He was followed by a woman, dressed the same. She was young, blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful in that not-quite-a-real-person, thin, tall, model sort of way. She also came down the stairs with the aura of one used to being watched at all times, for reasons different than that of the man.
“I think they sent her to the wrong place,” Orlando muttered.
“Don’t judge a book by the cover,” Eagle said.
“I don’t read books.”
A Russian soldier came next, his hand on the shoulder of a young woman confined in a straitjacket. Her head was close-shaven, just a dark stubble. She was of average height, skinny to the point of anorexia, and seemed resigned to her fate.
“That’s just great,” Orlando said.
The big man walked up to Orlando and Eagle, not bothering to wait for the others. “I am—” he began in a Russian accent.
“You’re nobody,” Orlando cut him off. “No names. We do the naming. For now, you’re Boris.” The woman arrived, having heard the exchange. Before she could speak, Orlando also christened her. “And you’re Princess. And you’re”—He looked at the girl in the straightjacket—“Lara. Welcome to Area 51.”
Our Present.
Area 51
Eagle glanced across the cockpit at Orlando. “Are you sure?”
Orlando shrugged. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Someone dies.”
“People die every day.”
“We could all die,” Eagle said.
“That’s the whole point of the test.” Orlando pulled an oversized flask out of his pocket, unscrewed the lid, took a deep drink, then offered it to Eagle.
“I’m flying,” Eagle said. He had the Snake at 10,000 feet altitude, having taken off as soon as the three Russians boarded. Orlando had unbuckled the arms of the young woman’s straitjacket, then directed all three to go up the ramp into the cargo bay. Eagle had then flown the Snake, almost vertical, gaining altitude and circling, but not moving away from the position over the airfield.
“In the old days,” Orlando said, “pilots had balls. Big brass ones. A little drink wouldn’t have scared them. Hell, they were supposed to drink.”
“My shoulder is killing me,” Eagle said. “I should be on painkillers, but I’m not. You think I’m going to take a drink if I can’t take something for the pain?”
“You could take something for the pain,” Orlando pointed out, waggling the flask. “You choose not to.”
Eagle shook his head.
“It’s always about choice,” Orlando said. “Remember that. And hell, this thing can fly itself on autopilot.” He stood up from the co-pilot’s seat, which reminded Eagle he’d never buckled in on takeoff or put on his parachute as per SOP.
Eagle sighed and flipped on the autopilot.
Orlando stood in the passageway between the cockpit and the cargo hold. “Yo!” he yelled to be heard over the sound of the two jet engines. “Listen up.”
Boris, Princess, and Lara were on the red web jump seats along the outer edge of the bay. Boris and Princess sat on the same side, but with enough distance between them to indicate they wanted nothing to do with each other. Lara sat on the other, cross-legged, eyes closed. She didn’t open them at Orlando’s shout. The harness was still around her body even though her hands were free. She seemed used to it.
“Why are we here?” Boris shouted back.
“They didn’t tell you?” Orlando said. “Oh, that’s right. They weren’t supposed to tell you. You’ve all volunteered to try out for the most super-secret, best of the best, covert unit in the world.”
“I did not volunteer,” Princess complained.
“Who does?” Orlando said. “If you really were volunteers, we wouldn’t want you. It would mean you’re stupid. We don’t do stupid here.”
“Where is here?” Boris demanded. “What is this Area 51?”
“Now, thirty years ago,” Orlando said, “that question might be sorta legit. But seriously, son. You don’t follow the news? You didn’t see Independence Day? The original or the sequel? I hate sequels, although Aliens was pretty good. And the second Godfather. That was good too. Maybe better, but it’s debatable.” Orlando pointed. “That way is the Nevada Test Site. Seven-hundred and thirty-nine—”
“Seven-hundred and forty,” Eagle corrected him, remembering their last Nightstalker mission, after the Cluster-Frak in Nebraska.
“Seven-hundred and forty nuclear weapons have gone off there,” Orlando said. “Pretty good barrier. Area 51 is just about below us. Groom Lake. Big runway. Air Force and NASA test their high-speed stuff out here since it’s pretty far from anywhere. Vegas is that way,” Orlando pointed in a different direction, and Eagle didn’t have the heart to tell him he was off. It really didn’t matter. “I have a theory,” Orlando said. “People go to L.A., to suffer, and Vegas to die.”
Boris and Princess exchanged confused glances. Lara still hadn’t opened her eyes or indicate she heard any of this.
“Y’all want to go to Vegas?” Orlando asked. “Or do you want to go to L.A.?”
Boris stood up. “I do not like this.”
“I was just joking,” Orlando said. “You’re not going to either place.” He looked at Boris. “And no one gives a rat’s ass what you like or don’t like.” He reached up and hit a button.
The noise level in the cargo bay increased dramatically as a crack appeared in the back. The ramp lowered, while the top portion went up into the tail section. Both moved until the ramp was level and locked in place.
Boris looked at that, then back at Eagle and Orlando. “What is this?” he yelled.
Princess edged away from the ramp toward the cockpit. One of her hands was tight to her side.
“She’s got a knife,” Eagle yelled into Orlando’s ear, the equivalent of a whisper.
“I know,” Orlando said. “Saw her take it off Lara’s guard. Idiot didn’t even know she lifted it.”
Orlando pulled a grenade out of his pocket then held it up so they could all see it. “Choices!” he yelled, then he pulled the pin, knelt, and rolled it to the center of the cargo bay.
Everyone was frozen for a moment.
Princess ran for the cockpit, away from the grenade. Boris was frozen, eyes wide, staring at it, less than five feet in front of him.
Lara darted forward, scooped it up, then continued her run and swan-dived off the back ramp, grenade in hand.
“That was different,” Orlando said, reaching for his flask.
Our Present
Area 51
“Jerk,” Eagle yelled at Orlando as he ran to the ramp then dove out.
He spread his legs and arms akimbo, getting stable and oriented. He saw Lara tumbling in the air. He pulled his arms into his sides, clamped his legs together, and dove, angled straight down.
Using just his hands, like fins for direction, he accelerated toward her.
This is Roland’s gig, Eagle thought. He began making up the distance between the two of them, losing altitude the entire way.
Six thousand feet, the altimeter warned via his earpiece.
He saw her arm move, tossing the grenade away.
Five thousand feet.
Eagle was stunned when the grenade exploded, a brief flash, the sound lost in the air rushing by.
“Double Jerk, Orlando!” Eagle screamed as he adjusted his track slightly.
Four thousand feet. She was fifty feet below.
Eagle blinked as he realized she was slowing her spin. She was experimenting, thrusting an arm this way, tucking a leg that way. Why, when she had no chute?
Three thousand feet.
Ten feet away.
She was looking at him, no longer tumbling. She’d assumed an odd position. Legs together, arms spread wide above her head. Feet straight down toward the rapidly approaching desert.
She looks like an angel, Eagle thought, apropos of nothing of importance at the moment because they were both going to splat in about two thousand fee
t.
Eagle over-adjusted then bumped into her, chest-to-chest.
She smiled at him.
One thousand feet.
Eagle only had time to clip a single snap link from his lowering line into her straitjacket harness, then he jerked the ripcord.
His parachute blossomed.
Eagle was jerked upright, and then he felt the abrupt tightening of his harness as she hit the end of the fifteen-foot lowering line. He barely had time to look down before she struck the ground, then he was down, hitting hard, feet on either side of her body. He collapsed to his knees, straddling her.
“Frak me,” Eagle muttered. He glanced down at the young woman lying between his legs. Now that he was this close, he noticed the poorly healed scars underneath the hair struggling to grow back on her scalp. A jigsaw puzzle of them.
Lara was still smiling. “He is a crazy man.”
“He is,” Eagle agreed. She had an American accent, not Russian. Who exactly was she?
“I like him.”
“I don’t.”
Our Present
Area 51
“A live grenade?” Eagle asked Orlando.
The Colonel turned the Jeep off the hardtop onto a dirt road. A piece of plywood had a warning spray-painted on it in unsteady letters: No Trespass: We Will Shoot Your Ass. A skull and crossbones were painted next to it.
“It wouldn’t have been a real test if it weren’t a real grenade,” Orlando said.
“I should—”
“Oh, relax. It had altimeter arming built in. Wouldn’t have gone off above eight thousand feet. If none of those yahoos had done anything, it would have just rolled around, and we could have kicked it out or put the pin back in. But she did something. Damned impressive.”
“But why have it explode on the way down?”
“She didn’t, and doesn’t, know there was an altimeter arming device,” Orlando said. “She’s always going to believe it was live from the get-go.”
“What if one of the others had done that?” Eagle asked. “I was able to hook into her straitjacket with the lowering line. But if one of the other—“
“They didn’t,” Orlando said. He glanced over at Eagle. “I been doing this for a long time. I didn’t actually expect anyone to jump out with it. Jump on it. Try to throw it out. Run away. No one has ever grabbed it and jumped with it. What’s as interesting as Lara jumping, is you going after her.”
Eagle didn’t like the change in direction. “So she’s suicidal.”
“You said she tossed the grenade away after she left the plane,” Orlando pointed out.
“Yeah, but she didn’t have a chute.”
“If she were suicidal, she’d have held on to the grenade,” Orlando said.
Eagle shook his head. “But, again, she didn’t have a chute.”
“Maybe she knew you’d come after her?”
“How could she know that?” Eagle asked.
Orlando shrugged. “Good question.”
Eagle sighed, tired of going in circles with Orlando. “Any problems with the autopilot landing?”
“Nah,” Orlando said. “Machines can do stuff like that, but they can’t think. They don’t got the instincts a real pilot has.”
“Boris?”
“Pissed in his pants,” Orlando said. “Seriously, if that’s the best the Russkies got, I don’t know why we worry about them. He’s on a plane home. In the old days, they’d greet him with a bullet to the back of the head for getting sent back. Now, they’ll probably kiss him.”
“Princess?” Eagle asked.
“Had to shoot her,” Orlando said. “Not fatal, but she’s gonna need a knee replacement. She tried to cut me. Women. Can’t trust ‘em.”
“Ms. Jones was a woman.”
“She was Ms. Jones.”
“Moms is a woman.”
“She’s Moms.”
“Scout?” Eagle tried.
“I like her,” Orlando grudgingly admitted. “Something about the kid.”
Eagle knew he’d never dent Orlando’s misogyny. “Why’d you call her Lara?”
Orlando shrugged. “First thing that came to mind when I saw her.”
“Doctor Zhivago?”
“Who?”
“She’s not Russian,” Eagle said. “Sounds American. How’d she end up with the Russians?”
“How’d she end up in a straitjacket?” Orlando asked as a way of answering.
“Where are they taking her?”
“Your boss, Dane, wants to talk to her.”
Eagle had a good idea what that “discussion” entailed.
Orlando looked at him. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me what unit you guys are in now. Who Dane is.”
“Sorry,” Eagle said. They were approaching what appeared to be a derelict gas station.
“Don’t suppose you want to tell me what happened to Nada. You gotta remember, I knew who he was. Before.”
“Best not get into that, Colonel,” Eagle advised.
The brakes screeched as Orlando stopped them a hundred yards shy of the building. Two guards popped up from spider holes, weapons trained on the Jeep. A third man, coming out of his hole behind the Jeep, walked up and put a handheld in front of Orlando’s eyes. It beeped, and a green light flickered.
“Proceed, Colonel.”
“Ever wonder if, one day, they’re just going to let you pass, since they know you?” Eagle said, as Orlando threw the Jeep into gear.
“They do, I’ll have their ass.” Orlando pulled to the front of the crumbling station. “I’ll wait.”
Eagle got out, then went to the rusting soda machine and pushed the button for a grape soda. The soda machine slid to the side, and a stairway beckoned. Eagle went down the stairs, the entrance sliding shut behind him.
He entered a room that only someone on a government contract could design: depressing, gray steel-reinforced concrete walls, curving to a popcorn ceiling. Eagle knew there was twenty feet of steel-reinforced concrete above it.
The Den.
The evolution of the place’s name was part of the history of the team. It had been tabbed a “bunker” on the official specs, but that had sounded too last-days-of-Hitler. Someone during the Cold War days had suggested the Zoo, via The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. But when the Cold War faded, that had changed to Lions’ Den, then simply Den.
The generations of Nightstalkers who’d passed through had given it personality. Various knives, axes, guns, etc. were on the wall, mementoes of missions past. A vertical log, half chipped away from thrown knives, spears and axes, stood in one corner. Eagle smiled as he remembered everyone ducking whenever Doc took his turn throwing an axe.
A large table was in the center. Etched into it were the names of all the Nightstalkers who had made the ultimate sacrifice. The table had originally been in Area 51, in the room where the very first Nightstalkers, under a different name, were assembled to battle Rifts. It had been moved out here when the team moved, many years ago, away from all the scrutiny focused on Area 51 by alien conspiracy people.
Eagle ran his fingers over the names, all code names conferred onto each team member as they joined.
There were a lot of them.
He looked about, and his desire to strip the place in order to make the team room in the Possibility Palace wilted. The new team, whoever they were, whatever missions they were being tasked with, were the Nightstalkers.
Traditions always had to start somewhere.
Plus a name was missing. It was the first for the Time Patrol: Nada.
The Time Patrol needed their own traditions.
The Possibility Palace
Where: Can’t Tell You. When: Can’t Tell You.
Dane sat across from Lara, regarding her without comment. Frasier was on his side of the table, leafing through a thin file, translated from Russian.
“What little is in here, is heavily redacted,” Frasier complained. “But from what I can read, she did some very, very bad thin
gs.”
“Bad things,” Lara whispered. “Yes. Bad things.” She was speaking to herself as if she were alone in the room.
“We’ve all done bad things,” Dane said.
Frasier shoved the folder over to him. “Not like this.”
Dane didn’t have to read it. “I know.”
Frasier pointed out the obvious. “And she’s not Russian. How did she end up over there?”
“Here, there,” Lara said. “Now, then. What does it matter?”
“I’m sure it’s an interesting story,” Dane said.
“The Fifth Floor,” Lara said.
“What’s that?” Frasier asked.
Dane shook his head. “Not now. We’ll get to that.” His focus was on the girl. “You’re going to make a choice.”
Lara nodded. “Whether to join the Time Patrol.”
Dane nodded. “How do you know that?”
She’d been brought here unconscious, through the Gate from underneath the Met. The only part of the Possibility Palace she’d seen so far was this room.
“It is all everyone here thinks about,” Lara said.
“You know what people are thinking?” Frasier asked.
“At times.” She smiled. “Why do you think they sent me in the straitjacket?”
“What am I thinking right now?” Dane asked.
“I don’t do parlor tricks,” Lara said. She shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t work like that. But if enough people think or feel something, it is easy to”—She paused, searching for the word—“see.”
“The Sight,” Dane said. He tapped a finger on the tabletop. “In the course of history, there are billions and billions of lives. The reality is, few of those individual lives make an impact. That’s not to say that in their personal lives, for their family, their friends, and even their enemies, all those people aren’t important. But if any of those people ceased to exist, blinked out of existence, the course of history would not change.”
Lara stared at him, expressionless.
“Even those we think are historically significant,” Dane continued, “whether by the weight of their entire life, or by a single, momentous action, such as Oswald assassinating Kennedy, might not even be important, since someone else might do the same.”
At the Helm: A Sci-Fi Bridge Anthology (Volume 1) Page 12