Black Tuesday (Area 51: Time Patrol)

by Mayer, Bob

  Raleigh’s head drooped down, the messy hair falling over his face and mostly hiding it. But Mac caught the hint of a smile on Raleigh’s face through the hair.

  The Lord Chief Justice continued. “Fear not death too much, nor fear death too little; not too much, lest you fail in your hopes; not too little, lest you die presumptuously. And here I must conclude with my prayers to God for it, and that he would have mercy on your soul.” He paused, and then announced: “Execution is granted and will be carried later today.”

  As the guards stepped up next to Raleigh to escort him away, he lifted his head and looked at the man next to Mac. “Will you be present at the show later this morning, Lord Beeston?”

  “I hope so,” Beeston said. “If I can find a place in the crowd.”

  Raleigh smiled. “I do not know what you may do for a place. You must make what shift you can. But for my part, I am sure of having a place.”

  The guy had guts, Mac had to grant him that.

  And with that, Raleigh was hustled away.

  Beeston edged close by Mac’s side and spoke in a low voice. “You are here to help save him. Say the word is yes. I will lend my sword to yours, as will those who have gathered. Surely history cannot allow such a man to suffer this fate. It is not in the prophecy.”

  It was also not stated as a question to Mac.

  Mac looked at the old man, well dressed for the time period, sporting a wig that didn’t quite hide his baldness. He had a wicked rapier scar slashing across his left cheek, a piece of nose missing, and a gash ending above the right side of his mouth. The wound had not healed well. And his eyes glittered, in which Mac recognized the confidence of a fellow warrior.

  Nope, Mac thought, I’m not here to save him.

  “I’m just a visitor,” Mac said.

  “From time, not another place, am I correct?”

  Well that didn’t take long, Mac thought. “What do you mean?”

  “I was told you’d be right here, right now,” Beeston said. “It’s part of the prophecy.”

  “All right,” Mac allowed. “Yes. The prophecy.”

  “Come with me,” Beeston ordered.

  So his contact thought he was here to save Raleigh, because the contact didn’t know the future, while Mac knew the past.

  But then the question for Mac was: Why was he here?

  And what prophecy was Beeston talking about?

  Andes Mountains, Argentina, 1972. 29 October

  Moms wasn’t there, and then she was there, but she’d sort of always been there. It was the best way to explain how she arrived, becoming part of her current time and place without fanfare or excitement. She was in the bubble of this day, not before, and hopefully she wouldn’t be here afterward.

  Luckily, Moms’s instincts were faster than her conscious thought.

  Something was behind her, something dangerous and maleficent. As quickly as she sensed this, she whirled about, bringing the silenced M14 rifle to bear, but the thing was too close and too big. The bulky suppressor on the end of the barrel hit the creature’s side, and then the rifle was torn from her grasp.

  In the darkness, through falling snow, all she could see was a large hulking figure, hairy. And teeth, glinting in the starlight. Large teeth, fangs, mouth opened wide. Moms tried to back up, feet pushing in knee-deep snow. She felt trapped in slow motion as the beast closed on her, blocking out the stars.

  Moms’s hand was scrambling for the pistol on her right thigh, the other hand held up in a vain, instinctual attempt to stop the assault. She couldn’t get the pistol, her gloved hand fumbling with the release. So she grabbed the haft of a machete, Nada’s old machete, and drew it.

  The beast growled, a deep guttural noise, spraying Moms with saliva.

  Beyond that was a noise Moms recognized: the chugging sound of a suppressed weapon firing. Letting out a cry of pain, the beast wheeled away from Moms to face its attacker.

  Moms lay on her back, still trying to understand, but her training prompted her into action. She got to her knees, holding up the machete and then preparing to swing it. The creature was over seven feet tall and broad in the chest. She slashed at its back, the razor-sharp blade slicing through fur and into flesh.

  Between her machete and the shooter, the creature had enough. With an outraged roar it dashed off into the falling snow, irritated but not fatally wounded by the bullets and blade.

  Moms slumped back. She sheathed the machete and picked up the M14. She had no idea from which direction the shots had come, so she quartered the vicinity, rifle tight to her shoulder.

  She caught a flash of something out of the corner of her eye, higher and to the north. She froze. She didn’t stare directly at the location, but rather used the off-center part of her retina, more sensitive to light.

  A flicker of movement, so quick one could imagine it wasn’t real.

  It was real.

  Someone else was out there—the shooter.

  Moms’s gloved finger was over the trigger, but she didn’t fire

  The shooter rose up out of the snow and began moving toward her. Like her, the shooter was covered in white camouflage, a hood draped down over the face.

  Moms aimed center of mass at the approaching figure.

  The figure stopped, slung a rifle, and raised both empty hands. Moms slid her finger off the trigger, but kept the rifle aimed.

  “Come forward,” Moms called out.

  The man came toward Moms. “Welcome, my friend,” he said with an accent.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “A friend. My name is Pablo Correa.” He was carrying a large backpack and a rifle was slung over one shoulder. Moms recognized it as an FN FAL with a bulky suppressor on the end: an excellent weapon. “We need to get to shelter. We will not survive the night exposed like this. It will get colder as the sky is clear. It is already well below zero Fahrenheit.”

  “I can handle the cold,” Moms said while also accepting that he was right.

  Correa pulled down his hood. His skin was dark, his features sculptured. His moustache was tinged with ice, but his smile was striking, revealing perfect white teeth. However, there was a gauntness to his face, the cheekbones a bit too pronounced, that whispered of a recent illness or difficult time.

  Correa shook his head. “The cold is bad, that is true. But there are other dangers as you have just seen.” He pointed at the blood trail heading away in the direction the beast had gone. There were deep tracks in the snow, easy to follow, but slowly being filled in by the descending snow.

  Moms had done a lot of hunting in her time, but she’d never seen a track like this. Large, over six inches wide by sixteen inches long. Almost human shaped, but different. “What made that? What did we shoot?” Moms asked.

  “A monster,” Correa said. “We did not kill it, as you could tell. It has gone off to nurse its wounds. It has had many names, in many lands. Yeti in the Himalayas. Abominable Snowman. Sasquatch. Bigfoot. Ts’emekwes among the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. Here in the Amazon and Andes it has been called Mono Grande, or Large Monkey.” He shrugged. “I prefer Yeti. Much simpler.” He slid the FN FAL rifle onto his shoulder. He coughed, hard, for several moments, turning partly away from Moms and bending over.

  “Are you all right?”

  “A touch of the flu,” Correa said, straightening up. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Moms didn’t care for the cold. Early in her career she’d served in a Special-Ops unit that was oriented toward Winter Warfare training. That meant she was prepared, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. It was good in that she knew what she was doing here at 13,000 feet in the Andes in the middle of the fall.

  It was bad in that she’d learn to hate being cold.

  “Let me get oriented,” Moms said.

  Correa smiled. “I know where we are, but do as you wish.”

  It was nighttime, GPS was just being tested at White Sands using ground-based pseudo-satellites, and Moms had
to go back to her early training. She took her compass out, unfolded the map, pulled a poncho over her head, and knelt in the two-foot deep snow. She flicked on the red lens flashlight, oriented the compass, and stared at the map for almost twenty seconds. The poncho rustled and there was Correa right next to her, looking down at the map. Moms’s mind transferred the contour lines drawn on the map into what they looked like in the real world. She turned off the light, removed the poncho, and looked about in the starlight.

  The peaks all around made it easy to get an approximate fix on her location.

  “Oriented?” Correa asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Want me to double-check? Two is always better than one.”

  Moms knew her objective was just over the ridgeline to the west. A ridgeline that was only three hundred feet higher than her current location, the problem being that a three-hundred-foot climb in snow and cold and thin air was a lot, lot harder than it appeared.

  Then again, those on the other side were in considerably worse circumstances.

  Moms couldn’t tell if Correa was questioning her orienteering ability or backing her up. She knelt once more, opening the map under the poncho and turning on the light. “We’re here,” she declared as she pointed to a spot on the map.

  Correa nodded. “Yes. Exactly.”

  It is 1972. The first handheld scientific calculator is introduced. President Bhutto announces Pakistan will develop a nuclear weapons program. Nixon orders Haiphong Harbor to be mined. The first financial derivatives exchange, the International Monetary Market, opens. Franco Harris makes the “immaculate reception.” The first and second Watergate break-ins fail; they’re caught on the third. George Carlin is arrested for obscenity for presenting his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” gig. Kissinger announces “peace is at hand” in Vietnam. The concept of recombinant DNA is announced and tested. Genocide begins in Burundi with hundreds of thousands of Hutus killed; twenty-two years later the Tutsis would return the favor.

  Some things change; some don’t.

  “The objective is over that ridge,” Moms said as they got to their feet and she stuffed the poncho into her ruck.

  “Yes. It is. But we can wait until daylight. Unless whatever it is you must do, must be done now?”

  “We can wait until daylight,” Moms said, because she really had no idea what it was she was supposed to do, but given there was going to be an avalanche the next evening, she thought it best not to move precipitously. The terrain was as dangerous as the weather. The presence of the Yeti, though, indicated she was in the right place. The Shadow was up to something.

  Correa pointed and Moms suddenly noticed a large man-made shape resting in the snow about fifty yards away.

  “Come.” Correa led the way. Moms quickly followed, her rifle at the ready. As they got closer, Moms realized what they were heading toward: the severed tail section of an airplane. Correa made his way into the shelter of the debris and pulled off his pack.

  “We wait for dawn,” he said. “It is too cold and too dangerous to move at night. If any of those over there”—he nodded toward the ridge and what lay beyond—“are still alive, they would not venture out at night as they have not the proper clothing or gear to deal with the cold.”

  Moms had no argument with the plan to wait.

  “I will take first watch,” Correa said. He pulled a blanket out of his pack. “Use this.”

  “Let me take first watch,” Moms said. “Looks like you need some rest.” They both sat down with their back against the inner bulkhead of the plane, facing the outside through the severed section. Correa was close by her side.

  Correa chuckled. “As you wish.” He pulled another blanket out and handed it to Moms. “Let me know if you see the Yeti, eh?”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  Correa wrapped his blanket around his shoulder and then he leaned in close, pressing himself against her.

  “Excuse me,” Moms said, surprised.

  “Warmth,” Correa said, flashing his beguiling smile. “Surely in your missions you have done such? It is part of survival training. And if the monster grabs you, it will awaken me.”

  Moms had to smile at that. “Then you just have to run faster than me,” she said.

  But his answer was serious. “I will not run.”

  “I will not either,” Moms said.

  “I can tell.”

  “Who are you?” Moms asked.

  “I am Time Patrol, of course,” Correa said. “Surely you were briefed you would be met?”

  “I was told it was likely someone would meet me. How did you know to be here?”

  He chuckled. “My entire life has led up to this place and this moment.”

  That startled Moms, who knew this was just a twenty-four hour-mission for her, but this man whom she had just met had waited for this for years.

  Correa continued. “I was born and grew up in Argentina. I served for a decade in Agrupación de Comandos Anfibios, the APCA. Amphibious Commandos Group. Weapons were my specialty.”

  Moms had no doubt of that as she took in the modified FN FAL and the Browning Hi Power 9 mm pistol with silencer in a specially designed holster. A bulge on his harness on the right side held something.

  “What’s that?” Moms asked.

  “Three FMK-1 mines,” he replied. “We don’t know what we will meet up here.” He changed the subject. “I was recruited into the Patrol five years ago. I was never called to action. Until now.

  “South America is my area of operations. I have filed reports, but this is the first time I have met someone traveling back on a mission.” He paused for a moment. “I would like to know of the future, of course. What you know to your time, whenever it is. But it is forbidden. We of the Patrol cannot know further than our present. Very frustrating, but it is the rule.” He stopped to cough, a deep rattling sound that worried Moms. He nodded toward the west. “I would like to know what will happen to them. The disappearance of the plane was in the news for many days, but now no one, except the families, speak of it. They are assumed dead. Since you are here, I assume they are not all dead?”

  “They are not,” Moms said. “Eighteen are dead. Twenty-seven are alive.”

  “Ah. It is tragic some died but also good that some survived.” He looked about the tail section. “Amazing that anyone could have survived if this got ripped from the plane and landed here. I spotted wreckage farther back along the flight path: one of the wings. The searchers were looking in the wrong area. I was surprised when I received the coordinates this far east and north. The pilots must have turned too soon into the mountains, missing the pass.”

  Moms knew exactly why Uruguayan Flight 571 had crashed and why the searchers had been looking in the wrong area: The pilots had been flying on dead reckoning from Uruguay to Santiago, Chile. They’d been forced to stop in Argentina because of inclement weather. With the Andes Mountains between their stop and their destination, and a limited ceiling for the aircraft, the plane had to take a route flying through Planchon Pass in the mountains, rather than over the top.

  Unfortunately, heavy cloud cover required the pilots to rely on dead reckoning, to first fly south to the pass and then west through it based purely on flight time. But they’d failed to take into account a strong headwind as they flew to and through the pass. Figuring they were almost through the mountains, the pilots called into the airport in Chile, announcing they were beginning their descent through the pass. Unfortunately they had taken the turn and begun the descent too soon. Thus they weren’t in the pass and they weren’t in Chile when they dropped altitude.

  The plane hit a mountain peak at 13,800 feet, ripping off the right wing, which flew back and severed the tail section of the plane.

  Which Moms was now sitting in with Correa.

  Then the left wing was torn off, leaving the remaining fuselage hurtling through the air. It crashed on a downward slope just over the ridgeline to the west of Moms’s positio
n, sliding and coming to rest in a snow bank. By some miracle, most of those on board survived.

  Correa spoke through the information she’d been downloaded with. “They must be suffering. The survivors have been down there for eighteen days.”

  Moms knew the survivors had begun eating their dead a week ago. She didn’t think that was something she should share at the moment. “They are.”

  “At least let me know if they survive?”

  “If all goes as it should, many will live,” Moms hedged.

  “So the beast is here so that all does not go as it should,” Correa said.

  “Apparently.”

  “Why?” Correa wondered out loud. “Why would the Shadow care about these rugby players? Does one of them go on to achieve great things in history?” He waved a hand before Moms could answer. “I know you cannot tell me. But it is frustrating not knowing.” He sighed. “When dawn comes, we must protect the survivors from the beast,” Correa said, as if he were discussing a matter of no consequence. “I think that should achieve the goal of keeping things as they should be.”

  Moms wasn’t so certain of that. “There is something I can tell you. About what happens this evening. There will be an avalanche. It will sweep over the plane and bury those inside. It will kill eight of the survivors. The rest will be trapped inside for three days before managing to dig out.”

  Correa considered that. “These mountains are very dangerous. There are over a quarter million avalanches of various sizes along the range every winter.” He looked out at the dark night, the air filled with snowflakes lazily drifting down. “This is the third straight day of snow. The surface pack is heavy. Ripe for an avalanche.” He shook his head. “I do not believe we can stop an avalanche. Unless the beast is here to cause it.”