TW11 The Cleopatra Crisis NEW (25 page)

"No, sir, I guess we don't," said Maselli.

"You're damn right, we don't. Just about anything we do here can constitute a disruption, so we stick to the original objective. Morton, you get back to the rest of A team. If Caesar asks about the missing men, tell him that you sent them out for wine or something and they were set upon and killed. That should make Caesar think twice about discounting the rumors of a conspiracy against him. Maselli, I want you to bring the rest of C team in. From now on, A team sticks to Caesar like glue. B and C teams remain right here at baseops. If Cleopatra decides to go out, B team stays as close to her as possible. She's our insurance. In the meantime, we'll double the guard here, just in case they're crazy enough to try anything. And nobody, nobody, gets inside unless they've been cleared through me first. Got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Any questions?"

“No, sir. “

"Right. Dismissed."

They all snapped to attention. Morton and Maselli both clocked out and the others went back to take their posts. Hollister took his cigar out of his mouth, spat out a soggy piece of tobacco, and crushed the butt out in a small dish he was using as an ashtray. Merely a minor setback, Hollister told himself. So they'd lost a few people. They had expected that. They had all volunteered for this assignment, this mission from which there would be no return, and they had all expected to die, if not in this temporal scenario, then in some other one they'd clock to after they were finished in Rome. The plan was simple. Cross over and research one temporal scenario early in their history as thoroughly as possible, create a disruption that would have maximum impact, then immediately clock ahead to another time period and try to pull off another one. Keep doing that, building on the domino effect of temporal disruptions in their timeline until they were either all killed or until there was no possible chance of the T.I.A. being able to reverse their actions. Then, thought Hollister, their one remaining chance for survival would be to find some time period that was still relatively safe. While the damage escalated of its own momentum elsewhere in the timestream.

Until tonight, everything had gone off like clockwork. The one part he hadn't liked was killing their own Observers, but there was no avoiding it. It had to be done. The poor bastards hadn't known what was coming, of course.

They had thought that they were just sent through to scout a temporal location for a baseops that would serve as a jumping-off point for temporal assault missions further down the enemy timestream. But at least they were able to make it quick and painless.

The rest of it was easy. Killing the real Apollodorus and taking his place had proved no problem. Hollister had been carefully selected for the mission so that his body type would correspond with that of Apollodorus and the rest had been accomplished by cosmetic surgery. Cleopatra had never suspected a thing. The rest of it, getting the others into place, had all been easy once he had assumed the identity of Apollodorus. Cleopatra trusted him. Even now, she was sleeping soundly in her bedroom, having had her bones jumped by the Emperor of Rome, never suspecting that anything was amiss in her household. So long as she was there, she was the perfect hostage. There were guards outside her door and all around the building and the grounds. Even on the roof. They still had a firm lock on the situation.

Hollister poured himself some wine and walked over to the window. The shutters were open to let in the cool night breeze. He looked out at the dark surface of the Tiber, and along its banks, toward the house where Travers lived.

“Come ahead, you bastards." he said softly. "Take your best shot."

The scene inside the library of the handsome Roman villa of Lucius Septimus was highly incongruous, to say the least. It was three o'clock in the morning. The library door was bolted, just in case any of the household slaves felt restless in the middle of the night, heard voices in the library and decided to investigate. Travers had given strict orders to his household slaves and they knew that certain rooms in the house were off limits to them, especially the library, but had they glanced inside, what they would have seen would have astonished them.

Reinforcements had arrived. Finn Delaney, Creed Steiger. Andre Cross. and Lucas Priest had all doffed their Roman tunics and were now dressed in black combat fatigues, with lasers holstered at their sides. They had spare charge packs attached to their belts and combat bowies strapped to their calves, above their boots. They wore extremely lightweight, black nylon, Balaclava-type hoods over their heads, leaving only the area from the mouth to the eyebrows exposed, and those parts of their faces had been blackened with camo stick. There were two dozen other people in the room, all similarly dressed for night fighting. Some of them, in addition to their laser pistols. were armed with night-scoped laser rifles, others with the ugly, mean-looking disruptors designed by Dr. Darkness, which looked incredibly innocuous for what they were. They resembled a cross between a small riot gun and an antique blunderbuss, but they were considerably more sophisticated than either, capable of firing a pulsed neutron beam on either tight focus beam or wide spray. Their inventor sat comfortably in a carved ivory chair, observing the proceedings.

Lucas and Finn stood over a couple of hastily drawn interior maps of both Cleopatra's house and the imperial palace. Seeing Lucas had been a shock for those who had arrived, because they had all believed him dead. But it was a mark of their professionalism that, stunned as they were, they simply accepted his remark that there would be time for explanations later. They were all bursting with questions, but those questions would have to wait. They had a mission to perform.

"All right, let's go over it again," said Lucas. "Bryant, you'll take your team into the palace. Where are the guards' quarters?"

"Right here," said Major Bryant. He pointed to the drawing with his bowie knife. "There will probably be at least a couple of them posted in the corridor. We're going to have to get in fast, clocking directly to the transition points that Capt. Travers has supplied, which will put us here, here, here, and here."

"Good," said Lucas. "Now remember, we don't want any accidents, so be sure that everyone clocks in no closer than three feet away from each other, Check your final coordinates now."

He waited while they did so.

"All right. Caesar's chambers are right here." He pointed to the diagram. "He sleeps there with his wife. Be sure to take out the guards at his door right away. And you've got to do it without making any noise. Now, these areas marked off here, with stars, are where Roman legionaries are usually stationed. Stay the hell away from them, whatever you do."

"What if something goes wrong and we accidentally alert any of the Roman guards?" asked Bryant.

"Make sure you don't," Delaney said, staring at him hard. "If you have to, knock them out, but under no circumstances are any of them to be fired upon. We can't afford to raise an alarm in the palace. You've got one thing going for you. None of the S.O.G. people will be wearing Roman uniforms. As part of their cover, they'll be dressed as Egyptian soldiers. Either that, or they'll be in their quarters, asleep. I doubt they'd expect us to try anything this desperate. So with any luck, you'll get most of them in bed. I hope."

"Yeah, so do I," said Bryant.

"Use disruptors on all the bodies," Lucas said. "I want them all to disappear without a trace."

"How are you going to explain that?" asked Sgt. Neilson, who'd worked with them before on a mission in 19th-century London.

"It's not your job to worry about that, Scott," Lucas said. "Leave that part to me. I've got it covered."

"Yes, sir. Sorry. sir."

"No need to apologize. You just do your part, well take care of ours. You'll have more than enough to worry about. You guys are going to have to move fast and there won't be any room for mistakes."

"That's what I've always liked about you, Lucas," said Bryant with a smile. "You always give me the easy jobs."

"You'll have the Doc here for backup," said Lucas. "in case anything goes wrong. But don't count on him for everything. He can't be everywhere at once, even though it sometimes seems that way."

"Glad to have you along, Doctor." Bryant said.

"Just try not to trip over one another and wake up the whole palace," Darkness said.

"We'll take our shoes off and walk on tippy-toe," Bryant replied, deadpan.

"Okay, Cooper. let's go over your end of it," Lucas said.

Col. Cooper was the commander of the Temporal Counter insurgency strike force headquartered in Galveston. The T.C.I. troops were elite combat commandos, specially formed by General Forrester to deal with S.O.G. infiltrations. They were on constant standby. in combat readiness, and for this operation, Cooper had clocked in with a dozen picked men.

"We'll be going in with Delaney, Cross, and Steiger to hit Cleopatra's house," Cooper said. "There are some Roman soldiers stationed outside, here at the front gates." He pointed to the second diagram. "We trank them with stun darts. I have three men clock in here, here, and here. That should give them a good shot at the guards. What about traffic in the street?"

"There isn't any traffic on that street this time of night, so the the risk should be minimal," said Lucas. "But if any pedestrians happen to get in the way, trank them, too."

"Got it," Cooper replied with a curt nod. "The rest of my people clock in here, here, and here. Three on the roof, three in the back garden, three in the atrium."

"Right," Lucas said. "Now here's where it gets unpleasant. Some of the people in there could be Egyptian slaves, or they could all be S.O.G. Unfortunately, we haven't got any way of telling that for sure. That puts your people in a pretty tricky situation. Except for the legionaries at the front gate, anyone stationed on guard duly will be S.O.G. for sure, so don't take any chances with them. Take them out right away. But the moment you get inside the house, you run the risk of killing innocent civilians, so use your stunners. Unless you see someone carrying any weapon other than a dagger or a sword. In that case, take 'em out. But we need to get at least one or two of them alive for interrogation, just to make sure we've got them all. Now there's going to be a risk factor involved in doing it that way. Anyone you trank, you got maybe a second or two before they go down, and if they've got a concealed weapon on them, they just might have enough time to get off a shot before the drug takes effect, so watch yourselves. Stay in your teams of three. Two men carrying stunners, the third ready with a laser or disruptor. Again, speed's going to be critical, but remember that these people are all pros. All right, Finn. let's go over your part."

"Creed, Andre, and I are clocking in directly to the
peristylum,
right here." Delaney said, pointing to the drawing. "Our objective is to try to take Apollodorus alive, if possible. As soon as the house has been secured, we conduct a thorough search, remove anything that doesn't belong there, then get right back here."

"Right," Lucas said. He looked around at them. "Any questions?"

Cooper shook his head. "No. My people are ready."

"None here," said Bryant.

"I guess we're set," Delaney said.

Lucas took a deep breath. "All right, then. Everyone stand by. Doc, you want to go get our guest of honor?"

"I'd be delighted," Darkness said. He disappeared.

Simmons listened on the headphones as he aimed the dish mike at Travers' house.

"What's going on?" asked one of the Network men beside him. They were concealed behind a clump of bushes near the riverbank.

"They've clocked in reinforcements." Simmons said. "From the sound of it, some of them are old First Division commandos and some are T.C.I. troops."

"T.C.I.?"
one of the others said. "Jesus. They brought in the fucking strike force?"

"Yeah. Cooper's in there. I can't tell exactly how many of his people he's brought with him, but I'd say at least a dozen, plus the T.I.A. assault team. Bryant's in command, so it sounds like they brought in some of the old First Division people."

"Shit. This just became a brand-new ballgame."

"It's still the same game, Rick. There's just a few more players, that's all," Simmons replied.

"The hell you say! Taking on First Division commandos is had enough, but Cooper's a stone-cold killer. Some of his strike force recruits don't even survive the training. What the hell are they planning in there, a goddamn war?"

"That's about the size of it," said Simmons. "They're about to launch a simultaneous two-pronged assault against the S.O.G.. in the palace and at Cleopatra's house."

"Fuck. They
are
crazy. No way do I want any part of this!"

"We came here to do a job, Warren," said Simmons.

"Yeah, against Steiger and maybe the adjustment team, but not a whole assault force. There's only eight of us, for Christ's sake!"

"We don't have to take on the whole assault force," Simmons said.

"All we have to do is pick the right moment, take out Steiger in all the confusion and we're gone."

"Forget it! I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not about to take my chances against those kind of odds. You want that bounty on Steiger so bad, Simmons, you're welcome to it. I'm outta here.”

"Warren . . ." Simmons began. but Warren had already clocked out. “Warren? Son of a
bitch
!"

"Warren's right," one of the others said. "This whole thing just became too hot to handle. Let's get the hell out of here. It's not worth it."

"It's worth it to me." insisted Simmons. "That bastard busted up some of our best operations and he cost me my career. And he did the same thing to every one of you."

"So there'll be other opportunities to square accounts," the man named Rick said. "This one just went sour. It's just too risky. I'm out."

"So am I," one of the others said.

"Me, too. I didn't bargain for this."