

All four men heard the heavy breathing and just assumed it was Charlie. It wasn’t long before they realized that each of them was the culprit. Jack released the toggle on the tractor’s remote and the small train came to a stop. He turned and looked back at where the doorway had been. He saw ash-covered jungle in the darkness as his eyes slowly adjusted. They seemed to be in a small thigh-high grass clearing. He once more looked at the sky and the moon was just sitting in this strange land, that and the ash clouds of angry elements was why the night was so dark. Collins looked over at Henri just as Jenks and Ellenshaw joined them. The master chief still had to have a handhold on the tractor as he steadied his shaking body.

“Well, we made it someplace,” Jack said as he looked around them and the stillness of the green canopy they found themselves under. The moon vanished low in the northern sky and then the ash had a complete hold on the night. The darkness became even more still than it had been just a moment before. They all knew it was the total absence of light that played tricks on their minds.

“Yeah, so far anyway,” Jenks said as he looked at a small box he held in his hand. “Wherever we are the oxygen level is off the chart.” He looked up from his readout. “Twenty times the content of our atmosphere at home. No pollutants other than this.” He reached up and caught a handful of hard ash as the pumice-like material fought its way through the thick tree canopy above them. Jenks turned his hand over and allowed the ash to slide off his glove. “Heavy ash particulate. It looks like your volcanoes are acting up big time, Colonel. This isn’t from just a smoking cauldron, it’s activity that’s carrying some weight to it. This stuff is being ejected far from the caldera.” Jenks looked to the south and that was when he saw the clouds in that direction were tinted red and flashed heavy electrical activity.

“We only have four hours’ extra supply of O2 in the trailers, we’re bound to run out. Can we breathe this stuff?” Jack asked.

Before Jenks could answer they saw Henri reach up and slide his locking mechanism on his helmet. He waited a moment and then looked at Collins. “We may as well find out now rather than later if we have to pack up and get out of here.” He lifted the helmet free and then slowly took a breath.

Charlie couldn’t help but take a deep breath while he watched the Frenchman, as if he were willing the air to be good.

“One thing we must do before we leave this place,” Henri said as he took another deep breath, “is to bottle as much air as we can to sell on the black market back home.”

Jack smiled and then removed his own helmet. He was happy not to hear the warning alarm for a bad environment sound in his ears just the same.

Before long each man had to sit in the darkness as the air was so heavy and oxygenated that they became momentarily giddy with an overdose of something none of them had ever breathed before — unpolluted air from a world producing such an abundance through the ancient plant life. It was impossible for them to fully comprehend its purity.

“This clearing seems good enough to get our bearings. Master Chief, can you get our precise location?”

“Yeah, I’ll break out the sextant,” Jenks joked.

Jack cleared his eyes and took a shallow breath as he tried to limit his intake as much as he could. He looked at his gloved hand and then unzipped it and peered at the illuminated dial on his watch. He was shocked that the timepiece made it through the electrical hell as they passed through the doorway. He again glanced up but was unable to see anything beyond the canopy as the falling ash came down like a winter snowfall.

“It should be daylight soon enough. We’ll forego camp and make ready to move at first light. We’ll set up in a more defensive position when we can see what the hell we’re doing. I don’t relish the idea of flashing a bunch of lights around without knowing what may be watching.”

The stillness of the night was shattered by the scream of a large cat somewhere in the distance. Each man froze as the cry echoed against some far-off obstruction and bounced back.

“That was not a normal large-cat call. I’ve heard them all and believe me, that’s something that hasn’t walked the Earth for well over ten thousand years,” Charlie explained excitedly.

Jenks, Farbeaux, and Collins looked at Ellenshaw as if he had just reverted back to his old, ditsy self. However, it was the Frenchman who put things into perspective once again as he removed the small M-4 from his back and made sure to charge it.

“I’ll say this once again: You people never cease to amaze me in your unlimited and imaginative ways you have for trying to get me killed.”

As if in answer to Farbeaux’s observation the unseen beast roared again, and this time it was answered by a second, far closer call before the echo of the first had faded to nothing. As they listened a heavy rain came and started cleaning the jungle around them of the white and gray ash. Still, the sound of the animal life of the Antarctic continent 227,000 years ago told them they were indeed a long way from home.

The strange new world they found themselves in was starting to awaken.

Sarah waited as long as she could as the doorway slowly started to power down. She swallowed her fear as Jack had vanished into a wall of light. She felt part of her rapidly beating heart go with him. She felt Anya beside her and she looked up and saw the sympathy in her eyes. The Israeli agent knew the exact anxiety she was feeling.

“Come on, ladies, waiting around in here won’t hurry things up any. Let’s get some air,” Mendenhall said as he nodded toward Ryan, who was speaking with the director and Alice. He soon joined them.

“I don’t know about you people, but I’ve never felt so damn worthless in my life,” Jason said as he held the door for the two ladies and Will.

The four walked outside and took in the stillness of the night. The fog had actually worsened in the past hour. The scene was eerily reminiscent of the open Wellsian Doorway in that all sound was absorbed by the fog. The strange light the fog produced made Sarah feel uneasy.

“Peter to Paul, we have a vehicle approaching from the main gate,” came the call from one of Ryan’s men at the perimeter. “Looks like a limo, over.”

Jason raised his brows at the other three who heard the call. He raised the radio to his lips and pushed the transmit button.

“Stop and detain,” he said. He lowered the radio and then started to raise it again but stopped. He waited.

The radio finally crackled to life. “Driver says the party is expected by Madam Mendelsohn, over.”

“Number?” Jason asked, not liking this one bit. He nodded at Will, who quickly vanished into the night after retrieving a small case from the dock area. Sarah raised a questioning look at Ryan.

“I count what looks like a family of four plus infant.” The radio went silent for the briefest of moments. Then it awoke once more. “Two well-dressed men plus the driver, over.”

“Will, are you in position?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Mendenhall said from the high vantage point he had taken. It was one of the many streetlights he had rigged earlier for climbing. He was using a new scope delivered the past year from Bushnell. The infrared lighting system cut through fog like it wasn’t there. Will could switch the system to read heat signatures as well as cold spots. “Oh, it looks like they brought company. They’re hanging back just beyond the gate. Lights off. Six large Explorers. Infrared says they’re full of very large sacks of meat.”

“Copy. Let me know if they move.”

“You got it,” replied Mendenhall.

“Let them through, then blend into the night and wait for Captain Mendenhall to make a call on those cars. Positions three and four close on the main gate.” Ryan was quickly answered by just three clicks from each man watching the buildings. “Sarah, you and Anya get out of sight for now until we see what these folks are up to. Dr. Pollock, are you there?”

“Pollock,” came Virginia’s quick response.

“Inform the director we have company, supposedly at Madam Mendelsohn’s request.”

“Copy.”

Sarah didn’t question Ryan as she and Anya vanished into the fog next to the USS Los Angeles, which now sat dark and silent under the camouflage netting.

“They’re moving to your pos, over.”

Ryan made sure his own pistol was charged. He stepped forward to greet their visitors and raised the radio once more. “Dr. Pollock, I’m sending Sergeant Hernandez in. He’s to stick with the director, who is to remain secured inside the observation room.”

“Copy. Also, Professor Mendelsohn was not expecting company. She says she’s in the dark.”

“Roger,” Jason said as he finally saw the long limousine appear through the rolling fog. Its approach was slow as it made its way to the front of the building. Ryan stepped forward and held his hand in the air. As he did he got what the colonel called a jolt to his hackles as he felt the trouble before it actually appeared. He watched as the driver emerged from the front seat and stepped easily to the rear and opened the door. A man eased himself from the car and adjusted his ankle-length coat and then he saw Ryan. He smiled, his teeth even and white. His beard was immaculately trimmed and the navy man immediately took the guy for an asshole.

“Thank you for allowing us to visit,” the man said with a slight taste of Russian accent, which brought Ryan to full attention.

“This building and area are closed for the time being. Stems from the trouble this afternoon.” Ryan watched the man closely. “Perhaps you heard?”

The man stood his ground and then his smile grew as he looked to his left at the former dry dock area and saw the camouflage netting covering the long shape of the Los Angeles. He turned back to face Jason.

“I must admit that whoever you are, you have access to the most amazing resources.”

Jason remained as still as he could while his eyes slowly took in the man and his driver, who still hadn’t moved from the open rear door.

“It is cold and damp out here, so I will state my business.” He gestured to the driver, who leaned in and said something to the people inside the darkened interior and then stepped back. “Inside the car are some particular friends of Madam Moira Mendelsohn. Very close, you might say.”

“I don’t know a Madam Mendelson and as I said before this section of the navy yard is closed. No one goes inside.”

The man looked Ryan over and smirked at the garish tattoo. He stepped aside as he was joined by an older couple and what looked like a young family of three, including a baby. The family looked frightened.

“I insist.”

Jason Ryan didn’t move or gesture in any way as the three laser beams struck the man and remained unmoving upon his black coat right over where his heart would be. For emphasis a red beam of light struck the bearded man on the forehead. The laser beams were clearly marked as they cut a swath through the fog. Ryan just raised his brows as he waited for the Russian to continue on his insistence to enter.

“Very well,” the man said as he took a step back. Ryan didn’t like the fact that the Russian did this without fear of being shot. He pulled the young mother forward and then raised the blanket covering the sleeping baby. Jason tried not to react when he saw the plastique and electrical wiring. His eyes went to the well-dressed man, who released the blanket and allowed it to once more cover the explosive-covered baby.

“Barbaric perhaps, but it is an attention-getter, is it not?” The man saw something in Jason’s eyes he didn’t like. “I assure you there is enough of a charge attached to that child to not only kill us all, but to flatten enough of that building to bring in the authorities. Neither of us can well afford that, can we? Wellsian Doorways are a little hard to come by.”

Ryan knew the man had the advantage and no matter what firepower he brought to bear this man held all of the cards at the moment. He couldn’t risk damage to or the discovery of the doorway, or they would lose everyone. Ryan gestured toward the building. He raised the radio and informed Virginia about the situation and she also knew they had very little choice.

As the frightened family and the three Russians moved toward the building and the doorway beyond, the six Explorers entered the navy yard and also made their way toward building 117. The remaining Event Group security posts could do nothing about it.

As the sun rose, Jack felt more in control. The jungle surrounding them was lush and green now that the hard rains had washed the greenery clean. With the ashfall turning to a fine dust, Collins could see the jungle had a youngness to it, a beauty none had ever seen. The flowers were large and colorful. The insect life was active with mosquitoes the size of large houseflies. They had started making their way toward the inland sea and hoped to exit the greenery before too long. The electric drive on the tractor made little noise as the group finally broke into the clear and they saw the diluted, shrouded sun for the first time. The angry ash clouds to the south were far more visible now. Even as they examined the dark sky they felt the movement of the earth beneath their feet.

“Here’s something for the books,” Jenks said as he had pulled the atmospheric analyzer from the trailer nearest him. He shook his head at the readings. “We just went from a balmy and humid ninety-two degrees to a low of sixty-seven in less than three minutes.” He looked up from the analyzer. “Air current shift from the northeast. Cold air front.” He again looked at the readout. “We’re back up to ninety-two degrees.”

“What do you think?” Jack asked Jenks.

“Hell, your guess is as good as mine, Colonel.”

“The great freeze has begun,” Charlie said as if speaking to himself. He then looked around and saw the team looking his way and he realized he had spoken aloud.

“Go ahead and keep it to yourself, Doc,” the master chief quipped.

“Sorry, but it seems the activity of the four or five volcanoes are interacting with the freeze that’s occurring in the northeast. Sarah’s geology department in conjunction with atmospherics say that we have just entered the opening rounds of the climate change that leads to Antarctica being buried in ice. Perhaps the volcanic activity is retarding the process.” He looked at the confused master chief. “Slowed it down. At least for now. But in the end it is the activity of so many volcanoes that they are the ultimate culprit in sending this continent to the same frozen hell as the rest of the world.”

“There’s a small rise right over there.” Jack loosened the high collar of his camouflage BDUs. “It has a clear field of fire for about two hundred yards. I say we start this show right there. I don’t relish traveling too far away from the beacon but also don’t want to have a sea at my back in case we have to get the hell out of there fast.”

“The sooner the better,” Henri said as he looked around him. The sudden stillness rankled his calm. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we have eyes on us,” he said as he pretended to adjust something in the first trailer.

Without comment and believing every word just uttered by the Frenchman, Jack started the tractor forward, its tracks digging deep into the soft soil.

The deep rumbling beneath their feet started and they assumed at first it was the movement caused by the rumbling mountains to the south. But it wasn’t Mount Erebus and her sisters. Jack stopped and they all saw the giant herd of bison as they rumbled no less than two miles away. They sped past the four men, moving the very ground they stood upon even at that extreme distance. Collins watched the hairy bison, the likes of which had vanished long ago. The sight amazed him. Charlie was beyond himself as he took in the scene. He quickly removed a small digital camera and started shooting the extraordinary view. The only one who wasn’t watching the scene in the distance was Farbeaux. He was busy looking at the jungle they had just exited moments before.

“What in the hell are those things?” Jenks asked as he raised a set of field glasses to his eyes.

Behind the large herd of bison, several smaller animals could be seen running at a strange gait. The smaller creatures would dodge in and out of the herd as if they were driving them toward something. Several more of the animals emerged from the jungle that ran parallel to the frightened bison. The herd started to turn toward them and then back again when the small creatures waved long, feather-covered arms in the air as if they were scaring the frightened animals back toward the center of the large plain.

“Doc, you’re the expert, what in the hell are those things?” Jack asked as he lowered his own field glasses.

“My God, they’re raptors of a sort. I’ve never seen anything remotely that size in the fossil record. They must be close to five feet in height. Look at the feathers, how colorful they are!”

“Charlie, I am beginning to believe that that particular fossil record you scientists keep referring to is vastly incomplete,” Jack said as he again raised the glasses to his eyes.

Suddenly the men were startled as in the distance one of the birdlike animals raised a right arm and then threw something at the closest bison. Jack’s eyes widened when he saw that the raptor had thrown a rock. The animal fell, sliding to a stop as three of the raptors jumped upon its thrashing body. More rocks were thrown to still the injured beast. The raptors then circled the dying animal.

“Tell me, Nerdly, what does the fossil record say about large chickens that use weaponry to kill its prey?” Jenks said as he looked over at the stunned cryptozoologist.

“This is impossible,” was the only thing crazy Charlie could come up with.

Henri ducked and warned the others as a long and sharpened stick flew from the jungle only thirty yards away. He brought his weapon up but Jack gestured for him not to shoot. Instead Farbeaux pulled the long polelike object from the ground where it had embedded itself next to him.

“Dr. Ellenshaw, perhaps you can enlighten me as to how an animal with a brain no larger than a walnut can develop such tool-using capabilities?” he asked as he again examined the spear. He broke it and held it high toward the dark jungle it had come from.

“I’m at a loss,” Charlie said as he watched Henri toss the makeshift weapon away.

“Look, I don’t particularly wish to stay here and get skewered by a pissed-off hungry chicken. May I suggest we egress to said hill and make a defense of some sort?”

“I must concur with our rough friend here,” Henri added.

To punctuate the statement another, although smaller, stick flew from the greenery and ricocheted off the last trailer.

As Jack moved off he hoped Carl had survived in this backward world.

The large herd of bison had moved off after losing seven of their number to the hunters. Jack and the others had been amazed at the efficient way the raptors had disposed of the large carcasses. Instead of feeding in place, the birdlike animals dismembered, butchered, and moved the meat off with very little left behind. They had nervously watched as they set up the camp. They had just finished when the sun started to set. The raptors had not made an appearance since the hunt, and the jungle only a quarter mile distant had remained unmoving. Even Henri felt the eyes were no longer upon them.

“I thought we would see more animal life than we have,” Jack said as he reached over and threw a switch that activated the automated laser defense pod he had just installed. The camp was now ringed with the high-tech weaponry. The six modules were perched on their high posts and were aimed outward. The weapons looked like nothing more than a small black box with a glass ball in its casing. Each pod was capable of firing two thousand high-voltage radar-guided laser bursts. It should be enough to frighten anything that may come upon them in the night.

Master Chief Jenks made sure the doorway was secure inside the last trailer. He would start to build it during the lighted hours of the morning. He hated losing the day but they had no choice if those chickens decided to visit during the night. The camp was efficient. They set up a small cookstove but refrained from putting up their shelters. The tents would only keep them from knowing their surroundings and give them a false sense of security, and Collins wanted them all in one place and alert. The five trailers and tractor had been dispersed so as to give them some sort of cover as they watched the terrain below them. Jack knew the makeshift barrier looked like covered wagons and they were the settlers. He stood at one of these and examined the darkening terrain. To the south the earth rumbled and they could see the glow of Mount Erebus. Every now and then a deep explosive jolt would course through their feet as the great volcano rumbled. As they waited for nightfall the night became cold. Yes, the deep freeze was slowly coming to the last land on the planet to know warm sunlight.

“This place has a decidedly dark edge of doom to it, don’t it?” Jenks said as he prepared to send the signal balloons up. He adjusted the strobe light that would flash inside of the white aerial device. He quickly filled the balloon with helium and it shot skyward. As it rose into the air the flashing beacon shone brightly in the night sky like a magical orb.

“There, I hope we attract the attention of Toad and not some monster out of a nightmare,” the master chief said as his eyes watched the round balloon sending out its flashing beacon. “I’ve noticed that in my time with you people you seem to attract a hell of a lot of monsters,” he said as Henri nodded in agreement. Jenks repeated the process two more times until three of the balloons rose a thousand feet into the air.

“Now look up, Carl,” Jack said mostly to himself as his eyes took in the bright luminescent balloons overhead that blinked their magic against the most brilliant star field they had ever seen. Then the night sky was slowly blotted out as a large ash cloud rolled over the area, cutting off the signal from above.

Five miles distant other eyes were trained on the strange sight that filled the night sky, and the ancient world slowly came alive with menace.

“What in the bloody hell is that?” Henri asked as he spit out the mouthful of food as he attempted the impossible task of not allowing it to touch the inside of his mouth. He figured his tongue and taste buds had already been lost.

Jenks smirked and then spooned his own tasty mouthful.

“Uh, enchilada casserole I believe the package said,” Ellenshaw said as he examined his own MRE packet.

“Beats the hell out of the old C-rations we used to have to force down,” Jenks said as he ate some more of the casserole. “Back in ’Nam we would have sold our souls for this crap. The only good thing the old ’rats had was cheese and crackers.”

“I would gladly take your cheese and crackers over this,” Henri said as he tossed the casserole free of his plastic spoon. He slowly placed the open package into the plastic bag they were using to keep the animal life from snooping around for food. He spit again to clear his mouth and then drank some water.

“We have enough of the damn MREs to last three months,” Jack said as he sniffed his own package of roast beef. He reclosed it and decided to try again later.

A soft tone came from the remote panel Jenks held on his lap. The master chief placed the MRE package down and raised the small plastic console. The holographic map displayed the radar information the portable defense system was acquiring. The first station coordinated with her sister units and that gave Jenks a complete 360-degree view of their surroundings and anything that moved within.

“We have major movement close to the tree line.”

“Which one?” Jack asked as he raised the night-vision scope to his eyes and started scanning the trees to his left no less than three hundred yards away.

“All of them,” Jenks said as he saw multiple targets moving in and out of radar range. He switched over to infrared and his eyes widened. “Targets are too numerous to count.” Jenks leaned over and switched on the main acquisition program on the weapons control. “Laser system is now armed.” He looked up at Collins. The light-colored ash was now falling heavier than a moment before as the skies to the south were a deeper red in the night sky. “What fail-safe point do you want the safeties placed on, Colonel?”

“Zero,” Jack said as he lowered the nightscope. “I don’t intend to wait around here and allow something to get close enough for us to identify it.” He turned to a nervous Charlie Ellenshaw. “Doc, you said the odds of the local animal or humanoid life escaping Antarctica’s frozen future are a basic zero, right?”

“Yes,” he said as he wondered what Jack was thinking.

“So we won’t be altering the destiny of any living species occupying this land?”

“That’s just a theory, of course, but the anthropological departments and also natural history concur. Europa reported that all the animal life here at this time will perish.”

“Good. Master Chief, give me a three-hundred-round spread just into the tree line on all sides. Let’s see if our visitors’ interest in us is a motivated one.”

“Right,” Jenks said with a gruff chuckle.

“Very scientific of you, Colonel,” Henri said as he lowered himself to form a smaller target just behind one of the empty trailers.

Collins raised the glasses once more and saw that the white blurry targets were gradually easing themselves closer to the first line of trees. The jungle floor hid most of their bodies from view.

“Thirty-five three-thousand-watt bursts from each laser should make our chicken friends think better about dropping in on us without calling first.”

“If that’s what’s out there,” Ellenshaw said as he hunkered next to Farbeaux.

“You just add the most wonderful elements to any discussion, Doctor, you know that?” Henri said, looking at crazy Charlie as if he had lost his mind.

“Ah, you ought to be used to me by now, Colonel.”

“That’s what’s worrying me — I am.”

“This shouldn’t hurt us too much with the system’s portable battery. Here goes nothing. Firing sequence — now!”

The six long poles with their strange little black boxes affixed to their tops activated and started tracking the closest moving targets inside the tree lines on all sides of the camp. As one target was picked by one weapons system its sister tracked the next in line and then the next, all the while feeding their own targeting information to the base system controlled by Jenks. The targets were then prioritized as to threat and all of this happened in less than a microsecond. The lasers started their silent destruction. The sound of a small battery-powered generator fired, giving the laser its umph. Small pinpoint beams of light burst from each weapon with an audible pop as the argon laser cleared the glass apertures of the black boxes. The shots were faster than the speed of light and the green dot of burning energy was hard to pick up in the glow from the south. But soon the pace of fire was so rapid that it looked like a science fiction war. Beads of light struck trees and other things that cried out in the night. Like tracers from low-caliber weaponry, the lasers punctured the initial line of trees and jungle. Then all was silent with the exception of the animal cries in the jungle beyond.

Jack examined the black boxes housing the lasers. They were hot but looked as if they had operated as designed. He leaned over and looked at the battery drainage from the light assault. Down only two percent.

“My God, they sound like the screams of children,” Charlie said with horror written across his features.

As much as Henri didn’t want to agree with Charlie, he was right. The wounded animals sounded like children and it was damn-well unnerving to the Frenchman.

“I hope we didn’t screw the pooch here, Colonel,” Jenks said as he laid the targeting hologram down. Jack looked and nodded at the device. “All activity with the exception of a few blips have all gone. Listen, the cries are fading. So at least we know one thing.”

“What’s that, Master Chief?” Charlie asked, but it was Jack who answered with a concerned look.

“Whatever they are, they carry off their wounded.” Collins looked at the darkened and quiet tree line. He then faced the men. “Doesn’t sound like an animal to me.” The colonel raised his M-4 and made sure the weapon was charged and safed. “Okay, two on, two off. Fifty percent alert. Charlie, you’re with me. Jenks, you and Henri get some rest, we have a hell of a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

With that note, the camp had a very lousy sleep.

17

As Ryan held the door for the unwelcome visitors, his radio crackled to life.

“One, this is main gate, the six vehicles have turned off the main drive and have gone beyond my view. We’ve lost them, Commander.”

“Roger, make your way back to building one-seventeen, consolidate what we have.” Ryan lowered the radio and saw that the small group was waiting on him inside the old reception area.

“Problems?” the Russian asked with a mockingly concerned look on his face.

“None at all.” Ryan again raised the radio to his lips. “Five, this is one, copy?”

“Copy,” Will said from outside.

“Inform the local authorities we may have a security concern.”

“Roger,” came Mendenhall’s reply, and then the radio was silent.

“A wise precaution, my friend. Wise indeed.”

“You know, I’ve always noted the comic book ways you guys talk, a much more precise language, trying to be more sophisticated than you are, when in the end you are nothing more than those pathetically depicted comic book villains.”

The smile faltered for the briefest of moments and Jason could see that his words had angered the Russian. He smiled and gestured that they should follow him.

Joshua Jodle directed the first Explorer in line to the south side of the navy yard toward the original building 114. The windows of the building were dark as all of the activity had shifted to building 117 a quarter of a mile away.

“The tunnel better be there.”

The small man looked over at the brute who was wearing a black leather jacket that didn’t do much to hide the small automatic weapon he held.

“Of course it’s there. I supervised the construction myself,” he lied. “How do you think we could move about from one building to the other while reengineering the doorway without being noticed by the navy yard staff? It’s there, it goes directly to the subbasement of building one-seventeen.”

The man nodded and then opened the door. He removed the Israeli-made Uzi from his jacket and then waited for his fifteen men to join him.

“Remember, once we are in, there is to be no firing of weapons. I am informed that there is some very delicate equipment inside that does not react well to gunfire.”

The other men nodded and Jodle cringed as he saw the explosive firepower of the Russian mob firsthand.

The former concentration camp survivor moved the men into the darkened building where the first doorway had allowed much more honorable men to invade the heart of Nazi Germany not many years before.

But tonight his task was not so noble and he felt guilty as the men made their way to the basement and the tunnel that would lead them to the time machine.

Sergeant Hernandez stepped in front of Director Compton when he tried in vain to move past him and the meeting just outside the observation room.

“Step aside, Sergeant,” Niles ordered as calm as he could.

“No, sir, can’t. Commander’s orders, sorry,” Hernandez said, and truly felt bad. He realized he just told the man in charge of Department 5656 and secretly one of the most influential men in the world that he couldn’t do something. “After the reaming we took from the colonel… I mean… can’t you see we’re on thin ice here?” The sergeant looked for help from the only other person in the observation room, Moira Mendelsohn, but she only shook her head. No help there, he thought.

“Sergeant, the bite of Colonel Collins is nothing compared to mine. I swallow military personnel whole, now open that door,” Niles said so calmly that the large army sergeant took an involuntary step back. After all, he had never once spoken to the kind, scholarly man before. And now here was that same kindly and scholarly gentleman threatening to swallow him whole. He reached out and opened the door — as far as the sergeant was concerned it would be a pleasure to get court-martialed by Ryan. At least he didn’t have to look into the scary one-eyed visage of the small director. Compton took the wheelchair’s handles and bypassed the battery system of Madam’s chair and they left the office together.

“Ah, there she is,” the Russian said as Niles limped behind the chair and both he and Moira entered the reception area where the ghosts of World War II secretaries gossiped over the latest Cary Grant film sixty-five years before.

Virginia looked angry as she took in Niles. She should have known he would pull something like this. The man hated being told what to do. This Group had spoiled their own boss too damn much. The assistant director wanted to throttle the man.

“I was just telling this asshole here that this is a private concern and that he can go fuck himself. Do you have anything to add, Doctor?” she said as her eyes bored into Compton’s only good one.

“No, sounds like a good position to me,” Niles said as he made his way over to a chair and sat down. Moira was silent as she took in the scene before her. Her eyes sadly found the Koblentz family and she wanted to call out to them but she forced herself to remain still. Then she saw the small baby wrapped tightly against the night. She had heard a few days before that the mother had gone into labor. She had always insisted on being informed when the offspring of one of her children were born as each child received a full scholastic scholarship. But now it looked as if all of that were over for her and her extended family.

The Russian half bowed and then looked at the small balding man who had just taken a seat. The portly man was in poor shape as the Russian soon discovered. He was scared and had a limp and an arm that didn’t seem to work quite properly. All in all these people were not the meek scientific types he had expected. They would bear watching.

“Alexi Doshnikov.” He straightened after the brief protocol of the bow.

Virginia and Niles had heard the name and they could see by the look on the Traveler’s face she had heard of the mobster herself. It also looked as though a small smile eased across her lips. Compton looked up and he could see one of the outside monitors in the reception area and saw the face of Xavier Morales appear and then disappear almost as fast. Suddenly he saw that Europa had shut down all of the monitors inside the building. Even the cell phones died in the Group’s pockets. Europa had pulled the plug. At least he knew they were being monitored by an outside source.

“The police have been called,” Ryan said as he looked angrily toward the director. The act of defiance started here at Group right at the top of the heap and worked down.

“Oh, that,” Doshnikov said with a sad smile on his face. “The local authorities have a small terrorist act on their hands, nothing major I assure you, but it seemed to be directed at Brooklyn’s pride and joy of an arena, so it looks as if any response time from the police may be an extended and lengthy proposition.”

“See what I mean about talking as if you’re a sophisticated villain,” Ryan said angrily, but kept his smile from reaching his eyes.

“My friend, your little quips of humor have a decidedly harsh and mocking edge to them, and I am growing tired of it. Out of respect for the Traveler, I will not have you shot in front of her, but keep in mind there is no help coming and that mouth of yours is a severe liability to the survival of this innocent family.”

The door opened from the outside and Will Mendenhall, Sarah McIntire, and Anya Korvesky walked in as if they were unaware of what was happening. Jason noticed none of them were carrying the M-4 rifles they had had earlier, but at least all of them played the role well as their eyes widened in mock surprise as they slowly raised their hands into the air.

“These are the two that were on top of the building this afternoon,” one of the larger men said as he stepped forward and frisked Mendenhall. Will had to smile when he saw the melted nylon of the man’s coat pocket.

“Have a little accident there, Ivan?” Will asked as he nodded at the man’s pants where the confiscated cell phones had melted down. The Russian angrily tossed Mendenhall against the wall and made a far more thorough and rough search of the captain. Ryan winced as he realized Mendenhall was trying his best to provoke these men.

“Where are my four men?” Doshnikov asked as he stepped menacingly toward Ryan, who held his ground.

“It seems we left them in the loving arms of some very motivated Italian folks. You might know them since they ran these neighborhoods a hundred years before you were born, Stalin.”

The backhand to Ryan’s jaw caught everyone but the navy man off guard. Jason shot Will a look to let him know that he just took the heat off of him and for the captain to knock off antagonizing these assholes. That was his job and he prided himself on doing it well.

“I will deal with our Italian friends another time. For now you will take us to see this marvelous machine you have stolen from our poor Madam Mendelsohn. If you do this, we will utilize this golden ticket”—he nodded at the young family and the baby the mother held close to her chest—“one time and one time only. And then you can return to rescuing Jews or whatever it is you people do. I couldn’t care less. I need one night only, one trip only.”

“What do you hope to accomplish?”

All eyes turned and faced the Traveler. She was leaning forward in her chair and waiting as if a patient teacher had asked a backward student a question.

“A great many things, Madam. They may not be the noble endeavor you and your associates have planned, but one that will benefit this great city very much. One that I might add benefited your own company very much indeed. Ah, don’t tell me you are unaware how your board of directors made their fortunes, are you? Come now, who’s being the naive one here, Madam? Yes, we have a far less noble, but yet beneficial endeavor.”

“And that endeavor is?” Moira asked just as patiently as before.

A warning look from Alice Hamilton failed to still the questioning by the brilliant scientist.

“Alas”—Doshnikov looked from Alice then back to Moira—“I’m afraid my quest is one of avaristic value alone, just as your board of directors before me. Only I won’t be nickel-and-diming, as these Americans like to say. I’ll be making my moves all in one night, and the special thing is, and I mean very special, is the fact that other than the use of this magnificent doorway, it will all be completely aboveboard and legal. You see, I plan to be running this city this time next year and I plan on having the financial backing to do it.” He smiled and stepped closer to the wheelchair-bound Moira. He patted her old hand and then turned over the wrist and saw the tattoo: 674392. “And your miracle of science is going to supply me with that opportunity.”

Moira only smiled as she pulled her arm free of the man’s grip. Then she turned and gestured for the new mother and held out her hands for the baby.

“That is not recommended,” Doshinikov said as he stepped between the mother and the Traveler. “As the child has yet to be burped, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?” he joked, and then saw that the tattooed Ryan wasn’t laughing.

Niles nodded that they should adjourn to the observation room. He waited until it was just him, Virginia, Alice, and a Russian guard before following. He nodded descreetly toward the darkened monitor. Both Virginia and Alice knew then that Xavier Morales was knowledgeable of their situation.

But could the new computer whiz do anything about it?

As the Russian took in the stirring sight of the Wellsian Doorway and the many technicians who were preparing for the return dimensional shift when and if the signal was received, they could not prepare themselves adequately for the size of the operation. Seeing the many angry-looking technicians made Doshnikov momentarily hesitant about the size of his task. But seeing the doorway eased the problems to the back of his limited brain.

“Everyone is just so busy, a stirring sight indeed,” he said as he placed a manicured hand onto the shoulder of one of Virginia’s female operators. The specialist recruited from George Mason University but five weeks before turned her body away from the man’s cold touch.

“We aren’t going to allow this, you know that, right?” Ryan said as he nodded at the director to hurriedly escort the young science tech from the room.

“Oh, I think we can come to an understanding,” Doshnikov said as he nodded toward the baby and the closing door where the female operator had just left.

“We won’t be killing the baby, you will, along with the doorway,” Ryan said as he didn’t want the director speaking directly to this man.

The Russian looked at his watch as he again stepped to the window.

“Oh, we will be killing far more before we even get to the child.” He turned and smiled as the noise was heard from below through the speakers on the observation room wall.

Ryan stepped hurriedly to the glass and saw that the room had filled with many men and all of them were carrying automatic weapons. They had bypassed external security somehow and entered through a portal the Event Group had no idea was even there. The plans for the building didn’t include another exit.

“Oh, these dramatic shifts in circumstances always give me that comic book thrill,” he said, smiling, and with mock excitement as he took in an even angrier Ryan. “Or is that too wordy for you?”

Below on the platform floor, the Event Group technicians were rounded up and forced against the wall and held there.

“Now,” Doshnikov said as he turned and faced the people in the room, “let’s see if we can make this expensive slot machine pay off.” He pushed Ryan toward the stairs. “Shall we?” Jason made eye contact with Niles on his way out. He silently pleaded with the director to not antagonize these men. As he told Will earlier, that was his job to keep the black-hearted men off balance.

Below them the doorway lay dormant. In Nevada Xavier Morales wondered just what he and Europa could do to help because if they could not resolve the situation sooner rather than later, Colonel Collins might not have a way to come home again.

Director Compton said he would face excitement even inside the complex, but thus far in his limited experience with Department 5656, this was just plain ridiculous. Xavier hit the emergency switch located at his desk and the warning chimes sounded throughout the complex. The Event Group was now on alert for a possible hostage rescue in Brooklyn.

With the exception of Niles, Alice, Moira, and two of the larger Russian guards, the group was led down the stairs. The three were left behind because of age or infirmities, along with the outright thought that the three could cause no harm, even if they somehow escaped. But in all reality Doshnikov just didn’t have the time to get them down the stairs and ensconced in the large elevator.

The Russian immediately left the group after stepping from the stairwell. The rest were being brought down by the freight elevator. He wanted to gaze upon the doorway by himself. He saw his fifteen men had secured the technicians safely — after all, they would be the ones to help him achieve his goals this night.

He turned and saw the doorway as it sat silent and still, steaming like a hot iron. The lasers were being cooled through the conduit system that was currently being flushed with liquid nitrogen, which made a loud and ear-piercing noise as it struck the hot system. The Russian didn’t even flinch at the loud noise as he was mesmerized by the sight of the ceramic-covered doorway.

The radiation warning lights were flashing their yellow cry of danger as the system was being rebooted. When Virginia reverse-engineered the doorway she was only guessing at the turnaround time. Moira had explained that at the height of their dimensional jumps they had a twelve-hour turnaround time to reboot their systems and to recharge their antiquated laser platform. That was when she realized how painful Moira’s trips were through the German Doorway before the advent of the advanced lasers of today. It was a wonder the girl child had survived even the four experimental jumps back in Germany.

Doshnikov saw something just beyond the doorway and stepped up to the platform. He cautiously ran a hand through the air to make sure nothing vanished on him. Then a loud scream sounded and the Russian almost screamed. He turned angrily at the intruder to his thoughts. It was the man they called Ryan. He had screamed as soon as the elevator doors had opened wide enough for him to see what he had been doing. He intentionally made the Russian look the fool. Jason was brutally pushed forward as he and Mendenhall laughed at the fright he had put on the mobster.

Doshnikov returned to what had attracted his attention. He grimaced and then stepped through the front portal of the doorway. He took five steps inside and then reached down and felt the cold steel. He then reached over and retrieved something from the deck. He straightened and saw that it was dirt and some form of moss. The entire entryway to the doorway was covered in what looked like ash. He looked down and the trail vanished after only a few feet. He brushed the dirt and ash away and slapped his hands together and then turned to face the others. He moved over to the glass partition where the Event Group technicians sat stoicly, not moving but not frightened either. Most were defiant and just waiting for Commander Ryan to lead the way and tell them what to do. They had come to learn the colonel’s security department was always one step ahead. They all turned when they heard a grunt and saw that Jason Ryan had been clubbed on the head pretty good by one of his captors. The reality of knowing they may not be one step ahead didn’t frighten them as much as anger them. After Overlord, it was pretty damn hard to scare people from Department 5656.

“Perform your duties well and you will soon be set free”—Doshnikov gestured around him—“to go about doing whatever it is you very strange people do. Do not perform them and I’m afraid there will be repercussions. Starting with that small child. And I know how you Americans can be so aghast when harm befalls children.” He gestured toward his men. “Take the family Koblenz to the observation room. Give me the detonator.”

The detonator to the explosives strapped to the baby’s carrier was passed to him and the family was moved back into the elevator once the threat was made and understood. It was then that a groggy Ryan looked at Mendenhall and then his eyes found the small detonator device in Doshnikov’s hand. Will nodded but at the moment there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Anya and Sarah were also watching and examining the detonator. The key here was to make sure that the baby and family were left unharmed. To every man and woman in the Group, that was now the priority, even beyond the safety of Jack and his team, Everett or themselves. Niles had explained time and time again: what they did was not worth one innocent life in their pursuit of historical acumen. Ever.

“Now, Mr. Jodle, please step forward.”

In the observation room Moira saw the traitor for the first time. Joshua Jodle. She had known the man was a weasel and the only child she ever regretted bringing out of Germany. Ambitious was a mild word for the cruel child. He had learned from the Nazis just how to get things done through intimidation. Sad that was the only lesson the boy had learned in the camps. The board had warned her of the man’s ambitions.

“Are you prepared?” the Russian asked.

Jodle held up an aluminum case. The prize was held chest high and the Wall Street genius nodded.

“If I may ask?” Ryan said as he rubbed the bump on his head and angrily looked at the guard who had delivered the blow. The tattoo made the Russian thug wary of the much smaller naval officer.

“Ah, finally some curiosity. Actually I was hoping you would ask. Inside this case”—he reached out and tapped it lightly on its top as the smiling little rat that held it did the same—“is the future, or should I say the past. This is the mythical Pandora’s Box and it is filled with the key to riches beyond measure.”

As Moira listened to the men speak through the speaker system, she cringed as she realized just what the traitor Jodle and the Russian were about to attempt. The thought that all of her wealth that her board of directors might have accumulated in the same manner over these many years made her physically ill.

“What are they up to, Moira?” Alice asked.

“They are simply going to change their destiny. I suspect that inside that case is a stock portfolio from sometime in the past, perhaps an exact copy of Warren Buffet’s. Or perhaps corner the market on Microsoft stock. My bet would be on Buffet or Gates.”

“Can they do that?” Niles asked.

“Yes, but they would have to use the doorway from building one-fourteen way back when it was operational, and since time and the dismantling of the doorway from building one-fourteen means nothing to the quantum jumper, it could be done. They would lock on to the signal during one of our operations just as you did tonight, and then they can travel all the way back to 1968 if they wanted. But they wouldn’t have to go back that far. I would guess they would shoot for the doorway’s last operation, when we brought back that little bastard Julien.”

“Industrious, I’ll give the poor bastard that,” Niles said as he eyed the monitor in the corner. It was still dark but he suspected that Xavier was there along with his entire staff. He was hoping he was thinking the same way that he was at that moment. Niles nodded at the monitor and the two Russian guards thought he had gone into some sort of spasm. Again he nodded at the monitor and then moved his head to the side toward the glass that separated the observation room from the doorway below. Compton quickly and deftly ran a finger across his throat.

At that moment both Alice Hamilton and Moira Mendelsohn knew what Niles wanted Xavier to do. The two Russians conversed in their native tongue at Compton’s strange behavior and that was when Alice broke the silence since the guards wouldn’t know what they were talking about anyway.

“What about our people?”

Niles shook his head.

“That’s just it, they’re our people and they will know what to do.”

Alice and Moira both looked at each other, knowing the director might have just ordered the death of all in that room.

The camera system had remained on but was set only as a one-way link. Xavier could see them but they couldn’t see him. Morales could hear them but knew the director was limited as to what he could say in the open. What Compton did manage shocked and astounded him. There was only one thing he could do to achieve what the director wanted and he hoped he was thinking along those same lines.

“Gentlemen, I need your attention and your expertise,” he said as he turned his wheelchair and looked out on the computer center floor. His 112 techs looked over at their new department head and listened.

“What do you need, boss?” Harvey Anderson from photo intelligence asked before the others could. The men and women had managed a growing respect for how fast the twenty-five-year-old thought.

“We cannot make adjustments to the settings from here, they can only do that in Brooklyn. But we can do something else.”

The large center waited as he thought a moment. He hoped beyond measure it was the same thing the director was thinking.

“What, sir?” Anderson asked.

“We can turn the doorway on. And do it on full power. We can’t adjust the settings from here, as I said, but we can sure as hell make that doorway burp a little. I need a direct link to the Los Angeles. We need that boat on standby for emergency power-up.”

“At full power that doorway will create a hurricane force inside that building, and then it will suck anything in front of it through to another dimension.” Anderson looked around him at the other techs that were just as shocked as he.

Xavier smiled. “And hopefully right into the waiting arms of a very pissed-off Colonel Collins.”

The light slowly dawned on the technicians’ faces and they knew that this man had just as much if not more brass balls than that had been demonstrated by none other than Dr. Peter Golding.

“People, let’s get ready to send this Russian jerk-off into a world he didn’t expect. Someplace his stock portfolio does little good.”

Joshua Jodle examined the new and improved design of the doorway. He went from the rectangle lining the doorway to the technicians’ stations behind the glass partition. One of the Group’s younger electrical engineers from UCLA watched the man and shook her head. He caught sight of this in his peripheral vision and turned on her.

“What is the minimum reboot time for this system?”

“You got me there, fella, they don’t tell me diddly around here,” she said in all seriousness.

“Unlike my Russian partner over there, I do not like to use threats, but you must know that they are not beyond my capabilities, young lady.” Joshua turned to face the girl and her colleagues sitting against the old brick wall. They all seemed to be enjoying his lack of knowledge.

“Yeah, we’re going to cooperate with a bunch of lowlife bastards who just strapped explosives to a sleeping baby.” The young blonde looked to her left at the other young technicians. They were all of the same mind and it was at that moment most realized just how much their chief of security had rubbed off on them.

Jodle looked through the glass at the waiting Doshnikov and shook his head. The Russian just nodded once and one of his guards went to the first tech in line and stood the young man up. The defiance in the kid’s bespectacled face was evident to Ryan and Mendenhall, who stood with Virginia, Sarah, and Anya. The boy’s eyes momentarily flicked to those of Ryan for the bravery he would need in the next few moments.

“I believe the question was what is the turnaround cycle for the doorway,” Doshnikov asked with an exasperated intake of breath. His eyes bored in on the young tech, who swallowed as the larger Russian took him by the lab coat’s collar menacingly.

“That’s enough,” Jason said as he took a menacing step away from the center of the room, but only made it two feet when an old-fashioned six-shot Colt .45 Peacemaker was put into his face. Ryan raised his brows when he saw that it was the head man who had produced the weapon. The end of the barrel looked like a cannon’s bore. Will followed suit and the gun moved minutely to the right and stilled him. Doshnikov nodded that his man should continue the questioning.

Ryan had decided to move again when he caught sight of Alice Hamilton in the observation window above them. She had her hands on the windowsill and he barely saw the small gesture of her hand waving him off and the small shake of her head. Then one finger went up, two fingers went up, and then finally the third finger.

The gathered Russians flinched when the doorway started its slow revolutions. The lasers were off but the coolant chambers were still charged with nitrogen and that stored liquid vented through one of the ports on the side of the rectangular mainframe of the doorway. This loud noise made the Russians jump back as the revolutions increased, creating a small onrush of air as the doorway gained momentum. Doshnikov looked first at Jodle, who was also watching with interest, and then over at Ryan, who gave the Russian a sad look as if his earlier question had unintentionally been answered by the doorway itself.

“Ah, it has completed its cool-down cycle.” He looked over at Jodle, who meekly agreed with a nod.

The technicians who lined the wall exchanged knowing looks that the doorway did not require a cool-down period before a second attempt could be made. They hoped what was about to happen didn’t occur until at least their friends were out of the line of fire.

Jason, Will, Sarah, Virginia, and Anya all saw Niles Compton as he stepped to the glass and stood beside Alice. Niles Compton closed his good eye and then nodded his head. Ryan swallowed when he realized that the scenario facing them was a simple one — they had to get the Russians and that detonator out of the building, and there was only one way to do that. He didn’t know how they would get the Russians to voluntarily step through the doorway, but Jason was willing to go on faith. Before he turned away, Commander Ryan nodded back at the director. He then looked at the darkened main monitor where Xavier would have been. Ryan raised his eyebrows in concern for the plan. He knew it was a silent plea that asked the young computer whiz if he knew what he was doing.

“Oh, shit,” Virgnia said as it just dawned on her how this plan had only one way of working.

“What?” Sarah asked as quietly as she could as the Russian admired the spinning doorway in front of him.

“There’s only one way to get these dickheads through that doorway without asking them to do so — Xavier’s going to flood the system and open the doorway with a surge burp.”

“A what?” Sarah hissed in questioning.

“It’s a theory, but should work.” Virginia’s features soured somewhat. “Damn, this is going to be something.”

“A what?” The young computer specialist asked as he listened to their new boss’s plan. The other specialists were just as confused.

“When we studied the plans for the German doorway and the more recent apparatus from Madam Mendelsohn, we discovered their earlier mistakes that cost them a few innocent lives in the process. It seems it happened a few times when the doorway was brought online too fast. The surge, or burp, as Madam Mendelsohn called it, is a backwash of energy that rebounds in the opposite direction of the doorway’s intended path when the system’s lasers are started too quickly. The light refuses to bend until the doorway is at full revolutions. Until that speed is achieved the light has no place to go except to bounce off the incomplete doorway path.”

“I don’t follow,” the young man said as he knew he was listening to another computer boss that was light-years ahead of all of them.

“The power of the dimensional shift will bounce back into the room.” Confusion still reigned on most of their faces. “You know, where the bad guys are currently standing.”

It dawned on most at the same time and they realized the Russians were not the only people in the line of fire.

“By the time the burp backfires into the room those people will think the gates of hell have opened up. Madam Mendelsohn claims it’s an enclosed hurricane that sucks everything and everyone into the vortex before anyone knows what’s happening. The RPMs on the machine are at max power and they have a one-way ticket — target, Antarctica — and hopefully a helping hand in Colonel Collins and his team. I hope they’re ready for this.”

The faces staring back at him were worried and Morales knew why.

“It’s the only way we can protect the bulk of the Event Group staff and the doorway. We have to disable those explosives and removing the only way to detonate them is the only way we can achieve that. We just have to hope Mr. Ryan knows what’s happening. So, let’s remotely get this thing started before that Russian asshole decides to kill everyone there.”

The computer center came alive with frightened but determined activity.

“Okay, you can shut it down now, Joshua,” Doshnikov said as his hair was beginning to be tossed by the increasing revolutions.

Joshua Jodle stepped from behind the technicians’ safety glass, shrugged his shoulders, and hurried over to the spot where the artificial wind was starting to move Doshnikov’s heavy coat.

“I said you can shut the doorway down now. We must prepare for your journey.”

“I didn’t start the cycle. I assumed it was on a timer and after she cooled down it would automatically reboot. As you can see it’s just the centrifuge turning, no lasers.” He now had to shout to be heard and that made the young stockbroker concerned as he turned and looked at the spinning doorway. That was when he looked up and saw that little balding man with the eye patch. He could swear the man was moving his lips as he was saying something. It looked like—

“Good-bye.”

Jodle turned and saw that Doshnikov felt the same thing they were all feeling — the electrical charge coursing through their bodies had increased five-fold in seconds. Jodle found he couldn’t move his lips or voice his warning.

Ryan reached out and grabbed a hold of Sarah’s belt. She did the same with Anya. Will and Virginia huddled together, following suit. The room was erupting as the fifteen Russian guards quit paying attention to their charges and their strange behavior. Doshnikov’s heavy coat was almost ripped from his frame as the revolutions increased.

Before anyone realized it, the large monitor sprang to life and the face of Xavier Morales filled the screen. The overhead speaker blared to life and that was the only thing everyone in the laboratory heard as Morales spoke.

“I owe you one, Commander Ryan, I will get you back home, I promise, so… hang on!”

The lasers burst into life. Without the required revolutions and the collider still dormant, the green and blue light burst from the spinning circle of the doorway, shot into the room, hit the far wall, and then an amazing thing happened — the lasers reflected off the old brick and burst backward through the doorway and smashed into the laboratory where the hurricane winds threatened to tear the people and the doorway apart. The electrical charge froze all and they spasmed and jerked. The handholds that Ryan and the others had were not quite enough and they were ripped from one another. The lights burst into a multicolored flash that engulfed the Russian and then the doorway came up to the dimensional-shift speed it needed. The entire room exploded. The guards watching the technicians collapsed into the cowering men and women, and the men next to Doshnikov felt their bodies being swept through the doorway.

Niles froze as the view below was distorted by the blinding light as the Wellsian Doorway burped and then, like a fishing net, a bright circle of light surrounded all and a sparkling sensation filled the room. Before anyone could blink, the sixteen Russians, Joshua Jodle, Jason Ryan, Sara McIntire, Will Mendenhall, Anya Korvesky, and Virginia Pollock vanished as they were pulled into the shift with battering harshness.

The Wellsian Doorway started to wind down as the main coolant lines erupted.

In the observation room Niles Compton turned from the window and saw the two guards staring numbly at the spot where a moment before their boss had been standing with twenty-one other people. Some loose papers still swirled and floated and the static electricity seemed to make anything made of metal glow with light blue haze. The two guards were in shock at the sudden disappearance of Doshnikov and the others. Their mouths were gaping in disbelief. Compton excused himself as he easily reached past Moira and then grabbed the radio before the two Russians could gather their wits, and then the director simply clicked the transmit switch three times in rapid succession. As he did he hoped he had remembered the right number of clicks that Jack had explained earlier.

The two guards turned and knew they had been had when the door burst open and two men — Sergeant Hernandez, who had lost himself in the shuffle and confusion when the intruders had herded everyone down below, and one other from a posted station outside — were on the two before they knew they were being attacked. The two powerful tranquilizer darts hit simultaneously and before the men could grab their chests where they had been struck, two more of the Pfizer chemical — supplied darts hit the men in the neck and shoulders respectively. Their vision clouded and their muscles froze and the paralyzing agent completed the cycle by momentarily cutting the oxygen supply to the brain, dropping the men cold within 1.2 seconds.

“The Los Angeles?” Niles asked.

Sergeant Hernandez rolled the first Russian over and then looked at the director.

“The sudden turn for one hundred and fifteen percent power from a standstill fried a few of her circuits, but other than a small fire in the power transfer cable, the crew says she will be good to go in two hours.”

“Thank God Xavier timed that right. Without the power we would have fried everyone inside that room.” After checking the family Koblenz and after Hernandez and the Marine had safely removed the baby carrier with the explosives, Niles went to the window to check on his other people.

The technicians had all stood and started running for fire extinguishers, and the lone Russian left guarding them could only watch in stunned surprise after the shock of the dimensional displacement. As he tried to close his mouth his weapon was removed from his right hand. The Georgian gangster slowly turned with his toupee askew and saw the young blonde girl from UCLA holding the Glock nine millimeter in his face. Her smile never met her gorgeous green eyes.

“What did you people do?”

“Oops,” she said as she jabbed the taller man in the ribs with the weapon. The young technician was thinking that she could very much get used to this. It was preferable to monitoring gamma radiation readouts.

18

Jenks cursed at the tight fit of the last laser emitter to be installed. It didn’t help any that Charlie was having a difficult time holding the ladder still as he tried in vain to check its wobbly movement on the uneven ground.

The doorway was almost completed and it wasn’t noon on the second day yet. It would have gone faster if they had the help of Collins and Farbeaux, but since the colonel, on Jenks’s own recommendation, had shut down the radar-operated defense system to save precious battery life, necessitating a fifty percent security awareness around the camp. That didn’t stop Jack or Henri from cringing every time the master chief let out a long profanity-laced tirade at poor Ellenshaw.

“There, damn it, that’s the last one,” Jenks said as he eased himself from the shaking ladder. He hit the ground and produced a cigar from his jacket pocket, then lit it with his lighter, the whole time staring a hole through Charlie. Once it was lit to his satisfaction he spit and then looked at Ellenshaw and was about to tear into him for trying to fling him from the ladder when he stopped himself. “Well, I guess I’ve had far worse assistants.” He chomped on the cigar and moved off toward the lone trailer in the center of the camp.

Charlie smiled at the false praise heaped on him by Jenks and allowed the ladder to wobble until it tilted over and hit the centrifuge on its way to the ground. The master chief looked up and shook his head.

“Almost got it, Master Chief?” Collins asked as he and Henri walked into the middle of camp drinking water.

“Yeah, if Crazy Charlie there doesn’t send the whole thing rolling down this hill.”

Jack looked at Ellenshaw as he struggled to get the ladder up. He nodded at Farbeaux, who reluctantly went to assist.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. The doc’s had a rough go of it.” Jenks removed the cigar and looked up from the interior of the trailer as he rummaged for the last two items to complete the doorway. “Hell, I’m used to losing soldiers and seamen. I have to remind myself that civilians don’t react like us old salts.”

Jack nodded, knowing he didn’t have to say anything beyond what Jenks had just explained.

“Is that the portable power unit everyone’s so paranoid about?” Collins asked as he finished his water.

“Paranoid? Yeah, you can say that, Colonel. There are two in existence. This one and one that NASA and General Electric keep close to home. But even more important to our little science experiment is this.” He raised a small foam-encased box and opened it. Jenks held the box out to show Collins. “That is the electrical transducer. It transfers the power from this box”—he slapped the five-by-six-foot generator/storage unit—“to our doorway. Without this you may as well be in Europe with American electrical plugs. You’re shit out of luck. I don’t want to even ask the director how he managed to snag these babies since together they’re worth about the cost of an aircraft carrier and her fighter wing combined.”

“Director Compton has his ways,” Jack said as he turned and looked at the sky. The ash cloud had thickened since morning and the white ash was falling at a far steadier rate. Jenks followed suit.

“That’s another little development. I didn’t want to say anything to the doc, but that’s why he couldn’t hold the ladder straight, I just like yelling. But if you hadn’t noticed, fearless leader, the damn earth is moving in rather peculiar ways since about nine this morning, and the winds have shifted as you just saw. The bulk of the ash cloud is now coming from the southwest, directly from Erebus and her little bitch sisters, and, oh, by the way, the temperature has dropped by twenty-one degrees in the past two hours.”

“Anything else, you sour bastard?” Jack asked as Henri and Charlie approached after hearing the last of Jenks’s wonderfully delivered report.

“Yeah, there is,” Jenks said as he looked from face to face. “Since I’ve been standing here shooting off my big mouth we’ve seemed to have gathered an audience. About five hundred yards to your south.”

Jack turned and saw several creatures gathering just outside of the protection of the jungle and the trees. He quickly raised his field glasses and took in the scene. Charlie and Henri followed suit.

“It’s them!” Ellenshaw said loudly. “Raptors. V. Mongoliensis.”

“Vamongo what?” Jenks asked as he saw the gathering of about fifteen of the small animals.

“Mongoliensis, a Velociraptor.” Ellenshaw slowly lowered his own glasses and looked out at the scene before them. The look on his face made Collins take a second look at Charlie. “They shouldn’t be here.”

“What do you mean?” Henri asked as he saw the creatures just standing there and looking at the camp in the distance.

“They died off sixty-five million years before our current time frame.” He looked at Jack. “They should not be here. Plus the feathered raptors supposedly died off before the more modern version we are used to seeing in the movies. But here they are, almost as if they reversed their evolution.”

“They don’t seem too damn reversed to me. Four of them evil buzzard-looking things are carrying sticks long enough that you have to qualify them as spears.”

Jenks was right — four of the small brightly colored raptors held long poles like the one that flew into camp earlier. As Collins studied the curious group, he noted the feathers were somewhat thicker and more colorful on the winglike arms and the tail, where they ended in a graceful plume like an at-ease peacock’s.

“Uh-oh,” Charlie said as he saw what the animals were doing.

“Are they pushing those others out into the open?” Farbeaux asked, amazed at what he was witnessing.

In the distance the group as a whole were using their strange humanlike hands to push two of the raptors from their cover. One of them even used one of the sharpened sticks to encourage the two chosen guinea pigs forward.

“What the fu—” Jenks started to say.

“Did I just see that?” Charlie asked incredulously.

Collins was amazed as two of the raptors forced spears into the hands of the chosen two. “Henri?”

Collins heard the charging of an M-4 as an answer to his inquiry.

“Should I turn on the defense system?” Jenks asked.

“If this is just a probing action, no, I’m not ready to ascribe to your smart-chicken theory, Doc, we can manage without the lasers.” He lowered the glasses and looked at Jenks. “But stay by that damn switch in any case.”

“Here they come,” Henri said as he lowered his own glasses and brought up the M-4 and sighted on the lead raptor as it charged with wings hanging low to the ground. Its spear was in its left hand and was only inches from the ground as both raptors came on at close to forty miles per hour. Jack also brought his weapon up and started sighting.

“This is beyond anything we know about their behavior. They’re just not supposed to be here and they surely shouldn’t be able to use tools!” Charlie’s fear and excitement grew as the two animals charged the camp.

“That’s it, they’re not slowing,” Jack said as he took aim at the raptor on the right. He fired a single round. The birdlike animal stumbled and then fell, skidding to a halt and blurring the twin experience of the second colorful raptor as the Frenchman struck his mark. The dust slowly settled. Collins raised his field glasses and looked again. The scene was getting darker as the ash fell heavier than just ten minutes before.

“I have four, looks like they’re pumping themselves up.”

Jenks was right as the others soon saw. Four of the raptors circled the group of eight and were bobbing their necks back and forth, raising the long sticks up and down. Then they broke from the pack and their group watched on in interest from near the tree line. They charged as the first two had.

This time the example was made far earlier as Jack and Henri made short work of the second set of attackers.

“Jesus!” Jenks screamed as he turned just in time as four of the raptors broke through the camp from behind. They had drawn the attention of the team while others maneuvered around them and then attacked using stealth. Jack was stunned at the sudden problem-solving skills exhibited by the once-extinct creatures.

Charlie was quicker than anyone would have thought possible as he fired his Glock nine millimeter at the closest raptor. It fell but tried to rise again as Charlie shot it three more times.

A spear, this one smaller, struck the trailer next to Jenks and pierced the aluminum. He turned and quickly fired. The weapon was on full auto instead of the three-shot burst. The powerful rounds almost cut the raptor in half. Still, the grasping gray-scaled hand reached for Jenks’s leg. The master chief fired once more into the upturned, ugly face of the lizardlike muzzle. And even after the bullet struck its head the jaws still snapped at empty space as the nerve center kept firing even after death.

Jack turned and saw he was going to be too late for the third attacker as it hopped into the trailer and hissed at a startled Charlie. The creature poked at the cryptozoologist with its sharpened stick, actually stabbing Ellenshaw in the side and drawing blood. Ellenshaw yelped just as the fourth raptor jumped into the trailer alongside the first. This one screamed a horrible sound that raked their nerves. The beast raised the spear and threw it. Henri stepped away at the last second as the sharpened shaft hit the earth at his feet.

“Son of a bitch!” Charlie screamed and shot the first raptor, sending it flying from the trailer and Henri finished it with a quick three-round burst.

The last raptor hissed and spat angrily at the four men and then quickly reached down and grabbed something with its hand. With colorful wings spread wide the raptor sprang from the trailer and hopped over the remaining perimeter trailers and sprinted for the tree line to the north just as a multitude of sharpened spears came flying into camp. They managed to dodge the high-arcing weapons but by the time they recovered, the last raptor had vanished into the falling haze of white ash and jungle beyond their reach.

“That was just a little bit beyond probing our defenses. What in the hell was that all about?” Henri asked as he ejected his magazine, checked the loads, and then popped it back in.

“At West Point they discussed the Viet Cong tactic of attacking a spot to cover the real objective, and they didn’t care how many they sacrificed to do it.”

“Well, they had a goal, all right, and if they knew what they were doing they couldn’t have hurt us more, buckos.” Jenks cursed as he slammed the empty Styrofoam box back into the trailer. “That smart-ass chicken just made off with our power coupling, and they even managed to cut our tethers to the signal balloons.”

“And this means what?” Henri asked, afraid of the answer.

“It means, Froggy, we’re screwed as far as getting home goes or even signaling Everett that friends are here. As I said, truly screwed.”

Jack cursed and then reexamined the perimeter with his field glasses. He knew then that they had to go hunting in a land where they could quickly become the hunted.

“If they stole that thing with the intention of coming back for the doorway, tell Compton that I quit. First Russians and now buzzards with an attitude and smarts.”

“For once, Master Chief, I am in total agreement,” Farbeaux said angrily as he glared at Collins, who would more than likely succeed in getting him killed after all.

“That just makes my day, Froggy. I’m so happy to have you onboard my way of thinking.”

Henri ignored Jenks, who was showing his fear and frustration.

“Big, crazed chickens and Frenchmen — what’s next, a friggin’ asteroid?”

At that moment the trees to the south were illuminated with a bright flash of brilliantly colored light and then the jungle and dense tree canopy where the team had originally shifted to erupted in flame and noise.

It wasn’t an asteroid.

The pain was almost merciful as it caused such a shock to their systems that they lost consciousness. The last sensation Ryan felt was his hold on Sarah’s belt as she was ripped away from him with a force that made his strong grip seem like a child’s. The noise was ear-shattering and the light blinding. The electricity popped through their bodies as if firecrackers were being set off in their very bone marrow.

Jason felt the impact as the large group was ejected from the doorway. All sound, light, and sensation had vanished and all felt as near death as any had ever felt.

Sarah was the first to shake off the effects of the displacement. She felt herself smoldering but for the life of her she didn’t know what it was she was supposed to do about it. The heat started on her arm and was slowly working its way up. She knew her eyes were open because she had the sensation of her lids moving up and down. She heard a loud pop from very far away. Then another.

“Oh, crap!” came the voice Sarah immediately recognized as Will Mendenhall’s. Because of the heat and the pain in her arm her eyes finally cleared and then opened. That was when she saw Will with blood on his face as he started slapping at her. At first she was shocked by his actions until she felt the heat and pain on her arm lessen to the point that she regained some of her lost composure and senses. Suddenly she heard more loud popping noises. Sarah rolled over in time to see Anya and Ryan as they seemed to be wrestling with someone. Finally, as Mendenhall lifted her to her feet, she saw that they had removed a weapon from a severely burned man on the ground. The pistol Jason held was still smoking. Sarah again looked at the man who must have been spasming and firing his pistol off through pure instinct. The Russian stopped moving as his smoking corpse settled and finally gave in to death.

“My God,” McIntire mumbled aloud. She looked around at the men that were slowly picking themselves off a semi-darkened ground. Fires were everywhere and the screams of shocked travelers filled the air. Several of the Russians were clearly dead.

Virginia Pollock was magically standing in front of Sarah. Virginia quickly snatched at the blood streaming from her own nose as she leaned over and checked Sarah’s arm. She tore away the burned sleeve and then nodded. “Nothing too bad,” she said as she looked around nervously. Her features suddenly sank.

“I’ll have… that if… you don’t mind,” came the voice of Alexi Doshnikov.

Sarah cleared her eyes once more and saw the Russian holding the large Colt Peacemaker to Jason’s head.

“Glad to see you made it, Ivan,” he said as Doshnikov angrily pushed Ryan toward his four companions.

The mobster quickly removed his smoldering greatcoat and tossed it on the ground. He gave himself a quick health and welfare check and saw that other than being a little singed and having a broken nose from where he had rolled into a rather large tree, he would survive. He was shaking and was having a hard time regaining his senses beyond the ability to keep the American from gaining a weapon. He looked at several of his men as they were in various states of wakefulness. Then he saw others that would never awaken again. He counted five of these that lay smoldering and burning on the ground. He realized then that these were his people who had been on the periphery of the doorway, closer to the lasers and the centrifugal heat caused by the spinning collider as they passed through. Unlike the survivors who had been in the center of the room. This was cause and effect no one, not even Virginia or Xavier Morales, had foreseen as a consequence of the dimensional burp.

“Oh, man, that’s something you don’t see every day,” Mendenhall said as he tried to brace Sarah for the sight.

Fifteen feet away Joshua Jodle was half in and half out of a large tree. He had phased into this existence in entirely the wrong place. His hand was still holding the aluminum case that had all of Doshnikov’s plans and dreams. As a shocked group watched on, the case slowly slipped from the dead man’s fingers.

A stunned Doshnikov turned and faced Sarah, Jason, Anya, Will, and Virginia and was amazed they had basically made it through unscathed. In his childish mind he thought it extremely unfair that this was the case. Even as they all stood in a semicircle the earth shook so violently that they almost lost their footing. The earthquake subsided and then the world became silent once more.

“What have you done?” he asked as he gestured for his men to cover the Americans.

“You wanted a trip through our little dream maker, and you got one,” Ryan said, not being able to stop the smile from coming. He disliked most Russians out of habit.

“Tell them to turn it back on, immediately,” he said with spittle flying from his lips.

Now Jason wasn’t so sure he should have been antagonizing the man. He looked a little unstable to say the least. The Colt was shaking in his hands.

A loud crack and a flaming branch came down and the Russian shot it twice before he realized it wasn’t a threat outside of the flames. He nervously looked at Ryan, the man who was his antagonist since he had seen him that very afternoon. Ryan was to blame for this, Doshnikov didn’t know how, but he was sure of it.

“As soon as you tell me how to go about that, Chief, but in case you haven’t noticed, you’re not exactly in Kansas anymore.”

Again Doshnikov looked around and saw a burning primordial forest he had only seen in museum dioramas. He was finding it extremely hard to draw a breath. No, that wasn’t quite right, he thought. He was drawing too much. He had to place his free hand on a smoldering tree to steady himself as his head spun as if drunk.

“The effect you are feeling is over-oxygenated air. You’re used to smog, particulates. This is a clean, unmolested environment, with the exception of volcanic fallout… exhilarating, isn’t it?” Virginia said as she nodded at Ryan that now would be a good time to leave these people before they regained all of their senses. Then she lost hope as she felt the pure oxygen effects also. She clung on to Sarah, who was down to a knee. Ryan was about to say something when he too became dizzy. To his horror he saw the Russian and most of his men straighten from their own discomfort and start shaking their heads. It seemed they were recovering far faster than he thought they would.

“I think… I will start with… the small woman… first,” Doshnikov said as he took a menacing step toward the five. “Then we… will see if the mutual… cooperation we had earlier… returns. I want that… doorway turned back on!” He screamed the last two words. He raised the Colt revolver toward a kneeling Sarah McIntire.

Jason was just getting ready to move his shaky body in front of Sarah’s when the scene was shattered. First came the roar and then the scream of men as a blur of orange, black, white, and gray burst through the flames of the trees and into the midst of the Russians.

Virginia’s eyes widened and Mendenhall nearly lost the contents of his bladder when they saw what had sprung at them from the unsettled jungle and burning forest. The saber-toothed cat was at least a thousand pounds of bustling muscle and sinew. The eight-inch incisors were snapping at the men who were so shocked none of them made any move to fend off the giant lionlike beast. The scream of the animal was horrifying to say the least. The claws of the saber-tooth swung and caught the first Russian across the chest area, ripping his still beating heart from his body along with a section of breastplate and ribs. Doshnikov regained his senses first and fired two shots into the cat but that only increased its fear and hatred of the men it had cornered. It hunched its back and sprang at the next man in line.

Before Ryan really knew what he was doing, he picked McIntire up and started pushing the other four away from the scene just as more shots rang out from the Russians, who were fast recovering from their shock after they had just witnessed their companion being eviscerated.

They heard another shot, then another as they ran for the jungle undergrowth, but the still-burning fires made their silhouettes stand out and Jason feared that made them excellent targets. Then to cement his opinion he felt the bullet fly just past his right ear and slam into a giant fern plant as they finally made it to the undergrowth.

Behind them the cat screamed and men died before silence once more filled the world.

Jack used the binoculars but the thickening ash made viewing the four miles difficult. He lowered them just as the sound of distant gunfire came to his ears. That distinctive sound made even Jenks stop his cursing over the power coupling’s loss — momentarily.

“Carl?” Charlie asked with hope lacing his question.

“No, that was more than one brand of weapon. I counted no less than three different calibers,” Jack said as he looked over at Henri for his opinion. The Frenchman just nodded his concurrence. Collins raised the glasses once more. “Master Chief, we were going to conserve the batteries on the two drones until we had the doorway up and running, but I think now is the time to get them in the air. We need eyes out there.”

“Well, I hate to be the stick in the damn mud here but we have another very serious concern,” Jenks said, drawing the attention of the others. “Unless we track that damn chicken-lizard down we’re going to be sending out change-of-address cards to the post office. Now what do you suppose we do about that?”

Jack shook his head as he looked over to the master chief. “Well, I guess we have to go and get it back, don’t we, you grumpy old bastard?”

“When was the last time you tracked one of those Velocipedes?”

“Actually it’s called a Velociraptor, there is a distinct—”

The look coming from all three of his companions shut Charlie up.

“This will be my first raptor hunt, Master Chief,” Jack said as he tossed Jenks the binoculars he had been using. He caught the glasses and then almost dropped them. “Now, do you think you and Charlie can get those two drones up and then arm the laser defense system and possibly keep those damn things from stealing any more of our toys?”

Jenks didn’t respond with anything other than a huff.

“Actually, I don’t think there was a devious attempt to thwart us,” Charlie said. “I mean they are smarter than any animal in the fossil records, even their direct ancestors, but they are still animals.”

“Come on, Doc, what in the hell are you saying?” Jack asked as he retrieved a field pack and then tossed it to Farbeaux, who was listening to Ellenshaw.

“I mean to say that I believe the raptor stole the coupling because it was shiny. The stainless-steel housing had to look awful tempting to the animal. They are after all part of the avian family, or so the theory goes anyway. So I think this one acted just like a raven, or crow, it likes bright shiny things.”

“So?” Henri asked as he changed out the magazine on his M-4.

“I am saying that if you are to track them, keep in mind that they will act like an animal at first, don’t give them time to think things out. It’s like telling Pete Golding a riddle, at first he will be stumped, but give him time to think and you’re had.”

Collins looked from Ellenshaw to Farbeaux. The poor doc hadn’t even realized that he had invoked Pete Golding’s name. It was as if Pete hadn’t died in Chato’s Crawl. Jack lowered his eyes as he concentrated on situating his own field pack.

“Just water, Henri, we’ll travel light.”

“That’s fine with me as I would rather eat bugs than that MRE disaster you Americans are so proud of.”

“Before this little foray is over you may be wishing for some of that crap. Ready?” Jack asked as he slung the M-4 over his shoulder and gathered his scopes and night vision equipment.

“Remind me again why you insisted on bringing me out of your president’s forced retirement of my services?”

“Because you’re expendable, and for the decidedly more important fact that you owe me, not the president. After all, you’re no longer a wanted man in the United States,” Jack said while producing his only smile of the day.

Farbeaux watched as Collins nodded his farewell to Jenks and Charlie as he left the center of the camp.

“In case you have failed to notice, my dear colonel, we’re not in the United States.”

Jack glanced back just before he stooped over and examined the tracks made by the thieving raptor. “Just think of it as Central Park after midnight, Henri.” Jack looked back at the raptor print and then started out.

With a last look at Jenks and Ellenshaw, Farbeaux followed the crazed colonel.

“You don’t suppose all of this is an adverse reactionary hallucination to all of those inoculations they gave us, do you?”

Master Chief Jenks looked at Charlie as if he had truly lost it.

“Exactly how many acid trips did you go on in the sixties, and how many resembled this prehistoric menagerie?”

“Well—”

“Never mind, Doc, your answer would probably scare the hell out of me.”

19

Jason and his wayward travelers finally broke out into the open. It looked like they had traveled south, but Ryan knew that was very misleading. In all directions in Antarctica you traveled north. No matter your position, and no matter what directions you thought you were traveling in, you were always headed north, there just simply was no other way to travel. All roads led north. He stopped running as his lungs cried for relief from the purified oxygen of the times. The ash cloud was now so heavy that he was fearful of breathing in some of the volcanic particulate that would eventually lead to his death.

“Get down!” Mendenhall screamed as he pushed Anya, Sarah, and Virginia to the thickly ash-covered ground.

The bird missed Ryan’s head by mere inches as it swooped out of the sky. Jason hit the dirt and then saw the shadow of the giant condor as it pumped its twenty-three-foot wingspan to regain altitude. Ryan had felt the tremendous rush of air as the five-hundred-pound bird nearly swept him up.

“Holy crap!” Will said as he hustled the women to their feet.

“Let’s take cover over by those rocks,” Ryan yelled, and made sure everyone was on the same thinking track as himself.

Once they were hunkering around the large boulders, they saw the enormous condor swoop low again some distance away. They then heard the sound of rapid gunfire once more, thankfully quite some distance away.

“I guess those Russian assholes have met Tweety bird,” Mendenhall said as he winked at a frightened Virginia.

“The ones that survived Sylvester the Cat, you mean?” Sarah said, not wanting to but smiling nonetheless.

“Exactly,” Will agreed. He looked at a shaken Jason Ryan. “What now, boss?”

“If the colonel and the others were close by, they had to have heard the gunfire. We have a choice here: hide, or go and find them.”

“Speaking for myself, I think I would prefer to stay in the open and not hunker down as you Americans like to say.”

“Yeah, open sounds good to me,” Will agreed.

“I think you’re right.”

“Smell that?” Sarah said as she looked around the best that she could through the falling ash cloud. The earth continued to rumble beneath her feet.

“What, the smell of primordial terror?” Mendenhall asked. “Well, I’m afraid to disappoint you, but that’s me. I may have had an accident in my drawers.”

Sarah ignored Will’s foxhole humor and then stood up and looked to what she assumed was the west.

“No, I’m smelling chlorine in the air. Something else.”

“What—” Jason started to ask.

“Methane and sulfur.” Sarah sniffed the air again. “Mount Erebus and the others are getting ready to blow.”

“Damn Niles and his theory about Erebus setting off a chain reaction in the climate parameters of this time frame.”

“What theory?” Ryan asked, not liking the sound of Virginia’s voice.

“That the eruption of Erebus and her sister volcanoes brought on one of the deadliest ice ages in natural history.”

“Okay, that should give us a little time, right?” Ryan asked hopefully, but his hope was dashed as soon as he saw Virginia’s face go slack as the earth rumbled and shook.

“Before the ice comes, Jason, it is preceded by fire. Lots and lots of fire, earth shaking, mountains exploding, basically nature saying enough is enough.”

“How long?” Anya asked for the others.

It was Sarah who answered. “Hell, as far as timing goes, we couldn’t have picked a worse time or place to go sightseeing.” The earth shook harder. “We’re already on borrowed time, and the tax man is at the door.”

Ryan looked around and decided on a course. “That way,” he said.

“Why that way?” Mendenhall inquired as he assisted Virginia to her feet.

“Because it’s in the opposite direction of that.” He pointed to the sky many miles distant.

At that very moment a hard wind moved the ash particulate away and they all saw it. Erebus’s smoke plume was as red as Hades and as thick as any they had ever seen. For emphasis the ground shook again, almost knocking them from their feet.

“Atom bombs, crazed Russians, alien invasions, monsters in the Amazon — when are we going to get a library research gig?” Will asked, turning to see no one.

The others had already started following the commander, and Will cursed and hurried to catch up.

Ryan pulled up when he managed to briefly spy the small rise of rock just ahead through the irritating ashfall. In just an hour the ground had been covered by over a foot of the abrasive particulate.

“There, we’ll hold up and rest. I don’t know about you people but my system is used to a little more pollutants in the air I guess. This clean stuff is killing me.”

“I agree, we need to collect our bearings before we run into something we can’t escape from,” Virginia said as she quickly checked Sarah’s scorched arm. She smiled at the diminutive geologist as she studied her worried face. “Don’t worry, I think Jack can outsmart any big pussycats.”

Sarah smiled and shook her head. “It’s not Jack. I was thinking about all of those lectures in school about the many theories of how the major ice age was brought on. I’m afraid I have to ascribe to the nutcase theories that Erebus was the cause of it all. It just happened to freeze the rest of the world before its own home turf.”

“Fascinating, but can we move to a little higher ground for defense before we discuss further the shortcomings of modern science?” Ryan asked.

“Defense?” Will asked as he followed Anya and the others.

“Yeah, I think we may have to start making some bows and arrows.”

“That’s what I like about working with the best organization in the world: we have all of the high-tech gadgets at our disposal.”

The two drones separated just short of the large canopied forest. The round, four-engined drones were capable of ten hours of continuous flight but the limitations imposed on her viewing systems were worrying the master chief. Capable of infrared or night vision, telescopic or laser-designated targeting, the drones were state of the art and had been constructed by the mechanical engineering department at Group.

“I’m going to put number one on hover just west of the black forest there. That damn ashfall is retarding the efficiency of the plastic propellers.”

“I can handle flying that thing, Master Chief,” Charlie said as he spared a look from the radar system of the defense pods.

“You just concentrate on keeping those refugees from Colonel Sanders from getting too close. I’ll play flyboy.”

The two remote viewing systems were designed by Niles Compton’s special projects division, the very same division Jenks himself was to take over, if and when he survived this ordeal. They came equipped with night vision, three different telephoto lenses, infrared detection, and laser targeting. A little redundant in Jenks’s experience, but he had to admit the drones were very nearly self-flyable. Jenks followed the compass heading that was currently giving him erratic readings, forcing him to position the drone by eye, which was growing increasingly difficult because of the thick ashfall.

“Well, the infrared systems work, there’s the colonel and Froggy.”

Charlie chanced a wrathful rebuke by Jenks and leaned over and saw the aerial view of Jack and Henri as they made their way slowly across the small savanna toward the area where the explosion was seen. He even saw Henri look up at the passing drone. He smiled when the Frenchman shot them the bird.

“Damn French have no respect,” the master chief mumbled as he ordered the drone forward. The second drone was taking up a preprogrammed station to the opposite side of the large wooded and jungle area.

They watched as the second drone slowly crept in on the smoking site at over three hundred feet. The monitor showed small fires still burning, which ignited a white blur on the camera lenses. Jenks switched to passive viewing. He hovered just inside the woods and over the tree canopy. Once he was over the site he used the telephoto lens to try to penetrate the sparse areas where the giant trees didn’t shut off their view.

“Damn it, this is like to trying to catch a glimpse of a hot woman getting dressed through a keyhole.”

Charlie looked from the monitor and at the master chief with concern. He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Oh, don’t give me that look, it’s not like you never tried to peek at a good-lookin’ lady through a keyhole.”

“I most certainly have not. Why, I would—”

“Whoa, someone screwed the pooch,” Jenks said, cutting Charlie’s indignant response short.

Ellenshaw looked at the monitor and saw the small opening through the canopy and the three mangled bodies on the ash-covered ground. The red blood soaked through the ash, giving them a clear idea of their condition.

“Looks like whoever they are they ran into something that didn’t like them being there.”

“Stop joking, we know who has the only access to the doorway back home. Those can only be our people down there,” Charlie said as he raised the radio and called Jack. He informed them of what they saw and were ordered to cover them as they entered the forest.

“Look, Doc, since you’re not a military man you don’t understand the humor of scared men.”

Charlie realized what the master chief was saying and then slowly nodded. “Sorry for biting your head off.”

Jenks laughed as he adjusted the hover mode on the second drone. “Is that what you call biting my head off, Doc? Looks like I’m going to have to give CPO training on how to talk to people. No one can chew ass like a chief petty officer.”

“Yeah,” Ellenshaw said, still leery about the master chief.

Suddenly the static picture on the monitor went wild. The view skewed from a still shot of the tree canopy to a wildly spinning shot of the ash-colored sky, and then the ground and the sky again. Jenks fought with the toggle in an attempt to control the spinning drone.

“Doc, get the other drone up higher in altitude so I can see what the hell’s wrong with this damn thing.”

Ellenshaw quickly turned the control knob on the hovering first drone and the view on the second monitor rose with the plastic craft. He didn’t have to adjust anything else as the machine rose to three hundred feet.

“This is ridiculous!” Jenks said loudly as he spit his cigar stub from his mouth.

On the screen both men watched as a giant condor with a wingspan of a Cessna dove once more for the drone. The bird missed on the second pass as Jenks moved the drone out of the giant’s path. On the second monitor it showed the wings nearly miss the flying craft. The vortex shook the drone and almost knocked it from the sky.

“Damn chickens have an air force, too?” Jenks said as he dipped the rounded nose of the drone over and dove for the tree canopy below. He would try to get her close, too close for the large bird to follow. “Hit return on that panel. We don’t need to lose both drones out there.”

Charlie did as he was told and then he watched the view of the first drone move away and then start back toward the camp. Meanwhile Jenks was watching for the return of the great bird.

“Do you mind telling me what in the hell that was?”

“It looked like an exact duplicate of the species of California condor that is close to extinction in our time. Only much, much larger.”

“Well, they look pretty damn healthy to me in this one.”

On the monitor the giant flew close over the drone and then vanished high into the falling ash overhead.

“Inform the colonel he not only has to watch for chickens, he’s now got something real freakin’ big in the air large enough to carry both him and Froggy away.”

The earth shook far more violently than ever before as Charlie made the radio call.

Jason had managed to wedge everyone into a crevice on the rock face of a small hill. The area was covered by giant trees and had good ground cover. He and Will had cut up small branches and made a small stockade area that covered them from the ashfall, which had blanketed them all until they were a sickly white. Once they were all inside the makeshift fort, Ryan sat hard on the grass and ash-covered ground. He shook his head and the ash flew from his dark hair. He took a deep breath, not really wanting to go into how desperate their situation was.

As he looked around at not only the people he was responsible for, but who were also his very close friends, he knew they could all handle the situation without losing their composure. Will, Virginia, and Sarah had actually been in worse situations, and Anya was a trouper who faced death every day in the Middle East. No, he was worried about how he was projecting his command. Thus far he had managed to get everyone out of harm’s way for the moment, but as for a plan, he was at a loss. Maybe the colonel was right, maybe he was destined to always be an Indian and not a chief. That thought used to give him comfort, but since being around Jack, Carl, and Will, he had become someone he never used to be — a responsible officer. He wanted the chance to prove that those good men had rubbed off on him.

“Water?”

Jason didn’t know Mendenhall was speaking as he sat and thought. His tired brain was worn from the dimensional shift and he was slow to recover — he wondered if the others were just as affected.

“Hey, fearless leader, our first priority has got to be water, right?”

Jason finally looked at Will and then realized he had been asked a question. He slowly nodded.

“Yeah, but no one else is going back out there. Will, you’ll stay and everyone had better start sharpening some sticks. Let’s just hope water is close by.”

“Jason,” Virginia said as she stood and walked over to him. She leaned in close so the others couldn’t hear. They were busy collecting some of the leftover cuttings from their fort making. “Look, we can just lay low. The colonel is bound to find us. After all, I think we made quite a spectacle on our arrival.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, we can’t assume anything. First order of business is to make sure we’ll be alive if and when they do find us.” He started to move toward the small opening they had left as a doorway.

The gun in his face stopped him short. He took a step back and then held Will Mendenhall at bay as he too realized they weren’t alone.

“Oh, look, it’s Mr. Wonderful and his band of cutthroats.”

The pistol’s barrel hit Ryan in the chest, forcing him back into the makeshift cover.

“Not exactly the Ritz, my friends, but as they say, any port in a storm,” Doshnikov said as he and four other men made their way inside the makeshift shelter. “Very industrious in such short order, it makes me suspect you have had superior training for situations such as this.” Each of the five was armed and each of them showed signs of their tangle with the saber-toothed cat. “Sit down,” he said, waving the Colt Peacemaker menacingly. Jason backed away and slowly sat with his friends. The other four men looked grateful to be out of the elements. “I must apologize for my earlier hysteria. I’m afraid your little trap confused me for a moment. It is now obvious we need each other.” He saw Ryan eyeing his men. Doshnikov wiped some blood from his still-bleeding nose and then looked at Jason closely, the gun still pointing menacingly at his face. “I see the arrogance of military training in you, my friend, so let me warn you. I have four more men waiting outside, so you see, even if you got by us my four more ruthless employees would handle you.”

Ryan threw his first plan to get out of the enclosure with the knowledge that Doshnikov wasn’t as stupid as he first thought. He settled in and watched as the Russians started tending to their wounds. He noticed along with the others that his men were no longer watching their boss in awe. They now looked at him with trepidation as to how the man could have gotten them into this mess. Ryan would have to take advantage of that if he could.

Doshnikov eased his aching frame to the ground and then allowed the hammer of the old Colt to slowly release. He looked at Ryan and then Virginia.

“You were one of the doorway’s designers, yes?”

Virginia looked at Ryan and he nodded that it was all right to talk, after all this was no big military secret. They all knew they were truly screwed.

“No, I didn’t design the doorway, we reverse-engineered it, as you well know.”

“Semantics, my dear lady.”

“Awful big word coming from you, dickwad,” Mendenhall said as Sarah and Anya cringed at Will’s blatant insult.

The Russian snickered. It was more of a laugh that conveyed the joy he felt at having survived the transit to this time, but also the fact that he had survived something out of his worst nightmare — an animal he had only seen pictures of in books.

Doshnikov looked at Mendenhall with not anger but with a small degree of admiration. “I will not blame you for your views on us Russians, my friend. The lie that we are all dumb peasants is widely perpetuated by your unfair news media, but I assure you that some of us have had all of the training you have, maybe even a measure more in other deadlier areas. But I believe that yours is now the correct attitude we will all need to escape our predicament. So I will ignore your attempt at an insult and at pushing me into a corner as what to do with you. I think you know the answer to that, my friend.”

“Listen, pal, we’re going to need more than that. We have another team out here somewhere, and guess what, our boss is with them and he’s not going to take it too kindly that we’re here. So if you want to make like friends, I suggest you give us two of those weapons and start doing exactly what this lady here tells you.”

“Cooperation, yes, weapons, no.”

Ryan only smiled. “Okay, fearless leader, water — we need water and we need it now, and to get it we need those weapons. Unless you want to volunteer to go and get it yourself?”

Doshnikov smiled his own crooked grin and then slowly stood up as he again raised the Colt and then replaced two spent shell casings from the cylinder. “You think me a coward? My men, cowards?” He laughed this time. “Where we come from we have to fight to survive every day, not like you people who have had everything given to you. No, we are no cowards, and no, we are not fools either.” He pointed the weapon at Jason and then moved it to Mendenhall. “Shall we go and find that water, gentlemen?”

Jack surveyed the scene after the three-mile trek back to their original landing area. He couldn’t believe what it was he was seeing. Men were lying in pieces. He counted at least ten men in varying states of dismemberment. He leaned over and turned a body skyward. The man had both arms missing and it looked as if something had taken a large bite from his neck and back. He examined the face.

“Who in the hell are these people?”

“Judging by their dress, I don’t believe this was a planned trip for these men.”

Collins looked over in time to see Henri toss him something. He caught it and looked the blood-splattered shoe over. On the bottom in gold script was the brand name Gucci.

“Pretty expensive camping attire, don’t you think, Colonel?”

Jack tossed the shoe away and looked the scene over.

“What in the hell happened back in Brooklyn?” he mumbled as he gestured at Henri to follow.

“Where to now?” the Frenchman asked as he looked around nervously.

“This way,” he answered, looking to the west as he saw the tracks. He glanced up at the canopy overhead and hoped the drone he was hearing over the trees could follow.

That was when Henri saw the second and third set of tracks. One set led off in the opposite direction as them, and he could tell it was some sort of large animal, a cat possibly. The second set was unmistakable as they had seen these before.

“I suppose you noticed our little feathered friends are hunting again?”

Jack turned and looked at Farbeaux. “No, Colonel, we’re now the hunters, and I have a very bad feeling here that we may be in for a surprise as to who exactly is out here.”

“What are you referring to?” he asked.

Jack knelt by a set of smaller prints. Farbeaux followed suit but kept a wary eye on his surroundings and as he did so the colonel saw an impression pressed into a bloodstained carpet of white ash.

“A woman?” Farbeaux asked incredulously.

“Yeah, wearing Group-issued combat boots. Size six.”

Henri stood first as his heart skipped a beat. He looked at Collins as the colonel stared off into the jungle where the prints vanished.

They both knew only one person who wore Group-issued size six combat boots. Jack kicked at the thick ash and then raised his M-4 to his chest and moved off mumbling.

“Damn you, Short Stuff!”

The thought of leaving Sarah, Virginia, and Anya behind with the four Russians made Ryan angrier than being prodded along by Doshnikov and his five goons, who he noted were rather large. It was also clear why these brutes survived the giant cat attack — they were just too damn big to die. The one assigned to Mendenhall towered over the captain by a good foot and a half.

The ash cloud had shifted and the skies, while not clear, had at least allowed small snippets of sun to burst through. His guess was that they were headed in the wrong direction to find the colonel, Farbeaux, Charlie, and Jenks, that they were instead heading in the exact opposite direction from rescue — they were headed toward the great inland sea.

After an hour of travel they were hit with a freezing breath of wind that came in from the south. The next wave of air was warmer and that was when Jason realized that Sarah had been right — this continent was going through changes that had never been recorded in history. The very last continent to fall under the spell of death that Erebus had cast upon the rest of the world.

The seven men made their way through the heavier undergrowth but had to skirt the more impenetrable bush, which made their zigzag pattern time consuming.

“Look, we can’t be out here much longer. We don’t know when the sun goes down here and one thing I do know is that we don’t want to be caught out here in the dark,” Ryan said as he stopped and leaned against a large tree.

“You are worried about your women back at the shelter?” Doshnikov laughed. “I despair when I imagine what it is that you have heard about us Russians. Do you think us barbarians?”

“Not all Russians, no. As a matter of fact the last Russian I dealt with was one of the bravest men I have ever had the privilege of fighting alongside.”

Will nodded his silent agreement as he remembered the battle for Moon Gap during Operation Overlord and the Russian naval captain who had given his life in that fight.

Doshnikov went silent when he didn’t know what to make of the secretive comment.

“At any rate, your women are as safe with my men as—”

“Don’t move,” Ryan said easily as Doshnikov saw his men freeze and the black man back off a few steps. That was when he felt the movement behind him in the thick jungle.

Ryan felt his mouth slowly fall to the open and stunned position as he saw the creature looking through a clustered bramble of vines and branches. The yellow eye blinked and then the head tilted and the eye moved left and then right. The beak alone was wider than an old catcher’s mitt and its yellow-gold eyes moved in rapid motion as it studied the men before it. Doshnikov slowly turned his head without moving his body. His eyes widened when he saw the yellowish-brown beak slowly open.

If it wasn’t for Ryan’s quick movement and action the Russian would have had his head snapped clean off. Jason hit the Russian and both men went flying just as the giant roc fought to clear itself from its entanglement of vine and brush. The jaws of the giant, flightless bird missed Doshnikov’s head by three inches as the long-legged grounded avian screamed and clawed in anger as it missed its target. Ryan rolled onto his back with wide eyes as a vision from an old horror movie tried desperately to get at the seven men.

The roc stood at over six and a half feet. The powerful legs were far stronger than any bird species ever to roam the world. The giant snapped and hissed as it tore at the vines holding it back.

Several gunshots rang out and then the world around them went silent as the roc was sent crashing into the undergrowth with bullet wounds in its chest and head. Jason looked over at the two large Russians who had dispatched the large predatory bird. The men looked pleased with themselves.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Will said, not liking the fact that he and Jason were the only two unarmed men in the most hostile world he could ever have imagined.

“We need water,” Doshnikov said as he picked himself up from the ground. “We have to or we’ll dehydrate and—”

Again he was cut short as one of the men who had fired on the roc screamed as something rushed at him from the undergrowth. They saw a blur of black feathers, shortened wings, and powerful legs as the second roc slammed into the man and then ripped at his upturned face. Instead of helping their comrade, and preceded by their fearless leader, the men ran, even leaving Ryan and Will behind in their haste to escape the feathered nightmare. Mendenhall looked at Jason, knowing this was their chance to get away. They saw the second roc look up from its meal and eye them with that chicken look all avians have. The tick-inspired, quick glance and rapid eye movement took them in. They both decided that accompanying the Russians was probably the best recourse for the moment. They too ran as even more rocs came flying through the jungle after smelling blood in the air.

The simple foray for water had turned into a complete disaster.

Sarah allowed Virginia to look at her arm once again and found the pain was becoming far less tolerable than before. It was declared that she would live to see the dawning of a new day. Then Virginia turned and looked at the face of one of the younger Russians who sat near the entrance and tried to get a makeshift dressing on a large gash that had been administered by the saber-toothed cat. The nuclear physicist eased herself over to the kid and raised her brows. The Russian lowered his weapon and nodded that it was okay. She started wrapping the torn sleeve dressing far better than he had.

“You know,” Virginia said as she smiled at the frightened Russian, “none of us have been inoculated for this little safari into Adventure Land. There’s no telling what diseases are floating around here just waiting to attach themselves to us.”

The four Russians who had been left behind by their boss exchanged looks of discomfort.

Sarah remembered laughing at Jack and the others as they had endured a series of shots that made their arms go numb from the puncture wounds. Now it looked like Jack would get the last laugh.

“As a matter of fact I would venture to guess that—”

The roar made their hearts freeze as something tore at their feeble enclosure from the outside. Sarah immediately thought the giant saber-toothed cat had tracked the Russians here through the smell of blood. But the roar of the beast outside was far more deep sounding, not a cat’s call at all — a roar that was unbelievably more terrifying than the enormous cat. The bass sound alone shook their eardrums as the animal tore at the branches enclosing their shelter. The eight-inch-long claws reached through and a fur-covered arm swiped at the men as the women were quick enough to duck away. One of the Russian guards was not quite so lucky. The long claws caught the man mid-torso as he attempted to dodge the knifelike weapons of the giant towering over them. The young Russian tried to stand but was knocked down by the body of the first as the top half of the man struck him and sent the kid reeling.

Sarah and Anya waited for Virginia as she fought to assist the kid she had just helped to his feet. As she did, the animal outside tore away a goodly percentage of the branches covering the small crevice. Anya and Sarah’s eyes widened when they saw the muzzle of the largest bear they had ever seen outside of a natural history museum. The cave bear swiped and roared at the intruders to its lair. The second and third Russians never stood a chance as they tried to squeeze past the women to get to the opening. The set of claws hit the first across the throat, sending his head flying half on, half off as he continued to fight for the doorway. The sight froze the second man as he saw his friend dispatched right before his eyes.

Sarah hurriedly reached for the running and headless man’s Glock nine millimeter but the headless man continued into the open and then finally collapsed into the collected ash of Erebus. The roar of the enormous cave bear shook the world around the women as the bear started to lower its spittle-filled muzzle toward the cowering Sarah, Anya, Virginia, and the only Russian guard who was left. All they could do was cower as the cave bear moved its fifteen-foot body far enough to block their only escape route.

They leaned as far away as they could as the giant roared with bloodlust. The prehistoric bear crashed into the enclosure and the world exploded with blood and fur.

Jenks finally got the second remote unit under control. The nightmare-sized condor discovered something far less maneuverable and vanished into the now-clearing skies after the wind had shifted the ash cloud. The master chief cursed and brought the drone to a much higher altitude. As he watched the monitor he saw the distant outline of the bird as it made its way to the south.

“Damn, Slim should have put a mini-gun on this damn thing,” Jenks hissed as he spun the remote 360 degrees to see if there were any more surprises waiting for his robotic viewing pleasure.

“Master Chief, you better look at this,” Charlie said.

Jenks placed his drone in a hover over the canopy as he leaned over and looked at what Ellenshaw was viewing on drone number one’s viewing screen.

“What in the hell is that?” he asked, knowing well that the cryptozoologist had no idea what it was they were seeing.

“Well, the telephoto lenses are at full capacity, maybe thirty-five miles or so, but they’re close enough that I can tell you beyond a doubt that not only are we seeing a large contingent of mammoths, but the largest herd of bison ever dreamed about in North America. Millions of them are flanking the mammoth families at the center. They seem to be migrating toward Erebus,” Charlie said, his excitement growing while his eyes took in the magnificent sight.

“You can see all of that?” Jenks asked, looking at the way Ellenshaw perched his glasses on his head as he closely viewed the scene on the monitor.

“Oh, yes. See how easily they move? This looks like a natural migration.” Charlie looked over at the master chief, who was staring at the monitor. He turned and gently lowered the cryptozoologist’s glasses to his eyes.

“My point being, Doc, if you can see all of that why can’t you see the dust clouds rising to either side of this mass migration?”

Ellenshaw looked closer at the monitor. He scowled as he saw what the former navy man was referring to, but not his point. He faced the master chief.

“There. About the middle of the pack and toward the front. Watch closely.”

Charlie finally saw the movement Jenks was seeing. Every few seconds a number of the bison would roam farther from the giant herd after smelling greener grass, and as they did they ventured closer to the valley walls where trees of prehistoric size lined the trail. At first he saw a shadow break quickly from the cover of the tree line and make straight for the wandering beasts until the animals stopped and were scared back into the fold. The same thing happened toward the front of the migratory animals. Another small, darkened shape shot from the trees as some young bison and even a small baby mammoth strayed too close from the herd and stopped and ran a very fast circle around the frightened animals until they too were turned back.

“Uh-oh,” Ellenshaw said under his breath as he reached out and pushed replay on the small screen.The high-definition scene rewound until the small creature had just burst from cover. It was one of the small raptors that had attacked them. As Charlie pushed the play feature, the camera began a live streaming of the migratory herd once more. He zoomed in on the line of giant trees that encompassed most of the ancient game trail. Then his heart froze as he saw the enemy of both man and animal — thousands of the brightly colored raptors were following both herds and that led Ellenshaw to believe the same thing was happening on the far side of the game trail also.

Jenks cursed something under his breath as he turned to his own monitor and saw that the second hovering drone had lost Colonel Collins and the Frenchman. The master chief knew any attempt at finding them would be a waste of battery time, and this new development had changed priorities, at least as far as the base camp was concerned.

“Think you can fly that drone back here without cracking it up?”

“But we need to keep an eye on this, and what about the colonel and Farbeaux? We need to stay in contact with them.”

“That’s why we have radios, Doc. Now get that drone back here so we can recharge it for when we really need it.”

An angry Charlie waited the briefest of moments until the master chief looked up. He returned the look. “Listen, do you see that Ferris wheel — lookin’ thing over there?”

Charlie saw the doorway in its incomplete state. “Yes.”

“The priority is that damn thing, not keeping an eye on two men that know how to take care of themselves. We need to know when those murderous chickens start getting too close, is that clear to you, Doc?”

“Yes, but I don’t like the fact that I feel we are abandoning our friends out there, Carl.”

“One more thing while you’re so damn worried about everything else, there’s a missing piece of that Ferris wheel and those damn raptors or whatever they are have it. We need to see where they have taken it before the whole damn thing becomes a moot point. And in case you didn’t notice, we are sitting right in the middle of that damn game trail.”

Without another word Charlie started guiding drone number one home. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were abandoning Jack and the others when they needed their eyes the most.

Without knowing it, Ellenshaw was mirroring the master chief’s very thoughts.

20

The giant cave bear’s claws missed Anya’s head by mere inches. The blow was so close that it cut clean a long lock of her black hair. She cursed in Romanian and then in Hebrew as she scrambled backward on her behind just as the branches covering the small crevice came crashing in upon all of them. The enormous but blunted snout of the brown and black fur — covered behemoth roared as it leaned in to swipe at the branches covering its intended targets. The young and wounded Russian managed to slide by Sarah and Virginia and partially raise his weapon up and through the large leaves of their cover. That was a major mistake as it acted like a marker for the monstrosity fighting to get in. The boy screamed as the beast moved like lightning and took the man’s hand, but instead of biting through the light meat, sinew, and bone of the man’s wrist, the bear pulled the Russian up and out of the collapsed enclosure. Sarah and Virginia tried for his flying feet but missed.

The man screamed as he was thrown through the air to crash into other trees. The bear turned to move toward the easy meal.

Before anyone realized it, something had drowned out the roars of the enraged bear. Gunshots sounded outside and then their hopes soared as they realized that the colonel and his team had found them, or at the very least that bastard mobster had returned with Ryan and Mendenhall. Three more shots were fired and the roaring animal vanished from the enclosure. Sarah, Virginia, and Anya scrambled to push the debris of the shelter away as they struggled to take advantage of the brief respite. McIntire was the first one to break through and it was like a drowning swimmer breaching the surface for some much-needed air, only this particular sensation was brought on by fear. Anya popped up next to her and then Virginia with a halo of leaves garnishing her brown hair.

The animal screamed again and they saw the beast as it charged something that was blocked from view.

“Why aren’t they still shooting it?” Anya yelled over the din of the charging cave bear.

That was when they saw a fur-covered form break cover and dodge the charging giant. The man-shape moved quickly and took up station just to the animal’s exposed left flank as the beast crashed into the undergrowth where their savior had been in cover. Then they were amazed when the fur-covered figure fired a large arrow into the confused bear. Then another arrow was quickly nocked and fired without hesitation. Then the figure was again on the move just as the enraged animal turned to confront its attacker. The dark figure moved fast and before the women knew it the attacker had launched two more arrows at the bear.

“What in the hell is that asshole doing?” Sarah asked as she fought further to free herself from the roof of the enclosure. “Arrows?”

The bear had had enough. The giant roared one more time at the pesky animals that had thwarted its meal. The cave bear rose once on its hind legs and then screamed its outrage. It flopped onto all fours and vanished into the thick growth.

Sarah finally managed to free herself totally and then helped Anya and Virginia. They turned, and with their hearts still threatening to beat right out of their chests, they saw the fur-covered hunter move quickly toward the downed Russian. The man’s pulse was checked and the person or whatever it was lowered his head. Then their new company looked up toward them. There was no movement for the first few seconds as they waited to see who or what had come to their rescue. Finally, without rising from his crouched position, a gloved hand was raised and the fur hood was removed.

Even at the distance Anya saw who it was and her heart froze. Sarah and Virginia laughed aloud and even clapped their hands as the blond man finally rose. The beard was thick but even from that distance they saw the man’s eyes and there was no mistaking Admiral Carl Everett. He slid the large bow over his shoulder and smiled. Yes, it was Mr. Everett, and Sarah felt the tears come to her eyes as Anya ran forward. Virginia placed a hand on Sarah’s shoulder and they took in a reunion that had never been dreamed of until Moira Mendelsohn had been discovered. She jumped the last four feet and flew into his fur-covered arms. Carl took her in, fearing his own voice would fail him. As it turned out he didn’t need his voice at all.

Sarah looked at Virginia and saw that the older woman was crying. For Sarah it was a rerun of her reunion with Jack during the Leviathan mission… she knew the joy. Sarah’s smile said it all.

“We beat the damn odds, didn’t we?” she said as she watched Carl Everett embrace Anya for the first time since his once-upon-a-time death.

Before the embrace and the joy faded, the odds had shifted again for the worst as Mount Erebus rumbled and belched burning-red boulders from her caldera, and this time she and her sister world-killers didn’t stop.

The radio coming to life made Jack cringe. He hurriedly pulled it from its holder and lowered the volume. The noise in the silent jungle was not conducive to avoiding some of the pitfalls he and Farbeaux were made aware of by the screams of cats and other species that seemed to want to eat everything they came across. Collins could see that Henri was coming a little unglued, and he had to admit to himself that he was faring no better. You could only search in a scary place for so long before you start to hear monsters behind every bush you see.

“Collins,” he said into the radio as he hurriedly tempered his angry response, after all it wasn’t the master chief’s fault he had left his volume up like a rookie.

“Colonel, we have a serious problem,” Jenks said from five miles distant. “It seems we have an assorted selection of wildlife heading straight for us, and they have some disturbing company herding them. Doc says that they are migrating toward Erebus while the rest of the wild kingdom is heading the other way away from the volcano. The group heading our way is being herded by our feathered friends, over.”

“Our raging peacocks again?” he asked as Henri stopped beside him with an open bottle of water from his pack. Collins shook his head and then waited.

“Oh, yeah. The smart little bastards are keeping a massive migrating herd of bison and some damn big, ugly elephants.” Jack and Henri heard Charlie Ellenshaw’s complaint in the background that they were called mammoths before he was cut off.

“How long?” he asked as the exasperation and hopelessness of the situation was starting to wear on him.

“Doc says they’re traveling leisurely, but even if they stop at Denny’s we’re lookin’ at no more than twenty-four hours until they amble right over us and the doorway. Over.”

“Master Chief, do you see any indication of where these raptors may be clustering? Maybe they have a nest or something.”

It dawned on Jenks and Charlie at the same moment they heard Jack’s question.

“No, but I see what you’re getting at. Any leadership cast or whatever social, or pecking order”—they heard the master chief laugh if only briefly—“that may be where they stashed our little coupling.”

“My train of thought exactly.”

“Okay, we have our orders, we’ll use both drones and see what we can see. Any luck finding out who the assholes were that started the fires?”

“Negative, there wasn’t that much left to view.”

“I see, Jenks out.”

Jack lowered the radio and looked at Farbeaux, who had recapped the water and then wiped his brow. He looked from Collins toward the setting sun.

“The winds are bound to shift again and bring that damnable ash cloud back. Are you sure you want to use both drones to search for the coupling? Without at least one we’ll have a hard time tracking our new team members, whoever they may be.”

Collins knew not dividing up his two remotes limited his chances of finding Sarah and whoever else was sent through the doorway and into this hellhole of a continent, not to mention the fact that recovering Carl had become a distant part of the mission.

“You know who’s out there, don’t you?”

“Yes, I had my suspicions when you and I both saw the boot size that only one woman we both know wears. So, if you’re asking me if we should continue the search, yes, as a matter of fact, Colonel, I insist.” The Frenchman smiled, irritating Collins to no end.

“You want to take five?” Jack asked as a way of challenging Farbeaux. He returned the smile.

“No, but when I rescue young McIntire I fully expect for you to keep the word your president gave me when I fulfilled his recent, black request. I want to be free of you and your people for all time.” He smiled wider. “Or I’ll accept the offer of dear Sarah in return. Your choice.”

Jack started moving off without comment at Farbeaux’s desires. He then slowed to face the Frenchman. “The odds are that we’ll remain right here, Henri, so if we somehow manage to get out of here, and if I don’t kill you for any more remarks about Sarah, yes, when and if we get back you’re free to go.”

Farbeaux failed to see the humor in the comment as Collins laughed and then continued to follow the tracks in the fallen ash field. Then he realized it was so simple — if they got back.

“I truly despise you, Colonel.”

They were lucky to have only lost the one man. Doshnikov went to his knees after they had stopped running as did most of the others. Jason looked at Mendenhall as both men were not really winded but very much over-oxygenated. He shook his head at the captain.

“We have to ditch these assholes.”

“I agree, but in case you failed to notice, my backward navy friend, they have things they call guns. And we of course do not have said apparatus as per our usual circumstance.”

Before Jason could retort at his friend’s smart-ass observation they were joined by Doshnikov and two of his remaining men.

“If you think you can escape, by all means, I will not try to stop you.” The Russian looked around him nervously. “I don’t know where you fools have sent us, but this is not a very nice place.”

“If you only knew half of the places we’ve been, buster, you would crap yourself.”

Everyone looked at Mendenhall, who was deadly serious.

“Now, I’m sure you have an extra cap gun hidden away somewhere and me and my buddy are feeling a little exposed out here.”

“Listen,” Ryan said as he finally straightened from where he had his hands on his knees. He tilted his head as Will and the others fell silent when they saw he was trying to hear something. He tilted his head in the other direction. Then he froze, and before the Russians or a startled Mendenhall could say or do anything, Ryan started trotting away. The others hurriedly followed.

Doshnikov almost bumped into Ryan before he realized the American had stopped abruptly. He watched as Jason reached out and pulled some screening plants out of his way. The filthy Russian smiled and pushed past Ryan.

The river was fast flowing and blue as the gorgeous waters of the Caribbean. The smell of freshness after the dense jungle and forest was heavenly to Ryan. The others saw what he had smelled and pushed past him.

“Leave it to the navy to accidentally stumble onto water,” Will said as he slapped Jason on the back on his way past. Ryan smiled and followed. At least they wouldn’t die of thirst before some beast had their teeth-savvy way with them.

Ryan could see that the twisting river had worked its way down from the slopes surrounding Mount Erebus. He could even see fish as they jumped in the fast current. His smile vanished as he watched the Russians and Will drinking at the water’s edge. It looked as if they weren’t concerned about how potable this ancient waterway was, but of course he knew that the colonel’s team had all of the purification equipment and chemicals to make assurances of anything.

He started to join them when he saw that the river vanished over the small cliff in front of them. He was looking at a waterfall. He advanced slowly and was still wary of the animal life that he knew also used the waters to drink from. He eased slowly to the edge and then his mouth fell open when he saw where the river vanished to.

“Holy shit.”

When Will finally joined him with Doshnikov close behind, they found the navy man sitting on the ash-covered grass overlooking the falls and the greenest valley they had ever seen not far below. Mendenhall was about to say something when Ryan pointed to the valley and they saw what had stunned Ryan and sent him to the seat of his pants.

“If you have not lied about what time frame this is supposed to be, and if every schoolmaster in my life were not the most wonderful of liars about history, maybe you could tell me what in the hell that is doing here?” Doshnikov asked as his mouth dried up even after the thirst-quenching trip to the river.

Below, entangled in vine and undergrowth, was the remains of a wooden stockade. They could even make out the remains of watch towers at each corner and at the centerline of each fence. The jungle and forest had taken over the wooden structure and they could clearly see that it was deserted from their high vantage point. Inside the rectangle of stockade they saw deteriorating huts and other makeshift buildings. They saw sally ports along the high walls.

“You know what that looks like?” Mendenhall asked as he slowly looked at Ryan.

“Even I know what this is, and I didn’t go to school in America.” The Russian brushed past Will and examined the fort below.

Ryan stood and joined the others. He looked down at a sight they had no right to see in this distant epoch.

The Roman-style encampment was complete with a dried-up moat surrounding it. It looked to have been abandoned for a century at least.

Will laughed aloud and then turned to face the others in their lost band of idiots.

“This is going to throw a major kink into a lot of brilliant minds back home.”

Mount Erebus exploded as an exclamation point to the most bizarre discovery of that very long and trying day.

Carl smelled atrocious and as Sarah finally pulled back from her hugs and kisses so Virginia could get her shots in, she turned to face an exuberant Anya Korvesky. They hugged.

“I won’t even ask how,” Carl said as he held Virginia at arm’s length after her battery of welcoming hugs and kisses on his bearded cheek.

Everett allowed Virginia to move away as he reached for the dark-haired Gypsy woman and took her in his arms again. Finally it was Anya who couldn’t take it any longer. She pulled back from Carl and held her nose.

“I tried to be a stand-up trouper, but my God that cologne!” she said as she laughed as did the others who had been too polite to point out the fact that the admiral smelled so sickening that it was hard not to gag on the stench.

Everett acted as if he were hurt for the briefest of seconds, and then he broke out laughing also. He removed the longbow and the quiver of five arrows from his back and then pulled the bear coat off of his large frame. He tossed an empty shortened version of an AK-47 away as he did.

“Sorry, but to get around out here you have to smell like something bigger and badder than anything else — I find saber-tooth lion pee-pee the best.” He laughed as the women recoiled in horror.

Sarah saw the nine millimeter strapped to Everett’s filthy and ragged flight suit. The suit had once been white with red trim, but was now unrecognizable with the exception of the small American flag on his left sleeve and the Overlord mission patch on his chest.

“I guess saving us was worth only six shots? I take it you wanted to practice your Robin Hood thing?” Sarah joked with her right brow raised.

Everett smiled and then removed the Glock from its holster. He tossed it to Sarah. “My last bullets were fired over a month ago. I was lucky to come across a rather gruesome scene a few miles back and found that.” He kicked at the empty AK-47 at his feet. “It only had what you heard in the magazine. After that I had to use my superior mountain-man skills.”

“How long have you been living like this?” Virginia asked as once again Anya was on Carl like a lost puppy.

“A thousand rounds of ammunition were gone within three days. The damn raptors took my MREs the second day, and those damn condors flew off with my enclosure with me in it on the third. That was a close one, I can tell you.”

Sarah lowered her head and then swiped a tear from her eye just thinking what this man had to have endured in the six months he had been here.

“Okay, you’ve kept me in suspense long enough. Where’s Jack and those two low-ranking idiots I call friends and colleagues?”

Anya pulled back from Carl and then looked at him closely. “We haven’t seen the first team since we arrived. We don’t even know if they made it. Jack, Master Chief Jenks, Charlie, and Colonel Farbeaux — we can only hope they’re still alive.”

“Team? Then just what in the hell are you guys, then?”

“We’re an accident thanks to some outside Russian mob interference. They’re the ones who brought that.” She indicated the automatic rifle. “And as a real kicker that’s exactly who is holding your two low-ranking friends at the moment.”

“I’m not following one little bit.” He turned to Virginia and Sarah, who tossed the empty nine millimeter back to Everett.

“Longer story than the first,” was Sarah’s answer. “Right now we have to get Jason and Will back.”

Carl looked around and then leaned down and retrieved the stinky bear coat from the ashes covering the ground. He looked toward the erupting Erebus and shook his head. “Not now, the sun’s getting ready to go down and we can’t chance getting caught out here with only one bow and five arrows for artillery.” He looked at Anya and kissed her on the lips, his red-tinted beard itching her nose. “Unless you have a rocket launcher under that blouse?” Anya blushed like a schoolgirl and then looked embarrassingly at the two knowing women. “No, no rocket launcher? Then I have a place we can hang our coats until daybreak.”

“Where is that?” Virginia asked as she stepped into the small line of retreat from the forest primeval.

“This time it’s you who won’t believe it,” he said as he eased his found charges off into the jungle and the river that flowed not far away.

As the world around them started to come alive with the terrors of the night, Erebus belched smoke and flame and then settled into an uneasy slumber.

Niles Compton limped toward the phone that was held out by Alice Hamilton. He set his demeanor to one of defensive confrontation as he took the receiver. Alice nodded, knowing he had to be firm.

“Mr. President?”

“What in the hell is going on in Brooklyn, Baldy?”

“No ‘Niles,’ no ‘hello,’ not even a ‘how are you doing, my very good friend’?”

“Do not, I repeat, do not act like it’s just a coincidence that a possible terrorist action in Brooklyn happens the same day you find it necessary to raid the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And also at the same exact time you seem to have been avoiding my damn calls. Your commander-in-chief! Now what gives, Niles? I have agencies screaming from here to the Potomac about some mysterious group of people running amok in New York. I can’t cover for you if you don’t keep me up to date. The hundred hours is nearly up.”

“Jim, you agreed to a one-hundred-hour window before we report oversight. We have forty of those hours remaining. If I told you that we had nothing to do with the terrorist action at the Barclays Center, will you stick to our agreement?”

“Don’t you dare hold me over a barrel, I am not one of those schoolkids you have at Group. I happen to be the President of the United States, who is right now getting ready to send the Marines over there and shut you down, among other things. This is getting messy, Niles. How am I going to explain the terrorist action in Brooklyn?”

Niles remained silent as the president, his friend, the best man at his wedding, exploded when he realized Niles was protecting his office over his express orders to keep him in the loop.

“Do we still have our time?”

The quiet on the other end of the phone was telling. Niles felt the sheer heat coming from his friend’s anger at what was possibly going on. He knew as long as the president had full deniability he would be protected.

“Jim, the terrorist action weren’t terrorists at all. It was the Russian mob and thanks to them you have a culprit. Allow the FBI to do their job and that should give us the time we need to complete our mission.”

“Niles, tell me the truth: Are you making headway in bringing Mr. Everett back home?”

“Very much so. Enough progress to say that we should be finished within your time frame.”

“Okay,” came the voice at the other end of the line. “I can cover my ass on this end, but no more buildings are to be blown to hell. I have the press screaming bloody murder.

“Niles, where is my submarine?”

Well, that did that. So much for hoping the president had suddenly ceased being smart. He looked over at Alice, who was listening to the speaker phone across the room. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

“Uh, yes, the Los Angeles. Assistant Director Pollock needed an alternate power source since the explosion and subsequent police response two days ago. She was close by in Groton so I made a few calls. That is in my new directives, along with the proposed allotted oversight time frame.”

“Do not quote to me the very policy that I wrote, damn it!”

“Do we have the time?”

“Of course you still have the time. Congressional oversight can only crucify me once.”

The line went dead. Niles looked at the phone and then sat heavily into a chair. Alice stood and slowly walked over and removed the receiver from his hand and placed it in its cradle.

“It won’t be the first time a president has yelled at the director of this department, I can assure you of that, Niles.”

He half smiled and then shook his head. “I hate placing my best friend in this situation.”

“It’s a situation he agreed to. After all, Niles, Carl is one of his men as well as yours.”

“We may not have a mission anymore, and may have also lost even more personnel and friends than just Carl. We may have single-handedly sunk a hundred years of departmental history. The Group may not survive this if the president is caught lying to his own agencies. I’ve placed my best friend in an impossible situation.”

Alice patted his arm and then turned on the monitor to check in with Xavier Morales. She turned just as the computer center back at Nellis came into focus.

“If we can get back our people, who gives a damn in the end? The president is still the head of this agency and one of us.”

Niles Compton smiled for the first time in two days as he realized that Alice had just refueled his desire to get his men and women back in one piece and save the president the indignity of having to explain something he had little to do with. He knew his friend would go down, just like the presidents before him, in safeguarding the secret that is the Event Group.

“Xavier, let’s start working to get our people home.”

On the screen Morales was there with his many computer techs.

“Yes, sir, we are assuming that they are alive and have been working to get the return doorway operational. We are beginning the signal now and will continue until we get an answer.”

Niles looked at the clock on the wall and then shook his head.

The director had a bad feeling that the clock here was not the only one running down as his thoughts quickly went to the threat of Mount Erebus and her murderous sisters.

21

Carl had given Sarah the combat survival knife and appointed her point man. He would guide her from the back of the small line as they made their way down the falls side of the steep ravine. Everett felt far easier with his new charges because he knew the terrain was much too steep for the local animals to feel comfortable hunting on. Still, they made slower time as the ash cloud once more arrived with the winds, and this time it was mixed with a harsh blend of sulfur and pumas that was starting to irritate their throats.

Carl had allowed them all to quench their parched throats at the wide river. The newcomers to his world were faring far better. Everett was still having a hard time believing they had come for him.

“Oh, my,” Sarah said as she spied the Roman stockade for the first time as Carl had led them down a trail that was hidden from view, just in case the Russians they had told him about followed them. He knew Jason and Will would have no problem giving them the slip if they hadn’t already.

“Okay, I give up on the whole history thing,” Anya said as she and Virginia saw the old ruins through the falling ash.

“Someone is going to get an earful when I get back,” Virginia said as she stepped toward the long dried-up moat. The trench was over ten feet deep and the opposite side was spiked with old spears that shot off at angles toward the moat. “The whole of history may have to be rewritten.”

Everett chuckled as he realized the others had not figured out the little puzzle. He would let them stew on it awhile.

“You have to slide down on your asses I’m afraid, I didn’t think it would be wise to build a two-lane highway to my only sanctuary.”

Virginia snorted as if his concern for their femininity irritated her to no end. She sat and went sliding down the ash-covered slope of mote. Sarah also shook her head at Carl’s concern and then followed suit. Carl took Anya’s hand, looked down at her, and frowned when he saw her returning his look as if he had kicked her puppy.

“What?”

“I’m still extremely pissed at you for dying on me.”

Everett scratched the itchy beard and looked consternated. “Well, then, I guess I have to make it up to you.”

“Don’t think it will be that easy. I’m a Gypsy, remember?” She smiled and then plopped down unceremoniously and then gently and adeptly slid down the slope.

Everett knew that no matter what happened, he could be happy with Anya anywhere in the world, or at any time.

The three were shocked at the equipment that had been gathered up by Everett in the six months he had been in Antarctica. Sarah had to stop and examine the Roman shield. The red leather had peeled away exposing the wood beneath. She saw the outline of an emblem or insignia that had long ago left the ghost of a shield.

“Just wait, you’re really going to like this,” Carl said as he pushed aside some giant elephant ear plants and pulled out something they couldn’t see. He had to laugh again when he saw their faces as they turned a shade of red he could clearly see in the mounting dusk and ashfall of the false evening.

“I understand now,” Virginia said just as Sarah and Anya realized the true nature of the strange finds. The Rising Sun battle flag of the Japanese army was unfurled. Even though it was tattered and worn out in many places it was still spry with the colors of red and white. Virginia reached out and raised the old wooden shield that had once been covered in dyed-red leather and adorned with tacks that made the shield enduring in thought and memory. “The legendary Ninth Legion,” she said as she smiled over at Anya and Sarah.

“The Iranian power plant tests. From their test records the timing fits. The year the legion vanished was in the time frame of their sixth test. Tell me, Carl, was there any Chinese battle gear found?” Sarah asked, hoping to lay the theory to rest.

“Not yet, but then again I wasn’t keen on going out and looking for any either.

“They all vanished through a wormhole not intended for them. They were trapped and went through the same rip in time that I did, only many hundreds of years separate,” Carl said almost sadly.

“What happened to them?” Anya asked, very much afraid of the answer if he had one.

Everett looked away momentarily and was about to answer when he heard the movement behind him.

“Yes, I would very much like to know the same thing.”

They all turned as one and Virginia dropped the Roman shield when she saw Doshnikov as he and his four men pushed Ryan and Will out in front of them as they left the first enclosure only yards away.

Everett saw the armed intruders to his inherited domain and then his eyes went to Mendenhall and Ryan. Without any regard to what would happen, the three men stepped forward and shook hands. When that wasn’t enough they hugged and slapped each other on the back. The whole time Sarah, Anya, and Virginia smiled and the Russians didn’t interfere.

“I should have known you two hard-asses would have already infiltrated the enemy camp and taken hold of the situation,” Carl said with a broad smile.

“Yeah, we were just getting ready to make our move,” Ryan said as he finally released Everett’s hand. “Besides, I fully expect a royal ass-chewing if we ever get out of this.”

Carl finally turned his attention to the man Sarah had told him about in their trek back to the stockade. The man was looking far worse than his people and that made him smile at the Russian.

“What’s your story?” Everett asked as he made Will and Jason step back.

“I am a man not to be trifled with, as your friends can attest.”

Carl looked from the Russian’s eyes to the old Colt in his hands. Doshnikov saw this and then lowered the weapon and gestured for his men to follow suit.

The Russian turned to face the man that looked like one of the old pictures of his countrymen who lived in the wilds of Siberia, or the mountain men of the American West.

“Yeah, I understand you like to wire explosives up to children.”

“No, not children, small babies and their mothers to be more precise. And being a businessman I am willing to negotiate a deal. I will say this in absolute assurance, I will kill every one of you if you do not do as I say. You will get us to that valley and that new doorway these rather strange people built and you will get us back home. I can start right now with this one,” he said as he once again cocked the .45 and aimed it at Anya.

The silence after the threat was palpable even over the rumbling of the erupting volcanoes. Sarah and the others watched as Carl remained silent as he stared straight ahead. They all became concerned when they saw a smile creep across his face. The Russians even became uneasy at the strangeness of this man’s reactions. Then the world once again froze in time. The ash seemed to fall slower and the earth shaking under their feet slowed as did their own heartbeats when Everett spoke.

“Jack, you have the most outrageous sense for the dramatic. What in the hell took you so long?”

The automatic fire opened up and tracers stitched the ground in front of Doshnikov and his four men. They jumped back as the glowing red tracers arched into the stockade from somewhere the men couldn’t or didn’t have the time to see as they dove for the soft, hot ash. As the bullets continued to fly, they stood and ran for the far wall of the stockade. A few tracers followed them with no malicious intent other than to scare the fools off.

Carl waited as the others willed their shock away. Walking toward them after only a minute the outlines of two men took shape. Everett laughed as did Ryan and Mendenhall when they recognized the large silhouette of Colonel Jack Collins.

“Piss-poor shooting if I may say so,” Carl said as he stepped forward, recognizing Henri Fabrbeaux.

Collins stopped and took in the surprised faces staring at him and the Frenchman.

“I was torn between who to shoot, these people or those Russian assholes.”

Jason, Sarah, Will, Virginia, and Anya looked at one another, not one of them knowing at what point to start the tale of what happened.

“But since we have a time machine to play with, I can shoot them anytime, I guess. Then go back and do it again, again, and again.”

The two men, and even Henri Farbeaux, shook hands while the others took a deep religious breath at their sudden reprieve and deliverance from the Russians.

Now their problems were narrowed down to a few things. Like finding their stolen power coupling and dodging every horror-story creature God could have thought up, until they left here in a reengineered doorway they weren’t quite sure would work.

Yes, Jack Collins had worries other than his anger at all of the new company in this Lion Country Safari family experience.

An hour later while sitting around a small fire Everett scarfed down some of Jack’s and Henri’s MREs, wishing many times instead that he was eating one of the complex’s masterful corned beef sandwiches from the departmental mess. They had briefed all parties on the predicament they found themselves in. Ryan found it shocking that the colonel didn’t chew his ass off anyway, but only nodded when briefed by Virginia. What that meant, Ryan wasn’t exactly sure.

“I don’t know which is hardest to believe, the fact that we find ourselves in the biggest jam we have ever been in, or the fact that we have prehistoric, out-of-time Velociraptors trying to outthink and outfight us.”

“What can you tell us, Carl?” Jack asked, leaning forward after finishing the first meal he had had since arriving two days before.

“Hell, after six months of trying to piece things together, I think I’ve only scratched the surface. I do think with all of us putting our heads together we can at least make some sense of this strange-ass continent.”

Everett waited as Will and Farbeaux returned from a thorough perimeter patrol. Henri unslung his M-4 and sat, shaking his head vigorously at the offered MRE. Instead he started eating a giant berry he had found on the patrol. Jack shook his head.

“We believe now that when the continents separated it took the existing animal life with it. This continent developed totally on its own seven hundred million years ago.” Virginia looked at Sarah and she nodded. “Dinosaurs evolved differently and many more of them may have survived extinction by that separation. Maybe not the larger dinosaurs, but the smaller, avian breeds we have come to know from the movies. Left alone they developed rudimentary tool-making capability. In essence they took up where their larger relatives left off, unabated. I suspect that this is a recent development, maybe a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand years. Eventually those small birdlike raptors will learn to make more sophisticated weapons.”

“I do not know about you, my American friends, but I think the spears alone are pretty damn sophisticated.” Farbeaux tossed the remaining large pit from the fruit away. “And how long did it take humans to think of throwing a rock to defend himself?” Henri said, putting a damper on things as usual. “No, there is more to this than mere evolution.”

“Perhaps so,” Everett said as he looked deeply into the fire. They all could see that the many months of isolation had taken its toll on their friend. “You asked earlier about humanoid life.” Everett ceased staring into the flames, stood, and turned to look up at the falling ash and then toward the red glow of Erebus three hundred miles distant. “I’ve found fields of bones. Early man, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, even the little species we know as Lucy, at least from what my limited education into those fields can tell me. Thousands upon thousands. Entire species of anything that could threaten those raptors.” He looked at his rescuers. “You also asked about the Romans, the Japanese, and Chinese soldiers. All dead, massacred to the man. Three modern armies, all taken down by those feathery little bastards. They nearly had me more than once until I figured out how to get around them.”

“Do you know anything about the migratory animals?” Anya asked.

“A little from my observations. It may be a yearly trek to get at the richer volcanic grasses near Erebus, I’m not sure. But the animal life that lives around the volcanoes permanently have decided it was time to get out of Dodge. Why one set goes one way, why the other goes a different direction has me stumped. I guess the large herds of mammoths and bison just don’t know anything other than that their migration they have been following for thousands and thousands of years is just too hard a habit to break.”

“That makes sense,” Sarah agreed.

“But one thing I did notice. There are millions upon millions of bones lining that game trail. I believe the raptors actually herd them, or at least take extreme advantage of the migration to kill and eat. There’s no end to the smarts of those ugly little bastards.”

Jack’s radio suddenly sprang to life. The sound, though loud, made Carl feel like he was part of the modern world again. It did no harm to the psyche of the others either.

“Colonel, Jenks here.”

Jack looked at Virginia and saw the relief in her face when she heard the gruff man’s voice.

“Collins,” he said into the radio. He had yet to inform the master chief they had found Everett and the others. Jenks wasn’t even aware that Virginia was there. Jack couldn’t wait to tell him and hear the cursing start to fly.

“Negative on any roost those damn things may have. We searched until we drained the batteries on both drones. We’re recharging now.”

“Good, Master Chief. Is Charlie close by?”

“Yeah, he’s right here.”

“We have Mr. Everett.”

The radio was silent as the others around the fire smiled at what must be happening in the camp.

“And a few others that we found picnicking in the woods. One may wish to say hello to you.”

“Wait, damn it, is Toad all right?” came the hurried voice of the master chief. Sarah got up and joined Jack. All the while Henri watched her as she moved. She saw this and then looked at the Frenchman and her eyes told him that she was appreciative of him, but that was all for the moment. Jack tossed Virginia the radio before she could react.

“Oh, your precious Toad is just fine, he saved all of our asses. Maybe you should worry about me, you gruff bastard!”

“Slim, what in the holy Sam hell are you doing out here? I told you to keep your skinny ass out of—”

Virginia turned down the volume on the radio and smiled at the others. “That will keep him occupied for a while.” She tossed back the radio to Jack and he caught it with a grin.

Collins held the radio and then looked at Carl. “You see, everyone missed you so much that I bet you can’t wait to get back and deal with your old buddy on a daily basis.”

“Don’t you dare tell me that,” Carl said as he turned on Collins. “Did everyone lose their damn minds while I was gone?” He paced around the fire. “The director would never allow that man anywhere near his precious collection,” he said in his final defensive denial.

“When you’re discussing and designing ways of going into hell,” he explained, looking around the horrific world, “you sometimes have to deal with the devil, Swabby, you know that. And without Jenks we would never have had the chance.”

“I am going to kick everyone’s asses on this deal, let me tell you.” They caught the final threat of the master chief as Jack turned the volume back up.

“She’s happy to hear your voice, too, Master Chief,” he said with mock seriousness.

“She’s all right? The others?”

They heard the belated concern in Jenks’s voice.

“Everyone’s still breathing.”

“Okay, I’ll deal with her when you people get your asses back here, and that little event better be soon.”

“Why is that?”

“Because those raptor things are increasing their attacks on the animal herds and they are starting to move far faster than we realized.”

Collins lowered the radio in wonderment as to their ability to catch a break.

“We’ll send all nonessential personnel back to you. We have to continue on until we find out what those things do with their spoils of war.”

“Roger. Get them back so I can bounce some ideas off of Slim’s head.”

“Watch out for those Russians, they’re loose out there and they’re scared. They may make a move for the doorway.”

“Let them try it if they want to get their asses sliced in two. The laser system is working just fine. But they or the power won’t hold up to a full-scale onslaught of those rock-and-spear-chuckin’ chicken bastards.”

“Roger, Collins out.”

“Jack, what was it you were saying about a nest, or lair?” Carl asked.

“It may be nothing, but the off chance that the raptors collect things of beauty, shiny objects, just like other birds, we’re hoping, or at least Doc Ellenshaw was hoping, that they took it there, wherever that is.”

They saw Everett thinking. He pursed his lips and that was when he turned to them. “I may know where that lair is.”

Collins stood with the faint hope that Everett may have an answer. Then he felt his heart skip when he saw the look on the admiral’s face.

“It’s close by. About three klicks out. But, Jack, you in particular are not going to like it.”

“What is it?” he asked as the others came near.

“First, I have to feed my chickens, we’re going to need them.”

“Chickens?” Mendenhall asked, not liking the sound of anything that had to do with birds of any kind.

“Yeah, I like the eggs, and they like being fed without hunting for their meals. It’s a mutual thing. They need me and I them.” He saw the strange looks being directed his way as if he had truly lost his mind. “Hey, you guys try living alone out here and not talk to strange birds.”

“I do not like the sound of this at all,” Will said as he and Ryan exchanged looks of dread. They all made their way to feed Admiral Everett’s chickens.

Charlie watched the small radar screen that controlled the automatic defense system. The miniscule blobs of light would appear and then vanish just as quickly. It was as if the raptors on the camp’s periphery were testing their defenses.

“They’re a little leery after getting their asses kicked the last time. They’re just trying to get us to react,” Jenks said as he looked through the lens of his night-vision scope that zoomed in three hundred times power. He chewed on the dead cigar and hissed under his breath.

“Do you hear yourself?” the crazed white-haired Ellenshaw asked as he kept his eyes on the scope and the surrounding countryside.

“What?” Jenks asked as he lowered the scope.

“My God, we’re actually worried that these abominations are merely trying to get us to react to them. Like they are hoping for a desired plan to take shape.”

The silence coming from the master chief was enough to unnerve Charlie.

“How many can we get with our limited supply of battery power?”

“Enough to probably piss off the remaining three or four thousand of the damn things when we’re all done.” Jenks smiled at Charlie, who had finally turned away from the screen in abject fear.

“Just think Little Big Horn, if that’s easier for you to grasp, Nerdly.”

The seven novice adventurers were stunned at the makeshift pen Everett had set up toward the rear of the stockade where the Romans had stored other animal life in their short tenure as rulers of this horrid land. What was inside the pen was far more shocking to them. Pecking the ground and scratching at its ash-covered surface were about fifteen of the giant rocs. The huge ostrich bodies were well over ten feet, far taller than a horse. The heads were large and the beaks terrifying in hooked deadliness. These rocs looked different to Ryan and Mendenhall. The killers they and the Russians had run into were multicolored with red and gold and black feathers, where these fifteen were white with red highlights. Their small, stubby wings flapped every once in a while when their beaks came into contact with some crawling thing making its way through the accumulated ash. They were calmly scratching for food as the humans watched them.

Carl went over to a large barrel that looked as if it were a thousand years old. He lifted out a large wooden bowl full of what looked like grain. He walked quickly over to the fence and then he opened the small gate and reattached a rope made of vine twistings. He approached the first roc as the others held their breath.

“You are one crazy son of a bitch, Skipper,” Ryan said as his blood froze when the roc looked up at Everett’s approach. “Will and I saw one of those tear a man’s head off not five hours ago.”

Carl turned and smiled. “Yeah, I’ve run across those guys too, they’re not friendly at all. These here? I think they may have been on their way to being domesticated by the Romans, Japanese, and Chinese soldiers before they were wiped out.” He turned and put his hand out to the roc. They were shocked when the giant bird nuzzled at Everett’s hand. The three long gouges in its beak told the newcomers this particular roc had seen trouble and survived. The head of the rooster was colored in bright red feathers that ended in a curlicue at its top. They could also see the obvious affection Carl had for the large, frightening animal.

“This one is my friend, we each saved the other’s life. His name is Foghorn.”

“Just when you thought this day could not get any stranger,” Henri said as he leaned on the rickety fence that wouldn’t have kept in a small bunny, much less the five-hundred-pound monstrosities moving toward their handler.

Everett turned and looked at Henri and his smile widened. With the beard it made the brevet admiral look quite insane, especially in the torchlight.

“You haven’t seen strange yet. You still have to saddle your transportation.”

“Transportation?” Jack asked, looking at Sarah, who also had no clue as to what Everett was talking about.

Everett took the grain and tossed it wide in an arc and the giant chickenlike rocs went wild as they started to feed on the sweet grain.

“Yeah, I just fed ’em, but you have to saddle ’em yourselves.”

The old saddles were not saddles at all. In the real sense it was a strap of leather that was butt wide with bridles and harnesses. There were no stirrups to speak of.

“I can only assume they’re Roman. God knows they’re hard to ride on, but it beats the alternative of having those course feathers poking you in your ass.” Everett laughed when he saw his friends’ faces. Farbeaux was in particular despair. “When you get on, be sure to put your feet and legs under its wings. It helps to hang on. Their gait and angle of run can be a little disconcerting from time to time.”

They had watched on in complete and abject horror when Carl placed his hands near each of the roc’s mouths as they pecked at the grain thrown to the ground. Everett easily placed a bridle on each, securing the beak with a leather strap that looked as if it couldn’t control a small donkey, much less a Rodan-sized creature. Each of the eight rocs Carl selected as being the most docile of the group were bridled, saddled, and anxiously awaiting their riders. The yellow eyes flicked back and forth and made them all nervous with the eight sets of predator eyes watching them.

“Okay, you two have your orders. You take one of the M-4s,” Jack said as he unslung his own weapon and handed it to Will Mendenhall, “and one of the Glocks. We’ll take one M-4 and we have Carl’s Glock and extra ammo.” He smiled and looked at an anxious Carl as he looked into Anya’s scared eyes for the briefest of moments. “And of course we have Robin of Locksley’s bow and arrows.”

Carl looked at Jack with raised brows. “I was hoping my archery days were behind me.”

“We can only hope. Okay, let’s get a move on before the sun comes up and the saber-toothed lions, tigers, and cave bears start to awaken.”

“Don’t forget the wooly mammoths and the giant bison,” Virginia joked as if to rid herself of the fear of the great roc she was currently sitting upon with shaking hands holding the leather reins.

Sarah leaned into Collins but Jack refrained from hugging her. Instead Jack just winked. She was relieved that his attitude about their sudden arrival had softened to that of Mount Erebus.

“You kids get straight home, don’t stop for Cokes and a burger anywhere,” Carl said as he assisted Anya up onto her feathered mount. He turned serious as Will and Ryan both fought to climb onto their skittish birds who each turned in a wide circle making the men run alongside until they had enough leverage to jump up and onto their frightened animals. Will went over on his stomach and was bounced roughly until he righted himself. His eyes were wide as he looked at the others like he had meant to do that.

“Find that coupling,” Sarah said to Jack as he climbed onto his own roc while having the same difficulty as Ryan and Mendenhall only with a more dignified ending. Once aboard Jack had to laugh at the Frenchman as he sat astride his roc with his elbows sticking straight out to his sides as he held the reins like a poorly trained cavalryman.

“Stick to the game trail, the rocs will let you know in advance if anything is stalking you. Their sense of smell is like that of a great white shark,” Carl said as he leaned over and kissed Anya. “See ya, Gypsy girl.”

She smiled, even though she really didn’t care for the great white reference, and then she lightly kicked her giant roc into motion. She almost fell off backward as the long-legged animal started to trot toward the far gate of the stockade. Jason, Sarah, Will, and Virginia hurried to follow using their rocs like out-of-control and headless chickens. Will’s mount went in circles before hitting the open gate and then almost threw him from the makeshift saddle until he finally gained control and went after the rest of his team.

Collins turned to a white-faced Henri, who waited patiently and acted as if he rode rocs all the time back in France, even though his stiff frame and wide eyes betrayed the fact of the matter quite differently.

“Ready, Colonel?”

There was silence as Henri found he didn’t want to make any noise and frighten the very large and carnivorous bird he found himself sitting upon.

“Shall we go and try to retrieve the master chief’s little toy?”

“By all means,” Everett said as he kicked his own roc, Foghorn Leghorn, not too gently, making the enormous and already skittish bird elicit a wild, cawing scream as it broke at full speed for the gate. Jack’s roc followed and then Farbeaux’s as he tried desperately to stay in the old saddle of Roman design.

Everett’s exhilarating scream of “Hi-ho Silver” reverberated even over the rumblings of Erebus.

At sunup the first probing attacks began in earnest. An exhausted Charlie Ellenshaw almost didn’t react to the warning tone sounded by the small radar system installed in each of the sixteen lasers pods. Each revolution of the small self-enclosed dish told Ellenshaw that what he was seeing was real. The defensive system went into action without having being told to do so.

The first sizzle and pop of the eastern-most laser pod startled a slumbering Jenks to full wakefulness. He never hesitated in sending up one of the recharged drones to get a bird’s-eye view of what was taking place along the tree line.

Ellenshaw watched as the faster-than-light laser burst into the far-off trees. He didn’t know if the accurate system hit anything other than wood. Then before he could contemplate more, a second and third shot sounded and the bluish-green bolts of laser light shot out, reaching for the unseen raptors as they tested the range of the defensive measures they employed. The thought of how smart these animals were made Jenks’s head hurt.

All sixteen of the lasers went off simultaneously as the raptors made a bold move and actually broke the cover of the trees to expose themselves. They flapped their flightless wings and screamed into the air and then ran back into the cover of the trees.

Jenks got the number one drone remote to the desired altitude and his blood froze as he saw the bison and mammoth herds moving much faster than before. When he examined the edges of the enormous migratory herd he saw the reasons why — a hundred raptors charged and then retreated, making the animals start to flee in panic.

“Crap, it looks like those bastards are making their move.” Jenks reached for the radio.

Charlie Ellenshaw watched as the raptors were no longer interested in hiding and playing games — they were coming on and they meant business.

Above him the lasers started firing off at intervals that told Ellenshaw and Jenks that they now had precious little time remaining.

The lightning in the morning sky overhead lit up like the old footage of London during the blitz. The lasers would fast drain at this rate and they both knew it.

The five miles were covered in bone-jarring speed by the three rocs as they ran free for the first time since Everett had corralled them six weeks before. They were free and the large birds sensed it. Their speed and maneuverability over the uneven jungle floor was amazing. They would smell something that might be a danger to them and automatically shift gears and turn in another direction. Then they would eventually reroute to their original course. Enough so that Jack was beginning to suspect that every animal in this crazed land was intelligent enough to instantly adapt to any quickly changing situation. The men were quite scratched up by the time the three rocs finally broke into the open. Everett was the first to rein Foghorn in, and Jack and Henri were grateful when their rides followed suit.

“It’s right over this ridge. Tie up and we’ll walk the rest of the way.”

Jack and Henri did as instructed and then they started off through the thinning brush of the outermost jungle. Carl was kneeling only feet away.

“I thought it was going to take forever to get a favorable wind.”

“Their sense of smell is that good?” Jack asked as he and Henri kneeled next to Carl, who only nodded his head in answer to Jack’s query.

As Everett parted the bushes they spied the small valley below. The first thing they saw made their eyes widen in awe as they thought they’d never see one of the damnable things again.

Inside the small clearing was the downed saucer. It was smashed and ancient. Large sections of its round housing were missing and the upper dome of the saucer was smashed and open to the elements. But it was what was crawling all over the ancient crashed vehicle that held their attention. They were even lying casually in front of it on the ground. Several young raptors were playing with one another until one or the other started snapping. Some of the feathered raptors looked to be larger than the ones they had seen earlier. These meandered in and out of the once powerful ship. Jack despaired and turned away and sat heavily into the tall grass.

“The saucer looks to have been dead for at least a million years. Hell, it may even have been the first one to open up a wormhole over Antarctica. But as you can plainly see, it has new tenants now.”

Collins shook his head. “How are we going to get inside?” he asked.

“We don’t have to — look,” Carl said as Jack and Henri tried to see what it was he was indicating in the far distance. “Near the small river running by the saucers starboard side.” He looked at Henri. “That’s the right side for you landlubbers.”

Henri gave Carl a withering look in return.

Jack realized that the quirky Carl was just having the time of his life knowing full well that no matter what his fate would be, he wouldn’t have to face it alone.

“See it,” Carl said, pointing once more.

Jack removed the cased binoculars from his pack. He adjusted the focus and then scanned the area on the starboard side of the ancient crashed saucer. Then he finally spied what Everett was pointing at. Near the water’s edge was a debris pile that several of the raptors hovered around. One would retrieve something and then another would hiss and then throw a rock to get the first to drop what it was holding. As he adjusted the image and brought the large pile of debris into sharper focus Jack saw that it was a collection of detritus that held one thing in common — they were all shiny or extremely colorful. He saw Roman helmets, banners from the Chinese, and even several shiny sixth-century gladius swords. God help this backward world if the raptors ever started using the weapons they had scavenged.

“If they have it, it’s in that pile.”

Jack lowered the field glasses and then pursed his lips.

“Recommendations?” he asked both men.

“Do we have a choice? How many of those feathered lizards are there?” Farbeaux asked.

“Maybe a hundred.”

It was Jack who faced both men. “Then we have to scare the hell out of them long enough to examine their little collection.”

“And how do we go about accomplishing that?”

Jack smiled, although only briefly. “The old cavalry way. We charge into the camp and run off the tribe. I figure we may frighten them off for the chance at seeing the coupling.”

Carl nodded but Henri did not. “Are you insane?”

“Yeah, I am.”

The Frenchman watched as both Jack and Everett made their way back to their waiting rocs.

“I’m truly starting to hate you two gentlemen.”

22

Sarah saw the encampment from a mile off and the sight made her freeze. The roc she rode smelled the violence in the air and balked at continuing forward. The five of them watched from the highest hill surrounding the center of the game trail where Jenks and Charlie were waiting for them. The vision that greeted Ryan was chilling as he watched the defensive laser system crisscrossing the cloud and ash-laden sky like bursts of diamonds that streaked to their targets. In the distance they could see the many thousands of animals as the dust cloud they created blotted out the sky, but they could still see the small shapes that ran in and out of the migrating animals. The massive weight of both mammoth and bison herds shook the very earth beneath them.

“Damn it!” Ryan said as he had trouble controlling the roc, which wanted very much to leave the area through its serious sense of smell. It knew what was hunting the bison and mammoth herds. “I figure Charlie and the master chief have about a half hour before they are trampled underfoot or them raptors get to them. The way that laser system is firing off they won’t have much juice left in the batteries before those murderous things are on them.” He looked at his frightened companions. He didn’t need to ask what they should do because as one they kicked the giant rocs into motion. The enormous birds were hesitant at first and then the frightened avians broke cover. It wasn’t long before they found out what changed the rocs’ small minds — the raptors came at them from the rear. They had somehow worked their way around them, or this had been another group that came in from a different direction than the main assault. The first raptor screamed and leaped at the roc that Virginia was astride and missed her by mere inches as Will didn’t hesitate to shoot three times from the Glock into the stumbling raptor. With that fight closely won, they charged down the slope and through the screening trees in front of them.

The five people and birds shot down the hill narrowly missing trees and raptors that sprung from behind cover. They dodged three of these attacks with only Sarah’s roc coming up bloody as a raptor had managed to strike the roc in its hindquarters. The bird was able to keep its feet only after careening Sarah and itself from tree to tree, momentarily threatening to dump the diminutive geologist.

Jason found his path to the valley blocked by three of the hissing reptilian creatures that displayed their plumage as if this alone would dissuade Jason from fleeing. Just before the first of the three bent over to spring, it was stunned and frightened by the incredible roar of Erebus as she blew her caldera. The expanding gas and ash hit and rolled down Erebus and her sisters like a tidal wave of scalding fury. The pyroclastic phenomena had one intention — to kill the continent of Antarctica, the last landmass free of the ice that covered the entire world.

Sarah and Anya flew past Jason as the raptors blocking their path fled before the onslaught of noise and thunder. Jason, Virginia, and Will were not far behind as the choices had become clear to all — face the four giant volcanoes’ wrath, or run the gauntlet of voracious raptors.

Above, the sky filled with black smoke and the rain consisting of fiery coals started to devastate the surrounding landscape.

They charged headlong into the first great battle between Mother Nature and her smartest animal life, and one thing was looking foregone — both man and animal were going to lose this fight.

The coincidence of Erebus erupting at the exact same moment of Everett’s disappearance was not lost on Sarah or Virginia. The wormhole effect had done something to trigger this event but they had precious little time to contemplate as to why. It seems the history of this world had been shaped by beings other than any who ever called this planet home. Human destiny had been in the hands of others all the way from the beginning.

The world of 227,000 years ago was coming to an end with fire, and then miles upon miles of ice.

Henri could not believe what it was they were attempting. Did these men have a death wish? He saw the excitement in both Everett’s and Collins’s faces. It was as if they actually looked forward to the challenge. The Frenchman, although thoroughly motivated to find that power coupling, was equally anxious not to be knocked off of his giant chicken while riding into the very nest of raptors they normally would have avoided.

“Gentlemen, shall we sally forth?” Jack said. He raised the Glock nine millimeter as his large roc pawed at the earth, irritated by the sulfuric smell emanating from the south. Carl raised his own weapon and then they both looked at Henri, who unenthusiastically raised the M-4 in mock bravado.

“By all means, let’s ride off to our deaths, because by the look of Erebus, we’re out of time.”

“Boy, he’s a real killjoy, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is that, but he’s French, what can you do?” Jack said as he kicked the roc into action. Everett smiled at Farbeaux and with a return look expressing his incredulity, the former French black operation commando reluctantly followed the two crazed Americans into the valley of the shadow of death—or something akin to it anyway, he thought.

The batteries were draining so fast that Jenks had to adjust not only the rate of fire from the sixteen weapons, but also the distance to engage the target. He tapped in the new parameters and then placed the laptop down and tossed Ellenshaw another thirty-round magazine for his M-4.

“Okay, Doc, we need to supplement the lasers. Start by firing into the front of that bison herd when they get within two hundred yards. Maybe we can turn this stampede into going another direction.”

“Shoot the buffalo?” Ellenshaw asked, horrified about shooting such a magnificent animal.

Jenks inserted his own magazine into his weapon and then charged it. He finally spared Ellenshaw a look of frustration. “Look, either we turn them now or wait until them hairy-ass elephants are crawling up our butts.”

Ellenshaw finally understood. He turned and aimed, waiting for the bison to come within range.

The attack from behind caught both Jenks and Ellenshaw off guard. As Jenks turned and saw the four raptors jump upon the outer trailers of their defensive line, he quickly fired, hitting one of the brightly plumed animals, dropping him into the empty bed of the trailer. Charlie wasn’t as fast and managed to stitch the sky with tracer rounds as the three remaining raptors jumped from the green-painted trailers into the center of the camp. The first sprinted, feathered arms outstretched for balance as it tried desperately to avoid the bullets striking the ground at its feet. The master chief cursed again when he saw the animal crash into the ceramic and steel doorway. It rebounded with half of its scaled, reptilian head sliced open and dangling. It quickly shook off the blow and started to charge the doorway again.

“Son of a bitch!” Jenks said, and fired ten rounds into the running raptor just as the next two charged the doorway. One had a large rock that it threw, not at the doorway, but at the master chief’s head. It narrowly missed as Jenks fired five more rounds hitting the red- and yellow-colored feathers at the creature’s neck, sending him into a sliding crash next to the doorway.

As Charlie took aim and easily dispatched the last of the intruders, Jenks had time to figure out the horrifying fact that the raptors had somehow found a gap in the laser system’s radar coverage. How they found one was far beyond him.

“Oh, oh,” Ellenshaw said as he saw the blips on his own screen. Five targets were emerging from the forest line to the south and six more not far ahead of them. Two distinct groups were charging the camp simultaneously.

Jenks swallowed and wiped sweat from his face as he studied the radar scope on the laser control panel. He shook his head. “We can’t cover all fronts here,” he said as he hurried away and gathered up his two recharged drones. He yelled something at Charlie that the doctor couldn’t hear, and then the master chief started pulling access panels from the two air force drones. Ellenshaw saw the ordnance box next to Jenks and grimaced, afraid of what the navy man was up to. His attention was taken away by the loud hissing as the five raptors in the first group finally broke cover and charged the camp just as the first set had done. Charlie fired but his aim was off and he knew at that moment that at least four out of the five would make the trek into their camp.

Once again Erebus belched flame and fire. The plume blotted out what was left of the sunlight and a surreal landscape came into view and it had a nightmare quality about it — like the world had turned a sepia color. The ground shook so hard that the front two raptors stumbled and fell as the other three easily hopped over their fallen comrades.

“Look out!” Ellenshaw shouted as three spears — sharpened sticks is a more accurate description — came flying through the air and dug themselves into the ash-covered ground near the doorway. It was almost as if the reptilian beasts were out to destroy it. But Charlie knew this couldn’t be, they were just afraid of it and wanted it gone.

He fired and then his M-4 jammed. The second set of three raptors were on them, but just a second before the first of them could leap the trailers they were using as a camp barricade, several shots brought it down. Then more shots rang out over the roar of the distant mountains.

Both Jenks and Ellenshaw heard the shouting as the giant rocs broke through the cover of the trees. Charlie couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the prehistoric birds had riders perched upon their backs. The rocs screamed and the riders charged through a screen of raptors, the huge taloned feet of the running rocs decimating the aggressive little dinosaurs as they crashed through their ranks.

“It’s Jason!” Charlie shouted as he tried to clear his weapon of the jam. Jenks looked up from his tinkering and saw the commander as he fired point-blank into the back of a raptor’s skull, dropping it like a sack of potatoes. To Jenks and Ellenshaw the point was now moot about the impossibility of anything surviving an age it wasn’t supposed to on this messed-up continent. So, raptors outlived their brethren a mere sixty-five million years, but now they were actually witnessing Jason Ryan of the United States Navy riding a giant feathered roc like a charging cavalryman. “It’s Virginia, Sarah, and Anya!” Ellenshaw screamed, causing Jenks to fumble the C-4 charge he was handling. Cursing, he looked up from his task and saw Virginia as she kicked brutally at the giant bird’s hindquarters to get it to jump the first trailer. Then Jason, Sarah, and Anya broke through the gap in the defensive trailer line and skidded to a stop. Jason immediately ran to Charlie and slapped him on the back.

“What are you guys doing here?” Ellenshaw asked as Ryan fired his smoking nine millimeter into the line of raptors that now threatened to break through the tree line in force. Ellenshaw suspected they awaited the herd of bison and mammoths to crush them first.

“Never mind that, Doc, what’s up with that dust cloud?” Jason asked as Sarah and Anya joined them at the firing line. The rocs had decided that they could be in a far better situation than the one they currently held. As one, their mounts deserted them.

“The raptors are using the bison and mammoth herds to stampede our position. They have been herding them for two days now.”

“Raptors? Mammoths?” Ryan asked, looking from Ellenshaw to Anya and Sarah.

“You know, those lizard-looking chickens you just shot up,” Charlie said as he, Anya, and Sarah turned back to look at the animals they had assumed were just small rocs laying dead and dying in the fallen ash.

“To tell you the truth, I was really hoping that Carl was a bit touched in the head when he told us about them things,” Sarah said as they continued to look at the nightmarish advanced evolutionary form of an extinct Velociraptor.

“What in the hell?” Ryan asked as he stood, because he had to see this.

As the others looked on in amazement, they saw a larger-than-normal raptor stride easily from the trees. It stood directly over the raptor that was wounded and writhing on the ground. Ryan would swear later that the brightly colored feathers of the six-and-a-half-foot reptile plumed out from its long and flightless wings and rose along its spiny back. It seemed to be posing for the humans who watched it. Then to their amazement the sharpened spearlike stick came down into the wounded raptor’s chest. It suddenly stopped moving and lay still. They would swear later that the raptor never looked away from them as the spear came down, its bright yellow eyes challenging the humans.

“Okay, it’s official, I don’t like this place,” Jason said as he lowered himself to a kneeling position.

Virginia had slid to a stop and jumped from her roc. She saw the wide eyes of the master chief as he realized just what it was she had been riding. The roc screamed and then ran off just as Will Mendenhall made it over to the both of them.

“Glad to see you’re still alive,” Virginia said as she knelt beside Jenks and his dismembered drones. He continued to work as Virginia pecked him on the cheek.

“Nice horsey you had there, Slim,” Jenks commented as he tore a set of wires free from a drone.

“Yeah, a little hard on a woman’s ass, though,” she said as Mendenhall silently agreed.

“What are we doing, Master Chief?” Will asked as he hurriedly tossed his and Jenks’s M-4s to Sarah and Anya before turning back to the frantically working navy master chief.

“Slim, slide the blasting cap into that wad of C-4 in drone number one. Captain, do the same on two. I’ve got to rewire this telephoto lens to send the charge through.”

“What’s the plan here, Harold?” Virginia asked as her slim fingers easily pushed the inch-long cap into the block of C-4.

“In case you failed to notice, Miss Nuclear Sciences, we have a herd of giant bison and even larger Frankenstein elephants charging down to the camp, which so happens to include the doorway. We have to turn them before they get here.”

“Master Chief, the raptors are all out in the open, they’re forcing the bison and mammoths to charge!” Charlie called out as he started to follow Jenks’s last order to him. He emptied the full load of tracer rounds into the fast-moving bison herd.

“Jesus, we may as well be shooting at a brick wall,” Jason said. “Jenks, we’re out of time here!” Ryan also started firing in hopes of scaring the frightened animals even more than the raptors pushing them.

Jason, Anya, Charlie, and Sarah watched the trees come alive as thousands of raptors slowly broke from cover alongside the racing animals, adding to their terrified panic.

“Okay,” Ryan said as he stood up to see the full picture. “That is a lot of raptors.” He watched as the bison were now only a quarter mile away. “I’ll never laugh at another made-for-TV movie again.”

Behind them the first of the two drones flew skyward and quickly vanished in the increasing ashfall.

The initial shock of Jack’s planned attack went off with spectacular results. The raptors that were caught playing or lounging were taken by surprise, probably for the first time in their lives. They saw the charging rocs and the men who sat upon them. Collins, Everett, and Farbeaux fired into the running raptors, not really caring if they hit anything at all. The object was to scatter the nest, so to speak. They needed the time to search for the coupling. Even the fatter, older raptors thought it better to retreat and reevaluate the strange behavior of the rocs, the raptors’ only natural enemy. It was by sheer luck that the rocs had been chosen to carry the men. But as most professional soldiers will tell you, battles are decided by a healthy dose of that particular charm — luck.

Henri and Carl would stay mounted since Jack was the only one of the three to even know what the coupling looked like. As he ran toward the raptors’ booty pile, a single feathered menace, who had not had a chance at running, turned on Collins and charged. Jack, while looking over the large pile of colorful and shiny detritus, raised his nine millimeter and quickly dispatched the charging raptor as he was far more interested in the impossible task ahead of him: finding the coupling in this mess before the raptors found out they had been had and returned with a little payback.

Carl and Henri rode to the ancient and crumbling frame of the downed saucer and fired blindly into the trees surrounding the nesting area of the raptors.

Jack almost had to turn away from the smell as he kicked at the first pile of treasure. That was when he saw the arm with a bright and shiny wristwatch upon it. It was obviously one of the Russians who had been taken as a spoil of war. He grimaced and started in earnest to pull items from the large stockpile of absconded items. Seeing a colorful stone that had obviously come from Erebus, he also saw there was five MRE packets, their mylar wrap shiny to the raptor eye. He was looking at a near impossible task to accomplish before the nesting raptors found the courage to return. Still, he went crazy looking.

Henri felt the presence of the raptor before his roc recognized the smell of the animal, turned, and was so taken by surprise that rider and bird fell to the floor of the nesting area. The ash plume rose and hid the Frenchman for the briefest of moments, but not before Carl saw what had scared the roc so bad. There, standing inside the damaged frame of the million-year-old saucer, was the largest raptor they had seen. This one was over six feet tall and stared down at the men as if they were intruding on its home. Everett hurriedly tried to correct and fire at the same time but his roc also screamed and fell backward. Carl was able to maintain his precarious hold on the bird but he lost his nine millimeter in the process. As he corrected the fall of the roc his eyes caught on something shiny in the clutched digits of the raptor’s left hand as it surveyed the chaos of his nest. The world shook but the raptor only stared out as if the men and rocs were but a minor inconvenience. This one was not to be intimidated.

“Jack!” Everett shouted as he frantically looked for his lost weapon, but it was now buried so deep in the fallen ash that he gave up. Henri was just getting to his feet when he saw exactly what Everett was yelling about.

Collins kicked at a smelly pile of collected objects when he heard Everett’s shout. He turned and his eyes immediately fell upon what the roosterlike raptor was holding in its tightly clutched right hand — the shiny stainless steel power coupling. Evidently it was his prize and his alone. As he watched, Farbeaux quickly moved toward the saucer. He saw the raptor’s eyes turn his way and knew that he was had before he ever made the twenty feet. The raptor’s eyes went wide and its feathered arms flared outward and its neck’s down feathers went to full attention. It hissed again as the Frenchman came on, firing the M-4 as he did so. The raptor screamed as a round nicked its winglike arm. The creature opened its slim jaws and the teeth were apparent as it leaped from the skeletal remains of the downed saucer. Instead of sizing up the Frenchman it charged him. Suddenly Farbeaux realized that the elongated twenty feet wasn’t that long at all. The rooster was upon him.

Jack moved but he knew it would be far too late. Henri was about to be torn apart right in front of them. Still, he raised the pistol and aimed.

Everett, who was also moving, saw that neither he nor Collins was going to be early enough to save the Frenchman’s life. The raptor screamed in triumph as it leaped into the air, clawed feet coming at Henri like a small set of arrows. With Jack’s and Carl’s bullets striking near it, the raptor had no other route to land except right in Farbeaux’s lap.

The blur of brown and black caught the raptor right before its leap connected with Henri. He was shocked to see the raptor suddenly vanish in a rush of falling feathers. The world turned to a slow-motion movie as the saber-toothed lion tore at the stunned rooster only feet before they both struck the ground and rolled. As Jack looked around he saw other large cats, bears, and prehistoric antelope as they charged away from the burning woods behind them. Erebus was running the population of animals away from its slopes. The frightened lion quickly tore at the soft orange- and red-tinted down of the rooster, who was struggling to free itself from the teeth of the massive cat.

Farbeaux felt his bladder nearly explode as the cat and raptor went flying right over his head, close enough that he actually smelled the musky odor of the saber-tooth as it sped past. He then felt the searing pain as something struck him hard in the area that most men dread. He felt his breath explode outward and immediately felt the bile rising in his throat as he was momentarily incapacitated. He fell backward as the world spun. He didn’t even realize that the pain had caused him so much consternation that he actually rolled right into the biting and scratching cat and raptor.

Both Carl and Jack slid to a stop and almost cringed as Farbeaux wasn’t even aware of his dire situation. It looked as if he were just lying there not caring about much at all. Finally the lion snapped the neck of the raptor and with a giant paw on the lizard’s chest, the great cat roared in triumph. It leaned over, smelled death as it claimed the rooster, and then in one motion the beast bit deeply into the raptor’s neck and leaped into the trees and was gone. Jack and Carl ran to Farbeaux, who was lying there moaning in pain. Next to him was the object that had struck him right dead center of his groin — the power coupling. It was barely visible through the mounting ash deposit covering the ground. Collins reached over and retrieved the vital part of the doorway.

“Now that was impressive,” Jack said as he ruthlessly pulled the Frenchman to his feet where he wobbled and almost fell backward. Carl slapped him on the back and then one of the most ruthless men in the world vomited. He swiped angrily at his mouth and vomited again as the pain slowly started to subside from his groin as it worked its way up and out of his body.

“If you ever”—he spit out some ash-colored bile and then looked at both Americans—“I mean ever, mention this in mixed company, I swear I will track you both down and kill you.” Henri bent at the waist and yelled an obscenity. Jack smiled.

“You see, Frenchmen know what to do with their sex packages. I told you he would come in handy,” Collins said with insulting intent.

Again, Everett slapped his back. “You sure did.”

“Now, before I throw up again, may I suggest we get that part back to camp and get the hell out of here as I don’t relish the thought of fighting all of them off.” Henri was pointing back to the destroyed and ancient saucer.

“Oh, damn,” Collins said as he and Everett slowly pulled the Frenchman backward as they spied the two hundred raptors that studied them from the highest point of the vine- and vegetation-covered ship.

Carl quickly caught the two remaining rocs. They tossed Henri up on one and Jack jumped in the makeshift saddle in front of him. Henri screamed as his crotch settled into the harsh leather saddle.

“You better take it as easy as you—”

Jack spurred the giant roc forward and its bounding gait made Henri scream in pain once again. As he threatened Collins’s life for the hundredth time in his long and illustrious career, Everett joined up with them on the back of Foghorn Leghorn, and the trio sped away before the raptors could regroup.

Ryan’s eyes were on the center-most part of the bison herd where the charging mammoths crushed the poor buffalo-like animals into the ground. As he watched with trepidation he saw that the thousands of raptors lining the edges of the stampede had actually slowed and then stopped as they looked to be gathering things off the ash-covered ground.

“What are they doing?” Sarah asked, having to scream over the roar of the charging beasts combined with the eruption of Erebus and her sisters.

“I suspect they are gathering missiles for their final assault after the herds are finished with us.” Charlie smiled when he saw the horror on their faces. They hadn’t seen these smart creatures in action before. “They seem to like rocks and sharp sticks as their preferable mode of killing.”

Jason, Anya, and Sarah looked at Charlie as if the old hippie professor had lost his mind. Jason was about to explain to the white-haired professor just how he felt when the zip of the second drone sounded behind them. Virginia and Will soon joined them behind the wall of empty trailers.

“I think you can inform that mean bastard that we can see our deaths coming rather vividly. I don’t think we need the drones to tell us what’s coming.”

“He’s got a little more planned than idly watching, Jason,” Virginia said as she and Will exchanged knowing looks.

They heard the first drone cease its hovering inside the ash cloud. As it was joined by the second drone, they heard the two automated systems scream off toward the charging bison and mammoth herds. They saw the giant animals were now only a hundred yards to their front and were not going to veer away for some small insignificant humans.

“This is going to hurt,” Ryan yelled as he pulled Virginia and Anya down to the ground, hoping for some relative cover of the John Deere trailers, but they all knew the mindless fear of the animals would assist in crushing the trailers like tinfoil. The lasers above them continued to fire. With dawning horror Mendenhall hit the earth beside his friends. At least twelve of the laser pods had ceased shooting. They were out of battery power.

The forward line of bison started to jump over the fallen as they came within a hairbreadth of breaching the camp perimeter.

Suddenly the world exploded in front of them. The earth shaking of the Erebus eruption seemed tame in comparison to the rolling and rocking that Jenks’s little surprise caused. The combined eight pounds of C-4 plastique detonated after the drones it was attached to reached an altitude of five hundred feet. Jenks had nosed the drones over and sent them at 150 miles per hour downward. The first struck the ground only fifty feet in front of the first line of bison, sending at least two hundred of them to their doom. The mammoths were knocked from their feet as the explosion sent an invisible shock wave outward. It struck the trailers they hid behind and they rocked on their wheeled frames. The John Deere tractor lost its hold on the world and went flying, coming dangerously close to striking the doorway. Ryan was struck in the face by a dismembered hoof of one of the bison.

Jenks flinched as he clenched the cigar in his teeth and was pleased to see that the raptors had not been expecting that. The five or six thousand of them toward the front beat a hasty retreat back into the safe cover of the trees.

“Just a tad more advanced than chucking rocks and sticks, huh, you ugly sons of bitches!”

The master chief sent the second drone down into the midst of the animals themselves at the front of the stampede. The detonation rocked the game trail and sent both mammoth and bison skyward.

“Yes!” Charlie screamed in triumph when he saw that although the first detonation did little to sway the frightened but determined beasts, the second convinced them another route was more preferable to the noise and carnage in front of them. The animals turned right and then they turned left. The raptors that had ran before the powerful explosions stared on from the tree line as their well-laid plan of stampede fell apart right before their menacing eyes. Mammoths and bison slammed into the milling thousands of feathered lizards.

The rumbling of the two herds dwindled as the screams of the raptors escaped the trees. Charlie stood and smiled over at a grinning master chief.

“Where in the hell would you people be if I wasn’t here to save your pansy asses?”

Virginia stood and, with a womanly casualness, brushed her clothing as she approached Jenks, who was expecting a big wet one on the lips for his heroics. Instead he saw that her eyebrows were raised as she approached. She was even beautiful with her hair covered in ash and her face in mud.

“Do you think for one damn minute that any one of us couldn’t have thought that little idea up? Do you think we were helpless before you came along… Harold?”

Jenks was taken aback but only momentarily. He dropped the drone remote box, tossed his cigar away, and kissed the assistant director hard on the lips, then released her.

“You’re welcome, Slim,” he said, and then walked away.

“Hey!”

Jenks turned and saw the filthy black face of Will Mendenhall. He raised his chin, wanting to know what the young captain wanted.

“I thought your plan was pretty cool.”

Jenks was about to chew the captain’s ass off when he glanced at the warning Virginia gave him. Instead the master chief just nodded and with one last look at Virginia he walked toward the doorway to inspect it for damage. They all realized at the same exact moment that the two had to be the most bizarre couple imaginable. Jason, Sarah, Anya, Will, and Charlie turned to look at an eye-batting Virginia, who was fawning at the retreating master chief. She then turned and smiled like a high school girl.

“Ain’t he something,”

The laser system was out of power with the exception of her radar system, which was being heavily scrutinized by Jason and Will. The look that crossed their faces was not one to make an observer comfortable.

“Is it Jack?” Sarah asked as she approached with a bottle of water as she attempted to keep the heavily falling ash out of her eyes as much as possible. She looked around at the dark sky above that was streaked with red light as Erebus ejected five- and ten-ton boulders from her guts.

“Uh, no,” Ryan said as he fixed Sarah with a look. He stepped aside and allowed the lieutenant to scan the radar. She saw the gathering blobs of light as they once more gathered just inside the tree line. Since the detonations of Jenks’s little surprise, the raptors had laid low for forty-five minutes but were now starting to gather their courage once more. Jason had to admit they were a determined bunch even after losing their screen of fifty thousand animals.

“Oh, that isn’t good at all,” Sarah said as she handed the water bottle to Will, who splashed his face with the remains.

“I swear when I get back I will never eat another chicken or turkey again, the scheming bastards,” Mendenhall said in all seriousness as he tossed the empty bottle away. The earth rolled and they heard Master Chief Jenks yell as the doorway rolled with the ground it was anchored to. The master chief was nearly crushed before the doorway stilled and the anchor pins held. He hurriedly went back to work.

“We have movement to our rear,” Charlie said as he grabbed hold of his M-4, which he had become very attached to.

Jenks stuck his head up from where he laid on his back making an adjustment to the particle collider. He looked at Virginia as she was in the process of handing Jenks a torque wrench.

“What is it?” he asked.

“They may be attacking again.”

“Or it’s them damn Russians, don’t forget them.”

As they watched to the south they saw a bright red flare burst from the trees and then quickly vanish as it reached the low-hanging ash cloud. Sarah lowered her head when she realized it wasn’t raptors, but Jack and the others — hopefully.

Ryan’s radio crackled to life.

“Popping color,” came the voice of Jack Collins, which made Sarah go weak in the knees.

Ryan raised the radio to his lips. “I see a red flare, over.”

“Coming in,” came the tired voice.

Sarah ran to the far wall of trailers and was biting her lip as Anya joined her. They both wanted to gasp when the first roc exited the smoldering trees. They saw Henri Farbeaux as he and the roc he sat upon came out of hiding being led on the ground by Jack. They were followed by a second with Carl onboard, and that sight made Anya smile. The matter of the recovery of the power coupling was far from their minds even as they knew it shouldn’t be. They were soon joined by all, including Jenks and Virginia.

“Well, I guess those chicken bastards didn’t get their afternoon snack,” he said without realizing the others weren’t laughing.

Ryan and Will moved one of the wheeled trailers out of the way and Jack led the roc inside as Mendenhall assisted Farbeaux down from the giant bird. Everett was next as he allowed his weary body to slide off the back of Foghorn.

Sarah hugged Jack and Anya repeated the process with Carl.

“Well, the gang’s all here, but did you find the golden egg?” the master chief asked, a little more than curious.

Jack pulled away from Sarah and then reached into his pack and unceremoniously tossed Jenks the power coupling. He caught it and smiled at Virginia.

“How about it, Slim, you want to get the hell out of this screwed-up Disneyland?”

“I was ready about three days ago.”

With the exception of the master chief and Virginia, who were busy connecting the coupling to the nuclear-powered battery system, the rest were scavenging the radar systems of the laser defense pods to back up the signal enhancer. Only Henri was off by himself recovering. All of the others gathered around the two remaining rocs as Carl slid the old Roman saddles from their backs. He slid a powerful arm around them both and they looked as if they wanted nothing more than the man to stop choking them. He patted each on the enormous beaks and then slapped them both on the tail feathers, sending them through the circled trailers. Then Everett went to the redheaded rooster he called Foghorn. He patted the animal on the neck and Foghorn nuzzled the man’s hand. Carl stepped back and then waved his arms. The giant roc, with one last look at Everett, jumped the trailers and was gone. The three enormous birds trotted easily away without looking back. Carl watched them go with a hint of sadness to his slumping frame. Anya walked up and placed an arm around him as they watched the three remaining rocs vanish into the trees. Everett turned to look at Sarah, who was putting a field dressing on Jack’s arm.

“My birds aren’t going to make it, are they?” Carl asked Sarah, who slowly shook her head.

“Today, tomorrow, or even next month, everything on this continent will be dead and will soon be covered by two miles of ice.”

“Get attached?” Jack asked as he flexed his arm.

Everett looked momentarily embarrassed. But he managed a smile. “Foghorn Leghorn wasn’t the best conversationalist, but him and the others were the only buddies I had in this part of the world.” He lost his smile as he looked over at Ryan and Mendenhall. “At least they never talked back but listened to everything I said without complaint.”

The two men only smiled. They were in the mood to tolerate a lot of guff from the admiral; after all, they each considered it a miracle they were looking at him at all. Everett ceased his joking as he glanced at the doorway as it was about to be powered up. He looked at the faces around him. The kind look even extended to Henri Farbeaux as he joined the group.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said, as he felt he couldn’t face the people who had gambled so much in their attempt to bring him home.

“You’re a navy man — why is that so surprising? You guys never know what to say,” Collins said with his brows raised, meaning for Carl to knock off the thank-yous.

“Regardless”—he looked at his friends and then his eyes settled on the Frenchman—“thank you. All of you.”

Farbeaux noticed most of that was directed at him, but the Frenchman couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He was resentful of the fact that these men and women made him examine his life, and he did not like that at all. He only nodded in response to the debt of gratitude.

“Okay, everyone better cross their friggin’ fingers,” Jenks said as everyone turned and watched as he crawled out from underneath the circular collider after connecting the main power source. Jenks nodded as the others shied away, making the older navy man laugh out loud. “Oh, come on, the least that will happen is that this magical erector set explodes and fries us all just like that volcano will do eventually, so what in the hell are you afraid of? Hell, I would be more afraid if this thing doesn’t work and we are left here with the Colonel Sanders army chasing us until Erebus blows her top.” He looked at his watch as a joke. “Which should be in about thirty minutes by the feel of the ground.” He saw the others relax. Maybe he was gaining some humanity — who knows?

“Uh, would you mind ceasing with the jokes and start that damn thing up?” Ellenshaw said as he turned away from the trailers. “We have a lot of company heading our way.”

The others walked over and saw what Ellenshaw meant. In the veil of falling ash they watched as the raptors came out of the trees by the thousands. They pushed, screamed, hissed, and fought each other as they came. A large rooster was in the front and it held what looked like one of the ancient Roman spears at its side.

“Yes, now would be a good time,” Jack said as he turned to Jenks.

“Okay, Slim, let’s see if we can jump-start this damn thing.”

Virginia mentally crossed her fingers as she reached into the last trailer and raised the clear plastic cover of the world’s most expensive portable power source. She closed her eyes as she flipped the red switch.

They all felt the ozone in the air as the battery generator kicked in. Its small reactor core sent an electrical charge through the very ground as it slowly amped up in power. As Jenks turned to the doorway he cursed as the collider didn’t move. Then he mentally kicked himself and ran to the collider and released the static pins holding it in place. It was only a second longer that the large collider started to slowly rotate on its axis.

“Start with fifty percent power only, Slim, until we get a return lock-on signal from Europa.”

“Right,” Virginia said. She was soon joined by Sarah.

As they watched, the doorway started to spark and hiss as it revolved faster and faster.

Master Chief Jenks sniffed the air and then cursed himself again. He was screwing up in his anxious state to get the hell out of there. He turned to Virginia. “Release the coolant reservoir, slowly. She’s starting to sizzle a little.”

Virginia did as ordered and then crossed her fingers as she watched Jenks go to the main control panel in the trailer. He adjusted the audible signal and turned the knob all the way up. At first they didn’t think it was working, then they all felt the minute irritation of the signal as it penetrated their eardrums.

“Signal is broadcasting,” Virginia said as the others gathered around and watched the sparkling doorway slowly open to another dimension with eye-hurting brilliance.

Virginia wanted to jump when the needle on the return signal pegged out in the red.

“Europa is on the line!”

Before any of them could react to the good news, the world exploded in flame and shrapnel.

23

The return team was shocked as the warning alarm on the doorway sounded three times, almost breaking the monitors along the technician’s stations.

Niles went to the window where Moira was sitting in her chair. Alice bit her lip as she was confused as to how the return trip would work. They watched as the young technicians ran to their various stations. The activity was vivid and exciting as they speculated on the success of the mission. Most though worried about the missing security team that had deported with the Russians. Xavier Morales was most worried about that fact since it had been him who had so unceremoniously sent them away.

“Los Angeles, we need fifty percent reactor power,” called out the young UC Berkeley grad who was now in charge of doorway operations.

“Los Angeles reports her board is in the green. Going to fifty percent.”

“Open the collider and send out the return.”

The doorway slowly started its revolutions. The sound was piercing as most placed the headphones over their ears. They had learned that fact the last time — it was painful when the audio tones began.

“Signal acquisition at twenty-two thirty hundred hours and twenty-two seconds.”

The loud cheer went up inside the control room and at the science labs at Nellis.

Niles nodded his head as the first hurdle was jumped successfully. He turned and looked at the large monitor where Xavier was sitting, patiently and nervously waiting with the rest of them.

“What are the chances of us accidentally bringing something back that we don’t particularly want?” Compton asked. Moira had not thought of that. The worst thing they had ever feared bringing back was a batch of angry Nazis, not monsters from a long-dead world.

Morales smiled. “Group locators will tell us; even our French friend was fixed with a tracking bug. We injected him the day before his departure.” Xavier watched as Niles clearly understood.

“You can stop an intruder from entering based on their transmission signal?”

“Yes and no. We can’t stop them from transiting once they are through the doorway, but we can redirect an undesirable to another location if we prefer.”

“Where’s that?” Niles asked, but as he looked at the Traveler he could see by her smile that she already knew.

“There are only so many operational doorways emitting signals, Doctor.”

Compton fully understood then.

Jack shook his head and tried to clear the fog that clouded his memory. One minute he was standing next to Sarah as they were both exhilarated that a return signal had been acquired, then the world went crazy. He felt a sharp sting in his back and Sarah’s small fingers digging into his skin. He hissed as she pulled out a smoking piece of metal shrapnel. He slowly looked up from his prone position and saw the others as they recovered and started moving. Charlie had his hair in his accustomed state, but he was bleeding from a large wound on his forehead. Others were tending to people who were slow to get up from the devastating explosion. The first thing a bleeding Jenks did was check Virginia, and when he saw that other than a broken nose she hadn’t taken a big shot, he immediately crawled to the still-spinning doorway. He looked and saw that it was still functioning. He was about to turn and tell Virginia the good news that it hadn’t been the doorway that exploded, but the gun pointing in his face explained the real reason behind the shocking and brutal attack. Doshnikov was standing over him. Jenks slowly stood on wobbly legs and saw the other four torn and battered mobsters as they held the team at bay with their sidearms.

“I am so disappointed you were going to go home and leave us behind without at least saying good-bye,” he said as he pushed the master chief hard into Virginia’s arms, who stayed his fall while giving the Russian a withering hate-filled glare. He gestured with his Colt .45 for the others to stand. “I am sure you won’t mind if we go first this time?”

Jack rocked back and forth as Sarah stilled him. Charlie Ellenshaw helped Farbeaux to his feet and Will and Ryan were still trying to gather their senses. Carl was on the ground with a bleeding Anya lying prone with her head in his lap. Everett was watching the Russians with murderous intent. The dark-haired Gypsy moaned and they all felt relief as she batted her eyes. Everett looked down — his relief was most visible.

“Now.” Doshnikov stepped forward and then reached for little Sarah. When Jack tried to stop him, Doshnikov shot the colonel in the upper thigh, sending him crashing to the ground.

“You son of a bitch!” Sarah said as she fought the hold of the Russian.

Ryan and Will ran to Jack but another shot rang out and ash and dirt flew from the bullet striking just inches from their feet.

“Another foolish attempt to stop us will result in us leaving one of these behind as we pass through the doorway.” He raised something he held in his left hand and easily tossed it up and down. It was an old grenade. “It seems you were right in your theory about others coming here before us, Colonel,” he said as he watched Jack hiss as he struggled to sit up. “We found two of these inside the pack attached to the skeletal remains of a soldier. We couldn’t tell if he was Japanese or Chinese, but I must say it was indeed fortuitous that we came across him in our flight from your treachery.”

“There he goes using those big words again,” Jason said as his anger was just about to boil over. He would rather die here and now than take a chance at his friend being left behind in this whacked-out menagerie.

Doshnikov turned and looked at Ryan. He pointed the .45 at his head and pulled the trigger. Click, the hammer fell on an empty chamber.

“Your luck is holding, my friend.” He eased the old and rusty pin from the grenade and smiled as he held the handle in place and turned to the master chief and Virginia. “Now, start the process and get me and my men out of here.”

Jenks looked at Virginia and winked. She didn’t understand why Harold was taking this so well. He stood on wobbly legs and made his way back to the trailer. He looked at Jack, who was watching while holding his wounded thigh. Of all people it was Henri who was applying pressure and a dressing to the bleeding hole. Collins fought his building anger with every ounce of willpower he had as the Russian reached out and took Sarah by the arm and steered her toward the still-spinning doorway.

“Remember, all I have to do is drop this inside of there and your dreams of a future are done — am I understood?”

Jenks smiled but it was brief and only Virginia saw it. She bit her lip, wondering why the gruff bastard was taking all of this so well.

“Behave and you just may see this lovely young lady again; misbehave and she will die a horrible death and you can stay here and contend with the animal life.”

“Master Chief, send this man to where he wants to go,” Jack said as Henri assisted him to his feet.

“Yes, sir,” Jenks said as he started the collider rolling at full RPMs. “Slim, stand by on the lasing system.”

Virginia saw Jenks switch to another tone setting on his control panel and made sure the volume was down when the return signal arrived. Her eyes widened when she realized what he was going to do. She looked at Sarah and then hurriedly back at Jenks, who winked.

“Start the lasing and get the collider lined up.”

Doshnikov heard the orders and, remembering this was where they were tricked back in Brooklyn, roughly brought Sarah to his side.

Henri made as if to move on the Russian but Jack forcibly stayed him. They exchanged looks and then Farbeaux knew the Americans had other plans for Doshnikov.

“Let’s just cut to the chase — no countdowns, no fact-checking. Either this damn thing works, or it don’t.” He smiled at Virginia and then nodded. “Bring the collider online at full power, Slim.”

Without even looking at the panel before her, Virginia did as she was told. Sarah looked over at Jack with fear in her eyes. Jack nodded at Jenks, telling her to concentrate on him. The master chief looked at the small woman whom he had come to like immensely.

“You trust me, Shorty?” Jenks asked as Doshnikov forced her to the doorway’s opening. Sarah could only nod that she did. “Then tell everyone we’ll be along shortly.” She nodded and Jenks smiled, relaxing her as much as he could.

As the other Russians came forward to join their boss, the doorway went into full-power mode. Suddenly the lasers reached the correct frequency and the burst of pure atomic sunlight exploded from the circling laser apertures, sending out a brilliantly illuminated perfect tunnel of spinning light. Doshnikov turned and smiled at the Americans. He halfheartedly saluted them as he started forward through the vortex of wind and multicolored light.

“Short Stuff, remember: that asshole doesn’t have a Group security clearance,” Jack yelled above the din of noise.

The dawning look of understanding filled her face. She smiled as she realized what was about to happen.

The five Russians along with Sarah stepped into the doorway.

The doorway went to 115 percent power and the world inside the building started to shake and rattle as the dimensional doorway opened before them.

“Dr. Morales, we have six targets coming through, only one has a transponder.”

“All right, Europa, cull the herd down to size,” he said as he watched on from Nellis.

“Separation of signals commencing,” came the call as the explosion of light bathed the old building in a myriad of color. Before they saw the doorway start to power down they heard it.

They heard a woman’s yelp of pain as the vision of the technicians returned slowly after having their retinas fused by the brilliant lasers. When they cleared they saw a lone figure standing on the far side of the doorway as the lasers shut down one at a time.

“Los Angeles, cut power!” called out the lead tech as she stood and ran to the latest traveler.

“Damn, that hurts!”

Niles smiled when he recognized the small form of Sarah McIntire. And then that smile was replaced with a look of concern for his missing nine people. He started to open the intercom to get his people moving again, but Xavier Morales was ahead of him.

“Get the doorway back up!”

As Sarah was assisted from the pad, she looked around in confusion and was wondering through her pain just what in the hell happened to her traveling companions.

Heinrich Himmler smiled as the young Jewish lab rat, as he referred to her, stepped through the doorway and vanished. He smiled as her brother was led out of the lab and the doorway started to slow.

Many Nazi officers smiled and congratulated the Reichsführer on the success of the Wellsian Doorway.

“How soon can we transport the doorway to Berlin?” he asked, but was soon cut off.

“Doorway is coming back online!” called out one of the German techs.

Down below in the laboratory, Professor Thomsen’s mood went from one of triumph to one of confusion.

“I didn’t order the doorway to be reopened yet. We have to recharge in order to bring the Traveler back.”

In the observation room Himmler saw the confusion below as the doorway started spinning faster and faster. Suddenly the room filled with bright light as many of the German technicians dove for cover, thinking the Wellsian Doorway had exploded. They were even more confused as twenty uniformed guards broke in and pointed their weapons at them, thinking they had something to do with the malfunction.

“What is happening?” Himmler asked.

Then the doorway opened. Doshnikov shook off the pain of the transit as he stepped into far cooler air. He smiled as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. His relief quickly faded as he realized that he wasn’t back home at all. As his four men joined him, the German soldiers rushed the strangely dressed travelers. He started cursing in Russian and that really got the party rolling. Gunfire erupted and Himmler high above in the viewing room stomped his feet as he thought the doorway had been compromised by their enemy, the Red Army.

As bullets started flying, Doshnikov cursed the Americans for tricking him again. He decided upon the best course of action after seeing the uniforms the troopers were wearing. He smiled as he tossed the grenade just as the automatic gunfire cut him and his ragged group of time travelers down.

The German foray into time travel had become very confusing indeed.

The Wellsian Doorway started spinning and coming up to full power.

Above, Niles Compton placed his hand on the shoulder of Moira Mendelsohn as they waited. It didn’t take long. He met the eyes of Sarah McIntire as she sat next to Alice Hamilton and drank a glass of water. Niles nodded.

“We have a signal coming through,” Morales said from the complex in Nevada. Then everyone heard the new computer genius laugh out loud as the other computer specialists started cheering and clapping him on the back. Xavier looked into the large monitor and made sure Dr. Compton was watching. “Nine transponders coming through. The team is accounted for, including one wayward admiral!”

The cheers continued as Niles sat hard next to Moira, who patted the director’s hand.

“Thank you, God,” was all the director could say.

The homecoming was a rather raucous scene as everyone hugged anyone who had anything to do with the most harrowing mission Department 5656 had ever been involved in. Carl was in tears as they all hugged and offered congratulations.

Above, Niles Compton sat heavily into a chair next to Moira as Sarah dashed from the room to see Jack and the others.

“Thank you for this,” he said as he patted the old scientist’s hand.

The next day as the Event Group made ready to depart Brooklyn, they were surprised to see six very large and very black Ford Explorers come screeching to a stop just outside of building 117.

Niles, who was standing on the front steps of the building, was leaning on his cane. He smiled over at Jack, who winked in return. Sarah, Will, Ryan, and Carl saw the two men standing there stoically as ten federal agents calmly walked up to the old concrete stoop. The lead agent produced a badge as if Jack and Niles didn’t know who these men were.

“Dr. Compton?” the lead agent asked.

“Yes,” came the answer.

“Agent Freeman, Secret Service.”

Jack and Niles exchanged looks as they had expected the FBI and a whole lot of questions. The agent saw Collins’s wrapped leg wound but decided not to ask.

“Sir, as you know the president is still recuperating from his surgery in Los Angeles and he wanted me to pass this along.” He handed Niles a small parcel. “He would have done it himself but said you would understand his rather busy schedule with the problems incurred in the past few days.” The agent gathered his men and they quickly exited the navy yard.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

Niles opened the package and smiled. He held the object out to Collins, who had to laugh at the gift.

In Niles Comptons’s hand was a small item he recognized. It was a large, mouth-watering corned beef sandwich. He looked at the note written in the president’s handwriting.

“We’re even, Baldy,” was all the note said.

On the large dock where the others waited for the laughing director of Department 5656, the remaining members of the strangest mission ever conceived by the Event Group gathered. They watched as the sleek black hull of the USS Los Angeles slid out of the birthing area for her trip back to Groton.

“Where is Henri?” Virginia asked no one in particular.

“The last we saw he was being checked out by medical,” Ryan said, and Mendenhall agreed.

Virginia nodded just as alarms sounded inside the building where the last of the doorway was currently being dismantled. Ryan and Will shook their heads at the irony just as one of the engineering techs opened the door and stepped out.

“Dr. Pollock, we have an entire case of industrial blue diamonds missing.”

Virginia closed her eyes just as the sound of a large outboard motor was heard coming from the river. They looked up in time to see a waving Colonel Henri Farbeaux as he gunned the speedboat forward, heading toward the open waters of the bay.

Virginia was the only one who didn’t look stunned. “What is the value of the case?” she asked.

“About eight and a half million dollars,” the tech said.

Jenks whistled.

“You want us to go after him?” Ryan asked as he was smiling so wide that it was almost scary.

“No, I don’t think we need to do that,” Virginia said as she turned and looked at her people. “After what we put him through I’m sure he could use some walking-around money. Besides, who here thinks Henri is out of our lives forever?”

No one spoke.

“Then let it go,” she said as she turned and watched the speedboat blazing past the U.S. Coast Guard. Henri was still waving.

Ryan and Will exchanged amused looks. Jason started down the steps.

“Good for you, Henri.”