Simon Hawke - The Cleopatra Crisis

His heart sank with the realization. But it wasn’t over yet.He was still alive. And if any of his men got out, they’d clock to their escapecoordinates and rendezvous as planned. He wasn’t finished yet. Even if he wasthe only one left, he could still do some damage here.

Hollister. well trained in temporal terrorist tactics, hadquickly and professionally sized up the situation. He was not the sort of manto panic when things fell apart. He was a pro and he kept his mind on hismission. The parameters had changed drastically and he had to adapt to the newsituation without a moment’s hesitation. he realized that the success of theT.I.A.

strike was totally dependent on everything beingaccomplished during this one night. The activities of mission support teamsback at headquarters in Plus Time would have to be completely governed by thetimetable of the team in Rome. The timing would be close. If they’d taken Caesarwhen they killed his men, which would have been the only time when they coulddo it. they would have to return him by morning in order to minimize the dangerof a temporal disruption. Then, with their teams in place to monitor events,they would remain to make sure that Caesar was killed by the conspirators onschedule.

Only what if he died a week early, murdered along withhis wife in his own bedchamber?

There could then be no explanation for the sudden disappearanceof the Egyptian bodyguard. The blame for Caesar’s death would fall onCleopatra. instead of on Brutus, Cassius. and the other conspirators. She wouldbe arrested, tried, and executed. She would never live to join forces withAntony against Octavian. It would not be as great a disruption as they’doriginally planned, but it would be a disruption nonetheless. It might evenbring about a timestream split. Best of all, the T.I.A. wouldn’t be expectingit. When they discovered that they’d missed “Apollodorus,” they’d naturallyassume that he’d escaped to some other time period. It would have been thelogical thing for him to do. They’d never think he’d risk coming to the palace.It would be foolhardy. Almost as foolhardy as what they’d done tonight.Hollister smiled. Learn from your enemy, he thought. It was risky as hell, butit was worth a try.

Slowly, cautiously, holding his weapon ready, Hollistermoved out into the corridor, heading toward Caesar’s chambers.

They had counted on the element of surprise and they hadlost it almost immediately. The scream from the rooftop had galvanized theopposition into action and even though they hadn’t expected such a bold attack,they responded like the pros they were. They didn’t run: they chose to standand fight. In spite of the swiftness of their attack, Cooper lost almost halfhis men in the first three or four minutes of the assault. Three more werewounded, two of them seriously. As Andre ran across the atrium, a laser beamlanced out and burned a hole right through the left side of her shirt, missingher kidney by scant millimeters. Steiger, running right behind her, took outthe man who’d fired the shot, but another one they hadn’t seen until it wasalmost too late fired at him as he was bringing up his stunner. The beam struckSteiger’s forearm and burned a long furrow from his wrist up to his elbow. Hecried out, but managed to hold on to his weapon long enough to fire a dart intohis attacker, and Andre shot him with another one almost immediately. Hecrumpled to the floor.

“You all right?” asked Andre.

“I’m fine, go!” Steiger shifted his weapon to his left handand followed her as they moved quickly from room to room.

Cooper’s men had rappelled down from the rooftop and as soonas they secured the upper floor, they ran down the stairs to join the battle inthe main part of the house. Cooper heard the sounds of their booted feetcoining down the stairs and turned his head to shout a warning to them so theywouldn’t fire on their own men. In that instant, a laser beam burned its waythrough his left cheek and out the right. Cooper was so psyched, he didn’t evenfeel the pain. He spun around and fired, dropping his attacker, then kept righton going. If he hadn’t turned his head just at the right moment, the laserwould probably have killed him.

Delaney found himself pinned down behind a column in theatrium, under fire from three directions at once. Three laser beams bracketedhim, one passing to either side of the column, the third grazing the marble,inches from his head. He dropped down low and risked a glance around thecolumn. In that instant, he saw a sight that made his jaw drop.

Darkness suddenly appeared out of thin air and, movingfaster than the speed of light, plucked the weapon from the hand of one manwhile he knocked him senseless with his cane. Then he materialized behind thesecond gunman and clubbed him to the ground. before his afterimage had evenfaded from where he had first appeared. He repeated the same procedure with thethird S.O.G. man, but at the speed with which he moved, it all happened in thesame instant and Delaney actually saw three of him. He jumped about a foot whenDarkness appeared standing right beside him.

“Somehow I knew I’d find you in a situation like this,” Darknesssaid laconically.

“Jesus. Doc,” Delaney said, exhaling heavily, I wish youwouldn’t do that!”

“If I hadn’t done that, you lunkhead, you’d look like aSwiss cheese.”

“How’s Bryant doing at the palace?”

“Knocking them dead.” said Darkness. “You, on the otherhand, seem to be having a few problems. Excuse

Suddenly he simply wasn’t there anymore. Delaney heard asickening crunch behind him and spun around in time to see Darkness droppingthe limp form of an S.O.G. man whose head he’d smashed against a marble column.Then he jerked as he suddenly heard Darkness speaking beside him even as he sawhis image disappear again.

“I’d move somewhere else. if I were you:

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He vanished.

Delaney crossed the atrium and encountered Cooper and two ofhis men coming the other way. Andrew and Steiger came running up behind them.Several more strike force commandos came running into the atrium from theopposite side.

“Our wing’s secured. sir.”

“Second floor secured.”

“Grounds secured. sir.”

“How many did we lose?” asked Cooper. glancing around quickly.

“Kaufman bought it outside,” one of the men said.

“Hockett’s dead,” another man said. “He clocked in right ontop of one of the roof guards.”

“Poor bastard: said Delaney

“We lost Bishop and Grant.”

“Campbell’s wounded. We had to clock him out.”

“How bad?” asked Cooper.

“Pretty bad. I don’t know. He may not make it.”

“Connors. you hit?”

“I’ll make it.”

“Where’s Sharp?”

Silence.

“Damn it. Okay, you all know what to do. Find Sharp, see ifhe’s alive. Search the house and grounds. All bodies. tranked or dead, getclocked to TAC-HQ. Make sure there aren’t any weapons left lying around. Moveit!”

“Well done. Colonel.” said Delaney.

“You’re hit.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah, but I’ll be okay long as I don’t drink any beer,”said Cooper. “Did you get your man?”

“No. dammit.” said Delaney. “I had a shot. but I was just asecond too late. He clocked out on us.”

“Well, we might get lucky and track him down through one ofthe prisoners, but he’s probably long gone.” said Steiger.

“We’ll have some of Bryant’s people on Octavian and Antony.just in case.” said Andre.

“Where’s Darkness?”

Who the hell knows?” Delaney said. “He saved my ass backthere and then just popped off, like he always does. But he said things at thepalace were under control.”