others,he thought. Who needs them? This was the perfect opportunity. In all theconfusion, he could slip in and nail Steiger. then be gone before anybodyrealized what had happened. He bent over the body of one of Cooper’s men.Perfect. He quickly stripped off his own clothes and started putting on thecorpse’s T.C.I. fatigues. He slipped the black Balaclava hood over his head,then smiled as he picked up the disruptor. Hollister came bursting into Cleopatra’sroom, then stopped as he saw the unconscious bodies of his men lying on thefloor. There was no sign of Cleopatra. Somehow, incredibly, they had managed toget her out. He couldn’t believe it. He heard running footsteps coming down thehall. He quickly punched in a preprogrammed sequence of transition coordinatesand clocked out just as Delaney came diving through the doorway, firing hisstunner. The dart passed harmlessly through empty air.
Lucas waited tensely, glancing every couple of seconds atthe readout on his warp disc. The time was almost up. Andell had clocked toPlus Time with Caesar and Calpurnia, as had Castelli and Corwin. withCleopatra. It would take days for them to be properly conditioned by the psychteams at TAC-HQ, but then they would be clocked back to Minus Time so that onlyone minute would have passed since they’d been gone. They would reappear,sedated. safely in their own beds. They would wake up several, hours later.completely oblivious of what had happened to them.
As soon as the operation at Cleopatra’s house was concluded,assuming that it was concluded successfully, the survivors would be clocked toPlus Time and interrogated under drugs. The household slaves would then he separatedfrom any surviving S.O.G. infiltrators. Castelli would take charge of a teamthat would clock out to ancient Egypt. where they would purchase slaves thatwould replace the S.O.G. men. Once those slaves had been acquired from themarkets in Alexandria. they would then be tranked and clocked to Plus Time,when: they would be conditioned to believe that they had been in the Queen of Egypt’sservice all along. Cleopatra herself would be conditioned to believe that theyhad come to Rome with her. Then Castelli and his team would clock back in withthem, all before daybreak.
Cleopatra would remember nothing of what had happened toher. She would recall meeting Marcus Septimus and his wife, Antonia, though shewould believe that they had left Rome. Both Caesar and Calpurnia would recallhow he had dismissed his Egyptian bodyguard because he did not wish to give theappearance that he feared his enemies or that he was too much under theinfluence of a foreign queen.
In a matter of seconds. Lucas thought, if all goes well.Caesar and his wife would reappear in their bed and they would wake up in themorning as if nothing had ever happened. Cleopatra and her new slaves would beclocked back into her house.
They had put the plan together quickly. but it seemed toLucas as if they’d covered every contingency. At least, he hoped they had.Everything hinged on the assault against the S.O.G. unit at Cleopatra’s housebeing successful. Lucas checked the time again. Another few seconds. Heswallowed nervously. Had they covered everything? All right. he thought, comeon. What have we missed? What else can go wrong?
Hollister materialized inside the quarters assigned to hismen at the imperial palace. And froze. absolutely stunned. He recovered quicklyand glanced around, sweeping his weapon around the room, but Bryant and histeam had already left. He had missed encountering them by scant seconds, hemoved quickly to the door leading to the corridor and listened intently.Everything seemed quiet. For a moment, he simply stood there, not moving. Herisked a glance out into the corridor. There was no sign of his men. They wereall gone, every last one of them. Jesus, Hollister thought. they must have hitthe palace and the house at the same time! He was staggered by their audacity.They must have clocked into the palace, and while Caesar slept just a shortdistance down the hall, they had killed every one of his men and gotten outagain, a lightning operation, brilliantly executed and devastatingly efficient.He had never dreamed they would dare take such a risk. He had vastlyunderestimated them and it had cost him. It had cost him everything.
His mind reeled as he realized that his operation wastotally undone. All that work, all that preparation, wiped out in just onenight. It was beyond belief. How in hell had they managed to snatch Cleopatra?And how could they cover everything that they had done without risking atemporal disruption? He had to think. He had to put himself in their shoes andimagine what he might have done if he were in their place. And if he weredesperate enough to try something like this. Desperate. hell. he told himself,the bastards had actually pulled it off.
All right, he thought, if they snatched Cleopatra, theycould do a wash job on her brain. Program her and she’d come out believingwhatever they wanted her to believe. They’d have to do the same with Caesar.Make him believe that he’d dismissed the bodyguard. God damn it. it’ll work,thought Hollister, They’ve beaten us.
His heart sank with the realization. But it wasn’t over yet.He was still alive. And if any of his men got out, they’d clock to their escapecoordinates and rendezvous as planned. He wasn’t finished yet. Even if he wasthe only one left, he could still do some damage here.
Hollister. well trained in temporal terrorist tactics, hadquickly and professionally sized up the situation. He was not the sort of manto panic when things fell apart. He was a pro and he kept his mind on hismission. The parameters had changed drastically and he had to adapt to the newsituation without a moment’s hesitation. he realized that the success of theT.I.A.
strike was totally dependent on everything beingaccomplished during this one night. The activities of mission support teamsback at headquarters in Plus Time would have to be completely governed by thetimetable of the team in Rome. The timing would be close. If they’d taken Caesarwhen they killed his men, which would have been the only time when they coulddo it. they would have to return him by morning in order to minimize the dangerof a temporal disruption. Then, with their teams in place to monitor events,they would remain to make sure that Caesar was killed by the conspirators onschedule.
There could then be no explanation for the sudden disappearanceof the Egyptian bodyguard. The blame for Caesar’s death would fall onCleopatra. instead of on Brutus, Cassius. and the other conspirators. She wouldbe arrested, tried, and executed. She would never live to join forces withAntony against Octavian. It would not be as great a disruption as they’doriginally planned, but it would be a disruption nonetheless. It might evenbring about a timestream split. Best of all, the T.I.A. wouldn’t be expectingit. When they discovered that they’d missed “Apollodorus,” they’d naturallyassume that he’d escaped to some other time period. It would have been thelogical thing for him to do. They’d never think he’d risk coming to the palace.It would be foolhardy. Almost as foolhardy as what they’d done tonight.Hollister smiled. Learn from your enemy, he thought. It was risky as hell, butit was worth a try.
Slowly, cautiously, holding his weapon ready, Hollistermoved out into the corridor, heading toward Caesar’s chambers.
11
They had counted on the element of surprise and they hadlost it almost immediately. The scream from the rooftop had galvanized theopposition into action and even though they hadn’t expected such a bold attack,they responded like the pros they were. They didn’t run: they chose to standand fight. In spite of the swiftness of their attack, Cooper lost almost halfhis men in the first three or four minutes of the assault. Three more werewounded, two of them seriously. As Andre ran across the atrium, a laser beamlanced out and burned a hole right through the left side of her shirt, missingher kidney by scant millimeters. Steiger, running right behind her, took outthe man who’d fired the shot, but another one they hadn’t seen until it wasalmost too late fired at him as he was bringing up his stunner. The beam struckSteiger’s forearm and burned a long furrow from his wrist up to his elbow. Hecried out, but managed to hold on to his weapon long enough to fire a dart intohis attacker, and Andre shot him with another one almost immediately. Hecrumpled to the floor.
“You all right?” asked Andre.
“I’m fine, go!” Steiger shifted his weapon to his left handand followed her as they moved quickly from room to room.
Cooper’s men had rappelled down from the rooftop and as soonas they secured the upper floor, they ran down the stairs to join the battle inthe main part of the house. Cooper heard the sounds of their booted feetcoining down the stairs and turned his head to shout a warning to them so theywouldn’t fire on their own men. In that
