by Brad Raylend
D’s voice came over the plane’s intercom, “Everyone, find a seat. We’ll begin taxiing out to the runway; takeoff in five minutes.”
The plane began humming to life, and moments later Todd could feel it moving forward out of the hangar. He stood up and walked towards the front sections of the aircraft, past the med room, in which he had first regained consciousness after almost dying.
Albrecht, Kara, Amber, Bohden, and Kevin sat around a long table in the lounge. Kevin was telling a humorous story about their days back in college that had Amber laughing. Albrecht was typing something on his tablet, and Kara was next to him reading a book. To no surprise, Bohden was sitting on the far side of the table doing something on a laptop. He looked up and saw Todd and motioned him to come over.
Todd sat down in the large chair next to Bohden and fumbled for the seatbelt connections. Bohden rotated his laptop so it faced Todd and he pointed out a few images on the screen. They were grainy black and white shots of Durango. Todd nodded like he was paying attention, but as far as he was concerned, any Intel Bohden thought he had was no good. He would just have to wait until he got there to figure out the situation.
The plane was now picking up speed. Todd looked out of the window behind Bohden and saw the white ground speeding past. The sky was clear and the sun reflected off the snow and was nearly blinding. Todd could feel the wheels of the plane leave the earth’s surface and the brief drop sensation as the plane left the ground.
D came over the intercom. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. It will be about eight long … painful … boring hours until we reach Colorado, where we will drop off Mr. Hotshot back there; then it will be another eight hours back to our freezing little paradise.” He did his best to sound like a typical commercial airliner pilot. “Our flight attendant Ms. Bohden will be coming by with drinks momentarily; please sit back and enjoy the flight.”
Bohden grinned and shook his head. Amber was laughing at D’s sarcasm. Todd breathed out slowly and closed his eyes. He opened them and saw Kara looking at him.
“Todd,” Albrecht said, smiling.
He looked over at him and raised his eyebrows to say, “What is it”?
Albrecht was grinning. “You know you don’t have be dressed for a while,” he said, looking at the suit.
Todd looked down at himself and realized how he had been over-prepared by getting dressed eight hours early. Regardless, the suit was actually extremely comfortable, even though it was tight and form-fitting. The inner temperature control made it the perfect environment to sit in. He realized how ridiculous it was that he was sitting at a table with five people staring at him. He stood up and looked dumbly at himself. There were a few chuckles.
“Yeah … I’ll go change.” He came back moments later wearing a t-shirt and cargo pants. He chatted with the five of them and they ate dinner together. All the while he said nothing to Kara. He didn’t want her to hate him. She was without a doubt the sincerest person he had ever met. He didn’t understand why, but the thought of her despising him brought a deep discomfort to him.
* * *
December 9, 2013
I had a session with Kara last night. She kept prying about the last op in Nam. I dodged around the true answer, I just kept giving her bullshit explanations about encounters with “Charlie” and the horrors of war. I had earned yet another scar from a firefight a few hours after I smoked that American platoon. It was the largest of them, spanning from my cheek, down my jaw, and damn near my throat. It now had twenty stitches in it and I noticed Kara continued to look at it in a way that showed disapproval. I think she didn’t agree with what I was doing in the past. Her entire life had been dedicated to learning and understanding history, and here I was altering it. Maybe she felt that I was an anomaly. No matter how I felt though, I still thought that it was going to work. All we needed to do was stop the Communists in the past and preserve the future. But one thing still troubled me.
During dinner one night I was talking with Brian and I had an epiphany. What if I did end up stopping them, and in doing so prevented Brian from ever inventing the technology, which meant he would have never gone to the North Pole, therefore he would have never found me. Would I one moment be in some random place and time, and then in a blink of an eye be back in Virginia with ST6? I brought this thought to Brian’s attention and he thought about it for a moment. He told me that the war had no effect on his studies, and that he would have invented time travel anyway. The only thing that would change was his exodus with Bohden and his students to the North Pole. I told myself that no matter the result, WWIII had to be prevented. I was so blind.
Kara ended our session with one last question, one that made me really think. She asked me, “Are you afraid?” I thought about this for a moment. Although I had felt fear in combat and during my inserts and extracts, I had not felt the same level of fear that I had felt during my time with the SEALs. I almost felt invincible, with the ability to alter the future and be invisible. My answer was an effort to ease her worries. “No, I’m not scared, the mission is too important for any weakness on my end to hinder its success,” I said in a confident way. Those eyes of hers showed me that she could see through my bullshit, but she didn’t pry.
TIME TRAVEL
Todd stood at the hinge of Odin’s ramp, the outline of his dark figure only distinguishable by the internal red lighting of the aircraft. He ensured the straps of his web gear and parachute were firmly tightened, enough to support him comfortably for when he would be beneath canopy. He double-checked all the metal buckles on his kit and ensured they were properly seated. He arched his back and put his hands up in the air to practice his free-fall body position. He chuckled when he reached back to do a practice touch on his pilot chute, remembering that he hadn’t used the old system since he was a young Ranger.
The new systems were always activated via control unit such as the wrist device, or in this case the MTX. In the corner of his eye he saw a group massing behind the large window behind him.
He put his arms down and turned to see Albrecht approach him.
“Thank you for doing this, Todd; this couldn’t be easy for anyone,” he said as he extended a hand towards him.
Todd looked at his hand and grasped it firmly. The visor of his helmet slid up and he looked Albrecht in the eyes and replied, “Thank you … for giving me a second chance.”
Albrecht smiled slightly and nodded, shaking his hand. He turned and walked back to the front and Amber and Kevin approached Todd. Amber had tears in her eyes, and she wrapped her arms around him. He chuckled and assured her that he would be fine. Kevin shook his hand; he pulled Todd in close and placed something in the side pouch of his pack, ending the maneuver by patting Todd in the shoulder.
“Be safe out there buddy!” He said.
Todd nodded and returned a pat to his shoulder. “Will do, my friend,” he said as Kevin and Amber stepped back into the adjacent room with the others. The door sealed the pressurized room so that the ramp could be opened.
He stepped to the skin of the aircraft and flicked a switch. The ramp announced its opening with a loud hissing noise. It continued to lower, presenting a growing black opening. It was a clear night; there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. He stepped to the edge of the ramp and peered twenty-nine thousand feet down at the earth’s surface, seeing the small lights of modern civilization. He looked back at the group behind the window; their eyes were all trained on him. He then saw Kara standing in the corner behind the group. She wore a familiar look of worry that troubled him. Knowing that she knew he was looking at her, he grinned and winked, then the visor of his helmet slid shut. Her eyes lit up slightly and the edges of her mouth curved up. Behind the dark visor, Todd smiled ear to ear. The O2 hissed with every breath within his helmet. He stepped to the edge of the ramp and looked out into the black abyss. His heart thumped in his chest. He looked down at the MTX; 1887 was set in the time wheel. A large button pulse
d beneath it displaying “Initiate.”
He took a deep breath and dove out of the aircraft. The relative wind caught his extended arms and leveled him out on his belly. He moved one arm to his chest and flipped over on his back to watch Odin become smaller and smaller in the moonlight, but was unable to see the aircraft as it flew away. Assuming it was too dark due to the lack of a full moon, he thought nothing of it and rotated back over to his belly and glanced at his current altitude displayed in his HUD. “27,484 feet AGL” was quickly scrolling down as he plummeted to the earth. Todd relaxed his body and took in the massive scope and the surreal clarity of his current situation. The ground beneath him was covered in thousands of lights from cars, street lights, and buildings. He looked back at his altitude. “22,875 feet AGL.” It was taking a little longer than expected so he slowly moved his arms from out front to his sides until his body was in a tracking position. The altitude began dropping quicker as he dove head first through the air like a missile.
Todd held this position for a few more seconds until he was around fifteen thousand feet. He then leveled off and brought his arms back to his front with his MTX in front of his face; his other hand held on to his left wrist. He moved his right index finger over the “Initiate” button. His heart began pounding in his chest. He was about to go back in time! He could hardly believe it. He pressed the button. The cables lining the suit lit up with a bright white light and then a loud crack made his ears ring. Suddenly, the lights of the modern civilization below all simultaneously went dark, and heavy clouds appeared out of nowhere all around him. The moonlight shone off the top of the heavy cloud coverage.
He passed through the clouds and entered heavy rain that streaked off his visor as he met the falling drops. Todd was in awe at what had just happened. One moment it was a clear night, the next it was a heavy storm. He continued falling, staring at the ground below, far too awestruck to look at his altitude, which was dangerously dropping. The word “DEPLOY!” began flashing in front of his face. He glanced at his altitude. “4,000 feet AGL” scrolled down his helmet, highlighted in red.
“Shit!” he yelled. He pressed the Deploy button on the MTX and felt the opening shock of his canopy inflating above him. He reached up and grabbed ahold of the steering toggles and began manipulating his parachute.
The rain and the lack of illumination made it hard to see the ground. Not a single light was present for as far as he could see. He used night vision to find a suitable landing area. He pulled his left toggle hard and began spinning downward. Once he was about twenty feet from the ground, he leveled off and swooped across the dark grass. Once Todd’s feet touched the ground, he jogged out of the momentum until he could drop down to a knee. The rain began to die down. He flipped the small Velcro-encased switch on his hip and his parachute retracted back into its container.
He stood up and looked around at the dark landscape. A bolt of lightning lit up the dark plains around him and was followed with a cracking boom a few seconds later. He pulled up a digital map on his MTX and placed a waypoint on Durango. His HUD highlighted the terrain before him and showed a large beacon up in the sky pointing down at the earth where the town was. The distance that displayed next to the beacon was “4.8 kilometers.” It would be daylight before he reached the town. He started walking towards it in the cool dead of night.
The rain finally stopped about an hour later. The clouds began to pull back, revealing a star-filled sky. Todd stayed vigilant as he strolled along the rolling landscape. Several minutes later, the clouds had completely disappeared and left the night once again beautifully illuminated by the moon. He remembered that Kevin had slipped something in his pack before he jumped, and he unclipped the pack from his shoulders and hips. He set it down in front of him and unzipped the side pocket. Inside was a small black pouch, about the size of a large book. He pulled it out; it was hefty and contained several items. He unzipped it and smiled at the contents. The custom 1911 pistol, its Kydex holster, a sound suppressor, and four eight-round magazines were inside. Todd looked up into the sky and grinned.
“Thanks, Kevin.”
He screwed on the stubby suppressor and inserted one of the mags, then racked the slide. He continued walking, holding the weapon down low. He moved softly through the night, a warrior of the twenty-first century prowling the dark landscape of the nineteenth. He felt like an alien who had just crash landed.
THE OLD WEST
The sun began to emit pink rays of light over the horizon and the land around him presented its breathtaking range. Dark purple mountains lined the distant horizon like an unreachable barrier that teased exploration. Footprints appeared one by one in the grass as Todd’s transparent figure walked across the endless plain.
He grasped the 1911, not sure what he might run into. To his front was a large grass hill that hid the sun and its soft mixture of colors behind it. He sighed at the sight and began huffing his way up. When he was nearly to the top, he was stopped in his tracks by a thunderous noise on the other side. He crouched down and slowly crept to the top of the hill as the rumbling noise becoming more and more present.
When he reached the peak, his body froze, and his heart felt as if it had skipped a beat. He slowly rose to his feet, removing his helmet and disengaging the cloaking system. The sweet familiar tinge of sage brush lingered in his nostrils. The sun peeked over the shallow clouds and lit the thousands of buffalo that trotted through the valley beneath him like a thundering river of fur and power. The sight put a lump in his throat and a smile on his face. The last time he had seen the U.S., it was a burning heap of concrete and glass; a dark reminiscence of an arrogant civilization meeting its end. Yet now, it was a wild and free place of natural beauty. The bison continued shuffling down the valley in an orchestrated manner. Todd knelt down and activated the “Communications” option on his MTX. He checked the Link Quality Analysis and found it was sixty-eight percent; good enough to send a text to the North Pole. He began typing on the digital keyboard on his wrist.
-SITREP-
I have successfully inserted into the Old West. My gear is all accounted for and operational. I will reach the town in less than an hour where I will begin my search for York. I will send another transmission in four hours. Let Kev know I said thank you.
P.S. Buffalo. Lots and lots of Buffalo.
He continued walking towards the town, occasionally looking back at the distant herd of bison. He saw wooden buildings two hundred meters in front of him and he began walking softly, fully cloaked. He could faintly hear and see people inside the town going about their early morning activities.
Todd reached the backside of one of the buildings, pressed up against it and peered around the side. He was in awe. Real Western folk on horses were moving around the town, wearing nineteenth century garb. He felt like he was in the set of a movie. A wagon drawn by two horses pulled in next to the building in front of Todd.
“Whoa!” the man controlling them said as the horses came to a stop. The man wore a light red blouse with a leather vest, and a short-brimmed hat was pulled low on his forehead. He had a thick mustache that nearly stretched to below his chin. He climbed down the wheel of the wagon and walked to the back, where he opened the tailgate and pulled off what appeared to be a bag of rice. He threw it over his shoulder and walked past Todd, only inches from nudging him.
The man went back for a second bag, and Todd took advantage of his absence and darted to the adjacent building. It had a low roof and it was near the center of town. Todd decided to get to the roof and try to get a better look at his surroundings. He stepped up on a wooden barrel at the base of the wall, jumped up and grabbed the corner of the roof. His shoulder muscles tightened as he pulled himself up, throwing a leg to the roof. The man unloading the bags paid no attention to his blatant disregard for noise discipline.
In a low squat, Todd crept to the edge of the building and surveyed the town. It consisted of approximately thirty buildings, all of which were similar in design. T
hey all had a large front that made the structure seem larger than they really were. Wooden porches skirted each building, separated at various levels from the different sized buildings next to each one. Hitching posts and waters troughs were set outside next to the support posts of most establishments. He counted six individuals who were outside and going about their own business. As time passed, more and more people would be out and about, making his sneaking around much more difficult.
His first priority was to obtain a disguise. For obvious reasons, the general store was out of the question, but he would need to borrow some clothes. At the corner of the street was the saloon, the largest of all the buildings in town. He figured there would be hotel rooms on the second floor for all-nighters. Perhaps he could acquire something to wear from an unoccupied room.
Todd hopped down from the roof and ran down the backside of the buildings, checking around the corners before he crossed each time. He hopped over several small wooden fences and did his best to do so quietly. He came to a square corral with three large horses slowly pacing back and forth inside. He hopped the gate and tiptoed past the large animals. He was only several feet from the other gate when one of the horses began rearing on its back legs. Startled by this, Todd backed up slowly. The horse continued to pounce on its hind legs, bringing its front hooves up and slamming them back down into the loose dirt, neighing loudly.
An older man with a gray beard and a floppy brown hat came running out of the barn in front of the corral. He opened the gate and put his hands out in front of him. He approached the spooked horse from an angle and talked to it calmly.
“Easy … easy,” he said as he softly placed his hand on the horse’s long face.
The horse shook its head and snorted as if to let the man know that something was awry. Todd watched as the man eased the powerful animal’s nerves. He wondered if it had somehow sensed his presence. He took note of this and continued towards the saloon.