Written in Time (60 page)

When she looked back to the unfolding battle, Ellen witnessed Sergeant Goldberg clasp his side, then hammer his rifle butt into the face of one of the enemy. Goldberg wheeled around, taking another bullet or more, hurtling himself at the man who’d fired, driving his bayonet through the man’s throat, collapsing on top of him.
 

Jack and four of his men were fighting along what amounted to a street between more than a half-dozen motor homes lined along each side. New and improved barracks for the Lakewood personnel? That had to be it.
 

Beyond the “street” lay the fenced-off area within which were housed the actual time-transfer apparatus and the planes.
 

Jack, Lieutenant Easley and four troopers fought their way toward it, all of the men picking up weapons as they went forward. Once, Jack fired two submachine guns simultaneously, bringing down two more of the Lakewood personnel.
 

Four men of the Seventh appeared from between two of the motor homes, joined Jack and continued toward the enclosure.
 

The flat, helipadlike surface where the capsule phased in and out between 1996 and 1900 lay just ahead, the capsule itself—the width of a football field and perhaps twenty-five yards deep—at its center. There were chain-link gates, at least eight feet high, razor wire— something new, again—strung there as atop the entire fence. Two jets and a helicopter were there as well. The gates were closing.
 

Jack shouted to a corporal nearby, “Hold this position, if you can. I’ve got an idea.” Without saying anything more, without waiting for a response of any kind—with the incessant gunfire and the still blaring alarms, the corporal most likely hadn’t even heard him—Jack broke right, running for the nearest of the motor homes.
 

He spied no support jacks, no hose or sewer connections. There was an electrical line, probably leading to a common generator. Why would anybody bother to take the keys to a vehicle parked in a Nevada wasteland in 1900, an area surrounded by heavily armed guards? Why, indeed?— Jack hoped.
 

Jack wrenched open the driver’s side door.
 

No keys in the ignition.
 

He reached up behind the visor.
 

“Yes!” Predictability was a wonderful thing at times, something smart people tried to avoid.
 

Jack stabbed the ignition key into the switch and turned it. The motor roared to life.
 

Jack hit the horn button, then hit it again and again. Lieutenant Easley turned around. Jack hit the horn again and waved through the open doorway. Easley prodded at the men with him, gesticulating broadly toward the motor home. Two of the men did not move, transfixed, it seemed, by the sight of such a monstrously large “horseless carriage.”
 

Easley grabbed the more reluctant of the men by shoulders and pistol belts and propelled them forward. Jack took a deep breath as the men of the Seventh clambered aboard the horseless stagecoach through its center door. Counting himself, there were ten men in all. The total number of MP-5 submachine guns was six. There were a few fully loaded magazines—maybe six— and how many rounds remained in each of the in-place magazines was anybody’s guess.
 

“Lieutenant,” Jack said at the top of his voice. “Get everybody seated on the floor. Set all of those submachine guns to semi only—not full-auto. Make sure every one of them has a chambered round and a full magazine. Mine are on the passenger seat there.” Jack gestured toward the other front bucket. “Impress upon these guys that this vehicle is going to be moving fast, starting now.” Jack released the emergency brake and moved the selector into drive.
 

The motor home began rumbling forward. Jack turned the wheel left, pulling into the little street formed between the two rows of motor homes. Easley was barking orders.
 

“Hurry it up, Lieutenant! We’re going to punch through that gate in about sixty seconds! Once we’re in, pile out of the vehicle and continue the fight.”
 

Jack stopped, threw the selector into reverse and used the side mirrors to back up. He wanted as much speed as he could get. “When I shout, everybody go flat on the floor. Hold on to something that doesn’t look like it’ll move.”
 

Jack stopped the motor home, took a deep breath and put the selector into drive. Gradually, he gave the engine gas, rolling perhaps ten yards before he stomped the accelerator flat to the floor. There was a driver’s side seat belt, but he’d forgotten to put it on.
 

No time.
 

For an instant, Jack found himself wondering if Jensen, Standing Bear and the other marksmen had reached the fence from the opposite side yet. Were the jump jets warming up, the noise of their engines just not discernable over the general cacophony? Was the chopper about to get airborne?
 

The gates, fully closed, lay fifty yards ahead. Forty. Thirty. Twenty. “Everybody hold on and be ready to move!” Ten yards. The gates looked awfully sturdy. What if they wouldn’t yield to the motor home’s mass and momentum? “This is stupid,” Jack muttered as he grabbed his Stetson and used it to shield his face. He heard breaking glass just as his body shuddered and everything around him seemed to vibrate and his rear end started lifting out of the seat to fly forward. He should have used the seat belt.
 

CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
 

Time was dilated. In life-and-death situations, moments of great stress, life played in slow motion. He’d never believed that until it had happened to him on a suddenly icy stretch of interstate highway in Kentucky in 1979 or 1980.
 

“Mr. Naile! Are you still with us, sir?”
 

Jack opened his eyes and saw Lieutenant Easley looking back at him. Jack’s forehead ached a little, and his right arm felt sore, but not broken. “Yeah—I think. Okay, yeah—everybody out!”
 

“You heard him! Exit that way!” Easley shouted. As Jack stood up, his knees were wobbly.
 

Jack looked through the shattered windshield. Parts of the fence gates had collapsed over the motor home’s front end. One of the verticals for the gate had punched through the windshield about six or eight inches from where Jack’s head should have been but wasn’t, then continued on outward through the driver’s side window.
 

Jack shook his black Stetson, and broken glass tinkled from it to join the glass around his feet.
 

Lieutenant Easley handed Jack a submachine gun as Jack finally started for the door. Jack flexed his right shoulder, rubbed it with his left hand. More broken glass fell from his shoulders and back when he moved.
 

A half-dozen men, perhaps more, moving from point of cover to point of cover, were running from the trailer at the center of the fenced enclosure toward the huge gray cylinder on the flat concrete apron, the site where the time-transfers actually took place. The cylinder existed in two times, simultaneously, just as did the mountains beyond and the rocks above and around Jack and the dirt and sand beneath Jack’s boots. If the men could get into the cylinder and a time-transfer was already set, they would be blinked into the future and have escaped, escaped with the knowledge that the time-transfer base in 1900 had been breached, compromised and was about to be overrun. Within minutes, or no more than hours, certainly, a tank, perhaps, or several dozen men and a helicopter gunship—Jack could only guess what Lakewood Industries held in reserve—would emerge from that capsule and retake the time-transfer base.
 

The sole helicopter—a Bell Long Ranger, of the type used by television and radio traffic reporters and life flights and for ordinary commuting, but not a gunship— was warming up its main rotors. It was well back from the capsule, closer to the far side of the chain link fence.
 

Jack grabbed one of Lieutenant Easley’s men. “Find Alan Naile—not my son, but the guy who looks like him. He should be up in the rocks there with my wife and the others. Get him down here to that trailer—that thing! Hurry!”
 

Jack buttonholed another of Easley’s men. “Go with that guy! Now! Hurry.” The trailer was the control center for the time-transfer mechanism. Alan was the only one of them here—Clarence’s wife, who knew the procedures well, had not accompanied them—who could rightly be expected to know what he was doing with the apparatus.
 

Lieutenant Easley and five of Easley’s men were using the cover of the motor home, advancing toward the gray capsule. Jack joined them, crouched beside the driver’s side wheelwell. “We can’t let those Lakewood Industries men get into the time-transfer capsule. They may have some means of operating the time-transfer device remotely, or may have the system set on some sort of timer.” Unintended puns were the most embarrassing kind. “If they get into the capsule and escape into 1996, we’ve had it.”
 

“Had what, sir?” Lieutenant Easley asked, his voice as grave as his countenance.
 

“It’s a figure of speech, Lieutenant. If they get to 1996, they’ll send back men and equipment we can’t hope to defeat, and they’ll not only retake the time-transfer base here, but also kill any chances we’d have to stop them from selling their military equipment from the future to the highest bidder in 1900.”
 

“What if we were to destroy this capsule thing?” Easley asked.
 

“They could just build another one in 1996—probably already have a spare one for backup—and get here anyway. The only way to stop them is in the future, not here in the subjective present.” There were seven men, actually, Jack counting as the Lakewood personnel began leapfrogging their way toward the capsule again. Three men stayed in cover, laying down suppressive fire while four men moved to the next position, a standard fireand-maneuver tactic.
 

Jack touched at the skin just inside his shirt collar. Another little piece of glass. As he threw it away, he had an idea.
 

“Lieutenant. Take one of your men and come with me.” It was a desperate idea, but one that might save the day. And, as a commodity, time was the enemy. With Lieutenant Easley and one of his troopers, Jack made his way back toward the motor home’s door, hoping all the while that he could find what he needed and quickly enough.
 

Once inside, he started rearward. “Lieutenant, check the kitchen area. We’re looking for glass bottles of alcoholic beverages. Vodka, whiskey, anything like that. If the liquor is stored in anything other than glass, we need to find some glass containers which have small openings at the top. Get your trooper to search for sheets, handkerchiefs, like that. We need fabric, material. It’s no good to rip down the curtains or skin the cushions from the couch or anything because all of that stuff would be fire-retardant.”
 

“Begging your pardon, sir, but what are we doing, Mr. Naile? What’s the purpose here, sir?” Lieutenant Easley inquired earnestly.
 

“A man by the name of Molotov, a Russian revolutionary, will forever be associated with what we’re doing, although I doubt he invented the procedure.” Before Easley could ask another polite question, Jack told him, “We stuff rags down the mouths of bottles containing alcohol, then set fire to the rags and throw the bottles. When they shatter, they spray fire. In my day, we call them Molotov Cocktails and I sure hope they work as well as they do in the movies—magic-lantern shows. It would work better with gasoline.”
 

Frantically, Jack, Easley and the trooper tore through the motor home. There was a nice little liquor cabinet in the master bedroom at the rear. Jack picked up one of the bottles. “Now, somebody find me a corkscrew! And fast!” The longer this battle dragged on, the greater the chance of Lakewood’s leadership interdicting. And interdiction could translate into a helicopter gunship or a jump jet from the future, not to mention one of the VSTOLs or the Long Ranger already at the base getting airborne. If the marksmen hadn’t reached the backside of the fenced enclosure yet, one of the armed VSTOLs could get airborne vertically, change to horizontal flight mode and strafe the time-transfer base, putting an end to the attack.
 

Submachine gun fire hammered into the motor home, blasting through what glass hadn’t shattered on impact. As Jack, Lieutenant Easley and the trooper rejoined the men outside the motor home, the seven Lakewood men leapfrogged again. In another ten yards, the maneuver element would reach the time-transfer capsule. Then it would simply be a matter of laying down all the suppressive fire possible—for a matter of seconds—to bring the remaining personnel to the capsule. Once inside, it was over. The capsule was probably resistant to most conventional munitions, merely as an incidental result of the strength it would have been built with, the electrical energy it had been constructed to withstand.
 

Jack, Easley and the trooper handed out wine bottles stuffed at the mouth with bits of sheeting and pillowcasing. Jack took his first bottle and upended it, letting the alcohol begin to saturate the wick. In movies, lighting a Molotov cocktail had always looked a little dangerous. In real life, it was positively scary. Best cover up with bravado, he thought, striking a match on the sole of his boot. He faked a French accent. “And, on today’s menu, we feature flambé of bad guy.” No one caught the attempt at humor. Jack lit the alcohol-saturated wick, and there was serious flame very fast. Jack flung the bottle toward the Lakewood position. Jack was always less than gifted at throwing anything, from softballs to hand grenades. The bottle shattered some six feet shy of the Lakewood personnel, but sprayed burning alcohol all around it. The principle worked. “Who can throw better than I can? Anybody, right? The most accurate toss gets a brand new nickel-plated Colt Single Action out of my store!”