D-Day

by Bob Mayer

  “Pearl beer,” Moms said, passing cans out. Once everyone had one, Moms opened hers, then held it up.

  “To Mac.”

  “To Mac,” everyone responded.

  “To the Time Patrol,” Eagle said.

  “To the Time Patrol.”

  “To Nada,” Scout said.

  “To Nada.”

  The Possibility Palace: Down the Hall

  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 things.”

  “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.”

  “We’re replaceable,” Lara said.

  “Pretty much everyone,” Dane said.

  “Who am I replacing?” she asked. “There’s a group of sad people here. They miss someone.”

  “That’s not important right now,” Dane said.

  “Would they miss me some day?” Lara murmured. “It would be nice to be missed. I doubt they miss me on the Fifth Floor. But maybe they do, but not for good reasons.”

  As Frasier opened his mouth to say something, Dane gave a subtle signal with his hand, silencing him. “What is needed to be a member of the Time Patrol, Lara, is that you are a person who will never, ever, use our capability and go back and change something for personal reasons. Every person has something in their past, some point where we wish we had chosen differently. Many points, probably. But you can’t ever use time travel for personal reasons.”

  He held up three fingers. “You now have to make a decision to take one of three paths. First, you may choose not to choose. To walk away. Second, you may go back to that key moment and change what happened. Third—”

  “You will not allow that second choice if it changes history,” Lara said.

  “True,” Dane said. “But as I said, most of us aren’t that important. If you choose to go back, and it doesn’t affect the timeline—and it most likely won’t—you will be allowed to go back but that will be it and you will never be Time Patrol. And if you begin to interfere in the point you go back to by knowing the future, you will receive a visit from one of our operatives at that time, and be Sanctioned.”

  “Killed.”

  “Yes.”

  “I imagine that will also be the result if I choose not to choose.”

  “No,” Dane said. “You’ll be sent home.”

  “’Home’?” Lara laughed. “What home? The Fifth Floor? Before that? Which home? Which person?” Lara shook her head. “You will not allow me to leave this place, knowing what I know.”

  “You won’t know what you know,” Frasier said. “We’ll wipe your memory from the time you arrived at Area 51 until just before you get back.”

  “Ah,” Lara said. “But how do you know this key moment?”

  “We know,” Dane said. “We have our own people with the Sight.”

  “And my final option...?” Lara asked.

  “Accept who you are now,” Dane said. “Where you are now. All that has happened to shape you into who you are. And choose to be part of the Time Patrol.”

  “When do I have to make this choice?” she asked.

  “Now,” Dane replied.

  “I can really go back and change it?”

  “Yes.” Dane said. “We both know the moment.”

  “Do you?”

  A flicker of uncertainty crossed Dane’s face.

  “And if I change it,” Lara said, “that won’t change the timeline?”

  “No.”

  She stared at Dane, unblinking. Tears glistened in her eyes. She looked down for a long moment, blinking hard. When she looked up, the tears were gone.

  “I will stay here and be Time Patrol.”

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Edith Frobish stood on the balcony overlooking the main hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her hands on the railing, her fingers rubbing the metal nervously.

  She’d checked. There was no record of the Charioteer of Delphi in Greece or in the art world. It had never existed.

  As far as the art in the Met?

  It was all there. Nothing fading, nothing gone.

  But there were differences. She’d walked the museum before it opened this morning. Every spot that was supposed to have art in it did: paintings on the wall, sculptures on their stands. But some were different. Subtly different.

  But different.

  The End

  For Now

  Books by Bob Mayer

  Coming 4 July 2016

  Independence Day

  The next installment in the Time Patrol Series

  by Bob Mayer

  "Same date; six different years, the Time Patrol must save our timeline from the Shadow by preserving our past.

  On the 4th of July 362 B.C. is the Battle of Mantinea in Greece, in which Sparta is defeated by Thebes in a Pyrrhic victory, leading to a third party uniting Greece: Philip II, father of a man who would change history: Alexander The Great. But what if Sparta wins the battle?

  The 4th of July, 1776 is one of the most important dates in American history, but there is also the 4th of July exactly 50 years later, in 1826, when two of the architects of that document and the country, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, die within hours of each other. What secrets do they hold close on their deathbeds? And who else might know about them?

  At Gettysburg, the Confederacy reaches its ‘high water mark’ with Pickett’s charge on the 3rd of July 1863. But on the 4th, both armies stare at each other on a rainy day, waiting for the other to make a move. What if the Union attacks?

  All of these events, and others on the same day, are being attacked by
the SHADOW.

  It is up to the Time Patrol to send an agent back to six different years on the 4th of July and make sure our timeline remains intact. If they fail, our present will snap out of existence!

  Order your copy now!

  Amazon

  For more on the following, I recommend these books:

  Nightstalkers: Time Patrol. How the Nightstalkers became the Time Patrol

  Time Patrol: Black Tuesday. The first mission run by the Time Patrol, to 29 October in six different years.

  Before they were the Time Patrol, they were the Nightstalkers:

  The Nightstalkers Series: The Fun in North Carolina. Where the Nightstalkers first encounter Scout in a gated community in North Carolina. The Fun in the Desert. And a history of the Nightstalkers and how they dealt with the Rifts, a President who cannot tell a lie and more! The Clusterfrak in Nebraska. The Demon Core and how it was used at Area 51 to open the first Rift is also touched on in this series.

  The six book Atlantis Series: Tells the story of another Earth timeline that faced the Shadow and fought a battle against it covering centuries. We meet Dane, Amelia Earhart, and others from another timeline that battled the Shadow. As well as: The Space Between, The Shadow, The Ones Before.

  The books cover a battle in the present and great battles in the past such as Little Big Horn, Isandlwanda, the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, Gladiators in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius and more.

  Duty, Honor, Country: West Point to Mexico, is a free eBook, first in the series. It goes to West Point in 1842 and traces Grant and other West Pointers from the Academy to the Mexican War and through it. The series goes forward, currently to the battle of Shiloh.

  Amazon

  And, of course, if you’re interested in how Hannah and Neeley came together, The Cellar series consists of Bodyguard of Lies and Lost Girls.

  Amazon

  Also free: The Green Berets: Eyes of the Hammer. The first book in the bestselling Green Beret series.

  Amazon

  Acknowledgements: To the members of my private Facebook group, the A-Team, for feedback on covers, ideas and beta reads. Thanks to Dalice Peterson and K.D. for their beta reads.

  Excerpt from Atlantis

  ANGKOR KOL KER

  It was well into the first month of the wet season but not a drop of rain had fallen. Concern in the first week had turned to fear by the fourth week. As the water level of the deep moat fell, so did the will of the occupants of the capitol city. Anxiety was spreading like a sickness from person to person and mother to babe.

  The city had taken the people over five hundred years to build. Within its watery protection lay all their wealth, memories and the graves of ten generations of their ancestors. It was the most advanced and beautiful city on the face of the planet.

  Thousands of miles to the west, Charlemagne was being crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the Eternal City, but this place deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia dwarfed even Rome in comparison. It was the center of a kingdom extending south to about the Srivijayan Empire of Sumatra and the Shailandra Empire of Java. To the northeast, the Tang Dynasty of China ruled, while to the west, in the Middle East, the tide of Islam was rising. The capitol city of Angkor Kol Ker, the heart of the Khmer empire, held architecture the likes of which Europe would not see for half a century. But within the empire lay a Shadow--a dark place, which closed off all travel toward India and the world beyond.

  The ancestors of the Khmer people had traveled halfway around the globe to avoid the shadow and for many generations they had seemingly foiled the force that had destroyed their original homeland. That place had birthed the Ones Before; the ones who knew the secrets of the Shadow. Secrets that their descendants had forgotten or remembered only as myth. But two generations ago, myth and legend reappeared in the lives of the Khmer. The Shadow had appeared in the mountainous jungle to the northwest, sometimes coming close, sometimes almost disappearing, but always stopping at the water. Now the water was disappearing.

  The Emperor and his advisers gazed toward the mist-covered jungle beyond the evaporating moat knowing the Shadow had removed their choices as quickly as the sun took away the water. They spotted a fire from the guard tower on top of a northern mountain that poked above the mist. The fire burned for two nights, then went out and never came back.

  The Emperor knew it was time. The Ones Before had written thousands of years ago of abandoning their home. He knew the cost of quitting the city. The Ones Before had chosen a hard thing to save the people. The next morning, the Emperor issued the order to evacuate the city.

  Wagons were piled high, packs were placed on backs, and en masse, almost the entire population of the city crossed the lone causeway and trekked away to the south.

  Fifty strong men remained. Warriors, standing tall, spears, swords and bows in hand, they had chosen to represent all the people of the Khmer. They would face the Shadow, so the city would not die alone. They destroyed the causeway and waited on the northern edge of the city, staring across at the dark mist that approached. It grew ever closer despite their prayers that the clouds would come overhead and rain would fall, filling the moats.

  The men had been tested in battle numerous times. Against the Tang people to the northeast, and the people of the sea along the coast to the south, they had fought many battles and won most, expanding the kingdom of the Khmer. But the warriors of the Khmer had never invaded the jungle-covered mountains to the northwest. They had never within living memory gone in that direction, nor had any intrepid traveler from the lands on the other side come through.

  The warriors were brave men but even the bravest's heart quavered each morning as the mist grew closer, and the water still lower. One morning they could see the stone bottom of the moat and only puddles were left, drying under the fierce sun. The moat was over four hundred meters wide and surrounded the entire rectangle of buildings and temples, stretching four miles north and south and eight miles east and west.

  Inside the moat, a high stonewall enclosed the city. Over 200,000 people had called Angkor Kol Ker home, and their absence reverberated through the city, a heavy weight on the souls of the last men. The tread of the warriors’ sandals on the stone walkways echoed against the walls of the temples. Gone were the happy cries of children playing, the chants of priests, the yells of merchants in their stalls. And now even the jungle sounds were disappearing as every animal that could flee did so.

  In the center of the city was the central temple, Angkor Ker. The center Prang of the temple was over five hundred feet of vertical, massive stone, a hundred feet taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza. It had taken two generations to construct and its shadow lay long over the city as the sun rose in the east, merging with the Shadow that crept closer from the west.

  As the last puddle dried, tendrils of the thick mist crossed the moat. The warriors said their prayers loudly, so their voices would prove to the gathering Shadow that this was a city well loved. Angkor Kol Ker and the fifty men waited. They did not wait long.

  FLIGHT 19 AD 1945

  FORT LAUDERDALE AIR STATION

  “Sir, I request stand-down from this afternoon's training flight.”

  Captain Henderson looked up from the papers on his desk. The young man standing in front of him wore starched khakis, the insignia of a corporal in the Marine Corps sewn onto the short sleeves. On his chest were campaign ribbons dating back to Guadalcanal.

  “You have a reason, Corporal Foreman?” Henderson asked. He didn't add that Lieutenant Presson, the leader of Training Flight 19 had just been in his office making the same request. Henderson had denied the officer's immediately, but Foreman was a different matter.

  “Sir, I've got enough service points to be mustered out in the next week or so.” Foreman was a large man, broad shouldered. His dark hair was swept back in thick waves, flirting with regulations, but with the war just a few months over, some rules had waned in the euphoria of victory.

  “What does that hav
e to do with the flight?” Henderson asked.

  Foreman paused and his stance broke slightly from the parade rest he had assumed after saluting. “Sir, I--”

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, I just don't feel good. I think I might be sick.”

  Henderson frowned. Foreman didn't look sick. In fact his tan skin radiated health. Henderson had heard this sort of thing before, but only before combat missions, not a training flight. He looked at the ribbons on Foreman's chest, noted the Navy Cross and bit back the hasty reply that had formed on his lips.

  “I need more than that,” Henderson said, softening his tone.

  “Sir, I have a bad feeling about this flight.”

  “A bad feeling?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Henderson let the silence stretch out.

  Foreman finally went on. “I had a feeling like this before. In combat.” He stopped, as if no further words were required.

  Henderson leaned back in his seat, his fingers rolling his pencil end over end.

  “What happened then, corporal?”

  “I was on the Enterprise, sir. Back in February. We were scheduled to do an attack run off the coast of Japan. Destroy everything that was floating. I went on that mission.”

  “And?”

  “My entire squadron was lost.”

  “Lost?”

  “Yes, sir. They all disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No survivors?”

  “Just my plane's crew, sir.”