by Mayer, Bob
But the executioner hesitated.
Raleigh pulled his arms in and then out again.
And still no blade.
“Strike, man, strike!” Raleigh insisted.
And the axe fell. Slicing almost all the way through, but there was no hesitation in the follow-up blow and the head sprung free of the body.
The eyes were open and staring directly at Mac from the floor of the scaffold. The lips were still moving in silent prayer.
And then the cloud of death faded out the life in the eyes.
The body remained exactly as it had been, not falling over. Blood, more blood than one would think a person could have in them, covered the scaffolding.
The head was lifted up by the hair. Walked to each corner of the scaffold. Without the customary words: “Behold, the head of a traitor,” but in silence, almost respect.
To Mac it seemed the bloodlust of the crowd disappeared as quickly as the life in Raleigh’s eyes. A collective moan swept over the yard.
A voice cried out: “We have never had such a head cut off!”
Mac realized something wet was on his forehead. He went to wipe it off and it was blood, Raleigh’s blood, having pulsed across the platform immediately after the arteries were severed.
The head was put in a red leather bag while the body was wrapped in a black cloak. Beeston finally pushed his way forward and took the leather bag. He paused, holding Raleigh’s head, and looked down at Mac. His eyes were brimming with tears. He sighed and then turned away, walking down the stairs, off the scaffold to a black coach drawn by two white horses. The body had already been bundled into it.
And with that, Sir Walter Raleigh, favorite of Queen Elizabeth, searcher for El Dorado, abandoner of Roanoke, and receiver of the prophecy, fulfilled his place in the timeline.
Andes Mountains, Argentina, 1972. 29 October
It began an hour after the avalanche.
The snow had lightened somewhat, as if the avalanche had taken its strength. But a strange mist began to creep across the valley. Moms had seen snow fog before, but this was different. A grayish white.
“That is not natural,” Correa said.
There was a smell, one Moms had encountered before. Oily, slightly nauseating. She’d experienced it in the Space Between, the place between her timeline and other timelines that weren’t directly connected. Where Amelia Earhart and her band of outcasts from various times and timelines fought their lonely battle.
“They’re coming,” Moms said, not exactly sure who “they” were, but assuming more of the Yeti were about to arrive.
She searched her area of responsibility, but visibility was diminishing even further, down to less than fifty feet.
“We have to protect the plane,” Correa said.
“Let’s go,” Moms agreed.
They stood and moved forward, side-by-side, rifles at the ready.
Moms spotted the first Yeti too easily coming in from the left, plowing through the snow with a shuffling gait, twenty feet away and closing quickly.
“Contact left,” Moms said as she brought the M14 to her shoulder and aimed. She fired, the round missing her target, hitting the thick ridgeline of bone above the creature’s right eye. But her second round was dead on, directly into the eye socket. With a twisting fall, the beast collapsed into the snow and remained still.
“One down,” Moms informed Correa, who was maintaining security in the other direction.
They’d both come to a halt while she fired. She glanced forward. The mound that represented the crashed plane still wasn’t in sight. She had a vision of a Yeti bursting into the cramped interior, surprising the double survivors of the crash and the avalanche, and finishing them off. “Let’s move,” she ordered. She noticed the creature she’d just killed implode slowly and silently into dust.
Shoulder to shoulder, she and Correa continued forward.
“Contact,” Correa said in a calm voice even as he fired. Once. Twice. Three times.
On the third shot, with nothing dangerous in her field of vision, Moms swung about to support him.
There wasn’t a need for a fourth shot as another Yeti collapsed into the snow.
“It’s too easy,” Moms said. “Too obvious.”
“Indeed,” Correa said.
“There’s something more coming.” Moms halted as the mound of snow indicating the plane appeared twenty feet away. The mist was thicker, more tangible.
“This is evil,” Correa said, echoing what Moms was feeling. “And it is still here,” he added as the Yeti he’d just killed disintegrated.
There was no sound from inside the buried fuselage. About the only positive aspect of being buried by the avalanche was that the survivors inside were well insulated from the outside world, from both the cold and sound.
“Watch the snow,” Moms said. It was waist deep where they stood. She recalled the rattlesnake possessed by a Firefly that attacked during the Fun in the Desert outside of Tucson. “Something could be coming through it.”
She spotted it first. “Contact!” Floating about two feet above the snow fifteen feet away and closing: a green, elliptical sphere, roughly three feet long by two in diameter, an oversized football. Two black bands diagonally crisscrossed its surface. Moms didn’t wait to see more detail.
She fired three rounds in rapid succession, each hit producing a puff of black liquid. The thing reacted, diving front point first into the snow. Moms fired where it had disappeared and then pulled back her aim, peppering the snow in front of her as the entity burrowed toward her.
“Contact!” Correa yelled, and she could hear the sound of his suppressor as he fired.
The sphere burst out of the snow right in front of Moms. She had a snapshot glimpse: The two black belts were moving, churning, with bands of small, sharp barbs like teeth. The apex of those two bands hit the muzzle of her rifle even as she pulled the trigger.
The tip of the suppressor was ripped up, the rifle torn from her hands. Metal was shredded as the bands did their work. From the widest part of the sphere, a thin sheet of green snapped open like a sail, catching the metal and then wood as the rifle was destroyed.
Moms wasn’t standing still.
She drew Nada’s machete with one hand and a grenade with the other as the remains of the rifle were snapped back, caught in the sail, and it snapped shut as quickly as it had opened.
This was a killing thing, designed specifically for that purpose. Whether machine or animal didn’t matter.
Moms had to kill it.
“Backing up,” Moms yelled to Correa. He was at her shoulder, still firing at something as they retreated.
Done with the rifle, the sphere moved toward Moms. She jabbed the point of the machete at it. The weapon was deflected off the churning bands.
Moms jabbed harder and the machete was ripped from her hand, metal getting shredded and tossed backward as the green sail snapped open once more to take the remains.
Which is exactly what Moms wanted as she pulled the pin on the grenade and tossed it into the sail.
“Grenade!” she warned Correa.
But there was no need for worry as the sail snapped shut, grenade caught inside along with the remains of Nada’s machete.
A muffled explosion, the sphere expanded all around ever so slightly, and then it fell into the snow, the bands stopping.
Moms didn’t bother to verify, pulling her pistol and turning to support Correa.
The sphere he’d been firing at reacted to her success by turning away and heading directly toward the mound of snow and the people inside. Moms didn’t want to imagine what would happen if it burrowed through the snow and got in there among the survivors.
She added her bullets to those from Correa’s FN FAL. “A mine,” she shouted as she joined him, chasing the sphere as it headed toward the hump of snow.
As Correa reached into the pouch on his vest, Moms used every ounce of energy she had to push herself over and through the dense avalanch
e snow to try to catch up to the elliptical sphere. Correa was next to her. Moms knew they wouldn’t make it, that the thing would beat them through the snow and into the plane and then literally into the survivors.
Correa thrust his free hand out, barely touching the rear point of the sphere, but that was enough. The black strips abruptly reversed and ripped into his fingers, pulling him forward. Moms grabbed the back of his pack, pulling him back.
She succeeded just as Correa’s hand was done; flesh, blood, and bone being churned into a rough mist. The green “sail” snapped open to absorb the ghoulish remains.
Correa tossed an armed mine into the sail with his remaining hand.
The sail snapped shut. A muted explosion. The sphere dropped into the snow.
Everything remained frozen for a moment, and then as the sphere imploded as the Yeti had done, Moms ripped a cravat off her gear and wrapped it around Correa’s forearm, cinching it tight to stop the arterial bleeding.
Satisfied she’d closed that off, she grabbed him by the back of his collar and dragged him back. He slid over the snow and she dug with every ounce of energy until she reached a depression underneath a large rock outcropping about two hundred meters from the plane.
She propped Correa up on his pack and sat down wearily.
She knew the time was close to midnight, when she turned into the Time Patrol version of a pumpkin.
Correa spoke, his face pale from loss of blood. “Tell me my friend. I believe I deserve to know some of the future. At least the future here.” He nodded down toward the plane. “They probably never heard us. Muffled by the snow. Desperate with their own plight. Trying to dig each other out.”
Moms broke the rules and spoke of the future. “They’ll eventually poke through the snow. Get air. Break out in three days. They learned a while back by transistor radio that the search was called off. Now they will truly realize if they stay here, they will die from starvation, the weather, or something like the avalanche. This will give them the impetus to send someone to go for help.
“Three of them will head west since they think they are already in Chile. They’ll send one back because they don’t have enough food to make it. Enough human flesh. Even though they’ve gained eight bodies because of this latest tragedy.
“The two will make it. Summon rescue. At first the world will be shocked at the news of the cannibalism. But then, when the complete story of their ordeal comes out, it will be one of the greatest tales of courage in the face of extreme odds. Of human survival.”
“And which of them will achieve something great?” Correa asked. His eyes were half-closed from exhaustion and blood loss. “So important the Shadow wanted to kill all of them?”
Moms shook her head. “The great thing is simply surviving and telling their story. They let people know that we can do so much more than we think we can when we have to. We can overcome the greatest odds.”
“Ah,” Correa said. He opened his eyes wider. “Hope. It is all about hope, not a single person doing something. Their story will give people hope. Hope is the enemy of evil. The enemy of this Shadow.”
Moms realized that was it: It wasn’t the lives saved. It was what those lives went on to do in the face of overwhelming odds and the story passed down.
The snow was tapering off. The grayish-white mist had dissipated with the destruction of the last sphere.
Correa spoke. “I am afraid, my new friend, that I am done.”
Moms was not surprised, but a wave of deep sadness washed over her.
“It is not that I am giving up,” Correa explained. “But my life was directed to this moment and we have succeeded.” He peered at her. “You told me my disease, this AIDS, is transmitted by blood contact.”
Moms nodded.
“But you didn’t hesitate to bandage me,” Correa noted. He looked at all the blood spattered on her. “I would suspect some would have hesitated.”
“Some would,” Moms acknowledged, thinking of the history of the disease and the fear it spawned among many when it wasn’t understood, and even after it was. The opposite of hope: fear.
Correa pointed with his good hand, his only hand, toward the mound of snow. “They have hope and will spread it when they get rescued. But my future is bleak. You will be gone soon and I cannot make it out of the mountains with the blood I have lost.”
“Don’t lose hope,” Moms said and regretted it. He wasn’t giving up. He was giving in. A huge difference.
Correa chuckled softly. “Nice try, Moms. I have done my duty and that is more than many can say.”
Moms looked at her watch. Just a few minutes remained until her twenty-four hours in 1972 were done.
“It is very cold,” Correa said.
Moms moved close to him, pressing her body against his and wrapping her arms around him.
“Would you pray with me?” Correa asked.
Moms cradled his head, pulling it tight in to her chest. “Certainly, my friend.”
Correa murmured into her chest, his words muffled. It was Latin.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.”
And then he repeated it and she did too.
Moms tried to remember, to think back to that lonely house on the Kansas plains. Her mother had prayed. She remembered that. Prayers that were never answered.
But she tried anyway.
Correa paused in the reciting, pulled his head slightly away, and looked up at her. “What is your real name?”
Moms leaned over and whispered it in his ear.
He smiled. “That is a very pretty name.” He reached inside his shirt and pulled out his dog tags. “Take them.”
Moms took them.
“Remember my name,” Correa said.
He began reciting the prayer again and Moms joined him.
And then all went black for Moms.
Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, 1980. 29 October
Eagle was on a “hill,” as best this slight rise to the west of Wagner Field could be described given it was in relatively flat Florida. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was a quarter way down to the horizon behind them. Hammersmith was on his belly to Eagle’s right, Caruso and the other two survivors forming a circular perimeter.
The mist was completely gone and visibility was good. The plans for Wagner Field had been downloaded into Eagle’s brain, but he’d also been here before, piloting the Snake during some joint training with the Air Force’s 1st Special Operations Wing, which was headquartered at Hurlburt Field, the headquarters of the entire Eglin reservation.
Constructed during the early days of World War II, Wagner was part of a series of airfields built on Eglin to train the thousands of pilots who shipped overseas to fight.
Originally, Wagner had been shaped like a triangle with a main 4,000-foot strip running north-south and another runway northwest-southeast. They were connected on their north ends by a taxiway, which also had a parking apron off of it. The north-south runway had since been extended another 3,500 feet south.
Eagle and the patrol were located just below where the north-south runway had been extended, on the west side. They were about fifteen feet above the level of the tarmac, and two hundred feet away, hidden in the low scrub trees the area surrounding the airfield was covered in.
“A dog and pony show,” Hammersmith commented, indicating the group of obvious dignitaries clustered on a set of temporary bleachers.
“There’s the plane,” Eagle said, pointing north and offering Hammersmith his field glasses. It was on the junction of the angled runway and the taxiway, where a group of mechanics were working.
They’d taken a C-130 aircraft and modified it. The C-130 was still in widespread use in Eagle’s time and he’d lost count of the number of times he’d parachuted out of one. It had four turboprop engines, two on each wing, a high tail, and a
back ramp that could open up, with the ramp’s top portion going up into the tail section. First fielded in 1956, the C-130 was the second longest serving aircraft in the Air Force, surpassed only by the venerable B-52, indicating its excellent design and usefulness in a variety of missions, from troop transport to aerial gunship.
Now it was being prepared for another unique task.
“What are they doing?” Hammersmith asked.
“Loading the rockets,” Eagle answered. “It’s been retrofitted with eight rockets. They’ve got a total of eighty-thousand pounds of thrust to stop the plane as it lands and also fire a three-second burst so it touches down lightly. It also has rockets to help it take off.”
“So an updated example of Doolittle’s B-24,” Hammersmith noted, and Eagle realized he hadn’t thought of it that way. But Credible Sport was very similar to what Doolittle had been trying to achieve in concept—to take off from a very short distance, which was, in Doolittle’s case, the deck of an aircraft carrier. Except Doolittle hadn’t planned on landing back on the carrier. This C-130 would not only land and take off from a soccer field, it would land on an aircraft carrier with the hostages in order to get to medical treatment as quickly as possible.
The sound of helicopter blades caught Eagle’s attention. A Huey helicopter came in from the south, flying low over the long runway and then banking and coming back to near the stands. It settled down.
Hammersmith handed the binoculars back to Eagle. “What now?”
Eagle scanned the area slightly to their northeast, a section of the north-south runway that had large flags marking distances. “That’s where the plane’s going to land, turn, and then take off,” he said. “The size of the soccer field in Tehran.”
“Not much,” Hammersmith noted.
“No,” Eagle agreed. It was years before the Osprey would take flight, followed by Eagle’s own toy, the Snake, a tilt-wing aircraft that could easily land in that space much like a helicopter. He knew the mission couldn’t go. Not just because his timeline said so, but because it had little chance of success. But he had to admire the spirit and inventiveness of the men who were planning it and going to conduct it. And he had respect for the pilots who were testing this jury-rigged technology. Flying a propeller-driven cargo plane with powerful rockets attached all around was a proposition fraught with disaster.