Valentines Day

by Bob Mayer

  Edith threw in her facts. “Cook is known for being the first European to reach the east coast of Australia and the first to find Hawaii. He also extensively explored the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, searching for a Northwest Passage.”

  “But he did all that before he died,” Roland pointed out. “Why am I going to the day he dies? The Shadow going to try to save him? Why?”

  “We don’t know,” Dane said.

  “Cook wasn’t the only one killed,” Edith said. “Some native Hawaiians died. And some survived from his crew who later made history. Captain Bligh, who would later command the HMS Bounty, was Cook’s sailing master. He was there.”

  “So I just keep my eyes and ears open and see what’s not quite right,” Roland summed up his mission. “It could have nothing to do with Cook. Like what happened in Germany on my last trip had nothing to do with Varus or Arminius.” He pointed the boarding axe toward the monster’s scale on the wall. “Could be Grendels and such.”

  “Correct,” Dane said.

  “All right,” Roland said.

  Dane wrote the last mission on the board.

  1929

  “Ivar.”

  “Not the mob again,” Ivar protested, but there was no energy in it. The clothes, the gun, the date, all added up.

  “Chicago this time,” Dane said.

  Even Ivar knew what that location and the date meant. “The Saint Valentines Day massacre.”

  Dane gave Edith the go-ahead. “You’ll get all the specifics in the download, but the fundamentals of the massacre are that seven men were killed inside a garage on the North Side of Chicago. Five were members of George ‘Bugs’ Moran’s gang. Two others, a gang associate and a mechanic, were also among the dead.

  “It is highly likely, although never conclusively proved, that the killers were sent by Al Capone. There were four men, two dressed as police and two with Thompson submachine guns who entered the garage. They lined the seven up against a wall, then gunned them down. One victim survived for a few hours. When asked who did it, he told the police ‘no one shot me’.”

  Ivar spread his hands. “I don’t get it. What am I supposed to do? Make sure they get killed? The same with Roland and Captain Cook. And Scout and Saint Valentine. These missions are messed up.”

  “We didn’t invent them,” Dane said. “Remember, the Shadow uses misdirection. The event each day is known for might not be the Shadow’s target.”

  “What if I go into my bubble,” Ivar said, “and I’m one of the guys lined up against the wall? I got cement overshoes last time I went to 1929.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Dane said.

  “Vague much,” Scout said.

  “Scout,” Eagle warned, stepping in as team sergeant.

  “Listen,” Dane said. “I agree with you. We have to accept that as we adapt, the Shadow adapts. And the other timelines. Ivar’s mission to Chile on Nine Eleven was different. He rescued Dominic, who was from another timeline. But as a result of that mission, a loop was closed, with Dominic disappearing from here. So the question we have to wonder about is whether that bubble in Chile was an attempt to change our timeline or to fix a problem the Shadow had from another timeline?”

  “I think,” Ivar said, “that the problem in that incident wasn’t with the Shadow, but with Pandora’s timeline of Gaia. Dominic and his mother were refugees from that timeline.”

  Dane nodded. “Possibly. We know there are other players, other timelines, in this war with the Shadow. With their own agendas. Pandora and her ilk from the Gaia timeline. The Fates. The minions of the Shadow like the Legion and the Spartan mercenaries from their timeline.”

  “Monsters,” Roland threw in.

  “Yes,” Dane said. “Grendels and Aglaeca. Yeti. Kraken. And the Valkyries. There’s an infinite number of possible timelines. Many are unaffected by Gates, going along without interference. Our best guess is that the Shadow is the one that managed to open Gates first and was able to travel between timelines. And they developed time travel. Because of that, they gained tremendous power. They’ve destroyed a number of timelines, raped them for their natural resources, destroyed others that were a threat, like mine. Subjugated others, such as the one nominally ruled by the Spartans.”

  “What’s the Shadow’s end game?” Lara asked.

  “If we knew that,” Dane said, “we might be able to anticipate what it’s going to do. Then again, maybe it doesn’t have an end game beyond survival.”

  “Like us,” Lara said.

  Dane walked forward, between where Moms and Eagle were seated and leaned forward. He put his fists on the top of the table as he spoke. “We’re swinging in the dark. Fighting back against the bubbles the Shadow is punching in our past. We know the Shadow is trying to cause changes in history. Ripples. A big enough Ripple will be a Cascade. And six Cascades; well that initiates the Rule of Seven. The seventh event being a Time Tsunami that wipes this timeline out. We know that’s happened to other timelines.” Dane straightened, taking his hands off the table. “That’s what we’re dealing with. If that’s not enough—“ he didn’t say anything further.

  Moms stood. “It’s good enough, Dane. Scout and Lara are upset. I told Frasier not to enter the team bunk area after catching him there, watching Lara while she slept. He did it again. That’s not acceptable. He told them he was doing it on your orders.”

  Dane nodded. “He’s trying to find out the truth about Lara’s background based on my orders. But I agree. Entering your team sanctum, especially after being warned not to, is unacceptable. You have my word it will not happen again. I’ve already dealt with him regarding that.”

  “Are you done?” Moms asked Dane and Edith.

  “Not quite.” Dane looked at Edith.

  “In regard to Doc’s question,” Edith said. “There’s more to the Saint Valentines Day Massacre. No one was ever convicted of perpetrating the crime. But it is widely accepted the shooters were sent by Al Capone. Two of the suspected shooters, you’ll get the names in your download, were killed not long afterward. Perhaps Capone covering his tracks. As far as is known, nobody involved in this, including Capone, had a happy ending.”

  “I’m only there for twenty-four hours,” Ivar pointed out.

  “There’s something else strange about it,” Edith said. “One of the men killed was Jimmy Clark, Bugs Moran’s brother-in-law and second-in-command. His real name was Kachellek, but he went by the alias of Clark. For the rest of his life, Capone swore that Clark’s ghost haunted him. He would scream Clark’s name in the middle of the night, to the point where bodyguards would break in, worried their boss was being attacked. In prison, he was known to cry out for Clark to leave him alone. Now that could be ascribed to Capone’s mind deteriorating from his syphilis, which eventually reduced his mental capacity to that of a child, but as we know, there are other explanations for ghosts and visions.”

  “Why would the Shadow send a Valkyrie to haunt Capone?” Ivar asked.

  “I don’t know,” Edith said. “But it just struck me as odd.” She was flustered, but Moms came to her aid.

  “A lot of this is guesswork and acting on gut instinct,” Moms said. “We have to pay attention to that instinct.”

  Edith nodded. “It’s also odd that Kurt Vonnegut is located where and when Doc is going. His novel, largely based on that experience, Slaughterhouse Five, has time travel in it.”

  “A ripple?” Eagle asked.

  “Or just his imagination,” Dane said.

  “What about the other missions?” Moms asked Edith, ignoring Dane. “Anything strike you as odd? Or, I should say, odder than usual?”

  Edith glanced at Dane and he gave a slight nod. She pulled a flat plastic bag out of her leather satchel. “This will help you, Ivar.” She put it on the table in front of him.

  Ivar looked at it but didn’t touch it. “What is it?”

  “A letter of introduction.”

  “What?” Ivar said. “From who to w
ho?”

  “From Meyer Lansky to Alfonso Capone,” Edith said.

  Ivar stared at her. “No.”

  Edith swallowed, but didn’t say anything.

  “You’re joking right?” Ivar said. “A letter of introduction? Who is it introducing?”

  Dane intervened. “You.”

  The rest of the team stared at Ivar. He closed his eyes. “I met Lansky on 29 October 1929. I’m going back to 14 February 1929. Before then. How can Lansky know who I am before he meets me?”

  Edith struggled to answer. “He wrote the letter after he met you.”

  “But as far as he knows, he killed me,” Ivar said. “I don’t understand this at all. Why would he write a letter of recommendation for someone he put concrete shoes on?”

  Edith turned to Dane.

  Ivar continued. “Why would he even write such a letter anyway?”

  Dane indicated the letter. “We’ve got it. Edith went through a lot of trouble to track it down so quickly and get it here.”

  “Bull,” Lara said. Everyone turned toward her. “You’re telling me you learned of this bubble just several hours ago and then managed to find this letter? You had it. You had it all along.”

  The deep red blanketing Edith’s face betrayed the truth about the lie. Moms glanced at Eagle, then faced Dane. “Truth. Now.”

  “We had it,” Dane admitted. “Except we didn’t know we had it.”

  “Clarify,” Moms snapped.

  Dane spread his hands, indicating the Possibility Palace. “There’s more to this place than the Time Pit. We’ve got archives. Yes, the filing cabinets along the Spiral are full of scrolls of information. All of recorded history. Key information. But we’ve got caverns surrounding this place full of artifacts and more documents gathered over the years by our agents. It’s catalogued, but by hand and on paper, because—“

  “No computers,” Doc said. “You’ve never explained that.”

  “Anything electronic can be hacked,” Dane said. “It’s that simple.” He indicated Eagle. “You received a transmission to shut down your electronics during your last mission, didn’t you?”

  “You know I did,” Eagle said. “You were in the debrief.”

  Dane nodded. “Same thing I got in my timeline when I was in Vietnam on the mission to recover the black box.”

  “What black box?” Eagle asked.

  Dane dismissed that with a wave. “It’s not important. My timeline. Which is gone. The message is the key. It came from the Ones Before. We don’t know who they are, but they help. Once in a while. The Shadow can track electronic signals. Much better than we can. We do know of one timeline where the Shadow attacked via the Internet. A timeline where computers had developed earlier and the Internet much faster. Where control for everything had been given over to their form of the Internet. Once the Shadow took control, it was easy to wipe that timeline out. We’re not taking any chances here.”

  “Battlestar Gallactica,” Eagle murmured.

  “Frak that,” Scout acknowledged.

  “Back to the note,” Moms said.

  “We have archives,” Dane continued. “Once the alert was sounded for this mission, our analysts begin going through the archive records. They found the note. It’s that simple.”

  “Then why lie about it?” Ivar asked.

  “Because we’re wasting time here,” Dane said. “The Gates for your bubbles open soon. I can’t detail everything. You’ll get the pertinent data in your download.”

  “I still don’t understand how Lansky can write a note to Capone,” Ivar had the letter out and was reading it, “telling him I’m trustworthy, when he thinks I’m dead.”

  “Because,” Dane said, “he knew you weren’t killed.”

  “And how did he know that?” Ivar asked.

  “Because of you,” Dane said. “It’s your fault. You violated the rules of Time Patrol. You told Lansky who you were.”

  “I had to,” Ivar argued. “You guys gave me money printed after the time I was sent to on Black Tuesday.”

  “Yes, yes,” Dane said. “I know. Our fault. It’s why we let your violation go. But we had to contain the Ripple that caused. Lansky knew part of his future. You told him he would die a natural death. So we had an agent contact him. He found out you weren’t dead. We got some things from him. The note was one of them.”

  Ivar shook his head. “Still doesn’t make sense. How did you know you would need this note?”

  “We didn’t,” Dane said. He sighed. “But apparently our Agent-In-Time did. Our best guess is the A-I-T knows about this mission you’re going on and went to Lansky afterward and got him to write it.”

  “That’s a loop,” Doc pointed out.

  “Indeed,” Dane said. “Much like your mission to Philly in 1776 on Independence Day was a loop to Moms’ mission to Monticello in 1826. One affected the other. It happens.”

  “My head hurts,” Roland said.

  “I understand,” Dane said. “It’s not easy. But it is what it is. We need to get going.”

  “You mean we need to get going,” Moms clarified.

  “Of course,” Dane said.

  “Can we have a team moment?” Moms asked.

  “Certainly.” Dane led Edith out of the team room, shutting the door behind him.

  Moms turned to the team. “More than ever, we have to hold on to some of our traditions as a team. Those of us who were Nightstalkers were inculcated into some traditions. I don’t know when they began. Before I got there. Before even Nada,” she said, nodding toward the name etched on the table. “But they give us stability. They give us continuity.”

  She looked around the table, meeting each person’s gaze for a moment before moving on to the next.

  “We’re getting distracted,” she said. “I know this is confusing. But that’s the nature of war. Organized chaos. This is more chaotic than what we’re used to. I don’t pretend to understand the loops and how each affects the other. Let’s get back to basics.

  “Why are we here?” Moms looked around the table at the Team. “Because, as Dane said, we are the last defense against the Shadow. We man the walls surrounding our timeline. We live and fight in a realm which ordinary people have no clue exists. This place—“ she pointed down—“the Possibility Palace, is something many couldn’t even imagine. Most people are worried about ordinary things. Paying the mortgage. Taking care of their family. Their job. We have a higher calling.

  “We stand watch. We protect them. Both their worries and their joys. We keep the Shadow from wiping them, everyone, out of existence. None of us know exactly what we’re going to face when we go through the Gate into the time bubble the Shadow has created. We’ve run five missions. We’ve stopped the Shadow on every one. We’ll do it again.” She turned to Eagle, who stood up next to her.

  “It is protocol for us to acknowledge our fallen team-mates because no one else will,” Eagle said. “Their names were erased when they joined the team, whether it be the Nightstalkers or the Time Patrol. We must pay respect and give honors.” Eagle reached out and touched the top of the table, running his hand over the first name. “He was named Nada by the team, the Nighstalkers, when he joined them. In death he regains his name and his past. He was Master Sergeant Edward Moreno, Delta Force. He left behind a wife and a daughter. We look after his daughter, Isabella, because we always look after our own, just as we will look after any family member. He made the choice to go back and right a wrong.”

  Lara looked surprised by that, glancing over at Scout, but Eagle was already moving on. “He was named Mac by the team, but he was Sergeant First Class Eric Bowen, U.S. Army Special Forces, MOS eighteen-charlie, engineer—“

  “Best damn demo man ever,” Roland muttered.

  “—from the great state of Texas. He made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, for his world, for his timeline during the D-Day mission. We speak his rank and name as it was.”

  The team said as one: “Sergeant First Class Er
ic Bowen.”

  Scout looked over at Lara. “As long as a name is remembered, we live on.”

  The team sergeant spoke the words they’d all heard before. “We are here because the best of intentions can go horribly awry and the worst of intentions can achieve exactly what it sets out to do. It is often the noblest scientific inquiry that can produce the end of us all. We are here because we are the last defense when the desire to do right turns into a wrong. We are here because mankind advances through trial and error. Because nothing man does is ever perfect. And we are ultimately here because the Shadow is out there, trying to obliterate us. That is our duty.”

  Moms finished. “Can we all live with that?”

  The Team moved out, heading for their Gates.

  Left alone, Lara waited until the door shut, then she spoke quite clearly. “No. I can’t live with that.

  The Missions Phase I

  “I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand.”

  —Al Capone

  Chicago, 14 February 1929 A.D.

  IVAR WASN’T THERE, and then he was there, but he’d sort of always been there. It was the best way to explain how he arrived, becoming part of his current time and place without fanfare or excitement among those around him; well, not exactly, because the guy sitting across the table from him twitched his hand, lifting up a folded newspaper, revealing a .45 caliber pistol pointed at Ivar.

  Ivar was in the bubble of this day, not before, and hopefully not afterward, as long as this guy didn’t shoot him.

  It is 1929 A.D. The Museum of Modern Art opens in New York City; All Quiet on the Western Front is published; Popeye appears for the first time in a comic; the first patent for color television is submitted; Mother Teresa arrives in Calcutta to begin her work among India’s poorest; Grand Teton National Park is established by President Calvin Coolidge; Herbert Hoover then becomes president and the first telephone is installed at the White House; the yo-yo is introduced; the British High Court rules that Canadian women are persons; the New York Yankees become the first team to put numbers on their uniforms; the longest bridge in the world, the San Francisco Bay Toll, opens; President Hoover proposes the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounces war; the first US roller coaster is built; Lieutenant James Doolittle flies over Mitchell Field in New York in the first all instrument flight; the Peking Man skull is found; Palestinians and Jews riot over control of the Western Wall and over one hundred are killed.