Time Shift: A Historical Novel Of Survival, page 18
“Hold up,” Zihna said. “I think we should hide the gold pieces. I don’t like carrying it around. We don’t know who we’ll run into.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” he said, slipping back out of his ruck. “And it’ll lessen the weight we have to carry.” He swiveled his head back and forth, searching for a good spot. He picked up the bucket, walked over to a squatty outcrop directly across from the rock pile, and dropped to both knees. He used the bucket to dig a hole in the soft sand at the base of the rock.
While Jackson dug, Zihna removed the wrapped gold pieces from the two packs, pulled a large Ziploc bag from a zippered pouch on her pack, and placed the wrapped pieces inside.
“That should do it,” Jackson said, sitting back on his heels. “That’s about three feet.”
Zihna carefully placed the bagged articles at the bottom of the hole and shoved in enough sand to cover.
Jackson turned the bucket upside down and placed it over the sand-covered lump, and then pushed the rest of the sand into the hole. When they were done, the spot looked like it had never been disturbed. They both stood and stared down.
“Should be easy enough to find,” Jackson said.
They picked up their packs and started walking east, into the sun, toward Highway 89. With every step, a cloud of dust swirled around their feet before drifting off.
“How far to the highway?” Zihna asked, as she glanced up at the sun.
“Ten, twelve miles. Three or four hours, at least.”
“Do we have enough water for that?”
“Not really, but we’ll have to make do,” he said.
Zihna looked at her phone and checked for service. “Still nothing. Maybe it’s broke; let’s try your phone.”
He stopped, slipped out of his ruck, and fished into the main section until his hand came out with the phone. Nothing happened when he brought the phone up to his face. He pressed the power button for several seconds. “I only had one percent charge when I took that picture of us.”
“And you never powered off the phone to save the battery,” Zihna said.
“I guess not,” he replied. He stuck the phone back into his pack, and slipped it over his shoulders. They resumed walking.
They had walked five miles when Jackson spotted a cloud of dust in the distance, off to the north, a couple of miles out. The thick cloud rolled to the side of something moving through the desert. That something turned out to be a sand-colored truck meandering through the desert with the sun reflecting intermittently off the windshield.
Zihna dashed forward and began waving her arms in the air.
The truck suddenly altered course and headed directly toward them at a faster rate.
Half a mile out, Jackson was able to hear the rev of the engine as the truck bumped over hollows and hills, kicking up even larger clouds of dust, which quickly rolled off to the west. “They see us,” he said to Zihna, who had already stopped waving.
“You think this is part of the search party?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “But it’s a ride.”
The truck was an enclosed, SUV-type vehicle, large and bulky looking, high off the ground with step boards, heavily tinted windows, and painted in a desert camouflage theme. It looked military, but it wasn’t one Jackson had ever seen. The truck came to a stop twenty-five yards out.
When no one exited, Jackson and Zihna started walking toward the vehicle.
“This is weird,” Jackson said quietly to Zihna. “Military jets, and now this.”
“Why is that weird?”
“There’s no military base anywhere around here. And even if there were, there would be no reason to patrol this area.”
Suddenly, both doors popped open and two men stepped out. They both wore desert camo uniforms, boots, and a floppy boonie hat. And they both held a rifle pointed at Jackson and Zihna.
The man from the passenger side took two steps forward. “Alto. Ustedes dos necesitan dejar de caminar.”
Jackson understood the stop part of what the man said, but nothing more.
“What is going on?” Jackson asked Zihna as they both stopped.
“He just said to stop walking,” she said, as she raised both hands in the air. “And I think the pointed rifles mean we should raise our hands.”
“Who are you?” Jackson called out as he raised his hands.
The passenger side occupant took two more steps forward. “You are walking in a restricted zone,” he said with a heavy Spanish accent. He motioned with the barrel of his AR rifle but, again, not one Jackson had ever seen. “Drop to your knees, both of you, and put your hands behind your head.”
Jackson glanced at Zihna and then looked back at the man. “Walking on Navaho land makes us criminals?”
The man motioned with the rifle barrel. “I won’t tell you again.”
Jackson and Zihna laced their fingers behind their heads and lowered their knees to the sand.
The man from the driver’s side came forward, circled around with his rifle pointed at Jackson, and removed each of their backpacks. He tossed them to the side and then pushed Jackson and Zihna to the sand with his boot.
Jackson turned his head at the last moment to avoid a mouth full of dirt and saw Zihna just as her torso thumped into a cloud of dust. Jackson cut his eyes back to the man still standing behind him. “There’s no reason to treat us this way. We were camping, that’s it.” He glanced at Zihna and saw fear in her eyes. Sand caked part of her cheek, mouth, and nose.
He suddenly felt the man’s knee bearing down on his back and a hand patting down his body. The soldier finally twisted one arm back, then the other, and clasped his wrists with handcuffs. Handcuffs instead of zip ties, passed briefly through his thoughts.
As the man proceeded to pat down Zihna, spending considerably more time on her than he had Jackson, Jackson turned his head and raised his eyes to the other man still standing just in front of the truck. “At least tell us who you are. Police or military?”
“Ejército del Aire,” the man said. “Nueva España.”
Jackson turned his head to Zihna as she was being handcuffed. “New Spain Air Force,” she said.
“New Spain Air Force,” Jackson repeated. “What in the hell is that?”
With Jackson and Zihna both handcuffed with their hands behind their backs, the two men lifted them to their feet. The driver pushed them toward the truck with the barrel of his rifle while the other man walked ahead and opened the rear driver’s side door.
Zihna first stepped up on the running board, into the truck, and took a seat on the very dusty, black vinyl seat. She slid over to make room for Jackson, who stepped up and took a seat beside her. The door slammed shut. The rear hatch opened, their backpacks were deposited, and the hatch slammed shut.
“What in the hell is the Spanish military doing in Arizona?” Jackson asked Zihna beside him.
“Could they be on maneuvers or something?”
He shrugged. “I guess that’s possible, but that doesn’t explain their treatment of American civilians.”
Both front doors opened and the two men got in.
“Where are you taking us?” Jackson asked.
Both soldiers ignored the question. The driver started the engine, put the truck in gear, and pulled away in a cloud of dust.
Two miles north, the truck rolled up on a relatively flat gravel road in a cloud of thick dust and accelerated. Thirty minutes later they came to a stop at a four-lane highway running north and south. They turned north.
“A new four-lane highway in four days,” Jackson whispered. “Something is definitely off.”
Within a few miles, more and more buildings and businesses began to appear on both sides of the highway. People were coming and going from the various buildings, as though what was happening was a totally normal occurrence.
Twenty minutes later they approached a gate and guard shack, an entrance to what looked like a major military installation. A sign on the guard shack read Base Aérea Del Cañón Sur. The truck slowed upon approach to the uniformed man at the gate, but then accelerated after being waved through.
At that moment, another pair of twin-engine jets screamed overhead, apparently having just taken off.
Jackson focused through his window at the jets as they raced into the distance. They were definitely military jets of some sort, but he had never seen the particular model. Double, inline cockpits and double vertical stabilizers, like an F-15 Falcon or F-14 Tomcat, but the similarities ended there. He leaned toward Zihna. “This is about where Page would be in Arizona. The terrain is right, the mountains, but nothing else is the same.”
“Something has definitely changed since we left,” she said. She tightened her jaw and squeezed both eyes closed. She opened them and turned her head to Jackson. “Must have to do with—”
“Shut up back there,” the soldier in the passenger seat yelled in his heavily accented English.
A few minutes later, the truck pulled into a parking slot in front of a long Quonset hut painted desert beige. There were no identifying signs or other markings on the structure.
The two soldiers got out, opened the two rear doors, and motioned for Jackson and Zihna to exit.
They scooted out their respective doors and stepped to the sandy, windswept asphalt.
The driver took Jackson by the bicep and guided him to the only door in the building, located in the exact center of its length. The second soldier and Zihna brought up the rear.
During the ten seconds it took to reach the door, Jackson took the opportunity to survey the area. There were plenty of people coming and going, all dressed like his two escorts. Various military vehicles passed by on the asphalt road. Buildings, mostly Quonset huts with a few wood frame structures interspersed, intermittently lined both sides of the street. It appeared to Jackson that the streets, and probably the flight line and runways, were well laid out, but the buildings were more hastily erected.
The Quonset hut’s interior was administrative in nature with desks, people at the desks, and some strange-looking computers. A very old-looking window air conditioner churning slightly cooler air rumbled from the backside of the long room. Everyone in the room looked up when Jackson and Zihna first entered but then quickly went back to work, all but one.
A rotund older man wearing a metal badge with four black horizontal lines on his collar maintained his gaze and then began walking in their direction.
“Área restringida,” the man holding Zihna said when the older man, apparently a supervisor, approached.
The supervisor eyed Zihna up and down, glanced at Jackson, and then motioned.
The two soldiers guided Jackson and Zihna along the corridor between the lines of desks and mumbling workers to a door at the end of the room. Jackson’s escort opened the door and pulled him inside, followed by the other soldier and Zihna. The room was bare except for a ceiling light, a table, four chairs, and a second, smaller, window air conditioner.
“You’ll remain here,” Zihna’s guard said.
“What about the cuffs?” Jackson said. “And we could really use a drink of water.”
The two soldiers looked at each other. Finally, the man that had been with Zihna gave a slight nod. Jackson’s guard produced a handcuff key and removed both sets of cuffs.
“What are we waiting for?” Jackson asked, as he rubbed his wrists.
“Just have a seat,” Zihna’s man said, as they both headed for the door.
“And don’t forget that water,” Jackson said in a raised voice, as the two men exited and closed the door behind them.
“You were in the military,” Zihna said, as she wiped the still-caked sand from her cheek, “what do you think is going on?”
Jackson walked to the air conditioner, held his hand up to the stream of air, and turned back to Zihna. “We’ll certainly be interrogated.” He looked around the room. “That has to be why we’re here.”
“None of this makes sense. This all has to be because of something we did in the past.”
“Either that, or the US was invaded by Spain in the last four days.” Jackson took a seat in one of the chairs. The most likely place for a listening device and camera was the ceiling light, but he didn’t see anything except a bulb and a bare-metal fixture. He motioned for Zihna to take a seat next to him. When she did, he leaned closer. “We were camping near the rim, didn’t realize we were in an off-limits area, and that’s it.”
“How did we get there?” Zihna asked. “Where’s our vehicle?”
Jackson shook his head and shrugged. “We hiked in, been hiking for days, five days. Just keep it simple. If they separate us, don’t make up anything. Stick to the story.”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
Jackson put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her head to him. “For now, we need time to get our bearings, figure out what is happening. Maybe they’ll keep us together.”
A full twenty minutes went by before the door finally opened. Three men entered, all in uniform. Two wore a semiautomatic pistol on their hip. One of them held Jackson and Zihna’s backpacks. The man in front, wearing shoulder boards with a single gold leaf and a thin, gold stripe, was instantly recognized.
“Jimmy!” Jackson exclaimed, jumping to his feet.
CHAPTER 22
The man stared at Jackson. “Have we met, señor?” The man’s English was near perfect, with just a hint of accent.
“Have we met? We’re best friends,” Jackson said, as he came around the table.
The two guards standing behind the officer stepped forward in unison.
The man in charge motioned them back. “Where, exactly, did we meet?”
“High school, Phoenix.”
The man stared at Jackson with only the slightest shake of his head.
“Phoenix, Arizona. United States.”
“Sorry, señor. I am Capitán Juan Diego Garza. Air Forces of Spain. I am not familiar with these places. Phoenix, you say?”
Jackson looked back at Zihna, still sitting at the table. “This is Jimmy, right?”
“Looks like him, but I don’t think that’s Jimmy.”
Garza ushered Jackson back to the table. “Please sit,” he said, as he took a seat in the chair across from Jackson. He motioned to the men behind him, standing at the door. “I have a few questions.”
Jackson sat.
One of the men stepped forward and placed two plastic cards on the table between the two men.
Garza leaned forward, focused on the cards, and lifted his head. “Mister Lee and Miss Onsae, it says here.”
“That’s right,” Jackson said, as he turned to Zihna. He smiled. “It’s Jimmy, same beard, same haircut,” he said, as he turned back to Garza.
Garza pointed at the two cards. “What are these?”
Jackson glanced at the cards on the table. “What do you mean?”
“These cards, señor, what are they?”
“Our driver’s licenses,” Jackson said. He spun his card around and pointed to a spot. “See, it says Phoenix, Arizona.” He fingered the other card. “She’s from New Mexico. See, it says here—”
“You’re from Mexico,” Garza interrupted, looking at Zihna. “Where in Mexico?”
Jackson shook his head and leaned back in the chair.
Zihna smiled. “It’s New Mexico, not Mexico, New Mexico. The state, a few miles that way.” She pointed east.
Garza scooped the cards off the table and set them aside. He motioned to his men.
One of the men came forward and placed the two cell phones from the backpacks on the table.
“And these, what kind of devices are these?” Garza asked.
“You’re kidding, right?” Jackson asked, leaning forward. When Garza responded with a blank stare, Jackson continued, “Cell phones. For making phone calls.”
Garza glanced at the phones as he shook his head. “I’ve never seen a telephone like that. Such things are not possible.”
Jackson leaned back in his chair again. “What year is this?”
“Twenty nineteen,” Garza replied. “June 18th, 2019.” He glanced back at the cell phones. “These are some kind of spying device, correct?” Garza said, as he pushed one of them a couple of inches forward with his finger. “Please explain the function of these devices.”
Jackson picked up his phone. “Look, I’ll show you,” he said, as he pushed the power button on the side. “Shit, this one’s dead.” He put it down and picked up Zihna’s phone. He held it up to Zihna’s face to activate it.
Before it activated, Zihna took the phone from Jackson’s hand. “You are right, sir. This is a camera, a very advanced camera. But it contains no images of your installations. We were hiking and camping. This is for pictures of the landscape. That’s all.”
Garza leaned back in his chair, took in a deep breath, and exhaled. “First it’s a phone and now it’s a camera.”
“It’s both,” Jackson said. “From where we come from, everyone has one.”
“And where do you come from again?”
Jackson glanced at Zihna. “Arizona and New Mexico. Two states in the United States of America.”
Garza put both arms on the table and leaned forward. “Places that don’t exist. Trust me when I say this, what we do here, this is the easy way. The civilized way. If you continue to lie, I will have no choice but to transfer you for, how shall I say, more focused questioning.” He stared at Jackson.
Jackson threw his hands in the air and sat back. “We’re telling you the truth. I don’t know what is happening here, we were just camping. We’re not spies. Just hikers and campers.”
“You are military, yes? Maybe the English military?”
“English military? What are you talking about? What English military?”
Garza displayed a slight smile. “Just over the river, the border. New England.”
“New England? You mean Vermont, Connecticut, places like that?”
“I mean New England.”
Jackson exhaled. “Look, do you have access to the Internet here?”
