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“As part of phase 1, the army also secured major financial institutions and infrastructure to prevent the transfer of funds outside the country.

  “The army has since moved to the second phase, which was to assume control of the other branches of the military. Our army has secured all domestic Air Force installations, Marine bases, and Coast Guard bases. We have secured all domestic naval bases, though several aircraft carrier battle groups remain at sea, as well as ballistic and tactical submarines.

  “Though the ballistic submarines carry nuclear missiles, those weapons cannot be enabled without the launch codes, which we have secured.

  “The army has now entered phase 3, securing the country’s energy infrastructure—all energy production facilities and transport infrastructure. Completion of this phase is expected by end of day.”

  “What resistance are you encountering?” asked Jones.

  “Limited. Sporadic,” replied the general. “Our greatest concern was resistance from the other branches of the military. Our goal was to achieve the element of surprise, which we succeeded in doing. Communications to leadership was severed at the outset of the operation, which created confusion in the chain of command.”

  “Some isolated groups of civilian fighters have attempted to stage resistance here and there, but all communications are closely monitored. When we detect insurgent communications, we freeze their bank assets and raid their homes. Though there have been attempts to encrypt communications, we control all the companies used for encryption. We can freely eavesdrop on all communications.

  “In a few instances, when resistance has been well organized and armed, instead of risking soldiers’ lives, we’ll simply drop a Hellfire missile from a predator drone.

  “Though some survivalists have stockpiled significant stashes of weapons, ammunition, food, and supplies, they’ve been cut off from their funds and are now draining their caches. The vast majority of citizens are terrified of the consequences of lending support to the insurgence. Most of the preppers will exhaust their resources within the year.”

  “Excellent work, General. You and your soldiers are to be commended,” said Jones. “Now, what do you have to report regarding your progress in apprehending the fugitives Anderson Wild and Padma Mahajan. I must say I’m a little disappointed it’s taking so long.”

  “My apologies, Consul,” replied the general. “My army and I have been a little busy over the past few days.”

  “Your sarcasm is not appreciated here, General,” snapped Jones. “The American people demand justice, as do I.”

  The general glared at Jones, summoning the full measure of his will to contain his inner contempt for the fat dictator.

  “My staff and I are preparing the attack plan,” replied the general coldly. “Taking over America was easy. Taking Dreamland is another story.”

  “And why is that, General?” asked Jones. “You have the most powerful army in the world.”

  “Dreamland is an underground fortress encased in hardened steel,” replied the general. “Breaking in without destroying the facility is challenging.”

  Jones fantasized about a public show trial for the couple, followed by an execution for Wild and a lifetime sentence of servitude for Padma at the consul’s beck and call.

  “Give them an ultimatum,” said Jones. “If they don’t come out, nuke Dreamland.”

  “That would be a mistake,” replied the general.

  “What the hell did you say?” snapped Jones. “I’m the consul! I don’t make mistakes. But you sure as hell just did!”

  “I think you should know exactly what you’re nuking before you do it,” replied the general coldly.

  “So, tell me, General, what exactly is at Dreamland?” asked Jones.

  “It would be best if I shared that with you in private.”

  “I have no secrets from these men,” said Jones.

  “After I tell you,” said the general, “you’ll wish you did.”

  Jones and the general stared at each other for a few tense moments. Jones blinked.

  “Gentlemen, please excuse us,” said Jones.

  The men rose and began to file out of the room. As General Patterson reached the door, General Craig called out to him.

  “Oh, General Patterson, there’s just one thing before you go,” General Craig said. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  Panic flashed across General Patterson’s face. Jones looked confused.

  General Craig turned to Jones. “You see, Consul, you may not have any secrets from these men, but one of these men is holding back a secret from you.”

  General Craig pivoted to General Patterson. “I’m not the only man in the room who knows what’s at Dreamland. General Patterson knows what’s down there too… You see, Consul, General Patterson ran Dreamland before I did.”

  Jones glared at General Patterson, stunned.

  “Consul, I…” General Patterson stammered, “I was trying to find the appropriate time.”

  Jones looked at General Craig, then turned to Joshua Jones.

  “General Jones,” Jones said to his son, “please have your men escort General Patterson to the Praetorian Guard detention facility. I’ll have some questions for him later.”

  “Yes, Consul,” replied Joshua Jones, motioning for Praetorian guardsmen to escort General Patterson out of the situation room. Two black-uniformed guardsmen entered and took General Patterson by each arm.

  “Consul, no!” yelled General Patterson. “Please! I can explain!”

  All eyes were on General Patterson as he was pulled from the room. Only General Patterson saw General Craig’s Cheshire grin as the door slammed shut.

  Jones and General Craig were alone. Jones turned to the general.

  “This had better be good,” warned Jones.

  “In 1947,” the general began, “it was reported that a spacecraft crashed in Roswell, New Mexico—”

  “Oh goddammit! Roswell’s a myth!” interrupted Jones.

  The general stared forward. His expression didn’t flinch.

  “You’re shittin’ me!” said Jones. “Roswell was real?”

  “Roswell was real,” confirmed the general.

  “The aliens are at Dreamland?”

  “The remains of four are at Dreamland,” replied the general, “as is their spacecraft.”

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Jones.

  “We reverse engineered much of their technology,” continued the general. “Their power source is of particular interest. They use antimatter to power their ship.”

  “What in the Sam Hill is ‘antimatter’?”

  “The short answer is that it’s the most powerful weapon on this planet,” replied the general. He placed his hands on the chair in front of him. “An antimatter bomb with the mass of this chair could destroy Europe.”

  “God Almighty!” exclaimed Jones. “And Wild and Mahajan know this?”

  “They do,” replied the general. “Which is why the ultimatum won’t work. They know I’ll never destroy Dreamland.”

  “So those two are the most powerful people on the planet,” deduced Jones.

  “They are.”

  Jones chuckled. “Now I understand why you wanted Dreamland so bad, General. Whoever rules Dreamland rules the world, right?”

  The general was silent.

  “Well, General, you are right that we’re not going to nuke Dreamland,” said Jones. “But when you go in, you can be damn sure that I’m coming with you.”

  Apartment 343

  Time Tunnel Complex

  Area 51, NV

  December 5, 2008

  00:01 hours

  Timeline 002

  A violent shudder woke Kyle and Padma from a sound sleep. Alarms sounded within the Time Tunnel com
plex. Strobes flashed with the alarms. The townhouse phone rang as the complex shook again.

  “This is Kyle,” he shouted into the phone. “What’s going on?”

  “We have uninvited guests upstairs,” shouted Major Tony Darwin, the leader of the company of Dark Star commandoes. “We’re under attack.”

  Kyle paused.

  “Colonel, it’s time for you and your wife to go,” said Tony.

  “Tony…” Kyle began.

  “Kyle, we’ve got this. We’ve got your back. Go.”

  “Thank you, Tony,” Kyle said, choking up. “No words. ”

  “It’s been a privilege knowing you, Colonel.”

  “Godspeed”

  Kyle hung up the phone and speed-dialed another number.

  “Colin here. What’s going on?”

  “It’s time to go,” replied Kyle.

  “Understood. We’ll be ready.”

  Kyle hung up. Padma was already pulling on her jeans—bellbottoms. Kyle grabbed a black Kevlar vest from under the bed and tossed it to her.

  “Put this on,” he said. “Have you got your getaway bag?”

  Padma drew a large black backpack from under the bed. “Right here!” she replied. She pulled a jade turtleneck over her body armor, then threw on a long-fringed leather vest and quickly tied a leather band around her head to complete the chic hippie ensemble.

  Kyle heaved a larger, heavier backpack on top of the bed as he threw on flare jeans, boots, an Illya Kuryakin-style black turtleneck, and suede jacket.

  One hundred feet above the Time Tunnel complex, in the midnight darkness, General Craig stood in the gun turret of his desert-camouflage Humvee. His ride was parked with his armored regiment, 100 yards outside the Time Tunnel’s freight elevator hangar. Over 100 tanks, along with dozens of attack helicopters and 1,500 soldiers, had begun their assault on the complex.

  One side of the Time Tunnel’s ground-level hangar was ripped open, shredded by a barrage of tank shells.

  Parked next to the general’s desert-camo Humvee was another Humvee, painted black, with the insignia of the Praetorian Guard on each side. Joshua Jones stood in his gun turret, keeping an eye on the general. Jones wore a black helmet and body armor with his standard Guard uniform.

  “Fire,” General Craig said calmly into his helmet headset.

  Simultaneous yellow cannon blasts from dozens of tanks lit and shook the desert, shattering the hangar. The general noticed Joshua jerk in reaction. The concussion of the powerful blasts rattled the junior Praetorian Guard general. He shivered with fear. He realized he was out of his depth, but could not risk disappointing his father, who sat inside their Humvee.

  The elder Jones also wore a helmet and had managed to stretch a flak jacket around his pot-bellied girth. He gasped as the barrage of tank blasts pummeled the hangar.

  Standing near the Jones’ Humvee were two platoons of Praetorian Guard troops. Though 2,000 of General Craig’s battle-hardened soldiers had already been transferred to the Praetorian Guard’s command, both Joneses had chosen to use handpicked Guard members for this assignment to avoid conflicts of loyalty between their old and new commanders. The 30 Guard members under Joshua’s command were a discordant mix of mercenaries and inexperienced personal friends.

  General Craig’s regiment vastly outnumbered and outgunned the Praetorian Guard’s troops. The general had prepared for two battles—one for the Time Tunnel, and another with the Guard. He had lied to the Joneses about the size of the force he was bringing to the engagement. Under the cover of darkness, the Joneses did not begin to realize the full scope of General Craig’s army until the first barrage was unleashed on the hangar.

  A crane truck drove into the shredded hangar building toward the elevator well. A pallet was hanging from the crane—it looked like a giant hockey puck. The general spoke into his headset, and the crane lowered the pallet into the elevator well.

  “What are you doing?” shouted Joshua Jones from the Humvee.

  General Craig spoke to one of his officers, a colonel, standing beside his Humvee.

  “Colonel, please explain to the boy what we’re doing,” said General Craig.

  The colonel walked over to Joshua’s Humvee.

  “We’re lowering daisy cutter bombs into the freight elevator well,” the colonel shouted to Joshua. “These bombs have been specifically designed for this mission. They’re encased in armor, with one end exposed—the end facing the vault door. The objective is to breach the vault door to the complex while minimizing damage to surrounding structures as much as possible. It’ll still make a helluva mess, though. No way around that.

  “The bombs are lowered to level 1 and detonated. After we breach the vault door, Special Forces will rappel into the elevator well and enter the complex. That’s when your troops go. Get ready.”

  “Will it work?” shouted Joshua.

  “Yes sir, it’ll work,” replied the colonel. “The only question is, how many bombs will it take to knock down the front door. I’m betting on four.”

  The colonel turned back toward the general’s Humvee.

  “Fire in the hole!” crackled a voice over the radio.

  “Fire!” said the general.

  A blast rocked the earth and shot a geyser of orange fire into the air, blowing the roof off the hangar. A second crane truck moved into position with its payload.

  The massive explosion rattled the complex, though it had not yet breached the vault door. Dark Star commandoes massed on the level 1 mezzanine, preparing to repel the attackers.

  • • •

  Kyle and Padma ran to the elevator. As they descended to the Time Tunnel chamber, the complex shook again violently. The elevator lights flickered out momentarily, then came back on.

  The doors opened onto the mission control anteroom. The Dark Star guard opened the vault door.

  Inside, a skeleton crew frantically prepared the tunnel for a jump. Colin barked out orders to his team. Kyle waited for a pause.

  “Where are we?” Kyle asked.

  “By the book, it takes one hour to jump-start the tunnel,” said Colin.

  The complex shook again.

  “I don’t think we have that long,” said Kyle.

  “You think?” replied Colin. “You and Padma get to the chamber. I’ve got the miracles covered.”

  Kyle nodded.

  “C’mon,” Kyle said to Padma.

  They ran to the Time Tunnel chamber’s anteroom. Moments later, the door opened and two technicians in white clean-room suits hurriedly guided Kyle and Padma up the steps to the glass sphere chamber. The technicians secured the door, removed the steps and exited the room. Kyle took Padma’s hand.

  Colin’s team was executing Plan B, a contingency that had been drilled dozens of times. Plan B had been positioned to the staff as the ultimate defensive measure. In the event of an attack, the Time Tunnel emergency jump would take the complex out of time, into its parallel universe, leaving the enemy behind. A byproduct of Plan B was Kyle and Padma’s escape into the past—insurance in case the enemy breached the Time Tunnel fortress.

  The record time to execute a jump from a cold start was 30 minutes. Ten minutes had elapsed since the first explosion shook the complex.

  In mission control, Colin yelled for system status over the din of his team members. Most of the system status lights showed red. Firing up the Time Tunnel on short notice was like turning a super tanker on a dime.

  Kyle and Padma felt the Time Tunnel chamber shake as another bomb exploded at the vault door. Padma looked at Kyle, anxious.

  “We’re going to be fine,” Kyle said, reassuring her.

  The lights went out in mission control. Emergency lights came on. Auxiliary generators instantly kicked in to keep vital equipment online.
r />   On level 1, another bomb exploded, cracking the vault door. The concussion from the blast seared through the fracture. Tony called mission control.

  “Colin here,”

  “Estimate five clicks before the vault door goes,” shouted Tony. “Maybe ten before they get to mission control.”

  “Thank you, Major,” said Colin. “Godspeed.”

  “Roger that, Darwin out.”

  Colin looked at the clock. Not enough time, he thought.

  Colin looked at the status board. All of his vital system status statistics showed red.

  Tony shouted into his helmet microphone, “Kill the lights, except in mission control and the tunnel.”

  The complex went dark. Tony’s team lowered their night vision goggles.

  Another explosion cracked the vault door in half. Special Forces operators from General Craig’s army rappelled into the smoking elevator shaft. Jonah and Joshua Jones stood on the rim of the elevator shaft, peering at the Special Forces soldiers on the smoking elevator platform 100 feet below.

  “Are you gentlemen joining us?” asked General Craig.

  The Joneses, startled, watched as General Craig rappelled into the elevator well.

  “He wouldn’t go down there with the lead soldiers if he didn’t have a good reason,” shouted Jonah. “We can’t let him take control of Dreamland. We have to go!”

  Jonah and Joshua looked at each other. Both attempted to mask their fear.

  The Praetorian guardsmen hooked a harness to the winch cable on their Humvee.

  “I’m going first!” shouted Jonah. Though terrified of what lay below, his covetousness of the Gray’s antimatter weapon trumped his fear.

  The guard helped the fat consul into harness straps. He sat on the edge of the shaft, took a deep breath and pushed off. Dangling over the edge, the winch motor was snapped on, slowly lowering Jones into the shaft as Special Forces operators sped past him on their rappel ropes.

  Inside level 1, a grenade was tossed through the vault door opening onto the mezzanine.

  “Grenade!” shouted Tony.