“That almost sounds like a proposal,” she said and accepted the damp cloth, which she held to the back of her neck.
“Way cooler than a stupid ring,” Lee said and waggled the banner. The polished horse atop it caught the sunlight.
“We have to get them moving, Lee,” Bat said, pointing her chin down at the men clumped below them.
“Remember, there’s only one here that we’re interested in,” he said. “Some of them ran off. Maybe he was one of them. It’s ‘Jesus, save yourself’ from here on. Our job is done here.”
“Or maybe he died on the march or in the quarry. Maybe we came here for nothing.”
“That’s always a possibility.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“Then the world we go back to is going to be a lot different than the one we left.” He shrugged.
“If we get back. Mission failure would mean that the future changed from this point on, right? No Taubers. No time machine. No way back.”
“I try not to think about things like that,” Lee said. “What if things are different? What will they be like? Rhetorically.”
“Rhetorically?”
“Okay, theologically,” Bat said. “If they’re different, it’s because Jesus’s life was interrupted and the events he lived through were never recorded. What does that prove?”
“Maybe you and Chaz will be singing from the same hymn book.”
“I don’t think so, stupid. Jews recognize Christ as a philosopher, just like Buddha or Plato. He lived and was influential to history. Subtracting him from the historical record would be a major shake-up to the status quo even if you don’t believe.”
“Like if there was no Elvis.”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe that should be our next mission,” Lee said. “Go back and save the King.”
“No one could save Elvis,” Bat said, shaking her head sadly.
Down in the camp, Jimbo had lashed some tent cloth to a pair of poles to make a stretcher for Boats.
The wound on the SEAL’s leg was turning ugly. It was swelling around where the shaft pierced the flesh. The skin already felt warm. The arrow needed to be pulled, and the puncture wound cleaned end to end. Only there was no way to know if that might tear a vessel, leaving Boats to bleed out. The shaft pierced him at an angle, where it could have struck any number of major vessels, including his femoral artery. They just weren’t equipped for that kind of eventuality, and the nearest surgery was a couple of millennia away. All he could do was stabilize Boats with antibiotics and try to keep the big guy from going into a fever. They’d all had dozens of prophylactic injections for whatever bugs they might run across. There was no way of knowing what brand of filth that arrow carried in with it. The sailor was a tough son of a bitch and could last a few days more. It would get sketchy after that.
Carrying the SEAL was a whole different set of problems. It was a four-man job, minimum. While Jimbo had all the respect in the world for the former IDF wonder woman on the team, she just didn’t have the size to keep up over the long haul under a load like that. Boats was well over two hundred pounds, and they had a rough days-long slog back to the coast with fifty pounds of gear each over hard country. It wouldn’t work even if Dwayne was along and they had four Rangers on the job. They needed guns walking point and drag. They couldn’t just be humping Boats like it was a marathon event through a city park.
Jimbo looked around him at the slaves they had freed. Instead of putting distance between them and their captors, they were hanging around like it was a tailgate party. Two guys were fighting over a crock of wine while others cheered them on. The rest were either sitting idly on the ground or walking around listlessly. They all had lice. Their skin crawled with the critters. Some of the men were wasted physically, painfully malnourished, and covered in sores. They looked like they’d never walk another step. There were plenty of others who still looked healthy enough, and even a few who had some muscle on them. They were all little guys, but they all looked as tough as old timber.
There were younger and healthier ones here, too. They had to be the recent captives from Nazareth. Among them was the man they came to save. Jimbo searched their faces, not sure of what he was looking for. He had gone to a Catholic elementary school on the reservation. The nuns had told him all about Jesus, but none of them knew what he looked like. And no one here looked like the bearded rock star in his catechism books.
He walked up to a few seated on the ground chewing mouthfuls from a loaf of bread they were sharing.
“How about a hand, dude?” Jimbo said and kicked at the foot of the biggest one.
The man looked up at him sullenly and went back to chewing.
“We freed your ass, bro. How about doing a little work as a thank you?” Jimbo said and kicked the man’s foot again.
The man spat a wad of bread at Jimbo. The Pima reached down, grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair, and yanked him upright. Jimbo planted a fist square in the man’s face, sending him flying to lie unmoving in the dust.
“Up off your asses!” Jimbo roared.
The group understood the timeless language of aggression. They stood up as one and let Jimbo shove them into a line for an informal inspection. He picked the six stoutest examples, guys with good feet and sturdy calves and all their fingers. Years of quarry work had taken its share of digits off a lot of these guys. He pushed them from the line toward the stretcher. He gestured for them to pick the man up. Most looked at him blinking. One of them,
