Black Tuesday (Area 51: Time Patrol)

by Mayer, Bob

  “A directional explosive,” Scout said.

  “Groovy,” Luke said, and Scout felt that tingling sensation once more, much stronger. She was also much more certain of it, given what she’d just learned in the library.

  The room above the computer lab and the one below were clear.

  “Let’s check outside,” Scout said.

  They exited the building. It was getting dark and the campus was much less crowded. They walked around the building, trying to approximate where the computer lab was. Scout walked between a pair of tall trees and pointed up. “There.”

  Luke nodded. “Most likely.”

  Behind the trees, the two were relatively isolated. Scout turned and looked in the opposite direction. “Bad field of fire for a rocket launcher.” She accessed the download. “LAW or RPG-7.”

  “Where’d you learn all this stuff?” Luke asked, moving closer to her side.

  “You know,” she said, “you haven’t asked me a single question about the future.”

  “I’m not supposed to.”

  Luke put a hand on her shoulder, drawing her closer to him.

  “Yes, but aren’t you curious?”

  “Would you tell me if I asked?” Drawing her around in front of him. Both hands were on her shoulders. She was looking up at him.

  He was most definitely in her personal space. She stared into those incredibly blue eyes. He leaned into her and she could feel his hard body, all the hard parts. He kissed her and for a moment Scout was out of it, kissing him back.

  Not a very long moment, but she knew Nada wouldn’t have approved.

  “Geek,” Scout whispered as he briefly broke off the kiss.

  “What?”

  “It’s not a very popular word in 1969.”

  “So?”

  “And have a nice day really didn’t become popular until the seventies.”

  Luke laughed. Damn he was good. “I’m ahead of my time.”

  He kissed her again, and this time she felt some tongue, and her body was feeling other things, but that irritating buzzing in her brain was getting louder and louder. His hands gently slid from behind her head and down her back, pulling her close.

  When he broke this kiss off, Scout was momentarily breathless. Dane had not briefed her at all about this possibility. And Nada had never prepared her for it.

  And it was the memory of Nada that steeled her as Luke leaned in once more, this time nuzzling her neck, his hands cupped behind her head, fingers entwined in her non-dyed hair.

  His tongue gently curled around the base of her ear, a surprisingly wonderful feeling for so strange a place Scout thought, wishing she’d done more necking in high school.

  It would have prepared her better for this, because her knees were weak and her will was bending, but she conjured up Nada and his Yada sayings, trying to find one that applied to this and then figured frak it, she had better start coming up with her own Nada Yadas.

  “Your eyes,” Scout whispered as his tongue worked its magic, sliding down to the little hollow in the front of her neck, his hands at the back of it. And she knew he was going to keep going down, and, well, damn the call of duty.

  “Soft contact lenses weren’t invented until 1971,” Scout whispered.

  And just as quickly those hands encircled her neck and he squeezed, hard.

  Scout sensed movement nearby, behind Luke, but she was also experiencing a moment of real loss because she’d hoped he really did like her. He drew back, hands cutting off her flow of oxygen, and she could see the glint in those eyes, even through the contact lenses—bad mistake there, she thought—and it was pure business.

  He was a killer. Scout knew not just because he was currently trying to kill her, but because she served with killers.

  And now she became one as she expertly slid the stiletto under the sternum, angling it up to the heart just as she’d been taught, although she was sure her instructor would have preferred she’d gone for the brain through the eye, because that was instantaneous. This, not so quick.

  Luke blinked in surprise. His hands were still tight, but Scout knew time was on her side. She twisted the blade, shredding his heart muscle, knowing he had about fifteen more seconds before he passed out. She had enough oxygen to last longer than that.

  But then a pair of arms looped around Luke’s neck, and did a quick twist. The sound of his neck snapping was surprisingly loud.

  He dropped to the ground, taking Scout’s stiletto with him, his hands pulling her partway down, and then letting go as he went limp.

  Dead, dead, dead.

  Scout looked up. A guy was standing there, dressed in black pants, black T-shirt, and with a calm look on his face. He had a few day’s growth of beard and looked rough.

  Not Lukish at all, but then again, Luke had just tried to kill her.

  “Heart’s not the best place to strike,” the man said.

  “I know,” Scout said, a bit affronted. She leaned over and pulled her blade out of the body. She wiped it off on Luke’s stupid shirt. “But he’d have let go of me soon enough. And died not long after.”

  “You slice the heart once the blade was in?” the man asked, as casually as if asking her opinion on the weather.

  “Of course.”

  He seemed satisfied with that. “Amateurs pull the blade out. And the heart can temporarily seal itself. Long enough for the stabbee to kill the stabber.”

  “I’m not an amateur,” Scout said, but it occurred to her she actually was when it came to killing. “And who are you?”

  “Time Patrol,” the man said. He kicked the body lightly. “He was pretending to be Patrol, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Scout was beginning to realize she’d just killed someone. For the first time. Well, mostly killed him, but Luke would have died anyway even if this guy hadn’t come along. She felt surprisingly detached from the act, as if someone else, someone outside of herself, had actually done it. “Do you have a name?”

  “Do you?”

  “Scout.”

  He nodded. “Price.”

  She noticed a tattoo on his right bicep. It triggered something familiar in her brain, but she couldn’t access it, so that meant it hadn’t been downloaded into her, but was from her own memory. Her brain was processing things like the tattoo, avoiding the growing surge in her chest, as if some alien was trying to rip its way out to turn and scream at her: You just killed someone!

  “I don’t understand it,” Scout said, but her eyes were forced on their own volition, and against her own, to look down on Luke’s body. Inert. Dead, dead, dead. Those eyes, with their betraying contact lenses in them never again to see. Everything all done here, now.

  “I don’t either,” Price said, “but—” He paused as Scout turned to the side and threw up.

  She realized she was beginning to hyperventilate. Price stepped over Luke’s body and put an arm around her shoulders. “Breathe slow. Deep breaths. Easy. Easy, Scout.”

  And there was something about him, something Nada-like, because she did as he said and got herself under control.

  But then the strangest thing happened. Luke’s body slowly collapsed in on itself, crumbling down to just a few specks of gray.

  “What the frak?” Scout asked.

  “An agent for the Shadow,” Price said, reassuring arm still around her shoulder. “They disappear and go back to their time or their world or something. He wasn’t of this world and this time, so once he loses his life force, that’s that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve killed their agents and their creatures before,” Price said, as if this was a normal thing.

  “Well, we don’t have to worry about hiding the body,” Scout said, straightening up.

  Price pulled his hand back and nodded. “Exactly. One benefit.”

  “So what was his plan?” Scout said. Then she realized: “Oh, is my mission complete now? No bad guy anymore?”

  “Not quite,” Price said. “I’ve been t
racking him for days.”

  “Days?” Scout said. There was a trembling in her chest and she wondered when that would go away, if it would ever go away? “What if he decided to do something a little more abrupt than choking me?”

  “Then you’d be dead,” Price said. “I couldn’t interfere because I had to see it play out.”

  “Could have played out with me being dead.”

  “Could have,” he agreed. “But it didn’t. You did good, Scout.”

  “Then why aren’t we done for the day?”

  “We almost are,” Price said. “I was wondering why he was hanging with you. Why he put that belt in the room. Just seemed odd to me he’d draw attention to himself, when his mission was that.” He nodded toward the computer science building. “He has a device planted, by the way.”

  “Where?” Scout said.

  “Air-conditioning unit servicing the computers. And not explosive, but poison gas. Primitive device, but it will get the job done.” He looked at her. “Why is it so important to the Shadow that those scientists get stopped?”

  “No clue,” Scout lied. She realized the trembling in her chest was gone. She was focusing on the situation ahead, not the one behind. Not that she would ever leave behind what she had just done but . . .

  Price stared at her with those eyes that had obviously seen a lot of death. “All right. Well, would you like to deactivate the bomb with me?”

  “Certainly,” Scout said. Not exactly a date, but . . .

  Without another word, Price walked away and Scout hurried to follow. She spared one glance over her shoulder to the spot where Luke had died. Then she put that in a box and shut the lid.

  “Here,” Price said, pointing at a large bulky machine that was emitting a loud noise.

  He didn’t wait, but pulled out a Swiss army knife and unscrewed a panel. It took a few moments to get all the screws. He put the panel to the side, revealing the guts of the machine.

  It was getting dark, but it was still light enough to see inside. Scout spotted the device right away. A canister hooked into a line. A battery was attached by wires to the canister. A simple egg timer was attached to it all.

  It was ticking.

  Without hesitation, Price slid the blade of the knife through a wire, and then removed the timer. “I’ll have to clear all this out before scheduled maintenance, but it’s good enough for now.”

  “That’s it?” Scout asked. Then why the heck did they need me here?

  “Yep,” Price said as he put the panel back on and replaced the screws. “Well, I hope so. But then I wonder why they sent you back if I could have handled it. So maybe this”—he pointed with the knife at the machine—“wasn’t all there is to this day.” He flipped the blade shut on the knife and put it back in a small sheath on his belt. “They tell you anything?”

  “Just that I had to make sure that message goes out tonight on ARPANET.”

  “Interesting,” Price said. “Why is that so important?” He held up a hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You can’t tell me.” He ran that hand over his beard stubble and Scout suddenly realized he was quite attractive, albeit in a much different way than Luke had been. She tried to pin it down, then had it: Luke was a boy trying to be a man. Price was a man. And he was dangerous. And he was capable. A winning combination in Scout’s book.

  “How old are you?” Scout asked.

  “How old are you?” he shot back. “Twenty-four.”

  “You look older.”

  He nodded. “Two tours in Vietnam will do that to you.”

  “I’ve seen that tattoo somewhere,” Scout said, pointing at his bicep.

  “MACV-SOG,” Price said. He didn’t decipher the letters. “A Special-Ops unit that does a lot of dirty work in Vietnam and over the borders into neighboring countries where we aren’t supposed to be killing people. But, of course, we are.”

  He began walking around the building toward one of the doors. “So let’s go babysit some scientists and make sure they do whatever it is they’re going to do, so you can go back to Dane and tell him mission accomplished.”

  That stopped Scout in her tracks. “How do you know about Dane?”

  “That’s probably where you saw this,” he said, tapping his arm. “Dane was in MACV-SOG too. But he disappeared under very mysterious circumstances. He’s running things, ain’t he? Or involved somehow.”

  “I can’t talk about that.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Price said. “That’s what the last agent from the future told me, when I threw that tidbit out there. Just a fishing expedition and by not telling me, he was telling me.” He held open the door for her and they entered the building.

  London, England, 1618. 29 October

  “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage,” Mac recited as he walked to Gatehouse Prison at Beeston’s side.

  “What was that?” Beeston asked.

  “Nothing,” Mac said. “Just something I read a long time ago.” And hadn’t been written yet, he realized. Richard Lovelace wouldn’t pen “To Althea, From Prison” with that famous line for another twenty-four years while locked up in this same exact place. The info dump thing was a bit irritating if not monitored correctly, Mac realized. He wondered how Roland was dealing with it. He was probably coming off as pure genius among the Vikings. The thought made Mac smile.

  Gatehouse Prison wasn’t actually designed as a prison. It was what the first word indicated: the gatehouse to Westminster Abbey. It was first used by the Abbot to imprison subordinates and apparently that seemed like a good idea at the time, so more were locked up over the years. It was also closer to the place of execution, so there was that convenience.

  As they passed the palace yard, the sound of men at work echoed off the stone walls of the palace on one side and Westminster Abbey on the other.

  The scaffold for Raleigh’s execution was being erected within hearing distance of the man’s place of confinement. A little dig perhaps? Mac wondered.

  A pair of guards briefly questioned Beeston, relieved him and Mac of their weapons, and then allowed them to pass inside.

  They seemed pretty confident of their planned execution, as confident as Beeston and his cronies felt about the prophecy.

  A guard shut the door behind them and they could hear the lock being turned, which gave a sense of at least some sort of prison. Mac’s download was trying to dump information about Gatehouse Prison, Westminster Abbey, and Raleigh simultaneously, more than he cared to get, but he did find it interesting that Raleigh had actually conceived a son during his incarceration in the Tower during his previous time awaiting execution. For thirteen years.

  Maybe that was part of their confidence? He’d been in a similar situation before?

  “My Lord!” Beeston exclaimed, going to one knee.

  Mac followed suit, but said nothing.

  The man himself wore a black cloak, a plain white shirt underneath. He was seated in a high-backed chair, a goblet in his hand. He gestured wearily with one hand for them to rise. He was looking at Mac, ignoring Beeston for the moment, although it was to him he addressed his question: “Is this the one from the prophecy?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “Your name?” Raleigh asked.

  “Mac.”

  “Short for something Scottish? MacGregor perhaps? But you do not have the accent of the barren north. No, no,” Raleigh said, running a finger along his upper lip, over his mustache. “You are a strange one, but I had a feeling you would be strange, ever since the angel spoke of you.”

  “And what did this angel say about me, Lord?” Mac asked.

  One eyebrow arced on Raleigh’s face and he turned to Beeston. “He does not know the prophecy?”

  “No, Lord,” Beeston said. “He’s been told the three promises but I believe he knows nothing more.” He cast a sideways glance at Mac.

  “Curious.” Raleigh pondered this.

  While he pondered, Mac wondered. Raleigh did not look like a man facin
g impending doom. In fact, he looked like someone very concerned about a future he wasn’t supposed to have.

  “Perhaps that’s for the best,” Raleigh finally said. It was as if Mac was no longer in the room as Raleigh addressed Beeston. “Are the men ready?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “Horses ready?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  “And the French? Are they holding up their end?”

  “I spoke with our French agent just prior to coming here. He assures me a ship will be waiting at”—Beeston paused and glanced at Mac—“at the designated place.”

  “Good. Good.”

  “May I ask something, Lord?” Mac said.

  Raleigh inclined his head, indicating he might.

  “Where does this prophecy take you in the long term?”

  Raleigh smiled. “I will be remembered in history as a great man. A man who changed the destinies of empires.”

  Not if I have anything to do with it, Mac thought.

  Raleigh gestured to the door with a flick of fingers, dismissing them. “You may go.”

  Mac was getting a little tired of all of this. Everyone seemed to think he was part of something that was going to keep Raleigh alive. Except no one seemed willing to let him in on the plan.

  “Lord?”

  Raleigh was surprised to be addressed by Mac once more. “What is it?”

  “How am I part of your prophecy? We’ve never met. I am new to London, indeed England.”

  Raleigh smiled. “And you are new to our time, aren’t you?”

  Mac opened his mouth to say something, but he paused. WTF? How could Raleigh know that? Something was very, very wrong here. Had Beeston told Raleigh about the Patrol?

  Mac switched gears. “Lord, may I ask something else?”

  Raleigh was growing irritated. “Yes?”

  “When did you meet this angel?”

  “On board ship, returning from France after fighting for the Huguenots. I was on a small vessel and it was late at night. I was the only one awake. The angel came to me and gave me the prophecy. The three promises and more.”

  Great, thought Mac. A loony.

  “Lord, if I—” Mac began, but Raleigh was done with him.