Afterward, Boats went back down to the beach to take a swim and a nap under a tarp he’d slung over the inflatable. The other four made their way up the rocks to the top of the promontory. It was only fifty feet high at its tallest but provided concealment between rough black boulders spackled with an eon of bird shit. More importantly, it was a platform that provided a view of the entire sheltered cove and the chain of islets that sat in the turquoise shallows that spun away north from Nisos Anaxos.
“This is our spot,” Dwayne said. “This is where we set up our OP. We can see any approach from the sea and probably have a front-row seat to watch them bury their loot.”
“How much would this topography have changed?” Jimbo said.
“There’ll be differences,” Caroline said. “But nothing as dramatic as we saw in Nevada. I mean, geologically, we’re going back five minutes. These rocks have been here since forever. They’ll be there then. Maybe some changes in plant life. Maybe not.”
“It’s the best place for a hide on the island. Full lines of sight all around and no one is likely to climb up here,” Dwayne said. “A couple of dark camouflaged tarps and some netting and it’ll be like home.”
“We’re going to have to hump a shitload of supplies up here for a thirty-day hide,” Jimbo said.
“Thirty days is an outside estimate, right?” Dwayne said, turning to Morris.
“Oh yeah. Thirty days. Outside,” Morris said, nodding.
27
The Maelstrom
“For the last time, I am not wearing a fucking toga,” Jimbo said.
“Technically, it’s a singlet,” Caroline said.
The two-man team was in the passenger stateroom that they’d converted to a ready room. Dwayne and Jimbo were gearing up for insertion back to the target date. They were dressed in BDUs and sneakers. Their observation gear, weapons, rations, and other gear was packed in buoyant containers and already strapped down on the Zodiac waiting in the Tube chamber.
“I’m not wearing it,” Jimbo said.
“It’s more in period,” Caroline said.
“Like my Winchester and our MREs?”
Caroline was all business, and Dwayne knew why. She still wanted to go along but knew she’d get voted down by everyone. Her disappointment was taking the form of detached professionalism.
“Do not interact with anyone. Do not be seen. Do not leave anything behind. You are only going back to observe and report,” she recited for the umpteenth time.
“Roger that,” Dwayne said.
“We’ll try to keep the field open as long and as often as possible. You each have a transmitter, and Morris has made some tweaks that should increase its range. Keep us posted on your progress.”
“Roger.”
“When you arrive, take a star reading as soon as you can and transmit it back to us so that we can confirm the date of your manifestation. Your transmitter has the capability to send back images now like a smartphone, but watch your range.”
“Will do.”
“You have the relevant text from the Praxus codex. You have a rough description of the Phoenician bireme you’ll be looking out for. Don’t get too close. Even an approximate location of the burial site is enough.”
“Anything else?” Dwayne asked.
“I can’t think of anything,” she said and met his eyes.
“That’s it, then.”
“Guess it is.”
He let her have the last word, and they made it down to the Tube chamber below decks where Morris waited. Jimbo glanced to the sky above the bow where the balloon floated dark; a black hole in the starfield.
The Tube chamber was bone-chilling cold and painfully dry. The floor around the Tube itself was hidden under a cloud of vapor. The rings dripped ice in steaming clumps. Every surface of the room thrummed with the power contained within the Tube field. Morris stood layered in sweaters and a parka.
“We’re powered for manifestation,” Morris said. “You need to go now, to take full advantage of the thirty-minute window. After that, regrets only.”
“I like it better that way. No time to think about it,” Jimbo said.
Dwayne was startled by Caroline’s arms around his neck and her mouth on his. She was pulling his face down to hers. She broke it off and stood silent as he joined Jimbo at the Zodiac resting on the modified platform.
The Tube platform was modified into a rolling conveyor like the one used by loadmasters on cargo jets. The pair of Rangers shoved the Zodiac into the tube from behind like toboggan riders. They leaped aboard as the rollers took over. Their forward momentum carried them into the freezing fog and away.
The disorienting physical effects of moving back to The Then overwhelmed Dwayne once again, hammering headache, pounding heart, crushing vertigo, sense of falling.
The sense of falling was real. The cold and wet shocked him into recovery. He was thrown hard onto the deck of the Zodiac and then airborne, only to crash down on the aluminum plates again. All around it was dark and wet. It was raining, a hard, dense rain. He fought to hold onto the raft as it lifted and fell. Dwayne looked around for Jimbo in the downpour and could not see him.
Dwayne crawled to the edge of the raft and could see nothing but a trough of churning water with walls of sea on either side. The trough closed like a pair of giant hands, and he was submerged, raft and all. He came up gasping as the tough little raft resurfaced at the top of a swell. Off the bow, he looked down from a dizzying height to a canyon of raging seawater falling away far below. Over the shriek of the wind, he could just hear the sound of a shouting voice. He turned to the stern and could see, for only a second, a dark shape against the foam of a following swell.
Lightning revealed the sea in painful white and deep black, but
