D-Day Read online

  D-Day

  TIME PATROL

  BOB MAYER

  “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” — Albert Einstein

  Dedication

  For all those young soldiers who parachuted, glided, or landed into Normandy on the Day of Days, and the members of the Resistance who put their lives on the line for freedom!

  The Time Patrol

  There once was a place called Atlantis. Ten thousand years ago, it was attacked by a force known only as the Shadow, on the same day over the course of six years. The last attack led to Atlantis being obliterated to the point where it is just a legend.

  There are many Earth timelines. The Shadow comes from one of those alternate timelines (or perhaps more than one). It is attacking our timeline by punching bubbles into our past that can last no more than twenty-four hours. In each bubble, the Shadow is trying to change our history and cause a time ripple.

  By itself, a single time ripple can be dealt with, corrected, and absorbed. But a significant time ripple that is unchecked can become a Cascade. And six Cascades combine to become a Time Tsunami.

  That would be the end of our timeline, and our existence.

  To achieve its goal, the Shadow attacks six points in time simultaneously; the same date, in different years.

  The Time Patrol’s job is to keep our timeline intact.

  The Time Patrol sends an agent back to each of those six dates to keep history the same.

  This is one of those dates: 6 June.

  Where The Time Patrol Ended Up This Particular Day: 6 June

  “The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.” — General Dwight D Eisenhower

  Normandy France, 6 June 1944 A.D.

  “STAND IN THE DOOR!”

  Mac barely had a chance to grip the metal frame around the opening in the side of the plane before he was slapped on the rump and the jumpmaster screamed, “Go!”

  Mac went on pure instinct, throwing himself out of a perfectly good airplane, chin tucked, hands around the reserve across his belly. The airplane’s prop blast immediately ripped away the leg bag containing the Thompson submachine gun and the blasting caps. Mac was automatically counting, “One thousand, two thousand, three thous—” then the opening shock of the parachute jerked him upright.

  He checked above, and the twenty-eight-foot diameter hemisphere above his head appeared intact. He looked down. He was 700 feet above ground, just the dark mass of Earth below. There was a little time, so he glanced about. Quiet, other than the fading sound of a plane’s engines. Lights here and there in the countryside. But no flak, no artillery, nothing martial to foreshadow the greatest invasion the world would ever know. The Day of Days was yet to kick off with fireworks.

  Mac was going to be one of the first with boots on the ground, but he would be gone before the day came to a close.

  Hopefully.

  Where was the drop zone? The Resistance should be showing a light. Why else had he, whoever he was before he left the plane, jumped? Fortunately, there was an opening among the trees almost directly below.

  This was a T-7 chute, the download reminded him—no toggles to steer with, so he reached up and grabbed the risers, pulling, trying to gain some control. He felt like a target. The green chute was silhouetted against the dark sky, and he felt a moment of empathy for Roland, who’d been the first to jump in on so many Nightstalker missions.

  If a bullet came, he knew he wouldn’t hear it; it would just be one moment here and then not here, sort of like traveling in time, except with no consciousness in the not-here. He took a deep breath then exhaled, hearing the air rush around his canopy.

  Feet and knees together, knees slightly bent; the training from the Black Hats at Fort Benning during Airborne School was deeply ingrained. He glanced down once more, and then he saw the deeper black opening of the well directly below him.

  It is 1944 A.D. The world’s population is 2.2 billion. World War II is well on its way to taking fifty to eighty million, depending on who is doing the math, out of that number. National Velvet, starring Elizabeth Taylor, is released; Auschwitz is photographed by a British surveillance aircraft; Anne Frank and family are arrested; IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator; Hitler survives another assassination attempt; George Lucas is born; the 1944 Summer Olympics, scheduled for London, are postponed; The siege of Leningrad is lifted; Jimmy Page is born; Kurt Gerron films a Nazi propaganda film in a concentration camp, then is sent with his entire crew to die in Auschwitz; the Great Escape; No Exit is published by Sartre.

  And Mac saw no exit if he went down that well.

  Some things change; some don’t.

  Mac pulled on the risers, trying to ‘slip’ the canopy, but the ground was rushing up now, the way it always did in the last fifty feet of the jump. There was movement to one side, and he saw the woman with the gun.

  Sjaelland Island, Denmark, 6 June 452 A.D.

  “Then perhaps you should be dead,” Beowulf said. “Perhaps you are already dead, which would explain how you got in here, and why you do the bidding of the Goddess Hel.”

  The hair on the back of Roland’s neck tingled, a warning he’d learned never to ignore. He looked at the barred double doors across the entrance to the great hall of Heorot. “Is there another way in here?”

  Beowulf shook his head. “Only the front can be opened from the inside. We sealed every other door.”

  Roland realized his, and Beowulf’s, mistake as the monster dropped from the smoke hole in the roof and landed on the stone floor with a solid thud, right next to the fire pit, its massive weight cracking the flagstone beneath.

  Nobody ever looks up.

  Roland could hear Nada’s voice echoing inside his head just as the sound of Grendel’s arrival echoed outside of it.

  Roland spun to face the monster as it shredded two of Beowulf’s thanes before they were awake, blood, viscera and flesh splattering about.

  It is 452 A.D. The world’s population is 190 million. Fifty-two percent of those humans live in India and China, seventeen percent in the rest of Asia, seventeen percent in Europe, ten percent in Africa, and the rest of the world has only four percent; Attila leads the Huns in an invasion of Italy; King Vortigen marries Rowena and becomes King of the Britons; Saint John the Silent is born and will become known for living alone for seventy-six years; Emperor Valentinian III flees from Ravenna to Rome trying to escape Attila’s invasion.

  With his first glimpse of Grendel, Roland realized this was a lot worse than he had imagined it could be.

  Some things change; some don’t.

  Kala Chitta Range, Pakistan, 6 June 1998 A.D

  “Into the valley of death we go.”

  Doc blinked, trying to get oriented. The man who’d spoken was definitely inside his personal space, less than a foot in front of him, holding a piece of paper in front of Doc’s face. “Message decoded, sir.”

  Doc took the piece of paper. He was in a small cave, hole, whatever; he couldn’t quite make out his surroundings in the dark. Doc read it in the very dim glow from a single chem light that the man cupped in his other hand.

  The words were scrawled in block letters:

  TASK FORCE KALI A GO

  VIA PRESIDENTIAL AUTHORIZATION

  CODE FOUR KILO NINE NINE ECHO TERMINUS

  REPEAT GO

  VERIFY

  CODE FOUR KILO NINE NINE ECHO TERMINUS

  KALI WHEELS UP IN THREE ZERO MIKES

  TIME ON TARGET FOUR HOURS ONE FIVE MIKES

  INITIATE CLOCK AT MESSAGE TRANSMISSION DATE TIME STAMP

  MAY GOD BE WITH YOU XXX

  Doc had to read it twice to process what it meant.
r />   It is 1998 A.D. The world’s population is 5.943 billion. The Lunar Prospector finds water on the moon, and NASA predicts it is enough to support human colonies; Frank Sinatra dies; Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning; Matthew Shepard is beaten and left to die in a field in Laramie, Wyoming; Pol Pot dies (no one will miss him); the High-Z Supernova team is the first to publish evidence that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate; the Unabomber pleads guilty; the story of President Clinton’s ‘did not have sex’ with Monica Lewinsky breaks; Google is founded; a Soviet sailor kills five others, barricades himself in the torpedo room of a nuclear submarine, and threatens to explode it, causing a nuclear meltdown; Saddam Hussein brokers a deal with the U.N. to allow weapons inspectors back in, preventing war (for the time being).

  Doc very much wished at the moment that Pakistan was at the same developmental stage in weapons of mass destruction as Iraq, but it was in vain, since Pakistan had had the capability for nuclear weapons since 1984.

  Some things change; some don’t.

  Doc looked about, noted it was dark outside through the narrow observation slit, then realized exactly where he was: The TF Kali surveillance position in Pakistan, overlooking the nuclear storage facility. Accessing the download, he found the duty roster and learned the identity of the other man in the hole with him: Staff Sergeant Duane Lockhart.

  But this was not where he’d expected to be. Not at all.

  It was surprisingly cold for June, but they were at altitude. Lockhart reached inside his field jacket then retrieved a red envelope. He ripped it open and leaned next to Doc, checking the authentication code against the one in the message.

  “Crap,” he muttered when the codes matched. “Yours, sir?” he prompted.

  Doc fumbled around inside his camouflage Gore-tex jacket and felt an envelope. He retrieved it, then opened and checked it.

  Identical.

  “Ours is but to do and die,” Lockhart said. “And I’d put my money on the dying part.”

  Delphi, Greece, 6 June 478 B.C.

  “You’re too late.”

  The first thing Scout saw was the body lying in a pool of blood on the floor of the cave. Then a small fire. And on the other side of the fire, an old woman dressed in a white robe, with a heavy red cape over her shoulders. She was clutching the cape tight around her neck and had a purple veil over the lower part of her face.

  “I’m too late?” Scout asked, trying to understand where she was, who was dead, and who the old woman was, although that answer popped up instantly: the Oracle of Delphi.

  “Can’t you see?” the Oracle asked bitterly, pointing at the body.

  It is 478 B.C. The world’s population is roughly 100 million humans, minus 300 Spartans and a lot of Persian troops from a battle two years previously at the Gates of Fire in Thermopylae, and tens of thousands more from the battles the next year which finally pushed the Persians out of Greece, allowing them to once more celebrate these games, the Pythian, in honor of Apollo and the Oracle of Delphi; Fifty-one percent of those humans alive are in India and China, twenty-one percent in the rest of Asia, eighteen percent in Europe, seven percent in Africa, and the rest of the world has only three percent; despite objections from the Spartans, Athens is rebuilt after the Persians destroyed it; there are no plans to rebuild a structure called the Parthenon, which was utterly destroyed by the Persians, although about a century and a half later, a guy named Alexander would sow revenge on the Persians for that act and many others by destroying their empire.

  Scout looked more closely at the dead man lying facedown, his white robe stained with blood. “Who is this? What happened?”

  “That’s Pythagoras,” the Oracle said. “The man you were supposed to save.”

  Some things change; some don’t.

  United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, 6 June 1843 A.D.

  “A man does not beat an animal,” Cadet Ulysses S. Grant snapped, holding tight to the bridle of the Hell-Beast. “Never!”

  “An honorable man does not intrude between another man and his lady.” George Pickett’s face was flushed with anger. He stepped up to Grant, barely two feet between them, the horse on one side. He slapped Grant across the face. “On your honor, sir!”

  Grant nodded. “Accepted!”

  “One half-hour,” Pickett said. “The river field with pistols. We will see who has honor. And courage.”

  It is 1843 A.D. The world’s population is 1.2 billion. Roughly twenty million live in the United States. Former West Point cadet Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, is published; the world’s first bored tunnel opens underneath the River Thames in London; the Indian Slavery Act removes legal support for slavery within the territories controlled by the East India Company; the first major wagon train departs for the western United States; Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol is published and sells out by Christmas Eve; the world’s first Christmas cards are sent in London; James Joule finds the mechanical equivalent of heat; Saint Louis University becomes the first law school west of the Mississippi; Henry James is born.

  Ivar sighed. He’d barely been here ten minutes, and Grant was in a duel for his life with the man who would lead the most important charges in both the Mexican War and Civil War.

  Some things change; some don’t.

  Chauvet Cave, Southern France, 6 June 32,415 Years B.P. (Before Present)

  The point man raised a fist as he came abreast of Moms’s position. The other four warriors and the woman froze. The point man looked left, then right. Moms was hidden under the bush to the right of the trail, and had also gone still at the signal. She stopped breathing, her hands on the Naga staff, knowing that even with the weapon, these were very bad odds.

  Seconds passed, an eternity, then the point man signaled for them to continue.

  The female hesitated for a moment, and Moms felt the woman’s gaze rake over the area where she was hidden. It was tangible, and it took everything Moms had not to stand up.

  Then the woman moved on.

  They disappeared up the valley, following those whom Moms was here to protect.

  Moms took a deep breath and got to her knees, then stood. She estimated there was about an hour of daylight left.

  They’d attack once the tribe was settled in for the night inside the cave.

  Moms giggled uncontrollably for a moment, her mind a swirl of images she couldn’t process and her body coursing with emotions she couldn’t control. She closed her eyes, took several deep breaths, and managed to regain control.

  Moms stepped onto the trail then followed.

  It is 32,415 Years B.P., which stands for either Before Present, or can be interpreted as Before Physics, based on radiocarbon dating becoming commonly used in the 1950s; it is dated back from 1 January 1950 A.D., because after that, the proportion of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere from nuclear testing makes carbon dating unreliable.

  There was killing to be done.

  Some things change; some don’t.

  But Before D-Day, and As They Came Back From The Ides Of March

  New York City: The Present

  “THE NEEDLE’S FINE,” Edith Frobish said, referring to Cleopatra’s Needle, located in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

  The hieroglyphics that had been missing (at least to Edith and the other members of the Time Patrol) were back. Edith, not trusting her eyes or Ivar’s, had asked three different passersby. All confirmed they saw what she and Ivar saw, then hurried away from the crazy couple standing next to the obelisk. New Yorkers were tolerant, but asking them if they saw what was clearly there made even a cynical “New Yawker” a bit nervous.

  “The team did it,” Edith said.

  “They did,” Ivar agreed. “I hope everyone is all right.”

  Edith had her satchel, and Ivar had a large backpack full of notes over one shoulder. They’d come back to the here and now to do some research. They’d just met back up
at the Needle before heading to the Possibility Palace.

  “We’ll know shortly,” Edith said. “Let’s get out of here before we run into another policeman wondering why we’re wondering.”

  She had an extra bounce in her step now that all was in place in her world. She pushed open the metal door on the side of the Metropolitan Museum of Art labeled‘ Authorized Personnel Only‘.

  There was no security guard on duty.

  “That’s odd,” Edith said.

  Ivar shifted the heavy load he was carrying. “Let’s go. I want to look at this data for—”

  “No,” Edith said. “This isn’t right.” She remembered the last time something wasn’t right and how it had involved death and mayhem.

  Edith led them down a corridor, but turned left toward the Museum proper instead of right toward the elevator down to the Gate leading to the Possibility Palace.

  “Edith,” Ivar complained, but then she pushed open a door and stepped through. Having no choice, Ivar followed. They were on a balcony overlooking one of the exhibit halls. The usual throng of people were milling and moving below them, taking in the paintings and sculptures.

  “Everything’s fine,” Ivar said. “Can we—”

  Edith gasped. She lifted a hand, fingers trembling. “Look!”

  Ivar stared where she was pointing. A row of paintings. “I don’t—” he faltered as one of the paintings faded from sight, leaving a blank canvas.

  No one in the crowd seemed to notice.

  “I don’t—” Ivar began, but then another painting faded out.

  “Oh, dear!” Edith exclaimed. “Not the art.”

  “It’s just some paintings,” Ivar said.