Of course, their research could be bullshit. One variable and the whole op was turned ass up. The city could be in the grip of plague or famine. It could be suffering the aftereffects of an earthquake or fire. Maybe the legions were there clamping down after a week of riots. They could motor their rubber raft right through an imperial fleet.
Doc Tauber worked at fine-tuning the Tube, but he still couldn’t guarantee what time of day they’d pop out, high noon or the middle of the night. They could drop into mirror seas or the middle of a hundred-year storm. There was just no way to know. It was impossible to be prepared for every eventuality, but they’d be ready enough to stay flexible when, not if, things went sideways.
They had enough of the Carthaginian coins on board to live like kings in first-century Rome. They’d only take enough to buy mounts and incidentals. Lee Hammond took care of the currency they’d need for paying their way. A few days in a lemon-juice solution removed the centuries of patina from the coins so they’d look closer to the right vintage in the eyes of anyone they met back in The Then.
Jimbo rolled a fifty-gallon drum off the lower rear deck of the Raj. Bat stood by with one of the Winchester 70s. The sea was as flat and calm as a tablecloth. The sun was low to port, making the sea glimmer in copper and deepest green. The ship was moving slow. The barrel rose and fell on the rolling, creamy wake.
“Let it drift on out,” Jimbo said.
“Okay,” Bat said and dropped her Ray-Bans onto her freckled nose to cut down the glare off the water. She stood rocking easy with the slight movement of the deck. Three weeks on board, and she had her sea legs back. But striking a moving target from a moving deck was still going to be a challenge.
The barrel bobbed away until it was a good two hundred yards out. It was a crimson dot catching light as it dipped and rose in the gentle current.
“Find your target,” Jimbo said. He had a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
Bat rode the slight rise of the deck and sighted over the scope to locate the barrel. She lowered her eye to the scope cup. The drum seemed to leap within touching distance.
“Got it,” she said.
“All yours, then,” Jimbo said.
She locked the reticules on the barrel and held that position as the deck fell beneath the soles of her sneakers. Holding her breath, Bat waited until the deck climbed up and the barrel was in view again. She let her breath out slowly and squeezed firm and steady on the trigger.
Jimbo saw a geyser of foam six feet in front of the barrel.
“That an honest miss?” he said.
“If you mean, was I on it, I was,” she said.
“You’re hitting short.”
She lowered the rifle and twiddled a dial atop the scope then raised it again to find the barrel now drifting closer to three football fields distant. Breathe in, ride the roll, squeeze.
Through the lenses, Jimbo saw a hole punched in the metal skin of the barrel. The force made the drum take a quarter spin.
“Money,” he said with a grin.
She jacked a fresh round and retrained the 30x and nailed the barrel again. Four more times she worked the bolt and brought the crosshairs down and drilled the steel drum clean each time. The barrel was five hundred yards aft on her last strike and sinking low in the water.
“Nice,” Jimbo said. “How’d that feel?”
“Like holding my first puppy.” She smiled.
“What’s your best?”
“In the rings from a thousand meters.”
“On a range?” he asked.
“A place called Qana. Took a Hezbollah sapper through the head,” she said and pulled the bolt from the rifle with an expert tug.
“Headshots are a bitch.”
“He didn’t give me much choice,” she said. “I’m going forward to clean the Winchester if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure.” The Pima nodded. “Far as I’m concerned, that rifle’s yours from now on.”
“Thanks.” She flashed a smile and walked to a ladder with the rifle under her arm.
Damn, Jimbo thought, Lee better watch his ass around this girl. He wouldn’t want to do anything to piss off someone who could shoot like that.
Bat found Chaz in the cabin they used for meetings and as a day room. He had buds in his ears from an iPod and listened to his tunes while running the blade of a combat knife, an eight-inch Bowie type with a brass tang, over the surface of a whetstone.
“What’re you listening to?”
“Right now? Gorillaz. Part of a mix,” he said.
“They’re okay. You like Bonde do Rolê?”
“Brazilian, right? Yeah. I have some of them on here.”
“Death to your speakers. Death to your speakerssssss...” she growled in an exaggerated basso.
Chaz laughed. Bat poured some coffee from a pot warming on a hot plate.
“Hey, while I’m putting an edge on my blade, you need your knife sharpened?” He nodded to the bayonet in a web scabbard on the belt of her cutoffs.
“Thanks, but I promised my dad I’d always do that.” She sat across the table from him, shaking a paper packet of Equal in her fingers.
“A Kabar. Your dad a jarhead?”
“First Marines. Semper fi, do or die. He carried it in Vietnam. He was at Hue City after Tet.”
“So that’s where you get it,” Chaz said.
“My mom’s tougher. Public school teacher in Cleveland. She’s been in more fights than me or Dad.” She took a sip.
“So why this fight, girl? You coming along to be with Lee or for the action?”
“A chance to see what you guys have seen? Like I could pass that up? Besides, you
