15:10 (Montreal Time)
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Boucherville, Province of Québec
Canada
Nancy Laplante stopped her red Mitsubishi Outlander 2010 sports utility vehicle in her reserved parking spot in the underground garage of her condominium building, then cut the V-6 engine and let out a sigh of relief. Home at last! Home and a well-deserved vacation after five weeks on a hard, dirty and dangerous assignment in the border area of Eastern Afghanistan. As the top field correspondent for the military and international affairs magazine CONFLICTS, she spent many months per year traveling to such dangerous, chaotic places around the World. She had however been helped greatly in that assignment by the fact that two of the nine languages she spoke fluently were Pashto and Dari, languages she had opportunities to improve and practice in the past during two six-month operational tours in Afghanistan as a Canadian Army reserve officer. Nancy always had an affinity for languages, something also helped by her phenomenal memory and her IQ of 153, which made her officially a genius according to the Mensa Institute.
Stepping out of her car, Nancy stretched her six foot tall frame to take out the kinks in her muscles. The superintendent of the condominium, who had been changing one of the light bulbs lighting the garage, approached her with a large smile on his face. At 45 and still single, he was fond of Nancy, probably because he fantasized about dating the athletic young woman. At least he kept it to himself and never bothered her.
“Welcome back to Boucherville, Miss Laplante. How was your trip?”
“Tiring, I’m afraid. I’m going straight to my lakeside cottage for a needed vacation. Do you have any mail for me?”
“Oh, your usual mountain of magazines, a few letters and more than a few bills! I’ll go and get them. You will be going up to your condo?”
“Yes, I have to pack for my leave. Could I abuse you and ask for the help of your little luggage cart later? I have to bring down a ton of things.”
The short, stocky man understood her immediately. Nancy’s cottage had been burglarized a year ago, with all of her appliances and electronic equipment taken away. Since then, she made a point of hauling back and forth anything of value when she went to her lakeside residence, situated in the Laurentian Mountains.
As the man went towards the elevator, Nancy surveyed her luggages in her car and decided against bringing them upstairs: she would need her notes and portable equipment in order to prepare and edit a full report on her trip during this incoming vacation. As for her dirty clothes from her trip, she could wash them at leasure once at the cottage. She locked her car before going to the staircase of the garage and running up the stairs to the second floor. She fumbled for her keys in her coat pocket and opened the door of her suite, stepping in her comfortably furnished lounge. The first thing she did before anything else was to go in her bedroom’s closet to check on her firearms. To her relief, the solid polymer carrying case was still locked and at the exact same place she had left it. Unlocking it, Nancy verified that all five handguns were still there. A smile appeared on her face when she took out her favorite gun from the case. Heavily customized and with gold plating on its frame, the Desert Eagle caliber .50 Action Express pistol weighed heavily in her hand, its 72 ounces of normal weight further increased by a Simmons 3 X 28 scope and a muzzle compensator. That gun had helped her outshoot that braggart American at the last metallic silhouette target shooting competition she had participated in near Albany, in the American state of New York. The moron had claimed that no women could shoot that kind of gun without being knocked back by the recoil. The only things that kept being knocked back when Nancy started shooting then had been the steel plates of the targets at 150 and 200 yards. Putting back in place the huge pistol, she brought the gun case in the living room, then took out a few boxes of ammunition from a separate, fireproof strong box and loaded them in the gun case: the small outdoor range she had built behind her cottage would see some use during this vacation. A quiet knock on the door announced the superintendant, his arms full of mail.
“Oh, thanks, Claude. Could you put these on the kitchen table?”
“No problem, Miss Laplante. When do you want me to help you with your stuff?”
“Not for another hour, at the least. I will come for you when I will be ready. By the way, you can call me Nancy, and thank you for everything.”
Claude beamed as if he just had won the lottery.
“My pleasure, Miss La… er, Nancy.”
He then closed the door behind him, leaving her to her packing.
It took about two minutes for Nancy to sort out her mail into four piles: one for the junk mail; one for personnal letters; one for bills and another, the biggest, for the various specialized military and international affairs magazines she subscribed to. Opening and reading the various letters and bills took her another ten minutes. Finally, she selected the magazines she wanted to bring on vacation. Then the serious job of packing began, with extra caution taken in putting her computer and electronic appliances in their shock-resistant transport boxes. She packed a small but diverse wardrobe, with the emphasis on informal and sports clothing. When she was finished, Nancy started heading towards the entrance door to get Claude to help her move the small mountain of boxes and suitcases, but stopped in midstride.
“Shit! I forgot to check my damn answering machine.”
As expected, the tape was filled to near capacity. Only two calls were worth noting: one was from her editor at CONFLICTS MAGAZINE, reminding her that he needed her story ready in two weeks time; the other was from her army reserve unit.
“Captain Laplante, this is captain Lemire, calling at 15:05 hours on Thursday, October eleven. I would need to speak to you as soon as possible about an operational matter. Please call me as soon as you can. Thanks.”
Nancy swore quietly and called back the regular army officer at the Fourth Intelligence Company, which was housed in a converted warehouse building in the Longue-Pointe garrison in Montreal. To her relief, Captain Lemire answered after the second ring, speaking in French.
‘’Fourth Intelligence Company, Captain Lemire speaking.’’
‘’Marc, this is Nancy. You wanted to speak to me about something urgent?’’
From formal, the tone of Lemire immediately became friendly.
‘’Effectively, Nancy. You just came back from your latest trip to Afghanistan, I suppose?’’
‘’I just arrived from the airport. Before you ask, my trip was a bit rough: the Afghan Army still has a long way to go before it could control effectively its country…if ever. I also have a few new shrapnel holes in my civilian tactical vest.’’
Marc Lemire hesitated a bit before coming to the reason of his call. Nancy Laplante, a junior officer he considered extremely competent, apart from being an extraordinary linguist, already had accumulated in her thirteen years of part-time service more operational tours overseas than any other officer in the whole Quebec Sector, be they regulars or reservists. Her language skills were just too rare and precious for the staffers at Canadian Forces Headquarters in Ottawa for them not asking for her when facing a special manning crunch overseas. The fact that she had always performed brilliantly and with exemplary courage also endeared her a lot in the eyes of Ottawa.
‘’Uh, Nancy, I know that you just came back from a working trip in Afghanistan and that your last operational military tour, as part of our expeditionary force for Libya, was completed only twelve months ago, but the Army needs you…again. One of our officers training Afghan Army recruits in Herat, one of our rare people able to speak Dari or Pashto, has been wounded in a Taliban attack and is being repatriated for treatment. Would you be ready to volunteer as a quick drop-in replacement? I promise you that you will be able to skip that whole chicken shit pre-tour training process.’’
Nancy giggled at those last words: she and many others at her unit despised the normally mandatory period of pre-deployment training, which went on for months, imposed by Ottawa staffers. While useful to a point, that training was conducted under the aegis of regular combat arms officers and NCOs who too often showed disdain or even contempt towards non-combat trades soldiers. They forgot or overlooked the fact that those non-combat trades soldiers were highly trained specialists whose particular skills were the reason for their inclusion in the mission, and not their skills as frontline combat soldiers. In Nancy’s mind, judging the suitability for a mission of, say, a vehicle mechanic on his or her ability to do assault tactics or effect long road marches while wearing heavy backpacks was positively stupid. Reservists were looked upon with even more prejudice by these same combat trade instructors, for their lack of experience and generally less in-depth training. She had herself experienced many times that sort of attitude before during her past tours and had not hesitated then to shut up those instructors by equaling or bettering them at their own game.
‘’I accept to volunteer, Marc, on one condition: that I am allowed to take first the two weeks of vacation I had planned for on my return from assignment. I really need to decompress and also have to write my tour report for my editor, especially if I have to tell him that I won’t be available for another six months…again.’’
‘’Don’t worry about that, Nancy. I will advise Ottawa to be patient. With your operational record, I don’t think that any of those desk-bound paper pushers will be able to accuse you of slacking off. My only request would be to see you on Saturday, so that I could make you fill and sign your deployment papers and also arrange a visit to the base quartermaster, so that you could replace your used combat gear with new or improved kit. Uh, could you bring your going out uniform with medals at the same time? We are holding as well a short unit parade for the unit’s honorary colonel.’’
Nancy sighed, seeing her vacation plans already being nibbled away bit by bit.
‘’Very well, Marc, I will show up on Saturday with my kit and uniforms. Anything else?’’
‘’No! Thank you for accepting to volunteer. You decidedly are an irreplaceable asset.’’
‘’I know.’’ Replied Nancy maliciously. ‘’See you on Saturday.’’
Putting down the receiver, she went back in the bedroom and started stuffing another bag, along with her big military backpack. The camouflaged, shapeless combat uniforms went in first, along with her web gear and kevlar helmet, followed by her goretex camouflaged coat. Last to be packed was her dark green-coloured service dress uniform, with medals. Nancy caressed the rows totaling ten ribbons on the left side of the tunic, feeling pride as she looked at them. At age 30, with thirteen years of part-time service in the Canadian Forces reserves, she wore more medals than most regular officers and NCOs of the Canadian Army, with the ribbon of the Medal of Bravery topping the three full rows of ribbons. She had up to now served on a total of seven operational field missions overseas: two times in Afghanistan and once each in Kosovo, the Syria-Lebanon-Israel region, Haiti, Darfur and near Libya. These tours, along with her experiences as a war correspondent in various war zones around the World, had helped satisfy her unending appetite for adventure and travel. Skydiving about every spring and summer weekends, apart from helping to keep current the parachutist qualification badge on her uniform, also satisfied that craving for action and thrills that had possessed her since being a young girl. She knew her limits, but tried to push them as much as possible by staying in top physical shape, keeping her mind alert, learning constantly and improving herself in every way possible.
Finally done with her preparations, Nancy made a quick trip to the superintendent’s office on the ground floor. Claude had already put aside his baggage cart, which made it possible to haul all of the young woman’s equipment in one trip via the building’s elevator. Another five minutes were used to make all her kit fit in the rear of the Mitsubishi Outlander. She then returned the cart before going back to the garage and driving out. Her first stop was at her bank, where she paid up her accumulated bills and took out enough cash money for her vacation. Crossing the central halway of the commercial center, she visited a newspapers and magazines store to check for the latest novelties, buying three magazines and a newspaper. Acting on an impulse, she also bought the latest edition of the PLAYGIRL magazine after its cover had hooked her eyes. Going to the big grocery store of the commercial center, Nancy bought a few bags of groceries to stock up her cottage and finally went to fill up her car’s tank before heading Northwest towards Lake Manitou and vacation.
17:54 (Montreal Time)
The Laurentians
This vacation was shaping up to be as agreable as she expected it to be. Contrary to normal for a late afternoon, the roads were not packed solid and she was able to make good time, crossing first into the island of Montreal via the Louis-Hippolyte-Lafontaine tunnel, then passing through Montreal and Laval in record time, taking Highway 15 North towards the Laurentians. The region, a succession of hills and eroded mountains sprinkled with a multitude of lakes and covered with thick forests of mostly pines and firs, was normally beautiful at most times. Now, with the pastel colours of autumn, it was positively gorgeous. Despite the fresh temperature, Nancy rolled down a bit her window to smell the scent of the region, crancking up at the same time the volume of her radio so as to keep listening to the latest song by Shakira, herself singing along in Spanish. Many of her friends had often wondered why, with her fine voice and devastating good looks, she had not gone into professional singing, comparing her to a more muscular and much taller variant of the famous Canadian singer Shanya Twain. Her answer had been that she was too much of an adrenaline junkie to be simply a singer.
Going off Highway 15 at Saint-Sauveur-Des-Monts, she rolled on Road 364, then Road 329, passing near three of the numerous ski resorts in the area, all of which were actively preparing for the hordes of winter skiers to come. The ski resort of Lake Manitou soon appeared, telling her she was closing in on her cottage. A brief stop at a service station let her both fill her car and empty her bladder prior to taking the unpaved road leading to her lakeside cottage. Her now growing joy as she neared the log house in the approaching darkness would have been doused if she had known that she was being watched. Hidding behind a curtain of trees, a large ovoid object floated near the ground in silence. Inside, two bald men with Eurasian features were watching the approach of the car on a holographic screen. One of them used a six-fingered hand to zoom in on Nancy through the windshield of her Outlander. He then spoke in a variant of English that would have been incomprehensible to any human of this time period.
“This is truly a perfect specimen for our first field test of the time distortion analyzer. She should be able to cause massive disruptions of the timeline, hence producing an easily detectable distortion signature.”
“Quite correct. Once our system is proven, we will be able to selectively shape and manipulate an alternate timeline of our liking.”
Nancy finally stopped her car near its side entrance and turned off the engine. As she was ready to step out, a large object suddenly moved into her field of view. She only had time to watch for one second the impossible craft visible through the windshield, her mouth opened ajar in surprise, before a bright beam hit the car and knocked her unconscious. The craft then floated to within a few feet above the car. Both soon disappeared together in a halo of white light.