Black Tuesday (Area 51: Time Patrol)

by Mayer, Bob

  Eagle checked his compass one more time. Same result. Then he checked his watch. It had stopped running too.

  At least they were at a slightly higher level and on dry ground. Which meant they’d gained a whopping two feet of elevation.

  Hammersmith raised a fist and every member of the patrol froze in place, even in midstride, foot hovering over the ground. Then Hammersmith put one finger up and crooked it, indicating for Eagle to come forward, and then with open palm toward the ground, indicated for everyone to get down.

  A hasty perimeter was set up, every man alternating his weapon outward, trail man covering their track. Eagle hustled forward and lay down next to Hammersmith, who was peering ahead.

  At what, Eagle had no idea as it looked the same as it had all along.

  Eagle waited for Hammersmith to tell him why he’d stopped the patrol. He scanned the swamp, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Hammersmith tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. Twenty meters to their right front, a tree was splintered, as if something large had hit it and knocked it partly over.

  “Probably tracks,” Hammersmith whispered.

  Which was an implied question. Check out what had done that, or keep moving forward?

  Despite the lack of a working watch, Eagle knew they had some time. There were too many unknowns. He rolled half on his side and looked back. He spotted the Ranger with the M60 and indicated for him to come forward.

  When the machine gunner arrived, Eagle indicated for him to set up to the right, and with his hand, indicated a field of fire. The gunner popped down the bipod, flipped up the butt plate, and settled in, gun at the ready, hundred-round belt in place.

  Hammersmith took the action as assent and got up. He moved out, half bent over, toward the tree. Eagle put his rifle to his shoulder covering the other side of Hammersmith from the machine gun. The Ranger Instructor reached the tree and knelt. Eagle waited as Hammersmith examined the ground.

  Hammersmith straightened and came back with a troubled look on his face. He slid down on the ground next to Eagle. “Tracks. Ones I ain’t never seen before. Something big. With clawed feet.”

  “Cougar?” Eagle asked and regretted it as soon as he said it because Hammersmith had said he’d never seen these tracks before.

  “Bigger than a cougar and heavier,” Hammersmith said. He pointed to their right front. “Was heading that way. Which is the way we have to go.”

  Eagle cocked his head to the side and sniffed. “You smell that?”

  Hammersmith’s nostrils flared as he inhaled. “Oily. Ain’t never smelled that before.”

  Eagle had. In the Space Between. “We’re going to make contact soon.”

  “With what?” Hammersmith asked.

  “Monsters,” Eagle said.

  Hammersmith didn’t seem surprised. “I’ll pass the word. Watch out for monsters.” And so he did, whispering it to the machine gunner, who would relay it down the line.

  No one seemed surprised.

  Caruso chuckled. “Monsters? Top, you got any idea what it’s like to be shut up in a max security, federal prison? With the worst of humanity? That’s monsters.”

  “Let’s move out,” Eagle said.

  Hammersmith took point and they moved forward. Visibility was about fifteen meters through the dense vegetation. But as they went northeast the smell got stronger.

  Eagle made sure the patrol had a flanker out on each side. Working with such experienced soldiers was like driving a well-oiled racing car. Each man knew his place in the patrol and his job without having to be told, despite his lack of motivation.

  Hammersmith held up his fist once more, freezing the patrol, but he didn’t signal for everyone to get down. He was peering about, getting oriented as best he could without a compass. Eagle moved up next to him noting the angle of the sun. It was probably about 9:00 a.m., which meant they had several hours to make it to the airfield.

  Hammersmith seemed satisfied and began moving forward again, the muzzle of his M16 moving back and forth in concert with his gaze. Everyone’s weapon was off safe and fingers were resting on the trigger guard, ready for action.

  They all froze as an inhuman scream undulated through the swamp.

  “Oh, yeah,” Caruso muttered. “That’s a monster.”

  Eagle looked at the squad and he noted that even those who’d been slack were now paying attention, eyes peering about, weapons at the ready.

  Hammersmith pointed and Eagle saw that the ground dropped about two feet to a sluggish stream of dark water. It was only about four feet across, but for some reason that distance seemed significant to Eagle. The water didn’t look more than thigh deep. The scream had come from the other side.

  And the far side was obscured by a wall of unnatural mist, yellowish-gray with darker streaks. It went up as high as they could see and ran along the far edge of the stream. Eagle turned and signaled for the patrol to come on line, maximizing their potential firepower.

  “What do you think?” Eagle asked Hammersmith.

  The sergeant first class shrugged. “The airfield is that way.” He looked left and right. “I’m gonna assume that this extends either way. We’re going to have to go through to get to the objective.”

  “Water seems to be a barrier,” Eagle observed.

  “Or maybe it’s just using the water as its boundary,” Hammersmith said.

  “All right. Doesn’t matter.” Eagle signaled for them to move out. He stepped down into the stream and was across in three steps, up the slight bank on the far side and into the mist.

  Eagle shivered. The temperature had just made an abrupt drop of at least ten degrees. The air felt like it was crawling across his exposed skin.

  “Tighten up,” Eagle said to the soldiers on either side of him, and the word was passed down. He had Hammersmith to his left and the M60 gunner to his right. He could barely see the man past them on either side.

  “Contact right!” someone yelled from that direction, and then there was the sound of an M16 firing on full automatic, which indicated either poor fire discipline or something very bad.

  “Hold!” Eagle ordered the rest. He grabbed a strap on the M60 gunner’s load-bearing equipment and pulled him along the line.

  The firing ceased and a scream undulated through the swamp. Eagle collided with one of the patrol members running away from the firing.

  “It got him!” the man yelled. He ran past Eagle and right into Hammersmith, who turned him around.

  Eagle stopped, the M60 gunner next to him.

  Something came flying out of the mist and slammed into a tree, slowly sliding down—the flanker, without his head, his sternum sliced wide open, leaving a bloody smear as it plopped onto the ground.

  Eagle had his M16 to his shoulder.

  Something was moving in the mist in front of them, something big.

  And definitely not human.

  “Fire,” Eagle ordered as he pulled his own trigger, aiming at whatever it was.

  The M60 gunner expertly fired twelve to fifteen round bursts, every fifth round a red tracer, burning through the mist.

  There was another scream, not human, and the thing bounded out of the mist, almost on top of Eagle and the machine gunner. As he flipped his M16 to full auto and emptied it, Eagle had one quick impression of the beast: body of a lion, head of a serpent, and tail of a scorpion.

  That tail flicked forward and impaled the M60 gunner.

  The head struck at Eagle, jaws open wide, fangs dripping venom.

  And a blast right next to his head set Eagle’s ears ringing as Hammersmith fired Lola. The first slug went right into the thing’s mouth and stopped its forward momentum less than a foot from Eagle’s face. Hammersmith jammed the muzzle of his shotgun into the creature’s mouth and emptied the six rounds in the magazine as fast as he could pull the trigger, following the path of the first. The huge rounds blew the back of the skull off.

  It dropped to the ground.

  Hammersmith cursed
and dropped the shotgun, the end of the barrel sizzling as if it had been sprayed with acid.

  The scorpion tail was still twitching, moving the gunner about, so Hammersmith drew a machete and, with one swipe, severed it from the body.

  “What the hell is that?” Caruso was now with them, along with the other surviving members of the squad.

  “Perimeter,” Eagle ordered. “Caruso, take the 60, orient that way.” Eagle pointed in the direction the beast had come from. There was no hesitation as the survivors deployed in a tight circle around Eagle, Hammersmith, and the two bodies. Caruso flipped down the bipod legs and bellied down to the ground. He loaded a fresh belt of one hundred rounds into the gun, and then put the butt plate on his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Hammersmith said. “That’s a monster.” He picked up Lola and checked it. “Damn.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a spare barrel, quickly changing the acid-eaten one out. “Magazine is still good,” he noted as he clicked the new barrel into place. He sounded more upset about the shotgun than the two casualties.

  The Ranger Instructor reloaded Lola.

  Then Eagle and Hammersmith stood perfectly still for several moments, side by side, listening. Dead silence.

  “Whoa,” Caruso said, as the creature crumbled in on itself until there was nothing left. “What was that?”

  “It went back to . . .” Eagle began, but realized the truth would make no sense. “Its organic structure couldn’t survive once it was dead.”

  “Yeah,” Caruso said. “Right.”

  “You ever see that before in your journeys?” Hammersmith asked.

  “No.”

  “Know what it was?”

  “A chimera,” Eagle said.

  “A what?”

  “Greek mythology,” Eagle said. “The original was a fire-breathing beast that was a mixture of lion, goat, and a snake’s tail. But almost every country has a beast that’s a hybrid of various animals. The Chinese have the Pixiu; the Persians the Simurgh; the Jewish people have the Ziz; the Japanese the Nue. None of them are exactly this mixture, but legend tends to have some basis in truth.”

  “Think there’s more?” Hammersmith asked, ignoring the history of the chimera and focusing on the immediate issue.

  “Probably,” Eagle said. “I don’t believe this is the extent of what is between us and the airfield.” He turned to Hammersmith. “How much farther?”

  “Four klicks.”

  Eagle looked up, into the indeterminate mist, trying to figure where the sun was. “Any idea what time it is?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then let’s move out.”

  Manhattan, New York, 1929. 29 October

  Ivar was bound to a stout wooden chair. Blood trickled down his face from a half-dozen cuts. Nothing major, just the kind that hurt like hell and were going to look bad if he didn’t get to a plastic surgeon soon. But Ivar figured it was more likely he was going to meet an undertaker than a doctor before the day was out.

  Siegel seemed happier, having blooded his knife several times.

  Lansky not so much.

  “You don’t seem to know much of anything,” Lansky said. He turned to Siegel and whispered something to him.

  Which wasn’t true, Ivar knew. He knew lots, he just didn’t know anything about how the guy he’d just met had gotten all this money. Heck, he could tell Lansky who was gonna win the World Series; then he realized that was just past, the Philadelphia Athletics beating the Chicago Cubs in five games. Well, 1930 World Series then! After all, Lansky’s mentor, Arnold Rothstein, had put the fix in on the 1919 Series. Then again, Rothstein was dead, gunned down over a gambling debt the previous year.

  Ivar had plenty of information and if Siegel kept it up, he was afraid he was going to sing like the proverbial canary.

  There’d been a couple more hushed conversations at the door while Siegel used his knife.

  Costello had counted the money while all this was going on. Lansky seemed almost distracted, thumbing through the bills after Costello counted them.

  It took a while.

  Costello spoke for the first time. “We got fourteen million here. In cash.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” Lansky said, looking up from the bills in his hand. “You show up with fourteen million in cash on a day when pretty much every person with any money is having the bottom fall out. Wall Street is going crazy. Notes are being called. And you’re sitting here with a boatload of cash. Not a coincidence.”

  Siegel walked over. He flipped open his knife and slashed down Ivar’s left arm, opening up the shirt and a very neat wound.

  Again, not too deep, but enough to hurt like hell and bleed.

  “What’s this?” Siegel picked up the piece of paper. He opened it, not understanding what he was seeing. He brought it to Lansky, who understood what he was reading immediately. He cocked his head and stared at Ivar, but it was obvious he was thinking. Hard.

  “Benny. Frank. Would you let me speak to our friend alone for a little while?”

  It was a real question, indicating power was shared, especially with Lucky Luciano being AWOL.

  “Okay,” Costello said.

  “You sure, Meyer?” Siegel asked. “He ain’t been too talkative.”

  “I think I can have a conversation with him,” Lansky said.

  “Okay, Meyer,” Siegel allowed.

  The two gangsters left the room.

  Lansky picked up his chair and brought it over, turned its back to Ivar, and then straddled it. He tapped his upper lip for several moments.

  “Don’t lie to me, Ivar,” Lansky said. “You will not leave this room alive if you do. And I know when people lie to me. And, before you die here, in this place, I will allow Bugsy, as you foolishly called him, free rein to inflict as much pain as he can. And he can deliver a lot of pain. It might take several days before you die.”

  That gave Ivar both a sense of dread and hope. The pain, not too happy about. But if it was going to take several days, he’d be out of here at midnight tonight. Good news wrapped in painful news.

  Lansky looked at the list. “Some of these stocks I recognize. Others. No. But here . . .” He tapped something at the bottom. “This is a bank account number. Whose is it? Masseria? Maranzano?”

  “I don’t know,” Ivar said. “Really, I just ran into that guy. He’d already been stabbed.”

  “But you had this,” Lansky said, waving the piece of paper. “So you recognized what was on it. And you were counting the money. Nothing you did indicates this all just happened and was a surprise to you. You expected to meet someone on Wall Street, didn’t you?”

  The accuracy of that assessment startled Ivar. Then he realized he was dealing with the man who would become known as the mob’s accountant. Who would survive for decades when almost everyone around him was murdered or sent to prison; who would not only open a Swiss bank account to avoid Al Capone’s fate, but then buy a Swiss bank. This was a man who could unravel and understand complex situations quickly.

  His life depended on it every second of every day.

  Ivar doubted, though, that Lansky would understand time travel.

  Then again?

  “Someone has to place these trades,” Lansky continued. “We’re getting reports. It’s very bad on Wall Street. Been bad for a while. The market was down thirteen percent yesterday. Margin calls went out. And today, it’s looking the same, except the volume is unprecedented.”

  Ivar knew that not only was the volume of trading unprecedented, but it wouldn’t be matched for over forty years. The market wouldn’t recover to the peak closing of early September until 1954.

  Lansky shook the paper once more. “I had my man check. Some of these stocks are air pockets. Do you know what that is?”

  Ivar was sure that was in his download somewhere, but he shook his head, because every minute Lansky spoke was another minute Bugsy Siegel wasn’t in the room with his knife.

  “Stocks for sale that no one
is buying no matter what the price is,” Lansky explained. “People don’t even want them for free. No one can get any credit, never mind margin.” He looked over his shoulder at the $10,000 bills piled on the table. “But cash. Today, someone with that much cash could buy a portfolio that would be”—Lansky smiled—“unprecedented.”

  Ivar had begun figuring that out as soon as he opened the satchel, but it had taken him a little longer than Lansky to see the long play involved. And what Lansky didn’t know was that those stocks were probably picked by someone from the future knowing what the stocks’ futures were.

  Lansky, of course, went right to that next. “The problem is, if no one is buying a stock, how do we know it doesn’t end up being just a piece of worthless paper? And you’re spending real wealth, cash, for that paper?”

  Lansky drummed his fingers on the back of his chair. “Lucky, as you called him, is in court today. They’re trying to indict him for getting picked up and beaten to a pulp, which would be funny, except the cops are serious. But who beat him up? My money is on Masseria hiring the muscle. Frank thinks it’s the cops, even though he pays off the cops. He says other people pay off the cops, which, then, leads us back to Masseria.”

  Ivar listened, hoping this would continue for a while.

  “This money is an enigma,” Lansky said. “You know what an enigma is, right?”

  Ivar nodded.

  “Yeah. You strike me as the smart type,” Lansky said. “School smart. Streets, maybe not so much or you’d be in my chair and I’d be in yours. Anyways, two million of this money is ours. Stolen four days ago. Had to be an inside job, except Benny hasn’t been able to figure out who. Which is odd, because Benny’s pretty good at getting information, as you, my friend, are becoming keenly aware. It’s like someone knew the combination of our safe. Knew everything they needed to know to walk right in and walk right out with our money.

  “We’re assuming that the rest of the money was stolen from either or both Maranzano and Masseria, since they’re the only ones who’d have such cash around.” He reached over to the table and grabbed a bill.

  “You got a broker?” Lansky suddenly asked.