“I damned sure hope you’re right, bro,” Chaz said. He turned and made his way down from the ledge back to the compound.
Dwayne stood studying the terrain for a moment. He tried to picture it as it would appear tomorrow. How it would be different and how much it would be the same all that way in the past. He decided that was a waste of time and followed Chaz back toward the lights below.
Together they neared the Q-huts. They saw someone out in the dark near the tower. It was Tauber. He was pacing back and forth, holding a satellite phone to his ear. He waved at them as a greeting and a gesture that he was occupied and would speak to them soon.
“History, not a mystery,” Chaz muttered, and they headed for their bunks.
Renzi was still up and seated at the kitchen table in the residence hut. He was sipping coffee and watching the tiny TV there with the volume all the way down. His eyes were on the silent screen where cars went round and round a track without seeing any of it.
Dwayne and Chaz got that “not in the mood” vibe and just said their goodnights and went to their bunks. Renzi grunted back.
He was still up with the TV on when Parviz and Quebat returned and bustled into the hut, chattering in Persian. They fell silent when they saw Renzi seated in the blue glow of the TV.
“Good show?” Renzi said.
“Oh, yes.” Parviz smiled. “We’ve seen her a dozen times or more.” He turned to Quebat and spoke in a hushed tone. Quebat fished in a plastic shopping bag and held up a t-shirt with an image of Celine at the mike large on the front. He turned it to show Renzi the legend on the back.
“My Heart Will Go On,” Renzi read out loud, “my little girl likes that song.”
“Maybe we can get her a shirt for her,” Parviz said. “Next time we go. After you and the others come back.”
“Yeah, that’d be cool,” Renzi said. “Or maybe I’ll take her myself. I’ll be able to afford it after this.”
Both Iranians smiled the smiles they wore when they felt they did not quite understand what was being said to them. They excused themselves and left Renzi in the dark.
Morris Tauber stood outside huddled in a parka and listened to the voice on the other end of the sat phone. He nodded impatiently. Each time the voice paused, Tauber interjected with pleas and assurances. The voice broke in on him, and he paced as he listened. Then silence. Tauber wanted to throw the phone as far into the dark as his strength would allow. But it was his lifeline, and his sister’s lifeline. He would need that connection to beg for more money, more time.
The compound came to life the following morning.
The four men stripped down and dropped their clothing, watches, wallets, and other personal items into tubs marked with their names in black Sharpie.
Tauber stood by to assist. He wore a neutral expression and kept his eyes on their faces. But his gaze could not help but stray to bodies marked with scars and garish tattoos. All four had some variation of the Army Rangers unit symbol on their arms: a grinning skull with crossed combat knives behind it. Rick Renzi had an impressive one on his back that covered his entire right shoulder. The skull wore sunglasses and a fatigue cap with a cigarette butt clutched in tombstone teeth. Crossed M-16s and We All Come Back were emblazoned in a scroll beneath. There were also the puckered scars from bullet wounds on each man. Chaz had a broad patch of skin on one thigh covered in pink flesh left speckled by shrapnel. Dwayne had some grafting on the left side of his belly, the skin slick and hairless. Each man had the kind of rough-worn bodies a soldier gets in the field. No prison muscle or sculpted flesh from a gym. These were bodies built by long marches laden with heavy packs, used hard by battle.
The men showered with a strong antibiotic, exfoliating soap as Tauber directed. It was part of the protocol for entering the Tube. They had to remove as much bacteria from their skin as they could. The theory was that many of the bugs living on them would be unwelcome strangers in Nevada 100,000 BC.
The Tube was prepared to power up. The coils were rimed with a thick coat of white ice and dripped clumps of wet, frozen nitrogen. A frigid mist spread from the tubes across the concrete floor of the big room. The interior temperature hung down around thirty degrees.
The monitors at the computer station were filled with graphs of floating bars, levels climbing and falling in tiny increments. Tauber turned to them now and again to make sure the levels were constant. He was up all night going over the programs to calibrate the window into which the field would open on the other side. He wanted the men emerging as close behind Caroline and the others as he could manage. That intense work kept him from reviewing and re-reviewing the phone conversation from the night before and what he might have said to make his case stronger.
The Rangers stepped shivering from the showers and lined up at the tables where their uniforms and underwear lay folded. The clothing was neutral colored and stiff.
Next came the ammo packs and gloves that were made from a thicker weave of the same paper-based cloth as their uniforms. Each man would carry ten clips for two hundred rounds total in addition to one of Renzi’s special satchel charges. Two one-quart leather botas were worn on straps about their shoulders. Leather boots with leather soles held together with organic, decomposable glue.
