Time Patrol (Area 51 The Nightstalkers) (28 page)

If
they survived going to the other side of the door was the unsaid issue no one voiced.

Every member of the team had a mask on and was breathing via a rebreather slung on top of all the other gear they wore. They looked anything but human, they were so encumbered with gear.

Scout glanced over her shoulder at Foreman, the Keep, Edith, and Frasier, all gathered in a little clump at the base of the ramp.

“Don’t want to join in the fun?” Scout pulled aside her mask and asked, looking at Foreman, then Frasier.

In front of her, Moms and Nada snapped out of existence into the door.

“Not my job,” Frasier said. “I spent my time in the trenches.”

“I’ll come,” Edith said, taking a step forward, but Foreman put a hand on her forearm, just as the ATV was gone.

“Not today, dear. Let the experts handle this.”

“Experts,” Scout muttered, thinking about her limited training. “Right.” She put the mask back in place. She took a deep breath, knowing it was stupid as she did have the rebreather, just before she hit the utter black of the gate.

Not so stupid as she fell fifteen feet and hit water, going under, the weight of her body armor, weapons, and assorted other gear incumbent upon a Nightstalker taking her down, the mask ripping off.

Scout fought to jettison the gear, fingers fumbling in the pitch black to unbuckle, unsnap, discard. The water was pressing in on her and she was disoriented, uncertain which way was up even if she got the gear off. As she shed the combat vest of the body armor, she couldn’t keep her breath anymore. She had to breathe.

She opened her mouth.

Darkness fell.

Four Hours

“They’re gone,” Foreman said. He looked at his watch. “Missed them by about ten minutes.”

Hannah stared at the old man. “What are you doing?” She was with Golden, standing on the rock floor of the cavern, facing Foreman. Edith and Frasier were flanking the old man, but not with him. The Keep had disappeared back to the elevator the second the team went through.

“Please be more specific,” Foreman said. “At the moment, I’m standing here, awaiting the return of the Nightstalkers.”

“The Bermuda Triangle, Devil’s Sea, Angkor Kol Ker, and the other locations outlined on the map in your office,” Hannah said. “What’s special about them?”

“You went into my office?” Foreman asked.

“I did,” Doctor Golden said.

“And you’re here,” Foreman said. “Very good to have survived that.”

“Is everything a game to you?” Hannah demanded.

“Wasn’t everything a game to your predecessor, Nero?” Foreman challenged. “Didn’t he put you and Neeley through the ringer, so to speak, in order to determine what you’re made of? He taught me well.” He jerked a thumb at the door hovering at the top of the ramp. “I can assure you, this is no game, Ms. Hannah. The fate of our planet rests on understanding these gates and what lies beyond. We are under assault, both in time and space. It’s only been by the effort of the agents of the Patrol and the members of the Nightstalkers and other organizations that we have survived. I assure you, other timelines have not fared as well.”

Hannah wasn’t distracted. “Why are you focused on those locations?”

“Because they’re vulnerable spots in the space-time continuum on our planet,” Foreman answered. “There is a reason locations become the center of myths and legends. Area 51 is a modern myth, is it not?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “But it
is
real as we all know, and hides things most people couldn’t imagine. Why should we not think the same of the Bermuda Triangle? Or the Devil’s Sea?”

“Is my agent Neeley in danger being near the Bermuda Triangle?” Hannah asked. “Tracking Carl Coyne’s movements?”

Foreman smiled. “Neeley is in excellent hands. And she most likely is not in the Bermuda Triangle anymore.”

“Sin Fen,” Hannah said, finally starting to sort out the moves on this chessboard.

“Yes.”

“Where
is
Neeley?”

Foreman nodded toward the gate. “Most likely heading to the same place the Nightstalkers just went.”

“You set Coyne into play,” Hannah said. “Why?”

“Coyne was racked by guilt for not getting on that rescue helicopter in 2005,” Foreman said. “Survivor’s guilt plays out in different ways. He came back, was abusive to his wife, and became a dangerous man. Such men are also useful men because their guilt can be leveraged. As you know,” he added pointedly to Hannah.

“You got him assigned here as security,” Hannah said. “Were you planning on having him give up the location? Why would you do that? You’re threatening the very thing you say you’re protecting.”

Foreman hesitated. “It’s not that simple.”

“It never is,” Hannah replied. “The Ratnik. Spetsnaz stationed near Chernobyl. Were they Russian time travelers? Their Patrol? Just as they have their own version of the Nightstalkers?”

Foreman didn’t hesitate on this question. “Yes.”

“What happened to them?”

“They got stupid and careless,” Foreman said.

Frasier took a step forward, turning toward Foreman. “Ms. Jones. Did she know about the Ratnik?”

“Not exactly,” Foreman said. “She knew what happened at Chernobyl wasn’t the result of mistakes by the engineers as history has recorded it. The Ratnik were the Soviet Patrol and they, like our Patrol, were battling incursions into our timeline. They experienced, shall we say, a particularly aggressive incursion. In the course of stopping that incursion, Chernobyl went critical.”

“And the Ratnik?” Hannah pressed.

Foreman shrugged. “They were lost.”

“Apparently not,” Hannah said.

“Apparently not,” Foreman agreed. “But we assumed so at the time.”

“Where have they been?” Hannah asked.

“Traveling in time, one assumes,” Foreman said.

“To what end?” Hannah asked.

A new voice spoke up. “To heal themselves,” Frasier said. “All the surgeries. The transplants the coroner talked about. It makes sense. That body. The Acme said the surgery on it was beyond our capabilities. And that the man should have been long dead. They’ve been in there”—he pointed at the door—“fighting to stay alive. Traveling to different timelines for help. Different times.”

“Most likely,” Foreman said. “We know they’ve been dealing in antiquities, stolen during time travel. To get funding for whatever they need funding for.” He turned toward the door. “All we can do now is wait.”

They all turned as the Keep came back. And she wasn’t alone. Six heavily armed men accompanied her along with two men rolling a trolley. A cylindrical object rested on it.

“What are you doing?” Hannah demanded.

“I have Presidential authority to implement Furtherance in order to keep this place secure,” the Keep said.

“What does that mean?” Edith Frobish asked.

The Keep ignored her and turned to the trolley, which they parked at the entrance of the cavern. She checked her watch, and then opened a panel on the object. “I am coordinating execution of Furtherance on my command and on a timer for two hours from now.”

“What does execution of Furtherance mean?” Edith asked.

“It means,” Hannah said, “that the nuclear weapon, which she is arming right now, will go off when she decides or in two hours. Whichever comes first.”

Scout opened her eyes to the vision of Nada’s face barely inches from her own. She coughed, sputtered, and then he rolled her to her side as she vomited. Her head was throbbing, as if a band of pain had wrapped around, squeezing her brain.

“Everyone in scuba school drowns at least once,” Nada said. “It’s a rite of passage.”

Scout finished losing everything that had been in her stomach, and, it felt, part of her stomach. She struggled to a sitting position. “I would never volunteer to go to scuba school,” she managed to say. “Especially if it involved drowning.”

“It’s easier the second time around,” Nada assured her.

“Where are we?” She looked around. The other members of the team were scattered about in varying degrees of disarray. Roland was chest deep in black water, disappearing every so often as he dove. He was right next to the base of a six-foot-in-diameter black column that ascended overhead into a misty distance. Scout could spot other black columns of varying diameters in the distance, some quite massive. There were various vessels stranded on the beach, but Scout couldn’t focus yet to make them out.

“The other side of the gate,” Nada said. He gestured about. “We lost most of our gear. The ATV is down there somewhere.”

Moms was issuing orders. Mac and Eagle spread out, their pistols, the only weapons they had left, in their hands. They moved about forty feet along the black beach and took up security. No one had their harnesses or body armor on, ripped off in an effort to get back to the surface and then the shoreline. They were down to their black fatigues and the pistols that had been in their thigh holsters, along with their knives.

“This ain’t good,” Scout said. The pain in her head had receded slightly, but was still a steady throb.

“Yo!” Roland yelled in excitement as he surfaced, holding an MK19 in his hand, a bandolier of ammunition attached to it.

“That’s a start,” Nada said. He helped Scout to her feet and they went over to Moms. Doc had his handheld out, but his equipment case was somewhere under that slimy-looking black water.

“Well?” Moms asked.

Doc shrugged. “No clue. I’m getting nothing. As if electronics don’t work here.”

“We might be able to scavenge weapons from the ships and planes,” Nada said. He pointed at some military planes, obviously American with white stars on their wings, but old, propeller driven.

“Flight Nineteen,” Moms said, recognizing it from the briefing book of strange events she’d reviewed when she’d first been recruited into the Nightstalkers.

“Oh crap,” Nada said.

“We’ve gone down the rabbit hole,” Moms said.

“I take it that ain’t good?” Scout asked.

“Doc,” Moms said, “can you recognize any of these other craft?”

Before Doc could answer, Roland popped up, sputtering. “I can’t find anything else. There’s a steep drop-off and I think most of our gear went down deep. I can—”

“Come ashore,” Moms ordered. “You did good enough.”

Roland, as always, flushed at the praise, and he waded ashore.

“That ship there,” Doc was pointing, “is the
Cyclops
.”

“Eagle,” Moms called out. “That ship is the
Cyclops
. What can you tell us? Weaponry?”

Eagle came over. “A collier, resupply ship in the US Navy. She disappeared in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle in 1918. Probably small arms in a locker on board. I think it had some larger-caliber guns on deck for basic defense.”

“Great,” Scout muttered.

“Over three hundred crew,” Eagle continued, “it’s still the largest loss of life for the US Navy that didn’t occur in combat. There is speculation she was sunk by a German U-boat—”

“Not,” Scout said.

“—or buckled in a storm, as vessels of that class were believed to have issues with I beams running the length—”

“Not,” Scout repeated.

“—of the ship not being sufficient to handle stress, especially with a full load. At the time of its disappearance, it was coming from South America with a load of manganese ore and believed to be overloaded, which led to its foundering. The ultimate determination was that she sunk during an unexpected storm.”

“Not,” Scout said. “It got sucked into the Bermuda Triangle just like those planes and just like us. And the real question,” Scout added, “is where did those three hundred–plus sailors go?”

The Nightstalkers looked about, the black landscape and flat water eerily still. And not a good still.

Moms pointed at the black column. “The first question is, can we go back through that? Doc?”

“Uh, well,” Doc began, but it was obvious without his gear, his guess was as good as anyone else’s. “No idea.”

“We need to find these Valkyries,” Nada said. “They know something about the Patrol. Heck, maybe the Patrol is in here somewhere.”

“But where?” Mac asked.

Nada and Moms exchanged glances. Moms pointed to the left. “I say we do a sweep in that direction for an hour—”