Free Time Patrol (Area 51 The Nightstalkers) by Bob Mayer Page A

up wearing a hat similar to Walt’s because he liked it, he identified with Walt, and because it made him look crazier than usual. Besides, the fedora he’d worn for several decades had become passé with Mad Men . The changing of fashion with time was something that amused Foreman. What was old is new again and vice versa.
    He’d found crazy kept people away, and Foreman didn’t particularly care for people.
    World War II was history to the people in this building, ground having been broken on the building just a few months prior to Pearl Harbor. It was completed in the beginning of 1943, in time to see service during the conflict. Foreman’s first visit had been in 1946, at the beginning of his career in covert operations.
    He felt his age as he limped up to a desk manned by two military police. It blocked the corridor on the supposed lowest level of the Pentagon. With a sigh, he pulled out his identification card and showed it to them.
    It was one of those strange identification cards, designed for the handful of people who had the highest security level possible but were not formally affiliated with any agency that these guards would be aware of. Both MPs snapped to attention. One of them scanned the QR code on the ID and got a green light. Then he took another scanner.
    “Your glasses, sir?”
    Foreman removed his thick spectacles, another concession to age.
    The guard checked both retinas and got two more green lights.
    “Good to go, sir.”
    Foreman put his glasses back on, retrieved his card and his cane. He walked past, aware that cameras were tracking him. With another sigh, this caused by the pain in his replaced knees, he took the stairs down to a sublevel of the Pentagon that wasn’t supposed to exist.
    In stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of the corridors above, this level was eerily quiet. At the end of the corridor was an old metal desk. An old man, young to Foreman, sat behind it, doing a crossword puzzle. He peered up over his reading glasses.
    “Good day, young fella,” he greeted Foreman.
    “Same to you, old man.”
    “Here to see anyone in particular or stopping by your office?”
    “I need to chat with Mrs. Sanchez. Then go to my office and clean out the inbox. Perhaps nap for a bit.”
    The last guard laughed. He didn’t pull out a folder with personal, obscure questions to ask Foreman as he did with everyone else who approached his desk, questions only someone who had lived the answers could correctly reply to. He was facing the only person who predated his position as the last check before entry into the covert world attached to, or, more accurately, underneath the Pentagon. While there were rules, there was also the reality that Foreman was an institution. Or at least he was to another human institution, of which there weren’t many left in an increasingly technical world.
    “How are the knees?” the guard asked, looking down at something behind his desk.
    “You tell me,” Foreman said.
    The man looked up from the scanner. “They look good.” He reached underneath his desktop and hit a button. A door behind him swung open, revealing a telephone-booth-sized room.
    Foreman got in and sat down in the chair, grateful for the relief of pressure off his knees. He’d had them replaced decades ago and the doctors had told him the replacements needed to be replaced; he’d worn out the metal and plastic.
    But Foreman was realistic enough to know he didn’t have the energy, strength, or patience to go through two more surgeries. Plus he didn’t have the future.
    Reality sucks.
    The door shut and with a slight jolt, the box moved sideways. It halted abruptly and then moved backwards, riding along a unique rail system, the only means by which someone could get to the buried offices of the denizens of the darkness underneath the Pentagon.
    Foreman also understood another reality of the rail/booth system. Once seated inside one of the booths, the occupant was at the mercy of the