To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (30 page)

“Great!”  Santino exclaimed.  “We’ll get the thing tomorrow, have one last meat-on-a-stick, and be home in time for the Fourth of July.”

“It’s not that simple,” both Gaius and I told him at the same time.

I looked at Gaius.  “Wait
… why not?”

“You didn’t t
hink it was going to be as easy as walking up and purchasing it, did you?”  Marcus asked.

“Well, no,” I replied.  “Things are
rarely that simple.”

“And they certainly won’t be now,” Gaius intoned.  “Had we been the ones to track down the supplier, it may have been, but we were not.  Another
Octetus
did.  However, we were able to later inform the dealer that another buyer is present in Byzantium.  You.  He now expects to auction it off to both parties two nights from now.”

“I assume the other buyer is one of your fellow Praetorians?”  Helena asked.

“Correct,” Gaius answered.  “However, he has yet to be informed of this, and I do not look forward to telling him.  He is an angry man.”

“So we’ll have an opportunity to bid for the
orb two nights from now,” I said, mostly to myself.  I rubbed my chin with my hand before directing my attention back at Gaius.  “You should know that if we are to participate in this auction, we will come ready.  If we see any of your friends sneaking around, putting one of us at risk, we will kill them.”

Gaius and Marcus exchanged glances.

“We know,” Gaius answered, “but we also feel that we owe you this opportunity.  Even at the expense of our partners.”

“Honestly,” Marcus interjected, “we have no feelings of friendship towards those men anyway.  We are but a few of the remaining original Sacred Band, as most of Agrippina’s new band replaced those who Caligula enlisted.  We have trained with them, yes, but in that time, Gaius and I always felt something off about them.  Most of Agrippina’s new Sacred Band seem… odd, in some way.”

“In
what
way?”  I asked.

“They’re ruthless bastards,” Gaius answered for him.  “Before Agrippina, Caligula’s Praetorians were honorable men.  Men with valor and principals. 
Men from the legions.  But Agrippina’s recruited her new Praetorians from prisons and the streets, looking for criminals, cutthroats, and thieves.”

“I
f I were you, I would be more afraid of being killed by them, than by anybody else,” Helena offered.

“One would think, yes,” Gaius agreed, nodding approvingly at her.  “But the empress is not stupid.  She still has many loyal and honorable men in high places that keep this new breed in check.”

Made sense.

“Where and when’s this auction
going down?”  Santino asked, back to business.

“Two nights from now, an hour past midnight, outside the hippodrome at the southeast side of town,” Gaius answered.  “The
dealer asks that each party only bring one representative, but with the range of your weapons and your communication abilities, that should not be a problem for you.”

I smiled.  “We’ll be fine.”

“Good,” Marcus said, getting to his feet.  “We have to go.  We can’t be gone long.”

“Wait,” I said, leaning back over the bed and grabbing a gear bag from behind it.  I picked one up at random and rummaged around inside before I found what I was looking for.

“Take these,” I said, holding out two small devices, each the size of a wallet.  “If you find yourselves on the rooftops during the transaction, attach these to your clothing and open the shutter like this…” 

I demonstrated how to open and close the shutter, which kept a rectangular bulb at the top of the blocky device hidden when closed.

Both Romans accepted their gifts, turning them over in their hands questioningly.

“Thank you, Hunter,” Gaius said tentatively, “but what
are they?”

“Here,” I said, holding out a pair of NVGs for them to wear.  I nodded at Santino, who doused the candles we had burning, plunging the room into darkness.  “Put these on.”

I couldn’t see the Romans now that the lights had gone out, but when they managed to successfully place the goggles over their eyes, I heard one of them stumble into the door, while the other almost knocked me over, surprised at their newfound ability to see in the dark.

“This… this…” Marcus started.

“Is amazing,” Gaius finished, his head glancing about wildly as he tried to drink in as much detail as he could.  I waved in his direction, and he quickly came to his senses.

“Now,” I said, “as you observed earlier, with normal eyesight, this device appears to do nothing.  Now, watch with the night vision on.”

I opened the shutter on one of the infrared strobe beacons, and waited for the reaction.  I couldn’t see a damn thing, but with the help of NVGs, the infrared strobe must have been flashing as brightly as lightning for the two Romans.  Infrared strobe beacons were worn by pilots in case they were shot down, and carried by soldiers either for rescue purposes or simple identification at night.

Exactly how I intended
Gaius and Marcus to use them.

“The strobe emits a very bright light with those goggles on,” I explained.  “If you wear these, we will be able to see you, and we won’t shoot you.”

“At least we’ll try not to,” Santino said in the dark.

I sighed and waited for Santino and Helena to relight the room’s candles
, while Gaius and Marcus removed their NVGs and handed them to me.  I traded them for the beacons.

Both men still looked stunned.

“You continue to amaze us, Hunter,” Gaius said.  “If this sphere is able to send you home, wherever that may be, maybe you will consider letting us come with you?”

I thought about it.  Both men were bright, capable men, but the immense cultural shock that would come with living in the 21st century might be too much.  If anything it would be an interesting experiment,
I guess, but I suspected the combination of hamburgers, women in thongs at the beach, Ferris Wheels, and football would be too much for the Romans to handle.

Besides, I wasn’t even sure they could make the trip at all.

“I’ll think about it,” I told them.

They smiled at my consideration
and left without another word.  I closed the door behind them and turned to face my companions.  They waited patiently for me to retake my position next to Helena on the bed.

“So, what do you think?”  Santino asked.

“I think it’s the best chance we’ve got,” I replied.  I looked over at Helena.

“I agree,” she said wearily, probably still unhappy that we were once again purposefully risking our lives.

I squeezed her knee in support.

“But remember,” I said, “no matter what happens, we can’t go home yet.  Not only do we need to contact the rest of the team, but we still have to deal with the other
orb as well.  Whatever happens, we destroy this one first.”

Both of them nodded, and mused silently for a few minutes.

“It’s gonna be just like old times,” Santino said.

I nodded silently in agreement.  This had to be a military operation like we’d never performed while in Rome.  Everything we’d done down here had been off the cuff, haphazard, performed with an overconfidence developed from our vast technological superiority and unique skill set
s.  We’d never gone into a mission with anywhere near the level of detail as had become routine for operators back in the U.S., but this time, everything had to go off perfectly.  Agrippina’s ninjas were too unpredictable for us to go in halfcocked.  We needed to set the stage, write the rules and make sure each participant stuck to our script.  It’s what we were trained to do.

No more playing dress up trying to fit in with the Roma
ns like cocky ass clowns.

The thought made me nervous, but another emotion worked its way through my body as well.  It was the feeling of excitement mixed with fear I always felt before a mission back home.  It was the feeling that reminded me to get ready for the
danger, for the adrenaline rush was sure to come.

I hadn’t felt
it so intensely in years and I couldn’t deny that I liked it.

I
really liked it.

***

Two nights later, I was doing exactly what snipers did best.

Waiting.

But at least I felt both comfortable and safe in my sniper hide – a place on a field of one’s choosing that offered elevation, a clear view of an area and plenty of room to dish out some punishment from.  Hides could be anything from holes in the ground to bombed out deli stores, a simple rooftop or even a five star luxury suite.

As long as it kept
a sniper hidden and in a position to kill bad guys, it was a hide.

The comfort I felt was like slipping into an old
pair of shoes, one that I had loved so much but had temporarily misplaced.  Although I had kept up on my target shooting over the years, practicing when the opportunity arose, finding time to seek out, locate and customize a hide was something I hadn’t done since I was still a resident of the year 2021.  It surprised me how happy it made me because it wasn’t something I’d relished back then.  Yet, as I lay here now, I felt safer than the times as a kid when I’d sneak into my parents’ bed after a scary dream.

Helena and I had gone scouring the rooftops for suitable hides as soon as Gaius and Marcus had left a few nights ago, while Santino scouted the ground near the Hippodrome.  Helena and I decided on two separate locations that provided overlapping fields of fire, elevation
, room to maneuver, and clear sightlines across most of the city.  I was situated atop a five story house, seven hundred yards east north east of the Hippodrome.

Interestingly, it was a house I’d visited before.  At least
, I’ve been to the area where it would have stood two thousand years from now.  It wasn’t a house then, but a beautiful park situated near the eastern coast of the city.  Although I couldn’t recall the name, I still remembered my ten year old self trying to escape my parents’ constant watchfulness, hoping to explore the beautiful and serene park, my younger sister dutifully at their side.

She’d always been the
obedient one.

While much of that trip was a blur in my mind, the one thing I remember
ed was how it became one of the most defining moments of my life.  On our first day in the city, a lifelong love of art, literature and history was born in my mind as my family and I toured the Hagia Sophia.  It was then, and will be again soon, one of the most unique buildings in existence with its curious amalgamation of Christian and Islamic architecture and art.  I’d spent hours exploring every nook and cranny that morning, sticking my nose in places it shouldn’t have been and driving my mother insane wondering if she’d lost her son only a few hours into the trip.  My father hadn’t been happy when he’d found me wondering in a crypt that had been roped off from the general public, but the damage had been done. 

I was hooked.

Unfortunately, the building wasn’t around quite yet.  We’d arrived about five hundred years too early, which, even though I would have loved to see the building in its prime, was a good thing.  Based on where I had positioned myself, the building would have blocked my view of the Hippodrome completely.

Stationed a
bout eight hundred yards due west of the Hippodrome was Helena.  Her hide was higher and much more remote, consisting of some kind of tower used for God knows what.  The roof was spacious enough for her to lay prone and keep her M107 Barrett sniper rifle atop her gear bag beside her.  She secured her hide by attaching small, fisheye cameras to watch the tower’s only entrance at the base of the building.  Each camera emitted an infrared beam that, when crossed, would alert Helena by flashing her eyepiece and displaying whatever the camera picked up.

We were pulling out all the stops for this one.  We wore all of our combat gear, had assault rifles loaded and ready to go, and brought bailout bags in case we needed to flee the city and leave the rest of our gear behind.  Our eyepieces, gun-cams, forearm mounted
touch screens, and mini-laptop computers were all up and running for the first time in maybe two years.  Solar energy had kept the devices going, but without Santino’s UAV, we couldn’t use the GPS system to perform aerial recon, or keep an eye on where we were in relation to one another.  At least the fisheye cams had microtransmitters built in that could send a signal a few dozen yards, more than enough to reach us from their security positions.  I had five of the fisheye cams guarding my own ass, the numerous routes to my position creating a unique security situation for us to overcome.

I sighed and tapped the trigger guard of my sniper rifle distractedly.  I hadn’t needed to do something like this in over four years, and I was out of practice.  It wasn’t the waiting that bothered me, or the impending death I was soon to dish out, but the thoughts of failure and the possibility I might get one of my friends killed.  It was a foreign feeling for someone who, as a SEAL officer, had
rarely ever used his sniper rifle while on mission.  As a SEAL Team platoon leader, my role was to provide guidance and leadership for my men, not to go lone wolf with a sniper rifle and play Rambo.