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  Below them the doorway lay dormant. In Nevada Xavier Morales wondered just what he and Europa could do to help because if they could not resolve the situation sooner rather than later, Colonel Collins might not have a way to come home again.

  Director Compton said he would face excitement even inside the complex, but thus far in his limited experience with Department 5656, this was just plain ridiculous. Xavier hit the emergency switch located at his desk and the warning chimes sounded throughout the complex. The Event Group was now on alert for a possible hostage rescue in Brooklyn.

  * * *

  With the exception of Niles, Alice, Moira, and two of the larger Russian guards, the group was led down the stairs. The three were left behind because of age or infirmities, along with the outright thought that the three could cause no harm, even if they somehow escaped. But in all reality Doshnikov just didn’t have the time to get them down the stairs and ensconced in the large elevator.

  The Russian immediately left the group after stepping from the stairwell. The rest were being brought down by the freight elevator. He wanted to gaze upon the doorway by himself. He saw his fifteen men had secured the technicians safely—after all, they would be the ones to help him achieve his goals this night.

  He turned and saw the doorway as it sat silent and still, steaming like a hot iron. The lasers were being cooled through the conduit system that was currently being flushed with liquid nitrogen, which made a loud and ear-piercing noise as it struck the hot system. The Russian didn’t even flinch at the loud noise as he was mesmerized by the sight of the ceramic-covered doorway.

  The radiation warning lights were flashing their yellow cry of danger as the system was being rebooted. When Virginia reverse-engineered the doorway she was only guessing at the turnaround time. Moira had explained that at the height of their dimensional jumps they had a twelve-hour turnaround time to reboot their systems and to recharge their antiquated laser platform. That was when she realized how painful Moira’s trips were through the German Doorway before the advent of the advanced lasers of today. It was a wonder the girl child had survived even the four experimental jumps back in Germany.

  Doshnikov saw something just beyond the doorway and stepped up to the platform. He cautiously ran a hand through the air to make sure nothing vanished on him. Then a loud scream sounded and the Russian almost screamed. He turned angrily at the intruder to his thoughts. It was the man they called Ryan. He had screamed as soon as the elevator doors had opened wide enough for him to see what he had been doing. He intentionally made the Russian look the fool. Jason was brutally pushed forward as he and Mendenhall laughed at the fright he had put on the mobster.

  Doshnikov returned to what had attracted his attention. He grimaced and then stepped through the front portal of the doorway. He took five steps inside and then reached down and felt the cold steel. He then reached over and retrieved something from the deck. He straightened and saw that it was dirt and some form of moss. The entire entryway to the doorway was covered in what looked like ash. He looked down and the trail vanished after only a few feet. He brushed the dirt and ash away and slapped his hands together and then turned to face the others. He moved over to the glass partition where the Event Group technicians sat stoicly, not moving but not frightened either. Most were defiant and just waiting for Commander Ryan to lead the way and tell them what to do. They had come to learn the colonel’s security department was always one step ahead. They all turned when they heard a grunt and saw that Jason Ryan had been clubbed on the head pretty good by one of his captors. The reality of knowing they may not be one step ahead didn’t frighten them as much as anger them. After Overlord, it was pretty damn hard to scare people from Department 5656.

  “Perform your duties well and you will soon be set free”—Doshnikov gestured around him—“to go about doing whatever it is you very strange people do. Do not perform them and I’m afraid there will be repercussions. Starting with that small child. And I know how you Americans can be so aghast when harm befalls children.” He gestured toward his men. “Take the family Koblenz to the observation room. Give me the detonator.”

  The detonator to the explosives strapped to the baby’s carrier was passed to him and the family was moved back into the elevator once the threat was made and understood. It was then that a groggy Ryan looked at Mendenhall and then his eyes found the small detonator device in Doshnikov’s hand. Will nodded but at the moment there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Anya and Sarah were also watching and examining the detonator. The key here was to make sure that the baby and family were left unharmed. To every man and woman in the Group, that was now the priority, even beyond the safety of Jack and his team, Everett or themselves. Niles had explained time and time again: what they did was not worth one innocent life in their pursuit of historical acumen. Ever.

  “Now, Mr. Jodle, please step forward.”

  In the observation room Moira saw the traitor for the first time. Joshua Jodle. She had known the man was a weasel and the only child she ever regretted bringing out of Germany. Ambitious was a mild word for the cruel child. He had learned from the Nazis just how to get things done through intimidation. Sad that was the only lesson the boy had learned in the camps. The board had warned her of the man’s ambitions.

  “Are you prepared?” the Russian asked.

  Jodle held up an aluminum case. The prize was held chest high and the Wall Street genius nodded.

  “If I may ask?” Ryan said as he rubbed the bump on his head and angrily looked at the guard who had delivered the blow. The tattoo made the Russian thug wary of the much smaller naval officer.

  “Ah, finally some curiosity. Actually I was hoping you would ask. Inside this case”—he reached out and tapped it lightly on its top as the smiling little rat that held it did the same—“is the future, or should I say the past. This is the mythical Pandora’s Box and it is filled with the key to riches beyond measure.”

  * * *

  As Moira listened to the men speak through the speaker system, she cringed as she realized just what the traitor Jodle and the Russian were about to attempt. The thought that all of her wealth that her board of directors might have accumulated in the same manner over these many years made her physically ill.

  “What are they up to, Moira?” Alice asked.

  “They are simply going to change their destiny. I suspect that inside that case is a stock portfolio from sometime in the past, perhaps an exact copy of Warren Buffet’s. Or perhaps corner the market on Microsoft stock. My bet would be on Buffet or Gates.”

  “Can they do that?” Niles asked.

  “Yes, but they would have to use the doorway from building one-fourteen way back when it was operational, and since time and the dismantling of the doorway from building one-fourteen means nothing to the quantum jumper, it could be done. They would lock on to the signal during one of our operations just as you did tonight, and then they can travel all the way back to 1968 if they wanted. But they wouldn’t have to go back that far. I would guess they would shoot for the doorway’s last operation, when we brought back that little bastard Julien.”

  “Industrious, I’ll give the poor bastard that,” Niles said as he eyed the monitor in the corner. It was still dark but he suspected that Xavier was there along with his entire staff. He was hoping he was thinking the same way that he was at that moment. Niles nodded at the monitor and the two Russian guards thought he had gone into some sort of spasm. Again he nodded at the monitor and then moved his head to the side toward the glass that separated the observation room from the doorway below. Compton quickly and deftly ran a finger across his throat.

  At that moment both Alice Hamilton and Moira Mendelsohn knew what Niles wanted Xavier to do. The two Russians conversed in their native tongue at Compton’s strange behavior and that was when Alice broke the silence since the guards wouldn’t know what they were talking about anyway.

  “What about our people?”

  Niles shook his he
ad.

  “That’s just it, they’re our people and they will know what to do.”

  Alice and Moira both looked at each other, knowing the director might have just ordered the death of all in that room.

  * * *

  The camera system had remained on but was set only as a one-way link. Xavier could see them but they couldn’t see him. Morales could hear them but knew the director was limited as to what he could say in the open. What Compton did manage shocked and astounded him. There was only one thing he could do to achieve what the director wanted and he hoped he was thinking along those same lines.

  “Gentlemen, I need your attention and your expertise,” he said as he turned his wheelchair and looked out on the computer center floor. His 112 techs looked over at their new department head and listened.

  “What do you need, boss?” Harvey Anderson from photo intelligence asked before the others could. The men and women had managed a growing respect for how fast the twenty-five-year-old thought.

  “We cannot make adjustments to the settings from here, they can only do that in Brooklyn. But we can do something else.”

  The large center waited as he thought a moment. He hoped beyond measure it was the same thing the director was thinking.

  “What, sir?” Anderson asked.

  “We can turn the doorway on. And do it on full power. We can’t adjust the settings from here, as I said, but we can sure as hell make that doorway burp a little. I need a direct link to the Los Angeles. We need that boat on standby for emergency power-up.”

  “At full power that doorway will create a hurricane force inside that building, and then it will suck anything in front of it through to another dimension.” Anderson looked around him at the other techs that were just as shocked as he.

  Xavier smiled. “And hopefully right into the waiting arms of a very pissed-off Colonel Collins.”

  The light slowly dawned on the technicians’ faces and they knew that this man had just as much if not more brass balls than that had been demonstrated by none other than Dr. Peter Golding.

  “People, let’s get ready to send this Russian jerk-off into a world he didn’t expect. Someplace his stock portfolio does little good.”

  * * *

  Joshua Jodle examined the new and improved design of the doorway. He went from the rectangle lining the doorway to the technicians’ stations behind the glass partition. One of the Group’s younger electrical engineers from UCLA watched the man and shook her head. He caught sight of this in his peripheral vision and turned on her.

  “What is the minimum reboot time for this system?”

  “You got me there, fella, they don’t tell me diddly around here,” she said in all seriousness.

  “Unlike my Russian partner over there, I do not like to use threats, but you must know that they are not beyond my capabilities, young lady.” Joshua turned to face the girl and her colleagues sitting against the old brick wall. They all seemed to be enjoying his lack of knowledge.

  “Yeah, we’re going to cooperate with a bunch of lowlife bastards who just strapped explosives to a sleeping baby.” The young blonde looked to her left at the other young technicians. They were all of the same mind and it was at that moment most realized just how much their chief of security had rubbed off on them.

  Jodle looked through the glass at the waiting Doshnikov and shook his head. The Russian just nodded once and one of his guards went to the first tech in line and stood the young man up. The defiance in the kid’s bespectacled face was evident to Ryan and Mendenhall, who stood with Virginia, Sarah, and Anya. The boy’s eyes momentarily flicked to those of Ryan for the bravery he would need in the next few moments.

  “I believe the question was what is the turnaround cycle for the doorway,” Doshnikov asked with an exasperated intake of breath. His eyes bored in on the young tech, who swallowed as the larger Russian took him by the lab coat’s collar menacingly.

  “That’s enough,” Jason said as he took a menacing step away from the center of the room, but only made it two feet when an old-fashioned six-shot Colt .45 Peacemaker was put into his face. Ryan raised his brows when he saw that it was the head man who had produced the weapon. The end of the barrel looked like a cannon’s bore. Will followed suit and the gun moved minutely to the right and stilled him. Doshnikov nodded that his man should continue the questioning.

  Ryan had decided to move again when he caught sight of Alice Hamilton in the observation window above them. She had her hands on the windowsill and he barely saw the small gesture of her hand waving him off and the small shake of her head. Then one finger went up, two fingers went up, and then finally the third finger.

  The gathered Russians flinched when the doorway started its slow revolutions. The lasers were off but the coolant chambers were still charged with nitrogen and that stored liquid vented through one of the ports on the side of the rectangular mainframe of the doorway. This loud noise made the Russians jump back as the revolutions increased, creating a small onrush of air as the doorway gained momentum. Doshnikov looked first at Jodle, who was also watching with interest, and then over at Ryan, who gave the Russian a sad look as if his earlier question had unintentionally been answered by the doorway itself.

  “Ah, it has completed its cool-down cycle.” He looked over at Jodle, who meekly agreed with a nod.

  The technicians who lined the wall exchanged knowing looks that the doorway did not require a cool-down period before a second attempt could be made. They hoped what was about to happen didn’t occur until at least their friends were out of the line of fire.

  Jason, Will, Sarah, Virginia, and Anya all saw Niles Compton as he stepped to the glass and stood beside Alice. Niles Compton closed his good eye and then nodded his head. Ryan swallowed when he realized that the scenario facing them was a simple one—they had to get the Russians and that detonator out of the building, and there was only one way to do that. He didn’t know how they would get the Russians to voluntarily step through the doorway, but Jason was willing to go on faith. Before he turned away, Commander Ryan nodded back at the director. He then looked at the darkened main monitor where Xavier would have been. Ryan raised his eyebrows in concern for the plan. He knew it was a silent plea that asked the young computer whiz if he knew what he was doing.

  “Oh, shit,” Virgnia said as it just dawned on her how this plan had only one way of working.

  “What?” Sarah asked as quietly as she could as the Russian admired the spinning doorway in front of him.

  “There’s only one way to get these dickheads through that doorway without asking them to do so—Xavier’s going to flood the system and open the doorway with a surge burp.”

  “A what?” Sarah hissed in questioning.

  “It’s a theory, but should work.” Virginia’s features soured somewhat. “Damn, this is going to be something.”

  EVENT GROUP COMPLEX, NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA

  “A what?” The young computer specialist asked as he listened to their new boss’s plan. The other specialists were just as confused.

  “When we studied the plans for the German doorway and the more recent apparatus from Madam Mendelsohn, we discovered their earlier mistakes that cost them a few innocent lives in the process. It seems it happened a few times when the doorway was brought online too fast. The surge, or burp, as Madam Mendelsohn called it, is a backwash of energy that rebounds in the opposite direction of the doorway’s intended path when the system’s lasers are started too quickly. The light refuses to bend until the doorway is at full revolutions. Until that speed is achieved the light has no place to go except to bounce off the incomplete doorway path.”

  “I don’t follow,” the young man said as he knew he was listening to another computer boss that was light-years ahead of all of them.

  “The power of the dimensional shift will bounce back into the room.” Confusion still reigned on most of their faces. “You know, where the bad guys are currently standing.”

  It
dawned on most at the same time and they realized the Russians were not the only people in the line of fire.

  “By the time the burp backfires into the room those people will think the gates of hell have opened up. Madam Mendelsohn claims it’s an enclosed hurricane that sucks everything and everyone into the vortex before anyone knows what’s happening. The RPMs on the machine are at max power and they have a one-way ticket—target, Antarctica—and hopefully a helping hand in Colonel Collins and his team. I hope they’re ready for this.”

  The faces staring back at him were worried and Morales knew why.

  “It’s the only way we can protect the bulk of the Event Group staff and the doorway. We have to disable those explosives and removing the only way to detonate them is the only way we can achieve that. We just have to hope Mr. Ryan knows what’s happening. So, let’s remotely get this thing started before that Russian asshole decides to kill everyone there.”

  The computer center came alive with frightened but determined activity.

  BROOKLYN NAVY YARD

  “Okay, you can shut it down now, Joshua,” Doshnikov said as his hair was beginning to be tossed by the increasing revolutions.

  Joshua Jodle stepped from behind the technicians’ safety glass, shrugged his shoulders, and hurried over to the spot where the artificial wind was starting to move Doshnikov’s heavy coat.

  “I said you can shut the doorway down now. We must prepare for your journey.”

  “I didn’t start the cycle. I assumed it was on a timer and after she cooled down it would automatically reboot. As you can see it’s just the centrifuge turning, no lasers.” He now had to shout to be heard and that made the young stockbroker concerned as he turned and looked at the spinning doorway. That was when he looked up and saw that little balding man with the eye patch. He could swear the man was moving his lips as he was saying something. It looked like—

  “Good-bye.”