"Truce?" Collins offered.
For a moment they stared at one another. Lightning flared, insanely. A beauty of an electrical storm raged overhead. Deeply etched strain in Collins' face told Logan he hadn't told the whole truth yet.
Logan asked softly, "You got the keys to these things?"
Collins' glance traveled to the manacles locked around Logan's wrists. "The manacles? Yes—"
Logan kicked him in the temple. The colonel crumpled. Collins slid soundlessly into a dirty snowdrift. Logan landed beside him and glanced hastily under the truck to be sure no others were lurking out of sight. All clear. Rising swiftly from a crouch, Logan retrieved the colonel's Beretta and the other rifle. He then searched Collins' pockets for the manacle keys.
Ahh... Freedom felt wonderful. Even better than he'd expected, considering his grim thoughts on the way out here. Logan rubbed his wrists and blew on his fingers to warm them, then confiscated Collins' leather gloves and locked Collins' arms behind him. Once his aching hands had unfrozen, Logan relieved the unconscious MPs of assorted knives and small-caliber handguns, then locked his erstwhile guards into the back of the truck.
By the time he'd appropriated the colonel's holster and belt, fastened them around his own hips, and distributed the confiscated weapons into various pockets and pouches, the colonel was beginning to stir. The man groaned and tried to move. For a moment, as realization sank in, Collins went rigid in the snow. He tested the manacles. Then groaned again and lay still.
Logan squatted comfortably and rolled the colonel onto his back. Collins blinked groggily. A thin trickle of blood had frozen to the side of his face. His lips worked to form a question. "Going to... shoot me now?"
Logan held silent for a moment and studied Collins' face. He saw no overt fear, but a crushing weight of despair had settled over the man's features.
"I want to know what's going on."
"It's a long story—"
"I've got time."
The colonel's eyes were haunted by an inexplicable terror. "No, you don't! Not on this side, anyway. And Carreras is waiting, damn him... ." His voice shook. Logan began to wonder if that kick to the head hadn't addled the man's brains. Collins added desperately, "He's got hostages, McKee. If I blow this, they die, too."
The other lives he had mentioned? "Whoa, Collins. Slow down. Start over."
The colonel squeezed shut his eyes, then drew a long, unsteady breath and released it slowly. "You're never going to believe this. Never."
"Try me."
Collins met his gaze squarely. "I'm the military liaison for a research project involving some very funky physics, Captain. I have a team of physicists here on base, mostly civilian. We're out here because this place is isolated. Some of the side effects of our research are pretty disruptive." He gestured with his nose toward the sky. Logan glanced up at the underbelly of a massive thunderstorm. Thick black clouds had come boiling down the mountainside. Phenomenal bolts and columns of lightning crawled out of the clouds in every direction.
The lightning was pink.
Logan's scalp crawled.
"It's effin' time travel. Isn't it?" he muttered.
"Yes. It is." The uninflected response sent a shiver down his spine.
He remembered vividly the disorienting drop through endless mist... .
Collins' voice reached through Logan's momentary disorientation. "It's still experimental. And it's dangerous, in unconventional ways. I mean ways other than the old question of paradox—can you change the future by altering the past. The very physics involved is potentially—" He stopped in the middle of the sentence. He closed his eyes and whispered, "We don't know yet the full range of side effects, but one of them is the backlash. Slippage." Collins finally opened his eyes again. "That's what you got caught in, McKee. When someone opened a portal near you, it caused... cracks. You fell through one." He shivered and added hoarsely, "You're the only one we know about."
"You mean there might be more? Christ, Collins, why are you running full-scale operations with this thing?"
Collins' face looked ghastly in a glare of hellish pink lightning, all taut lines and purple-blue hollows. "We're not."
A chill which had nothing to do with the air temperature gripped Logan. The pieces began form more coherent patterns. "The Hispanic..."
"Carreras. Miami mafia."
"What? Whoa, fella, you gotta be kidding."
"Do I look like I'm kidding?"
He didn't. Logan had rarely seen a grown man in the grip of such profound terror. The hollows under—and behind—his eyes deepened. "Someone on my staff is into debt with them. Big time debt. I haven't found out who, not yet. Somebody's relative, maybe, or lover, or simply a customer without enough cash. Somebody leaked it, showed them enough proof from our first trial runs to convince them. They've got Sue Firelli's daughter, Janet. She's twenty, brilliant career ahead of her. Zachariah Hughes' grandson is only twelve. And..." His voice faltered. "They've got my wife and son, too, McKee. Neat, clean, quick. And quiet. Not even my best friends have figured out what's wrong."
Logan frowned. "Where are they being kept?"
Collins shook his head. "Not where. When."
"Christ..."
"I've seen them, once. A show of power, to keep me in line while they need me. It's near here, a mile or so that way." He nodded toward a distant ridgeline. "Before they dragged me into the block house, I saw a herd of wooly mammoths on the horizon."
Collins didn't look mad. His eyes were as sane as anyone's. Anyone whose family is held hostage by terrorists, anyway. But wooly mammoths?
Abruptly Logan stood up and stalked a few steps away. This whole business was nuts. But he was undeniably here and yesterday—five years ago—he'd been in Florida. Collins hadn't lied about that time span. Logan's presence had jarred him badly.
And if he were telling the truth about everything else, Collins would've been genuinely desperate to find out who—and what—Logan was, before Carreras did. The thunderstorm lowered ominously. Lightning struck a tree not twenty feet away. The crash of thunder deafened him.
If Collins were lying...
He turned on his heel and stood above the colonel, rifle levelled casually at Collins' head.
"What were you planning on doing with me, Collins?"
To give Collins his due, the man didn't flinch.
"Take you with me through the portal. Dump my so-called bodyguards someplace they wouldn't come back from." His guards? Logan narrowed his eyes. He hadn't considered that.
"And?"
"Make another jump and hope I could persuade you to help rescue the hostages."
Collins was desperate.
"I've read your service records, McKee. And I've seen you fight. You're good. If we got the hostages clear, I'd be free to stop Carreras. I could just sort of lose track of you. You could go anywhere. Anywhen, for all I care. Just help me stop Carreras. Otherwise, he'll track you down wherever you go. You knew almost nothing before and he ordered us to kill you, anyway. He bloody well won't let you live now."
Logan spat something profoundly obscene.
Before the colonel could respond, a brilliant beam of white light distracted Logan. He paused to stare. Out in the clearing, a blinding crack of light had begun to open out of thin air.
"That's the doorway opening, McKee!" Collins' voice was tinged with desperation. "We're out of time, dammit! Once that closes again, if we're still on this side of it, not only will you die, I'll never get a chance to open another one. They'll probably kill Lucille or Danny just to punish me."