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"Get into the truck," Dan said quietly. "This'll take about ten, fifteen minutes."
Another time storm was already begi
Charlie nodded. He was grateful neither man followed him. Lucania drooped across his shoulder, watching Collins and McKee and even the truck with curiosity.
Modern clothing felt unbelievably alien. The combat boots were a little snug, but not bad. The trousers felt oddest of all. He twisted his lips in a wry grimace. It'd taken months to get used to going without them. Now they felt weird. He shook his head and finished getting dressed, then snagged both parkas. He bundled up Lucania in one of them, tying the sleeves shut around her. Then he swung the truck tailgate shut. Collins and McKee were staring out at the triremes.
"It's still hard to believe," McKee was saying. "a.d. 79..."
"Be thankful you didn't wake up here in chains," Charlie growled. "It's not an experience I'd recommend."
"Where did you injure that leg?" McKee asked quietly.
"In the arena," he answered shortly. His whole ma
Collins shivered and looked ill.
Collins, Charlie pegged as a bureaucrat. Good at his job, probably, or Carreras wouldn't have bothered to keep him. But not exactly a line officer. McKee... McKee looked like he might possibly understand some of what Charlie had been through. More than time was etched into that craggy face.
Neither man pressed him for details. They divvied up the weapons between them, then stood beside the truck and watched the time storm brew. The short hairs on the back of Charlie's neck prickled. He understood, now, why Sibyl had been so u
At least his daughter was safe. As safe as he could make her. Was he doing the right thing, risking her life going after Carreras? Stupid question. Would you rather keep her here, to grow up as a slave? When lightning began crackling down into the beach sand, Collins said, "Let's be ready for it, shall we?"
They piled into the truck. McKee drove by unspoken consent. The engine, left at idle, had died. McKee pumped the accelerator and restarted it. Charlie held his breath until it actually fired up, McKee nursed it on idle while they waited. Charlie watched ahead while McKee kept watch inland. Collins watched the big side mirror. About three minutes later, Collins said, "It's behind us."
McKee gave the big truck some gas and turned it around on the narrow beach. The doorway slid eerily open ahead of them.
"Well," Charlie muttered, "here goes nothing. Pray, if you believe in anything." He clutched Lucania and swallowed hard.
The truck roared ahead into the light.
Logan felt like he might possibly be getting used to this. The disorienting drop through nothingness still turned his belly inside out, but at least he knew what to expect. He gripped the steering wheel hard enough to leave his knuckles white.
The truck jounced.
We're through—
They skidded madly across a slick surface.
"Shit!"
Logan fought the skid and tried to straighten out the wheels, only to have the truck spin in crazy circles. Charlie yelled. Collins swore. Logan fought the wheel. He managed to counteract the spin, then Collins yelled.
"Look out—!"
They lurched sideways off a low dropoff. The truck skidded backwards at least five yards, spun around sideways, then slammed into a solid wall of ice. Collins grunted as he bashed against the door. Charlie fell sideways, ending up in Collins' lap, with a serious threat of falling all the way to the floorboards. His kid wailed in terror. As Logan threw in the clutch and kept the engine going, Collins managed to rescue Charlie from his dangerous slide and righted him in the seat. A miniature avalanche of brittle snow and ice chunks cascaded across hood and windshield.
The silence that followed was deeply ominous. The only sound outside the truck's engine and the little girl's sobs was a howling wind that rattled through the big truck's frame and shrieked past the doors.
"Well," Collins muttered. "So far so good."
"Oh, really?" Logan sat forward and glared at him past Charlie's shoulder.
Collins shrugged. "We're not on the backside of the moon."
"Yeah," Logan agreed dourly. "I'll give you that, Colonel. At least we've got oxygen to breathe. But where the hell are we? There's nothing out there. Or hadn't you noticed?"
He punched the windshield wipers to underscore his sour observation. The wipers scraped and groaned across the glass, shoving snow and ice chunks aside. Beyond, Logan saw more snow and ice and a towering mountain off to their right. In the distance, beyond its flank, was another range of mountains and a solid wall of ice at least a mile high.
Where'n hell are we? The heat inside the passenger compartment had vanished as though sucked out through a soda straw. Logan was already shivering. Charlie reached wordlessly for the heater controls and turned up the fan full blast. His little girl sniffled a few more times, then quieted.
"Well," Collins leaned forward, "if this jump worked, then we're back in Alaska. Way back."
Logan tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Like, say, thirty thousand years back? Where the hostages are?"
Charlie whipped his head around to stare. "Thirty thousand years?"
Whoever he was, Charlie could be rattled. Logan began to feel better. Their mysterious guest unsettled him, and not just because he'd succeeded in bashing Logan over the head.
Collins' jaw came up defensively. "That's how the jump was programmed. I can't change that once it's been set. If it even worked right. The last one didn't. We ended up on the other side of the planet and about two thousand years off. Probably because Carreras is screwing around with the time stream so much, slippage is worsening. Was there another time doorway opened anywhere near you recently?"
For some reason, that question drained the blood from Charlie's face. He shut his eyes. "Yeah." It came out raspy, like the wind outside. "At Herculaneum. A few hours ago."
Logan wondered just what had happened on the beach at Herculaneum. Charlie's face was pinched, the cheeks and brow so pale his face looked more like parchment over bone than sun-darkened skin.
Collins saw it, too. He glanced out the window and said quietly, "That's it, then. Slippage opens cracks in the time–space continuum all around a doorway, letting things fall through. Things like McKee. That's how he got mixed up in this. My guess is, the more we use the portals, the more cracks we open, and the more cracks there are, the likelier we are to punch sideways through one of them and end up in the wrong place. Dr. Gudekinst worried about that, early on." He swore softly. "What I wouldn't give to have Sue Firelli along, or Zac Hughes. Maybe one of them could figure out a solution."
"You can't?" Logan asked.
"Me? Hell, no. I'm just an engineer. They're the brains on this project."
"Huh," Charlie said. Collins had given him the time he needed to pull himself together. "Well, I guess I'd rather freeze a free man... ." But he tightened his arms around his little girl. "It's possible more than one time doorway was opened near Herculaneum. Tony Bartelli," the name came out knife-edged, "has been there more than once. Probably setting up the scam to get the manuscripts in the first place, then again to kill—"