Kill Them Wherever You Find Them (12 page)

Soon he would make things better once he
returned
for a short break. After all, she brought as much
joy and excitement to his life as did Math and Science. The latter
were an inseparable part of his very being, coming as naturally to
him as light from the sun. Mona, though, required work and patience
on his part – but oh, so worth it!

Mona couldn't imagine life without him either
but for altogether different reasons. She could easily spot
weaknesses in men – and women – using them to her advantage.

Though he wouldn't be precisely described as
ugly, he certainly was no magazine model either. His personality
gave away a man more comfortable in a classroom situation, better
yet a laboratory, than a social gathering. A man who preferred
seeing simulations on a computer monitor over a soccer match on a
television screen, she could not even begin to imagine him actually
in a stadium with real people watching a live game on the field.
The very thought made her smirk. While he probably had passing and
brief relationships with women, there would never have been much
depth to them outside of academia, likely not even then. His
genuine brilliance, especially in the ever-widening field of
Physics, would have been a source of boredom to most people;
certain death to any romance as it was pretty much all he could
communicate effectively.

Yes to manipulate such a man was for Mona as
easily done as manipulating a car into a parking space. The
information he provided her regarding
The Project
, something
absolutely unexpected initially, was worth more to her people than
the oil revenues of all OPEC nations combined.

How he could be so astonishingly intelligent
while at the same time so astonishingly naïve was a continual
marvel to her. She wondered what would happen to him once he was no
longer needed for information. Ultimately she really didn't
care.

Table of
Contents

8. Assess and Escape

"If you see an antimatter version of yourself running
towards you, think twice before embracing."
– J. Richard Gott
III, "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical
Possibilities of Travel Through Time"

Virginia – 1864

Fully conscious now Jeff
Stauffenberg
assessed his situation.
The Project
had apparently been a
success with unforeseen consequences. The initial test of the
Quantum Tunneling theory proved viable but unpredictable.

The Project
identified a family of
White Supremacists, leaders of a local Neo-Nazi group in the
Appalachian area of West Virginia known mostly for coal mining.
Starting with the current generation of grown children, going back
each successive generation to before the Civil War, this family was
wholly comprised of racist bigots who served the whims of various
hate groups including the Ku Klux Klan, then the Neo-Nazis once the
KKK fell out of political favor.

Each generation in their own turn had
committed murder, torched minority churches and homes, visiting
other atrocities on those not born into white families. It was
agreed that the world would be better without this family, making
them an ideal tentative foré into history manipulation. If one
specific branch of this family could be deleted from history and
memory
The Project
could move forward with the ultimate,
most important of targets. The deletion would be apparent in the
new time stream other than the shielded newspapers, documents, and
personnel of
The Project
so that the experiment could be
verified without adversely affecting the timeline and histories of
tangent individuals and events.

Such an experiment, thought by nearly all
scientists and theorists to be impossible, nonetheless succeeded.
It was unpredictable but well within the acceptable margin. Though
acceptable it remained important to narrow that margin by choosing
a qualified 'Gentile' for both the first and second phases.

Jeff was American-born, non-Jewish, with the
ability to speak with an excellent southern accent and knowledge of
the American south, due to his Virginia-born father.

Despite television shows such as "Andy
Griffith" and classic literature such as "To Kill a Mockingbird"
and "Tom Sawyer," the actual accent of mid-1800's Virginia was a
relative unknown. Linguists acknowledge the fact that with the
advent of speech and social influences of the radio in the early
1900's, followed by "talkies" and later still television and the
Internet, finally added to the mix the movement of populations in
and out of the south, accents and manners of speech during the
Civil War era would likely be very different than the way
southerners speak in modern times. Even isolated areas settled in
the south would have had different accents and vocabularies from
other such settlements in other areas.

Another important quality for the candidate
to possess: Jeff was a member of an elite Special Dark Ops team.
Though in academia for years since his military career, he
maintained a rigorous exercise and training regimen. These, and his
background in Physics, combined in the selection process for him to
go to the 1860’s to eliminate the patriarch of a branch of the
target family. While the year and GPS location within 10 kilometers
could be achieved, there would no way to know exactly where he
would find himself, or what events would be transpiring around him
when he
landed
. Because of these factors it was decided to
land
him in a very wooded area in the mountains near his
target.

All went as planned. Jeff arrived dressed as
a Private in the Confederate army, with the appropriate money both
in regards to the era as well as currency tendered in the local
bank.

Reaching Richmond, he checked into a boarding
house. In the early hours of the next morning he awoke to the
sounds of screams competing with what had to be musket balls
slamming into walls and people. The smell of smoke from burning
wood, not gunpowder, catapulted him into action.

Confederate soldiers were breaking into
rooms. Smoke and flames poured out of a room a flight above.
Additional soldiers continued to fan out from the congested
staircase, each shouting terse orders to the boarders.

Terrified women and children ran in every
direction, the entire scene unfolding in ways that reminded
Stauffenberg of his tour in Afghanistan.

Having arrived late in the evening Jeff had
no time to assess the boarders but wasn't surprised to find only a
few men among them. These were comprised mostly of elderly or those
entirely too young to take up arms in the Confederate cause. What
did surprise him were the numbers of black men, women and children
being pulled out of the basement. They had to be runaways. Taken
aback, neither he nor anybody else considered the possibility of
any Underground Railroad activity being carried out near this
location, let alone this far along into the war.

No sooner had his body been spun by the
impact of a musket ball piercing the muscle of his left thigh when
he saw the fist of another soldier slam into his face.

Now fully aware of his surroundings, slowly
but steadily piecing a mental picture together of his predicament,
he remembered his dreams musing over how often dreams interweave
with the realities around us. His leg still hurt like the devil
himself were chewing it, but it appeared well dressed with no
apparent fresh bleeding. It was swollen as one might expect, but
not exaggeratedly so as would be with the case were there a
presence of infection.

Keeping his eyes closed save it be for just a
slit open enough from to see though his eyelashes, laying on his
back with his head turned to the right side, he slowly tilted his
head to the left to better appraise his situation.

Stauffenberg found himself on a cot in a
crowded field tent that served as a hospital ward. He was impressed
by the deft, precise movements of the young doctor going from
patient to patient, as well as the nearly unspoken communication
between him and the nurses. Without a doubt this group of people
had been working together for some time having come to acquaint
themselves with the gestures and glances of one another, not unlike
a couple who has been married for years.

Most importantly the only soldiers present
were also convalescing, perhaps dying, on the rows of cots. While
the nurses might pose an escape problem this was unlikely given the
social morés of the time and place. They could scream but probably
not land a good punch. The doctor may or may not present a problem.
A slight build, obviously a sharp mind, was he also a trained
soldier? Even if he were, Stauffenberg knew he could take him on a
bad day. Were he an actor in a made-for-testosterone movie he
probably would do so in Arnold Schwarzenegger fashion. Wisdom
dictated and Dr. Stauffenberg agreed that he patiently wait for the
good doctor to depart, leaving only a minimum of nurses present
before taking his leave.

When opportunity knocks it’s always a good
idea to be ready to open the door that presents itself, running
through like a bat out of hell if need be. Training taught him to
not only be ready for fortuitous opportunity, but to give it a
gentle nudge when time was of the essence.

Close to his cot was that of a young man who
had the antique looking tools of surgery near him, easily within
Jeff's reach. While most of the blood and tissue had darkened,
crusting over with time, there was still some blood that glistened
in the light of the oil lamps. Surgery for this young man, boy
really, had been recent. Despite the Confederate cause for which
this boy fought, Jeff prayed for his survival. To be so young and
caught up in the horror that was the Civil War.

Though tough as nails, even cold to those who
didn’t know him well, he sympathized with others who were
suffering. Having served a mission for his church some 20 years ago
in Latin America, "Wow, over a century from now!" he mused, Jeff
could relate to the massive human suffering he saw as the
inescapable end result of the twin progenitors of misery: ignorance
and poverty.

Moving slowly to minimize any overt sound yet
as quickly as possible to reduce the odds of being caught in the
act, he
borrowed
a scalpel from the tray holding the
surgical tools. Once secreted under his body he then
borrowed
what appeared to be a cross between a
malevolent-appearing hook and the pocketknife he usually carried
with him.

Jeff cautiously angled his right foot under
the left foot applying upward pressure, as much as he could handle,
to establish how much weight his injured leg could withstand. Jolts
of pain with each application of pressure notwithstanding, he felt
satisfied that he could bear his own weight to walk. It would be a
while, though, before full-speed running would be an option.

Lady Luck joined hands with Opportunity and
Preparation sooner than one might reasonably hope. From the voices
and what conversations he could hear outside the tent, Jeff
concluded that he was still somewhere in Virginia. The tent's
location apparently on the far reaches of a major field of battle.
Sounds of explosions and shouting told him that the Union wasn't
far off, and closing in rapidly at that.

Bereft of clothing other than a union suit
pulled down to his waist, he estimated the height and weight of the
young man on the cot beside him. Though not a perfect fit the
clothes rumpled on the floor beside the cot would have to do as his
were nowhere to be found. His missing clothing told him, among
other things, that his medical care commenced somewhere other than
here. Judging from the growth of his beard, which he started
growing while still in Israel, Jeff guessed that he had been under
medical care for about two weeks given that his beard was about a
quarter of an inch longer than when he embarked on his
landing
.

An ear-splitting explosion interrupted the
time he had spent as a patient in this medical tent. The few people
on cots who were well enough sat bolt straight up as a couple of
nurses screamed. One nurse sank down sobbing and blubbering
incoherently. In another time she would surely be diagnosed with
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Springing from his cot, or at least the
closest approximation to
springing
that he could muster
between the pain and loss of muscle tone over two weeks of absolute
inactivity, Jeff pulled up his union suit without bothering to
button it, then dressed himself in the clothing of his tent mate.
All of the nurses save the one whose sobs had dissipated into a
moaning whimper fled the tent; as had two of the healthier
patients. The doctor was no longer a concern, having departed a few
minutes earlier.

Once dressed, foregoing the footwear that
would not have fit anyway, Stauffenberg limped over to the nurse.
Dizzy, nauseated, and very weak from lack of physical activity; he
knew he had to make physical and emotional contact with the nurse.
It was a near certainty that she would be killed during the
incoming fighting if not evacuated to safer ground. Holding his
gaze with hers, speaking softly and slowly - careful to maintain
his southern accent - he cautiously put a hand lightly on her
shoulder to make physical contact. Had he been able he would have
carried her out but with his wound compounded by a generally
weakened state that wasn't an option.

Helping the nurse gain a tenuous hold on
composure, with hysteria lurking menacingly below the surface, he
got her on her feet and moving toward the opening of the tent.

Peering cautiously outside he found people
running in every direction - some eager to join the fight - most
eager to distance themselves from it. They emerged from the tent
hand-in-hand and began to move in the general direction of the
people who were without weaponry.