Jaunt (32 page)

Gilmour dropped his holobook and balled his fists to Delta’s holographic gloved hands. “Get away from there, dammit! Do you want to get yourself killed?!”

Delta continued to ignore Gilmour, instead placing what Gilmour thought was Delta’s right ear to the door, cutting off the special agent’s view of the entrance, leaving in its place an image of the car’s portside wall. For a moment, Delta paused, then bolted away from the door and ran down a narrow corridor between the standing
Strela
s.

“Goddammit, get down! Get down!” Gilmour retrieved his holobook, tapped a green button, then looked to where the gallery’s anteroom cameras would be mounted.

“Rauchambau, is he armed? Do we have clearance to return fire?!”

Over the gallery’s speakers, Rauchambau answered, “Negative, they are not armed. All sidearms are restricted inside Confederation neutronic facilities by UN Resolution fiveoh-two-one-one-nine.”

“Sweet Jesus...goddamned politicians....” Tapping another button, Gilmour patched himself back to Delta. “Give me a heads up, Delta! What’s going down?”

A shaft of light split the darkness in two. Gilmour strained to see a silhouette move into the car at the entrance, swing its head once, take a step, then move back outside, extinguishing the light. Delta then rose and crossed to the entrance a second time.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?! If they stopped the car, they’re coming back! Do you hear me?!” Gilmour tore his eyes away from the holograph and yelled at the holobook’s web connection. “Is this thing fucking on?! Can you hear me?!”

Toggling the holobook’s audio, Gilmour patched himself through to the anteroom again. “Rauchambau, abort him, goddammit! He’s disregarding every command! He’s gonna crash it all!”

“You positive, Agent Gilmour?” Rauchambau asked over the loudspeaker.

“Do it now!”

The holographic image continued despite Gilmour’s protests, just long enough for Gilmour to see a line of Confederation MPs loading on to the engine car through the cargo car’s now open entrance.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Gilmour screamed. Desperate, he clawed at the holograph gallery’s controls. “Rauchambau! Get him the hell out of there!”

To his left, Confederation soldiers charged through the subway cars directly at him and Delta. Now just centimeters away, Gilmour recoiled in helplessness as Delta attempted to block a baton to the chest. Gilmour groaned after Delta was swiped across the head, throwing the holograph spinning and the special agent to the floor with nausea.

Tilting his head, Delta managed one more transmission through a single eye. Gathering like storm clouds, the blue-suited MPs loomed over the fallen Delta, circling briefly before parting and allowing one last image, one that soon seared itself into Gilmour’s brain: a familiar man, in the garb of a Confederation Army officer, reaching down to the special agent before exploding into a shower of static.

A single bellow shattered the gallery’s quiescence: “NICOLENKO!!!”

“It’s all gone to hell!”

Gilmour collapsed onto the floor of his darkened quarters, his hands shrouding his eyes. Alone, time stopped...all was quiet, and his troubles hid in the long shadows, daring not to rouse his ire again. Gilmour’s left hand soothed his chapped throat, raw from the past few hours spent damning the fates.

Folding himself into a ball shielded his body and psyche from the universe; it was almost certain not to work, but the act comforted his mind and distracted him long enough to forget for just a moment.

A solitary knock echoed throughout the sullen room, grudgingly bringing Gilmour upright. Filling his lungs full, he breathed out, then rose and stepped over to the door before fumbling for the handle. “Gilmour. Who is it?”

The drowned-out voiced responded, “Richard de Lis. May I enter?”

Gilmour opened the door, flooding his quarters with a blade of fluorescence. “Pardon the darkness. It seemed appropriate.”

Setting a foot inside, de Lis didn’t hesitate to say “Lights,” ordering the domicile computer to bring illumination to the room.

Surprised, Gilmour hid his eyes behind hastily raised hands. “What the—”

“Frankly, Agent Gilmour, I’m tired of your shit.”

Gilmour narrowed his eyes and stared straight into de Lis’ orbs.
The gall of this
—

De Lis returned the stern stare right back. “And you can wipe that look from your face too. There’s a war going down, Agent Gilmour, and niceties such as every man coming home to his wife don’t figure much in it. I know you took Delta’s capture hard, but the man did it himself. If anything, we know what we’re up against.”

Gilmour gritted his teeth, not content to have de Lis punching back. If anything, he swore it was Rauchambau he was standing next to.

“You sure that was Nicolenko you saw?” de Lis asked.

Gilmour nodded. “I’d recognize that sonuvabitch at a hundred meters.”

“Good. Rauchambau wants him eliminated, if he’s the threat you say he is.”

“We wouldn’t be in this quandary if I had succeeded in taking him out in my last jaunt.”
None of this mess would.

“But we don’t have much time.” De Lis rubbed his jaw. “Thanks to Delta’s bungling, the other illegals have been compromised, as far as we can ascertain. There may be enough warheads still reprogrammed to do the job, but I seriously doubt that’s an option anymore. The DoD expects the Confederation to speed up the trench project. That leaves the Navy only a few days to get the North Pacific fleet in place. Honestly, I’m not holding out much hope the military can stop this one.” De Lis’ face turned a shade of green normally seen on deathbed patients. This was the Big One.

“I apologize, Doctor.”

De Lis mustered a stoic look. “Forget it. We need you one last time, James.” He proffered his palm, expecting—willing—Gilmour to accept it.

Gilmour’s hands had been balled into fists ever since de Lis’ reaction. Slowly, Gilmour loosened them, allowing sensation to return, then extended his right palm. Together, the pair shook hands, reaffirming their commitment.

It was time to get this going again.

“If this man is indeed your target, how do you expect to get him?” Marlane asked. Seated across from Rauchambau at U5-29’s conference table, she leaned forward. “Without intelligence from the illegals, finding him will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

“I have a reasonably good idea where in Irkutsk our Nicolenko could be,” Valagua said. “Previous missions in that facility have allowed me to corroborate with the latest holographic intel just where that subway train was destined.”

For the first time in countless conferences, Quintanilla was in attendance, seating herself between Dark Horse and Rauchambau, apparently showing herself when times were at their roughest. And again, she surprised not only Gilmour but many of the other senior staff by speaking up. “Difficult, but not impossible, Doctor Marlane. There are many avenues not tread with which we have access.”

Marlane looked to Waters, who, if possible, would have shrugged with her eyes. To all but perhaps Rauchambau, Quintanilla succeeded in still proving to be the toughest one to read.

“I know of at least one place—one time—where Nicolenko is, was and will always be, where he can never escape, despite his best actions to the contrary.”

Constantine and McKean both raised eyebrows and turned to Gilmour, halfdisbelieving the words uttered from his lips; what had he mumbled?

De Lis stifled a proud smile, then urged him to elaborate, if only as a formality; de Lis was beginning to draw a good bead on Gilmour. “What’s on your mind?”

“Thanks to your mind-bending theoretical studies laboratory, I’m starting to see events in a different light.” He made eye contact with his two partners. “Nicolenko is forever bound to spacetime, just like the rest of us. Unless he were to go back into the past and alter events—which I doubt since they turned slightly to his favor—the days he spent in 1940 will always exist.”

Constantine scratched his nose, grasping the cusp of Gilmour’s thought. “Like a recording?”

Gilmour nodded. “Close, Will. Time isn’t as fleeting as we would like it to be, especially nowadays.”

“With the proper equipment, we can ‘play back’ time,” Waters added, then cracked a smile. “Excellent, Gilmour. We’re rubbing off on you.”

McKean leaned back in his seat and sighed. “The monkeysuits.”

“Has to be. That’s the only place and time I can guarantee Nicolenko will be,”

Gilmour said. “I want to do it right this time, take some back-up, find out where the hell Nicolenko got to and who helped him.”

“Sounds like you will need my assistance again, Agent Gilmour,” Valagua volunteered.

“You haven’t let me down yet. And 1940 hasn’t become any easier.”

“If I may make a request, Agent Gilmour,” de Lis said. “There is one man who can make your mission run smoother....”

Gilmour sat still.

“Lionel Roget,” de Lis blurted before the special agents and the senior staff could object.

“Good lord—”

De Lis raised his hands, hoping to drive his point across. “Now I fully understand your objections, Agent Gilmour—”

“The man’s a snake, for Chrissakes! You yourself admitted so much!”

“Gilmour’s right!” Waters said. “He can’t be trusted with overseeing such an important phase of the mission!”

De Lis stood. “Just listen, once, please. Trust me on this. Roget designed the very technology capable of performing our mission. Despite your very reasonable objections—

remind yourselves that I by no means condoned his actions—he has insight that perhaps no else here does. It’s instinctual to him, and he knows how to get the best out of the equipment. Plus, he will have no oversight authority. Everything final will be made by me, with Crowe and Ivan doing final checks. Is that fair?”

“If he’s capable of penitence,” Gilmour sneered.

“I interviewed him personally,” Quintanilla said. “Remorse is not alien to him. He is capable by far to assist you in your mission once again. I believe its success can be met more by him in the lab than in a jail cell.”

Dark Horse crossed his arms, perhaps betraying his opinion of security matters. “He will of course be escorted throughout the entire proceedings.” The colonel’s face was granite hard, reminding the group that
he
ran the details in the U Complex. “Day and night.”

“Then we acquiesce to your judgment, Doctor,” Gilmour said, dropping the subject. For better or worse, Gilmour admitted, they needed all the help they could get, even from a snake in the grass.

“This is strictly business. Anything superfluous will most likely earn you a broken jaw, which is what you deserve anyway, if not worse.”

Roget removed his spectacles and wiped the lenses free of smudges. “I would expect nothing less from you, Agent Gilmour. Seeing as how I have no wish to waste in a cell, you have my complete word I will do everything to get this mission successfully underway.”

Gilmour fought the urge to yell “Shut the hell up!” in order to abide by his and de Lis’ agreement. He, Constantine, McKean, the departed Mason and Louris were the better men, not the prestige hungry Roget. Alliances that shifted by the sway of the wind never endeared Gilmour much, let alone the “complete word” of such men.

Gilmour, along with Roget and two MPs, made their way into the theoretical studies lab. Ivan and Crowe greeted their former boss coolly, perhaps as eager to work with him again as Gilmour was.

“I trust everything is still as it was?” Roget asked his assistants. His eyes scanned his abandoned office once they passed near.

“Yes, Doctor,” Crowe answered, though without the old laboratory reverence.

“We’ve been updating ourselves on your new initiatives. They look promising.”

“New initiatives?” Gilmour looked at Roget, perhaps astounded that the jailed scientist would still be exploring new ideas outside the lab.

Roget led the escort inside, then picked up a holobook set there by Ivan. Powering it up, he accessed a file block, then handed the device to Gilmour to read.

After a few seconds of skimming, he looked back to Roget. “Omni-Coordinated Temporal Transportation.”

“Until now,” Roget explained, “Temporal Retrieve has been limited to two directions in the spacetime continuum, obviously the back and forth movements in time. One of the limitations in such travel is the availability to traverse space. Now, employing the planet’s magnetic field lines, we can send you anywhere on Earth.”

“Traveling location to location was always something we wanted to work on as a future upgrade to the equipment,” Crowe added, “but until recently, never had the resources nor personnel to devote to full-time research.”

Gilmour read on. “If I’m reading this right, we would be able to pick and choose our time coordinates, as well as our geographic coordinates, and jaunt there? That would open all sorts of opportunities....”

Roget nodded. “The wider landscape is finally revealing itself to you, Agent Gilmour. No longer are humans dependent on this tiny frame,” he said, making a square with his palms, the whites of his eyes growing. “We are creatures of every dimension now. You see, it’s bigger, larger, than just one man, one nation, one world. I do this for the enhancement of our species as universal denizens.”

For a moment, Gilmour considered smashing the holobook and destroying every bit of data contained within. If a man such as Roget could dream up this Omni-Coordinated Temporal Transportation technology, then fully homicidal men such as Nicolenko could easily obtain it.