by Fred Holmes
“If he screws up this escape, I’ll kill you and him!” said Traweek. “Understand? We don’t have any time left for mistakes, spells, or any of that crap.”
“How are we going to line up? Who’s going first?”
“I’ll go first,” said Traweek. “Rummy will come right behind me, and then Crawford. That way, we can sandwich him in and keep an eye on him. The rest will follow in pairs.” Traweek looked at Maul. “You go next and we’ll pair up in order of joining.
“Putegnat, you go with John and then Malone and Jackson. Templin will be with Scruggs. Shelton and Bensen will bring up the rear. Scruggs, I’m going to leave it to you to keep them moving. No dilly dallying. Once we start the escape, there’s no turning back. Once we’re out of the tunnel, we’ll meet at the church. The one where we can see the steeple from the stockade. If anything goes wrong, everybody is on his own. If you get caught and brought back, don’t tell them who escaped or any of our plans. If you do, I will hunt you down and kill you if it takes the rest of my born days. Everybody understand?”
They each said a silent prayer asking for help from the heavens above, even Rummy.
After what seemed forever, Traweek and Crawford quickly removed the sod. They had removed the dirt earlier, so they only had to pull up the boards.
As soon as they were out, Traweek let himself down into the tunnel. “Here we go!” He tucked his legs back into a hollowed-out area that allowed them to put their head and torso into the main shaft. At this point, he lit a candle and used his elbows and knees to squirm his way forward toward freedom. As soon as he got well into the tunnel, he turned on his side. “Come on Rummy.”
Rummy followed Traweek’s technique. But when he started to move up the narrow shaft, it was pitch black, and he was overcome with a horrible wave of anxiety.
“I can’t do it! I need a candle. I’m going to be sick.”
“You got to go,” said Traweek. “If you don’t move, I’ll have Crawford stick his knife in your ass and keep doing it until you move.”
“Wash, I gotta have a candle.”
“We only had enough for every other man, so pull it together. Be strong.”
Crawford had just started. “Here, take mine. But hold the candle so I get a little light. Move it, Rummy! We need to pick up the pace.”
Once he could see, the anxiety subsided. He found a rhythm and was able to keep up with Traweek.
It seemed like an eternity, but Traweek finally stopped.
“Psst! I’m at the end. I’m going up to see what’s outside. When I say go, come out quickly.”
They waited and finally, Traweek stood up. The vertical shaft was dug up to the sod. He pushed the sod up gently and then pulled himself up until his head felt the cool breeze.
“Half past three o’clock and all is well,” called a Union Sentry close by.
He froze and waited as the Sentinel continued walking his post, away from their stairway.
Traweek reached in and grabbed Rummy by the collar. “Hurry,” he whispered and jerked him out of the hole. “Get Crawford and tell him to get Maul and spread the word. No church. It’s going to be dawn soon. We need to get out of town. Each pair is on its own.”
Rummy did as he was told and then looked around. They were on a strip of grass between the wall and the city street. The sky was getting light in the East, so the three of them walked casually to the river and waded it. They stayed in the shadows and hiked up and into the mountains.
They made themselves comfortable and watched the sun rise. With the help of a small spyglass, they watched the antics and confusion in the camp from their height on Mount Zoar when the authorities found the tunnel and realized the men had escaped. They also saw the Cavalry looking for them.
They laughed. They had pulled it off. They had escaped from Helmira. Hell would be eleven short this week.
But although the escape was successful, their problems had just begun. They were still a long way from home.
* * * * *
An hour after Dee’s first misadventure to the past, the group of conspirators gathered around the dining room table. Dee was the first to speak.
“Let’s look at that journal, or whatever you called it.”
Lida produced the twelve pages. “Traweek calls it his ‘recollections.’”
She laid the papers in front of Dee and moved very close to him. She couldn’t help herself; it was her nature.
Bunny spied Lida’s move, and her Italian temper started a slow burn. She didn’t say anything, but resolved to watch Lida closely.
“Let me read what he says after they escape, cross the river, and ascend the mountain. We traveled about nine miles the first day, sleeping in a barn at night. The next morning, we went to a house nearby and asked the lady for food and directions. She gave us both but accused us of being escaped Confederates. We, in turn, acknowledged that we were. She then showed us the morning paper telling of the escape. The paper was the first information we received concerning the others.”
“You know what bothers me?” Dee tapped the paper. “There is no mention of Rummy or my first aborted trip, throughout the ‘recollection.’”
“If all goes well, it will be as if Rummy was never there. It’s possible that he couldn’t understand what happened to you, Dee. He might have thought he was going crazy, or people would think he was crazy. It might have been easier to leave it out than try to explain it. Folks were more wary of magic, illusions, and spells back in those days. I wouldn’t worry about it. We just need to get Rummy back.”
“There’s another problem,” said Dee. “If they stick with the original plan and stay in pairs, then Rummy will likely be added to one of the pairs, probably Traweek and Crawford. That would make a three-some. What I planned was to have you put me in or near the house with the woman. I could disable her and then set a trap for Traweek and Rummy. But if Crawford is there, I don’t think I can handle three. They aren’t going to give up easily. They’re tough and determined. I figure Rummy’s been watching their diets, and they’re in better shape than the other prisoners. They won’t be pushovers. I’d have my hands full with two, say nothing of three.”
“How about I go with you?” said Bunny. “I can handle myself.” Bunny wanted to be a part of the operation.
Lida snorted. “You can’t go there! You’ll be naked and, anyway, what can you do? You’re just a woman, and a small one at that.”
Dee eyed the two women. “Don’t worry about Bunny. She has a black belt in jujitsu and, believe me, she can handle herself. We’ll go in while it’s still dark. I’ll go first, tie up the woman, and then find some clothes for myself and Bunny. When Bunny arrives, the two of us will set a trap for the three escapees. Once we have them immobilized, we force feed Rummy his capsule, take ours, and we all return. If we can find a gun, it’ll be even easier.”
“You’re not going to shoot them?
“No, but it will be easier to obtain their cooperation when they’re looking down the barrel of a gun.”
“I’m not sure if I can put you in the farmhouse. We don’t have good coordinates, and we don’t have time to go to New York and get a reading. The house might not even be there in our time. I’ll just have to do some calculations using what information we do have. We can plot a close location on Mt. Zoar and then add the nine miles he mentioned in his recollection. We know there’ll be a barn and a house, and it’ll be the first one they encounter.”
“If you put us any place near the house or the barn in the middle of the night, we can handle the rest. Don’t you think, Bunny?”
“You bet.”
“I can’t think of a better plan.” Lida was glad things were getting settled. “How about you, Erik?”
“It’s iffy,” said Erik. “But I don’t have any better ideas. We’ll have to go with it.”
“Okay, I’ll have to do some programming to change your arrival place and time. Then, I’ll make a couple of return capsules for Bunny. I need about an hour.
Anything else?”
Bunny, Dee, and Erik just shook their heads.
Chapter 12
MIKE STARED at the yellow pad with MOM at the top of each column. He had eliminated nearly all the suspects except for Nina or Lida. Thoughts were running through his head. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of “either, or” … but “and.”
Both? Nina was a genius when it came to tracking down people, so she might have infiltrated SS&G and copped their plans with a sophisticated bug, or she might have gotten to one of the three. What did she have to offer for this information? Sex? Nah, that doesn’t fit. Too big a deal for a sex trade. Money? She wouldn’t personally have the kind of money to buy it. So she must have a money source. He knew he was close, but he was still against the wall, looking for a motive. His phone rang.
“Security. This is Mike.”
“Ralph here. Could you come to my office?”
“Sure. When do you want to see me?”
“How about now?”
“Be right there,” said Mike.
It was a short walk to the head geneticist’s corner office. Mike knocked on the door.
“Come on in and sit. Shut the door, please.”
Ralph sounded a little stiff. Mike shut the door and sat down.
“What’s up?”
“We’ve got a problem. Trixi brought the RTSL login sheets to me this morning.”
“That’s strange. I thought she was supposed to bring them to me.”
“Normally she would, but there was a problem on Friday night. Where were you between seven and seven thirty Friday night?”
Mike had a sinking feeling. “I was either home or on my way there.”
“Well Mike, the RTSL login shows that you were in the RTSL secure storage at seven, and then you logged out at seven-twenty. We just did an inventory of the ancient DNA, and a vial of Civil War DNA is missing.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wish I was. Help me here Mike. What’s going on?”
“Okay, Ralph, but brace yourself.” Mike proceeded to tell Ralph the whole story, from his encounter with Bunny at the bar to Lida’s statement that she had turned the SS&G case over to the FBI.
“And what did the FBI say?”
“My contact didn’t have a record of SS&G’s recent caper in the case files, but there was a memo to keep an eye on them and some other general information. You know, when the FBI keeps an eye on you, they track all your personal information right down to your height, weight, and what you like to eat. Even your brand of cigarettes. In their case, cigars. Stenson smokes imported Cuban cigars. Expensive ones.”
“Mike I’m afraid—”
“Hold up Ralph. I know what you’re about to say, but hear my analysis of the facts so far. Don’t fire me yet.”
“I want to keep you, but if Ginger finds out, it’ll be all over for you, and I’ll be in trouble as well. So … you’d better have something good. Shoot.”
The first thing Mike showed Ralph on his cell phone was the photo of Rummy.
“Where did you get that?”
“I had my suspicions, so I did a search of Lida’s office and found the photo in a locked drawer. The photo tells me something, and, here, let me enlarge it and pull it up so you can see the bottom of the photo. See …see it right there.”
Ralph look closely. “It looks like a couple of drops of water.”
“Maybe not water. How about tears? Maybe Lida is pining for Rummy.”
“Even though ”
“Let’s use an FBI trick, make an assumption, and see where it leads.”
“Okay.”
“What if she decides to go back in time and bring Rummy back. I did a little checking on the Elmira Prison, and there is no way she could go back naked into a stockade with 12,000 men who haven’t seen a woman for months or years. I’ve never seen Lida naked, but from outward appearances, I’ll bet she looks pretty darn good.” Ralph rolled his eyes.
“And as small and slight as she is,” Mike continued, “she couldn’t defend herself. So, I think she’s going to get somebody else to go back and pull Rummy out of Elmira.”
“People don’t believe in time travel. To say nothing about actually taking a trip in time.”
“Well then, how about somebody who knows that time travel exists. In fact, someone who probably has a client who knows that time travel works. Somebody like SS&G. Say they hacked into RTSL, retrieved the RTSL system and PINs. Now all they need is DNA that matches an entry PIN. Once they have the PIN, they plan on going in and nabbing the inert capsule material. They already have the ancient DNA. Nobody knows about it until this, this … I prefer ‘organization,’ maybe even a government, uses it to screw up the world.”
“Wow! Suppose your hypothesis works. Where does Lida come in on this caper?”
“Lida needs Rummy. He’s a powerful executive capable of negotiating a deal with a big company or a foreign power. Love and sex are secondary motives that sound good, but what turns her on is money and power. Rummy gives her access to both. Everybody has a role.”
“What’s the role of SS&G? You said Lida needed someone else to get Rummy?”
“Well, I couldn’t put that together for a while. Until I met two of the three players from SS&G. I understand it stands for Stenson, Sixkiller, and Grimaldi. We can rule out the young woman. She is five foot two, three on the outside, one hundred and ten pounds max. She’s beautiful and well built, and she’s accustomed to running cons. Like the one they did on me. My FBI guy tells me Stenson is a fat slob, albeit a brilliant programmer. He has a condition that gives him anxiety attacks when he ventures outside. Don’t see time travel in his future. He can’t go to a convenience store without having an attack of nerves.”
Mike pulled his chair closer to Ralph’s desk. “That leaves DeWayne Sixkiller; the Cherokee Indian. He’s six foot one, about one hundred seventy-five pounds, with a history of violence. Minor stuff. You know, beating people up, bar fights. He doesn’t handle booze well. Also a great tracker. A regular will-o-the-wisp. Our little friend, Bunny, pulls nothing without Dee having her back. Not sure if it’s romantic; I didn’t pick up on any pheromones. More like brother and sister. Now, you throw Lida’s two goons in the mix and, BINGO, you got Dee going back to get Rummy while Vinnie and Bruno keep little Miss Bunny out of action. They can also take care of Erik if he should get involved.”
Ralph’s eyes lit up, and then dimmed. “I still have one problem …”
“I know what you’re going to say. My wife, Lorna, brought it up. How did Lida know they were going to pull the con at the Country Club? I don’t have a definitive answer, yet. I think Nina Rains had something to do with it. She has the Means and the Opportunity. All I have to find to tie her in is Motive.”
“That could be anything.”
“Not as many variables as you might think. Most motives show up as money, sex, power, or some combination of the three. Sometimes, because it’s frequently hidden, motive is hard to find, and it takes some time to bring it to light. That brings me to my request. Give me some time. I know I can figure this out. Give me a week, and if my theories blow up, I’ll take the heat.”
Ralph thought for a minute. “Okay, Mike. You got your week. But if the deal goes bad, I will throw you to Ginger’s claws.”
Mike leaned forward to get up from the chair and felt his sweaty shirt peel from his back. He stepped through the door, and the air conditioner blew a cold gust of air on his back. He shivered, and then shivered again.
The second time wasn’t the air.
Chapter 13
DEE ARRIVED in some thick brush about nine miles south of Mt. Zoar. Without a watch, he could only have faith in Lida’s ability to program the Remote Temporal Synchronous Link system. She had aimed for three-ish, and he thought she was close. Early gloom obscured the farmhouse and barn. He shivered in the cold dew as he waited for Bunny to arrive. Soon, the brush cracked and creaked, and she appeared in the undergrowth a few yards from hi
m.
“Dee? Dee?”
“Shh, I’m right here. Be quiet.”
“I’m freezing.”
“Follow me. We’ll find the farmhouse.”
They left the brush and came upon a grass field. A barn and house soon appeared as shadows in the blackness.
She whispered. “That’s got to be it. It’s so quiet here, you can hear every sound. Pitch black, too. Hard to believe it’s 1864. I feel like I’m in a different world.”
“You are, believe me. I’m not going to be able to see from this far away. Stay here, and I’ll go up to the house and scout it out.”
“Okay, but I’m really cold.”
“Stay tough. I’ll be back.”
He moved silently to a small house, typical of the era, with a front door, a rear door, and only a few windows. The fireplace puffed weakly, feeding tinder to start its work day cooking and battling the Allegheny cold. He moved to the window and listened, then crawled to the other windows and put his ear to them as well. Then, he returned to Bunny.
“We’re going to wait here for a while. I think there’s a husband and wife in there. He wasn’t there in Traweek’s journal, so the husband must either go to a job or the fields. He should leave soon.”
“‘I’m so cold my teeth are gonna break. I need clothes!”
“Want me to put my arms around you? Might warm you up.”
“I’ll bet. We could try it, but don’t get carried away.”
“Don’t worry. I’m an Indian. We can control ourselves.” He wrapped his arms around her, and she snuggled up to him. After a few minutes, she moved away.
“You’re not doing a very good job as an Indian.”
“Sorry.”
Just then, a light glowed from inside the house, and they could make out faint movements in the kitchen. Dee figured the man was eating breakfast. A short time later, he exited out the front door and went around back of the house to the privy. He didn’t stay in there long before the cold drove him out, and he returned to the house. After a while, he opened the door again, stopped, bent over to kiss his wife on the cheek, picked up a bag, and left.