two ways.
Ellen, leaning heavily on Jack, looked up at him and inquired, “Are you contemplating the mysteries of the universe again, Jack?”
“I had a glimmer of what somebody might someday be able to turn into a string theory concerning the nature of time, that’s all.”
“Nothing important, then.”
Jack merely nodded and bent over to pick up the knife. He announced to Ellen, Easley, Armitage, Harek and Standing Bear, “The knife was just where it should be. There shouldn’t be a trap waiting for us in 1900. Just in case, at least two subguns worn on-body by each man.”
There were a good three dozen submachine guns and as many M-16s, four of these M-16/M-203s, standard M-16 rifles with independently triggerable grenade launchers mounted below the barrel/fore-end assembly of the rifle itself.
Jack had one of each principal weapon—one submachine gun, one rifle with grenade launcher—slung to his body. “I feel like a character from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie,” Jack observed.
Ellen smiled. “But you look so much better developed, so much more muscular, Jack.”
“You bet,” he grinned.
The capsule doorway started to close and Jack and Ellen, standing side by side, shot a wave and smiled a last good-bye to their great-great-grandson . . .
David Naile tried ignoring the man in the backseat who was saying, “I’m a gonna be pukin’ heah, suh!”
“If my father were driving, I could understand that. I drive very smoothly. Your stomach shouldn’t be bothering you.”
“Ya jes’ tell thet a mah belly, suh!”
“Aw, shit.”
“Ain’t the sitchashun, suh.”
Under his breath, David Naile snarled, “Pitiful shit can’t even speak English, and he’s supposed to be a soldier.” For the guy in the back seat to be able to get out, half the guys in the middle seat at least would have to climb out and guns and cans of ammunition and grenades and anything else would have to be unloaded—or, at least, a lot of it.
David stopped the car in the middle of the stagecoach road. “Okay! Fine! Hurl, then get your ass back here, Private. Corporal!”
“Yes, sir!”
David glanced at the man who’d occupied the Suburban’s front bucket passenger seat. “Get everybody to do what they’ve gotta do. I don’t want anybody asking to go potty until we’re there. We’re in a kind of a really big hurry. Right?”
“Yes, sir!”
David took the key out of the Suburban’s ignition and climbed out. The Northwest quadrant of the inverted bowl of sky was darkening more rapidly than David Naile had ever seen storm clouds change daylight into twilight. “We’re in for a good storm, Corporal.”
“That’s a fact, sir. A real gully washer, I bet, Mr. Naile.”
David Naile glanced at his pocket watch. If his parents and the raiding party made it through safely, they’d be back.
If was a very uncomfortable word.
Clarence had been waiting just outside the doorway as the time-transfer capsule opened. After helping get Ellen inside the control shed where there was a couch on which she could rest, Clarence had immediately volunteered that the guys from 1996 who’d traveled to 1900 had come out of the time capsule shooting. Three of the men, including the apparent leader—Jack pegged him as Lester Matthews and said so—had gotten away in a Hummer, rolling cross-country almost as if the rocky terrain had been a paved road.
Two other men, who’d tried getting into the tank—an old Soviet T-62, as Clarence recounted it—died in the attempt. There were three more men in the party. After a short, furious gun battle, the enemy personnel were overwhelmed and killed. By this time, Jack had no interest in knowing more than that.
“The T-62 was kind of an evolutionary blind alley for what was then the Soviet Union. Rate of fire and fire control were inferior to NATO stuff. It went out of production. Heck, the World War II T-34 was a better tank in a lot of ways.”
Jack looked at Clarence, knowing that his expression must have been something between blank and nonplussed. “How’d you get to know so much on tanks?”
“I had to learn a lot of things in the military, and that’s all I can say about it. If I told you more, Uncle Jack, I’d have to kill ya.”
Jack felt himself smile. “Yeah,” he told Clarence. “Since you know so much, you think you and one of Lieutenant Easley’s men could drive the thing and work the weapons system?”
It was Clarence’s turn to smile. “I’d sure like to try.”
“Just be careful—we don’t have a wrecker that can put a new track on for you.”
Lieutenant Easley said,