“Um, sure.”
“I have a few questions about these people who sell gold by the ton.”
14
Their Separate Ways
“No way! No way in hell, no way!” Chaz said.
“What are you going to do? You going to sit on your ass the rest of life?” Jimbo asked.
“I got near ten mil in cash hidden away. If I want to spend the rest of my life doing exactly nothing, then I can do that. Okay with you?”
The pair were shooting clay at a range neither of them would have been allowed on just two months previous. The membership was more than either of them earned in six months at their former jobs. Their custom engraved trap guns cost more than their last cars.
“You’ll get fat,” Jimbo said and raised his brand new Kreighoff over-and-under to blast a pair of clay discs flung over their heads from an automated launcher on the roof of the shooting shed behind them.
“I’m not fat!” Chaz said and missed both his clays.
“I said you’ll get fat. Again.”
Jimbo had reloaded and snapped his gun up to nail another pair even before they began their drop.
“Fucker.”
Chaz ejected two smoking rounds but ignored his turn. The twin discs soared away into the treetops unmolested.
“No sense wasting pigeons on you.” Jimbo touched the control screen set into the sheltered gun bench to shut down the launch program.
“Look at you, man. You’re in the best shape of your life. Ranger ready and born again hard,” Jimbo continued. “All because you thought we’d be going downrange again. You can tell me you’ll keep up the PT and the running and the weight training, but you’re lying to yourself. Guys like us need a purpose like a dog needs a job.”
“Why are you so eager to get back into it?” Chaz said. “You like that shit? Does it appeal to the Comanche in you or something?”
“I’ll let that pass.” Jimbo was a Pima.
“I bought a big house on the beach in Alabama, and when the renovations are done, it’s gonna have a state-of-the-art gym and my own running trail,” Chaz said and slid his double-barrel into a leather case.
“Six months from now, that gym will have an inch of dust on the floor and the running path will be weeds. Next thing you’ll be golfing.”
“Fuck you.”
“You’ve already been golfing, haven’t you?”
“Fuck you.”
“This isn’t about you becoming a fat ass, is it? You really have no itch to see more of The Then.”
“Damn straight, I don’t,” Chaz said and shouldered the gun case to walk away. “It fucked with my head. I keep thinking about it. That woman was dead, and we went back and changed it. She was stone dead for all those years and years and years, and we made it like it happened different, and now she’s alive and Renzi is the one who died.”
“It put everything into perspective for me,” Jimbo followed him along the gravel path back toward the main clubhouse. The bang-bang of shooters at other range stations came through the trees to them.
“I don’t want that kind of perspective, bro. I don’t want to know shit like that is possible. I don’t want to know that anyone can go back and change what shouldn’t be changed. What’s next? You going to go back and save Jesus?”
“Dwayne’s got something going. There’s enough in the kitty for the Taubers to build their own Wayback machine. We could use you. You’re part of the circle.”
“Circle of crazy. Roenbach’s going because he has a hard-on for that little brainiac. He’s too dumb to know he’s too dumb for her. But what’s your excuse, Jimbo? Admit it, bro. You liked it back there.”
“God help me, I did,” Jimbo said.
Everything was making Morris Tauber nervous these days.
At first, all that gold made him uneasy. The cash was worse. It was so much that it seemed unreal. It all felt wrong and dangerous. He let his little sister handle the arrangements for safe deposit boxes at two dozen banks in as many cities. He didn’t want to know about it. They were keeping a half-million dollars on hand in a North Face bag as petty cash. Just the idea of that was almost obscene.
Morris could not escape the feeling that something bad was out there, just out of sight, waiting to make itself known.
He insisted they stay on the move. Hammond got them a brand-new set of credentials and fresh credit cards that were legal in every sense except that they belonged to entirely fictitious people. The Taubers received statements each month and paid their bills like everyone else from checking accounts in the same phony names. Paying in cash drew all kinds of unwanted attention. Morris was now Kevin Francis Eckenrode, and Caroline was Helen Elizabeth Martin-Freeborn.
They were on the road each day moving from motel to hotel to cabin for about a week when Caroline announced that she’d had it with second-and third-rate motor-lodges and Wayside Inns and Best Westerns. She booked a flight to St. Thomas, and Morris, at a loss and adrift without her, tagged along.
Caroline was not doing anything to salve his paranoia. She wanted to talk about the Tube; about setting one up on their own and making more expeditions into the past.
“We’ll need the nuke,” Morris insisted from the shade of his umbrella on a white sugar beach. Caroline lay back on a marvelous chaise in nothing more than a bikini and sunscreen. Morris wore a sun-safe shirt and khakis. He was wearing socks, for God’s sake. With sandals. Jesus.
“The Iranians will go along with us,” she said. “They’ll come for the money. Besides, they have nowhere else to be.”
“I know how they feel.” Morris sighed.
“We need to talk about this, Morris. The theories are all proven. But there are engineering challenges to setting up for a trip back to Ionian, Nisos Anaxos. That’s where you come in.”
“Carrie...”
“You can’t be scared all the time, Mo! Hell, the
