Guardians of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  Abraham, meanwhile, pressed his back against the corridor wall and faced David. He was very calm, as befitted his training as a doctor used to crisis situations, and his eyes kept flicking from one gun to the other.

  “You don’t want to do this,” David said to Lee.

  “I really think I do,” Lee said. “I didn’t exchange servitude to you for oppression here only to fail now.”

  Judging Lee to be the more dangerous of their two opponents, Darren edged towards Lee, taking a half-step to the right to end up in front of Abraham in order to act as his protector. Dad was closer to Lee than David, a matter of two feet from the gun, which Lee should have known wasn’t a good idea. David sensed his father moving a split second before he did.

  Dad grabbed the barrel of Lee’s gun with his right hand, jerked the gun down and forward to pull Lee towards him, and then popped Lee’s nose with the heel of his left hand.

  A half second later, in a what the hell sort of way, David launched himself at Lee’s accomplice.

  Men with guns should be prepared to aim them, but Lee’s accomplice either viewed the gun as a prop or simply didn’t expect David make a move on him. As David rushed forward, the gun went off. David felt the bullet whistle by his left ear, but it didn’t hit him, and then David was close enough to grasp the man’s right wrist with his own right hand and twist it.

  The accomplice released the gun, which David caught in his left hand. Still holding the terrorist’s wrist at a brutal angle, David levered the man to the floor, kicking his left knee as he did so, and said, “Get down on the ground and put your hands behind your head.”

  David had never shot a gun in his life, but as Lee’s accomplice fell forward on his face, he held it two-handed like he’d seen on television. David backed away too so there was a good five feet between him and the man on the ground. He wasn’t going to make the mistake both these men had made, which was to get close enough to his victim to have the tables turned on him. David thought it would have been taught in Terrorist 101. Guns were uncommon in Britain, however, so maybe they really hadn’t known—or their nervousness had overcome their training.

  Once the man was on the ground, David glanced again at his father to see how he was faring. He had Lee on his knees, but instead of lying face down, Lee had both hands to his nose, which was pouring blood.

  Dad held Lee’s gun and was pointing it at him. His father had only seen a gun a few times in his life. He’d never held one and certainly never seen one fired, which was the only explanation David could think of as to why his father had taken the chance of getting shot and had moved as he had. He’d saved them, however, so David couldn’t feel bad about it.

  Before David could suggest Darren help out, the MI-5 agent moved swiftly to Dad’s side, took the gun from him, and then kicked at the back of Lee’s knee with his boot. “On the ground.”

  With that, David lifted his chin and tried to make his voice carry, though all the saliva in his mouth had suddenly dried up, and he found himself croaking, “Over here! We’re over here!” He repeated the words in Welsh for good measure.

  It would have been great if Callum had been able to hear him speak, but David wasn’t counting on it. His own ears still rang from the sound of the gun going off in the enclosed space, so even if someone had replied, he might not have heard him.

  He shouted one more time, and then answering calls came from outside the walls. A few seconds later, feet pounded along the stone passage.

  “You okay, Dad?” David said.

  Because of Darren, Dad had backed away from Lee, and now he stood guard over Abraham. “I am.”

  “Abraham?”

  Abraham nodded but didn’t speak. David turned the gun so the butt was towards the doctor. “I need a second.”

  Showing surprise for the first time, Abraham took the gun, his eyes a little wider than usual, and pointed it in the direction of Lee’s accomplice.

  David had to assume that the result of this encounter would be that all of them would spend the rest of the day being questioned by MI-5. He would have preferred to avoid that and silently thanked Callum for insisting that Darren join his party. Even if it took a while to clear everything up, having an MI-5 agent among those subduing a terrorist had to put them all instantly on the side of the angels.

  Still, it would mean no more toilet checking, and they hadn’t even finished this tower, much less the six others. With that worry at the front of his mind, David ducked into the last toilet he hadn’t checked, the one he’d been heading to when they’d been interrupted by Lee. In fact, it was through this doorway that Lee had entered the hallway a moment ago.

  The small room was at the end of a zig-zagging corridor, and this toilet was more intact than some of the others. Looking down it, David couldn’t see daylight. He stuck his hand into the chute, feeling around the stones, his mind more on Lee and his accomplice in the corridor than on what he was doing. Thus, it was a few seconds, as he felt around inside the toilet shaft, before he realized his hand was touching clay.

  Not that it was really clay, of course, but C-4. David hadn’t encountered explosives since that awful day at Dover Castle, but the experience of feeling around inside the toilet shaft at Canterbury Castle, touching the squishiness of the C-4 that felt more like modeling clay than anything else, wasn’t something he’d ever forget.

  David focused on his fingers, feeling around the edges of the block until they touched a cord, which ran downwards. He followed the cord it until it—and David’s fingers—connected with another block of clay. He could just reach it if he bent over fully and stretched his arm as far as it would go down the chute. The awkwardness of the position meant there was no way David could pull the bomb out by himself—and it would be stupid to try anyway, in case the detonator went off when he moved it.

  Fixing in his mind the particular details of what he’d found in order to convey them to the authorities as succinctly as possible, he pulled out his arm and darted down the passage towards the interior corridor. When he reached the doorway, Dad and Abraham were waiting for him, and Dad directed his attention to where two security guards were getting Lee and his accomplice to their feet while Darren talked to them urgently. His badge was closed but still held in his hand.

  “We need to get out of here right now,” David said to his father and Abraham, and then raised the volume of his voice to add, “There’s a bomb in the toilet shaft!”

  David kept his eyes on Lee because—bloody nose or not, hands cuffed behind his back or not—he was going far more quietly than David thought he should be. Lee was violent and spiteful, and even with Darren’s warnings, the two policemen had to be woefully unprepared for what he might do next.

  At David’s shout, Darren spun around, and as long as David lived, he would never forget the look of horror on his friend’s face. While the two guards openly gaped behind him, and Lee’s accomplice glared disdainfully, Darren ran back down the corridor towards David and the others. Meanwhile, the expression on Lee’s face as he looked at David chilled him to the bone. It was a mocking smirk, which turned into an open smile as he turned his back in order to show David his hands cuffed behind his back—and the trigger he held in his hand.

  “You get to be my ticket out of here,” Lee said.

  Fear coursed through David, but instead of freezing him, it gave him clarity and purpose. He didn’t reply. He didn’t protest. Instead, he grabbed Darren’s hand and clapped it on Abraham’s upper arm. “Don’t let go whatever you do.”

  Then he hooked his arms through Abraham’s and Dad’s elbows, spun everyone around so they were facing away from Lee and the guards, and urged them forward. Instinctively, David tucked his arms closer to his body and clasped his hands across his chest so neither Abraham nor Dad had a chance to get loose. Darren by now had one hand on Abraham’s arm and one arm around David’s shoulders and was shoving them forward as he ran behind them, as if he was pushing a giant boulder up a hill.

  Neithe
r Dad nor Abraham protested at the treatment, though one of the policeman shouted, “Hey! You can’t leave!”

  Yes we can.

  Ten feet … twenty feet … they were fifty feet away from the toilet, having made it almost all the way back down the corridor to the Black Tower, when the guard’s echoing call was cut off by the percussive boom that resounded in the corridor almost at the same instant that the force of the explosion pressed Darren into David’s back, and all of them were lifted off their feet and vaulted forward. David hit the wall in front of him full on.

  And fell into utter darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Math

  The easternmost tower of Caernarfon Castle burst upwards and out, raining debris on the whole of the castle square. It was as if a giant fist had punched up through the snow that was falling from the sky, and then collapsed.

  “Christ in heaven!” Math gazed up at the balloon of dust, which was already settling on the ground to be covered by a layer of snow from the swirling blizzard. He hadn’t been with Dafydd when Canterbury Castle had been destroyed, but now he knew something of what it must have been like.

  Horror was etched on Anna’s face, and Math wished she hadn’t been here to see this. Nobody had liked it when Llywelyn, Abraham, and Dafydd had entered the castle, and Math didn’t have any doubt that whatever had made Lee set off the explosion before the Prince of England’s speech, effectively half a day early, Dafydd had been in the thick of it.

  In front of them, people ran every which way, crying and screaming. Security men appeared out of avenue and alley to converge on the castle. Sirens wailed in the distance, and the four of them—Callum, Mark, Anna, and Math—stood and watched from their vantage point over a hundred yards away.

  “What just happened?” Meg’s voice echoed in Math’s ear.

  “The east tower of the castle blew up,” Mark said.

  Math was glad Mark had chosen to talk, because he didn’t know if he could have found the words to answer his mother-in-law. As he stared at the castle, he told himself that he believed with every fiber of his being that if anyone could survive such a blast, Dafydd could. It was whether or not he was close to Darren, Llywelyn, and Abraham when it happened that was the concern.

  “David—” Meg said.

  “They were in the castle when it went up. That’s all we know.” Callum spoke clearly and without emphasis or inflection. “We can’t raise any of them on their mobiles.”

  “We couldn’t earlier because of the stone walls, and now it’s what you’d expect if they were caught in the middle of an explosion,” Meg said reasonably. “They would have traveled home.”

  The lump in Math’s throat was huge, but he managed to agree with Meg around it. “That’s right. Of course they would. Dafydd would have seen to it.”

  Anna, who was white as a sheet, had her phone in her hand. She was dialing Dafydd’s number alternately with Llywelyn’s. Math slipped an arm around her waist and bent so that his chin was almost on her shoulder. He wanted to be able to hear if one of them answered.

  When neither did after another round of tapping at the screen, he said, “You don’t need to do that, Anna. Dafydd will either let us know he and Llywelyn are fine, or he won’t be able to let us know because they aren’t here anymore.”

  “What should we do, Callum?” Cassie said.

  Callum cleared his throat. “Stay where you are for now. I don’t want you getting stuck some place you can’t get out of. The only vehicles that are going to be able to get close any time soon are either security or emergency. I imagine Tate is going to want to speak to me sooner rather than later. I’m going to send Anna, Math, and Mark to you. Get some food. Try to rest. I will stay here to help.”

  “But—” Cassie started to protest again.

  Callum gentled his voice. “Give me a chance to find out what’s happening.”

  “Okay,” Cassie said.

  “I’m staying with you,” Math said to Callum.

  Anna looked up at him, her expression stricken, and she clung to his hand. He didn’t like the idea of being separated from her either. Given the way the time traveling seemed to work, another explosion in Anna’s vicinity could send her home. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck here without her while she took the others to the Middle Ages. But he needed to be the one to find Dafydd’s body if it was in the rubble to be found.

  He put a hand on Anna’s shoulder. “Do you know how to get to the Tesco?”

  “We do,” Mark said.

  Math wasn’t sure that Anna was aware of anything but what was going on in her own heart, but Mark had shown himself to be more than capable many times in the last year. And Callum was right that they couldn’t be searching for signs of Dafydd and Llywelyn in the destroyed castle with Anna beside them. Beyond the personal loss, Math knew as well as Callum what a disaster it would be for Britain to lose the King of England and the King of Wales on the same day.

  “Keep us apprised if you run into trouble,” Callum said to Mark.

  “Will do.” Mark gestured for Anna to come with him.

  Anna clung to Math, her arms around his neck, and he gave her a quick hug and kiss. “We’ll take care of this,” he said.

  “What about Abraham and Darren?” Anna said. “What am I to tell Rachel?”

  “That her father has reached the Middle Ages like he wanted, and she has only to join him,” Callum said, “by the end of the day if we can manage it.”

  Then the pair set off east towards the Tesco.

  Callum nudged Math as he watched them go. “They’ll make it fine.”

  “I know,” Math said. “If Dafydd and Llywelyn were in that tower when it blew up, however, Anna may never be fine again.”

  “You doubt they would have traveled?” Callum said.

  Math took in a breath. “I have utter faith in Dafydd, but what if he wasn’t holding onto his father at the time?”

  The thin lines around Callum’s mouth deepened. “I wasn’t going to mention such a possibility out loud.”

  “We have always spoken the truth to each other,” Math said. “Let’s not start lying now.”

  “No,” Callum said. “Especially not now.”

  Emergency vehicles had started arriving in the square, and a host of people were streaming into and out of the castle. Though only a short while had passed since the explosion, the chaos was coalescing into something slightly more organized. Caernarfon Castle had lost one tower, which was disastrous, but the bomb hadn’t brought the whole thing down and couldn’t have killed that many people. Math was almost more concerned for the people who’d been standing outside the castle in the square, who could have been felled by the flying debris.

  Callum moved several yards along the walkway so he could see the northern castle entrance more clearly. He grunted his disapproval. “They should be stopping and questioning every person who was in the castle, but they aren’t.”

  “Can you blame anyone for wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible?” Math said.

  “No, but Tate should have been better prepared.”

  “He wasn’t in charge of the Prince of Wales’ security, was he?” Math said. “If he was only marginally interested in your toilet theory, he may not have passed it on immediately. Perhaps he was waiting to speak to you in person.”

  “I hope he’s taking it seriously now because we don’t want what happened when the twin towers fell to happen here,” Callum said.

  “What happened then?” Math said.

  Callum turned to him. “In 2001, terrorists flew airplanes into two sky scrapers—which are enormously tall buildings—in New York City. Emergency personnel entered the building, in order to save people and put out the fires, and were subsequently killed because nobody was prepared for the towers to collapse in the aftermath of the crashes.” Callum grimaced. “Though in this case, I’m more concerned about a second explosion.”

  “It would be good to know why this bomb went off,�
� Math said. “If it was the only one, that would not correlate with Lee’s previous methods.”

  Callum’s phone sounded, and he looked at it. “Tate.” He pressed talk and then another button, which Math knew by now meant he’d activated the speaker.

  He and Callum huddled close to listen.

  “Callum, I need you here. Now.”

  “Director Tate,” Callum said. “It’s good to hear your voice. I’m glad you weren’t in the tower when it went up.”

  Tate tsked under his breath. “Where are you?”

  “Outside the castle,” Callum said. “We saw it happen. Where are you?”

  “Inside. I was near the front gate.”

  “How can I be of service?” Callum said.

  “A moment ago, I was informed that a security guard heard a gunshot in the Queen’s Tower before the explosion and ran with his partner to the scene. He radioed in that he found one of our agents, Darren Jeffries, standing over a man he identified as Lee Delaney along with a second terrorist. Jeffries had subdued them both. The two guards were in the process of bringing everyone in for questioning when the tower exploded.”

  “You need to know that when I last spoke to King David and King Llywelyn, they were heading towards that tower,” Callum said. “Did the guard mention the presence of anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “I hope you’re searching all the toilets now,” Callum said.

  “We are.” Tate paused before adding, “Most of the tower ended up in the square. We’re looking for bodies now.”

  “That’s pretty quick, isn’t it?” Math said to Callum, as an aside. “Isn’t everything on fire?”