Written in Time (68 page)

“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.