by Mack Maloney
It was also strange that he looked exactly the same to them. He hadn’t aged. His hair hadn’t changed. No graying, no paunch. They’d joked that wherever he went, he must have found the fountain of youth.
The shrink’s office was in one of the better parts of Football City, one of the few remaining. But as it didn’t have a helipad on the roof, Hunter had been forced to use ground transport to get there.
This presented somewhat of a problem. Since his return, Hunter had become a major celebrity, with crowds gathering daily outside his quarters in the Football City Military Building, and following him just about everywhere he went. Even a brief wave from his window could send the crowds into a frenzy, especially the females.
For his own protection, he’d spent most of the last week holed up in his two- room officer’s apartment, talking with Ben and JT and writing down everything he could remember.
On those rare occasions he went out, they served as his bodyguards.
The door to the shrink’s office opened and Hunter half-stumbled out. His hair was mussed, his flight suit was askew, and he had the same befuddled look he’d had the night he’d arrived in Football City.
“What the hell were you doing in there?” Ben asked him. “Wrestling?”
Hunter shrugged. “Something like that.”
JT called down to the street to make sure Hunter’s security team was in place and that a vehicle was waiting. When the reply came back affirmative, he and Hunter started down the stairs. At that moment, the shrink came out of her office. She was also slightly disheveled.
She signaled to Ben that she wanted to talk to him.
“He’s a fascinating case, in more ways than one,” she said, fixing her hair.
“Any advice you can give us?” Ben asked.
She put her glasses back on.
“I think these lost memories will come back on their own now,” she said. “You can remind him of things or events or people, but only if he brings up the subject first. In other words, don’t force him to remember anything or anybody. Just let the memories return naturally.”
Ben shrugged. “You’re the expert.”
She shook her head. “Actually, not in this case. From what I know about him, and a bit of what he’s told me—well, let’s just say there are things there that go beyond my range of experience.”
She took a business card from her pocket.
“I heard of a secret government project years ago when I was a grad student,” she said. “It was before the Big War. A research team looking into anomalies. I mean, real anomalies. They were investigating strange things that had happened mostly to the military. Things that no one could explain. It went into limbo sometime after the Big War—I’m not sure when. But the first guy to head the project is a local.”
She wrote some information on the back of her card and handed it to him.
“Maybe you can have your rock-star friend talk to him,” she suggested. “He might be able to help in a way I can’t.”
Ben took the card and thanked her.
As he was leaving, she called out to him, “Just make sure he’s back in time for our session next week.”
Chapter 6
The next day
THE TRIO OF HELICOPTERS circled the mountaintop home once before landing.
They were all Hueys, the entire complement of Football City’s rotary corps. Two were modestly outfitted as gunships, and the third was the same aged eggbeater that Ben and JT had used to rescue Hunter from his burning spacecraft. All three were riding in it once again.
Their copter touched down last and Hunter started to climb off. But JT caught him by the arm.
“Hang tight,” JT told him. “We gotta make sure the area is secure. St. Louie’s orders.”
Hunter sat back down and waited while JT, Ben, and the crews from the other two copters checked out the site.
They didn’t have much to scour. The house was built atop the tallest hill in what used to be the state of Missouri. About one hundred miles west of Football City in an otherwise-unoccupied territory, the hill was barely five hundred feet high and its summit was a half acre at best.
The house itself was an A-frame design made almost entirely of glass, perfect for appreciating the impressive view. But there were no security guards, no security cameras. The person who lived in the house lived alone.
Ben and JT gave Hunter the thumbs-up. He stepped out of the copter and stretched. Though he hated being treated like a celebrity, he knew St. Louis was just looking out for him. Besides, Hunter was suddenly a very valuable commodity; his skill alone had saved Football City for at least one night—and maybe more. Neither the 10th Street Crew nor Red Army Mafia had been heard from since he’d shot their bombers out of the sky. St. Louis hadn’t sent the criminals their monthly vig either, and still, not a peep. Maybe RAM was thinking over its options, but for sure, the Crew had gotten the message.
The front door to the A-frame was open and a man was standing in the doorway. He was middle aged, slightly built with long, gray hair, and a long, gray beard. His name was Dr. Pott.
He greeted Hunter warmly. “I never thought I’d get to meet the great Hawk Hunter,” he said, shaking the pilot’s hand enthusiastically.
“I’m as surprised as you are,” Hunter replied.
Dr. Pott had worked as an intelligence analyst for the US government before the Big War. While, officially, he’d been assigned to the Air Force’s Advanced Weapons Section, in reality he’d led a classified project called AII (Anomalous Incident Investigation).
At its height, AII contained a dozen scientists—experts in advanced mathematics, quantum mechanics, and string theory—with a like number of military intelligence people. Their orders were to look into truly anomalous events, many of which were related to military aviation, that the US government had deemed security issues. The group was considered so secret that even the location of its facility was classified.
While AII disappeared sometime after the Big War, Pott had left long before, sequestering himself on his hill, surviving on homegrown vegetables, MREs, and apparently, cannabis. His house reeked, ironically, of pot.
He and Hunter sat down in a spacious living room, the view of the prairie spread out before them. Ben and JT joined them while the rest of the copter contingent set up a defense perimeter outside.
Pott explained that having read the classified documents St. Louis had sent him about what happened the night Hunter arrived, he now believed that Hunter’s sudden appearance definitely qualified as an anomalous event as defined by his old AII research project.
“There have been a number of cases over the years that no one can explain,” Pott told them. “Things that are just different from what we’d call ‘normal.’ ”
He took out a pipe, casually packed it with marijuana, lit it, and took an enormous drag. He offered it to his guests, but they all declined.
“For example,” Pott went on, letting out a huge cloud of smoke, “in early 1909, years before the first war in which a Zeppelin was used, people in England saw strange airships flying overhead; they called them Scareships. In 1934, people in Sweden reported seeing enormous airplanes with large wings, up to ten engines, and giant floats underneath that were unlike any airplane ever built. In the summer of 1946, again over Sweden, people saw mysterious rockets flying in formation, taking ninety-degree turns, displaying flight characteristics way ahead of the times. No one ever figured out what any of these things were. They all just seemed of a different technology, from a different time or place.
“And all those UFO crashes that became popular? Roswell? Aztec, New Mexico? Kecksburg, Pennsylvania? The AII treated them not as extraterrestrial events, but more like technology that was not of the time. Put in that perspective, these things make a little more sense scientifically.
“I ran the AII project for a few years and saw enough to know there was something very strange going on—especially in cases with a lot of documented proof. It was all very bizarre. In fact, the onl
y hypothesis we even considered was the multiverse theory.”
Pott saw three blank expressions staring back at him.
“You know, the idea that what we call the universe might actually be just one of an infinite number of universes?” he said. “And in some of these universes, everything might be the same, except for a slight difference here and there?”
Again, three blank stares.
“Okay, let’s try this example,” he said. “Maybe in some other universe close by, the Scareships were actually war Zeppelins that were developed years earlier than in this universe. Or maybe in another universe, someone actually built ten-engine airplanes that flew over Sweden or cruise missiles forty years ahead of their time. Or maybe that the mode of air transportation in the universe next door isn’t airplanes but brightly colored, saucer-shaped flying discs.
“Because string theory says that these separate universes would have to be infinite in number, then every possible scenario you can think of must be true. A universe where red is green and vice versa. A universe where cigarettes are good for you, and fruits and veggies are deadly. A universe where the South Pole is just one-millionth degree warmer than the South Pole we know. In most cases, we’re all the same, and everything else is all the same, just with these little divergences. I know it sounds crazy, but the only theory that could explain the phenomena we were studying was that maybe, on rare occasions, objects can pass between separate universes.”
Hunter asked the question on everyone’s minds: “But what does this have to do with me?”
“Well, it just follows that maybe people can pass between universes as well,” Pott replied. “For example, we investigated a jet fighter that disappeared over Lake Superior in 1953. It was chasing a UFO at the time. The jet’s radar blip and that of the UFO merged, and then the combined blip just disappeared. The plane’s wreckage was never found, the pilots’ bodies never recovered. Where did they go? No one knows. But our hypothesis said they might have passed through to another universe. That case reminds me of yours, Major Hunter. And the fact that the plane was chasing a UFO makes it that much more intriguing.”
Pott took another drag of his pipe.
“It’s all just conjecture,” he began again, blowing out another cumulus cloud of smoke. “But after reading about your case, I think it’s possible you, Major Hunter, may have somehow jumped from one universe to another. You might have come from a place that was just a little different from this one. Just a little ahead or a little behind. But you did most of the same things in both, had the same friends and so on.”
Hunter was trying mightily to keep an open mind, but all the pot smoke was a bit distracting. In fact, he was getting a contact high.
“Let’s assume all that is true,” he said. “Then why can I remember some things and not others? I mean, I know some of what happened to me before I got into the Zon. But not all. And not anything that happened afterward. Why would that be?”
“It’s simple … maybe,” Pott said, taking another puff. “The theory says that if you are passing through universes, you’re also moving through time. The different universes aren’t necessarily synced up. They are probably going along on their own timelines. Many might be a nanosecond off, but others could be off by thousands or even millions of years.
“In your instance, now that you’ve returned, it seems that you have some of the same memories as your friends—but not quite all and not quite the same. For instance, they remember your blasting off in the Zon alone, but you seem to think you were with some of your allies. They remember your diverting the comet, yet you have no memory of what happened after the Zon took off. See? It almost proves the theory. Little things are different in each universe. Maybe in one universe, there is no comet. Maybe in another, you divert the comet, and it becomes another moon, orbiting the Earth. Maybe in a third, despite your best efforts, the comet hits the Earth, and we go the way of the dinosaurs. The possibilities are literally infinite.
“So wherever you were these past ten years after you took off in the Zon, maybe the timeline of those memories just hasn’t caught up with you yet. Until then, you’ll remember some things, and then bits and pieces of other things, and then maybe, for some things, not at all.”
There was a long silence in the room. It was a lot to take in.
“Where did this AII research take place?” JT finally asked.
The doctor took a long toke and exhaled. “We were working out at Groom Lake,” he said casually.
Like the cloud of smoke, his words hung in the air for a moment.
“Groom Lake?” Ben asked. “You mean … Area 51?”
The doctor nodded. “The one and only. UFOs. Aliens. Bigfoot. Elvis. They were all out there somewhere, though, I can tell you, all very well hidden. It seemed like the perfect place to study multiverse theory. In fact, after I left, I heard they were trying to find a way to ‘jump’ between universes, just as you might have jumped, Major Hunter.
“The deep scuttlebutt said they’d already been able to retrieve objects from ‘other places’ somehow—and that they had some of these retrieved objects in storage out there, along with a lot of data and research.”
He took one long last puff on his pipe and added, “There might even be a file on you out there, Major Hunter. I know some of my colleagues hung on to the project after the Big War and stayed at Groom Lake for as long as they could. Who knows what they came up with?”
They left soon afterward, taking off from the mountaintop in a burst of dust and exhaust.
Heading back to Football City, Hunter was deep in thought. JT and Ben also stayed quiet.
Finally, Hunter said, “Well, what did you think?”
Both friends shrugged.
“Of Dr. Pott?” JT asked. “He’s got the right name.”
Ben nodded in agreement. “The guy’s obviously baked 24/7. Who knows what’s real, and what’s coming out of that pipe?”
Hunter nodded. “I know I have to take it all with a grain of salt, but from where I’m standing, I’ve got nothing else.”
His friends anticipated his next thought.
“If only we could get to Area 51,” Hunter continued, “find this AII place, get inside, see what’s there, see what those guys left behind.”
Ben took a deep breath. “Hawk, that part of Nevada is under the control of the Asian Mercenary Cult,” he said. “Do you remember them?”
Hunter did—but vaguely.
“We fought them tooth and nail way back when,” JT said. “Had to go across the Pacific to kick their ass. But they’re like lice: they don’t go away.”
Ben explained, “These days, the AMC controls a large part of the American Southwest, including Las Vegas, which is still open and providing lots of capital for them. They’re also in Los Angeles and down in San Diego.”
Ben paused for a moment and then said, “Sorry, Hawk, but that research facility is deep inside enemy territory.”
Chapter 7
HUNTER WAS BACK in his quarters an hour later.
The sun was going down, and as he looked out of his tenth-floor window, he could see more than a few streetlights popping on, another sign that Football City was coming back to life.
The crowd below had not dissipated. In fact, it looked larger. He gave a quick wave, heard the cheers from below, and then moved away from the window for the night.
A knock at the door brought a pretty female orderly bearing a small bag. She explained to Hunter that it contained items found on him when he crashed. He thanked her and dumped the bag on his bed. It contained his boots, gloves, and a large combat pistol. But the item that caught and held his attention was a small folded piece of cloth. He studied it closely.
What was it?
Red-and-white stripes, a field of blue covered with stars …
Those stars. Those stripes …
If Pott was right, there would be some things he’d always remember, some things he might remember, and some things he would never remembe
r at all. That was a heart-wrenching thought, to know that crucial pieces of him were missing, maybe never to be found again.
But then he looked at the small folded flag in his hands and his eyes became misty.
“But this,” he whispered, touching the flag to his chest. “At least I remember this …”
Ten floors below, JT and Ben were sitting at the bar in Football City’s last remaining Officers’ Club. It was a dingy place, a far cry from its heyday when Football City was the place to be on the American continent.
JT and Ben were the only patrons. They needed scotch. It had been a strange week.
They had spent the last ten years without Hunter to guide them, trying their best to make a living flying anything that could get off the ground. It had been a tough time, because Hunter had always known the right way to go.
But now that he was back, it was like those ten years had never happened. They felt like Peter and Paul again.
Very strange …
Hunter appeared out of the shadows and sat down next to Ben. He tried to get the attention of the sleepy bartender.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Ben half-yelled at him.
“Getting a drink,” Hunter simply replied.
Ben and JT exchanged expressions of disbelief. They looked out the bar’s cracked window at the crowd of Wingman admirers outside.
“Are you insane?” JT scolded Hunter. “If those people see you in here, they’ll tear this place apart.”
Hunter shrugged. “It could use the renovation,” he said, finally getting the bartender’s attention. Moments later a huge scotch was set down before him.
He downed it in one massive swig and ordered another.
“Okay, so maybe that guy today was too high or too something,” he said, picking up their earlier conversation. “But that doesn’t mean everything he told us isn’t true. And I don’t want to start a war with the Asian Mercenary Cult. That would be unwise at this point. But at the same time, I’ve got to find out if anything he said was on the level. I’ll go nuts if I don’t.”