Far Edge of Darkness

Chapter Twelve

Francisco returned from Dr. Firelli's lab determined to find a way of placing a phone call off base. Someone had to be told what was going on up here. Surely he could find a satellite phone somewhere on a base as high-tech as this one was. What was that sergeant's name, the one who'd said something about a way to call home to his wife to be sure her labor went okay?

He had just sat down at his desk and was reaching for the base's phone directory when loud footsteps echoed through the nearly empty clinic. He frowned and glanced up just as the door to his office was thrust open. Two MPs he didn't recognize invaded the cramped space.

"Major Valdez, come with us, please." Despite the polite phrasing, the man's tone was curt, virtually insubordinate. Francisco leaned back in his chair. An involuntary chill trickled down his spine. Oh-oh.

"Why? There are two other doctors on duty in the wards."

The man's shrug was insolent. "Orders, Major."

"From?"

A flicker ran through the man's eyes. "Colonel Collins."

Francisco's chill deepened. The MP was lying.

"If you don't mind, I'm awfully busy right now, soldier. I'll just call Dan and see what this is all—"

He was reaching for the telephone when the first MP crossed the room with rapid strides and forcibly held down the receiver.

"You don't need to do that," the man said softly.

"Now, look here—"

With his other hand, the MP opened his parka and slipped out an obviously well-used Colt Woodsman pistol. But instead of a slender barrel and high-bladed sight, Francisco saw a long, cylindrical metal tube the thickness of a fluorescent lightbulb, at least seven inches long. He froze midsentence, afraid even to breathe.

They're going to kill me. Mother of God, they're going to kill me... .

"Now, Major," the MP was saying quietly, "we both know how quietly you want to come along. Just about as quietly as this little friend of mine would sing for you. Why, five shots from this wouldn't even attract their attention." He nodded toward the ward, where Francisco's medical staff worked in sweet oblivion. "They might look in, of course, and think you'd had a heart attack. And, naturally, they'd come in to check on you. It'd be a shame if we had to kill everyone in this building, wouldn't it?"

The man actually smiled at him.

Mother of God...

The spokesman said softly, "Put your hands flat on the desk, Major. Do it now."

Francisco complied. He sat motionless, palms slick against the cluttered desktop, and waited. The MP who hadn't spoken yet came around the desk and frisked him. Then pulled the chair—with Francisco still in it—out into the middle of the room. He didn't protest.

"Very good. Get up."

Francisco eased to his feet.

The MPs shoved him into a heavy parka. Briefly, he shut his eyes. Where were they taking him? A body could lie in those mountains for years... hundreds of 'em.

"Very good, Major. Now, we're going to go out there very quietly and watch you put together a field surgical kit. For an appendectomy."

"What?"

"I would advise you, Major, not to argue."

Francisco swallowed once and stared at the silenced pistol barely concealed by the other man's parka.

"Right. Sure. No problem. Field surgical kit." He licked his lips. "Anything else?"

"Your complete cooperation," the MP smiled. "I would hate to have to persuade one of your colleagues, instead."

Francisco found what he needed. When Dr. Allen and Dr. Kowalski asked what he was doing, he told them shortly that the base commander had summoned him for a medical emergency.

"What kind of emergency, sir?" Kowalski asked. "Anything we can do to—"

"Stop chattering when you're both three hours behind on your paperwork! Have you seen the mess that office is in?"

Allen and Kowalski exchanged puzzled glances and made themselves scarce. Francisco started breathing again once they'd gone.

"Excellent, Major," the MP murmured. "Let's go."

They shoved him into the back of a waiting troop truck and climbed in with him. The MPs took seats on opposite benches. The spokesman said, "On the floor."

He sat.

"And not another word from you, please."

They manacled his wrists with heavy bar cuffs.

Francisco was cold with more than the Arctic air as a third MP shoved the tailgate closed with a clang and disappeared around the side. Moments later the truck lurched into motion. The ride left him battered. From the little he could see out the back of the truck, they had climbed right across one of the nearby lower mountain ridges and descended the other side.

Where on earth were they taking him? If they were just going to shoot him, they wouldn't have forced him to assemble a surgical kit, but there was absolutely nothing out here but snow and ice and rock. Francisco eyed the silenced Colt Woodsman with a growing sense of foreboding. When the truck finally idled to a halt, nobody moved. Francisco tried to ease a cramp in his thigh. The nearest MP snapped, "Sit still!"

"Look, mister—"

Francisco had never been pistol whipped in his life.

It hurt.

He spat blood and groaned, then lay very still where he'd fallen. He did not want to be hit again.

The incongruous sound of thunder rumbled in his ears. Flashes of lightning blazed outside the truck. The thunder grew louder as false night descended over them. Then the MPs lowered the tailgate, jumped down, and dragged him out by the arms. The third MP grabbed the medical bag. Francisco stumbled and tried to regain his feet. As they hauled him bodily forward, he looked up.

And tried to stop.

"Mary, Mother of God—"

The men holding his arms ran him straight toward it. A glowing rip in the fabric of reality filled the air ahead. Blinding white light poured out of nowhere at all. Lightning blasted into the ground all around them. Francisco yelled—

Then they were inside it.

He fell... or thought he fell...

Frigid air that made Alaska feel like a balmy spring day hit him with a body slam. The shock robbed him of breath. He blinked and tried to see where he was. They had emerged onto a snowfield. The mountains looked vaguely like the Davidson Mountains north of the base, and that mountain off to the west looked like Table Mountain, in the Philip Smith range, but it couldn't be Table Mountain. Not far to the west stretched a sheet of ice that towered toward the sky, glittering a painful blue-white in the harsh sunlight. He tried to look around. To the east he found another massive ice sheet, farther away and much, much higher. That ice must be a mile thick... . Where in the name of Christ are we?

Between that ice sheet and the hole in reality they'd just dragged him through, Francisco focused on something dark brown and massive, moving slowly in the distance, but couldn't make his numbed mind identify it. Closer at hand was a prefabbed concrete building, similar to what the army used in Antarctica.

They dragged him toward that.

The MP holding the surgical kit pounded on what seemed to be the only door in an apparently windowless building. The door opened a crack.

"Special delivery from the boss." The man grinned.

"Joey! About bloody time!"

The door was thrown open by a man in blue jeans and a loud Hawaiian shirt with purple parrots on it. "Get him in here!"

The second MP of his escort turned and jogged back toward the lightning-filled crack in reality, disappearing into it. Francisco's mind reeled. Joey and the remaining MP—the same guard who'd pistol whipped him—shoved Francisco bodily inside. It was warm in the bunker, although very cramped. There were only four small rooms and no doors, only open doorways. One of the four rooms was a bathroom. The air stank of stale cigarette smoke, urine, sweat, and fear.

"Frank!"

He started. And swung around to see Lucille Collins' white face.

"What—?"

They shoved him in the opposite direction. In one of the corner rooms, they'd stacked up a collection of army cots. Janet Firelli sat crouched next to one of them, holding a young black boy's hand. The child was grey with pain. His eyes were shut. At their footsteps, the slim girl turned, a snarl on her lips. At sight of Francisco, she halted. Her eyes widened fractionally.

"Major Valdez! Hurry!"

They unfastened his wrists and shoved him forward. He put aside the questions crowding into his mind and knelt beside Janet.

"I think it's his appendix," she gulped. "This is Zac Hughes. The Third."

Hostages. The abrupt chill in his blood had not a solitary thing to do with the temperature: inside the bunker or outside in the frozen air.

Francisco checked Zac's pulse and pupils, then pressed lightly on his abdomen. When he let go, the boy screamed. Then fainted. Francisco swore. If it hadn't burst already—which would mean massive infection, peritonitis (and the probable death of Zac Hughes III, no matter what Francisco tried under these conditions)—it was very close to bursting, might well go at any moment. Madre Maria, please don't let it have burst yet, he's just a boy—a prisoner. Help me, so this child doesn't die like this, in this terrible place.

Taking a deep breath for courage, he growled, "Give me the medical bag." Someone complied. He tore Zac's shirt open, exposed the child's belly. He rummaged quickly through his woefully meager supplies. This was a helluva place for emergency surgery.

Better than a battlefield, of course... .

He administered anesthesia, then swabbed Zac's stomach and groin with alcohol and used more to wipe his hands. "Janet, tie that mask around my face, then put one on yourself and scrub your hands with those swabs."

She did so efficiently.

He motioned with his head to the gauze sponges and clamps he'd laid aside. "I hope you don't faint at the sight of blood, Janet. When I say 'sponge' reach in and swab up for me."

She gulped and nodded, then obeyed as Francisco made the incision.

She didn't faint. Didn't even make a sound after an initial whimper. She did make a fine nurse, everything considered. Mostly she did exactly as she was told and kept out of his way.

He finished suturing the incision closed, reached for a fresh alcohol wipe, and cleaned the area in and around the stitches. Then he reached for gauze and tape. Janet watched wordlessly and handed him a clean towel from somewhere for him to wipe his hands.

Then she burst into sobs. "I'm sorry—I'm sorry—" He reached out and hugged her.

"You did just fine, Janet. Your mother would be very proud."

That only brought fresh sobs.

"How touching."

Francisco turned to glare at the man in the Hawaiian shirt. He lolled in the doorway. Francisco noticed a pistol stuck casually in the waistband of his jeans. Stupid way to carry a firearm....

"Who are you?"

The man grinned and touched fingertips to brow in a mock salute. "Your jailor, doc. Welcome to cell block Alaska."

"His name is Bill," Janet said in a dull voice. "He works for somebody named Carreras. We're hostages, Major Valdez."

Bill gave him another jaunty mock salute.

"I figured that out," Francisco muttered, "but what for?"

She shook her head. "It has something to do with my mother's work. I'm not sure what. She's very close-mouthed when it comes to classified research. But I do know the general thrust of her work before she began this project. Before she was approached for this project," she added significantly.

"And?"

Janet glared at Bill, who was still grinning down at them.

"We're still in Alaska," she said dully. "But I wouldn't advise trying to escape. It wouldn't do a whole lot of good."

"Why not?" he asked irritably.

"Because we're about thirty-thousand years in the past."

She was serious. Francisco felt strangely disconnected and quite suddenly very, very afraid. Those ice sheets. And brown shapes that had looked vaguely elephantine... Bill began to chuckle.

Janet added, "Not only is there nowhere to go, we're stranded in the middle of the Pleistocene Ice Age. It's twenty below out there, without windchill. Last week, the wooly mammoth herds started migrating south for the winter, through the ice-free corridor. I figure the nearest people live somewhere in the middle of Russia, if Russia had any Cro-Magnons. Or would it be Paleo-Indians? Uh, I'm afraid anthropology isn't my thing."

Her eyes were bleak.

Francisco didn't want to believe her. But he'd seen the... thing... they'd taken him through. And that brown, moving mass he'd seen in the distance... It really had looked like a herd of elephants. Brown ones. With lots and lots of hair. And enough ivory on each beast to put a modern elephant to shame.

"We're treated pretty well, everything considered," Janet said in a low, scared voice. "They need us."

It occurred to Francisco Valdez in that cramped, foul little room, that he had no family to hold hostage. He was entirely superfluous now that Zac Hughes' life was out of danger. And he knew far, far too much about these people—whoever they were—for them to risk letting him get back alive.

Something dull and scared in Janet Firelli's eyes told him she knew it, too. Bill's laughter echoed in his ears.