Nine Eleven, page 15
part #5 of Area 51- Time Patrol Series
“Their army rides on us,” Haight responded. “Do you deny that?”
Turner didn’t respond.
Haight continued. “Brother Young has declared martial law. We did not begin this. We came west seeking peace. We struggled over the high mountains, and we have conquered the desert. The war comes from them, not us.” He gestured in the direction of the Baker-Fancher camp. “How far can we run? How much persecution can we abide? Why won’t they leave us alone? Must we continue going west until we end up in the great Pacific Ocean? They will never leave us alone unless we finally make a stand.”
Someone in the gathering behind Haight called out. “God be my helper, I’ll give my last ounce of strength, and if need be, my life, and those of my family. But I will not give another step in retreat.”
“We must wait on word from Brother Young,” Turner insisted. “The messenger has not had time to get there and return. Patience, brothers.”
“‘Patience?’” Haight said. “What if they try to depart in the morning? Push on to California? We saw them burying their dead. Six or seven. Do you think they will forget that? That they will not swear vengeance and tell a tale to the Federals, whose Army approaches us as we sit here and do nothing? Do you think the Federal soldiers are arguing among themselves? They come here with purpose, and that purpose is to destroy us!”
A murmur of assent rippled through the assembled men. Moms knew a losing cause when she saw it, but apparently, Turner didn’t. Or he was just plain stubborn, a trait of which Moms had been accused once or twice.
“Let us remember our Doctrine and Covenants,” Turner said. “Forty-two-eighteen: ‘He that kills shall not have forgiveness in this world, nor in the world to come.’”
“And we will not give the Gentiles forgiveness,” Haight argued. “I am prepared to feed to them the same bread they have fed to us, more times than we can count. I will shed my last drop of blood in defense of Zion!”
This time, the murmur upgraded to shouts of assent.
“Above all, brethren,” Haight shouted, “let us remember the Oath of Vengeance as it is written in the Nauvoo Endowment! We are all bound to it. ‘You and each of you do covenant and promise that you will pray and never cease to pray to Almighty God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this nation, and that you will teach the same to your children and to your children's children unto the third and fourth generation.’ You have all sworn this Oath. You must fulfill it.”
Moms had seen crowds turn into mobs. This one was getting close. “Let us retrieve Brother Turner,” she said to Lee.
Together, they pushed forward. Moms kept the brim of her hat low and her head down. She reached Turner’s side, with Lee on the other side. They each put a hand on his arms then tugged him back. He resisted briefly, but they got him moving, and the others parted easily, glad to be rid of him.
“Why do you drag me away?” Turner demanded as Moms and Lee got him clear of the mob. “They are prepared to commit murder most foul. We must stop them.”
“Hush, brother,” Lee said.
Haight called out. “We are agreed, brethren?”
A shout of assent.
“You can’t stop it,” Moms whispered to Turner, trying to pitch her voice as masculine as possible.
“Peace, brother,” Lee said. “You tried.”
“You—” Turner began, but Haight’s voice carried over the entire group.
“Brother Lee!”
“Yes, Brother?” Lee replied.
“You will go to the Gentiles in the morning,” Haight ordered. “Convince them to lay down their arms in exchange for safe passage to Cedar City. Tell them we will protect them from the savages. You are then to have them separate, women and children with the wagons. The men are to wait until the wagons depart and allow time between. Then, the men will be escorted off in a different direction, with one of our Brothers next to each Gentile.”
“What of the wounded?” Lee said. “They have—”
“The wounded will be placed in the wagons,” Haight said.
“I would prefer this task fall on someone else,” Lee said.
“I do not care what you would prefer,” Haight said. “If you had done this correctly, we would not need to take such drastic measures.”
“Brothers, I beg you!” Turner cried out. “You must not have this blood on your hands.”
Someone close by stepped up to Turner, and before Moms could react, hit him in the stomach with the butt of his musket. Turner doubled over, gasping for breath. The man with the gun glared at Lee. “Do you continue to disagree?”
Lee shook his head.
Haight continued with the plan. “When I fire, that is the signal. Each Brother will kill the Gentile man next to him. Brother Lee, you will have one squad to help you with the wounded and the wagons. I have already spoken with the savages. They will take care of the women and children.”
“Surely not the children!” Lee protested.
Moms knew he was right. Seventeen would live, the download confirmed, all those under seven. They would be—
Haight’s words cut off the download. “Not a single Gentile is to be left alive. Not a man. Not a woman. Not a child. Not even an infant if it is suckling at its mother’s teat! No survivors!”
Teutoberg Forest, Germania, 11 September 9 A.D.
Roland had been many places, and now to five different times in history, but this was the strangest band of fighters he’d ever joined. Jager was on point with Berta, the old Germanic woman carrying a scythe. Jager was half bent-over, and Roland swore he heard him sniffing at times. Severus and Rufus flanked Roland. Behind them trooped the survivors of Berta’s village: old men, women, and children.
Roland noted the path on which Berta led them was a continuation of the same path the men had been on to join the aftermath of the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest.
Apparently, Severus and Rufus noted the same thing, after about ten minutes.
“We’re heading toward the ambush,” Severus hissed as he came up alongside Roland. “We’ll meet barbarians who just killed my fellows. They won’t stop to listen to that old woman. They’ll butcher us. We need to make our own way out of here.”
To confirm his fear, Jager halted, holding up one fist, the universal military sign to halt. He pointed with his spear to the left. A head was affixed to a tree, a large spike through the skull. Jager went to it then touched it, Berta at his side, as Roland and the two Romans joined them.
“Still warm,” Jager said. “This happened about an hour ago.”
Berta was moving around the tree, searching. A moment later, they heard her grunt, then she returned, pulling a headless, bloody corpse. It had been stripped naked, and further atrocities had been inflicted upon it, whether before or after death, it was hard to determine. “Many of my people will be wearing parts of Roman armor and using their weapons.” She looked at Severus and Rufus. “But none will be wearing all of it, nor correctly. And what they wear will bear the blood of the original owners.”
Rufus got it right away, tossing his helmet aside. He ripped off his red cape then let it fall to the forest floor. He knelt, shoved his hand into a gaping wound in the body’s chest, then pulled the hand out and smeared blood all over his chest plate. He added a few dabs to his face and neck for extra effect.
Severus hesitated, and Roland could sense the soldier’s struggle. The uniform was an integral part of Severus, but the head nailed to the tree indicated a higher order of priorities. The Centurion chucked his helmet into the bushes, then followed Rufus’s example.
Berta called a couple of the old men in her party forward then took their rough cloaks, handing them to the Romans while giving her people the red capes. “Say nothing. Your accents will give you away. Let me do all the talking if we run into my tribesmen.”
They resumed their march. The trail was littered with the refuse of battle, including pieces and parts of fleeing Romans. None of the bodies were intact, and Roland realized this wasn’t much different from what Grendel had inflicted behind them.
“Another half-hour,” Berta advised.
“The tracks are here,” Jager said. He pointed, but in the darkness, Roland couldn’t see anything. Dawn wasn’t far off.
After five minutes, Jager once more gave the signal to halt. Roland moved up to him.
“Someone is coming,” Jager said.
Roland cocked his head, but couldn’t hear anything other than the normal night noises of the forest. Then he picked it up. Heavy breathing, gasping, someone running hard in their direction. Not Aglaeca; the footfalls were too light. A person.
Jager stood, readying his spear. Roland stood at his side, the battle axe ready.
A man came up the trail, half-running, half-staggering, short-haired, the moonlight reflecting off of its silver tint. He had one arm cradled across his chest, and wore only a dirty and tattered tunic.
“Stop,” Jager said.
The man froze, eyes wide. He held up his good arm and lowered his head. “No. Please.”
Berta lifted her scythe, but Severus called out. “No.”
“He’s a coward,” Berta said as they gathered round the Roman survivor.
“He’s more than a coward,” Severus said.
Rufus put the tip of his sword at the man’s neck. “He’s a damn fool, that’s what he is.”
“An officer doesn’t desert his command,” Severus said to the man.
The download confirmed to Roland that the trim on the man’s tunic indicated he was of noble birth.
“Kill him and be done with it,” Jager said. “We have to keep moving.”
“You don’t understand,” Severus said.
“This fellow is our ticket out of here,” Rufus said.
“What are you talking about?” Roland demanded.
Rufus tapped the flat of his sword on the bottom of the man’s chin, forcing him to look up at them. “This here is the great Publius Quinctilius Varus, Governor of Germania.”
Santiago, Chile, 11 September 1973 A.D.
Tower fell to his knees, his mouth working, trying to say something, but all the action produced was red froth through the front of his throat. He still had some fight left, though, as he tried to bring up the .45. Ivar kicked it out of his hand, then stepped out of the way as Tower fell forward into the pool of his own blood on the wood floor.
“Where did you come from?” Ivar asked the woman. She was beautiful, the sort of woman who would have scared Ivar back when he was the Ivar before the Nightstalkers. Thick, dark hair, dark-skinned, deep, soulful eyes, a willowy figure. Exotic. And something else. Something that scared the Ivar now.
She pointed toward an open door on the right side of the room. “I was searching for a way out.”
Dominic ran to her, and she put one arm around him. The other hand held the machete, blood dripping off the blade. Now that he saw the weapon clearly, Ivar realized it wasn’t a machete, but a short sword, the metal reflecting a unique sheen Ivar had seen before: Naga metal.
“Is he the one?” she asked the boy.
Dominic nodded, his head against her stomach.
The woman stared at Ivar, and he felt the strength of that gaze. He took a step back just as a heavy explosion rocked the Palace, followed by the roar of a jet passing overhead.
“How much time do we have?” the woman asked.
Ivar checked the timeline in the download. The first Air Force jets struck at 11:55 AM, local time.
The sound of rifle and machine gun fire echoed in the hallway as Allende and his guards fired back at the surrounding troops. Ivar heard the whoosh of another RPG.
“Not long,” Ivar said. “Then it will be over.” He picked up the .45, then tucked it into his belt, wondering how she had a sword of Naga metal and coming up a myriad of possibilities, none of them good.
She pointed at the door from which she’d emerged. “There are stairs. A fire escape on the first level that exits onto the Plaza. But if you go to the sub-basement, there is a narrow shaft inside on the left, about thirty feet in. Power lines run in it. If you crawl through it, you will end up on the other side of the Plaza, in the State Bank Building sub-basement. You should be able to escape from there.”
Where the contact was, Ivar thought. “What’s your name?” he asked. He realized the download was light on information on Dominic, just a description and that he would be here, with nothing on his mother. Not even a last name for Dominic.
“Esmeralda,” she said. “And you are...?”
“Ivar.”
“And you’ve met Dominic,” she said. The boy had turned around, looking up at Ivar, his mother’s protective arm around his chest. If anything, his gaze was more powerful than his mother’s.
“I have.” Ivar felt a little strange, making introductions with a body still bleeding out right next to them, and the sound of firing and the roar of a jet passing by emphasized this was anything but normal. He indicated the door. “Shall we go?”
Esmeralda shook her head. “I’m not going.”
Another explosion rocked the building.
“You have to come with your son,” Ivar argued, even though history said otherwise.
Esmeralda smiled sadly as she tousled Dominic’s hair. “Why do you think we are all here? You are to take my son away from this place. To his next stage in life. I am to finish my life. President Allende? To make a speech. Often what is important isn’t the here and now, but what is passed down through time.”
“Why didn’t Allende believe Dominic’s warning?” Ivar asked, trying and failing to understand.
“A young boy, a stranger, tells you that everything you lived and worked for will be gone today?” Esmeralda asked. “Would you believe him?”
“Allende knew there was trouble when he came to the Palace this morning,” Ivar said.
“Allende is fueled by hope,” Esmeralda said, “as we all are, but sometimes, the hope is put in the wrong place. That makes it a dangerous thing.”
Ivar shook his head. “Why did you believe Dominic about the coup?”
“Because he is special,” Esmeralda said. “Because he is my son. Because one morning, he warned me that my husband would die later in the day, and I didn’t believe him, and my husband died.”
Abbottabad, Pakistan, 11 September 2012 A.D.
The ringing in her ears blocked out all other noise, but Scout saw flashes from the muzzles of the weapons firing out of the window she’d missed.
They were blindly spraying the alley, not sure who had fired at them out of the darkness.
It wouldn’t take them long to spot her as someone fired a flare.
Scout fumbled with a 40-millimeter round on her vest, which she dropped as she belatedly tried to break open the M-79 and eject the expended casing. She didn’t bother picking the round up. She grabbed another out of the vest, slammed it into the chamber, then flipped the weapon shut.
She aimed more carefully and fired. The round arced right through the opening and detonated.
There were no more muzzle flashes.
What next?
She dropped the grenade launcher, letting it dangle from the lanyard, then drew the pistol. She ran toward the door, the stupid M-79 banging against her legs. They never do that in the movies.
She took a deep breath, then kicked the door to the garbage man’s tiny apartment, and it didn’t budge. Pain roared up her leg from her foot.
“Frak!” She screamed and kicked again, ignoring the Nada Yadda pain is weakness leaving the body, and the door splintered open.
The garbage man had one arm around his wife and the other around his daughter.
He looked surprised to see Scout, but she didn’t have time for his crap, firing at the two men dressed in black behind the trio, their scimitars raised to behead the couple.
One of the bad guys was yelling something, but Scout couldn’t hear a damn thing, not even her own Special Operations pistol firing.
She did violate Nada’s double-tap rule, mainly because those blades were starting to move toward necks. She hit the first guy between the eyes with only one round—That’s good enough—and shifted to the second, double-tapping him—You’re welcome, Nada.
The heavy .45 caliber slugs knocked both back, swords flying out of hands.
Scout walked forward then fired into both, head shots, just in case.
The garbage man was saying something, but Scout still couldn’t hear.
She gestured with the gun, always effective. The family scurried for the door, and Scout focused on the download for directions.
She ran past them—Moving too damn slow, there’s a clock, folks—making the turns as the download indicated, negotiating the maze of alleys and streets. I’m limping, she realized as she made another turn, glancing over her shoulder to make sure the family followed.
No one was in sight. Explosions tend to do that, especially here in Pakistan, where drones are a way of life, or rather death.
She stopped at the edge of a dusty soccer field, her foot throbbing, breathing hard—Really need to work out more and stop smoking—and took a moment to figure out which way was north. It was still dark. The field was surrounded by two- and three-story concrete buildings. The goals were made of PVC, with no net, just a place for kids to play.
The garbage man was looking around, probably for the high-speed helicopter he expected to to whisk them away to freedom.
You wish. Scout dumped the rucksack, tore it open, then pulled the gear out.
The ringing was starting to subside, which allowed her to hear sirens in the distance, or maybe they were close by, how could she tell with frakked-up ears?
Scout indicated for the three Pakistanis to put their arms up by demonstrating.
The family hesitated to comply, and Scout had no time or patience, and her head really hurt. She gave the universal “get your hands up” gesture with the pistol, then holstered it and threw harnesses around each, snapping them shut, with no time to cinch them tight. The kid was scared, and Scout felt bad about that, but it is what it is.
