Written in Time

by Jerry Ahern

  “You six gentlemen will accompany Alan and myself into the future. It’s quite safe, the process of traveling from here to there. Once we get there we’ll have our work cut out for us.” Jack lit a cigarette and said something he’d always wanted to say ever since he’d seen his first war movie. “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.”

  Exhaling smoke through his nostrils, Jack continued. “There will be an indeterminate number of hostile personnel at our arrival point in the future. They will be well-armed, but by that time so will you, trained as well as we can manage in a matter of hours rather than weeks in the use of these sophisticated weapons. The sole purpose of our mission is to get Alan access to certain pieces of equipment—machinery, if you will. In order to do this, we must kill everyone at the arrival point. Everyone. No prisoners, no woundings. Just death. Then Alan will operate the machinery that will return us to this time, to our present. We will bring with us a few items, if they are available. Alan will then destroy the machinery so that it can never be used again.

  “As time goes by,” Jack said, realizing the irony of his words only as he spoke them, “the six of you will learn why we are doing this. You’ll be risking your lives, so you have that right. If any one of you wishes to back out, now is the time. Once you’ve touched one of these weapons—” Jack hefted the H&K MP-5 submachine gun again—“begun to learn why this mission is of such grave importance to the Republic and to the world, there will be no backing out. I’ll add that no one will think the less of you should you choose to decline this mission. Unlike a lot of things in the Army, this genuinely is for real volunteers.”

  Second Platoon, Company B of the Seventh had volunteered as if one single organism when the call went out while they ate their dinner. These six—Jensen, Armitage, Goldstein, Harek, Luciano and Standing Bear— were decreed the best qualified. Jensen—short legs, thick chest and stocky build—was both the regimental boxing champion, with the semi-toothless grin to prove it, and, as his stature indicated to the experienced eye, the perfect human firing platform, he was the best rifleman in B Company. Armitage, Goldstein, Harek (his Turkish-origin name somewhat badly Anglicized) and Luciano were all standup troopers. Standing Bear was a full-blooded Cheyenne, his father and grandfather among the men who had handed the Seventh Cavalry one of the Army’s worst defeats twenty-four years earlier at the Little Big Horn.

  None of the six moved to leave.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  Teddy Roosevelt was trapped by his responsibility as the mission commander, marshalling men and materiel for the anticipated assault on the firepower demonstration Jack had guessed might be held near Groom Lake, the part of Nevada that would become known as Area 51. Superfluously, Roosevelt had said, “I wish I were going with you.”

  The Seventh had moved out, ridden until mid-morning, stopped to rest and feed their animals, then ridden on, minus its six volunteers, Jack and the six men staying behind. David, Clarence, Alan and Ellen rode with Lieutenant Easley’s troop, guiding them toward the time-transfer base.

  A picket line was set out for the mounts Jack and the six volunteers had ridden and the spare mounts that would allow them to catch up with the others; all fourteen of the animals were hobbled, lest the unfamiliar mechanical noises of the submachine guns spooked them.

  The quick course in the HK MP-5 submachine gun commenced.

  With the six men seated in a semicircle on their ground cloths, Jack covered operational characteristics first. “The MP-5 is a radically improved version of the basic concept of a submachine gun, meaning a weapon which fires multiple rounds with one single pull of the trigger and is chambered for a handgun round rather than a rifle cartridge. It’s a delayed blowback, meaning that the gas which is generated when the cartridge is fired is used to push the bolt back. This action expels the empty brass remaining from the bullet being fired and introduces a new round into the chamber from the box magazine as the bolt comes forward.” Jack held up the magazine. “The HK system incorporates a delay, brought about by a two-section bolt utilizing rollers. What all this means is that the gun works reliably, fires fast until you run out of ammunition in the magazine and is accurate in the extreme. The accuracy is in part due to the fact that, unlike most submachine guns, the MP-5 fires from a closed bolt, something you guys can parallel to the idea of the breech being closed on the old trapdoor Springfield rifles. If the breech had to close as the hammer fell, that added force would inhibit accurate shot placement.

  “We will have a goodly supply of ammunition soon, we hope, when we capture the Lakewood base in this time, but for now we have scavenged all of the 9mm Parabellum ammunition from the bodies of the men to whom these weapons belonged, in order to feed these four submachine guns. I will have one of these weapons, the remaining three going to three of you. Soon all six of you will have ones like these.

  “This particular variant is the SD model, meaning it has an integral sound suppressor. When you fire the weapon, most of the noise of the cartridge will be swallowed up. You don’t have to worry about that. Only the mechanical noises from operation will remain, for the most part. The empty cartridge cases will be spit out. These particular models do not have what is called a burst control, meaning that they can only be fired full-automatic and semiautomatic, which means that a single shot only is fired with each pull of the trigger. This magazine holds thirty rounds. After all thirty rounds have been fired, you’ll have to change magazines in order to continue making the weapon go bang!”

  His previously stonily silent students laughed, the first reaction he had from them. He’d have to remember to use the word bang often.

  Jack progressed to field-stripping, clearing stoppages and operation of the fire selector, warning the men, “Until you become proficient with these weapons, I want you to consider that there are only two positions on this lever, not three. When you’re not going to be shooting for a while, put the weapon aside or must accomplish some particularly difficult physical activity, set it on safe. When you’re using the weapon, keep it in the position for semiauto.”

  A check to his leather-cased Rolex showed him that he had about another fifteen minutes he could use before it would be imperative to get the men mounted. Jack started with Jensen, the boxer and marksman.

  In all, there were twelve magazines for the submachine guns, and, by using the pistol ammo, he’d been able to have all twelve magazines fully loaded.

  It would be prudent to expend only thirty rounds on familiarization-firing, a woefully insufficient amount under the circumstances . . . .

  Jack led the six volunteers into the mountains. Each man led his spare horse, keeping their animals at an easy gallop. Jensen, Luciano and Standing Bear had won the toss with the submachine guns. Each man had three magazines, plus a few loose rounds. Additional weapons and ammunition would have to be scavenged from the bodies of the men at the time-transfer base. Hopefully, they had a lot of it.

  Timing would be a total crapshoot, yet its criticality inestimable. The fate of humanity, as it likely had before and would again, hung on sheer guesswork. Logic dictated that Kaminsky or her chief henchmen would not care to drag a modern motor home across a good hundred fifty miles of some of the roughest terrain to be found in North America. Nor would people comfortably used to central heat and air, running water and the like go out of the way to travel so well beyond the reach of the amenities they’d gone to such trouble to bring back to this time.

  Therefore, Jack hoped, the grunts with the tanks and armored personnel carriers and Humvees and old Jeeps and anything else would set out for the site of the firepower demonstration before the big shots did. The big shots most likely would not travel by VSTOL jet, but by helicopter.

  The aircraft were the crucial element in the equation.

  If they were on the ground, victory was possible; if they were airborne, or got that way, the battle and mankind’s future was likely lost.

  Judicious use of the remounts allowed Jack and the six volun
teers to overtake Lieutenant Easley’s column at almost exactly the same time that it reached the dismount point, before beginning the forced march to the time-transfer base.

  Ellen, hatless as usual, one hand resting on the butt of one of her sixguns, walked forward. “You guys were pretty good in the timing department, Jack.”

  “Sheer skill at horsemanship,” Jack responded, smiling as he dismounted and handed off the reins of his horse to one of the volunteers.

  There was no fire; there were no torches. The only light was that of the nearly full moon, low on the western horizon. But it was enough, the night sky otherwise clear. Jack Naile took his wife into his arms. “I don’t suppose you’d wait here with the men Easley will leave behind to watch the horses and equipment.”

  “You ‘don’t suppose’ correctly. I’ll be fine. I’ll stick with you.” Ellen patted his cheek, then leaned up and kissed his lips lightly. “Are your volunteers ready for the mission?”

  “As ready as they can be to go ninety-six years into the future on a murder raid against a heavily armed force of killers with vastly superior firepower. Sure, they’re ready. You are aware of the fact that you’re not coming with us there? Right? Please?”

  “I’ve thought about that a lot. Sure, somebody has to keep things organized here. But it can be somebody else.

  Just don’t let anything happen to that time-transfer junk so we don’t make the kids orphans just yet. I don’t want you trapped there and I’m trapped here. So, I’m going. Whatever or wherever happens, it’s going to happen to us both.”

  Jack couldn’t argue with that. All of their lives, since their marriage, they had done everything possible to always be together. He’d never actually counted, but a rough guess was that they’d spent perhaps as few as twelve nights apart from each other, certainly no more than twenty. For one of them to be somehow alive in the future and one alive in the past wouldn’t be living at all.

  “You stick beside me like glue unless I tell you otherwise. Got it?” Jack demanded.

  Ellen took a half step back and feigned a salute. “Got it.”

  “Let me show you how one of these MP-5 subguns works, kiddo,” Jack began.

  Staying just outside the perimeter alarms, Jack wished he had night-vision optics. Standard binoculars had to do. What he saw as he scanned Lakewood’s time-transfer base below him was unmistakable, regardless of the less than perfect lighting.

  Perhaps realizing that an attack on the time-transfer base might be imminent, someone had installed something new. “Dad, those weren’t here when Clarence and I were up here last.”

  “I figured you would have mentioned them, David.”

  Jack had never seen anything like the objects of his attention. They were smallish-looking guns, each mounted with a double drum magazine, the guns set on sturdy-seeming mounts at approximately chest height. Fixed atop each of the guns, scopelike, was what appeared to be a miniaturized video camera. Cables trailed across the ground from each of the guns—a half-dozen, set strategically, ringing the time-transfer base—connected to what appeared to be individual power supplies.

  “If those do what I think they do,” David remarked, “we’re in trouble.”

  “They probably do and we very well might be,” Jack told his son. “However, we’ll have to cope.” In this case, “cope” would translate into he wasn’t quite sure what.

  “The guns fire automatically?” Lieutenant Easley said, repeating what Jack had just told him.

  “I believe that to be the case, Lieutenant, yes,” Jack responded. Jack, Ellen and Lieutenant Easley crouched well back from the perimeter of rock that allowed the overlook on what could accurately be described as the enemy position: the time-transfer base. “There’s something analogous to a camera, something well in advance of this time. The camera is linked to or incorporated with a small computer, which is a machine which cannot think, but can perform many functions much like a human mind, and many times faster. The computer can be programmed, I believe, to start the individual gun shooting once it has acquired a predetermined target, meaning a human or possibly animal intruder. Each gun will have been programmed to cover a specific field of fire, just like a human marksman in an infantry defensive context. The guns will be able to move right and left, up and down, will continue firing until the target has been neutralized—met a predetermined set of conditions programmed into the computer—or, until the ammunition supply is exhausted. The double drums which serve as magazines are probably .223 caliber, the current service rifle caliber from our time. If that is the case, each drum will hold fifty rounds, for a total of one hundred rounds per gun. They—the guns, I mean—are probably preset to three-round bursts for every electronic tripping of the trigger mechanism. Potentially very deadly as we try to penetrate the time-transfer base perimeter.”

  Lieutenant Easley spoke. “If I may interrupt, Mr. Naile, I’ve heard mentions of time-transferring and the future, regarding the six volunteers and now these guns. I know this is a highly secretive mission, but—”

  “McKinley’s people didn’t tell you much of a damn thing, did they, Lieutenant?” Jack posited. “Just that you’d be briefed as appropriate, I imagine. Give the lieutenant the barebones version of this, Ellen.”

  Ellen started with, “We’re from the future, and your six volunteers will be traveling to the year 1996 with us as soon as we knock out the resistance at the facility we’re about to attack. On the plus side, the jet-fighter aircraft and the helicopter—flying machines—haven’t gone airborne yet.”

  Outside of seeing it in a motion picture or on television, or reading about it in a book, Jack Naile had never actually seen someone’s jaw drop—until he saw Lieutenant Easley’s drop.

  The original plan had been to ignore electronic countermeasures and simply storm the time-transfer base by force, using what would appear to its defenders to be a frontal assault while, in fact, a second element of Lieutenant Easley’s force would accomplish a flanking movement that would become an envelopment.

  The objectives were two, both equally important. First was to gain control of the time-transfer capsule to deny the accomplishment of a time-transfer that could alert Lakewood Industries’ forces in the objective future that there was trouble and to bring high tech reinforcements.

  The second objective was to sabotage the VSTOL and helicopter aircraft so that they could not get off the ground and be used to interdict either or both attack elements.

  Because of the present physical layout of the base, however, both objectives could be attacked as one. Upon inspection of the time-transfer facility from their observation vantage point, it was determined that the two VSTOL aircraft had been moved to within the fenced area surrounding the time-transfer capsule. So had the helicopter. On the plus side, all of the surface fighting vehicles were absent.

  Except for the computer-regulated guns, a full-scale assault was still the plan, because it was the only workable one, since no means were at hand to disable any motion or heat sensors positioned as part of an alert system. The key to the problem, Jack concluded, was to deal with the guns—somehow—and go ahead with the attack before random chance kicked in and the time arrived for the aircraft to lift off. It seemed logical—but, unprovable except in the doing—that the guns would accept the fact that an adversary was terminated and no longer classifiable as a target when the intruder dropped below a certain artificially designated horizon line—fell down dead or wounded. If that were the case, in theory it would be possible to crawl along the ground beneath this horizon line without creating the conditions that would precipitate the guns being activated. The only trouble with that idea, if indeed such functional characteristics as he imagined were, valid, was getting past what heat, motion and other types of sensors were part of the extended perimeter defense and were likely also linked to the guns and would set them to firing.

  Getting past these sensors was impossible, given the constraints of time and technology.

  The guns we
re mechanical sentries. To get past sentries, it was often necessary to disable them permanently. The only remaining option was to “kill” the guns themselves with a shot to the brain.

  “Do you think, Corporal Jensen, that you and the five best marksmen in your platoon can each hit the respective target simultaneously?” Jack asked as he pointed over the rocks toward the six computer-controlled guns. “The greatest distance looks about two hundred fifty yards. You’d have to hit the little boxlike affair on top of the gun, maybe using the red diode—that’s a light—as an aiming point.”

  “Simultane—what you said—means all at the same time, don’t it, sir?”

  Despite their desperate circumstances, Jack found himself smiling. “Yes, Corporal. That’s what simultaneously means, true enough.”

  “I make the longest away of them guns at two hundred and eighty yards. Them box things with that there red light, they looks to be steel or iron.”

  “Probably neither, because of the weight. Most likely, a relatively thin material your rifle bullet shouldn’t have any trouble penetrating. Can you and five other guys hit reliably at that range with those .30-40s of yours? That’s the question.”

  “Yes, sir.” And the stocky corporal slapped the for end of his Krag-Jorgensen rifle for emphasis.

  Private First Class Wallace Standing Bear, one of the lucky winners in the first round of the submachine gun sweepstakes, would, along with Jensen and the other marksmen, be part of the “aircraft interdiction unit.” Jack had drawn a crude picture of an airplane in the dirt and, by match light, pointed out things like landing gear, fuel pods, cockpit bubbles and the like. The second-element marksmen had the task of crippling whatever aircraft they encountered by the only means available—accurate rifle fire to vital components.

  With all necessary watches synchronized to his Rolex, Jack watched the seconds tick by. Six shots would be fired in precisely forty-two seconds. For good or for bad, since there would be no time to verify whether or not the bullets of the marksmen had struck their targets, the assault would begin immediately.