by Bob Mayer
With a deafening roar to match the scream, the rest of the Nightstalkers opened fire. Their bullets slammed into the creature, having little apparent effect. The Keep hung back in the hallway, weaponless and with no experience in this type of event.
Mac fired the 40 mm HE grenade loaded in his launcher and hit the thing right in the chest. The round exploded, dangerously close (arming distance having been modified by Roland), and the thing was finally knocked back, the team momentarily stunned.
Momentarily, and then the fusillade began again.
The thing hovered, motionless, bullets bouncing off the hard white.
Without Moms or Nada issuing an order, the team was moving forward, vengeance for Kirk drawing them into the cavern. Magazines ran out and new ones were slammed home.
“Eyes,” Nada yelled, as he pulled the trigger of his sub, 9 mm bullets hitting the red bulges. Moms followed suit and her larger and more powerful 7.62 rifle rounds punched home. A spark of red exploded from the right bulge and the thing screamed once more, abruptly accelerating backward into the blackness of the cavern, heading for the shrinking patch of absolute darkness near the top.
“No, you don’t!” Nada shouted.
Again without an order, training and vengeance the driving forces, the team quickly moved forward as Doc knelt next to Kirk’s remains. Mac picked up the flare gun and fired another one ahead of them.
The creature was racing away now, toward the darkness. The team began to run as they fired, maintaining a semblance of discipline, fanning out to ensure they kept each other’s field of fire clear. Their rounds were beginning to chip off pieces of white and the creature was turned away, protecting its eyes.
Finally just before it reached the blackness, it turned once more. One eye was completely shattered and, within seconds, so was the second.
“Pour it on!” Nada yelled, and the team did just that. “Mac!” Nada ordered. “Thermobaric!”
Mac grabbed the correct grenade round on his vest by instinct, developed through many hours on the range in live fire exercises, and slammed it home into the breach of the launcher. Developed for combat in Afghanistan, upon detonation the round used oxygen to initiate an intense, high-temp explosion, which was more powerful and lasted longer than a conventional round. Mac loaded and fired.
The round exploded and blew off the thing’s right arm.
It remained perfectly still for a moment, and then the thing simply dropped and slammed to the floor.
The team ceased fire.
And the darkness stopped shrinking.
Nada had the light underneath his smoking barrel pointed at the blackness. It was now about ten feet high and six feet wide, fifteen feet above the floor of the cavern.
“It was trying to go through that,” Scout said.
“ ‘Through’?” Moms said.
“Like a Rift,” Scout said.
“Doc,” Moms ordered, emotions shut down and in combat mode. “Check it out. Nothing you can do for Kirk now.”
“Secure the rest of the cavern,” Nada ordered. He moved forward with Scout on one side and Moms on the other. The rest of the Nightstalkers moved out, checking every crevice in the place while Doc opened up his laptop underneath the dark rectangle and plugged in his handheld scanner.
“I need a bigger gun,” Scout said, a tremor in her voice as she and Nada reached the thing and stood over it.
“We all need bigger guns or bigger bullets.” Nada fired two rounds into the hole where one of the red bulges had been, a double-tap. “I think it’s dead.”
“What is it?” Scout asked.
“Doc?” Moms asked. “Is that a Rift?”
Doc was looking from his laptop screen and up to the black rectangle, and then back to the screen. “I don’t know. Something like a Rift, but not like any I’ve ever seen. Nor is it giving off any of the usual indicators other than a low-level muonic emission. Surprised the Can back at Area 51 didn’t pick it up. Very localized, as if the power is under tight control. I’d have to send a probe into it to learn more.”
“Negative,” the Keep said. “Not until we know everything we can about it from our sources here.”
“We fall back for now,” Moms ordered. “Send in a Support team to pick this thing up and analyze it. Secure the chamber and that gate as best we can until we get an idea what the hell we’re dealing with.”
“Roger that,” Nada agreed.
The team pulled back, several with anxious glances up at the dark rectangle. Roland had unrolled a poncho and tenderly placed both halves of Kirk in it. He wrapped it closed. Without a word Mac took Roland’s weapons. Roland picked up the body, cradling it in his arms.
Carrying their dead, the Nightstalkers, along with the Keep and Edith Frobish, packed up the elevator and began the ride to the surface in silence.
It was a defeat and a retreat, and they all knew it. They’d lost one of their own and that reality was pouring into each one as the adrenaline drained out.
“Here there be Monsters,” Scout whispered, and everyone in the elevator heard her.
Nobody disagreed.
Eight Hours
“Who the hell was Carl Coyne?” Neeley asked.
Hannah steepled her fingers together and considered her old friend and trusted assassin across the empty space of her desktop. “A rogue Navy SEAL. You saw the dossier. You watched the interviews of his shrink sessions. He should have been flagged, but wasn’t.”
Neeley shook her head. “It’s obvious the file we had for the Sanction wasn’t complete. And if it wasn’t complete, that’s a big problem.”
Doctor Golden was seated to the left of Neeley, a folder in her lap. Inside the headquarters of the Cellar it was eerily quiet, just the slight sound of air being forced into the bunker as background noise. The positive overpressure the room was kept in and the extensive filters on the pumps that provided the oxygen meant the space would stay safe even if a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack took out the facility above them. Neeley sometimes had visions of Hannah quietly working away while the world above was desolate and destroyed. She wondered how much the isolation from the real world had affected her friend over the years since she’d taken over this position.
Neeley had arrived less than two minutes earlier, taking the seat that Frasier had occupied. He’d been alerted and was racing off to New York City to join the Nightstalkers. Neeley was still focused on the odd ending to the Sanction on Whidbey Island, while Golden and Hannah had spent the time trying to find out more about the Time Patrol.
Neeley shook her head. “I’ve never had a completed Sanction disappear out of the body bag. You’ll admit that’s different. And Roland got a strange alert from the Nightstalkers. Not the standard ‘Lawyers, Guns and Money.’ He was out of Whidbey on an Air Force jet just before I was. I don’t believe in coincidence.”
Neeley had been flown by the Air Force from Whidbey to Andrews Air Force Base, then shuttled to Fort Meade by helicopter. She was still dressed in the black clothes she’d worn on the Sanction. They were dry, but they were dirty; mud from the Pacific Northwest still encrusted the fabric. Her short hair was sticking out in all angles, a polar opposite from the composed Hannah sitting across from her and Golden by her side.
Neeley didn’t notice or care, just as Hannah didn’t notice the oddness of having an office three hundred feet below the NSA.
“I’ve had Doctor Golden do some digging while you were coming here,” Hannah said. “Roland was alerted because the Nightstalkers are dealing with a major incident in New York City. One with global implications.”
“And is that connected to the Sanction?” Neeley asked. “A body disappearing seems right up the Nightstalkers’ mission profile.”
“It’s bigger than the Nightstalkers,” Hannah said. “It deals with the Time Patrol.”
Neeley absorbed that without blinking an eye. “Explain, please.”
“The Patrol has disappeared,” Hannah said. “Their base of operati
ons underneath New York City has simply vanished. That’s what the Nightstalkers are dealing with. And the Keep.”
“The Keep?” Neeley considered that. “Then it’s top level.”
“Apparently our world, as we know it, might end if they fail.”
Neeley leaned back in her chair. “Okay. That’s above top level.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve never heard of this Patrol.”
“Neither have I,” Hannah said. “One assumes they either travel in time or deal with time travelers infiltrating our world. Or both.”
“Well.” Which was all Neeley had to say about that.
“I checked with Mrs. Sanchez,” Hannah said. “Based on the process of elimination, we believe there’s a man in the warren under the Pentagon who controls the budget for the Patrol. A fellow named Foreman. I’ve never met him and rarely heard of him. He’s been running some sort of program since not long after the end of World War Two.”
“World War Two?” Neeley shook her head. “How old is he?”
“There’s no file on him,” Hannah said.
“The Cellar has nothing on him?” Neeley asked.
“Negative.”
“Great,” Neeley said. “What kind of program is he running?”
“I’m assuming it’s the Patrol,” Hannah said. “Mrs. Sanchez says he’s the only person drawing a significant amount from the Black Budget for a purpose she has no clue about, has a dead drop delivery address in Manhattan, and is weird enough to be in charge of it.”
Neeley considered that. “But you’d never heard of it before.”
“No.”
“And Mrs. Sanchez doesn’t have a detailed accounting of his funding,” Neeley said.
“No.”
“So how does Carl Coyne fit into this?”
“That’s the next piece of the puzzle,” Hannah said. “Carl Coyne did go rogue. But now we know that wasn’t the real reason behind the Sanction.” Hannah nodded at Golden.
The psychiatrist opened the folder. “Carl Coyne was a Navy SEAL in good standing for eight years. Well, except for the suspicion of domestic abuse, but there was never a formal report and, as you note, the psychologists assigned to the team didn’t flag him. That’s because—”
Neeley finished for her. “With the combat requirements for someone with Coyne’s training and skill level, it was never fully investigated. We figured that out during mission planning.”
Golden continued without comment. “He had constant rotations in and out of Afghanistan and other active areas of operation. He was selected and moved from Team Three to Seal Team Six. Then he was selected for a temporary duty, special work, TDSW, for an operation code named HUB. All capitals—H. U. B. in New York City. Six weeks.”
“The Time Patrol,” Neeley said.
Golden nodded. “We know that now. Located underneath the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Coyne was part of a rotating crew of six men, assigned for six weeks, TDSW each, all from elite units, with Top Secret clearances. One man was on duty at all times at the HUB facility’s guard post.”
Neeley frowned. “One man? That wouldn’t be sufficient.” Then she nodded. “He wasn’t a guard. The concern wasn’t people coming in. It was making sure no one got out of there alive if there was a security breach.”
“Correct,” Hannah said. “But the facility is gone now; just vanished.”
“Just like Coyne,” Neeley said. “And? What did Coyne do?”
A phone buzzed somewhere and Hannah reached down and came up with a receiver. She listened for a few moments. “All right.” She put the receiver down.
“The Nightstalkers lost one of their people in the cavern. They were attacked by what Moms could only describe as a floating, armored humanoid creature wielding claws and a spear. They’re awaiting an autopsy on the thing.”
“Which Nightstalker?” Neeley asked, with a bit more urgency than was normal for her.
“Kirk,” Hannah answered, staring at her assassin a little more closely.
“The team’s next move?” Golden asked, covering for Neeley.
“They’re regrouping as we speak,” Hannah said. “And Foreman is there, in New York.”
“Interesting. Tell me more on Coyne,” Neeley said, having done her own regrouping.
“He went AWOL a little after that TDSW tour,” Golden said. “Then he showed up in Southeast Asia doing various nefarious activities, including arms, drugs, and ancient artifact smuggling.”
“Where specifically in Southeast Asia?” Neeley asked.
“Cambodia. From there, he went to the Cayman Islands, we assume to deposit some of his ill-gotten gains. All of this is what we thought was the real reason for the Sanction.”
“Who initiated the RFS?” Neeley asked. “It was redacted, as it usually is, in the packet.”
Golden held up the folder. “The Request for Sanction came from a cut out in the Pentagon.”
Neeley sat up straight. “A cut out?” They all knew that meant someone in the middle who passed messages and knew both sides, but neither side ever knew who the other was. “A cut out could say anything, target anyone. How was this cut out vetted? Who is it?”
“We have to assume it was Foreman,” Hannah said.
“All right,” Neeley said. “I can do the timeline. Coyne works at a top-secret facility. Not long afterward it’s compromised. Disappears, whatever. So Coyne gave up the location. To who? And when and where?”
“Those are the questions we have to answer,” Hannah said.
Neeley nodded. “But it’s safe for us to assume that the RFS initiated with Foreman?”
Hannah smiled at Golden’s surprise. The psychiatrist was good at what she did, but the world of covert operations often baffled her.
“Most likely,” Hannah agreed.
“The real question,” Neeley said, “is whether Foreman sent the RFS in order to stop Coyne from giving up the location or to cover his tracks because he told Coyne to give up the location.”
Mac had piled enough explosive on board the elevator to take out a good portion of the south end of the Museum of Modern Art just in case someone or something tried attacking. They’d swept the cavern and come up with nothing else, except for the black, two-dimensional rectangle. Mac handed the detonator over to the first Support personnel on scene, which consisted of a company of Rangers hastily flown in from Hunter Army Airfield, fully armed and ready for anything. Besides focusing inward, they were setting up a close perimeter, inside the one already established by the New York Police who were now facing outward, maintaining the cover story of a terrorism training exercise.
Nada briefed the Ranger company commander on what had happened. The captain took it all in, and then snapped to attention, not troubled at all by the white creature with spear, claws, and red bulbs for eyes, and what they were now calling the gate. “Yes, sir. We’ll keep it secure.”
And that was why the “N” in Ranger stood for knowledge. But it also made them the best light infantry in the world.
Preservation of culture was the least of the worries right now. Preservation of life was, and the Keep was more than willing to level the Museum if need be. Although the team had found nothing else in the cavern, Moms was taking no chances. She’d alerted Pitr, who had a local Acme forensic team assembling to go down into the cavern and recover whatever it was they had just killed. And then figure out what it was.
Since New Yorkers were particular about low-flying airplanes, the Specter gunship that normally would circle overhead on a racetrack to provide fire support was being held out to sea, a non-threatening distance away from the city.
Pitr also had their FPF en route. Final Protective Fire. To be used as a last resort. And it wasn’t just to save the Nightstalkers if need be, but the rest of New York City and mankind as a whole. A B-52 out of Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota had taken off and was winging its way east at maximum speed. The plane, which was older than any of the crewmembers inside, had pods of AGM-129A cruise
missiles on each wing. Of the twelve missiles, ten had conventional warheads.
Two were nuclear tipped.
Which meant, if push came to shove, the Nightstalkers were ready to give up a portion of Manhattan to save the rest of the world. They considered it a form of species amputation, to save the core by sacrificing a part.
Nada had also put in a special request for more weapons with grenade launchers, along with plenty of thermobaric XM1060 40mm rounds. While regular bullets had had little effect other than on the creature’s eyes, they knew that grenade round had worked. As Scout had pointed out: they all needed bigger guns.
But none of that mattered at the moment.
The team was gathered in the NYPD command post trailer, shaken by Kirk’s death and the unexpected assault. While the Keep was on a secure line to whomever the Keep had to be on a secure line to, presumably the President, the team gathered round Kirk’s body, wrapped tightly in Roland’s poncho.
“What about his family?” Scout asked.
“We take care of our own, and we will take care of his family,” Nada said. “But first we must give honors to—” He faltered to a stop, lowering his head and putting a hand over his face, earning him curious and worried glances from the rest of the team. None had ever seen Nada falter before.
Moms stepped into the breach. “It is Protocol for us to acknowledge the death of a Nightstalker because no one else will. We must pay our respect and give honors.” She reached out with her hands, and those on either side took hold. Nada pulled his hand away from his eyes and joined the circle around Kirk’s remains.
“He was named Kirk by the team,” Moms said, “but in death he regains his name and his past. Staff Sergeant Winthrop Carter, US Army Ranger, has made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, for his world, and for mankind. We all speak his rank and his name as it was.”
The team spoke together. “Staff Sergeant Winthrop Carter.”
This caused even the Keep to pause in her conversation. She lowered the phone out of respect and stood still. Edith Frobish watched with wide eyes. Foreman was in one of the bucket seats, watching silently. Roland was looking down at his hands, stained with Kirk’s blood, averting his eyes from everyone else.