Time Riders

CHAPTER 88

1941, woods outside Obersalzberg

Bob dropped silently down out of the tree on to the men below. Liam heard the heavythud of his solid body and the unmistakable crack of bones.

Then all hell broke loose.

Voices brittle with alarm and confusion. The dark swirling scrum of figures below illuminatedfor a freeze-frame second by the single muzzle-flash of a silenced weapon. Bob, a bloodiedknife in one hand mid-slash across the chest of one man, his other big hand crushing thethroat of another of them.

Several more strobing muzzle-flashes in the confusing darkness, accompanied by the muted puffof a silenced rifle. The fleeting light showed four tangled bodies on the ground already,blood pooling across the snow. Bob thrashing at another man with lethal speed and agility, andat least another dozen men around him recovering from the moment of surprise and cocking theirguns to fire.

I have to help him.

Liam pulled the pistol out of his holster and aimed it at one of the dark outlines — one of the men who looked nearest ready to fire — and pulled the trigger. The loud crackfrom his gun echoed through the trees, no doubt rousing the SS guards up the track.

One of the men below him grunted and went down, clutching his thigh.

My God, I actually hit something.

Having now given his position away, he realized he couldn’t sit perched up on thebranch any more. Grimacing and gritting his teeth, he dropped down to the ground into thethick of the fight. He landed heavily on the back of one of the dead men. Around him all hecould hear was the grunting, the laboured breath of a dozen or more men, shrill words barkedin German, accented English and one or two other languages.

‘There… shoot him!’

‘Shoot! Shoot!’

‘Out of the way, Schwartz!’

A machine gun spewed a salvo of muzzle-suppressed taps and litthe scene with flickering light. Liam saw Bob take half a dozen shots in the chest, his blacktunic erupting with exit wounds and geysers of dark blood.

Not enough to stop him, though. In an instant he was upon the one who’d fired, hisblade a lethal flash of quicksilver death across the man’s throat.

Another short burst from someone else caught Bob from behind and once more his uniform tunicdanced, tattered, ripped and bloody.

Liam fired several rapid-fire rounds at the dark shape. It buckled and fell to the snow.

Bob leaped forward at another man, his hand twisting the blade into him, but he was slowingdown now. Still a deadly force, but no longer with the devastating whip-tail speed of a lethalpredator. Instead he had the lumbering energy of a cornered and exhausted mammoth, hisflesh-and-blood body weakened by too many wounds to recover from.

Another short, silenced burst of gunfire, sounding like a walking stick dragged across awooden picket fence. Bob staggered back heavily.

‘Schei?e!!Toten Sie ihn!’

Another rattle of suppressed fire.

Bob collapsed to his knees, wavered for a moment, before falling face forward into thesnow.

A torch snapped on to Liam. Caught in its glare, he instantly tossed the gun aside and raisedhis hands. ‘Don’t shoot! P-please!’

The torch panned across his face, blinding him. ‘On your knees!’

Liam dropped down into the snow.

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘I’m… my name’s Liam.’

‘Who sent you?’

There was no official name for the agency. None that Foster had been prepared to tell himanyway. ‘I’m… I’m an agent f-from the future.’

The torch beam dropped down, out of his face, and Liam could now see from the glow that onlyfour of them remained standing. The man holding the torch spoke again.

‘From the future? So soon?’ said Kramer. There was bitterness in his voice.Bitter and resentful that his bid to change history had already, after mere minutes, beenintercepted.

Liam knew for certain his life was now going to be measured in minutes… if not mereseconds.

‘But this is impossible. Waldstein’s was the onlymachine,’ snapped Kramer.

You have to keep him talking, Liam. Keep him talking.

‘No, Kramer. You’re wrong. The people I work for have machines. We’re hereto protect history.’

Kramer took a step towards him. ‘But why?’ He shook his head angrily. ‘Why?The world we’ve come from… it’s dying. We killed it with our pollution, weover-populated it, sucked it dry of resources, wiped out almost every other species.’ Hesquatted down in front of Liam. ‘Why would anyone want to preserve that kind of future?’

Liam looked up at him. He realized from the haunted expression on Kramer’s face thatperhaps he wasn’t driven by greed or an insatiable thirst for power, but perhaps bybetter intentions. ‘Why would anyone want to protect that?’ he asked again.

‘I… I’ve seen the future you made,’ uttered Liam, ‘with my owneyes. It… it’s a world of ashes and… and ruins.’

Kramer’s eyes narrowed. ‘What?’

‘You will end up doing something terrible. And it will destroy the world… leavingnothing. The future may be bad. But what you do makes it far worse.’

One of the other three men stepped forward and stood beside Kramer. ‘We came back hereto make a better world,’ he said adamantly. ‘Not todestroy it.’

It was the heavily accented man. The one called Karl.

Liam shook his head. ‘But somehow… somehow that’s exactly what you will endup doing. Something will go wrong. Something you do will lead to a…’

What was it Foster said?

‘… a… a nuclear war. And there’ll benothing left.’ Liam looked from one of them to the other. ‘God help me, I’veseen what’s left of humanity. Pitiful ghouls… living on each other’sflesh.’

Karl’s eyes widened. For a moment he looked lost, confused.

‘If there is a Hell, if there really is… then I’ve seen it,’ saidLiam. ‘And it will be your actions that createit.’

‘Paul?’ Karl turned to Kramer. ‘Paul? Could this be true?’

Kramer shook his head, his eyes searching for truth in Liam’s face.

In the distance, they heard a siren begin to wail. Liam’s unsilencedgunshots had clearly alerted the SS guards. The entire regiment would be roused and combingthe woods soon.

‘You say you have seen this yourself?’ askedKramer.

Liam nodded. ‘And I think I’d rather die here… than go back tothat.’

Clouds of vapour filled the space between them, caught like fleeting pale ghosts in the beamof torchlight.

‘Paul,’ said Karl, ‘this must be a lie.’

Kramer’s face was shrouded with conflicting thoughts, conflicting emotions. In thedistance they could hear the barking of dogs over the mournful wailing of the sirens. Voicesraised and growing closer.

Kramer shook his head. Something in the expression on his face, the glint of his hauntedeyes, told Liam that deep inside his troubled mind a decision was being made.

But what it was, he’d never know.

A burst of silenced gunfire ripped through the stillness. Kramer’s Arctic-camouflagejacket spat blood and then he flopped to the ground.

Karl and the other two men turned round to open fire on Bob. The support unit was splayed onhis back, holding one of their machine guns loosely in its left hand. Most of their unaimedshots sent divots of dry snow into the air. But all of Bob’s shots hit home, droppingeach of the three men with surgical precision.

‘Bob!’ gasped Liam, scrambling across the ground wet with blood, snow staineddark as night.

‘Bob… I thought you were dead.’

Up close he could see the support unit had taken too many chest and stomach wounds topossibly survive.

‘Information…’ He gurgled blood out of the side of his mouth.

‘No… shhhh, Bob,’ whispered Liam, cradling the supportunit’s head in his lap. His coarse dark hair, grown over the last six months and longenough to lose a fist in, was matted and wet from a head wound.

Bob’s grey eyes blinked and fluttered. He was doing some housekeeping on his hard drive- collating files, compressing data.

‘Bob?’

His eyes cleared and locked on Liam. ‘Mission priority one: must destroy theweapons… advanced weapons technology.’

‘Yes… yes, of course.’

‘Gather the weapons together… destroy them with a grenade,’ he said,pointing towards an equipment satchel lying on the snow nearby. ‘Grenades are in thatbag. Use one… set off the others.’

Liam nodded and realized there were warm tears running down his cheeks. Realized he wasshedding tears for a broken machine.

‘Bob… I — ’

‘You must be quiet and listen!’

He could hear voices now, dozens of them calling out to each other, and baying dogs eager tobe let off the leash. In the distance, torches flickered faintly through the woods.Floodlights up on the hill, where Hitler’s Berghof was located, sent beams into thesky.

The entire hillside seemed to be alive with activity.

‘Mission priority two: you must leave, Liam O’Connor. You must not be capturedalive. Hide, await the return window or back-up window. You must leave immediately.’

‘Just help me get you up! I’ll not leave you here to — ’

‘Negative. Self-termination must be activated.’

‘No! Don’t you do that, Bob! I mean it, don’t you do it!’

Bob gurgled more blood. ‘Mission priority three: support unit cannotfall into the hands of — ’

‘No! That’s crazy, we can get you out of here… if you’ll just get offyour backside, you big lump!’

‘Negative. You must leave now. You should leave now.’

‘Bob… will you shut your mouth for just a second?’

‘Leave now! Leave Now!’

‘Bob! Please… You don’t need to terminate! I’ll do it! I’ll doit!’

He looked around the bloodstained snow and saw what he was after.