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  “Or no-when,” the general said.

  “General?” Roger asked, confused.

  “Padma Mahajan was married to Kyle Mason for 48 hours. He dies on American 11 preventing a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Other terrorists in Virginia, New Jersey, and Boston are found dead in their hotel rooms the same day—coincidence?”

  “There are no coincidences,” said Gus.

  “What about the notes at the crime scenes?”

  Roger and Aysha sat down at their terminals at the history hive, under the rose-colored TVA light cube. In seconds they punched up the assassins’ notes on the big screen. The note cards were classified and had not been released to the public. They all referenced the President’s Daily Briefing, or PDB, of August 6, 2001, prepared for President Bush by the CIA. The PDB warned of a terrorist attack by Osama Bin Laden. The note cards referenced other planes to be hijacked, as well as their targets. The cards were all handwritten by the same hand.

  “Why was Kyle Mason on that plane?” asked the general.

  “No one knows,” said Roger. “There was never an explanation.”

  “Why does a Delta Force major who’s honeymooning in New York end up on a flight from Boston to Los Angeles? And it just happens to be the one flight that gets hijacked by terrorists?”

  “Again, no coincidences,” said Gus.

  “But, I don’t understand,” said Roger. “Kyle Mason died.”

  “Did he?” the general asked, looking at Gus.

  “What if four commercial airliners had been hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House? Does that not sound like exactly the kind of inflection point in time we’d be looking to fix?”

  “Holy shit!” said Gus.

  At that moment, the klaxon sounded as the outer vault door to the complex on level 1 began to open. The general and Gus looked at each other, surprised.

  “You expecting visitors, general?” Gus asked.

  “No,” the general replied coldly.

  All communications and visits into the complex were routed through the general. There was no such thing as a “surprise visit.” The general had been blindsided.

  “The son of a bitch didn’t waste any time,” he said.

  Mission Control

  Time Tunnel Complex

  Area 51, NV

  October 13, 2008

  10:17 hours

  Timeline 002

  A woman’s voice came over the PA system. “Attention, General Craig and senior staff, please come to the main entrance on level 1 immediately. Repeat, General Craig and senior staff, please come to the main entrance on level 1 immediately. Please acknowledge.”

  “God damned son of a bitch!” exclaimed General Craig.

  “Do we have options?” asked Gus.

  “None that I can see, unless we want to take the tunnel out of time,” replied General Craig.

  “There’s not enough time to fire it up,” said Gus. “It takes two hours from a cold start.”

  “Attention, General Craig and senior staff, please come to the main entrance on level 1 immediately. Repeat, General Craig and senior staff, please come to the main entrance on level 1 immediately. Please acknowledge,” repeated the voice on the PA.

  “I think that’s it,” said General Craig. “Either we come out peacefully or they’ll drag us out.”

  General Craig picked up a phone on one of the consoles “Craig here. On my way.”

  “OK, let’s go,” he said.

  On the elevator ride to level 1, the general said to the team, “Don’t repeat what we’ve discussed here. I think your lives may depend on it.”

  The team nodded.

  The elevator doors opened on level 1 onto the enormous cream-colored mezzanine that circled the giant atrium. The general saw that the rest of his senior staff was assembled outside the main vault door. The vault door was open. Two dozen armed soldiers in desert fatigues stood near the staff. An officer, a general, stood with the soldiers.

  They came prepared, the general thought.

  Lara Meredith, wearing her signature lab coat, gripped the handles of Strangelove’s wheelchair. John Kaomea, looking confused, pushed his glasses onto his nose with one finger, and held onto his laptop computer with the other hand. His second in command, Zhang Li, stood next to him, her poker face intact. Two of the soldiers appeared to be guarding Annika Wise. She was dressed in camo pants and military boots, with her arms folded over a black tank top. Her trademark scowl was on display. Annika’s guards eyed her closely—the general surmised that she had already had a dust up with the intruders.

  Several of the soldiers peered over the railing at the giant atrium and park below, marveling at the fantastic underground city. The general standing with them did an effective job of masking his stunned amazement. General Craig recognized the three-star general as James Patterson, the man from whom he wrested control of the complex in 2002. The last time General Patterson had seen the complex, it was little more than an underground concrete bunker, a fraction of the size of the 2008 Time Tunnel, with none of its present creature comforts.

  General Patterson had not taken his ousting well. Prior to General Craig’s arrival, he had been busy weaponizing the Grays’ antimatter reactor with the giddy excitement of a schoolboy playing with cherry bombs. He envisioned the world’s most gargantuan explosions that would make hydrogen bombs puny by comparison. He fantasized vaporizing entire rogue nations with a single device. He’d had difficulty containing his excitement, which sometimes breached his rigid, square-jawed exterior.

  General Craig had crushed Patterson’s dreams of big blow-ups. Patterson’s grudge had festered over the years. Now, another of Patterson’s fantasies, delivering a brutal payback to General Craig, was becoming reality.

  General Craig considered General Patterson a dim-witted functionary of the highest order, someone whose vision of the battlefield was restricted to three dimensions and a race for the biggest bomb. General Craig grasped the enormous potential of adding a fourth dimension—time—to the battle theater, making conventional weapons completely irrelevant.

  “General,” said General Patterson. He did not extend his hand. He observed General Craig’s informal khaki pants and polo shirt dress. “Casual Friday?”

  “I’ve got four stars in my pocket,” General Craig replied. “That’s about as formal as I need to be.”

  General Patterson smiled, ignoring the dig at his subordinate rank. “I see you’ve made some renovations in my absence.”

  “A little paint. A few flowers,” replied General Craig.

  General Patterson smiled curtly, then pulled a folded piece of paper out of his hip pocket, unfolded it, and began to read aloud.

  “General Craig, it is my duty to inform you that, per the articles of the Strategic Research and Development Act, management of this facility is now under civilian control,” said General Patterson in an unnecessarily loud and officious voice. “You stand relieved of your command and will exit the premises immediately. The following members of your former senior staff will also exit the premises at this time: Colonel Annika Wise, Gus Ferrer, and John Kaomea.”

  The general nodded. “I’ll collect my things.”

  “That won’t be necessary, General,” said General Patterson. “Your personal effects will be shipped to you.”

  General Craig was stunned by the complete absence of decorum. It was one thing to be relieved of command—it was another thing entirely for a four-star general to be kicked out of his house, with his belongings tossed out on the front lawn. He hid his indignation behind an incredulous smile.

  Paybacks are tough, he thought, looking directly at General Patterson.

  General Craig turned to the staff members he was leaving behind.

 
; “Well, it looks like this is goodbye. It has been a rare privilege working with you,” said the general. “Good luck to you all.”

  The general shook hands with Roger, Aysha, and Strangelove. Their expressions were shocked. Lara hugged him. She felt his big warm hands on her back. She also felt fear and sadness, as though her father was leaving.

  “General, what in God’s name is going on?” she whispered.

  “A ghost has returned from the dead,” he replied.

  Lara looked at the general’s face, perplexed. The general shook his head and turned to leave with the exiled members of his staff. He patted Annika on the arm, guiding her out.

  “You already managed to get yourself in trouble?” he asked.

  “I’m pretty sure I’m not the one who’s in trouble,” Annika replied. “Are you going to explain this to me?”

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” the general replied.

  “Right,” said Annika. As she turned to leave, one of the soldiers poked her in the back with the barrel of his assault rifle.

  “Let’s go, sweet cheeks,” the soldier said.

  Annika wheeled in the blink of an eye, snatching the rifle out of the soldier’s hands, flipping it, and pointing it directly at his heart.

  “That’s Colonel Sweet Cheeks to you, Corporal, and how’d you like to know what it’s like to breathe through your rectum?” snapped Annika.

  “No ma’am, I don’t want to know what that’s like,” replied the soldier, shaken. He had never seen anyone move so fast before.

  Annika pointed the rifle at the other soldiers. She had caught them all flatfooted, with their weapons lowered. General Patterson looked uneasy.

  “Anyone else want some of this?” she asked.

  Annika tossed the rifle back to the soldier, turned, and strolled out the great vault door to the elevator platform. The general was at her side.

  “Someday that temper of yours is going to get the best of you, Colonel Wise,” said the general, enjoying the moment.

  “That day is not today,” replied Annika.

  One hundred feet above the Time Tunnel complex, Kyle and Padma waited in their black armored SUV in the ground level hangar. Their ride was one in a phalanx of SUVs and armored personnel carriers parked both in and outside the hangar. The couple had arrived with 200 Special Forces soldiers from their Dark Star subsidiary.

  Red strobe lights fired in the hangar, signaling the ascension of the hangar elevator. Kyle and Padma watched as the enormous platform reached the surface, with General Craig, Annika, and the rest of the Time Tunnel outcasts, guarded by General Patterson’s armed squad.

  As the group stepped off the elevator platform, Padma watched Annika closely. Annika looked directly at Padma’s SUV—straight into Padma’s eyes, as though she could see through the SUV’s blackened windows.

  Mission Control

  Time Tunnel Complex

  Area 51, NV

  October 13, 2008

  14:00 hours

  Timeline 002

  The senior staff was assembled around the big conference table at the base of the mission control amphitheater, in front of the giant screen. A new member of the team, mission director Colin James, had assembled the team after General Patterson and the soldiers left. The other members of the senior staff looked at Colin, waiting for an explanation for the seismic change to their subterranean world.

  Colin was a slight man with fair skin, receding blond hair, and wire-rim glasses. He wore a permanent smile on his face, no matter how challenging the circumstances. Colin had come to the Wild family through one of the conglomerate’s many acquisitions of defense and technology companies. Over the years at Wild, Padma had found Colin to be an outstanding manager—somehow able to turn complex projects in on time and under budget without burning out his staff.

  “We are waiting for a couple more people to join us,” Colin said.

  The mission control vault door opened, and two people entered—a man and a woman. As they descended the steps to the conference table, the original Time Tunnel staff members gasped. It was Padma Mahajan, the empress of America, accompanied by her husband, Major Kyle Mason, the dead hero of American 11. Padma wore her trademark black pant suit with a crimson Nehru collar blouse. Kyle wore jeans, boots, and a white dress shirt. They descended the mission control amphitheater steps and took their seats at the center of the table.

  That the world’s most secretive couple could emerge from the shadows in the Time Tunnel complex was owed to the vice grip controls the general had established on security and communications. Kyle knew the general had made sure that all communication and access to the complex was controlled by a single person. Now that Kyle held the keys to the Time Tunnel, no word of his existence would leave the underground city.

  “Thank you for joining us,” began Padma. “I gather from your expressions that introductions are not necessary?”

  The stupefied staff members slowly shook their heads.

  “Good, then let’s begin,” Padma said. “I realize some explanation is in order. I am going to let my husband start us off.”

  It was the first time in over seven years that Padma had referred to Kyle as her “husband” to others while he was in her presence. Though their circumstances were deadly serious, she could not contain a sparkling smile as the words left her lips. She turned to Kyle. His smile mirrored his wife’s.

  “Since the Time Tunnel became operational a few months ago, Roger and Aysha’s history team have been trying to identify a key inflection point in time to target an operation,” Kyle began.

  Roger and Aysha glanced at each other, noting Kyle’s apparent familiarity. He spoke as though he knew them well.

  “The reason you have not been successful is because the inflection point you’re looking for has already been corrected,” Kyle said.

  The original staff members rocked back in their chairs, stunned.

  “You know me from the American 11 story,” Kyle said. “However, I am not that Kyle Mason. The Kyle Mason from your time died on American 11 on September 11, 2001. As you know, 14 Middle Eastern men were found dead in various hotel rooms in Boston, New Jersey, and Virginia that same day. Notes were found in their rooms suggesting that American 11 was not an isolated incident, but part of a wider conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and the White House. Those men were killed by me and the Kyle Mason of your time.

  “In my timeline, the terrorists succeeded in destroying the World Trade Center towers and part of the Pentagon. The attack fundamentally altered this country’s trajectory. In effect, it punctuated the beginning of the decline of the American empire.

  “We refer to the terrorist attack as ‘9/11.’”

  The faces of the other staff members were ashen. They struggled to grasp two bombshells—that time had already been changed, and that the Twin Towers had been destroyed. Both seemed beyond comprehension.

  Lara Meredith managed to speak first. “You didn’t return to your time.”

  “No,” Kyle replied. “In my timeline, my wife died when the World Trade Center’s North Tower collapsed.”

  Kyle looked at Padma. “The North Tower was the American 11 hijackers’ target. When I knew the Kyle from your time was dead, I chose to stay and reunite with my wife.”

  The staff sat in stunned silence.

  Suddenly, Strangelove slapped the conference table with both hands, startling the others.

  “It works!” he exclaimed in German-tinted English. “This is fantastic!”

  “You are unbelievable,” said Lara, shooting Strangelove a sharp look.

  “What? It works—isn’t that marvelous?” replied Strangelove, genuinely confused by Lara’s reaction.

  “We’re all trying to absorb the fact that this AWOL
soldier from the future, whose doppelganger is dead, has changed time, reunited with his dead wife, become a trillionaire and de facto emperor, and, by the way, made us all artifacts of a new timeline,” Lara said. “All you can think about is that your toy actually works.”

  “Well, I think it is a little more than a toy,” Strangelove said, looking down, embarrassed and disappointed that no one else shared his elation.

  “Sweetheart, I’m saying it’s a lot to take in. We need a minute, OK?”

  “OK, OK, I get it,” Strangelove said. “It just seems like a really great thing, that’s all.”

  “It’s a great thing, honey,” Lara said, patting his sleeve. “You did good. Or, at least, the other Strangelove did.”

  “So, why are you here?” asked Roger.

  “The other Time Tunnel is fully operational,” replied Kyle. “They may choose to leave this timeline alone—or not. Depending on the choices they make, this timeline and everyone in it could cease to exist and be replaced with a new timeline, just as it was before. Everything could be erased and started over at the inflection point they choose.”

  “We no longer live in ignorant bliss,” said Roger. “You’ve shown us our sword of Damocles.”

  “Which brings me to the reason I’m here,” said Kyle. “I’m here to disable the other Time Tunnel so this timeline can endure.”

  “You mean, so you can endure,” said Lara.

  “I mean so we can endure,” Kyle replied, taking his wife’s hand. “Fortunately, the byproduct of our selfishness is that it potentially saves the living realities of nearly seven billion people in this timeline.”

  Zhang Li spoke, a rare event that turned all heads at the table, “The other Time Tunnel is in a distinct parallel universe,” she said. “We have no way to go there.”

  Strangelove’s white brows furrowed as he considered the problem. “Major Mason…”

  “Actually, it’s colonel now, but please call me ‘Kyle,’” interrupted Kyle.