Daily Archives: December 7, 2025

Chapter Fifteen

Early the next morning, Mike woke up next to Gloria, delighted to be in her bed – but worried sick about everything else. The “Rustic Canyon Shootout” had been on the news all night — and Mike had no idea what his next move should be. Gloria rolled over, stunning in the morning light, and kissed him in a way that crossed all his weary wires. “Let’s talk over breakfast, baby,” she said, soothing him amid the madness.

The television was off as Gloria cooked up French toast, eggs, and bacon while Mike scanned the Los Angeles Times. The headlines screamed that Rustic Canyon had been the scene of deadly mayhem the night before. Two cops and a dozen militiamen had been killed — but nobody was certain what the shooting was all about. Nobody but Mike and Gloria and Andy.

Mike shoveled scrambled eggs into his mouth as Gloria filled his cup with coffee. Mike wished it could just stay this way: he and Gloria waking up together, having breakfast and enjoying each other’s company. It was a pipe dream, of course. Their destiny was anything but clear – and none of this would ever be normal. Normal disappeared back in ‘51. Now, the best they could do was take things one day at a time. Love each other one day at a time.

After breakfast, at 9:00 AM, Gloria drove Mike to Andy’s place.

“You really stirred up a hornets’ nest last night, pal. ‘The Rustic Canyon Shootout!’ Nice, stealthy work, my friend.”

Andy Pafko looked around to see it any of his neighbors were paying attention, then he ushered Mike and Gloria into his house. “Did you get the goods on video?”

“I got the whole meeting,” said Mike, somewhat defensively. “At least I got what they were saying. It was hard as hell to see anything without giving myself away.”

“Looks like you absolutely gave yourself away, partner,” said Andy with a pained smile. “Who shot first? You or the bad guys?”

“The bad guys. I tripped over a bush. They heard the sound and started shooting at me. Luckily, they couldn’t see me.”

“Hope you dropped ‘em all, buddy.”

“I’m not sure I hit anybody, Andy. I was firing blind. I got out of there before the bullets really started flying.”

“Gotta tell ya, pal — the shit truly hit the fan last night. In spades. Have some coffee and I’ll fill you in on what my pals on the force are telling me.”

Mike and Gloria took a seat at Andy’s small Formica kitchen table as Andy poured three cups of steaming hot coffee and launched into a description of the violent events of the night before – just as his police contacts relayed it to him.

“They found a bunch of dead bodies, Mike. Some by the side of Sullivan Ridge Road, some on and around the stairs leading down into that crazy old Nazi compound. And at least four near some cinder block building with a lot of crazy graffiti.”

“Graffiti?” Mike didn’t know the word.

“That wild spray painting the kids do nowadays.”

“That stuff that looks like Picasso?”

“If you say so, Mike. It’s just vandalism.”

Mike knew he was probably the guy responsible for the bodies near the blockhouse. They were lucky shots. He couldn’t see who he was shooting at. All he did was return fire in the direction of the muzzle flashes. Combat instinct took over.

Gloria kept silent until now. She looked at Mike, her eyes narrowing with concern. “How many guys do you think you killed, Mike? And how many were killed by the cops?” She sounded more like his lawyer than his lover.

Mike knew he likely dropped the guys near the blockhouse, and maybe he shot two or three on the concrete stairs – but nobody on Sullivan Ridge Road. The bad guys hadn’t gotten that far before Mike made his escape. The assholes gunned down on the road must’ve been courtesy of the cops.

“Relax, Gloria,” said Andy. “Your time-traveling fiancé isn’t a suspect.”

Andy turned to Mike, hard as stone.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about, Mike. You, my friend, don’t exist. And even if they could trace some bullets back to my TEC-9 – and odds are they can’t — how could an old guy in a wheelchair get into a gun battle, late at night, hundreds of steps down into a canyon? In that case, my gun must’ve been stolen, right? You’re home free, pal. You’re a freaking impossibility.”

Andy was right.  Mike didn’t really exist. He was here — but his presence was impossible. That was his one great advantage. Horst and Huber were the only other people on Earth who could possibly understand the insanity of Mike’s situation. And they had no clue that he was on their trail.

Andy tuned in the TV to catch up on the latest updates. The “Rustic Canyon Shootout” was still big news. Reports revealed that at least ten members of various right-wing paramilitary militia groups had been killed — and that several cases of high-powered assault rifles were seized in a concrete building on the site of a ruined compound that once belonged to Nazi sympathizers in the years before Pearl Harbor.

“They’re doing their research,” grinned Andy. “Accent on ‘Nazi.’ Let that sink in.”

When Mike heard the reference to “several cases” of assault rifles, he had two thoughts. He had seen at least a dozen cases stacked in the blockhouse. One thought was that the authorities were covering up the scope of the situation. The other was that the militia boys had made off with the rest before the cops shot their way down into the canyon. Mike’s second thought was far worse than his first.

Reporters and experts were speculating that a fight between militia groups may have broken out over possession of all those assault weapons. Mike knew that was bullshit — but he kept the thought to himself. There were lots of questions about where the weapons came from. Mike knew all the answers. But who would believe him?

Andy looked Mike in the eye — serious as a heart attack. “Mike,” he said. “We’re on the verge of civil war.”

Mike was way ahead of him. He gave Gloria a look that was grim, determined, and honestly scared: the kind of look he gave to his Marine pals just before they jumped off the landing craft and waded ashore under fire. She tightened her grip on his arm.

“I hate to tell you, Mike” said Andy, “but this country is seriously FUBAR. And you know what that means. You’ve got millions of self-professed American patriots in rural pockets of this country who get hard thinking about an armed insurrection against the U.S. government. That’s coming from the FBI, the CIA, and the military. All these nuts own guns and, what’s worse, a lot of these douche bags have served in the U.S. military. They took a sacred oath to defend our country – and now they’re all jacked up about overthrowing the government.”

“I know, Andy. I’ve seen them. I’ve heard them. I watched them listening to those old Nazi bastards. They ate up every crazy, racist, fascist thing that Horst and Huber told them. It was all I could do not to open fire and mow them all down on the spot!”

Gloria squeezed Mike’s arm harder than before, grateful her man had kept his cool.

Andy went on. “These nut jobs believe in what they call ‘The Great Replacement’. They say that billionaire Jews are flooding the country with black and Hispanic immigrants who will take their jobs for less pay. They’re scared shitless that colored folk will wind up with the same rights they’ve got. They’ll burn the whole country down before they let white folks become the minority. And they’re dead serious. It’s not a game, Mike. They’re pumped up to where it’s existential for them. A lot of them are ready to go out in a blaze of glory.”

“No shit, Andy. I saw that for myself.”

“So, what did you get on video that’ll help us take these bastards down?”

Mike handed his iPhone to Gloria. She played the recorded video for Andy.

The old cop was stunned by what he saw and heard. It was insane, of course. For a start, the inexplicable presence of Dr. Otto Huber: ageless after fifty-seven years. Even if the authorities could somehow identify Huber, what would they make of his apparent visit to the fountain of youth? And how would they react to seeing a highly regarded Nobel Prize-winning Cal Tech physics professor on the scene?

But, strange as the appearance of the two German scientists was, the incendiary things that they said, the militia yahoos that were gathered, the open threats of violence — and all those automatic rifles waved around — might give Andy just what he needed to get one of his friends at the FBI to dip a cautious toe or two into all this craziness. Especially now that shots had been fired and it was now a big news story. Andy said he’d get the video to a friend in the FBI that very day. He warned Mike to be careful. Mike didn’t need to be warned.

On their way back to Gloria’s, Mike turned on the radio. Suddenly, the madness was horribly worse. The news was reporting that three mass shootings had occurred that morning in towns between Los Angeles and San Diego — Long Beach, Carlsbad, and La Jolla. High-powered automatic rifles were used in each case. The victims were in Hispanic, black, and Asian neighborhoods. The cops who responded were outgunned. Casualty counts were high among victims, responding cops, and assailants. The gunmen appeared to be targeting law enforcement as much as minority communities.

Mike’s heart sank. His clumsy stumble outside the blockhouse had prematurely set all this violence in motion. He saw right away that the militia boys weren’t waiting for Huber and Horst to call the next move. The old Nazi brain trust’s big plans were now out the window. The militia yahoos were getting their Helter-Skelter on without direction from anybody. A lot of pent-up white resentment and fury was exploding with no grand coordination.

But, Mike feared, if those two old Nazis scientists could put their time-travel plans into effect and add Hitler and his cohort to the mix, it might inspire these militia nuts to rally around the Fuhrer — and make things infinitely worse. Mike couldn’t believe he had to think about loony crap like this. Even crazier, he knew he might be the only guy in the world who could keep a lid on all this madness. That old shrapnel pain flared in his hip.

Old wounds meet new wounds.

By the time Mike and Gloria got home cable news was reporting that a black nightclub in Long Beach was attacked, killing fifty people. A security guard gunned down one of the three assailants: a thirty-something white man, dressed in full body armor and armed with an AR-15 and several clips of ammunition. “The motive for the attack is unknown,” said the reporter.  But Mike knew the motive all too well.

In Carlsbad, a popular Mexican restaurant was shot up by as many as three masked men armed with semi-automatic rifles. Twenty Hispanic diners were dead. The gunmen were on the loose. Mike’s stomach was in knots.

But there was more.

In La Jolla, two heavily armed men shot up a marketplace in an Asian neighborhood. Twelve people were dead. Dozens wounded. Witnesses said the gunmen sprayed the crowd with automatic rifle fire. The shooters could not be identified — but Mike knew who they were — and it ate at him. Was this the world that he and his Marine brothers fought their bloody way through the Pacific to save?

As a cop, Mike dealt with lots of murders — nasty and brutal as they were. But those killings were mostly drunken rage, domestic violence, and gangsters fighting their deadly wars over territory. Now, he had to wrap his head around something far worse. Violence on a vast scale. Racist mass murder by white nationalists. He’d fought this kind of crap back when it was called “fascism” and “Nazism.”

His stomach churned. How could he stop the madness?

Mike knew he had to get back on Huber and Horst’s trail as soon as he could. He trusted that Andy would give his contact at the FBI the video from Murphy’s Ranch, but Mike also knew the Feds were usually slow to move, especially where politics were involved. Besides, what he recorded at Murphy’s Ranch was totally nuts. If the Feds ran down the details on Dr. Otto Huber, how could that old Nazi’s presence possibly be explained? They’d want to ask the guy behind the camera a lot of questions. And that guy was not available for questioning.

Mike’s head was spinning. He couldn’t control what the Feds would do or wouldn’t do. But he had to do something – and quick. He couldn’t wait for any official blessing to make his next move. And why should he?  

After all, he didn’t exist, did he?

What stung Mike most was that LA cops had died at Murphy’s Ranch because of his stumble. And too many people had already been killed by those murderous militia nutcases. He couldn’t just sit on his hands. But where to start? He couldn’t go back to Murphy’s Ranch. It was crawling with crime scene investigators.

Where would Horst and Huber go?

Gloria sat at her kitchen table, glued to the TV. A reporter confirmed that three crates of automatic rifles had been seized at the scene of the Rustic Canyon Shootout. Mike’s ears perked up. Just three cases? Where the hell did the rest of those guns go? A lot of deadly firepower was missing.

Mike knew the shooting – and the dying – had only just begun.

Four hours after they left Andy’s house, Gloria’s phone rang. It was Andy. She handed it to Mike. Andy was blunt.

“Mike. Your Murphy’s Ranch video is already stirring up a shitstorm in official circles. They want to know who was behind the camera, but I told them the guy’s operating in deep cover to infiltrate the militias. I don’t know what the FBI’s next move is gonna be — but everybody’s hair is on fire! We’ve got dead cops, right-wing nut jobs, mass shootings across Southern California, and a cache of high-powered rifles. The Feds know there’s a lot more guns out there, and they’re trying to track them down. They’re jumping on it, Mike, but they don’t know what you know.”

Andy made it clear. “They have no clue about this whole time-travel insanity. They’ll never figure it out. How the hell could they? That’s why you’ve got to take the point.”

“Take the point.”

Mike knew what that meant. Take the lead. Walk down a deadly trail into the unknown. Walking point is how that damned shrapnel got lodged in his hip.

“Stick with Huber and Mueller,” Andy implored. “Dog their every step. I can’t believe I’m fucking saying this, but after the gunfight at Murphy’s Ranch, they’ll be stepping up their time-travel plans, right? They’ll be trying to bring their Nazi pals into the future as soon as possible: Hitler, Himmler, Goehring — the whole unholy bunch! We can’t have those Nazi shit-bags coming back. We kicked their asses back in ‘45. No way we want to fight them again on our home turf.”

Andy went on. “You’re gonna get a delivery in the next hour or so. It’s a tracking device. You don’t know shit about this kind of thing, Mike, ‘cuz you’re just a 50’s private dick – but if you can pin a tracker on one of those Nazi bastards, it’ll lead you to their time machine or whatever the fuck it is. It’s down to you now, pal. The Feds are putting out fires everywhere – but they can’t comprehend how the fires started. The video you shot is a clue, but they’ll never wrap their heads around it in time.”

Andy’s words rang in Mike’s ears. The time-travel madness was all too real. Mike was the only guy who had a chance to do something about it. He had to stay on Huber and Horst’s trail. The old Nazi scientists might be momentarily stunned by the undisciplined, random violence of the last twenty-four hours –and that might give him a slim advantage.

It was nearing 2:30 PM when Andy’s tracking gizmo arrived. There was just enough time for Gloria to drive Mike to Pasadena, where he could tag Horst or Huber with the tracker, and follow one of those Nazi bastards to their time machine. He would need more than a little luck.

But that was always the case when a guy took the point.