CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
David swung down out of the saddle, tightly gripping the reins of his stolen mount as his father rode into sight. The noise from the automatic weapons was deafening, and the horses expropriated from the picket line were spooked by the cacophony more than David would have supposed. It was what his father would call “a miracle” that the helicopter—Lakewood’s only surviving airpower— apparently had not spotted the forces of good and truth and justice observing them from opposing sides of the lake bed, let alone stealing the best horses.
His father rode a big mare, the animal’s black coat lathered white with sweat.
In the second after Jack Naile dismounted and clasped David’s hand in his, the cinch strap was getting opened, the saddle removed. Using the saddle blanket, David’s father began rubbing down his animal. David prepared to do the same. “It’s nearly high noon,” David announced, “and the magnificent several dozen will have a gunfight at the OK Corral and we’ll see who’s still tall in the saddle when it’s time to cross the Red River from Tombstone to Dodge. And I’ve just about used up everything I know about movie westerns, Dad.”
“Not bad, son; not bad at all. Just keep reminding yourself that we’re the guys in the white hats.” Jack thumbed his black Stetson up off his forehead. “At least we are figuratively.”
“We’re not going to wait, are we, Dad?”
“We did it to ourselves, Davey. When we knocked out Lakewood’s fighter planes, we killed part of the program, and we alerted our adversaries to the idea that we could do them serious harm. Your great-grandson Alan in 1996 was going to encase the backup time-transfer capsule in cement. If Kaminsky and her people escape our objective present into the subjective future, they’ll be encased in cement and never leave the capsule. Not a pleasant thought, not a good guy kind of thing to do to someone, even the evil villain. But it’s the only way to make certain that the Kaminsky woman and the Lakewood people never use the capsule—ever. They would suffocate almost instantly—or worse. And all of the Lakewood Industries people in 1996 who know any of the intimate details of time-transfer will be killed one way or another. Good guys in white hats don’t do that; they just shoot the guns out of the bad guys’ hands and get the cretins a fair trial. So, in the final analysis, son, by the time we’re finished with this, all white hats will have to be permanently exchanged for black, mother-of-pearl, ivory and stag pistol grips swapped out for ordinary dark walnut wood, silver-mounted saddles discarded, guitar strings snapped, noble steeds traded in for equally serviceable but unheroic-looking horses. If we had sidekicks, they’d have to be reassigned.”
“There’s no other way but murder, is there?”
“We’ve avoided it so far, son, more or less, but I don’t think that situation is going to hold. Necessity is our only option, and it’s the mother of invention. But this time it’s just a mother.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“Clarence spearheads the thing with his tank, which will draw off the tanks Lakewood still has, and probably the helicopter. If we act while the prospective buyers are still assembled, this Kaminsky woman will try to pass off what’s happening as being part of the equipment demonstration. We’ve got some plastique, and Clarence and Lieutenant Easley are piecing together explosive charges using the plastique and combining it with the 115mm shells from the tank. We should be able to cripple the APCs enough that the few troopers inside will exit the vehicles and our Seventh Cavalry people can pick them off.”
“Still leaves Clarence pursued by two tanks and a helicopter,” David reminded his father.
“I know,” David’s father agreed, beginning to resaddle his horse. “It’s not as bad as you think. Clarence is going to get up into higher ground and abandon the tank. The two tanks pursuing him will take off after your mom in the Suburban, falling into our trap.”
“You hope.”
“They’ll have been re-tasked once the Suburban is sighted. And the helicopter isn’t a great concern. A half-dozen or fewer well-placed shots from those .3040 Krags the Seventh is using and that helicopter won’t remain airborne for long. Clarence getting out of the tank in time and escaping is the only dicey part, but if Clarence can run them out long enough, he’ll be okay. Once the Lakewood people see that things aren’t going their way, well . . . Who knows? They may make a run for it.”
“In which case, we’ll pursue. What about the eager buyers under the tent, and their secretaries and drivers and the personnel tending the food tables for the dignitaries?”
“What would you do, son?” Jack asked.
David felt his stomach churning. “Keep Mom and Lizzie out of it.”
“You’re a good man,” his father said quietly as he swung up into the saddle. “We’ll communicate by heliograph for the final coordination. Once the helicopter is down and the people inside those armored personnel carriers have been taken care of, we all close on the lake bed. Hopefully, our adversaries will put up heavy resistance and go down in battle rather than the other way. God have mercy on their souls and on ours.”
David’s father wheeled his mount and galloped off.
Ever since David could remember, it was always that whatever his father did required everybody else in the family to help. And, quite often, that sucked . . .
Bethany felt genuinely happy. Despite setbacks, her firepower demonstration was going quite well. The Germans would not only be the highest bidder, but the marvelously handsome Rupert von Staudenmaier was going to do his very best to screw her brains out. A breeze tugged playfully at her skirts, toyed with her hair. Clouds, nearly the same gray in color as her Imperial German officer’s uniform, marched in broad columns from the west. With her left hand, Bethany controlled her clothes against the wind; her right arm rested in the crook of her dashing baron’s elbow. Involuntarily, the fingers of her right hand dug into it as the third of her three Soviet-era tanks rolled down into the dry lake bed from the northeast. But it could not possibly be under the control of any of her personnel. “Shit!”
“Sheiss? My dear Fraulein, what is it?”
She let go of Von Staudenmaier’s arm and started looking around for one of her security people with a radio. As she did, still another unexpected vehicle caught her eye, approaching from the northwest. It was a military Humvee, painted in desert camouflage, a machine gun mounted at its approximate center of gravity. One of the French delegation had a pair of leather-wrapped binoculars suspended from his neck on a slender strap. Bethany grabbed at the binoculars and snapped the strap in two. Raising them, focus be damned, she looked to the northwest again. Standing up behind the machine gun, ready to operate it, was Lester Matthews, her security chief. There were two other men with him, one driving, another holding a rifle.
Morton Hardesty, ridiculous looking in a tall, black silk hat, swallow-tail coat, vest, striped pants and pearl-gray spats, ran across her field of view in the same instant that Bethany lowered her expropriated binoculars. A foot or two away from her, the binoculars’ owner fumed and sputtered in French. She glanced at him, using one of the only two French phrases she knew. “Merde a vous.”
Hardesty, barely audible with all the mechanical noise and gunfire, was shouting something at her that she couldn’t understand. “Your scientist, Fraulein—he seems to be suffering upsetment.”
Before Bethany could answer Von Staudenmaier, the third tank, finally in range for an artillery exchange, opened fire on her two tanks, first one, then a second artillery shell impacting only a few feet to either side of the nearest of her tanks. The helicopter spun a full one hundred eighty degrees on its main rotor axis, the jury-rigged machine gun opening fire—even she knew, uselessly—against the third tank.
The third tank fired once again, then made a quick ninety degree turn, re-orienting itself to roll off toward the northeast. Unbidden, her own two tanks and the armored personnel carriers took off after it, the helicopter flying almost directly over it, but no longer firing. Lester Matthews and his two companions in the machinegun-fitted Humvee changed direction slightly, apparently to intercept the third tank.
“Here, asshole,” Bethany snapped, shoving the binoculars toward the Frenchman. “Merci.” Hands on her corseted waist, shoulders thrown back, she stared after the tanks, the APCs and the helicopter. Everyone would think that this was part of her demonstration, and that couldn’t hurt. There was even some applause.
“Bethany!” Sounding breathless, Morton Hardesty skidded to a cartoonlike stop and stood before her, sweat beading on his brow, his glasses held in his hands. “Look!” Morton panted. He gestured toward the north, at dust clouds by the rim of the lake bed.
Through the dust, Bethany thought that she saw a truck or a car. “Frenchie!” She snatched the binoculars from the French envoy’s grasp once again, peering through them toward the dust cloud.
Morton, still sounding more than a little out of breath, volunteered, “It’s one of the Suburbans from the time-transfer base, Bethany!”
Indeed, in a moment that the dust shifted direction, she could make out the Suburban—green colored— quite clearly. How many more were out there? she wondered. “The Naile family; fuck them!” She gave back the binoculars.
“I spotted the Suburban on one of the perimeter surveillance cameras. What’ll we do, Bethany?”
“You’ve got your radio? Use the damn thing, Morty, and raise the drivers of the armored personnel carriers. Have them break off their pursuit of the third tank and go after those Suburbans. I don’t want prisoners. None! Am I understood, Morty?”
“But—”
She started patting him down, searching his pockets, located the cellular-telephone-sized radio and depressed the push-to-talk button. “This is Bethany Kaminsky. Don’t talk; just listen and do as you’re told.” She glanced once more at Baron von Staudenmaier. As appealing as he was, she wasn’t going to risk anything or everything just to let him into her panties—if she’d been wearing any . . .
***
The armored personnel carriers made a quick change of direction and went speeding after the Suburban Jack had used as a decoy—the one that Ellen was driving. As per plan, as soon as the APCs altered course, Ellen drove over the rim of the lake bed, vanishing. The APCs rolled on relentlessly.
Using a mirror from the Seventh’s heliograph kit, Jack signaled the men along the lake bed’s rim to be ready to light their fuses.
Through his binoculars, Jack studied the flight of the three tanks. Clarence and Lieutenant Easley were well in the lead. The armed desert-camouflage Humvee would not intersect Clarence’s tank, but would cross its line of travel a few seconds behind, leaving fewer than one hundred yards between them.
Jack swung his binoculars back to the chase scene nearest him, the two armored personnel carriers rolling hell for leather toward the rim of the lakebed.
He judged the distance as one hundred yards, and the marker they’d positioned at exactly one hundred yards was just passed by the lead vehicle. No heliograph signal was required, because the men of the Seventh would be watching through their binoculars as well.
The fuses would just be lit, timed as precisely as guesswork allowed for the improvised demolitions fabricated from Soviet-era tank shells and plastic explosives, ready to detonate when both armored personnel carriers were hopefully positioned to throw their tracks at the very least. At best, the APCs would be punctured, sustain body damage, flip over, powerless to move. When the men inside were disgorged into the sunlight, those same Seventh Cavalry troopers who’d lit the fuses would open fire with their Krag-Jorgensen rifles.
As planned, Jack quit his observation post, running in a low crouch toward where his horse was tethered. Horses being in short supply to him—they had stolen only two in the hopes that two missing from among so many would be unnoticed for a short while—not only was a rein tied to a sturdy seeming piece of scrub brush, but the animal’s forelegs were hobbled as well.
Jack dropped to one knee to undo the hobble, slipping the knot in the rein and swinging up into the saddle in the same instant that the explosions started. The animal shivered, stepped sideways, lowered its head. Jack stroked behind its ears, along its neck, spoke to his mount in barely audible tones. “Easy, girl, easy. I wish I knew your name, or that I could speak German.” The blanket beneath the European-style saddle bore the Eagle crest of Imperial Germany. The animal steadied, whinnied softly. Easily, Jack let a little slack into the reins and nudged gently with his knees. Looking over his shoulder, Jack spied the vaguely mushroom-shaped cloud from the combined explosive ordnance. And as he guided his mount up onto the lake bed rim and along its edge, he heard the sharp crack of rifle shots. The men of the Seventh were dispatching the Lakewood personnel from the APCs.
“Gyaagh! Let’s go!”
There would be no prisoners . . .
Major Davis stood in his saddle, stirrups flared outward, his animal’s reins pulled back taut, his right arm raised, the palm of his hand open. Lizzie watched his brown eyes as they glanced her way, his craggy features—just for an instant—re-molding into a smile. “No one will think the less of you if you stay here, Miss Naile.”
“I know that, Major; but I’d just as soon be with this at the end.”
“I understand, Miss. I started off in the cavalry right after the Point. That was a long time ago. I hope I remember the right commands.” And he smiled again. Then Major Clark Davis shouted, “At a canter, forward, ho!” He swept his hand forward. The troop, already formed up in what she’d heard called a “skirmish line,” started forward at a brisk, but easy, pace. A little triangular flag— it was called a “guide-on” or something like that, she thought—fluttered. A bugler clutched his instrument of gleaming coiled brass high against his right side, just ahead of his right ribcage, in a ready position. Lizzie felt first one, then the other of the hammer thongs on her holsters. She left them in place, lest she lose one of her Colt revolvers when the troop’s pace quickened. She felt as if her hat were about to go in the wind, so she pushed it back off her head, letting it hang down her back on its stampede string. In the same instant, the gentle breeze assailed her hair.
Just ahead, Lizzie could see the lip of the valley rim, and beyond it where smoke and dust still rose following the sound of a significant explosion. The scout had reported to Major Davis that two of the funniest looking horseless carriages imaginable were damaged, small fires burning in and around them and that some oddly dressed men were being fired upon by American troopers, this all more than a half mile away to the North.
Major Davis had simply said, “I believe the battle has been joined.” At his order, the skirmish line was formed, sabers drawn. The fieldpieces would be positioned to lay down artillery fire if and when the opportunity presented itself, Major Davis had told her. To Lizzie, this didn’t look like the right moment.
At the top of the rise, there was no hesitation.
Major Davis aimed the point of his saber toward what Lizzie knew was the conclave of prospective purchasers. The skirmish line wheeled right and started down the sloping side of the valley that was the dry lake bed. The pace neither slackened nor quickened. Major Davis raised his voice, to be heard over the clatter of hooves and jingle of spurs and bits, the creak of boots and saddles. “Listen up! We are under orders to engage anyone and everyone in the vicinity who is not immediately identifiable as an element of the friendly force. For this operation, there is no such term as noncombatant, nor are any identified enemy personnel, however uniformed, attired or gendered to be left alive.”
Lowering his voice, Major Davis spoke to the handsome young Lieutenant Adam Castle, who was riding at his side. “Castle—detail two good men to flank Miss Naile and remain at her side throughout the engagement, no matter what happens.”
“Very good, sir!”
Major Davis raised his voice again. “Remember! What we do or don’t do today, here, now, may well alter the course of the United States forever. We’ll be bloody.” Lowering his voice, he called out, “Bugler, sound the charge.” Raising his voice again, Major Davis shouted, “Charge!”
The bugle call seemed to pervade the entirety of the dry lake bed, while not drowning out the thrumming of pounding hooves, the rattle of equipment, yells coming from some of the men, the snorting of animals.
Major Clark Davis’ big brown gelding lunged into a low-slung run, the skirmish line—Lizzie within it—fewer than two or three strides behind him. The force of the air around him bent the brim of his hat upward and back, and his teeth were bared in what could have been mistaken for a smile—if she hadn’t known better.
The enemy personnel in and around the pavilions— some few in uniform, most in civilian attire, all of them male—were moving, most running, some few walking purposefully.
Coming up over the horizon, spectral almost in appearance, heat shimmering around it from the sand and rocks, a storm of dust in its wake, was a helicopter.
Neither Major Davis nor any of his men had ever heard of such a machine, let alone seen one. The skirmish line began to break, even Clark Davis reining back slightly, his horse edging right and away from the machine.
“It’s called a helicopter, Major! It’s one of the flying machines from the future. It’s probably outfitted with rapid-firing guns, like Gatling guns I’ve seen in western movies, only an awful lot faster. They use electricity to fire the cartridges, I think. It can be shot down. It must be!”
As if punctuating her plea, the helicopter opened fire, bullets stitching into the sand mere feet from the edge of the skirmish line nearest it, the sound of the gunfire like she imagined the sound would be if someone tore apart a piece of the universe, not like gunfire at all.
“Lieutenant Castle! Detail six men to assist the lady; she knows all about machines like this and will direct fire against it.” Major Davis looked down at her and smiled. “I’m counting on you, Miss Naile.”
“I won’t let you down, sir.” Already, her mind was racing, trying to recall every movie she’d ever seen in which the good guy had shot down the bad guy’s helicopter. In her mind’s eye, she could see Sean Connery firing a little AR-7 .22 rifle that disassembled to a size that stowed away in a trick briefcase. Somehow, she didn’t think shooting down a helicopter was going to be quite that easy in real life.
Ellen’s Suburban followed its carefully preselected route into the rocky escarpment on the far edge of the natural dish that was the lake bed.
Wisps of gray smoke from the explosions that had been engineered in order to disable the armored personnel carriers still hung in the desert air. Far to the North—it was probably North, Ellen figured—she could barely make out the dust trail from Clarence’s tank, and a smaller trail behind it.
Hitting a rock she hadn’t quite gauged properly, Ellen’s vehicle bounced so hard that her head actually struck the headliner. Murmuring “Shit!” under her breath, Ellen corrected her steering wheel and rode her brakes a little more heavily.
Dangerously close, but not in any position to fire yet, as best she could tell, were the two tanks aligned with the Lakewood Industries forces. Looking ahead, Ellen reminded herself that in—thankfully—only a few more moments, she would be abandoning her vehicle and running for cover.
Ellen started braking, knowing that the preset spot where the Suburban was to be abandoned lay just ahead, around the next bend. She couldn’t help glancing up into the rocks. Did she catch a glimpse of some of the personnel from the Seventh at the highest point along the bulge of ridgeline? Would the men operating the Lakewood Industries tanks see the men of the Seventh, realize what was about to transpire, what lay in store for them and their heavily armored anachronisms?
The spot where Ellen was to abandon her Suburban came upon her more quickly than she’d realized that it would, and she slammed on the brakes and skidded on the sand and gravel.
Grabbing her gear, Ellen was out of the vehicle and running. She glanced over her right shoulder and up toward the ridgeline. She heard the roar of the tanks behind her. One of the tanks plowed into the Suburban, the massive vehicle slowing the Russian tanks just enough. Ellen heard the explosion, looked back and right again. Up in the rocks, there was a puff of smoke, then another and another and another, in series. The entire face of the ridgeline began slipping away, tons of rock raining down upon what had been the road, hammering against the tanks, massive boulders striking them, bouncing off the armor—at least some of them bouncing. Ellen was running faster than she’d run in her adult life.
Ellen could barely see, the dust so thick, and she coughed, her throat dry, her mouth filled with the foul tasting pulverized rock and sand. Tears streaming from her eyes, her breathing labored, Ellen kept running . . .
Clarence stopped his tank’s forward movement so precipitously that Lieutenant Easley struck his head on one of the gauges mounted to the control panel. “Watch out!” Clarence cautioned tardily, working the pedals and turning the Russian vehicle a full one hundred eighty degrees, the machine groaning in complaint, but responding. “Jack told me about that son of a bitch,” Clarence declared, “the guy on the Hummer. Not the driver, but the other guy. He’s the Lakewood guy who tried killing Alan. Alan told me himself how that guy—his name’s Lester Matthews—had a lot of fun beating him. Look out, Easley!”
The Humvee’s .50 Browning Machine gun began chattering, and the clanging of projectiles off the tank’s armor was seriously unsettling because the .50 round was serious ordnance. Clarence solved the problem by aiming the nose of the tank dead on at the Humvee’s hood and smashing the tank’s left tread down and over it. The Humvee’s rear end snapped upward several feet, the driver throwing himself from behind the wheel, Lester Matthews quitting the .50 caliber machine gun and diving for the dirt.
As soon as the tank’s track cleared the Humvee, Clarence stopped the machine and started for the hatch. “I haven’t been in a good fistfight in a long time—since about 1984, maybe ‘85.”
Lieutenant Easley’s face seamed with an almost ear-toear grin. “Enjoy yourself, Clarence.”
“I intend to.”
Clambering out of the hatchway, Clarence oriented himself on the half-crushed Humvee. The driver was stirring. Matthews was already starting to stand. As Clarence jumped down off the turret, he heard Lieutenant Easley behind him. “I’ll take the driver, if need be. You go ahead with the other fellow.”
“Thanks,” Clarence told him, nodding, and flung himself to the ground. The gravel was a little slippery and Clarence made a mental note to remember that. He began walking toward Lester Matthews. Matthews was reaching for a gun, but Clarence already had one of the MP-5s in his hands. “Touch your pistol, and I’ll fucking cut you in half, cocksucker.”
Mathews’ fingers twitched, but his hands didn’t move.
Clarence stopped, unbuckled his gun belt and put it beside the Browning .50 in the back of the Humvee. “Ditch the pistol belt, Matthews.”
Lester Matthews wore a GI-style pistol belt with some sort of modern semiautomatic in a military flap holster.
“As you remove that belt, if you feel like going for the gun, hey, I’ll shoot you dead.”
Matthews had the belt open, held it by the buckle end, the holstered pistol, two pouches of spare magazines and a sheathed fighting knife suspended from it.
“Put the whole thing in the back of the Hummer and step away.” Out of the corner of his eye, Clarence saw Easley walk up to the driver, and toss the man a revolver. The driver started to turn away, then wheeled toward Lieutenant Easley and stabbed the revolver at him. Lieutenant Easley, his service revolver in his right hand, fired, then fired again. The driver was pitched backward, on to the gravel-and-sand track, dead.
Matthews said to Clarence, “You aren’t taking any prisoners, right?”
“You got it.”
“I figured. Let’s do it, hotshot.”
“Where you made your mistake, asshole,” Clarence responded evenly, “was to mess with my cousin. Nobody fucks with my cousins and gets away with it. This way, you’ve got a chance. Do your best, motherfucker.”
Matthews lost it, which kind of surprised Clarence, Matthews being a professional. But sometimes one could hit just the right epithet that would trigger somebody into an irrational move. Head low, hands like rigid claws, Matthews charged. Clarence sidestepped, made to trip Matthews. Matthews had faked it, wheeling right in a roundhouse kick that glanced off Clarence’s right rib-cage. Clarence got a piece of the kick, catching a fistful of Matthews’ bloused right trouser leg, jerking back on it. Matthews fell, hard. Clarence came in and went out fast, putting a kick to the side of Matthews’ head. Matthews slowed for a split second, then tried a leg sweep, but Clarence was already safely out of range.
Clarence took another step back, letting Matthews up to his feet. “Bar fighter, right?” Matthews inquired.
“From Omaha, Nebraska, to Athens, Greece, with Athens, Georgia, somewhere in the middle, you’d better believe it.”
“Are you good at it, kid?”
“Ask yourself—later, if you’re able.”
Matthews laughed, jerked a small pistol from inside his black battle dress utilities and fired.
R R R
“Testosterone,” Lizzie murmured.
“Yes, ma’am. What is tess, tesstoss—what you said, ma’am?” the private soldier beside her asked.
“What it might be convenient to have sometimes, Private Hargrave. But, as a girl, I just have to make up for it with inspiration. Follow me!”
They were afoot, Lizzie, Lieutenant Castle, Hargrave and a second private soldier named Butler, their horses left with the third enlisted member of their detail at the summit of the defile. The helicopter had broken off when the series of explosions came from the ridgeline and the avalanche there had begun. Lizzie had no idea who or what was behind the occurrences, but whatever the cause, the incident had bought her several precious minutes in which to formulate a plan and get ready to see it to fruition, while Major Davis reformed his skirmish line and made a second charge toward the pavilions.
She’d viewed everybody from Connery to Mike Connors do it on big and small screens: run across a broad, open expanse, the bad guy in the helicopter in hot pursuit, trying to use the machine to knock down the hapless person he pursued. The usual thing was that the quarry got a moment’s chance to bring his firearm into play and fired, either somehow or other hitting some vital portion of the helicopter’s moving parts or striking the pilot himself.
Lizzie’s variation on the more conventional scenario consisted of two principal points: The actual shooting at the helicopter would be performed by persons other than the party whom the helicopter pilot pursued, and the guy dodging the helicopter, like some sort of ball bearing in a pinball machine, would be a girl instead.
Lieutenant Castle veered off left, Hargrave and Butler angling right. The two enlisted men, .30-40 Krag rifles in hand, practically flung themselves beneath an overhang a scant three yards to the side of the defile. Lieutenant Castle went flat against a rocky outcropping. He would be easily visible from the air if the helicopter came that far.
It was coming along the lip of the dry lake bed, firing short bursts from its gun as if it were some sort of angry beast, snorting in contempt for its intended prey.
Lizzie poured on as much speed as she could, hoping that she’d reach the lake bed in time, before the helicopter pilot spotted Lieutenant Castle and the others. She also hoped—prayed, actually—that the pilot of the helicopter would not stop to ask himself why she was suddenly afoot rather than on horseback.
Lizzie reached the comparatively flat surface of the lake bed—she almost tripped and fell, which would have been too much the usual thing that girls in movies did, anyway—and ran as fast as she could. If she could get the helicopter safely between her back and the muzzles of the soldiers’ guns, she’d have a chance. If she only had twentieth-century track shoes on instead of high-button, high heeled, hard-soled shoes. She had to maneuver the helicopter to follow her, not cut her off. Otherwise, either the helicopter’s fuselage would bowl her over or its gun— it was an electric minigun—would riddle her with bullets. Either way, she’d be just as dead, and the helicopter would still be a factor in the affray.
Glancing back over her left shoulder once, she spotted the helicopter banking, vectoring toward her.
Lizzie was already running so fast that her lungs ached; she tried running faster . . .
The pistol in Lester Matthews’ hand was one of the few that Clarence Jones could recognize by sight, a Beretta .25—he forgot the model designation. His aunt, Ellen, had carried one in her purse for close to twenty years, back in their own time.
As Lester Matthews pulled the trigger and there was the flash of yellow-orange light at the muzzle, Clarence remembered once bragging that it would take more than a bullet from a handgun to stop him if he was intent upon beating the crap out of somebody. The bullet struck, and Clarence’s right side just under his ribcage was on fire with pain. Clarence staggered back.
This was his chance to live up to his boast.
Matthews seemed about to fire again. Clarence straight-armed Matthews in the chest with his right palm and swatted aside the little pistol with his left in the very instant the gun discharged again. Clarence felt no additional pain or numbness—there was some numbness already started by his right kidney—and his hand closed over Matthews’ gun hand, twisting it clockwise, first a single quarter turn, then another. Drawing his right hand back, closing it into a fist, he punched into the center of Lester Matthews’ pain-contorted face. Clarence felt his knuckles split against teeth—punching someone when there could be an interchange of blood was dangerous with someone from the twentieth century—and, in the next microsecond, blood sprayed everywhere, Matthews’ torn upper lip and crushed nose spurting.
Clarence still grasped Matthews’ gun hand. Abruptly, Clarence twisted it a few extra degrees and locked his own arm to maximum extension, forcing Matthews’ arm upward like the hand of a clock closing in on eleven. Clarence turned a full one hundred eighty degrees, the pain in his right side entrance wound and the numbness by his kidney almost making him lose balance and stumble. But Clarence kept himself standing, his right hand flashing upward, outward, grasping Matthews’ gun arm elbow. As Clarence pressured the elbow upward with his right hand, Clarence jerked the gun hand downward, hard and fast. The sharp sound of the bone snapping—actually, more like several bones—was clearly audible, and Matthews shrieked with pain.
The .25 fell from Matthews’ grasp as Clarence let go of the hand and wrist but kept his arc of motion going, burying his left elbow into Matthews’ solar plexus. There was a gush of breath that smelled of fear, and Clarence snarled as he told Matthews, “I learned that one in a bar fight in Greece when a guy came at me with a knife. Like it?”
Clarence didn’t wait for a response, wheeling one hundred eighty degrees once again. He was inside Matthews’ guard.
And Clarence did something for which he knew he would never forgive himself. He murdered Lester Matthews by smashing the heel of his right hand upward against the base of Matthews’ bloody pulp of a nose, driving the ethmoid bone up into Matthews’ brain, killing him instantly.
Bethany, skirts billowing wildly about her, rode low over her black horse, rode as if all the demons of Hell were suddenly chasing her. But it was only David and his father who pursued her. She might have had better luck with the demons.
A man in a German officer’s uniform, a Broomhandle Mauser pistol in his left hand, rode beside her. The horse was, quite evidently, not his own, fitted with a western stock saddle rather than a military one. Yet the German rode his mount perfectly, commandingly upright in the saddle.
There was a sharp report from the Broomhandle Mauser, like the sound of lightning striking a tree limb. Instinctively, David ducked, realizing nonetheless that the German’s chance of hitting anything from the back of a galloping horse was less than negligible.
“He could get a lucky shot, son! Keep low,” David’s father warned, himself low over the neck of his mount, the animal’s reins in his left hand, his long-barreled special Colt revolver in his right hand.
In the next instant, David watched his father bring the six-gun’s barrel on line and snap off a shot. David’s mount edged right, nervously. “Dad! Knock it off with the cowboy movie chase scene bit, will ya!?”
But his father wasn’t listening, even if he heard.
Bethany and the German officer rode at the center of a pack of six men, at least two of the men part of the assemblage of diplomats, two others dressed less richly and likely underlings. Of the remaining two, one was clearly just a hireling, a kid with a brace of six guns and a paint horse under him. The other rider was clearly a Lakewood Industries man, a submachine gun hanging at his side. As of yet, it was unused, the Lakewood man displaying obvious difficulties keeping his mount under control.
Jack fired one more probably useless shot, then holstered and hammer-thonged his Colt. The slipstream around him and his animal was stronger than he had imagined it might be all the times he’d watched his favorite western heroes riding hell for leather after the bad guys; Jack’s Stetson was nearly blown off. He screwed it down tighter and leaned lower over his mount’s neck, the animal’s mane lashing at his face, foam from its lips spraying him. Jack’s eyes were squinted against both.
The horse he rode with the European military saddle and Imperial German crest on the saddle blanket almost certainly belonged to the Mauser-armed German officer riding with the Kaminsky woman. “Come on, girl—we’ll get you reunited with der kapitan or whatever the hell rank he is. Come on!” Jack’s heels pumped against the animal’s flanks, the black’s pace quickening. Aside from the fact that he might get killed and be taken from his wife and family, Jack half-wished for a silver-mounted saddle and a big silvery-white stallion or a golden palomino. Live or die, this was probably the only horseback chase scene-cum-running gun battle he’d ever be in, and there was no sense not doing it right.
All the years of television westerns as a kid colored his perceptions, he thought, affected him to the point that— as surely as if he were listening to one of his daughter’s CD-things through a pair of headphones—the music he’d loved so much as a child, memorized in order to retain it, to possess it, long before the days of videotape, played in his head, with a depth of orchestration he’d never before experienced. It was the music from Stories of the Century and a half-dozen other programs, chase-scene music, frantic, full, resonating through his soul.
The German officer fired a series of quick shots. Jack’s stolen horse took a crease along the left side of its neck. Jack was angry: What kind of man fired at his own horse?
“Gyaagh!” Jack snarled, the music in his head playing louder . . .
Lizzie did it, the movie thing girls did every time a bad guy or a monster—in this case, a helicopter—chased them with evil intentions. She fell, almost flat on her face, her nose suddenly stiff feeling, but her right ankle hurting her more than any pain she could remember, even worse feeling than when she was shot. “Damn!” She tried standing up. If the ankle wasn’t broken, it was doing a great imitation.
Lizzie tried again, the ankle feeling almost worse, if that was possible. She drew a revolver.
The helicopter was closing fast. There would be time for one shot, maybe two. Why weren’t Lieutenant Castle and the two enlisted men firing? As she glanced right, she saw the two enlisted men, Private Butler and Private Hargrave, standing, their rifles to their shoulders. Lizzie craned her neck, spotted Lieutenant Castle. She saw his lips moving, saw a flash of gunfire from his revolver. Even above the whirring roar of the helicopter as it closed with her, Lizzie heard the dual cracks of rifle shots.
The helicopter kept on coming. More rifle shots, and maybe pistol shots, too. Hopelessly—almost—Lizzie stabbed one of her own handguns toward the helicopter. In the same instant that she fired, there was a ragged volley, coming from Hargrave, Butler and Castle.
The helicopter seemed to stop, suspended in mid-air, like a soaring bird of prey could do, its wings motionless against a powerful air current. But the helicopter, of course, had no real wings, merely its powerfully bladed main and tail rotors. These spun, but somehow not as she remembered them moving a split second before.
Her ankle screamed at her, but Lizzie got herself to her feet, started to fall. The dashing Lieutenant Castle was there beside her, catching her, propelling her away from beneath the helicopter, its gun silent, its fuselage spinning on its vertical axis, beginning to auger down toward the dry lake bed and destruction. Lizzie decided that her ankle couldn’t be broken; she hadn’t passed out from the pain.
Turning her head to glance behind her, just as quickly, she turned her face away. A rush of hot air engulfed her. The helicopter shattered against the sun-hardened surface of the lake bed, and a fireball flared from its fuel tank. She wasn’t on fire and she kept moving, thanking God for favors large and small.