The Empire Page 8

  “Yes sir,” the commandoes replied in unison.

  “Zero casualties, right?” checked Kyle.

  “Roger that.”

  “OK, let’s go,”

  Kyle walked to the authorization console to the right of the vault door.

  “Authorize,” said Kyle.

  “Authorize,” replied the console.

  “Colonel Kyle Mason, Radius, Nine, Five, Five, Three, Four, Aquarius, Authorize,” he said.

  The black panel lit up, scanning Kyle’s face and eyes.

  “Authorized,” replied the console.

  A loud klaxon sounded, and the door’s brilliant blue perimeter lights began to strobe. The soldiers normally stationed inside of the vault door were gone. Because there would be no “outside” after the tunnel’s move outside time, there was no need to post guards. The general was not expecting visitors.

  As the door opened, the team could hear cheers from inside the tunnel as the complex’s inhabitants celebrated their successful mission to prevent 9/11.

  The commandoes rushed into the level 1 mezzanine, setting up infrared spotlights to blind the security cameras. The team ran to the mission control elevator. Kyle swiped his keycard and authorized the descent to mission control.

  The elevator doors opened. A single guard was posted in the anteroom outside mission control. Shocked by the appearance of the commandoes, he scarcely had time to reach for his weapon before the brilliant red targeting laser lights of the commandoes’ assault weapons lit up his chest.

  “Gun down,” one of the commandoes ordered. The soldier complied, placing his rifle on the floor. The commandoes rushed in, laying the soldier face first on the floor and securing his wrists and ankles with plastic binds. With the room secured, the commandoes nodded to Kyle, who proceeded to the authorization panel.

  Kyle took a deep breath. “Here goes,” he said, opening the vault door.

  The door swung open to reveal a packed mission control room. Video images of the Twin Towers, fully intact in the revised timeline, streamed across the giant mission control screen. The celebration of the mission’s success, a joyful party only moments earlier, had turned to confused concern when the vault door’s klaxons sounded. Kyle saw the general, who stood by Roger Summit in the history hive next to the illuminated rose-colored TVA cube. The general’s jaw dropped at the sight of Kyle Mason, aged seven years in less than a minute and wearing a beautifully tailored suit.

  The room went quiet as Kyle strode to the general and extended his hand. The general refused to take it. He glared at Kyle, realizing that the Delta soldier had disobeyed his orders and remained in the past.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve, soldier,” the general said grimly.

  The commandoes swarmed into mission control, followed by Zhang. The Zhang from timeline 001 saw her doppelganger, eliciting a rare emotional reaction as her eyes widened.

  Kyle turned from the general and walked down the steps to John Kaomea’s console.

  “May I see your glasses?” Kyle asked Kaomea.

  John removed his eyeglasses and handed them to Kyle, confused.

  Kyle took them, folded them carefully, then punched Kaomea in the face, breaking his nose. John cupped his hands around his nose and screamed as blood poured from between his fingers. Several in the room gasped.

  “That’s for Annika,” Kyle said, tossing Kaomea’s glasses on his console.

  “My team has some work to do,” Kyle continued, “so I’m going to ask you all to return to your quarters and remain there until you receive further instructions. The information network and communications are being taken offline temporarily. They’ll be restored when we’re done.”

  Kyle turned to the general. “General, I’ll brief you in your quarters shortly.”

  The mission control staff began filing out. Lara Meredith pushed Strangelove’s wheelchair. Kaomea, whimpering, held his bleeding nose. The general gave Kyle a final withering look before exiting.

  Zhang from timeline 001 hesitated as she watched the new Zhang approach her workstation. The two stared momentarily into each other’s even brown eyes. Zhang 002 understood that her counterpart knew exactly what she was up to. The stare was a silent throwdown—001 would defeat whatever sabotage 002 effected.

  Zhang 001 turned and followed the others out the vault door. The commandoes followed the staff out, making sure they arrived at their apartments before locking their doors.

  Zhang 002 began typing at her workstation. After deactivating the information network and other internal communications, she began the tricky work of disabling the Time Tunnel’s ability to send people through time or space without jeopardizing the temporal bubble that enabled the complex and its citizens to exist. She knew that her counterpart would anticipate her methods of sabotage and encryption. She had to get creative, though not creative in the way 001 would expect.

  Kyle joined Zhang.

  “Have you got this?” he asked.

  Zhang turned slowly and looked at Kyle without saying a word.

  “OK, good,” said Kyle. “I’m going to visit the general before we leave.”

  • • •

  In his townhouse apartment, the general paced. After giving orders for years, he suddenly found himself without a command.

  Restless, he sat down at his laptop computer and began typing.

  He didn’t know why he wrote the memo. He needed to do something.

  The general heard a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” said the general. Kyle entered.

  The general was seated at his desk. He swiveled his chair to face Kyle. Kyle closed the door behind him.

  “I’m here for my debriefing, sir,” Kyle said.

  “Where is Colonel Wise?” asked the general.

  Kyle picked up a chair from the kitchen table, set it in front of the general, then sat down. He folded his hands in front of him.

  “Annika didn’t make it.”

  The general’s face turned to pain.

  “Everything went wrong,” Kyle continued. “Annika was DOA. We were way off course. We arrived on September 10 in a hotel room in Weehawken, New Jersey.”

  The general shook his head.

  “I had to make a decision whether or not to abort. I improvised and recruited the Kyle from 2001. He and I divided up the list and went hunting.

  “Something went wrong. The Kyle from 2001 ended up on American 11. He died during the attempt to retake the plane from hijackers.”

  Kyle paused.

  “The Kyle in that time was dead,” he said. “I couldn’t leave my wife.

  “I’m sorry, General,” Kyle continued. “You believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. You are my commanding officer, and you are the closest thing to a father any man could hope for.

  “I thought I was a better soldier, but I’m not. When it came time to choose between my orders and my wife…” Kyle trailed off.

  “You changed time,” the general said.

  “Well, yeah, that was the point, right?”

  “What are you doing to the Time Tunnel?” asked the general.

  Kyle took a deep breath. “I am disabling it.”

  The general’s eyes went wide.

  “You asked me once whether or not I thought we could do a worse job than the people running our government,” said Kyle. “We did a better job. We did a way better job.”

  “I accomplished my mission. I prevented 9/11. I turned the country around. I reunited with my wife. I don’t want things to change,” said Kyle.

  “You call me a father,” said the general. “Yet you don’t trust me.”

  “I should trust you,” said Kyle. “I’m sorry. There is too much at stake.”

  “Get out,” said the ge
neral.

  Kyle rose from his chair and left.

  As the door closed, the general thought about an explanation Strangelove had given him once about the randomness of quantum mechanics. Einstein was convinced that the universe must behave according to a set of orderly laws. He was unable to accept the possibility that an aspect of the universe was unpredictable, exclaiming that “God does not play dice with the universe.”

  Seeing what he had set in motion less than an hour earlier when he’d sent two temponauts back in time, the general acknowledged that Kyle Mason was living proof that Einstein was dead wrong.

  Mission Control

  Time Tunnel Complex

  Area 51, NV

  November 7, 2008

  09:15 hours

  Timeline 002

  Moments after Kyle and Zhang disappeared, an alarm sounded in mission control. It was the temporal transponder. Padma held prayerful hands to her lips.

  “Transponder alarm,” called out a voice from a console.

  “Roger that,” said Colin. “All systems go for jump?”

  Colin watched the display as all stations reported systems “green.”

  “Jump on my mark, three—two—one…”

  “Go.”

  Colin punched the commit button. A blinding light flashed in the glass Time Tunnel chamber. When it faded, Kyle and Zhang were standing in the sphere. The staff in mission control erupted in applause. Padma, enormously relieved, smiled and hugged Colin. On the video feed from the Time Tunnel chamber, Kyle gave a thumbs up—the mission was a success.

  NRG Stadium

  Houston, TX

  October 25, 2008

  19:00 hours

  Timeline 002

  Over 70,000 Texans sang the lyrics of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” as it soared over the PA system at the massive NRG stadium, home of the Houston Texans. As the final strains wound to a close, cheers erupted from the crowd as a plump man emerged onto the football field below, waving to the crowds as he walked to a stage in the center of the field. Red, white, and blue buntings hung from the mezzanines. Images of the American and Texan flags waved on the stadium’s giant screens. Jonah Jones scaled the steps to the stage and walked to the podium.

  As was the case when the junior senator was first elected in 2002, he was down in the polls going into the election. He was once again running into a stiff headwind whipped by Padma’s super PAC media storm. Though Padma’s ads and PR had moved the hearts and minds of independents, they had failed to dent Jones’ impenetrable bedrock conservative base.

  “Thank you, thank you…God bless you, my fellow Texans,” Jones spoke into the microphone. His twang echoed off the stadium walls. “God bless the USA!”

  The crowd roared its approval, preventing Jones from speaking. Jones put his hand over his heart. Tears welled in his eyes.

  “Thank you! God bless you!”

  The crowd continued cheering for another minute. Jones beamed, his hand on his heart as he soaked up the adoration.

  “My fellow Texans, do you know how much I love this great country of ours?”

  The crowd roared again.

  “You do, don’t you?”

  Roar!

  “You know that I would give anything to protect and defend these United States from all threats, both here and abroad. You know I would sacrifice my very life to protect this country from harm. You know that, don’t you?”

  Roar!

  “You know what the one most important thing is about America? You know what our Founding Fathers fought and died to secure for us?”

  “Liberty!” came shouts from the crowd.

  “Liberty!” affirmed Jones. “Blessed liberty!”

  “My fellow Texans, that liberty that our Founding Fathers sacrificed for has been taken from us!”

  The crowd booed.

  “It has been stolen from us by an outsider, an invader, someone who pretends to love this country…”

  On the giant stadium displays appeared the same darkened, angry, photoshopped image of Padma used in Jones’ ads.

  The crowd booed and jeered.

  “…but she doesn’t. She doesn’t love this country. She’s infected this country! She’s taken your hard-earned tax dollars and used that money to buy politicians. She’s bought congressmen, senators, even the president!

  “2 Corinthians 11:14 tells us that ‘Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.’ Well, we know better, don’t we? This woman isn’t an angel of light. Does this woman look light to you?”

  Epithets shrieked from the crowd.

  “Arab!”

  “Muslim!”

  “Nigger!”

  “So what are we gonna do about this, my fellow Texans?”

  “Kill her!”

  “Lynch her!”

  “Thomas Jefferson said ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’ Are there any patriots out there willing to shed their blood to refresh the tree of liberty?”

  The crowd roared.

  “I know I am. Are you?”

  Roar!

  “Are there any patriots willing to shed tyrants’ blood to refresh the tree of liberty?” Jones said, pointing at Padma’s image.

  The crowd howled its approval, drowning out Jones. A chant began to form.

  “Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!”

  Padma and Kyle sat on their townhouse bed, watching the spectacle. Padma clicked the remote off. Her gaze remained on the blank screen.

  Kyle turned to her. His face was pained.

  “Beloved…” he began. He was lost for words, overcome by the orgy of hate directed squarely at the woman he loved.

  “I am so sorry,” was all he could manage.

  Padma remained silent, staring at the screen. Up to that point, she had successfully blocked Jones’ hate ads from her feelings, though the collective blood lust of 70,000 people screaming for her death now swarmed her mind, overwhelming it.

  “I want to kill them all,” Kyle blurted.

  “So do I,” said Padma.

  Pennsylvania Avenue

  Washington, DC

  November 21, 2008

  08:00 hours

  Timeline 002

  Pedestrians walking to work in the brisk sunny morning in the nation’s capital were the first to know that this day would be unlike any other.

  Over the usual sounds of rush hour car engines and footsteps on the pavement, they heard a hum in the distance. They could feel a vibration beneath their feet. The hum erupted into a roar as dozens of charcoal-gray Apache helicopters buzzed low as they flew northwest down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol building and the White House. A phalanx of desert-tan camouflaged M1 Abrams tanks barreled down the avenue behind the attack helicopters. Humvees and armored troop transports joined the procession of tanks. The engines of the hulking tanks roared as they raced toward their target. Their metal tracks, designed for soft ground, clattered against the cement road.

  Commuters watched anxiously from their cars as the approaching column of tanks grew larger in their rearview mirrors. Most tried to pull over to avoid the hulking machines. When the lead tank reached its first traffic jam, a soldier opened the hatch and scanned the line of cars in front of him. He then pulled the bolt of his .50-caliber machine gun and fired into the air. Pedestrians screamed and fled as the soldier pointed the machine gun directly at the silver Honda Civic in front of him.

  Panicked, the driver, a white man in his thirties with glasses and curly black hair, stomped the accelerator, crashing into the black Lexus sedan in front of him. The line of cars wriggled uselessly as they bumped and crashed into each other. The soldier on the tank shouted something into his hea
dset microphone. The tank revved its 1,500 horsepower gas turbine engine and edged up to the rear of the Honda Civic. With a roar of its mammoth engine, the tank climbed up the trunk of the car and onto its roof, crushing it as its driver narrowly escaped. The doors of the other cars in the jam swung open and their occupants fled with horror as their rides were compacted under a train of 68-ton tanks.

  Dozens of Blackhawk helicopters joined the Apaches cruising toward their targets. Soldiers manned their side-door machine guns.

  Around the country, citizens watched TV with stunned amazement as images from news copters streamed identical scenes of tanks, troops, and attack helicopters swarming all major US cities. “Special report” chyrons announced the invasion over shocking images of tanks crushing cars and soldiers firing their weapons.

  Suddenly, every TV screen in America went dark. At the same time, all radio broadcasts went static. Every Internet page froze. Phone conversations were cut mid-call. America was blind and silent.

  An image replaced the dark screen. It was Jonah Jones, seated behind the president’s desk in the White House Oval Office. He wore a custom navy-colored military-style tunic, with two columns of bright brass buttons and a high collar. He faced the camera and hundreds of millions of citizens around the world with a smarmy expression.

  “My fellow Americans,” Jones began, “soldiers from the Third Army have occupied all major American cities and secured key infrastructure, including communications, energy, and transportation. These patriots have joined me to liberate this country from the despots that have seized control of our blessed nation. I am referring to Anderson Wild and Padma Mahajan.

  “Mr. Wild and Miss Mahajan have used their influence to corrupt our government, sweeping aside our blessed democracy and replacing it with totalitarianism.

  “I am here to assure you, my fellow Americans, that their treasonous acts will no longer be tolerated by these United States.

  “I have assumed custodianship of the government of the United States while Mr. Wild and Miss Mahajan are apprehended and brought to justice for their crimes against the Constitution. They will be tried by a military tribunal, along with any co-conspirators who have aided and abetted their efforts to undermine our democracy. This tribunal shall have complete authority to thoroughly investigate and prosecute anyone suspected of being associated with this treasonous plot. Any persons found guilty of treason by the tribunal will face severe punishment.