“Twenty-five thousand in silver bullion,” said O’Fallon. “And it slipped right through our fingers. What the hell went wrong?”
“those three idiots, Head. Leonard and Crane, went wrong.” replied Paul Zaber. “I gave them the plan myself. I told them, soon as the stage pulls up, shoot both the driver and shotgun guard, but they blew it Leonard shot all right, but the other two hesitated and the horses bolted, so they only got Philpot. Then instead of chasing the stage down when the horses bolted, they had King holding their horses a short distance away, so the stage had a good head start on them by the time they got mounted. They still could’ve caught it, but they gave it up as a bad job and took off. Had to run from the damn posse with nothing to show for it.”
“Exactly the way it happened in the original scenario,” said O’Fallon, thoughtfully. “We seem to be swimming against the current of temporal inertia. I wouldn’t have thought something like this would have made much difference to the scheme of things, but perhaps I was wrong. This time sector may have more temporal significance than I’d imagined.”
“If that’s true, then we’re taking a big risk.” said Zaber. You think we should pull out?
“I’d hate to do that without having this operation show more of a profit.” O’Fallon replied. “Remember that none of us can depend on our agency pensions anymore, thanks to Moses Forrester. And I always intended to retire a very wealthy man, with a ludicrously expensive lifestyle. That means I’m going to have to convince the board to put me in charge of more profitable operations. They’re not going to do that if they’re not sufficiently impressed with the way I conducted this one.”
“We’ve done all right.” said Zaber.
“‘All right’ is not enough.” O’Fallon replied. “They’re not going to be impressed with just ‘all right.’ I went to a lot of trouble to set this operation up. I don’t intend to pack it in until we’ve pulled everything we can out of it.”
“It could be risky staying around,” Zaber said. “There’s still the question of the Montana Kid, whoever the hell he is. If he’s a temporal agent, you can be sure he won’t be alone. If he’s an advance scout for the S.O.G. we’re liable to wind up in the middle of a temporal disruption.”
That could be very bad for business, all around,” O’Fallon said.
“Hey, as far as I’m concerned, the S.O.G. isn’t my headache. Let Forrester’s people handle them. There’s no money to be made going up against commandos.”
“Perhaps not, but there is money to be lost.” said O’Fallon. “A significant disruption in this sector could affect our operations further down the timestream. The S.O.G. isn’t just a threat to Temporal Intelligence. Paul. It’s a threat to the entire timeline. And that means us, too. If the S.O.G. mounts an operation here, and the T.I.A. isn’t around to stop them, it’s going to be up to us. Don’t forget, we were Temporal Intelligence ourselves at one time.”
“Yeah, but there are only five of us.” said Zaber. “We can use Clanton’s rustlers to help us pull off operations, but sending them up against trained commandos would he ludicrous. The thing to do is get word to Forrester’s people and let them handle it. And make sure we’re long gone by the time they get around to it.”
“That could be rather difficult to do, considering we won’t know when they would be clocking in,” O’Fallon replied. “Besides, we don’t know that it is an S.O.G. infiltration. The Kid could be T.I.A. In which case, something must have tipped them off. It could have been Bailey. He wanted to get out from under. He might have contacted them and tried a double cross in return for immunity. Warning us about the Kid the way he did could have been part of the setup, or just Bailey burning his candle at both ends, trying to keep his ass covered. Either way, we don’t have enough information.
Zaber shook his head. “And either way, we could be buying into one shitload of trouble.”
“I’m not sure we have much choice, Paul. But keep one other thing in mind. If the Kid is an advance agent for the T.I.A., and if Balky sold us out and they know we’re conducting a Network operation back here, they’ll send in one of their old First Division teams. If we could take them out, we’d not only enhance our standing in the organization, we’d collect a bounty that would go a long way towards making our retirement very comfortable.”
Zaber took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’ve got a point I can’t decide for the others, though.”
“Allan will go along with it.” said O’Fallon. “He’s young and he’s hungry. And he’s anxious to move up. Randy’s more cautious, but I think he’ll see that there’s no avoiding the risk no matter what we do. Steve won’t like it, but he’ll understand the necessity. Especially if you and I are together on this.”
“All right. So what’s our first move?”
“The Kid didn’t take the bait when you left here with Bailey. And I’m positive he followed Bailey here. So that means he’s playing it smart. He knows there’s something going on here, but we haven’t been hit, so either his backup hasn’t clocked in yet-assuming he’s T.I.A.-or Bailey didn’t tell him everything. Assuming Bailey tipped them off.” He grimaced. “That’s too many assumptions, but the one I think we can safely make is that he knows we’re here, but he doesn’t know exactly who we are Let’s put a little pressure on him. See if we can force his hand or get any backup he might have to reveal themselves.”
“One of them already might have.” Zaber said.
“Oh?”
“I was going to tell you about it when I came in, after we discussed the stage job. A few of Clanton’s boys were in town and got mixed up in a fight with a cowboy who just arrived in town. You know Jenny, down at the Oriental? Sam wanted to tear off a piece, only she turned him down. It seems she’s taken up with the Kid and given up turning tricks. Anyway, Sam got a little rough with her and this cowboy came Over to play hero. He dropped Sam with one punch, broke Joey’s wrist, used a whiskey bottle to make a mess out of Luke’s face and hit Walt with a table.”
“With a table?”
“Picked it up and used it to slam Walt against the wall. Then knocked him out. Walt said he snatched up that table as if it didn’t weigh a thing. Big guy, Walt said. Fast with his hands.
Hits like pile driver. Dark red hair, beard and a real shit-eatin’ grin.”
“Finn Delaney,” O’Fallon said.
“You know him?”
“Oh yeah, I know him. It was a few years ago, back in the old days before Forrester took over. I ran into him on a mission, when I was working with the Mongoose. He and Carnehan did not like each other. And Delaney had a real hard-on for spooks. First Division time commando all the way. only a real maverick. Crazy son of a bitch. He was a noncom in those days. Kept getting busted for punching out officers who gave him a hard time. Yeah. I know Finn Delaney, all right.”
“So then the Kid is T.I.A.”
“Yeah. And that probably means Priest is heading up their team. And Cross will be in on it, as well. Foxy lady, and nasty as a snake. Looks like Forrester sent in the first string.”
“That’s not what I’d call good news,” said Zaber.
“Are you kidding?” O’Fallon replied. “You know what the bounty is on those three? Shit. We just struck it rich.”
“I wouldn’t start counting that bounty before we collect it,” said Zaber. “And if they’re as good as you say they are, that’s not going to be easy.”
“Nothing worth doing is ever easy. Paul.” O’Fallon replied.
“But we’ve got the home-court advantage. I’ll check with the others, but I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one they know.
And they’ll never recognize me with this face. All we have to do is identify the targets and send the rustlers out to take care of them. We may not even have to get involved ourselves.
Because they’re concerned about temporal continuity, they’ll think twice before taking out any of the locals in this time sector. Our boys won’t have any such compunctions.” He smiled. “God damn. This operation is turning out to be a lot more interesting than I thought.”
“You want me to call in the others?”
“Yes. We’ll tell Allan and Steve to cancel their plan for the next shipment. Then we’ll get some of the boys together and take a ride into town. It doesn’t sound as if Delaney’s had any cosmetic surgery. They usually don’t, unless they’re going to assume specific identities. I want to make sure. I want to find out where they’re staying and what their covers are. I don’t want any mistakes on this one Once we’ve got them spotted and the situation eased,
