Ides of March (Time Patrol) Read online

  The man was keeping his distance, as if by doing so, he distanced himself from the act of his overseer. “That’s enough,” he ordered after the whip struck home once more. The overseer wiped blood off the twisted leather braids with a dirty rag, then coiled it. He hung it on a hook on the side of his belt.

  The man giving the orders stepped into the barn and Eagle recognized him. Dressed in a blue uniform, brocaded with gold trimming: George Washington.

  Ravenna, Capitol of the Remains of the Western Roman Empire, 493 A.D.

  ROLAND SLIPPED IN THE MUD AND BLOOD, which saved his life as the spear struck his chest armor obliquely.

  The Goth didn’t get a second chance as Roland took his head off with a single swipe of the sword, the decapitated body tumbling to join three others corpses.

  They really had to get better with the timing on this time travel thing, Roland thought as he spun about, ready for more enemies. Twenty feet away, a fifth person, a woman wearing a long black robe, took a step back and vanished into a black Gate. It was gone a second later.

  That was different, Roland mused. Now there was no one on the cart path other than four bodies. He checked the forest to either side, not taking the time to ponder the vanishing woman or even the bodies, focusing on staying alive for the moment.

  “Centurion!” Several soldiers came running around a bend in the path, swords drawn. Roland went on guard, but recognized they were equipped with the same uniform and armor he wore, and not that of the bodies, which Nada would have said didn’t prove they were on the same side. So, Roland lowered the tip of his sword a little less than an inch, until he could be certain they meant no harm. While one checked the bodies, the others spread out, providing security, which he took as a friendly sign.

  It is 493 A.D. The world’s population is roughly 190 million humans; in China, Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei begins his campaigns against Southern Qi, which culminates against the opposing Emperor Ming; Patrick, who would become the patron saint of Ireland, dies; the Byzantine Empire, once known as the Eastern Roman Empire, besieges and captures Cappadocia under the command of General John the Hunchback; Christianity has spread far beyond its start point in the Middle East; Buddhism reaches Burma and Indonesia.

  And here on a muddy road in the middle of forest, Roland had once more killed.

  Some things change; some don’t.

  Thirteen riders came around the bend. Astride a warhorse in the midst of them was a man wearing a purple robe over his shiny, for-show armor, which indicated he was some big muckety-muck, since Roland knew the type from his time in the army. Remembering the briefing, Roland realized this guy was probably the big muckety-muck. The reason he was here.

  Unless Dane and the Time Patrol had made a big mistake, which Roland didn’t rule out, and Nada would have expected.

  But Nada was dead.

  Odoacer, First King of Italy, sometimes calling himself Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, although technically he’d overthrown the last one, history just didn’t know it yet, leaned forward in the saddle. “Did you kill all four, Centurion?”

  “Yes, sir,” Roland said, figuring he, whoever he was before he, Roland, became aware of being here, had taken out the other three. Mac would have been impressed with that leap of logic on Roland’s part. But Mac was elsewhere; same day, different year. Doc would have been astounded at Roland’s instant ability to accept an improbable, yet logical, concept, but Doc was also, well, same deal.

  Roland didn’t think it would be smart to mention the disappearing woman. Another person, traveling back in time and suddenly appearing in the midst of a fight for their lives might have doubted what they saw, but Roland never doubted what he saw. It was one of his strengths.

  “I need a man like you close to me. A killer. Especially this day.” Odoacer raised his right hand, while he pointed with his left at Roland. “You are now one of my twelve; a Protector.” He gestured imperiously, which Kings actually get to do, at one of the riders around him. “Give him your horse.”

  The guy didn’t look thrilled, but dismounted.

  Roland liked the sound of that title, Protector, as his mind processed the implanted data: it meant he was still the equivalent of a centurion, but in the King/Emperor’s personal guard, the Palatini. Of course, like every army, it meant more responsibility, but the same pay; Then again, he was going to get to ride instead of walk, so that was something. Upgraded from the Infantry to the Cavalry; why walk when you can ride? was a rule of thumb in every army. Why ride when you can fly? was still quite a few centuries off. And the faux promotion meant he was a soldier on his way up in rank, except Roland’s future here was limited to 24 hours; and the First King of Italy, who had taken power from the last true Emperor of Rome, Romulus Augustus, in 476 A.D., had even less time than that.

  But BEFORE the Ides of March and AFTER they came back from Black Tuesday

  Andes Mountains, Argentina

  IT HAD TAKEN MOMS FIVE DAYS of her leave to make it up to this altitude, battling snow and weather the entire way. The effort had called upon all her cold-weather training and experience in the military. Going uphill in snow was battling a vicious combination of gravity and the elements.

  But she was finally here.

  In a flat piece of terrain, about a hundred meters from where the plane wreckage had been there was a stone pile with a makeshift iron cross. Pieces of the wreckage were also mixed with the stones.

  Most of the wreckage of Uruguayan Flight 571 was gone, burned by a search party that had buried the human remains.

  The remains of the people from the plane. Moms was here for someone else. She read the inscription on a metal plaque, automatically translating the Spanish:

  The World to its Uruguayan brothers. Close, oh God, to you.

  Appropriate, Moms thought. She moved two hundred meters away to a large boulder. She pulled out her snow shovel, unfolded it, and began to dig into a drift piled against the rock.

  It took a while. How long, Moms didn’t care. What was time after all? A variable.

  Until you ran out of it.

  She reached the corpse, well preserved from the cold, altitude, snow, and ice covering it since 1972. The body was missing a hand, the stub still covered by Moms’ bandage. She gently brushed snow and ice from the face.

  “Pablo, I buried your dog tags at your lover’s grave. I thought it’s what you would have wanted.”

  She sat down in the snow.

  She recited the prayer they’d shared just before he died. “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.”

  Moms didn’t believe in prayer; her mother had prayed all the time in their rundown house out in the middle of nowhere Kansas. And look how those had been answered?

  But Pablo had and that was all that mattered. The dead had to be honored.

  She repeated the prayer three times. Then she pulled off a glove and placed her hand on his frozen face. “I remember your name. Pablo Correa.”

  Then her satphone went off: Send Lawyers, Guns and Money.

  Duty called.

  Roland: Eastern Coast of England.

  “THIS IS WHERE I LANDED with the Vikings,” Roland told Neeley.

  Surf pounded the beach, the waves riled by a storm offshore, somewhere between England and Scandinavia. There was no sign of civilization in either direction.

  Neeley was a tall woman, almost six feet, with short dark hair, now with some grey. But Roland towered half a foot over her and while she was slender and lean, he was broad chested and well-muscled. They were both accomplished killers, which an observer might think was the attraction between the two, but it was really their differences that had drawn them together.

  Roland was a simple man; not simple-minded, as his teammates sometimes joked, especially Mac, but it was more a case of having a direct and linear way of looking at life an
d dealing with situations. Perhaps it was a result of his large physique, but Roland went through things, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

  Neeley, coopted by a terrorist cell as a teenager, saved by a covert operative when her terrorist boyfriend betrayed her, trained in the dark arts, then coopted by the Cellar to be an assassin, tended to be more circumspect. Each respected the difference in the other, and respect is the foundation of any relationship.

  Roland recalled his bubble of time here in 999 AD. “It was foggy.” He pointed inland, to the right. “Come.”

  The two strode across the beach and into the dunes, Roland narrating as calmly as if describing a pleasant vacation. “This is where the berserkers ambushed us. I took down two, but it was a ploy. One escaped to give word of the number of our party and capabilities.”

  “Look.” Neeley pointed. There was a unnatural mist ahead. “Do you feel it?”

  “It’s chilly,” Roland said, but he knew that wasn’t what she was referring to.

  “Reminds me of the Space Between,” Neeley said, referring to the netherworld region where innumerable Earth timelines connected. “Very faint, though.”

  They continued toward a six-foot tall upright stone. There were more behind it, placed in a rough circle. In the center was a nine-foot stone, angled 45 degrees.

  “I feel it now,” Roland said as they entered the stone circle. “It’s exactly what it was like a thousand years ago. Tam Nok, the seer, said this was built by the original people, the survivors of Atlantis.”

  Neeley was drawn to the angled stone. There were faint markings on it. “This looks like what you said they’re using in the Possibility Palace. Hieroglyphics.”

  Roland reached past her and put his hands on the stone. “I had the vision here. Actually, Tam Nok gave me the vision from the stone. Of the nun who had to die and the possible futures if I failed in my mission that day.”

  Neeley put a hand on his back. “You didn’t fail.”

  Roland let go of the stone. “Let’s see if anything is left of the monastery.”

  They departed the standing stones and headed north. Cresting a small rise revealed the place where Roland’s mission had concluded.

  There was nothing to show of the monastery and the village. Even the stones were gone from where the chapel had stood. Grass and bushes struggled to grow, as if the ground was cursed.

  “I don’t like this place,” Neeley said.

  “Nothing good came out of that mission.”

  “Yeah,” Neeley agreed. “But nothing bad either. And isn’t that the point?”

  Roland was about to say something when Neeley’s satphone buzzed with a text message. She was reading it when the satphone every member of the Time Patrol had been issued by Dane prior to going on leave went off, playing a ring tone: Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.

  He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen, then at Neeley. “You first.”

  “I’ve got to get someone, escort them back to the States. Chopper’s inbound.”

  Roland nodded. “Same chopper’s inbound to pick me up too. I’ve been Zevoned.”

  Scout: Arlington Cemetery. Section 60.

  “I KISSED MY FIRST BOY and then I had to kill him,” Scout whispered to the cold stone. She was on her knees in front of the marker, leaning forward, forehead touching the tombstone. “Actually, Nada, he wasn’t a boy, he was a man, and he was trying to choke me to death, even while we were kissing. But still, he was young. And I killed him. Did just as you taught me, in the heart, then shredded it with a twist of the blade. And I thought he’d really cared about me, but it was just pretend. I thought he was my contact. And I know, you’d have warned me not to trust him. A Nada-Yada: trust no one. But we, you and I, trusted each other.”

  She was surrounded by the dead-before-their-time, although as a member of the Time Patrol, Scout was beginning to doubt the nature of time itself. All the coffins were under the same upright headstones, 42 inches high, 13 inches wide, and 4 inches thick, according to Department of Defense regulations. It made them seem the same, except for the words inscribed in the stones.

  “Then I had to kill again, same day. Same way. And I thought he was there to protect me too, but it was also pretend. They came after me, Nada. Of the six of us who went back, I’m the one the Shadow deliberately went after.” Scout pulled her head back and traced the letters and numbers with her fingers.

  EDWARD MORENO

  MSG USA

  29 OCTOBER 1969

  28 JUNE 2005

  OPERATION RED WINGS

  DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSS

  SILVER STAR

  PURPLE HEART

  Sparse words for a life. She hadn’t even known Nada’s real name until she’d seen this marker in a vision after joining the Time Patrol. She’d served with Nada in the Nightstalkers, but when they became the Time Patrol and were given a chance to go back and fix one thing in their past, Nada was the only one who’d chosen to go back. A decision that meant one was unfit for the Time Patrol.

  But he’d had a very good reason to try to fix this particular problem. Several in fact.

  He’d fixed it and this marker was the price he’d paid.

  Scout looked to the side, down the row. There were no flowers in front of the distant marker; the reason Nada had gone back: to make sure the man under that marker died.

  Then Scout focused on the other date; the date of Nada’s birth. He’d been born on the day she’d been sent to on her last mission. Black Tuesday. Scout felt a chill slither around her.

  There were no coincidences. All of time was a pattern, millions of streams, billions of lives, woven in the tapestry of history that made the present and led to the future. Looking down into the spiraling depths of the Possibility Palace convinced one of that.

  What was going on with that date? What was she caught up in? What--

  “Did you know my father?” a woman asked, startling Scout.

  Nada wouldn’t have approved of Scout allowing someone to get so close without being noticed, but he would definitely have approved of the person. The woman was just out of her teens, her thick hair framing a beautiful face and eyes that reminded Scout so much of Nada.

  “Isabella,” Scout said.

  “How’d you know my name?” Nada’s daughter asked.

  “Na—your father spoke of you often.” Scout was disoriented, looping back to her vision of this cemetery during retrieval from Black Tuesday, 1969. But that vision had been of the place in 2005, and now was now.

  “You look too young to have served with my father.”

  Not even in high school yet, Scout thought, trying manage the numbers, the years. “My father served with him,” she lied. She held out her hand. “I’m Scout.”

  “Isabella.” Nada’s daughter frowned. “You seem familiar. Have we met?”

  Scout was at a loss how to answer that honestly. “I don’t believe so.”

  “And your father?” Isabella asked.

  “He passed away.”

  “So we share that,” Isabella said. “I barely remember him,” she added, nodding at the stone.

  “Your mother?” Scout asked.

  “She’s fine. Did you know her too?”

  “We never met. Is she also visiting?”

  Scout regretted the question as soon as she asked it, but between the date on the marker and this apparition, she was completely off-kilter. She saw the dark shadow flit across Isabella’s face. Scout sensed the long ago pain which caused that; not of Nada’s death, but of his life, who’d he been and one of the reasons he went back: to spare his wife and daughter any more pain living with the raging, abusive alcoholic he’d been.

  “She doesn’t come here,” Isabella said, without any further explanation.

  Scout fumbled in her pocket, pushing aside the satphone Dane had issued, and pulled out her personal iPhone. “Let me give you my number. If you ever need anything, anything, call me.” She rattled off her number and told I
sabella to call her right now, to get her number in the memory.

  Isabella checked it, glanced at the screen. “Scout is a strange name.”

  Your father gave it to me, as he gave you your name, Scout was tempted to say.

  “He was a fine soldier,” Scout said. “I’ll leave you alone. Remember. Call me if you need anything.”

  Why today? Scout wondered as she walked away. Why had Isabella come here today, so many years later? The vagaries of the variables? She didn’t believe it. She could sense Nada. He, his essence, was in a place between life and death. A place out of time. He’d lived in this timeline up until recently, but now this timeline was saying he’d died in 2005. What was in between?

  Scout walked down the row. She paused at the marker for the man Nada had taken down at the cost of his own life:

  CARL COYNE

  OPERATION RED WINGS

  28 JUNE 2005

  BRONZE STAR

  PURPLE HEART

  US NAVY SEAL

  Scout spared one last glance over her shoulder at Isabella standing as still as the stone she was looking at.

  Then the sat-phone’s ringtone interrupted and as she heard it, she began crying as she pulled it out, because it was Keep Me In You Heart.

  She was being Zevoned and the text indicated an aircraft was just two minutes out to pick her and another member of the team up.

  I’ll always miss you, Nada.

  She could feel the words, at the edge of her consciousness, where her ‘Sight’ resided: I miss you too.

  Mac: Old Palace Yard, London

  “GUY FAWKES WAS EXECUTED in the open space directly in front of you,” an obnoxious American tour guide was saying with an over-abundance of semi-knowledge. “Drawn and quartered, a most horrible way to die. And Sir Walter Raleigh had his head chopped off in the same place.”