‘Dammit,’ he hissed.
If he’d managed to find the machine sooner, assemble it just a little morequickly… or if the police had taken a few more minutes to get organized before stormingthe museum they could have all been through into the past without any bloodshed, without a single casualty.
‘I’ll hold them,’ wheezed Saul.
Karl looked down at him; the front of his grey and white Arctic-camouflage tunic was almostentirely black with his own blood. Several unaimed shots sprayed over the top of thestair’s handrail had found him, thudded into his chest and knocked him off his feet. Theyoung lad was spraying thick gouts of blood with each laboured breath; a lung, or both, hadbeen hit.
Karl didn’t need a medic to tell him that the rest of this young man’s life wasnow going to be measured in mere minutes, perhaps even seconds.
‘Saul, I…’
‘You have to go, sir.’ The young man forced a ragged smile. ‘You have togo… Change this world for a better one. Kramer’s one.’
Karl nodded. ‘We’ll do it, Saul.’
‘You better,’ he gasped, a thick curl of congealed blood leaking from the side ofhis mouth. ‘Go… now,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll give you… aslong as… I can.’
Karl nodded. Saul was fading fast.
He looked at the remaining men and gestured with a well-practised hand the signal for them tobreak cover and pull back to join Kramer. As they did so, Karl emptied a complete clip on tothe stairs. Sparks and sprayed chips of concrete danced amid plumes of dust. The armed police,getting ready to storm the last flight of stairs, backed off, ducking their heads from theheavy fire.
The clip empty, he looked down at Saul quickly and squeezed his shoulder. ‘Perhapswe’ll see each other in another time.’
Saul grinned, then began firing at the stairwell with short economic burststhat would conserve his ammo and hopefully buy his comrades the precious time they needed.
Karl turned and ran after his men, hearing their pounding footsteps ahead of him.
Kramer reset the machine once more. The last of the men with him had gone throughand now he was waiting for Haas and whoever else was with him.
He could hear footsteps and, in the distance, short staccato bursts of gunfire.
‘Hurry!’ he called out.
Out of the darkness two men emerged. Ronan and Sigi.
‘Quick!’ he said, ushering the first of them into the wire cage.‘Where’s Karl?’
‘Coming just behind us, sir.’
‘All right… good.’
He activated the machine, sparks showered and the darkness flickered alive with strobinglight as Ronan vanished. Sigi stepped in just as Karl’s pounding footsteps could beheard.
Kramer quickly reset and activated the machine.
The gunfire down the aisle suddenly ceased.
Karl appeared. ‘They’re through!’ he called out.
‘I know, I know. Hurry up and get in,’ he said, holding open the door of the wirecage.
Karl drew up and looked at him. ‘Who will send
‘Don’t worry, I’ll manage, Karl.’
He hesitated. ‘No one gets left behind. Your words, remember?’
Kramer offered him a smile. ‘No one left behind, I promise. I’ll be right behindyou, my friend.’
Kramer closed the door on him. ‘I’ll see you there, Karl.’
He replied with a salute. ‘Yes, sir. I’ll have the men ready tomove out.’
Kramer nodded. ‘Good… see you in a minute.’ He activated the machine.
Once more the dark area of the storage basement lit up, throwing the wooden fascias ofstacked crates into stark relief.
For a fleeting moment, as the sparks showered to the floor, it occurred to him that thecontents of some of the crates and boxes down here in this dusty basement were about to bechanged. History, recent history… the last hundred years to be precise, was soon goingto be drastically rewritten.
No bad thing. History as it stood had led mankind here to this dark, poisoned, overcrowded,exhausted world.
Over the noise of the portable generator he heard the thud of combat boots on hard concreteechoing down the passageway swiftly and voices calling out. The police were coming, and fast.He could see the dancing beams of their torches swinging from side to side in thedistance.
He kneeled down beside the palmtop and set the co-ordinates one last time. Taking a deepbreath, he set a five-second delay on the command, then hit the purge icon.
Quickly he stepped inside the cage, pulled a grenade from his pack, pulled the pin and placedit on the floor outside the cage. He shut the door and closed his eyes… hoping that themachine would have finished sending him into the past before the grenade detonated.
He cracked open his eyes and winced at the sudden blinding shower of sparks cascading aroundhim. Through the wire of the cage he thought he saw the approaching shapes of several armed police swiftly dropping to one knee and raising their guns to fire athim.
It would be the cruellest turn of fate for one of their bullets to find him a microsecondbefore he left this world for good. Kramer clamped his eyes shut, expecting any second torecoil from the impact of several lethal high-spread large-calibre rounds or to be blown topieces by the grenade on the floor just outside the cage.
Then he felt it… a sensation like falling, as if the floor of the cage beneath his feethad been suddenly whipped away like the trapdoor of a hangman’s scaffold.
CHAPTER 21
2001, New York
‘Umm… that thing’s a complete mong-head,’ said Sal,studying the figure from the perspex tube pityingly.
Maddy regarded the creature with something approaching motherly sympathy. ‘Are you sureit’s meant to be like that?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Foster, ‘the on-board computer is preloaded witha basic program of artificial intelligence: its adaptive learning code. It’ll pickthings up quickly enough, you’ll see. The most important thing right now is that it
He frowned. ‘What do you mean by
‘Think of it as being a bit like a chick hatching from an egg and deciding the firstthing it sees is its mother. To ensure the learning code embeds more efficiently, let it bondwith you first, Liam. Go on… go say hello.’
Liam looked uncertainly at Foster.
‘Go on, it’s perfectly safe.’
He turned to look at the large muscle-bound form on the ground and imagined this thing couldquite easily rip his arms out of their sockets and beat him over the head with them if itdecided that might be a fun thing to do.
Warily, Liam took several steps forward, grimacing as his shoes slipped on the drying smellygunk on the floor. He kneeled down beside the giant and studied it more closely.
‘Glaf… bug… drah?’ it gurgled in a deep voice thatseemed to rumble up from its chest. The creature was
