A Glint In Time (History and Time) (12 page)

"Okay, Bill, you get on one side and I'll get on the other, we'll carry her out. Sally, you get their stuff." There were two small gym bags next to the couch. Ted put his hand on Sally's back as if to push her toward the bags. Then he moved his hand to the front left pocket of her pants. She felt something heavy slip into her pocket. "Push the switch all the way." Ted said.

Sally heard Ted and Bill arguing with Sonny Woo at the door.They were putting on an act -trying to figure out how to get Janet through the door while effectively blocking the door and diverting attention from Sally. She bent over the bags and slipped the cylinder out of her pocket. It was an inch in diameter and three inches long. There was a small slide switch that had four positions labeled "SAFE, 1 3 5" along the side. The bottom of the cylinder was flat and smooth. It was obviously a magnet. This thing had to be an explosive. Where could she put it for maximum effect?

She looked around and saw the power cables in the tray overhead. Those cables had to power the capacitor banks that fed the lasers James Woo used in his time machine.

She pushed the switch to the "5" mark and jumped for the tray. She wanted to put the cylinder right on a power lead, but she missed and it fell into the tray. "It will have to do." she thought. She grabbed the bags and ran for the door. Bill, Janet, and Ted had just passed through the door and one of the goons was staring at her.

Bill and Ted had Janet in a fireman's carry and they were smoothly negotiating the hallway. Sonny Woo walked silently in front of them and two of his men were behind them. They went up one flight of stairs and headed for the front doors. There was no one in sight. They went through the doors -still no one around. But then they saw that there was no one in the helicopter either. The pilots from the oil company were gone.

Ted raised the tiny microphone in his sleeve to his mouth and said, "We're out with all three civilians, but the pilots are gone. Fire in the hole in three. Anything for us?"

Margaret's voice came out of Ted's sleeve and Sally's bra, "One man walked up to the chopper and talked to the pilots. They climbed out and left on their own. They're walking down the road. Nobody touched the chopper. More is coming from NRO surveillance center."

Ted said, "Head for the chopper."

"They put a car at the end of the drive. One guy parked it and ran like hell. It's a setup. They want you to take the car. Probably booby-trapped."

"Bill, get Janet in the back cabin. Strap in. Sally get in the left seat up front."

Ted ran ahead to the right door of the helicopter, opened it, jumped in the seat, and turned on the master power switch and the fuel pump. It took Sally a second to figure out how to work the door latch, then she got into the left seat. She heard Bill and Sally getting into the open cabin behind the pilots' seats. Ted pressed the starter button and the Lycoming 53 engine spooled up the blades began turning overhead.

"There's activity around the building." Margaret reported.

"Light on the skids!" Ted said into his sleeve. Then he dropped his hand and pulled up on the collective. "Hold on!" he shouted toward the back seat.

"Men on the roof. Weapons visible. Team two, smoke and gas on the roof." Margaret's voice was barely audible over the helicopter engine.

"Sally, tell me what she's saying." Ted shouted.

Sally shoved her hand down the front of her shirt and pulled the small radio from the front of her bra. She held the small speaker next to her ear. At the same time, she saw two explosions, one whiter than the other appear on the roof. Then she heard Margaret say the word, "Stinger."

"Stinger! Stinger!" Sally shouted to Ted.

Ted pivoted the helicopter to face the building. The maneuver stopped their forward progress, but gave him a good view of the man standing waist deep in the smoke

and gas with a missile tube on his shoulder. The air was calm and the smoke, which was designed to be heavier than air so it hugged the ground, was spilling over the roof onto the ground. Ted drifted the helicopter to the left and bobbedthe nose upand down.There wasaflashfromthe backof the tube and Ted only had a millisecond to react. At full power he popped the helicopter up less than fifty feet.The missile flashed under the skids. Looking through the windows set low into the forward part of the helicopter, Sally felt like it went right between her legs.

"Deadly force!" Margaret said in her ear."Fragmentation.
_â€
." but she stopped as the building was rocked by an explosion. Black and oily smoke rode the tip of red flames. The back part of the roof was gone and anyone on the roof was overcome or blocked by the hot black fumes.

"Tell Margaret to bug out." Ted said to Sally. The helicopter shuddered as he climbed and banked. Sally repeated the words into the radio.

"Margaret wants to know your intentions." Sally relayed. Then she thought, "I'll bet she does."

"Tell her I'm making for the embassy helipad. I'll be violating airspace left and right because I don't know any of the frequencies or have any clearances, but I know how to get there."

The trip to the embassy wasn't as exciting as the departure. Ted followed a main highway into the city and then cut across a high-rent residential area. He made a

gentle landing on the embassy helipad. They were met by US Marines in battle gear with M-16s pointed in their direction. "Easy Marines!" Ted shouted as the engine spooled down.

"We're friendlies." His words had absolutely no effect on the Marines. They were honoring the threat implied by an unauthorized and unexpected landing. Ted, Sally, Bill, and Janet spent a few minutes face down with arms and legs spread under the barrels of the Marines' weapons until the Military Attaché arrived. Ted thought that the Navy Captain took his time about telling the Marines to let them up, but then after a quick discussion on his walkie talkie, he was anxious to see them gone.

"The civilians are going to airport. There's a flight to Malaysia in about two hours and there are three tickets waiting. From there you're on your own.They want you the hell out of her right away! Captain, the ambassador wants a de-brief before you leave. I've sent some embassy Marines to meet your team outside the city. They'll pass them the right paperwork and take care of the weapons. You'll join up with them, we'll fly you commercially to Guam, and then you'll take military air back home from there. My Marine Captain can't wait to add your goodies to his arsenal."

Someone produced a wheelchair and Sally and Bill maneuvered Janet into it. The only thing anyone asked them was whether they had their passports. A Marine medic put an elastic bandage on Janet's ankle, gave her some pills, and then they were in an embassy car headed for the airport. It was evident that Bill was angry at Janet and that Janet was a bundle of emotions, so they didn't try to speak in the car or

on the flight. Janet slept most of the way. They were met at the airport in Malaysia by two men who identified themselves as FBI agents. The younger agent took Bill and Sally into a private room in an airport lounge. The agent spent an hour telling them that they had been involved in a classified operation and hinting at all sorts of grave consequences if they ever mentioned it to anyone. It quickly became evident that he knew nothing about any aspect of the operation, but was giving them a briefing out of some manual.

Then Janet entered the room supported on the arm of the older agent. Janet stood between the agents at the door of the room and said, "Bill, I'm sorry that you feel betrayed. We didn't know if you were part of an international scheme to launder drug money or what. But my affection for you is genuine. My enthusiasm for your work is genuine. I want to thank you for refusing to leave me with the Woos. I'm sure you saved my life." With that, she and the older agent turned and closed the door behind them. The younger handed them two packages of plane tickets. The final destination was Atlanta and the first leg of the trip departed in an hour. He stayed with them until they boarded the plane.

EXPLANATION AND ADVICE

Tuesday, October 3, 1995
1000 Eastern
Ritz Carlton Buckhead Hotel Atlanta, GA

Excerpt from the Personal Narrative
of Brigadier General Ted Arthurs

Recorded May 2006
UNCLASSIFIED

"They were test shots done many months later. Proof of the concept, so to speak."

Sally was attending a seminar on communications planning at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in the trendy Buckhead section of Atlanta. She ducked out of a class on new telecommunications tariffs to check her voice mail. She had been back from Indonesia for a month and she was still trying to smooth the ruffled feathers of some of her clients. Her voice mail system told her that she had four messages. She hit the one button on the keypad to play the messages.

"Sally, this is Ted. Hey, I'm back and I'd like to see you. Please return my calls." He gave his number, like he did in all of his previous calls. There had been three in the past two weeks.

She pushed the three button to erase the call and then pushed one again.

"Sally, this is Bill... Bill Wirtz. Listen, I'm on my way to a seminar in Europe, but I just spent an interesting afternoon with Ted Arthurs. He has some follow-up information to share with you. I can't go into it on the phone, but you'll be interested. He says you won't return his calls. I don't know what that's about, but you should hear what he has to say."

She and Bill had plenty of time to talk on the flights back to Atlanta, but primarily they shared their ignorance. It was obvious that Janet was some kind of a government agent. It was also obvious that Bill felt strongly about her, but that he also felt betrayed. Together, they didn't know what to make of Ted and his Special Operations connections. He had made no secret of the fact that he was in the Air Force and they didn't know if he had done anything covert.

They also didn't know if the Woo family had changed history. How would you know if history had changed? Would the world bend for a minute or would you remember when things had been different? They shared speculation and ignorance all the way across the Pacific. They talked and became better friends, but they had no answers.

She sighed, checked her book, picked up the phone, and dialed the number that Ted had left. She had written it down two weeks before. He answered, "Special Operations, Captain Arthurs."

"Hey Captain Arthurs, this is Sally. Bill says you have something interesting to tell me."

"Sally! What's going on? Why have you been so hard to get hold of?"

"We have nothing further to do together. Unless, as Bill said, you have something interesting to tell me?"

"How about telling you that I think about you every day and that I'd like to see you again?"

"How about Margaret and your baby? Do you think of them too?"

"Did she?... that ditz! .. damn... Look, there are flights to Atlanta about every hour this time of day. Where can we meet in two or three hours? I've got some things to straighten out."

"Take a cab to the Ritz Carlton Buckhead. Make sure you tell the driver Buckhead and not downtown. I'm in a class, but I'll check the lobby every half an hour."

It was two and a half hours before she found him waiting in the lobby. "Sally!" he said. "Where can we go to talk?"

"There's a big coffee shop over here."

When they were settled Ted said, "I don't know where to start. Let's do business first. Bill said you two were concerned that maybe James Woo was still trying to change history using the techniques we suggested. The embassy learned that James Woo was killed in the explosion we saw. Apparently the explosive cable cutter I gave you worked. James was in the process of trying to send one of your special

capacitors when it went off and cut the power cable. The power system wasn't well designed.The rectifiers blew and the load transferred directly to the transformers coming off the main line. Apparently the circuit breakers on the poles were wired shut.The black and fiery explosion we saw was the oil in the transformers exploding."

Sally sat and shook her head. "I didn't mean to kill him. I didn't really even know what the thing was."

"Yeah, I know. It turns out that I thought Margaret had briefed you on the cable cutter and Margaret thought I had done it. Too many officers in charge. Anyway, some of our guys paid off Woo's Russians and got a lot of information out of them. There are a couple of different teams of tough guys looking for those Russians, so they're happy to be in our protection."

"How about you. Were you a spy like Janet?" Sally asked. She wasn't being nice.

"Hey, I am what I seem to be. Look, Air Force Captains don't make that much money. Bill's operation paid well, used absolutely the latest equipment, and let me work flexible hours. I took a part time job there using the computer skills I picked up at the Air Force Academy. But then things got weird. I filed a report with my intelligence folks. Their inquiries tripped computers at the Justice Department, that was probably from Janet's reports, and at the State Department. Everybody has an interest in the Woo family. The job became unofficially official at about the time you showed up. We didn't know how you were involved, so I kept

my distance... despite my instincts. Nobody in my department really got interested until we moved to Indonesia. I took some special communications gear with me and the rest of the story you know."

"Would it have worked, Ted? Could it still work? Could we stop theVietnam War in some other way that really didn't have disastrous results?" Sally still had a special interest in that mission.

"We believe the answer is yes, Sally. I'm here partially to ask you if you want to work with us on the time machine project. But first, we need to clean up something between us."

"There is nothing between us." Sally said.

"Well, let me talk. Margaret is married to a man who is fifteen years older than she is. They love each other very much. They're good for each other. He's a nice guy. But he had a vasectomy back when it was a socially responsible thing to do. They tried getting it repaired and it didn't take. They tried extracting sperm using methods that I don't even want to think about and it didn't work. So, they asked me if I would donate sperm. My sperm was mixed with his, we're about the same build and coloring and alike in some other ways, and then they injected it into Margaret. It wasn't any fun for any of us. But, the third time around she got pregnant. We don't really know if it is my kid or his, but it doesn't matter. I'm the godfather and he is a house husband while she is a soldier. And that's what she meant by having my baby. Margaret and I are competitors in most things and friends in a few things... that's it."