Time Riders

CHAPTER 24

1941, Bavarian woods, Germany

Falling… falling… falling.

Dr Paul Kramer opened his eyes and immediately winced in the brightness. He screwed his eyesshut.

‘It’s OK,’ a voice spoke softly.

Kramer tried again, easing them open carefully. The first thing he registered was snow, adeep blanket of it, mostly smooth, with one or two tracks of footprints, and grooves whereheavy things had been dragged.

Squatting beside him was a familiar face.

‘Karl…’

‘Just take a moment, sir. There’s a minute of disorientation, dizziness.It’ll pass.’

Kramer took a deep breath and puffed out a thick cloud in front of himself. There were toomany questions he needed answered for him to wait. ‘Tell me we have arrived at the righttime?’

‘It appears to be. Snow for April would seem right.’

‘The right location?’

Karl nodded. ‘The woods outside Obersalzberg.’

‘The equipment?’

‘Is right here. It was a little scattered, but the men have located everything thatcame through and hidden it in the woods.’

‘The men all came through?’

Karl’s hesitation was enough. Kramer looked up at him, hooding hiseyes against the last faint glow of the dusk sky. ‘Karl?’

‘Tomas and Ethan… didn’t make it.’

Kramer struggled up on to his legs and looked around at the men. All were kitted out in theirArctic-camouflage jackets, backpacks and webbing strapped on. Each held ready astate-of-the-art M29 pulse rifle; on their heads they wore Kevlar helmets complete withfold-down nightscope and heat-sensor eye-HUDs. An impressive sight that stirred in him a warmsense of pride.

But so few of them.

He counted just seventeen.

‘What happened to Tomas and Ethan?’

Karl was reluctant to reply.

‘Karl! Please…’

His second-in-command nodded reluctantly. ‘I will show you.’

He stepped through his men across knee-deep snow that crunched beneath each step. Kramerfollowed him, pulling out his Arctic jacket, putting it on and zipping it up.

Karl led him into a thick copse of pine trees, branches drooping, heavily laden withsnow.

‘It appears something malfunctioned during their trip,’ said Karl as they pushedthrough some branches, dislodging a small cascade of powder snow. ‘Mercifully, neitherof them lived for very long,’ he continued, stepping to one side to reveal their bodies.‘They lasted no more than a couple of minutes,’ he added sombrely.

Kramer stared at the twisted tangle of limbs and organs. It was unrecognizable ashuman… or, more to the point, two humans. Instead, it looked like some grotesquecreature an insane God might construct from the parts left over from Creation — a pathetically corrupted thing with too many arms and legs and internal organsemerging into the open through distorted and bubbled skin that looked like melted plastic. Onehead, melded to the end of what looked like an impossibly long arm, Kramer recognized asEthan. He spotted the face of Tomas emerging from a mass of flesh that could only be describedas this thing’s pelvis.

‘My God,’ was all he could whisper. ‘They were still alive when you foundthem?’

Karl nodded, grim faced.

Kramer felt his stomach loosen, but he refused to vomit or retch in front of Karl. The manneeded to see a confident and strong leader, not someone who doubled over at the firstunpleasant sight.

‘We knew this might happen,’ said Kramer, ‘that Waldstein’s prototypemight be prone to error.’

Put a brave face on it, Paul Kramer, he commanded himself.

‘We were lucky to lose only two men, Karl. Only two.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, there’ll be no more time travelling now; we’re done with that.We’re where we want to be.’

Karl nodded and managed a weak smile.

‘Germany, fifteenth of April… 1941.’ Kramer nodded at the crest of a nearbyhill, now bathed in the cool, silver glow of moonlight. ‘Destiny is waiting for us upthere, Karl.’

Karl grinned eagerly. ‘We will succeed, won’t we?’

Kramer nodded. ‘Yes… we will.’