by Bob Mayer
Doc looked at Ivar. “You know math. You have a possible answer now in math for the attacks. Maybe it’s correct. Maybe not. But the math here is irrefutable.” He sat down, placing the muzzle of the shotgun under his chin.
“No,” Moms said.
“Scout,” Doc called out.
“Yes?”
“Here.” He tossed her an old pair of spectacles. “They were Benjamin Franklin’s.”
*****
If I move, Highball let’s go. The dog is scared.
Join the club, buddy.
Joey slashes at me with his knife.
A thin slice on my cheek.
Was it real? The pain felt like it.
They briefed me on Legion. They’re cutters. Not like the cutters I knew on the First Floor. Legion cuts others. They take pride in how many they can inflict before their victim dies.
That’s pretty fraked up.
“You feel it,” Joey said.
“Nah.”
“You lie poorly.”
He cuts me again.
Let’s do something people!
“Want some more pie?” Joey asks.
*****
“She can’t hold much longer,” Scout said, moving next to Highball and extending her hands to grab the clacker in case the dog lets go.
Eagle was next to Moms. “He’s right,” the team sergeant said. “We have no choice.”
“I’m dying,” Doc said. “The radiation from the D-Day mission. The meds Dane passed to me only gave me more time. Not a solution. There is only one inevitability. I would prefer to go on my own terms. And not the way those who were exposed to the Demon Core went. That is a horrible, slow, death.”
“No.” Moms was adamant. “There has to be another way.”
“Prepare to move quickly,” Doc said. “Keep me in your hearts.”
He pulled the trigger.
*****
I run for the door back to the kitchen.
“Stay!” Joey screamed.
I’m through. Someone has a hand one my shoulder, pulling me back.
I snap into Space Between. Amelia Earhart has me in her arms, waist deep in the oil water of the lake.
*****
Highball let go of the clacker as six Gates opened.
.04
“Go!” Moms ordered.
Roland, as usual, was first, because an order from Moms was always obeyed instantly. He went through his Gate, axe and cutlass in hand.
.03
Scout saw the number on the bomb, reached for the clacker.
“No, Scout,” Moms said.
Ivar went through his Gate.
.02
Scout jumped for her Gate and was gone.
.01
Moms and Eagle were both gone.
The Return
The samurai went to one knee in unison and bowed their heads toward Lara.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“They are giving you respect and honor,” Earhart said. “For what you did.”
I didn’t go through the front door, Lara thought. And Doc is dead because of that.
“I have to get back,” Lara said.
“Of course.” Earhart indicated the way along the beach to get near the location of the Gate to return.
*****
ASCENDING INTO THE TUNNEL OF TIME, IVAR saw the explosion, a flash that blinded him for a moment.
Then there was the interior of the garage. Unmarred by an explosion. Seven bodies splayed out as they had been in the photos in the download. As they had been in history.
It was all as it should be, just as the Fates had decreed.
As the interior the garage begin to fade away in the distance, Ivar heard a faint sound and smiled.
Highball barking.
*****
EAGLE was speeding through the tunnel of time, moving forward, the planet blurring below him, but he abruptly slowed, coming to almost a standstill high above a ship he immediately recognized.
The USS Quincy. Steaming in the open ocean under a full moon. On the deck, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sat alone at the very bow, a blanket over his lap. Several crewmen hovered a discreet distance away, prepared to assist in any way needed.
Because Major General ‘Pa’ Watson, West Point class of 1908, was dead. Cerebral hemorrhage. That’s what the history books would record.
Eagle wasn’t so sure.
Roosevelt had a folder in his hands.
Eagle squinted, seeing through the wall of the tunnel, but not quite seeing. Still, he knew what it was. The Top Secret targeting folder for the Manhattan Project. Something that had only partially been made public in Eagle’s time.
The section on the German targeting, Berlin at the top of the list, had been redacted.
Hiroshima.
Nagasaki.
Something fell on the page.
Eagle realized it was a single tear.
Then Roosevelt snapped the folder shut.
*****
IN THE TUNNEL OF TIME, ROLAND remembered the Jager he’d fought Grendel beside, asking: How much is any man’s life worth?
A life is worth only the lives it can take, was the proper Jager answer.
Roland had not believed that.
A life is worth the lives it loves, not those it kills.
And now, Roland had to add to that.
A life is worth the lives it saves.
Distantly, without much interest, he could see a melee on the beach of Kealakekua Bay. Captain Cook was stabbed in the back, running for the boat, falling into the surf. Knives plunged into him.
All was as it should be in history.
*****
MOMS was in the tunnel of time.
Numb. Barely interested in the flash of bulbs outside the tunnel as reporters covered the public revealing of ENIAC.
The ENIAC Six, so crucial to the programming and maintenance of the machine, were off to the side. Basically ignored.
But they were there.
And the machine was too.
Technology would march on.
Moms didn’t care.
*****
SCOUT was in the tunnel of time, trying to understand.
The Earth was flashing below her. Years going by. A bright flash on each 14 February. Valentines Day. When people professed love, having little idea of the roots of the day.
Love?
Greater love hath no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends.
She had no idea where that came from. It sounded Biblical or something Eagle would conjure up from his vast trove of knowledge.
She looked at the spectacles in her hands.
Far below was the Milvian Bridge. A glittering cluster of metal objects adorned the edge, right where Valentine had been killed. Scout didn’t recognize them at first, then realized they were padlocks.
Love padlocks.
To symbolize unbreakable love.
Keep me in your heart for a while.
*****
DOC was there and he wasn’t there.
I shouldn’t be anywhere.
“You did well.”
Atropos was to his left. All else was just a gray nothingness.
“Is this death?”
“It is what it is.”
Helpful as usual. Doc could hear Scout: Not
“What was all this?” Doc asked. “Just the Shadow trying to locate the Time Patrol base?”
“You know better than that,” Atropos said. She was dressed in a white robe, the scissors in the crook of her arm. Her hood was pulled back, revealing a lined and wrinkled face. Her eyes were pure white. She reached. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter? Besides, you have no choice now. You are on a different plane.”
Doc took her hand. Her skin was dry and cool to the touch.
Something flitted by to the left, startling Doc.
“It is just the restless spirit of one who you saw die.”
> “Clark?”
“He will haunt the man who betrayed him until satisfaction in that man’s death.”
Capone was going to have some hard times ahead. Doc had no sympathy.
“What about my teammates?”
“They are back.”
“What of Kurt Vonnegut?” Doc asked. “My mission.”
“You saved him.”
“This was a test,” Doc said. “You tested us.”
“It is what it is,” Clotho said.
There was something ahead. Something Doc couldn’t make out in the grey, but it was brighter. “What is that? Where are you taking me?”
“You have proved your worth,” Atropos said.
Then Doc saw the truth. “Math wouldn’t work to prove this.
Atropos smiled. “Not the math you know. So far.”
The Possibility Palace
Where? Can’t Tell You. When? Can’t Tell You.
Lara stood on the edge of the Pit, staring aimlessly into its depths.
The others were in the team room, debriefing from the mission, grieving the loss of Doc, grateful to have survived.
A mixture of emotions Lara could feel, sharp and brittle, pushing through the cacophony of the ‘voices’ in the Pit.
Hold me in your thoughts.
Take me to your dreams.
Lara swallowed. That was Scout. With whom she had the strongest connection. More than a dream-line.
Lara could never take Scout there. Not through that door.
Here there be monsters.
Lara was startled as a competing voice pierced out of the Pit.
And her immediate thought was one of redemption: If there be monsters, bring them on!
The End
For Now
Our History Afterward
Chicago, 14 February 1929 A.D.
Seven men were killed in the St. Valentines Day Massacre. Public outrage over the killings increased pressure on the mob. No one was ever arrested for the killings and their identity is still a mystery.
Al Capone was widely suspected to be behind the killings. He was haunted by visions of Jimmy Clark until he died; it’s suspected these came from his mind deteriorating from syphilis. He was arrested for tax evasion by Elliott Ness and imprisoned. He was paroled in 1939. He lived in Florida, his mind failing, until his death in 1947.
The Great Bitter Lake, 14 February 1945 A.D.
Most attention at the time, and in history, has focused on the Yalta Conference and its aftereffects.
Roosevelt’s meeting with King Ibn Saud was, and still is, considered a footnote. However. This meeting had grave implications to the present day in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East. While Roosevelt had supported a Zionist State in the Middle East, King Saud was strongly opposed to this. Taken aback by the King’s strong reaction, Roosevelt backed off pushing the issue. He was dead on 12 April 1945.
The issue continues to haunt the world to this day.
Hawaii, 14 February 1779 A.D.
Captain Cook is on the list of great explorers. He was the first European to land on the east coast of Australia and also Hawaii. He circumnavigated New Zealand. He explored the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America.
On 14 February 1779, in an altercation with native Hawaiians, Cook was killed.
Despite the altercation, the islanders held Cook in high esteem. They prepared his body with their traditional funeral rights for chiefs. They disemboweled him, cooked the flesh off, and cleaned his bones. Some of the bones were returned to his crew for burial at sea.
Cook was so well renowned in his time, that during the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin had a letter sent to American Naval captains that if they encountered Cook’s vessel, they were not to attack it and to treat him as a ‘friend to mankind’. Unfortunately, this letter was written a month after Cook’s death.
One of his sailors, William Bligh, survived the journey and went to a bit of infamy with the USS Bounty.
Dresden, Germany, 14 February 1945 A.D.
The firebombing of Dresden remains controversial to this day. The necessity for the raid is constantly questioned. Numbers of casualties ranged from 30,000 to 200,000 although the figure has generally been agreed upon at 25,000.
There are many who felt the city had little military value and thus the attack was unnecessary. Others believe it was war and any target was valid. At the time of the bombing, Dresden was the seventh largest German city and the largest not to have been attacked. In a way, that made it a target as the city was filled with workers, troops and refugees.
Some believe it was a war crime, or, at the very least, immoral.
Kurt Vonnegut survived the raid and went on to write Slaughterhouse Five. It contains scenes set in Dresden. He described the bombing as ‘carnage unfathomable.’ He was assigned a detail burying the bodies.
Italy, 14 February 278 A.D.
According to legend, St. Valentine was an early priest who insisted on marrying couples despite the Emperor’s edict against it. He was ordered to renounce his faith or be executed. He refused to renounce.
The romantic aspect of the day probably began in the Middle Ages, partly because it was believed that birds paired in couples in mid-February and also because of writings by Chaucer. The holiday might also have been invented to overcome the pagan holiday of Lupercalia.
There are relics of St. Valentine all over the world. His flower-adorned skull is supposedly in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin Rome. An Irish priest was given a vial said to contain St. Valentines’ blood by Pope Gregory XVI in 1836 and now resides in a church in Dublin.
St. Valentine is the patron saint of engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, happy marriages, bee keepers, plague, lovers and young people.
Philadelphia PA, 14 February 1946
The unveiling of the ENIAC, previously kept classified because it was also used in calculations for the Manhattan project, made the front page of the NY Times after it was unveiled on Valentines Day with the headline: Electronic Computer Flashes Answers, May Speed Engineering.
ENIAC Six, largely ignored in history, not only helped program and keep that computer running; they showed that programming was as essential in the field as the hardware. They also helped develop the concept of subroutines and nested subroutines. One of the group, Jean Jennings Bartik, just before she died in 2011, said: “Despite our coming of age in an era when women’s career opportunities were generally quite confined, we helped initiate the era of the computer.”
The Next Book in the Time Patrol series is coming on 1 October: HALLOWS EVE
An Excerpt follows author and books information
AMAZON
The next book in the 2 million copy Area 51 series, Resurrection will be published in Fall 2017.
The next in the million copy selling Green Beret series, Old Soldiers, will be published Spring 2018.
About the Author
Thanks for the read!
If you enjoyed the book, please leave a review.
Cool Gus likes them as much as he likes squirrels!
Any particular questions or comments, feel free to email me at [email protected]
Subscribe to my newsletter for the latest news, free eBooks, audio, etc.
Look! Squirrel!
Bob is a NY Times Bestselling author, graduate of West Point, former Green Beret and the feeder of two Yellow Labs, most famously Cool Gus. He's had over 70 books published including the #1 series Area 51, Atlantis, Time Patrol and The Green Berets. Born in the Bronx, having traveled the world (usually not tourist spots), he now lives peacefully with his wife, and labs. He’s training his two grandsons to be leaders of the Resistance Against The Machines.
For information on all my books, please get a free copy of my Reader’s Guide. You can download it in mobi (Amazon) ePub (iBooks, Nook, Kobo) or PDF, from my home page at www.bobmayer.com
For free eBooks, short stories and audio short stories, please go to http://bobmayer.com/freebies/
Free books include:
Eyes of the Hammer (Green Beret series book #1)
West Point to Mexico (Duty, Honor, Country series book #1)
Ides of March (Time Patrol)
There are also five free shorts stories and five free audiobook stories.
Never miss a new release by following my Amazon Author Page.
I have over 220 free, downloadable Powerpoint presentations via Slideshare on a wide range of topics from history, to survival, to writing, to book trailers.
https://www.slideshare.net/coolgus
If you’re interested in audiobooks, you can download one for free and test it out here: Audible
Connect with me on social media.
Questions, comments, suggestions: [email protected]
Blog: http://bobmayer.com/blog/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bob_Mayer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorbobmayer
Google +: https://plus.google.com/u/0/101425129105653262515
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sifiauthor/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/IWhoDaresWins
Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/user/BobMayer
ALL SERIES IN READING ORDER
NIGHSTALKERS SERIES:
1. NIGHTSTALKERS
2. BOOK OF TRUTHS
3. THE RIFT
The fourth book in the Nightstalker book is the team becoming the Time Patrol, thus it’s labeled book 4 in that series but it’s actually book 1 in the Time Patrol series.
TIME PATROL SERIES:
1. TIME PATROL
2. BLACK TUESDAY
3. IDES OF MARCH (free)
4. D-DAY
