Alex Scarrow - Time Riders

But instead he found himself standing in the middle of their field office, his feet on hardcold concrete.

‘Uh?… I thought we…?’ he blurted.

Foster slapped his back gently. ‘We go out wet, we come back dry. I’ll explainwhy some other time.’

Liam spotted the girls sitting at the breakfast table, both holding red andwhite cans of a fizzy sugary drink called Dr Pepper that they seemed to like drinking copiousamounts of. Spontaneously they clinked their cans together and cheered the return of theboys.

‘We know exactly where you went, fellas!’ shouted Maddy. ‘Being the pair ofcomplete freakin’ geniuses we are.’

Foster spread his hands. ‘And?’

She grinned triumphantly. ‘So, how was Dallas?’

‘Well done.’ He smiled.

‘I’m guessing you interfered in some way with the assassination of John F.Kennedy. You saved him maybe? But then you must have put it all right again.’ Her facedropped a little. ‘Unfortunately. I’d have liked us to have a mission to Mars onthe go.’

Sal cocked her head curiously. ‘You managed to stop an assassination attempt and thenmade it happen again… and also found some really disgusting clothes to wear… andyou did all that in just under an hour?’

Foster opened his mouth to answer.

‘An hour?’ cut in Liam. ‘We’ve not been gone that long, have we? Tenminutes at the most maybe — ’

Foster chuckled. ‘Time travel isn’t symmetrical ,Liam. I could send you to one time location and arrange a return window for fifty years later.As far as you’d be concerned, fifty years would have passed… a whole lifetime. Andyet to someone standing here you’d have disappeared as a young lad and returned againjust moments later as an old man.’

Liam shook his head and grinned. ‘Jay-zus, this timeriding thing is making my headhurt, so it is.’

1941, Bavarian woods, Germany

Kramer watched Karl with admiration. The man was a professional soldier, had servedwith some of the world’s elite special forces and thereafter been a highly recommendedand highly paid mercenary. In the troubled world of 2066, there was plenty of work for menlike him.

Karl had been one of the first to be won over by Kramer’s dream of a better world.He’d spoken on Kramer’s behalf to other mercenaries he knew and trusted, men heknew who also longed for a better place, a better time.

The world they’d left behind was a place that was dying, choked by pollution, strangledby dwindling resources, a world horrendously over-populated and ultimately doomed.

Who wouldn’t want to leave that behind?

It had been easy for Karl to recruit two dozen men he could trust for this mission. Everysingle man he’d approached had been ready to jump at the chance of leaving thetwenty-first century for a chance to rewrite the twentieth century. And good men they were,all of them. Very experienced, very disciplined. They all spoke at least two languages,English being their shared language. Most of these men quietly stepping through the snowywoods with well-practised stealth were German, some were Dutch, a few were Norwegian, a coupleof them British.

But… only seventeen of them now. Kramer shook his head.

We lost seven men just getting here.

Suddenly up ahead Karl silently raised his hand and made a fist. The men understood thesignal and squatted down amid the snow-covered foliage. In their mottled white and greyArctic-camouflage tunics and waiting perfectly still, they were almost undetectable in thedark.

Karl turned round and beckoned Kramer forward. He crunched lightly across the snow andsquatted down beside him.

Karl pointed through the trees ahead. ‘Is that it, sir?’

Kramer craned his neck to get a better look. Up a winding track he could make out a couple ofsandbagged machine-gun posts either side of a gravel track and a sentry hut bathed in thelight of twin floodlights.

‘This is it, Karl.’ He smiled. ‘This is it! Hitler’s winterretreat!’

‘ Der Kehlsteinhaus. The Eagle’s Nest. It does notappear that heavily guarded.’

‘It’s up this one road, perched on the side of a steep hill,’ said Kramer.‘The building itself is defended by several dozen of Hitler’s personal bodyguards,the LeibstandarteSS . A little further up the hillside, only a few hundred yardsaway, is an SS garrison housing four or five hundred of them.’ He turned to Karl.‘They will happily die to defend their leader. Your men will have to be very fast, Karl.The moment the first shot is fired, the alarm will be raised and the garrisonalerted.’

Karl looked back at his men, perfectly still in the snow, weapons ready and waiting for anorder. They were expertly trained and well equipped with modern weapons and nightscopes.

He smiled. ‘My men will get to him. Don’t worry.’

Kramer wished he shared the man’s confidence.

Just seventeen of them. If Karl’s men were unable tocomplete their objective before the regiment-strength SS garrison descended upon theFuhrer’s retreat, then it would be all over.

Seventeen against five hundred?

Even with the advantage of combat technology from 2066, he wondered for a moment if he wasasking too much of these men.

2001, New York

‘Why have you brought us here?’ asked Maddy, looking around theentrance hall of the Museum of Natural History. It was crowded mostly, it seemed to her, withJapanese tourists.

‘Because, Madelaine, this building, these exhibits, are what we’re allabout.’ He gestured with his hand at the giant skeletal frame of a brachiosaurus loomingover them and all but filling the grand entrance hall.

‘This is the history that was meant to be . This is thehistory that you — just like the other field teams — are tasked withdefending.’ His eyes drifted down from the giant skull above to rest on them.

‘Madelaine — the analyst. Sal — the observer. Liam — theoperative… and Bob — the support unit. You’re a team now. And everybodyalive today and alive tomorrow is depending on you to keep an eyeon the time. This museum records how history is … and itcannot be allowed to change.’

Foster’s voice carried a little further across the grand hall than perhaps he’dintended, but since no one else here seemed to speak English Maddy thought it probablydidn’t matter too much.

‘So, this afternoon, I want you to explore the museum. To reach out and really feel the history you’re defending. I’ll leave you to makeyour own way around and then we’ll meet back here in the entrance hall at fivesharp.’

They nodded in silence.

‘Then I’m taking you guys out to the best ribs and burger place I know. Acelebration… Think of it as a sort of graduation party.’

Liam found the display of dinosaurs breathtaking and was unable to tear himselfaway from the giant skeletons and the animatronic dioramas. He was soon left alone as thegirls and Bob wandered off to view the other exhibits.

Before he knew it, several hours had passed and he decided to make his way back to theentrance hall to await the others.

He watched the busy area, full of snapping cameras and quietly whispered familyconversations, overexcited children and mewling babies. Not for the first time, he felt a warmglow of gratitude to Foster for plucking him from the bowels of the stricken Titanic , saving him from the worst possible death he couldimagine.

In the last dozen or so days — he’d lost track of how long they’d been here- he realized he was the luckiest person born in the nineteenthcentury for the things he’d been privileged to see almost a hundred years intohis future, and all the amazing things he was yet to see. Hegrinned like a fool, like a child promised every Christmas present he could wish for.