The Last Mission Of The Seventh Cavalry. Charley Brindley

rotated the Dragonfly back to look straight down.

      “Zoom in a bit,” Karina said.

      Sparks worked the controls.

      “There! Stop!” Karina said. “Somebody count the elephants.”

      “Why?” Kawalski asked.

      “Just do it!”

      Everyone began counting the elephants.

      “Thirty-eight.”

      “Forty.”

      “Thirty-eight,” Kady said.

      “Fifty-one,” Paxton said.

      “Paxton,” Lorelei said, “you couldn’t count to twenty with your boots off.”

      “Thirty-nine,” Sarge said.

      “All right,” Karina said as she read something on her screen. “Can we agree on approximately twenty-six thousand soldiers?”

      “I don’t know about that.”

      “Thousands, anyway.”

      “I think more than twenty-six thousand,” Lorelei said.

      “Listen to this, people,” Karina said. “In two-eighteen BC—”

      Lojab laughed. “Two-eighteen BC! You dumb bimbo, Ballentine. You’ve gone completely off your rocker.”

      Karina glared at Lojab for a moment. “In two-eighteen BC,” she began again, “Hannibal took thirty-eight elephants, along with twenty-six thousand cavalry and foot soldiers, over the Alps to attack the Romans.”

      Several of the others laughed.

      “Stupitch,” Lojab mumbled.

      “So, Ballentine,” Sarge said, “you’re saying we’ve been transported back to two-eighteen BC and dropped into Hannibal’s army? Is that what you’re telling me?”

      “I’m just reporting to you what I see; the Rhone River, the Mediterranean Sea, the Alps, someone saying this place is called Gaul, which is the ancient name for France, no highways, no cities, no cell towers, and all our watches being five hours out of whack.” She looked back at her screen. “And I’m reading off to you the facts of history. You can draw your own conclusions.”

      Everyone was silent as they watched the screen on Sparks’s iPad. He reduced the zoom and panned around the horizon, searching for any signs of civilization.

      “The Vocontii were the ancient inhabitants of southern France,” Karina read from her iPad. “They cared little for trade or agriculture, preferring instead to raid neighboring tribes for grain, meat, and slaves.” She clicked off her iPad and put it away.

      Sparks brought the Dragonfly down to a soft landing on the grass. “It’s two-eighteen BC,” he whispered, “and that’s Hannibal’s army.”

      A momentary silence lingered as the soldiers thought about what Karina had said.

      “Sparks,” Lojab said, “you’d believe Ballentine if she said the moon was made of blue cheese.”

      “Green cheese,” Sparks said. “And she’s right about that, too.”

      Kawalski looked at Sarge. “We ain’t in Afghanistan anymore, are we, Toto?”

      “Can the Dragonfly go up at night?” Sarge asked.

      “Yeah, but we might lose her in the dark.”

      “Even with the video on?”

      “If we have a big fire going and we keep the camera trained on the fire, I guess I could bring her back down where we are.” Sparks flipped the switch on the Dragonfly and put it away. “Why do you want to go up at night, Sarge?”

      “I think we fell into a pocket of the past and it’s just this area around us. Maybe ten square miles or so.”

      “Like a wormhole?” Sparks asked.

      “Something like that.”

      “What’s a wormhole?” Kawalski asked.

      “It’s a hypothetical feature of the space-time continuum,” Sparks said. “Basically a shortcut through space and time.”

      “Oh.”

      “But Sarge,” Sparks said, “we saw the Alps and the Matterhorn, a hundred and fifty miles away.”

      “Yes, but we couldn’t see any distant cities. At night, from five thousand feet up, we could see the glow of city lights. Maybe Marseilles or Cannes.”

      “Could be, I guess.”

      “If we can spot a big city, we’ll go that way until we get out of this crazy place.”

      Chapter Twelve

      Autumn walked through the woods just below the Seventh’s camp, looking for firewood. It was a little past sunset, but still twilight.

      “You need help, Apache?”

      Autumn jerked around at the sound of the man’s voice, almost dumping her armload of wood. “Lojab, can’t you whistle or something when you’re sneaking up on a woman?”

      “I ain’t sneaking, I just wanted to help.” He put his hand on her shoulder.

      Autumn narrowed her eyes on his hand. “I know what you want.” She shoved away his hand.

      “Well, good. That’s saves a lot of small talk.”

      “Yeah, right.”

      “You’re not like the others, are you?”

      “Other what?” She knelt to pick up a dead branch and added it to her armload of wood.

      “The other women. They don’t understand what I need.”

      “Oh, I think they understand you pretty well.” She turned to go back toward the camp.

      He grabbed her arm. “Wait a minute. You don’t have to be in such a hurry.”

      “Get away from me.” She jerked her arm from his grip, dumping her armload of wood. “You’re breathing my air.”

      “You fucking bitch.”

      “Yes, I am.” She knelt to pick up her wood. “And if you touch me again, I’ll kick the shit out of you.”

      He mumbled something as she left him standing there.

      Back at the camp, Autumn dropped her wood on the fire, sending up a cloud of smoke and embers.

      “Is that big enough for you, Sparks?”

      Sparks glanced at the fire. “Yeah.” He looked at Autumn, with her feet spread apart and hands on her hips. She wore an expression that could scare off a Buffalo Dog. “Um, yeah, that’s really nice. You’re probably the best wood gatherer in the Seventh Cavalry.” He tried to look apologetic.

      Sarge sat on a log nearby, holding a tin cup of coffee. He gave Autumn a look, like, ‘What the hell’s eating you?’

      Autumn relaxed and grinned. “Sorry, Sparks.” She walked around the fire toward him. “I just had a cute little discussion with your charming pal, Blow Job.”

      “My pal?” Sparks opened the Dragonfly’s cover to insert a fresh battery. “Since when is he my pal?” He set the aircraft on the grass.

      “Well, someone has to be his friend.” She took Sarge’s cup and sipped the coffee.

      “I wish him luck in that fantasy,” Sparks said. “All right, kids, here we go.”

      A soft whirl came from the wings of the little drone, then it lifted off, going straight up.

      “Take her slow, Sparks,” Sarge said as he picked up the iPad to watch the screen.

      “Right.”

      Sarge held the iPad so Sparks could see it as he worked the controls. The campfire grew smaller on the display as the Dragonfly