Dragon Sword Read online

  “But you do?” Maybe coming out here with A.J. wasn’t such a smart idea, after all. What if A.J. was delirious? “And that’s why you’re telling us about his confession?”

  “Dan broke the covenant, son. And he used my pledge of secrecy to make matters worse. Now the Nazis are convinced that Project Split Second is on the verge of success. And they’ve been frustrated because they haven’t been able to figure out how to travel through time on their own.”

  “So what are the Nazis doing about it?”

  A.J. didn’t answer; he walked out farther on the rocks in the water. “Careful. It’s slippery. Don’t fall in.”

  “Ow!” That was Charlie. “Something stung me!”

  “Jellyfish. Be careful. We gotta be quiet. We don’t want them shooting at us.”

  Shooting at us! How come, if I have to be tangled up in time, I can’t land in some peaceful moment in history?

  The rocks were slick, and I almost lost my footing and went under several times.

  A.J. was just ahead of us, but with only the light from a partial moon overhead, I couldn’t really see him clearly — besides, my eyes were stinging from the saltwater spray churning out of the sea.

  A.J. crawled around the corner of the largest rock, then disappeared. I didn’t hear anything, but kept going.

  “A.J.?” I said, but I could barely even hear myself in the wind.

  “Andrew Jackson!” I shouted, but still nothing.

  “You all right?” Charlie had come up right behind me.

  “I think so,” I told him, but my teeth were chattering pretty badly. “I guess he must be waiting for us by that boat.”

  I turned the corner on the rock — almost falling in again — and saw the small cove ahead of us. A.J. was already there, and he had some kind of light — had he made a fire? — glowing on the narrow strand of beach.

  “A.J.?”

  I bumped into something, figuring at first it might be the rowboat.

  But it wasn’t. Not unless rowboats were about twenty feet long.

  “What — ?”Then I heard roaring all around, and my feet went out from under me completely, and I was drifting underwater, under the cold saltwater, thinking about all the places in time I’d like to see, thinking about that picture of the mother and child A.J. showed me, and how sad it was, it is, how sad that that’s what’s happening in this world, in this time…

  My world. Soldiers just following orders, and what about me? What about me? As Danger Boy, Danger…Danger…Danger Boy, they wanted me to go on secret missions for them, for Mr. Howe, for Thirty; to follow orders, everyone just following orders, no matter what, like everything is in the past, even our futures, because we’re all stuck doing what we always do, as if it’s already written down somewhere, in some old-fashioned book or on some Comnet history review with pictures…all our pictures…with Barnstormer pictures…I used to be little when I played that game…that Dang Good Game…I used to be little…a little boy, but I’m growing up now…growing up…blacking up…blacking out…I’m blacking out —

  And then I was slapped hard, and found myself on the beach coughing and soaking wet. In the dark I could just make out a little glint of light on the rims of A.J.’s glasses.

  “You all right, son? Looks like Charlie and I pulled you out just in time.”

  I nod. I’m about to ask him something else when I notice we’ve been joined by several others — guys I don’t recognize, in wool caps and heavy coats; they look like sailors. I guess they came with the giant boat.

  One of them leans over to stare at my face. He acts like he recognizes me. And then I recognize him: the kid from the museum. The big snotty one who knocked me over.

  “You’ve been following me, Roy Rogers,” he says.

  Following him? “Who’s…Roy Rogers?”

  “All you American kids think you’re Roy Rogers. Think you’re cowboys. Well, too bad. We’re dragons. And dragons eat cowboys.”

  I feel like I’m still underwater, drowning. I turn my head to look at A.J. for some kind of explanation.

  “I guess they got here first,” he says. “I guess Dan gave them everything they wanted.”

  “Quiet!” the snotty kid snaps. “I am a captain in the Drachenjungen, and you are our prisoners. Except we probably won’t keep you.”

  That’s when I notice what he has in his hands. The other guys are holding guns, pointed at A.J. and Charlie. But Museum Boy is clutching the White Stag’s stolen antlers.

  “We will add these to our collection,” he announces.

  “All this trouble for a pair of deer horns?” I ask.

  “Not just horns. We have some tidying up to do.”

  It doesn’t sound like he means pitching in to clean up trash on the beach, and the picture of the mother and child keeps swirling around in my head, like a song I can’t get rid of, only this one keeps reminding me how messed up the world is. And here’s this big jerk, acting like he’s a superhero or something, and all he wants to do is make things worse.

  “You think you’re so tough.” It sounds kind of lame, as soon as I say it.

  “We are tough, Roy Rogers.” We’re both talking like we’re stuck in a Comnet game or something, but that doesn’t faze Museum Boy. “We’re Drachenjungen. The finest young Aryan men in the world.”

  “‘Dragon Youth,’ son. That’s what the name means,” A.J. translates, and you can hear in his voice he’s been hurt. “They’re special soldiers. Young ones.” For all A.J.’s trouble, one of the goons hits him in the ribs.

  I move to help him, but Museum Boy knocks me down into the wet sand.

  “The finest young men in the world.” He grins. “And I am their leader. Rolf Royd.”

  Rolf? Well, Rolfie thinks he’s tough. But if we could just do something about those goons with guns, I bet we could take him.

  “And after tonight, these fine young men will be famous,” he continues. “Stay a little longer and see why. We’re waiting for the fort to blow up.”

  The fort.

  Mom.

  “I’m sorry, Eli,” A.J. says.

  “For what?” I’m so worried, it sounds like I’m snapping at him.

  “I think they’ve given Dan some kind of bomb to plant in the fort to blow up the time machine. Now is the time to pray for your mother’s safety.”

  “Sei ruhig!” Rolf spits, and this time he personally kicks A.J. in the leg.

  “Stop it! There aren’t any time machines! Time machines haven’t been invented yet!” I’m standing, almost shouting, and A.J., Charlie, Rolf, and his Boy Scouts are all staring at me.

  “How do you know, son?” A.J. says quietly.

  I never get to answer. We hear a large KABOOM from the other side of the bluffs. Every- body turns to it, but without even thinking, I dive at Rolf. He swings the antlers at me, hard, and they scratch my face.

  He can really fight, and I can’t, and I guess I’m about to get my butt kicked, but I’m still thinking about that soldier shooting the mother and her kid, and now maybe my own mom could be hurt, or worse, and all I wanted was to bring her home —

  “Good Lord!” I don’t even know who says it, and I don’t want to look, but I glance out of the corner of my eye and see it, too.

  “A flying saucer!” A.J. is pointing.

  Flying over the Golden Gate Bridge is a ship. It looks like a time-vessel.

  A Saurian time-vessel.

  But not Clyne’s. Not quite.

  That was the explosion we heard — the boom of the ship entering this time and place.

  An air-raid siren screams to life, and it’s not a drill. All of us stand, watching the ship fly circles around one of the tips of the Golden Gate’s towers.

  History had changed again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thea: Thunderclap

  Early 1940s C.E.

  The man named von Braun was still holding my chin. Tears wanted to flow from my eyes, but I held them back, refusing to let him see.
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  If Eli was there somewhere, would we be led to him? If he wasn’t, then how did we come to be there?

  I tried to find an answer, to take my mind off the pain from von Braun’s grip. Perhaps Eli’s rendering of a mechanical man had something to do with bringing us to a place of destructive science? Could the ship have misinterpreted the Barnstormer Robot Man drawing? More and more, the new Saurian time-vessel seemed to be operating with an intelligence of its own, which neither I nor K’lion were privy to.

  Von Braun let go of my chin. “This is all a ruse. A trick. Take the girl away. Take the serpent man to the medical doctors, and let them run their tests. I’m sure if you go out and look at that so-called ship, you will find it made of nothing more than lies and balsa wood. I’ve already lost one of my best young rocket scientists to the Drachenjungen so that he could volunteer for that suicide mission in San Francisco. This stupidity has to end somewhere. We don’t have anything to fear from these people”— and then, with a glance at K’lion —“these beasts. Our science is, and will always be, superior to theirs.”

  The praefectus nodded. “My thoughts exactly, von Braun.”

  Things might have gone very badly for us just then if the vessel hadn’t swooped into the Hammer Cave, humming so loudly it no longer gave off music but seemed to shriek.

  That shriek was matched by the shouting and screaming from the soldiers inside the cave.

  Von Braun and the praefectus went white, then ran out to see what was happening. In their rush, several bindings, parchment holders, and pictures were knocked from the table to the ground.

  The images and writings were some kind of documentation about what these Nazis were doing in places other than the Hammer Cave. To people not as “lucky” as the slaves there. The images are still with me:

  Bodies lined up by ditches — men, women, young, old. They lie still in holes in the ground. Piles of them.

  Buildings of fire, with people naked, withered, haunted, and hurt beyond reason — prodded by soldiers to march inside.

  And I saw the mother.

  It was a lone image, there on the ground below me. A man, a soldier, was in a field. He’s holding his gun, aiming it at the back of a woman, a mother, pressing her child to her chest. They are waiting for this soldier to ignite his gun, to follow his “order.”

  To murder them.

  I know all about people following orders.

  My mother, Hypatia, was murdered by people following orders in Alexandria. And that is who these “scientists” are in Peenemünde, with their new machines. Killers of children.

  “Thea!” It was K’lion.

  “Escape now please!” He motioned for me to come with him.

  Numb, I picked up the picture of the woman and child — I don’t know why — and slipped it inside my tunic. I staggered out after K’lion.

  We found ourselves on a platform overlooking much of the cave below. But the praefectus was there, too, running at us, weapon raised.

  K’lion hissed like a cat, and appeared ready to leap at the praefectus, but I knew my lizard friend couldn’t possibly survive those kinds of weapons. They weren’t mere blades he could jump away from.

  But suddenly the praefectus was knocked forward and cracked his head on the ground.

  A soldier had come to our aid — the one who was so panicked about us being “Ancient Ones” from the middle of the Earth.

  “Leave! Get out of here!” he yelled. “Get out of here! Go! Tell the Fuerher we helped you and not to harm us! Get out! Get out now!”

  And then the vessel rose, like a fish breaking water, next to the railing where we stood. It was still wailing — a loud, pervasive sound of agony like a whole chorus groaning at once. K’lion grabbed me and leaped off the railing, hurling us through the opened ship’s hatch before it slammed closed.

  The ship glittered briefly, like river water reflecting sunlight, then disappeared from the Hammer Cave.

  I knew we’d left, because the colors of the Fifth Dimension swirled around us.

  I was exhausted, drained. Why did the ship bring us to Peenemünde?

  Was Eli there somewhere, and did we fail him?

  Suddenly we were shaken by what sounded like claps of thunder, as if we were riding through a storm. I’d never had that experience crossing the Fifth Dimension before.

  “Rough times ahead!” K’lion shouted.

  As I looked through the ship’s translucent sides, it seemed as if we were the thunderclaps: We were skittering across the Earth in quick random bursts, appearing and disappearing in an instant — first a land battle below, then somewhere at sea with ships fighting, then over a great city, bombed from the sky, and then…

  The noise subsided, and we hovered above a field. Bodies lay scattered, just like in the images in the Hammer Cave. But this was real. I looked down — the floor had become translucent, too — and saw her below me:

  The mother, holding her child. She kept her son’s face buried against her. I saw the soldier behind them. He didn’t look up. But she did.

  She saw me. It was a look of such profound sadness and resignation that I expect it will always haunt me, no matter how many eons away I am.

  “K’lion!”

  It all happened so fast. The woman turned away to bury her face against her child’s neck.

  Thunderclap.

  We were back in the Fifth Dimension.

  No wonder there was no surprise on her face. In a world where such things can happen, a mere time-vessel is small cause for alarm.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Eli: Unsilent Night

  December 24, 1941 C.E.

  “We interrupt our evening of Christmas carols to bring you another report on the unidentified flying object sighted at the Golden Gate Bridge. Authorities confirm that the bridge is currently closed to all traffic, but they say this is due to unusual and dangerous wind conditions from the Pacific Ocean. Newspaper reporter Herb Caen has phoned us, saying he could definitely see lights in the sky and would try to get closer, noting he had an invite to a Christmas party at the Officers’ Club in the nearby Presidio. ‘Anyway,’ to quote Mr. Caen, ‘maybe it’s Santa.’ We will provide more details as we get them. Now, back to the Samuel Gravlox Orchestra’s recording of ‘Silent Night.’”

  I turn back to Mom. “How can they keep this quiet? There’s a Saurian time-ship flying around up there! My friend Clyne could be in it! How do you cover up a flying saucer and a dinosaur!?”

  “All they have to do is keep newspaper pictures from getting out, Eli. There’s just radio and newsprint here, no television and no Comnet.” She shrugs. “But even when you have those things, you’d be surprised what can be covered up.”

  She takes another sip of her coffee and strokes my hair over my forehead. It’s like I’m eight years old and I’ve been out in the snow too long. I’m sitting, shivering, with a big bulky green army sweater over me, trying to get warm.

  It’s great they want to get me all cozy, and that I finally found my mom, but I need to be outside right now, out there on the bridge, seeing if that’s really Clyne in the ship and if he needs my help.

  But they won’t let anybody out of the fort.

  After the time-ship appeared, Rolf began yelling to his pals on the beach. As soon as the searchlights came on, they ditched their plans to take off in the boat, and headed toward the bluffs instead. I think they wanted to stick around to make sure they heard the explosion they came for — their own bomb going off.

  One of Rolf’s goons figured they ought to do something about us, and the best idea he could come up with was to shoot us.

  He pointed his gun at A.J., who started to say something about valleys and death, like a prayer, with his arms raised in the air. Suddenly, though, Charlie sprang to life, like he’d been waiting for the right moment, and kicked the guy just as his gun went off.

  A.J. started hopping around, and I realized he’d been shot in the foot.

  A.J. began cussing. Rolf and th
e other goon were already off the bluffs, scrambling through the brush.

  Jumping on one leg, A.J. made his way over to the Germans’ boat.

  “I know how to drive one of these things,” Charlie insisted. “Like the fast boats we had in Hawaii to hop between islands.” We all climbed in, and Charlie took the wheel. “Where’s the starter?”

  “I don’t know — I’m bleeding,” A.J. said. “I expect this is it.” He grabbed a handle and pulled it down. The engine roared to life, knocking me backward.

  And that was as far as we got before the Navy patrols came roaring up on their way to the bridge.

  They made us put our hands in the air. They didn’t know if we were aliens or Germans or what, but they weren’t taking any chances.

  It took a while to convince them we weren’t any of those things. They brought us right into Fort Point — an old brick fort that’s been here since the Civil War — which they had just outfitted for their secret project.

  That’s where I found out that Dan the Oboe Man was under arrest — he couldn’t go through with blowing up all his coworkers and wound up confessing to the Army guys. He described the German agent he’d been told to meet up with at the museum. Since he was supposed to be young, they thought at first it might be me. So they took me in to where Dan was. He was already sobbing, and as soon as he saw me, he sobbed a little harder, which didn’t exactly put me in the clear right away.

  But the main thing was, my mom was there, too. She was in the room with Samuel Gravlox. I guess they were telling them both about the threat to Project Split Second. Apparently, part of Dan’s plan was to kidnap Mom at the de Young and use her to get into this place.

  “This young man is not who you’re looking for, Sergeant,” she said, coming up and putting her arm around me.

  “Well, then who is he?” The sergeant had been questioning me earlier, and sounded constantly annoyed. Aides kept interrupting him with messages. They must have been about the vessel, since he kept yelling about not being able to be both on the bridge and below it at the same time.