"It's under the Mamertine Prison. Jugurtha was starved to death in it and Vercingetorix was put to death there by Julius Caesar. It's... horrible. Sixteen feet high, maybe thirty feet long, twenty-two feet wide..."
"You know it, all right," Charlie muttered. "They drop you through a hole in the ceiling. Then, if they decide to let you out, they run down a ladder. Richie didn't bother with the ladder. He just shouted down the good news. He told me I was lucky. I was going to be the featured event of the day. The Emperor himself was going to watch me die."
The muscles on his scarred jawline stood out in high relief. "The Circus Maximus in Rome was really pretty, you know? All marble and gemstones and incredible bronze facings on the turning posts, gorgeous sculpture on the barrier... . They sprinkled ground-up mica flakes on the sand, to make it glitter. The first time I fought there, they used whips to drive us condemned slaves onto the sand. By the time my first fight ended, the place stank like a slaughterhouse. I was the last one of us left alive. God help me, I killed all the others to stay alive, even their goddamned champions, who were supposed to finish me off. That's when one of the schools begged the Emperor to have me sold to them, rather than execute me."
Sibyl leaned closer and slid an arm around him.
Nobody made a sound while he collected his composure.
"Well," he said heavily. "Now you know. What do you want to know about Carreras? His old man runs things, probably came out of retirement to set this up. Julio's got lieutenants in half the cities of the world. Most of them are cousins or in-laws. They control more money than the American budget deficit is worth and last I heard, they were planning..."
His voice trailed off. Dan Collins' head came up sharply.
"What?"
Charlie's eyes had lost their focus. "Collins, what do you know about this thing he's planning?"
"Not much."
"Anything, Collins."
"The only thing I've been told is, he'll be moving through a lot of men and equipment soon. Sue Firelli's lab notes refer to substantial disruption of the time stream from about fifty years back, in the general area of Alamogordo, New Mexico."
Charlie went white. "Jesus God..."
"What?"
Charlie looked up, but his eyes were nearly blank. "My sources..." He stopped. Cleared his throat once. "Julio Carreras plans to declare war on the Yakusa."
McKee started swearing.
"The what?" Danny asked.
Dan Collins was exceedingly pale. "The Japanese mob. And Trinity Site nuclear testing grounds is at Alamogordo, New Mexico."
Sibyl went cold all over. "Oh, my God. We have to stop him. He's mad..."
"Jésus Carreras would do it, too, damn him." Charlie swore. "Japan practically owns America—and what they don't own, they've driven out of business. Carreras can't make any money if Americans don't have disposable income, which they won't have if our economy's shot to hell. Eliminate or control the Yakusa—which owns Japan—and you'd have it all. That must be how he figures it."
Grim looks passed between Dan, Charlie, and Logan McKee. Unbidden, Sibyl thought of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis... An unlikely trio ranged against the darkness of eternity itself. Somewhere, somewhen, they would find a far edge to that darkness, just as Sibyl had found her way back from the far edge of her own personal darkness. She'd found her way back in the person of Charlie Flynn. Maybe a crippled cop from New Jersey, a frightened Army colonel, and an escaped lunatic could find the far edge of that darkness.
And if they did...
Maybe they could eventually try and put their lives back together again. Meanwhile...
"One for all, and all for one," she muttered to nobody in particular.
"What?" Dan Collins frowned.
Charlie stared at her, then began to laugh, very softly. "Who says watching old movies isn't educational?" He squeezed her hand and said, "I think we just found ourselves a freakin' windmill to tilt."
They stayed in the concrete bunker just long enough to get the most seriously ill and injured ready for safe transport. As Francisco had predicted, Zac Hughes III healed fast. Sibyl discovered she liked him a great deal, particularly when he felt well enough to gush on about the passion of his young life: construction and engineering methods in medieval cathedrals. Sibyl didn't know much about that period in history, but his knowledge—particularly for a twelve-year-old—was encyclopedic.
Lucille desperately needed surgery that Francisco was finally driven to attempt, just to keep gangrene from settling into the rotting meat around the hole through her chest and back, never mind the gunk that was rotting inside, along the path the bullet had traveled. She wouldn't survive if gangrene got into a major organ. So, with Sibyl and Janet assisting, Francisco worked over her for hours, the look in his eyes echoing a singular terror that he might kill her, she was so weak already. But the repair job he did, as he said, "Ought to hold until we get her to a real hospital. At least we've reduced the chances of gangrene by cleaning the entire wound track."
When Francisco said he was ready to risk it, they stripped the bodies of their warm clothes and redistributed them, moved all the food, blankets, fuel, the stove that had kept them alive, and anything else that looked remotely salvageable—including all the army cots and every knife and gun every guard had been carrying, not to mention every bit of spare ammo. Through some male chemistry Sibyl didn't understand, Dan Collins, Logan McKee, and Charlie Flynn just started hauling out boxes of loaded cartridges, without ever once discussing it.
With Logan driving, Sibyl beside him, Charlie squeezed in next to her. And—because (he'd argued) he'd missed all the fun the first go-round—Zac Hughes III rode on Charlie's lap. Logan hadn't objected. "Hell, with you up here, Sib, and little Zac there, we've got about as much historical expertise as we're gonna find around here, right in front where you can see what we jump into. Let's go. I'm freezin' my butt off."
Together, Charlie and Sibyl mashed the recall button. Slowly, the time storm gathered out above the incredibly long, blackened smear in the otherwise unblemished white ice, where Vesuvius had turned solid ice into steaming mud. The portal slowly opened, like the dilating lens of a good camera, with pink lightning sizzling out of it from every direction.
"Here goes nothing," Logan muttered. "Hope the guys in back hang on real tight." Charlie and Sibyl braced themselves as Logan stepped on the gas and roared into the puncture of blinding light. Sibyl knew she was still in the truck, grasping Charlie's hand, but the only sensation was that of falling down an elevator shaft.
They came out into a night so full of stars, Charlie gasped at the sight. Not the stronghold of the Carreras family, at least. Then Zac went nuts. "Look! There!" The bones of a two-towered cathedral loomed over them, off to the left; pink lightning struck the walls, the half-finished towers, the curve of flying buttresses visible in the stark flashes of semi-daylight. The impression was that of Satan slowly swallowing the cathedral down his gullet. "I know that one—it's Our Lady of Paris!" Zac stammered. "Before the masons finished her. Wow!"
Sibyl shot the excited kid a quick look. "Zac, isn't Notre Dame de Paris on the edge of the Isle de la Cité?"
"Yeah. Why?"
Logan yelled, seeing the reason for Sibyl's question in the steep dropoff now visible in the glare of truck headlights. Before he could even think of hitting the brakes or turning the wheel, they were airborne, falling like lead bricks toward the black water of the Seine.