Time Riders

The old man watched the car drift slowly away from them. ‘There’ll be times,Liam,’ he said wistfully, ‘that you’ll wish time could be changed, thatthings “down river” — in the future — could be made better thanthey’ve turned out.’

‘But,’ Liam replied, puzzled, ‘we just didchange things, didn’t we?’

Foster nodded. ‘Yes, but on this occasion, history corrects itself after about thirtyseconds.’

‘It does?’ Liam cocked his head. ‘How?’

They heard the distant crack of a rifle.

One shot, followed quickly by another.

Liam leaned forward, poking his head out of the window. He craned his neck to look down theroad as the vehicle swung left and headed beneath the underpass. He saw a fading plume ofsmoke coming from a wooden picket fence at the top of a grassy slope. The president’slimousine swerved. He saw the lady in the back seat, the lady in pink, scrambling over theseat to cradle her husband’s head.

‘In this training scenario, we’ve let history veer off track for less than aminute.’ Foster sighed sadly. ‘But, on this occasion, history does quitesuccessfully manage to correct itself.’ He turned to Liam. ‘Many people believedit was Oswald on his own who killed Kennedy. But there were othermen… hired contract killers ready to fire in case he missed or chickened out at the lastmoment.’

‘Information: time violation has been corrected,’ Bob announced formally.‘Mission priority: return without causing further contamination.’

Liam watched the chaotic scene down below. The panic among the gathered crowd, thepresident’s bodyguards clustering around the car.

‘Was he a good man? A good president?’

Foster shrugged. ‘If he’d been given more time, from what I’ve read inhistory books, perhaps he might have been a greatpresident.’

Liam nodded. ‘Pity.’

‘Yes.’

‘Information: extraction window approaching,’ said Bob, closing his eyes andretrieving data from his embedded computer. ‘In exactly fifty-nine seconds.’

‘We’re going to leave now,’ said Foster. ‘Soon every building alongthis road will be crawling with police and federal agents. Bob,’ hesaid, turning to the support unit, ‘place the gun on the floor.’

He did so.

The old man led them away from the window of the sixth floor.

‘So, how do we get back, Mr Foster?’ asked Liam.

‘Any second now.’

‘Nine seconds to be precise,’ offered Bob.

Liam looked about, but couldn’t see any large cylinders of water for them to climbinto. Then, all of a sudden, he felt a puff of displaced air on his face. A yard ahead of himhe could just about make out a shimmering circular outline.

‘Automated return window is now activated,’ said Bob.

‘Say goodbye to 1963, Liam.’

Liam looked around at the storage room, the dusty stacks of school books, and heard thetearful commotion of women’s voices coming from the floor below.

‘Goodbye, 1963,’ he uttered obediently, and then followed the other two into theshimmering air, holding his nose and his breath as he stepped forward.

2001, New York

Liam felt that horrendous familiar falling sensation. Worse still, he anticipatedfinding himself floundering around submerged underwater.

But instead he found himself standing in the middle of their field office, his feet on hardcold concrete.

‘Uh?… I thought we…?’ he blurted.

Foster slapped his back gently. ‘We go out wet, we come back dry. I’ll explainwhy some other time.’

Liam spotted the girls sitting at the breakfast table, both holding red andwhite cans of a fizzy sugary drink called Dr Pepper that they seemed to like drinking copiousamounts of. Spontaneously they clinked their cans together and cheered the return of theboys.

‘We know exactly where you went, fellas!’ shouted Maddy. ‘Being the pair ofcomplete freakin’ geniuses we are.’

Foster spread his hands. ‘And?’

She grinned triumphantly. ‘So, how was Dallas?’

‘Well done.’ He smiled.

‘I’m guessing you interfered in some way with the assassination of John F.Kennedy. You saved him maybe? But then you must have put it all right again.’ Her facedropped a little. ‘Unfortunately. I’d have liked us to have a mission to Mars onthe go.’

Sal cocked her head curiously. ‘You managed to stop an assassination attempt and thenmade it happen again… and also found some really disgusting clothes to wear… andyou did all that in just under an hour?’

Foster opened his mouth to answer.

‘An hour?’ cut in Liam. ‘We’ve not been gone that long, have we? Tenminutes at the most maybe — ’

Foster chuckled. ‘Time travel isn’t symmetrical,Liam. I could send you to one time location and arrange a return window for fifty years later.As far as you’d be concerned, fifty years would have passed… a whole lifetime. Andyet to someone standing here you’d have disappeared as a young lad and returned againjust moments later as an old man.’

Liam shook his head and grinned. ‘Jay-zus, this timeriding thing is making my headhurt, so it is.’

CHAPTER 28

1941, Bavarian woods, Germany

Kramer watched Karl with admiration. The man was a professional soldier, had servedwith some of the world’s elite special forces and thereafter been a highly recommendedand highly paid mercenary. In the troubled world of 2066, there was plenty of work for menlike him.

Karl had been one of the first to be won over by Kramer’s dream of a better world.He’d spoken on Kramer’s behalf to other mercenaries he knew and trusted, men heknew who also longed for a better place, a better time.

The world they’d left behind was a place that was dying, choked by pollution, strangledby dwindling resources, a world horrendously over-populated and ultimately doomed.

Who wouldn’t want to leave that behind?

It had been easy for Karl to recruit two dozen men he could trust for this mission. Everysingle man he’d approached had been ready to jump at the chance of leaving thetwenty-first century for a chance to rewrite the twentieth century. And good men they were,all of them. Very experienced, very disciplined. They all spoke at least two languages,English being their shared language. Most of these men quietly stepping through the snowywoods with well-practised stealth were German, some were Dutch, a few were Norwegian, a coupleof them British.

But… only seventeen of them now. Kramer shook his head.

We lost seven men just getting here.

Suddenly up ahead Karl silently raised his hand and made a fist. The men understood thesignal and squatted down amid the snow-covered foliage. In their mottled white and greyArctic-camouflage tunics and waiting perfectly still, they were almost undetectable in thedark.

Karl turned round and beckoned Kramer forward. He crunched lightly across the snow andsquatted down beside him.

Karl pointed through the trees ahead. ‘Is that it, sir?’