34

Brooklyn Bridge Showdown

The base of the bridge was a massive brick foundation, with the elevated highway of the bridge projecting out from its top some distance above their heads. The underside was a horizontal latticework of wide metal girders that fed into the brick foundation, stretching some fifty or more feet from where the highway first entered it up to where the span of the bridge left the foundation to reach across the waters. An old fence surrounded the immediate area around the side and back of the foundation, with one gate that still swung from having been roughly opened. Agent Harris led the charge through the gate.

It was full night now, and while the bridge was lit up to display its full glory, that was the upper side of the bridge. Underneath it things were blacker than the sky above. The team ran the length of the foundation until they came to where the superstructure reached out to span the river.

Agent Hessman stopped, waiting to see what Agent Harris would do. Her head snapped around as she sniffed the air, eyes alert and one hand gripping her gun tightly.

“Well?” Agent Hessman asked as he came up beside her.

“Too dark to track. He’s got to be around here somewhere, but I can’t tell where‍—‍”

Her sentence was cut off by a gunshot that narrowly missed her feet. Instinctively she raised her hand and pulled off a shot in the general direction of its source, while the rest flattened themselves to the ground.

“That came from above,” Agent Hessman called out as he hit the ground.

“Underside of the bridge,” Ernst called up.

“But that’s fifty feet up!” Professor Stein exclaimed. “How’d anyone get up there?”

Agent Harris dropped to one knee, gun held out in both hands while she searched the dark recesses high above. Then a voice with a thick Japanese accent shouted down to them, “Tojo must die, but you don’t have to. Let us finish this.”

Agent Harris swung her gun in the direction of the voice but held her fire. Too many dark shadows along with the maze of metal made any shot nearly impossible.

“They have the advantage,” she said quietly to Agent Hessman. “We’ve got to get up there.”

“Love to know how,” Agent Hessman said. “Must be an access door someplace in this thing. Has to be where Greber vanished off to as well.”

Dr. Weiss came crawling up next to Professor Stein and Claire, while Ernst crawled up to join the two government agents. “I’d say they have us pinned,” he remarked. “But what about Greber? Why didn’t they shoot at him as well?”

“Probably didn’t see him,” Professor Stein replied. “He’s one person and we’re a whole crowd. And the Japanese team must have still been getting into position.”

“How many of them do you figure are left?” Dr. Weiss asked.

“Well, I think that one said they had a team of six, so subtracting the dead bodies we’ve seen”‍—Professor Stein did some quick figuring before continuing‍—“should be just two . . . I think.”

“Could just two men carry enough of that explosive to do any damage to the bridge?” Claire asked.

Ben turned to reply, then paused when he saw the look in her eyes. He saw the ever-curious and persistent reporter’s face he had come to know in so short a time, but beneath it was something else as well. Her eyes shimmered hesitantly in the evening’s light, as if searching for something to grab on to‍—someone to grab on to. While she spoke with the voice of a confident reporter, her eyes spoke of someone looking for a stable vessel in a storm-tossed sea.

Ben reached out a hand to hers and held it tight, his gaze catching her own as he replied, “Not if we get to them in time. We’re going to save the bridge and everyone in that motorcade.”

She held his eyes for a moment, then replied with a smile‍—the first real smile he had seen from her since they’d met, and this one directed at him alone.

“We have to find a way up there first,” Dr. Weiss said, apparently oblivious to the silent exchange.

Claire drew in closer to Ben, her head sliding over to his shoulder when she suddenly stopped and returned to full alertness. “Access door,” she said. “At the base just underneath where the main bridge sticks out from the foundation. I remember from an article I did a few years ago.”

“Good girl,” Ben replied with a grin.

“But that will put us in direct line of sight to the shooter,” Dr. Weiss pointed out.

“We leave that little detail to Sue and Lou,” Ben told him. “Come on, start crawling.”

While the three crawled up to join the rest, Ernst was in a quick conference with Agent Hessman while Agent Harris continued to scan the girders for signs of movement. “Two men could not carry enough plastic explosives to bring down even a section of bridge,” Ernst was saying.

“We killed one at the beginning of this over at the Japanese Society building,” Agent Hessman told him. “They could have grabbed some explosive off his body before running.”

“In that case, we may have a problem,” Ernst admitted.

Agent Harris noticed the flicker of a shadow, like a darkly clothed phantom scurrying through a metal sky. “There.” She pointed with her gun. “I think I saw one of them.”

“Don’t waste your bullets unless you have a firm shot,” Agent Hessman told her. “And that’s assuming we can’t talk some sense into these guys.”

“We have little time to complete this mission,” Agent Harris told him. “You can try to talk them down, but the second I have a kill shot lined up, that’s all the time I’m giving you.”

“Good enough,” he agreed.

“Lou.” Agent Hessman saw Professor Stein crawling up to join them, Claire and Dr. Weiss alongside him. “Claire knows of an access door into that foundation, but it’s at the base, directly below the bridge.”

“We’ll be in full view of the shooter,” said Agent Hessman.

“You leave that part to me,” Agent Harris told them. “If there’s a door there, I’ll get you to it. Just get them talking.”

Agent Hessman replied with a nod, then rose into a squat, at least until a shot above his head paused his movements.

“We must complete our mission,” came the call from above.

Agent Hessman replied as loudly as he could, calling up toward the dark workings of the bridge, “It won’t come out as you figure. You can kill them all, but there are still too many unknowns.”

While Agent Hessman was dialoguing, Agent Harris made a mad dash for the underside of the bridge, flattening herself against the brick wall once she made it there.

“We have a duty to complete this mission,” came the call. “It benefits your people as well.”

“This benefits no one,” Agent Hessman replied. “Our history expert has confirmed it. At best, you’ll just get the world into more of a mess.” He received no response at first, so he tried rising up a little higher. Another gunshot woke up the night, but this one sounded no place near Agent Hessman or those with him. “Now where‍—” he began.

“That sounded like it was up in the bridgeworks,” Dr. Weiss remarked.

“Someone else shooting at them?” Professor Stein pondered aloud.

“Greber,” Agent Hessman realized. “Come on, we may just have our cover fire.”

Without another thought, Agent Hessman bolted, accompanied by Ernst. Ben exchanged a look with Claire, then found himself trailing a pace behind her, while Dr. Weiss brought up the rear.

“I am definitely not,” Dr. Weiss wheezed, “an athlete.”

Two more shots rang out, each ringing off a thick metal girder somewhere overhead. By the time the last of them had made it to the underside of the bridge, Agent Harris was already edging her way toward a heavy metal door fixed into its base‍—a door with a lock but no knob to turn. Agent Hessman, meanwhile, used the echo of gunshots overhead to better locate the shooters involved in the hidden fight. Following another shot, his eyes zeroed in on the assailants.

Two men, dressed in dark clothing, clung to the underside girders. One of them stood behind a tall metal strut for cover while aiming his pistol as the other bent over a large rectangular package he was working on.

“I see them,” Agent Hessman stated. “About a hundred feet out, up in the middle.”

“I see them,” Ernst said after a moment. “And that bomb they’re working on looks big enough to take out a couple of lanes at least, depending on what else they have in it.”

“I’m going to assume they came prepared,” Agent Hessman remarked. “Enough to leave a good-sized gap in this bridge, or they wouldn’t bother. Now where’s Greber?”

Another gunshot rang out, this one coming from somewhere closer overhead and barely missing the Japanese shooter. The bullet deflected off the girder the man hid behind, then ricocheted off two more girders before it was spent. It was enough, however, for Agent Hessman to locate the second shooter.

Greber, fifty feet over their heads and a few yards out, was climbing through the network of metal beams and access walkways. “Stop shooting,” Greber called out to the Japanese team. “I want that explosive to go off as much as you do. It’s the Americans we need to stop. They don’t want to see final peace in the world.”

“Don’t believe him,” Agent Hessman called out. “There’s more to it that‍—‍”

Another bullet ricocheted off the bricks above their heads, and everyone flattened against the wall.

“We’re sitting ducks out here,” Agent Hessman said. “Sue, about that access door?”

The sound of another gunshot came at them, but this one exceedingly close and directly behind them. The access door swung loosely open as Agent Harris stood before it with gun still in hand. “It’s open,” she announced.

“Quick,” Agent Hessman ordered, “everyone in. Sue first; Ernst, guard our rear.”

Agent Harris ran inside, followed by Agent Hessman, then Professor Stein urging Claire in ahead of him, while Ernst had his own gun out, taking aim at anything above them that moved. The Japanese man with the gun was about to level another shot at Major Greber when he saw the activity by the now-open metal door below. He quickly changed targets and pulled off two more shots.

The first one barely missed Professor Stein as he leaped in after Claire, while Ernst ducked just in time to avoid being hit by the second shot. But one team member had not ducked in time.

Dr. Weiss was ahead of the German and making his way through the door behind Professor Stein. When Ernst ducked, the less than athletically inclined Dr. Weiss caught the shot meant for the German. He fell facedown to the ground behind Professor Stein, a large hole in the back of his head.

“Sam!” Ben cried out.

“No,” Claire gasped.

Ernst took another shot, aiming straight at the one who had briefly exposed himself from behind his steel cover. His shot winged the man in the shoulder before he ducked through the door himself. Professor Stein, meanwhile, was trying to pull Dr. Weiss fully in through the door before turning him over. The second he did so, Ernst slammed the door against any further gunshots.

Behind the door, a short tunnel ended at a set of metal stairs slanting up to a landing before slanting again in the opposite direction to the next landing, and so on twice more. A string of weak bulbs hung across the ceiling provided lighting after Agent Harris found the switch. She was already at the first landing, aiming her pistol ahead, when Dr. Weiss fell.

“Sam,” Professor Stein said again as he shook his teammate. “Sam.”

A tender hand lightly touched his shoulder, the breath of a consoling voice in his ear. “He’s gone, Ben,” said Claire. “But maybe he’ll be back in that time chamber of yours.”

“I . . . don’t know,” Ben said with a sad shake of his head. “He’s the only one who knew how the physics of that might work out, and even he wasn’t sure. If he’s killed here, then . . . Oh, Sam.”

Ben sat for a moment beside the body, a tear forming in one eye, while Claire wrapped her arms around him from behind in her display of support. The others there, however, were of more practical minds.

“Mourn later,” Agent Hessman reminded them, “or there’ll be a lot more to mourn if we fail here.”

“He’s right,” Ernst agreed. “If you like, I can set his beacon.”

“No,” Ben said after a moment. “I can do it.”

Ben reached into Dr. Weiss’s coat and produced the amulet-like beacon, placed it on the body’s chest, and hovered his hand over it for a moment. “Here’s hoping you wake up back home, my friend.”

He slapped a hand down on the beacon, then quickly leaped back with Claire. All watched as the body was surrounded with shooting lights, filling the body until it was an outline close to bursting. As with the other returning bodies, the brilliant shell fell in upon itself, imploding to a single point before it was gone completely.

A single tear left Ben’s cheek at the sight, though Claire was still more than a little fascinated by the sight itself.

“That is utterly amazing,” she remarked, still staring at the spot where the body had vanished.

“It is still a little shocking to us as well,” Ernst said with a grin.

Agent Hessman gave him a second more before stepping over to pull the professor away. “If you can’t complete the mission, I’ll send you back myself right now,” he warned.

“No, I’m . . . okay,” Ben assured him. “Sam and I had just grown to be close colleagues on this mission.”

“Sometimes,” Claire interjected, “unusual circumstances can bring two people together who might otherwise have never even met.”

Ben nodded in agreement, then turned away to join Agent Hessman and the others before he realized what Claire might have meant. He paused, glancing to Claire, who had not left his side, and offered a questioning look.

She replied with a quick smile and then pushed him on ahead of her. “Come on, you guys have got the future to save.”

They ran up the steps, Agent Harris in the lead. She paused at the second landing to scan the shadows above while the rest caught up, then ran up to the next landing and repeated the same procedure. By the time they made it to the very top, Ben’s mind was back on the mission.

The top landing came out onto a catwalk that ran parallel to the girders imbedded into the concrete and brick wall behind and above them. A metal walkway ran out into the latticework of steel girders outside and from there was lost to the night. Agent Harris stepped up to the edge to look past the brick floor to the drop beyond. The angle was one that few people ever got to see of the Brooklyn Bridge, though she had no time to enjoy it. “Careful how you move around here,” she warned the others. “If you slip and fall, try to hit your recall button on the way down because, no matter how you land, you’re not completing this mission.”

She scanned the darkness ahead as Ernst and Agent Hessman caught up to her, leaving Ben and Claire alone now to bring up the rear. From where they all stood, they could hear the echoes of the night: distant traffic, a scattering of honking horns, a greeting bellow from a ship passing beneath the great bridge. Cool air massaged her face when she spotted her quarry.

“There,” she indicated. “It looks like Greber’s joined up with the Japanese.”

“He was trying to kill them all off before,” Ben remarked. “I don’t think that partnership is going to last.”

“It’ll last long enough,” Agent Hessman reminded him. “Now remember to hold on tight.”

Agent Harris took a step to test the weight of the catwalk, then nearly sprinted ahead to take cover behind the first available girder. The sound of the catwalk clanging to the beat of boot-shod feet attracted the attention of another gunman, whose shot glanced off the large girder just as she reached it.

“Ernst, you’re next,” Agent Hessman said. “See if you can get enough separation from Sue to lay down a good crossfire to cover the rest of us.”

“Right.”

Crouching a little, the German dashed off down the catwalk, pausing when he got to Sue, and climbed over the catwalk onto one of the horizontal beams. From there he took one careful step at a time, both hands steadying himself against whatever other steel beams were within reach as he made his precarious way through the bridge’s underworks.

The wounded Japanese man stuck out a gun, but before he could pull off a shot, Agent Harris took aim. Her bullet deflected off the beam directly above the man’s head, but was effective in getting him to duck while Ernst finished his crossing. Agent Hessman waited until Ernst had crawled through another twenty feet of latticework before motioning to the professor.

“What am I supposed to do out there?” he objected. “Even if I had a gun‍—‍”

“We may need your knowledge,” Agent Hessman told him, “in which case I want you near at hand. Miss Hill, you don’t have to come with us.”

“I’m dead already, remember?” she said with a cough.

“In which case, all of us in a line,” Agent Hessman decided. “Ben behind me, Miss Hill last. Sue and Ernst will cover us.”

“And what are we going to do once we catch up to those guys?” Ben asked.

“I have no idea,” Agent Hessman admitted, “but I’ll think of something.”

As Agent Hessman led the way, Sue and Ernst kept a steady eye out for the opposition. The one Japanese was working on his explosive package while his wounded friend was looking for another opportunity to shoot his pistol. Major Greber, however, had broken out the rifle they had seen him use earlier, one that, despite the darkness, Agent Harris was able to get a better look at.

“He’s got a scope on that thing,” she called out to the others. “I’m betting a night scope.”

“Night scope?” Claire asked from behind Ben.

“It means he can see in the dark with it,” Ben replied, “which in turn means we just lost the cover of night.”

“Boy, your century is just full of surprises.”

Agent Harris saw the end of the rifle protruding from behind a distant beam and ducked behind another one. Following her lead, Agent Hessman crouched low, and Ben and Claire got the notice to duck as well. When the shot came, it took a visible chip out of the edge of the girder in front of Agent Harris.

Claire was astounded, and her eyes widened. “What kind of a rifle is that thing?”

“Guns aren’t my specialty,” Ben replied, “but that’s not the worst thing from my century. Just what he could bring with him.”

“If the Germans would have had a few guns like that,” she remarked, “the war would have come out very different.”

Ernst replied with another shot of his own, but the other side had too much cover. He could, however, see the one working on the explosive package.

“I could hit the explosive,” he called back to Agent Hessman, “maybe get the detonation cap and take them all out.”

“But if that sets off the plastique, then we do their job for them,” Agent Hessman replied.

Everyone ducked in response to the next shot, and Agent Hessman made it the last few feet and swung around behind another girder next to Agent Harris; there he took out a gun of his own. This left Ben and Claire to take up position behind them, with Ben clinging desperately to a vertical girder and Claire clinging mostly to Ben.

“I never thought I was afraid of heights until now,” she remarked nervously.

“Don’t worry,” he said to her. “Heights aren’t really a problem.”

“They’re not? How can you say that? We’re fifty feet up, perched on a steel beam with no railings.”

“Still not technically a problem. The problem is the stopping if we ever fall.”

It took Claire a second or two before she stopped her fearful shivering and glared straight at Ben. “Was that actually a joke? Up here?”

“I thought it worth a try,” he admitted. “Take your mind off things a bit.”

Another gunshot echoed off one of the girders‍—which one they couldn’t tell, nor was it that important. The wounded man was shooting, and in that brief instant in which he exposed his location, Sue, Lou, and Ernst all fired their guns at once, hitting him enough so he stumbled even more into the open. Then, as his feet were slipping from their precarious hold on the girder, the next round of shots spilled his jerking body over the edge with a final cry.

Everyone watched as he fell the fifty feet to the ground below, but from the number of holes now in him, he was clearly dead before he hit the ground.

“Give it up,” Agent Hessman called out. “We’ve got three guns to your two.”

The gunfire stopped temporarily while the Japanese man and Major Greber discussed something; then the Japanese stepped partially into view. He didn’t hold a gun, but something smaller in the palm of his hand, from which a pair of wires led to the explosive package at his feet. “I release this button and the explosive detonates,” he announced. “Now go while you can; history is already rewritten for us all. You will see: it will come out far better.”

From his position, Agent Hessman had a good enough view of the highway leading to the bridge entry behind them to see the flow of traffic. Cars that had paused from their previous firefight were being ushered out of the way by a group of local police riding motorcycles some distance behind them. The line of cars approached from a side street, the first car waving a tiny United States flag from the front hood ornament.

That’s the motorcade, Agent Hessman realized. We’re outta time. “Sue‍—‍”

“Working on it now.” She was leveling her gun with both hands, taking careful aim as she shut one eye and squinted through the other. “Just keep him talking and out in the open.”

Ernst, meanwhile, saw what Agent Harris was doing and lined up a shot of his own, leaving Agent Hessman to call out to the man with the trigger, “Don’t do it. History will be worse off, and Major Greber there has other designs of his own. Or did he already tell you that he is the one who’s been killing both your team members as well as his own?”

“You will say anything to keep me from my mission, but the stain of the past will at last be removed. Once that motorcade crosses over‍—‍”

“Got it,” Agent Harris said under her breath.

She carefully squeezed the trigger, but she was not aiming at either the Japanese man or Major Greber. The wires leading from the trigger in the Japanese man’s hand snapped free, dangling uselessly from his hand, no longer connected to anything vital.

The bomber looked confused for a moment before Ernst pulled off his own shot. He had been aiming for the man. The man tumbled to the water far below.

Major Greber did not wait for the other to finish his fall. The second he noticed the wires had been cut, he leaped for the bomb, abandoning his rifle in favor of the explosive package. He deftly rewired the package.

“Give it up, Greber,” Agent Hessman now addressed him. “You’re outgunned and outmanned.”

“Am I?”

He stepped partially into view with a wide grin across his face. Held between his hands was the explosive package, only now with a trigger directly on it. Greber firmly held the button down. Agent Harris slipped back into the shadows, visually surveyed her options, and began climbing up into the higher levels of the latticed superstructure.

“No wires to shoot out,” the man called out. “Just my finger on this trigger. A dead-man switch. Kill me and my hand releases, detonating this bomb, and I take you people with me. When the motorcade passes above, I leave behind a large gaping hole in this bridge.”

“Günter,” Ernst called out to him, “why? We had a mission, but this . . . it won’t turn out as we thought. I have consulted with their history expert.”

“Won’t it?” Major Greber grinned. “Of course, you’re assuming that your mission was the same as mine. Hitler was right. The German people are the chosen race; we deserve to be the rulers of the world. The current leadership would see us do it economically, but that is the coward’s way out.”

“You’re a neo-Nazi,” Ernst realized.

“I am a loyalist! I want to see Hitler win the coming war, a victory the German people were denied.”

As the man talked, Harris crawled furtively through the latticework. Carefully she snaked along one horizontal beam above their heads, one eye on the streets and the motorcade now pulling onto the main highway that would lead to the bridge. There wasn’t much time left, but one slip and it was all over for her and the mission.

“The president’s motorcade will soon cross this bridge,” Major Greber continued. “And when he does, I will complete the mission that I started on, even if I have to become a human bomb to do so. President Wilson will be killed and the League of Nations will never form, leaving Germany in a far more favorable position at the start of the Second World War. With my sacrifice I will give my Führer the world!”

He’s rogue, Agent Hessman thought, not state-sponsored. That’s what I wanted to find out.

Major Greber looked ready to launch into what some might term a typical villain’s laugh at impending victory, when an unexpected voice called out.

“Uh, excuse me. Claire Hill, reporter, here.”

She poked her head out from behind the girder she and Ben were clinging to, timidly holding up a hand for attention.

“What is this? I don’t do interviews,” Major Greber snapped.

“No, it’s just I thought you might want to get the facts straight. I’m not from the future like you people, but I do know a few things. Like for instance that President Wilson’s convoy will not be taking this bridge.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

Agent Harris was nearly above him in the steel rafters, while the parade of dignitaries’ cars was turning onto the ramp leading up to the bridge. She searched for something in particular while the others kept Major Greber distracted. Agent Hessman had one eye on Greber and one on the motorcade as he motioned Claire and Ben out to him. Major Greber no longer had his rifle in hand, so the pair stepped out into the open as the reporter continued to speak.

“It’s just that—President Wilson will be taking another route,” she explained. “I don’t know which one; that’s a secret.”

“But the motorcade,” Major Greber snapped. “I can see it from here!”

“That’s the convoy of dignitaries that the president is going to speak to,” Claire explained. “They’re the ones about to cross this bridge on their way to meet with the president.”

“Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge,” Ben now called out, “leader of the opposition to the league in this country. General Tojo of Japan and chief engineer of Japan’s involvement and strategies in the war. And your own Gustav Noske, the man who made Hitler. They’re the ones in that convoy, not Wilson. Kill them and you might actually guarantee the league’s formation.”

“No,” Major Greber said, shaking his head, “you lie!”

“Without the congressman, the US joins the league,” Ben iterated. “Without Tojo, Japan never enters the war and Germany is deprived of a key ally. And without Noske, there is no one to mentor Hitler and he never rises to power in the first place. What happens instead, we have no way of knowing, but it won’t be the Nazi dream world that you’ve envisioned.”

“No . . . you lie.”

“Why do you think the Japanese were trying to blow up the convoy?” Ben asked. “Their mission was to kill Tojo and stop the war, the same mission the rest of your team had. They certainly wouldn’t be trying to blow up the president!”

For a moment Major Greber stood in confusion, his left hand wrapped around the package with his finger on the button, his right hand moving uncertainly to a bulge in his pocket. Then, in a single swift motion, he reached in with his right hand and pulled out a small handgun. The weapon was not as deadly as his abandoned rifle, but at these ranges, deadly enough. He leveled the revolver in Claire’s direction. In that motion his coat opened enough for Agent Harris to spot what she was looking for; now she just needed the opportunity.

“Try to lie to me now, you American bitch!”

“No!”

Ben stepped in front of her. Then from another beam came a shout from Ernst: “Günter!”

Major Greber turned to see Ernst boldly presenting himself with his pistol in hand. He fired the shot intended for Claire at Ernst, hitting him full in the chest and knocking him off his girder to fall to his death, while the bullet he’d fired at Major Greber narrowly missed. The major hid again behind a tall girder.

Now the major was directly below where Agent Harris had been waiting. As the motorcade of dignitaries started its escorted journey up the bridge, she leaped down, one hand aiming for his coat as the rest of her body slammed straight into him. With a cry she tackled him straight off his perch, his hand releasing its hold on the dead-man switch precisely as hers found what she’d been looking for: his recall beacon.

They were caught in a midair fall as the explosion began, but in that instant, the familiar appearance of spinning lights surrounded them both as she activated his beacon. Major Greber and Agent Harris both lit up, as did the explosive and the bright flare now loose from the major’s grip. Suspended in flight, a small star gave birth to itself in a storm of racing colors before the star collapsed in on itself, gone in a wink.

No explosion, no Major Greber, and no Agent Harris.

“Sue,” Ben gasped.

Directly overhead, an important parade of official cars sped by, escorted by a combination of local police and military soldiers. Away to a meeting with history while the three beneath them let out a collective sigh of relief, then bowed their heads out of respect for another lost teammate and friend.