Time Tunnel: The Towers Read online

  Time Tunnel: The Towers

  By Richard Todd

  Copyright © 2014 Richard Todd Miller

  ISBN 978-0-9906785-0-2

  MOBI Edition ISBN 978-0-9906785-2-6

  EPUB Edition ISBN 978-0-9906785-3-3

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014914402

  Dedicated to the heroes of 9/11

  Contents

  Soho Grand Hotel – New York, NY; September 10, 2001; 09:12 hours

  Roswell Army Air Field – Roswell, NM; July 10, 1947; 06:00 hours

  KGFL Radio – Roswell, NM; July 8, 1947; 11:25 hours

  Dreamland Research Facility – Area 51; Groom Lake, NV; March 15, 1985; 10:25 hours

  Dreamland Research Facility – Area 51; Groom Lake, NV; March 15, 1985; 10:45 hours

  US Airways Flight #2071 – Central Virginia; September 11, 2001; 09:50 hours

  World Trade Center, North Tower – New York, NY; September 11, 2001; 08:45 hours

  Milawa Base Camp – Tora Bora, Afghanistan; December 12, 2001; 05:00 hours

  374 Broadway – Apartment 3C; New York, NY; July 23, 2008; 09:48 hours

  Area 51, NV – July 23, 2008; 13:15 hours

  Time Tunnel Complex – Area 51, NV; July 23, 2008; 14:30 hours

  Time Tunnel Complex – July 23, 2008; 16:30 hours

  Time Tunnel Complex – Mission Control; July 23, 2008; 17:15 hours

  Time Tunnel Complex – Mission Control; July 23, 2008; 17:35 hours

  Time Tunnel Complex – Level 3; August 20, 2008; 09:10 hours

  Time Tunnel Complex – Level 3; September 15, 2008; 14:30 hours

  Time Tunnel Complex – Mission Control; October 1, 2008; 10:05 hours

  Time Tunnel Complex – Level 3—Kyle Mason’s apartment; October 26, 2008; 23:00 hours

  Time Tunnel Complex – Level 6—Time Tunnel Chamber; October 27, 2008; 08:00 hours

  Place: unknown – Date: unknown; Time: unknown

  Café Noir – New York, NY; September 10, 2001; 09:15 hours

  Corner of Thompson Street and Grand Street – New York, NY; September 10, 2001; 10:00 hours

  Sheraton Lincoln Harbor Hotel – Weehawken, NJ; September 10, 2001; 16:45 hours

  Marriott Hotel, Newark International Airport – Room 466; Newark, NJ; September 10, 2001; 23:59 hours

  Park Inn – Newton, MA; September 11, 2001; 01:05 hours

  Boston Logan International Airport – Boston, MA; September 11, 2001; 06:45 hours

  Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center – Nashua, New Hampshire; September 11, 2001; 08:20 hours

  American Airlines Flight 11 – Southeast New York; September 11, 2001; 08:35 hours

  Times Square – New York, NY; September 11, 2001; 10:28 hours

  Time Tunnel – Mission Control; October 27, 2008; 08:15 hours

  Soho Grand Hotel

  New York, NY

  September 10, 2001

  09:12 hours

  Kyle Mason opened his eyes. Next to him was the cavity of a vacant white pillow. The head that rested there was gone. In its place, a strand of long black hair lay tucked in the pillow’s ample folds.

  He heard shuffling and looked up. At the foot of his bed¸ a tall, young woman with brown skin and near waist-length black hair was pulling a maroon blouse around her braless torso. She buttoned up only halfway, and let the tails fall over her jeans.

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” the beautiful woman said with a loving smile.

  Kyle sat up in bed, returning her smile, rubbing sleep and sandy hair from his eyes. The sheet fell away from his chest.

  Padma’s eyes lit up. She thought Kyle looked like a god.

  While the Army had buffed him, Special Forces had chiseled his six-foot plus frame into an angled physique that he did not think was possible for his skinny former self to become.

  Padma sat down on the end of the bed to pull on her boots.

  “Where are you going?” asked Kyle.

  “Out for coffee,” replied Padma.

  “We can get room service,” said Kyle, pretending he didn’t know what she was really up to.

  “I prefer Starbucks,” replied Padma, looking over her shoulder at him.

  “You prefer American Spirits,” Kyle said, referring to her favorite cigarettes.

  Padma shot him a look, then got up and walked around to his side of the bed. Behind her was an overcast north-facing view of New York City. The Empire State Building stood in the distance. Padma put her hands on Kyle’s cheeks and leaned in to kiss him. A fresh diamond sparkled on her wedding finger.

  “I like married women,” Kyle said, between kisses.

  “I like being a married woman,” smiled Padma.

  She stroked a fresh tattoo on the inside of Kyle’s right forearm. The crisp, black character was the feminine form of “Padma” in Sanskrit. The tattoo, less than a day old, was outlined with his red inflamed skin.

  Padma reached for Kyle’s dog tags, hanging around his neck.

  “I’m married to Major Kyle Mason,” she said. “My parents are going to be so pissed.”

  “Pissed because you eloped or pissed because you married beneath you?” Kyle asked.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  Padma stroked Kyle’s chest with her fingers.

  “It’s not you,” Padma explained. “You know they like you. They’re just old-fashioned. They wanted me to marry a doctor or a lawyer in a traditional ceremony.”

  “What’s it called?” asked Kyle, “Viv…viva…”

  “Vivaah sanskar,” Padma replied. “I wear henna. You ride in on a white horse.”

  “I’d look good on a white horse,” Kyle said.

  “No doubt,” affirmed Padma.

  “So, you wear henna. Do you wear anything else?” asked Kyle.

  Padma leaned in to kiss Kyle.

  “Nothing else for you, love,” she said.

  Their kisses heated up. Kyle reached in to Padma’s blouse. After permitting him to fondle her for a few moments, she took his hand and kissed it.

  “Hold that thought. I’ll be back in 20 with coffee.”

  Kyle glanced at the lump under the covers, “If you’re not back in 20, it’s not my thoughts I’ll be holding.”

  Padma laughed and grabbed her black duffle coat on the way out of the hotel room.

  “I’ll be back soon, babe,” she said.

  Kyle beamed in her wake. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. He was newly wed to the most beautiful woman on the planet, and he was at the zenith of his career.

  Against the wishes of Padma’s traditional East Indian parents, she and Kyle had eloped the day before in a private civil ceremony at City Hall. New York’s City Hall was, at once, the world’s most and least romantic place to get hitched. With its long lines and numbered queuing system, it had all the allure of a traffic ticket processing center. Still, there was something exhilarating about the act of elopement—ignoring parents’ commands like bad children.

  Kyle had visited disappointment on his own parents years earlier, when he stunned them with the news that he was applying to the United States Military Academy at West Point after high school. Though he had already been accepted at Stanford, he felt Stanford was too close to his parents’ Palo Alto home. He also felt a calling from the military that he could not explain. His Silicon Valley friends thought he had completely lost his mind. He ignored them all, packed up, and headed for New York.

  Kyle jumped out of bed and picked up the phone next to the bed to order room service. While on hold, he stood, naked, in front of the window gazing at the metropolis. He hoped breakfast would be waiting for his bride when she returned. He knew she didn’t normally eat much at the beginning of the day—he ordered wheat toast,
fruit, and coffee. He wanted everything to be perfect during their short honeymoon in NYC. His generosity had already brought her to tears. She knew he had spent every last cent of his savings on her ring and their Soho Grand suite. Kyle’s largess was not driven by pride—Padma’s compensation was over ten times his military pay, and he had no illusions about who the breadwinner of the family was going to be. His Magi’s gift was motivated by nothing more than genuine desire to make his bride happy. Before she met Kyle, money was little more than a number to Padma. With this gesture, he had made it meaningful to her.

  What Kyle lacked in cash, he made up for in raw heroic talent. His military career was exemplary. He had graduated top of class from West Point. He became one of the youngest soldiers to receive a Silver Star when his Humvee platoon came under fire from an Iraqi tank platoon in Operation Desert Storm. As his small convoy was returning to base at night, the Iraqis surprised them, destroying one of his Humvees. Though many young officers would have exercised the better part of valor and retreated, Kyle opted instead to rally his troops and engage the tanks, despite the absence of artillery. His two Javelin Gunners took out two of the four Iraqi tanks, causing the remaining two to turn tail and run. Unbeknownst to the Iraqis, Kyle’s platoon had expended all of their anti-tank capacity on the first two tanks, leaving his men completely vulnerable. Kyle called in airstrikes on the remaining two tanks, and medevac’d his wounded from the damaged Humvee. Kyle knew he had been incredibly lucky—none under his command had been killed in the exchange.

  Kyle’s actions drew the attention of his superiors, who thought he had not only demonstrated heroism in the face of battle, but also remarkable poise for someone so young and inexperienced. One man he impressed was a lieutenant general named Aaron Craig. General Craig made it a point to get to know the young lieutenant and keep an eye on him as his career progressed.

  With tailwind from his Desert Storm experience, Kyle applied to the Army’s parachutist course, aka “Airborne School,” then the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program. After a tour as an Army Ranger, he applied to become a member of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta, more commonly known as Delta Force.

  The evaluation process for Delta candidates was excruciating. Rangers was tough. Delta Force was pure hell. After weeks of mental, physical, and emotional exercises, he and his fellow candidates were driven through a 40-mile navigation course intended to gauge endurance, speed, and intelligence. Kyle survived the course and became one of a very few selected for America’s most elite commando unit.

  Padma was drawn to the danger of Kyle’s job. Her world could not have been more different from his. She was a vice president at a Wall Street investment bank called Cantor Fitzgerald. Her life was consumed by numbers—numbers that translated into money.

  At 35, she was a couple years older than Kyle. Padma completed her undergraduate work at Columbia and then received her MBA from Stanford’s Business School, graduating Summa Cum Laude. Suitors from marquee firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan pursued the gorgeous prodigy with lucrative job offers.

  Padma found that she was very good at what she did, more than a match for the guys in the old boys’ club, though she felt something was missing in her artificial world of numbers.

  Padma had tried to explain her job to Kyle, but the convolutions of exotic derivatives glazed over his eyes in half the time it took to boil an egg. Padma loved their strangely conversed naivetés—Kyle was one of the world’s preeminent masters of real life and death though so innocent about her cutthroat world of big money. She smiled knowingly when the guys in her shop beat their chests about their latest “kill.” Padma knew better. She thought about her man with enormous pride, knowing the billionaire banker boys didn’t have the first clue what they were talking about. Kyle was her lightning rod to the real world—the physical world, where decisions are truly permanent. She loved him completely, and though she knew how much she would worry when he was away, the thought of what he did for a living sent an electric thrill up her spine. Though the tempo of her work was a burnout pace, and the dialect was machismo, no one ever died in the line of duty of investment banking.

  Kyle walked to the bathroom to cleanup, wrapping a towel around his waist. The bathroom was beautiful—a black-on-white toile at chest level, with polished black bricks below. It was large by New York hotel standards, with his and her sinks. Her toiletries and toothbrush were next to the right sink—his toiletries faced hers on the left. His bathroom toiletries would never be lonely again. He loved everything about being married to her.

  Kyle rubbed the beard on his angular jaw that framed an easy smile. Green eyes stared back at him from the mirror. He brushed back his sandy hair, which he had let grow well beyond a standard military buzz. In order to blend, many Delta operators let their hair and beards grow, depending on their assignment.

  Kyle brushed his teeth, and then lathered up to shave. He heard the chirp of the electronic door latch.

  “What’d you forget hon?” he shouted from the bathroom.

  He lowered his head in the sink to splash water on his face, then reached for a towel. He looked in the mirror. Someone was standing behind him.

  “FUCK!” he yelled.

  In the mirror’s reflection, there was not one Kyle Mason, but two.

  Roswell Army Air Field

  Roswell, NM

  July 10, 1947

  06:00 hours

  Captain Robert Shirkey gazed upon the black silhouettes of three C-54 Skymaster cargo planes queued up for takeoff on the Roswell Army Air Field’s sole runway. Dawn had broken minutes before, and the brilliant yellow-orange desert sun burst through gaps between the planes, transforming the black night sky into an ascendant midnight blue. The planes’ prop engines rumbled unevenly as they awaited clearance for takeoff. Though it was only 06:00, it was already nearly 80 degrees on the tarmac. Shirkey knew it was going to be a lot hotter at these planes’ final destination. A fourth plane, a B-29 Superfortress bomber, taxied to queue up behind the Skymasters. The B-29’s shiny chrome fuselage contrasted with the dull matte finishes of the cargo planes.

  Resting inside the cargo bays of the four planes was the most secret consignment on Earth—something that held the potential to transform the world and terrify its citizens.

  Roswell Army Air Field was the perfect launch pad for clandestine payloads. The hot, dusty desert base was home to the 509th Atomic Bomb Group, responsible for dropping the first nuclear bombs ever used in a battle theater. The Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the “Little Boy,” fission bomb on Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945 was parked only a few hundred feet from where Shirkey stood. With a yield of only 15 kilotons, Little Boy was puny compared with the new generation of multi-megaton hydrogen fusion bombs under development only a few hundred miles northwest in Los Alamos. Still, Little Boy was more than sufficient to flatten a city and create a 6,000-degree fireball 1,200 feet in diameter. One victim of the Hiroshima fireball was known only by the shadow he left on the steps of Sumitomo Bank. The bank patron sat, patiently waiting for the bank to open when the bomb vaporized everything about him except his shadow. It was left, memorialized in the bank’s concrete steps.

  The contents of the planes queued up on the airfield runway were far more dangerous than the Hiroshima bomb. Mere knowledge of the cargo had the potential to drive tens of millions of humans to mob panic. The planes contained the wreckage of a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft, smoking gun proof of two truths: the first was that humans were not alone in the universe. The second truth was that humans were not the smartest creatures in the cosmos. Someone out there was much smarter.

  The wreckage was concentrated in two debris fields near Roswell. The first site was discovered by William Ware “Mack” Brazel on July 6 when he surveyed the enormous J.B. Foster Ranch on horseback the morning after a fierce lightning storm the night before. The 48 year-old cowboy, named after former President William McKinley, worked as a
foreman on the sheep ranch, where he lived in a simple shack without electricity, telephone, or running water. The morning of the 6, he threw a faded Navajo blanket and leather saddle on his bay quarter horse, and a cowboy hat on his thinning combed-over head. He then rode out to survey the ranch landscape of desert grasses and arroyos in the summer heat.

  As Brazel made the rounds of the property, he spotted something unusual. In the distance, he saw a herd of sheep huddled together, behaving oddly. The animals were standing alert, heads up, facing the same direction. Normally, their heads would be at the ground, grazing on the sparse dry grass. As Brazel approached, he saw what alerted the sheep. Hundreds of solid graphite-gray fragments lay strewn over 200 square yards of charred earth. The fragments ranged in size from a few inches in length, width, and depth, to several feet. Brazel’s normally bombproof horse snorted at the strange sight. Brazel dismounted to take a closer look. He reached down and picked up one of the smaller fragments. It was several inches wide and light as a feather. One side of the solid dark gray object had a featureless smoothly curved surface. The opposite site was cragged with sharp angles, as though it had fractured away from the parent body. Brazel took out his pocketknife and tried to cut into the smooth side of the object. His knife couldn’t scratch the surface. He pushed the point of his knife hard into the fragment, trying to puncture it. His pocketknife blade snapped off.