The four former Rangers took seats around the black-granite-topped table in the windowless room blasted from Alpine bedrock. Bottles of Bitburger Pilsner were chilling in a silver ice bucket on a banquet. A platter of cold meat and cheeses and a selection of breads lay by it.
Dwayne laid out the mission for them. “Holy shit,” James “Jimbo” Smalls said.
Chaz Raleigh spat out a mouthful of his sandwich. “This sounds like a clusterfuck in the making,” Lee said.
“We’re in the right place at the right time,” Dwayne said. “We’re the only ones who can make this happen.”
“Sounds like the wrong place and the way-wrong time to me,” Lee said.
“I’m in,” Chaz said after a swallow of beer.
“You are?” Lee looked at him, wide-eyed. “That easy?”
“You ask me if I want to go back and save Jesus,” Chaz said. “Yeah, I want to go back and save Jesus.”
“Then why not just go back and pull him down off the cross?” Lee said.
“I take you’ve never read the Bible,” Chaz said.
“I read Bill O’Reilly’s book. Does that count?”
“No.”
“I’ll make this plain,” Dwayne cut in. “This Sir Neal, the same fucker who nearly had me and Caroline killed, has his own version of the Tauber Tube. He’s using it to change the rules. His people are going back in time and affecting key events. Or that appears to be the strategy, anyhow.”
“So how does someone kidnapping teenaged Jesus change things?” Lee asked.
“Samuel doesn’t think it’s a kidnapping. He thinks it was supposed to be murder, but there was some kind of fuckery, and Sir Neal didn’t get what he paid for,” Dwayne said.
“Okay,” Lee said, waving a hand before him. “This Samuel guy. He’s from the future? He knows all this shit for sure? Like it’s already happened and he’s reading it in yesterday’s newspaper. How can we believe all this?”
“Do you believe me? Do you believe me and Caroline entered the field and then showed up four days later in Rhodes with Caroline six months pregnant?”
Lee raised his hands in surrender.
“You may be an agnostic on all this, Lee. But Jesus Christ did exist. And even if you don’t buy the son of God thing, you have to admit that the man influenced the world, a lot. And taking him out of the picture before he’s twenty-one means he doesn’t walk the road he was supposed to and none of what we know about him ever happened.”
“So, no Christmas or Easter,” Lee said.
“You can’t be this dumb, man,” Chaz said with some heat. “Jesus changed the world. We’d still be worshipping trees and shit. There’d be no Christianity or America or nothing. I don’t want to live in that world, bro. I won’t live in that world if there’s something I can do about it.”
“Okay, if this is the real messiah then wouldn’t his father be intervening here to make it right?” Lee said. “You telling me this Harnesh guy is fucking with God’s plan? And getting away with it?”
“Maybe we’re part of God’s plan,” Dwayne said.
“Avenging angels.” Chaz smiled.
“We’re on a mission from God,” Jimbo proclaimed, speaking for only the second time since the mission was sketched out. “Elwood Blues, right?”
“Whatever changes get made, they’ll make a world where Sir Neal calls the shots,” Dwayne said. “Whatever this is and whatever it means, it’s what that fucker wants. That can’t be good for anyone, and particularly not for us.”
“It hasn’t changed, has it? We’re sitting here talking about Jesus right now,” Lee said.
“Because there’s still time to change what happened,” Dwayne said and lifted a laptop onto the table and opened it. “But there’ll be a point where it’s too late to fix what’s broken.”
“We know this how?” Lee asked.
“Samuel. It’s all way over my head but, the way he explains it, time doesn’t act in the cause-and-effect way that we think it does,” Dwayne said as he tapped keys. “He said that traveling back in time is like lifting a sheet from a bed and dropping it back in place. The sheet’s in the same position and the fabric is the same, but the wrinkles are different.”
The three men regarded Dwayne with blank expressions.
“Yeah, I don’t get it either.”
“Shit, as long as you promise to stop trying to explain it, I’m in too.” Lee shrugged. “Color me curious.”
“Jimbo?” Dwayne said to the silent Pima nursing a beer at the end of the table.
“And miss a second chance to play gladiator?” Jimbo grinned. “No fucking way, Maximus.”
Dwayne turned the laptop so they could see the screen.
“This is our area of operations.” Dwayne stood to touch the screen and bring up details. “Our rescue target should still be in transit from here to here.” His finger touched the screen to highlight a winding north/south road that stretched from what was now northern Israel and into southern Lebanon.
“We make an amphibious landing here along the Lebanese coast and move overland to intercept the slave caravan. We swim in or take motorized transport depending on how close Boats can bring the Raj to shore without any questions.”
“Not that close with the IDF patrolling those waters for Hamas,” Lee said. “We couldn’t have picked a worse time for this op.”
“We’ll work that out. Now the mission objective is to free all the slaves in that caravan. We are
