Timelines

by Bob Blink

  Outside the plane I stopped and looked around. It wasn’t as I expected. From what I could see I was on another airfield, as crowded and cluttered as any other. Most of the planes looked like war planes, and the marking were mostly Israeli, but other than that we could be anywhere. Even the scenery in the background looked like some place in southern California. It could be Riverside for all I knew. There were a few palm trees, a lot of desert, and vague undefined greenery in the distance. It was hot though. It had to be close to a hundred degrees. It was late in the day and cooling down quickly. I wondered how hot it had been during the heat of the day,

  “Where now?” asked Naiya stretching and trying to get her body to unwind from the cramped seating. I think she by some miracle had somehow managed to sleep a little.

  Jeff pointed to a couple of automobiles coming across the airfield in our direction. They were painted in military gray, but these were a cut above your average car. They had to belong to a general or whatever the local equivalent was. “Our transportation,” he said simply.

  Naiya and I slipped in the back of the second car while Jeff and Mike climbed into the first. There was a soundproof divider between us and the driver, and the cool air conditioning felt good as we made our way silently and rapidly back across the air field and then onto the base proper. It took less than ten minutes to reach our destination, where we were led into an unimposing building. Inside we were checked in by an American corporal, and then led back to a bank of elevators. They went down, of course. Most of the building was underground. From the buttons on the elevator panel I gathered it was a three level building. We only went down to the first level.

  The four of us followed the enlisted man who led us down several hallways making right and left turns apparently at random. Finally we reached a hallway with a number of doors reminiscent of a hotel. It was a good guess, as this was where we would be staying for the night. Naiya and I got a room together, with Jeff and Mike taking the rooms to either side. After the enlisted man left, the others came into our room and joined us so we could discuss the situation. Jeff hadn’t been able to tell us very much during the noisy plane ride.

  “We will be staying here while we are in Israel,” Jeff informed us unnecessarily. “This is a shared base, jointly operated by the Israeli forces and our own. It’s one of several throughout the country. None of the ‘sites’ are officially acknowledged by either country, and this particular base is very lightly populated at the moment. It is relatively new, and my group is about the only organization that has moved in so far. That will help keep your presence here low key. Hopefully no one outside of the intended group will be aware of you until after you leave.”

  “What happens next?” I asked Jeff.

  “Tomorrow morning we will meet with representatives of the local military and government. My boss has already provided them with the background of both the missing bombs and the situation surrounding the time complex. They want to know more about the aliens and the threat they represent. We need to convince them of the magnitude of the problem.”

  “Or they won’t help us? Naiya questioned.

  “They want to get the weapons away from the radicals more than we do. However, we are asking them to turn the weapons over to us and help us take them where we can actually use them. This potentially puts them in a bad way with respect to the United States government. We must make them understand the importance of turning the weapons over to us rather than hanging on to them, or returning them through normal channels to the U.S.”

  I understood the importance of getting these particular weapons. They were small and powerful, and had a long shelf life. Israel had nuclear weapons, but there was no way we could expect them to provide any to us. The political fallout would be more than they could bear. Besides, their weapons would be considerably more massive. Much like the older and larger devices the U.S. had made in the past. Size and weight were going to be important if our plan was to work.

  “Food?” asked Mike. We hadn’t had anything but a snack on the plane. I felt my own rumblings at the reference as well.

  “This way,” Jeff offered. We followed him to the mess hall down the hallway. This late I expected to have to make do with simple fare, but there was a cook on duty and we were able to order up a satisfying meal. Afterwards we turned in with Jeff’s promise to roust us at 0700. That would give us time to eat and still make the 0900 meeting with no problems.

  -----------------

  Sunday, 15 October 2006

  0845

  Jeff took us into a large, very plush conference room. Across the room was someone I recognized. General Jed Wilson was fixing himself a cup of coffee as we entered. His head turned our way as we entered and he smiled.

  “Welcome,” he said, starting our way while stirring the contents of the cup in his hand. The general was in civilian clothes. There was no indication of his rank or branch of service. Had we not known from previous experience he was a military officer, we would have thought he was a government official of fairly elevated rank.

  I took the offered hand as he approached. “Thank you, sir,” I responded. “I want to thank you for the warnings you gave us and for all the help. I know what this is costing you.”

  He waived off my concern. “This has to be done. The risks are too great to take any chances. My experts have gone through your materials in detail and they agree fully with your conclusions. Our best chance is to use the aliens own time constraint against them. We certainly can’t expect to face them with our primitive technology.” He pointed at the conference table. “I brought along a copy of the briefing materials you used when we met a couple of weeks ago. You will need to brief our hosts.”

  I had wondered how we were going to make any real impression on the Israeli leadership. We hadn’t brought anything that would constitute proof with us. Now I knew I would have backup in the form of the general’s observations as well as the videos of the earlier encounters.

  I headed over and made myself a cup of coffee while the general talked with Naiya and Mike. I didn’t know what Mike wanted, but I fixed Naiya a cup as well, and was just returning to give her the cup when our hosts arrived. Five of them filed into the room, two in civilian clothes, and the others in uniform. This was weird.

  One of the five was a woman. Fiftyish, and somewhat short, her light gray hair cut short accenting her thin figure. She was Dr. Rayna Shenkar from what Jeff had briefed us the night before. As the senior technical advisor to the cabinet she held several advanced degrees, including one each in the fields of plasma physics and multi-dimensional mathematics. We could count on her for some probing questions I suspected. I hoped Al would be available via the communicator link. We might need some support from someone who could speak her language.

  Next I was able to pick out the only political figure in the group. A key member of the cabinet, Mr. Nathan Weissman was short and plump, with only a thin band of white hair circling his head. The smooth shiny skin that covered the rest of his head made him stand out from the others. According to Jeff’s briefing, he would be in charge of the Israeli group with whom we would be meeting this morning.

  The remaining three men were all military. Mostly from the equivalent of our special forces. We had two generals and one major. The major was easy to identify because of the age difference. He was the only one of the group to have dark black hair. Major Uri Katz was solidly built, but light on his feet, and moved confidently to greet General Wilson. The two showed obvious respect for one another. Major Katz would be leading the assault team that would be inserted into Iran to attempt the recovery of the two missing warheads. There was no doubt that part of the mission would proceed. Whether they would then hand the recovered devices over to us remained to be seen.

  The final two men were both generals. General Shamir Levy, and General Zitzhak Ramat. Jeff had not briefed us in any detail on their roles, but I suspected they would evaluate our presentation and make recommendations to Mr. Weissman about what
we had to say. They might be key in deciding what resources we would need to complete the mission, either the extraction of the weapons or the delivery of the recovered devices to where we needed them.

  “This is an amazing story,” remarked Mr. Weissman when we were introduced a few minutes later. “The general and I have been friends for years, otherwise I would have a considered all of this some kind of a joke.” His eyes found Jeff a few feet away. “The fact my best friend is related to Major Cohen didn’t hurt either,” he admitted. He looked down the table at the three of us. “I thought there was another woman who is instrumental in your project?” he asked.

  “Carol Martens,” I replied. “She remained behind inside the control complex. She will trigger the explosives we have already installed in the event we aren’t able to return with the nuclear devices as hoped.”

  “Ah yes, the nuclear bombs. The general has told us about the devices our enemies have been hiding across the border. It’s too bad we weren’t informed of these a long time ago.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was expected to say about this. Fortunately, the General came to my rescue.

  “Politics,” he explained not at all bothered by the implied criticism. “Both countries have secrets our leadership won’t allow us to disclose. We have both been restricted by these rules in the past. You can be assured, had any action been initiated with these weapons you would have been informed.”

  “And this complex is another of those secrets?” the man asked.

  “Our government only learned about it recently,” I told him. “It was our secret. A small group of us discovered it fifteen years ago, but we have kept it hidden from the government until recently when we realized the situation had changed and called for drastic action which we couldn’t supply ourselves.”

  “The general has told me of your concerns. I share many of them. I would not want your government to have exclusive control of such capability.” He paused for a moment. “I am getting ahead of the group. I have seen the materials the general has brought, but some of the others have not. They have only heard about them. Please, could you go through the story, and then we will talk about our plans.”

  It took a couple of hours. They had more questions than the group that had visited us in the complex. Especially Dr. Shenkar as I had expected. Of course, they couldn’t see the complex, the ship, or any of the other items for themselves. Naiya, Mike and I took turns explaining the early history, what we had painstakingly learned about the aliens, their arrival, the resulting battles, and the events leading up to our escaping from the confinement imposed by our government. They were very interested in the fact Naiya was born almost two thousand years earlier, and by the fact she had managed to kill one of the two aliens that had slipped away during the battle. I think that made them view her with considerably more respect. A fellow warrior of sorts.

  After we completed reviewing the materials and the status up to the time we left, one of the men who had been quiet, but very attentive, asked. “You say this mother ship is still on a course that will bring it to earth before too long?”

  I looked at Naiya and she gave a small nod of her head. I was not comfortable with sharing this capability, but sensed now was not the time to be holding back. Reaching into the large pocket on the military shirt, I pulled out the small alien communicator.

  “This is an alien device,” I explained getting their instant attention. “We have only recently managed to figure out how to make it work. We haven’t figured out much of the functionality, and don’t know the principles behind its operation.” I smiled ruefully. “We have that problem with much of their technology. Even the things we can operate, we mostly don’t understand.”

  I explained the most important functions. How it allowed us to communicate from outside the complex, even with the tunnel pathways closed. The fact we could talk across multiple eras. In the end, we contacted Carol. After introductions and a brief summary of status during which time they clustered around the device which I placed on the table, we brought up the summary screen. Passing the device around they could each see the projected path and the small dot that represented the mother ship. I’m not sure why that had as much impact as it did. It could have been faked easier than anything else we had could. Yet they were all influenced by the short exchange with Carol inside the complex. We also promised to arrange a discussion between Al and Dr. Shenkar.

  In the end they agreed to help us. I sensed some lingering questions, but the long friendship between the general and several of these men made the difference. The fact he had been to the complex, seen the alien ship, and agreed with the seriousness of the threat carried a lot of weight. I knew he had told them most of this information long before we got here. They had wanted to see us and see how well our version of the story tracked what the general had told them. Now they wanted to know how this was all supposed to work.

  Jeff took over the presentation and walked through the plan. Occasionally the general would interrupt with comments or clarifications. I was surprised the general didn’t pull any punches about the weapons and their capability. I suspected this was in part to establish an environment of honesty as well as give them facts that would help them in any political fallout that might come from our government once their part in these activities became known.

  “Mostly your commandos will handle the raid,” Jeff explained. They understood the political issues associated with the U.S. entering Iran, and knew that the general had to keep this under wraps from the rest of the military. “We will send along one eight man squad of our people including a couple of men who are familiar with the device.”

  He worked through a description of the base in Iraq that would be used to launch the mission. The base was under General Wilson’s control, and was only a hundred miles from where the weapons were being hidden. The radicals that controlled the weapons were located at an oasis across the border. Supposedly an innocent group that profited from the services they provided to travelers who came to the oasis, they really were a support group which supplied weapons and intelligence to a variety of radical groups throughout the country. Their numbers were kept small to prevent unwanted attention being focused in their direction. That would work for us.

  “And what happens once you have succeeded in bringing these weapons out from Iran?” asked the leader of the Israeli group.

  “The bombs will be brought back here. Once they are delivered, we will disassemble the weapons,” Jeff explained. “This allows us to reduce the weight and size of the package we need to carry back. The payloads will be taken by Mike and myself via one of our special operations planes back to the United States and covertly returned to the entrance cave outside Seattle. At the appropriate time we will slip inside the complex and activate the bombs. At that time everyone will exit the complex, closing the tunnel behind us.”

  “Can you do this?” he asked surprised. “How will you be able to get past all of the guards that your government must have placed there by now? And what are the consequences to your people when they come out?”

  I answered for Jeff. “We have several of the alien weapons. They are incredibly destructive. We also have a weapon that Carol brought from the future. It is similar to alien weapons only we know how to reduce the destructive power. That weapon will disable everyone in the vicinity of the entrance, allowing us time to slip inside with the bombs before they can recover. It is one of the reasons the smaller weapons are important and one reason why we want to separate the unneeded components.” I paused. “As for the people, we have a plan that we believe will cause the government to be careful in their dealings after the fact. In any event this is too important to let that issue be a deciding factor.”

  The man looked at Naiya and me. “You won’t be going with them?”

  “No,” I answered. “We will act as a distraction. From the time we left Canada we have mostly traveled under our own names. That will be discovered at some point, maybe already has been for that matter,
and will point the searchers to Germany. We have been careful to not be linked with Mike or Jeff. Mike flew under one name, and checked into the hotel under another. There is nothing to link a third person following our same route.”

  “But the trail ends there,” suggested the balding man to the right of the leader.

  “We disappeared when we left to come here. After Mike and Jeff leave, we will head back to Germany where we will resurface and leave a trail that is difficult but not impossible to follow. They will hopefully be looking for us and not discover the bombs are going by another route. We hope to stay ahead of them until it is too late to stop the devices from being delivered.”

  “And if they catch up with you?” the man asked.

  “We don’t expect that to happen. However, if we are intercepted we hope our having some of the pieces in our possession will convince them we have the bombs somewhere as well. As I said, we have made plans to deal with being taken into custody. It is going to happen anyway when everyone has to leave the complex before its destruction. The important thing is to get the bombs in place. Once we get confirmation from Carol that she has the bombs, we can drop the charade and disappear.”