Cody turned around. "Well, afternoon, Z." He extended one callused hand. I shook it. "I was just telling your father about the last time we worked together."
"That was a tough day," I replied. My dad scowled at me, as if to say that I wasn't qualified to judge such things.
"A bunch of us didn't come back," Cody replied as he stood. He was a burly man, thick-shouldered, with a gray beard and mane of hair that made him look vaguely like an old lumberjack. "Well, I've got to get back to work." He turned his attention back to Dad. "It was good to see you again, Augie."
"Likewise, old friend," my father replied. "It makes me feel a little better to see that this outfit isn't entirely staffed with nut jobs."
"Who said that it wasn't?" Cody smiled. "It takes some getting used to, but this is as good a group of men as I've ever served with. And we've got a hell of a good CO."
Dad's brow creased. "You mean, Mr. Wolf?"
Cody didn't show any reaction, even though all of the team commanders were aware of Harbinger's condition. "I wouldn't know. But if Earl Harbinger came to me and said he needed volunteers to follow him on a suicide mission into Hell's bathroom, I'd go in a heartbeat, just for the chance to watch him kick Satan off his crapper. Don't worry, Aug, your boy's in good hands." The two old vets shook hands and said their good-byes. I waited patiently.
After Cody left, Dad gestured at the empty spot on the bench. I took a seat. "We've got some things to talk about," he said simply, eyes staring into the distant forest. There was a constant rattle of gunfire coming from the shooting range as the Newbies showed off what they'd learned.
"Mom told me you've been sick. She wouldn't let me talk to you yesterday. What's wrong?"
"She's protective like that," he responded, avoiding the question. "That's not why you're here."
"I want to know about this dream of yours."
He shook his head sadly. "You wouldn't understand…" My laugh was so sudden and bitter that I must have surprised him. "What?"
"Wouldn't understand?" My voice dripped with anger. "Don't treat me like I'm a stupid kid."
"Listen, boy-"
I cut him off. "No, you're going to listen to me for once. I've stood at the edge of the universe and seen what's on the other side. I've faced off against evil that most people couldn't even comprehend and I shot it in the face. I've traveled through friggin’ time. " A lot of pent-up aggression fought its way to the surface. "I've read people's minds. I've seen some things that no sane person would ever imagine. I'm not here for you to bully, and push around and scare. So don't you treat me like I'm your fat, dumb, never-good-enough child, Dad. I've had enough of your crap, and it's time I got some straight answers. Man to man."
Dad waited. "You done?"
I realized I was breathing hard. "Yeah."
He smiled slightly. "Cody was right. You do take after me. Stubborn. Now put a sock in it." He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an envelope that had been folded neatly in half. He handed it to me. My name had been scribbled across the front in bold black letters. "You know I've never been much of a talker, and Lord knows you aren't a very good listener, so I wrote it down for you. I spent all last night and all morning putting down every detail so I wouldn't forget anything."
I took the envelope. "This is the dream?"
"You could say that. Vision, prophecy, whatever." I started to open it, but his hand landed on mine. Dad started to speak, but hesitated.
"What?"
"Once you read that letter, my life will be over."
That sounded ominous. He was dead serious. "What do you mean?"
His voice was strained. "I've been living on borrowed time for over thirty years. My life was a loan, and once you read that," he gestured at the letter, "the loan can get called. So humor me."
"I don't understand."
My dad chuckled. "See, I told you so, Mr. Know-it-all. There's a place, a terrible place inside the border of the old Soviet Union. The coordinates are on that sheet. I was sent there on a black op a long time ago. Some really shady stuff was going on, some weird weapons' project, and we needed to find out what it was. I didn't survive…"
"Huh?"
"I was murdered. Dead. Done. Literally, a hole blown through my skull. But I was sent back, healed, given that dream and a charge that I couldn't fail. See, I wasn't done yet. I was told that I was going to have a son, and I had to prepare him for something unthinkable."
I didn't know what to say. It sounded so farfetched, so impossible. But then again, I had experienced the same thing myself. Mordechai had told me I'd drawn the short straw and then sent me back to slug it out with the Cursed One to see who got to decide the fate of the world. You could say I was pretty open-minded.
"I never knew if it was going to be you or David, but one of you was chosen before you were born. But from what I've heard over the last few days, you must be the one. I'm sorry, son."
"I am the one," I responded. "But I did the job, and I'm still here."
He spied a stick on the ground, bent over, and used it to draw a design in the dirt. He tore at the ground furiously. The symbol was unfamiliar.
When he was done, he asked, "Have you seen this before?"
Looking at it left me strangely queasy. It wasn't like the Old Ones' writing I had seen in Lord Machado's memories, or like Hood's grimoire, nor was it like anything I had seen in the regular world. But at the same time, it seemed like something I should recognize, but it was just beyond the edge of my consciousness. "No. I haven't."
"Then it isn't time yet. When you see that sign, the time has come."
"What does it mean?"
"It's a name." He kept the stick in his hand and absently poked it at the dirt. "There were a few other signs. Some that I could see happen and others that I wasn't sure about. The five minutes of backward time. That was one of them. Before it happened, I had almost been able to convince myself that none of this was real. You kids were grown-up, leading your own lives, the dream wasn't coming as often, and maybe I had imagined the whole thing, you know. But the five minutes, that settled things."
My father didn't know that that had been my doing. There was no way he could know that. "That was my fault."
He nodded, unsurprised. "That was part of it. In the dream, time is like a tube filled with water. As time goes by, the water freezes. The past is frozen solid, unchangeable, but the future is fluid until it happens. We live at the surface of the ice, the present. The water goes on forever. Whatever you did flash-melted a tiny bit of that water, moved us back in time. You woke him up."
"Who?"
He gestured at the symbol, an unknown player in this game. Then he erased it with his foot, blotting it out with a look of disgust on his face. "You had no choice. There are multiple sides at work, and if any of them win, we lose. This is the first and the last. That jackass that's messing with us right now? He's with one faction, but his side isn't the worst. Not by a long shot."
"How do you know this stuff, Dad?"
"It's all in the note. And once you read it, my job will be done." He sighed. "I had a good run."
I lifted the envelope. "You make it sound like as soon as I look at this, you're going to just keel over or something. What's going on?"
Dad paused. "Nothing."
I groaned. "You're the worst liar ever. It has something to do with Mom saying you're sick, doesn't it?"
He smiled. "When I died, I got shot here. Boom. Headshot. Asshole with a Dragunov." He tapped his finger to the base of his skull. It was utterly improbable, but I lived in a world of improbabilities. "Then I met the others. They stuffed my brains back in, fixed me up, sent me back, and I woke up on a mountainside covered in my own blood, with the understanding that when my mission was complete, when my son was prepared and taught, it was time to go home. A couple of years ago, guess what a physical turned up? Right in the exact same place…"