1961

By Robert P. Fitton

In 1986, led by terrorist Carlos Sánchez, nuclear devices are planted in American cities. As New York and other cities are swallowed up in fireballs, Patch Kincaid is sent back in time to prevent the destruction. He lands in 1961, where he chases Sánchez into the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Captured by Castro, Patch and his mentor Meinkewitz chase Carlos Sánchez into rural Cuba. Patch’s actions result in President Kennedy’s assassination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479735594

Robert P. Fitton

Robert P. Fitton grew up in small town America with an appreciation history. Summers were spent in North Easton, Massachusetts, often competing in baseball and other sports. With television’s increasing infl uence, Fitton reveled in the 1960’s Star Trek and The Twilight Zone programs. On cold winter nights he pointed his telescope skyward and dreamed of traveling to the stars or back through time. He graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, concentrating in American History and political science. After graduation but he added numerous literature courses, including the study of science fi ction, and began writing science fi ction and time travel stories. Fitton resides on Cape Cod and continues writing new and exciting time travel and science fi ction novels.

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Copyright © 2013 by Robert P. Fitton.

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Rev. date: 06/10/2022

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CONTENTS

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The evidence is clear—and the hour is late. We and our Latin friends will have to face the fact that we cannot postpone any longer the real issue of survival of freedom in this hemisphere itself. On that issue, unlike perhaps some others, there can be no middle ground. Together we must build a hemisphere where freedom can flourish; and where any free nation under outside attack of any kind can be assured that all of our resources stand ready to respond to any request for assistance.

The Bay of Pigs Invasion Speech

John F. Kennedy

Address to the AANE

April 20, 1961

1

Interstate 80

Northern California

July 17, 1986

3:30 p.m.

Consider time travel a risky venture. In July of 1986, Patch Kincaid turned thirty and had twice traveled back in time. They first sent him to 1976. Retrograde’s elastic effect, of being snapped back to the present, returned him safely to Sector 13 in four hours and garnered him the distinction as the first man to successfully survive a trip through time. Classified Sector Report 3517 stated that eleven men had died in the previous attempts. The public would never know about those deaths, nor would they celebrate his triumph. Massive power outages resulted when the electric grid overloaded during the retrograde. Patch just thought himself damned lucky to have survived, but like absorbing a mystical aphrodisiac, he stepped into the chamber again and ventured back to 1979. His orders were the same as the first trip: Do nothing. Touch nothing. Let the video capture a Midwestern cornfield seven years back in time from the embarking chamber at Sector 13. No one had yet solved the question as to whether someone transported back in time could actually change the flow of time.

He dreamed about traveling back in time as he watched jets taking off and landing with his dad. As a boy, for the first ten years of his life he and his family were stationed with his dad at the naval base in Atsugi, Japan. An American marine’s quick action with an ice block from a nearby restaurant saved his vision when he was hit at age eight by a wild pitched baseball. A cloth patch protected his eye for four weeks. For the rest of his life, Robert Garrison Kincaid Jr. carried a two-inch thin scar under his right eye and the nickname Patch.

Being around all the aircraft at the naval base made Patch want to become a pilot. The boys in school would tell stories about the U-2 spy plane housed on the base. He knew he wanted to fly high, fly fast, and leave the earth. Patch outlined stories about the U-2 going back in time when the old Soviet Union brought down the U-2 in 1960.

In high school back in Kansas, he tried to stitch Einstein’s theories and quantum mechanics into his imagined homemade time travel device. There had to be a way to go back in time like the Rod Taylor in The Time Machine. As a man, he settled for flying high-speed aircraft and then secret missions into space, believing such leaving the bounds of earth might just be the closest experience to journeying back through time.

The government conceived Project High Platform at the same time as the shuttle program in the early 1970s. As Patch watched Al Devins and Rick Petri roar into space on the first shuttle in 1978, he had to keep secret the project he had been a part of since 1977. The shuttle landed successfully at Edwards Dry Lake in Southern California, and Patch Kincaid drove north to a hidden military base called Catapult 35. Since the beginning of the space program, the military implemented a secondary program to gain a surreptitious military presence around the earth and moon.

He joined twenty-six other astronauts over several decades in being launched high above earth to construct Military Readiness Platforms (MRP). Patch worked closely with the facility that remained behind the dark side of the moon. All the spaceflights, traveling at almost eighteen thousand miles per hour, and the isolation on the MRP facilities could not prepare him for the perils of time travel.

He initially rebuffed assignment to the Sector 13 experiments. An intelligence agency physicist, Ray Meinkewitz, spoke with him for five hours in San Francisco. Meinkewitz constantly smoked a cigar and told Patch he did not have the guts to attempt time travel. Patch was unpatriotic and selfish, Meinkewitz ranted. He stressed that time travel might have military implications. Meinkewitz extolled Patch’s bravery and expertise in space. He successfully signed up Patch for a project that would be burrowed way from the general public.

Sector 13 demanded never-ending toil and high energy levels that neither rewarded achievement nor granted much free time. Patch worked on the high-powered accelerators, participated in constant testing, and even went around the country soliciting funds from prominent lobbyists and those in power. But in less than a month, he would leave the project and return to civilian life to test new commercial aircraft for Norcross Air. He cornered Meinkewitz after the trip back to 1979 and easily secured a few weeks away. Maybe Meinkewitz figured because of his pending discharge, he could allow Patch some private time. He met with Norcross in Chicago, stopped to see his father’s grave in Kansas, and then headed for Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Kate had finished her doctorate. In San Francisco, Patch would ask her to marry him.

The cool, fresh mountain air flared through the open window as Patch maneuvered his five-speed Suburban up a long asphalt stretch above the Truckee River. Two hundred miles away in Golden Gate Park, he would meet Kate tomorrow morning. Over a month had passed since he had stared into her earthy green eyes and touched her long dark hair. In his mind, he replayed their making love back in her New York apartment and could almost feel her tight body.

He smiled at the thought, turned on the radio, and scanned the dial for the Kennedy Program. He found it on a scratchy AM station. Jack Kennedy, older since he left the presidency in 1969, sounded as clear as his first inauguration in 1961. Of what the foreign policy of the United States should be. We need to make it cleah that we are the force in world, ah, politics today and stand by that position. We are ready to listen as well as move toward peace. Neither position is to be taken lightly . . .

The caller sought an argument. Yeah, that’s all well and good, but how much are we going to be spending until we break the U.S. Treasury? How much is all this defense spending worth? Do you have any idea?

I would like to point out that during the eight years of the Kennedy administration, we . . . ah, yes, I do have some ideah of what this defense spending is worth . . .

Patch turned up the volume and the static. The former president maintained the most—listened-to radio program in the United States.

It, ah, should be noted that because of the strong defense we were able to musta in the early 1960s, we were able to stop communism just ninety miles from our show-ahs. Now, conversely, I also have personal experience in not, ah, putting 100 percent trust in all military advice.

The caller laughed. Are you referring to the Vietnam action?

My comments refer to the Cuban situation supporting General Alverez’s overthrow of Fidel Castro. Kennedy kept a smooth and unruffled delivery. Vietnam, to address your assertion, was not in the national interest of the United States, and I think that was the general feeling in 1965 when we began bringing our forces back.

But President Nixon said it was a mistake to bring the boys back.

He said that at the time, yes. I won’t belabor that point, but I will say it was the momentous initiatives of President Nixon both to China and the former Soviet Union that stabilized the world situation. And this is a critical point. Combined with the Reagan buildup of the 1970s and early eighties led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire and—

Led to terrorism!

Yes, there are ramifications to every move on the world stage and, ah, we have to adjust to those realities. We will have ample opportunity to discuss these ramifications with President Nixon, when he is my guest for all four hours on Thursday. We will pause now and be back next hour.

The announcer’s voice faded in. "You’re listening to the Kennedy Program on the World News Network."

Patch rapped the FM switch and sent the channel search flying. He sat back and chugged through the serene Rocky Mountain expanse. The last caller had correctly targeted terrorism. His own briefings showed groups and alliances forged in the post-Cold War era as the real enemies of the United States. Prodigious secrecy surrounded Sector 13’s possible military applications and Meinkewitz’s talks with the intelligence people concerning terrorists and Sector 13 frightened everyone.

He glanced at the radio as the oldies station in Reno played Tom Fiedler’s Adios, Fidel from 1964. Hey, let it rip, Tom.

The year 1986 had already brought several terrorist scares and one near disaster. A radical splinter group had almost succeeded in planting biological agents in the greater Pittsburgh water supply. The general public never knew elite forces had killed five terrorists at the city’s filtration plant. Other incidents included dismantled pipe bombs under cars, plastic explosives on bridges, shootings, and airliners exploding. The nuclear threat, with spent plutonium readily available from rogue reactors and renegade scientists as well as paramilitary personnel ready to build bombs, had proliferated into a public frenzy.

Unless Meinkewitz bothered him again, Patch could forget the terrorism and his Sector 13 responsibilities for the next week. He gazed out the open window at the majestic jagged peaks scattered with towering evergreens, tapering like silent soldiers guarding the rock-carved canyon. This spaciousness contrasted the claustrophobic life of the Sector 13’s underground facility in Colorado.

Kate would meet him in Golden Gate Park. He planned it perfectly, flying her from New York. He arranged catered, linen-covered table and surrounded the scene with two violinists and a noted flutist in a reserved corner of the park, overlooking the bay. As they dined outside, he would present her with the sparkling diamond, secured by one of Meinkewitz’s buddies from South Africa. After San Francisco, they would drive east and spend tomorrow night in a Mariposa Grove lodge under the towering sequoias in Yosemite.

The cellular buzz from his second phone broke the mountain silence. Patch winced at the bulky unlisted phone on the passenger seat. Meinkewitz had promised three hours ago not to call again, but how did he get this number? Patch wanted to let it ring but reluctantly grabbed the phone from its box and pushed the green button. Ray, what the hell?

How’d you know it was me, Patch?

Who else is such a pain in the ass?

Well, that’s true. Patch held the wheel with one hand and rolled his eyes as he neared the mountain crest. Meinkewitz’s gravelly voice punctuated the transmission. How’s the scenery, Captain?

Ray, leave me the hell alone. I think you have your damned watch set on a timer. It just beeped and now it’s time to bother Kincaid again.

The signal weakened. Timer, that’s not a bad idea . . . Listen up, Patch, you need to get to a land phone.

Ray, this is my unlisted phone. At least, I thought it was. Look, I must be fifty miles from a regular phone.

You already passed Truckee and Tahoe, and now you are approaching Rainbow Bridge near the Donner Summit.

Jee-zus . . . I got off I-80 just to get some peace on the old road. I swear you’d track next time I take a leak.

We can do that.

Patch gazed downriver through the slotted concrete bridge angled upward. The evergreen slopes above the river were like an artist’s foreground to the magnificent deep blue distant mountains. Get lost, Ray!

Meinkewitz chuckled. Patch . . .

What?

Have a nice day.

The line went silent, and Patch sneered and then smiled at the phone. He shifted up the rock ledge. The bridge and the river were like an evolving video behind him in the side mirror. Somehow he thought of his dad. His father had died in a long battle with cancer in 1979. They buried him with full honors in Kansas. In many ways, Meinkewitz had become a father figure at Sector 13. As a physicist, he worked with Hollis Laminski, quantizing electrons and the electromagnetic fields, and then expanded his work by teleporting particles through time. His success led to a classified construction of accelerators to move matter back and forth through time, but his intelligence credentials landed the top Sector 13 job in the early 1970s. While his decisions could be reasoned out with the precision of an advanced computer, he always empathized with his people. That empathy allowed him to motivate and to steer subordinates on the proper course. Patch trusted him without question.

He looked skyward. Okay, Uncle Ray, you win.

*     *     *

Under the outline of the rock and fir tree mountains, Patch rolled into a dusty lot, housing a dilapidated gas station with dirty dark windows and a long porch. He slowed beyond a set of antiquated red and white pumps and stopped at the phone booth. A heavy guy in denim farmer’s overalls lounged next to a bulky rusted red Coke machine. Patch left the Suburban’s door open, engine running, and entered the booth.

He quickly dialed Meinkewitz, but connecting took time. The porch guy’s folded hands moved up slowly on his oversized stomach. Patch had difficulty seeing beyond the porch’s darkened screen door and reflective station windows.

Meinkewitz.

Okay, Ray. Great view up here. Only one thing: I can’t enjoy the river. I can’t enjoy the mountains. This pain in ass keeps annoying me.

You’re damned lucky I don’t pull you back here right now, Patch. There’s a ton of stuff coming over intel.

Patch tilted his head back. I don’t care.

I have just talked to Tom Shea, of internal security on the East Coast. Apparently, they are searching New York City for a possible nuclear device.

Meinkewitz had crammed a cigar in his mouth again.

Come on . . .

There are reports that other cities are being searched right now. I was afraid for your safety with your meeting your fiancée in San Francisco tomorrow.

Did Shea actually mention San Francisco?

No, only New York.

Kate lives in New York. Tell me you’re making this up. Thank God she’s on her way to San Francisco.

Meinkewitz talked to his people inside the Sector 13’s mountain complex and strayed from the phone for nearly a minute. The sun sizzled the nape of Patch’s neck, as his heartbeat soared, and he paced around the booth. Ray, I’m frying here in the sun like a desert lizard, waiting for you to tell me if they’re blowing up New York . . .

Meinkewitz finished up with the group. Patch, it’s not an alert or anything. Ted says it’s just a precautionary measure.

You and your precautionary measures. Sounds damned serious to me. I’m glad I’m heading west. You should have told me all this on the cellular phone.

Cellular phones can be monitored, Patch. Look how I found your position.

I don’t see terrorist groups having the expertise to pull off something like this . . . Is that all? Can I go have fun now?

Meinkewitz chuckled. I thought you ought to know that there might be problems in other cities. Patch, you may live for risk, but that can be good and bad.

Odds are with us . . . But if they go on alert or something . . . then call me.

Oh, I wouldn’t think of breaking up your little party.

Right.

Patch set the phone back on the hook and wished he could relax like the man sleeping on the porch. He stepped into the Suburban and shut the door as he spun onto the highway. As he placed the reflective sunglasses over his eyes, diminishing the glare, he visualized a brilliant orange explosion and a mushroom cloud rising over some American metropolis, sucking up the imploded buildings, streets, and people into a huge billowing fireball. Such far-fetched notions rattled his imagination as much as time travel.

2

Walt Whitman Rest Area

New Jersey Tpk.

Cherry Hill, New Jersey

July 17, 1986

Carlos watched his men drag the little bastard O’Hanlon through the mist and around the rest area building. When the highway traffic noise faded, the impact of Carlos’s AR-15 into O’Hanlon’s skull sounded like a watermelon smashing against cement. He tossed his gun onto the grass. With the handcuffed O’Hanlon collapsed to his knees, Carlos smashed his fists into his cheeks and jaw. Then he kicked his thick boot into O’Hanlon’s ribs. The Irishman grunted with each successive blow to his body. None of this would have happened if he had given the proper response to simple questions. This coward deserved death.

Carlos stood back and felt his neck veins bulge as he screamed. Tell me what I want to know!

In the streetlamp shadows, he pointed the rifle’s thin barrel at the fallen O’Hanlon’s blood-clumped brown hair. Only in his twenties, O’Hanlon possessed potential but he had been talking to the wrong people. Fresh blood trailed down his unshaven cheeks.

Now tell me! Who were you talking to, man?

O’Hanlon looked up slowly. More blood oozed from his mouth, and his puffy, shredded cheeks gave him the look of a beaten fighter. I was forced . . .

Forced by who? The kid could not open his swollen eyes. "Listen, you think I was born yesterday, man? You think I am some novice, O’Hanlon? El Leopardo was with the last dozen of Fidel’s men in the Sierra Maestra during the revolution. Then he spent years in a stinking two-hundred-year-old, rat-infested cell in the castle of the Cabana because of the Irishman, Kennedy, and that traitor, Alverez. We listened with Fidel in Havana when Kennedy spoke in Miami before the coup. He said Fidel’s people were victims of foreign imperialism. The son of an Irishman who made millions of Yankee dollars, Kennedy instructed the Cuban people to kill Fidel. I was with Fidel as he died on the beach! You tell me what I want to know, Mr. Irishman, and I will protect you."

He spoke in a whisper. They’ll kill me.

No, I told you El Leopardo will protect you. The devices are on barges and set to detonate. It will happen whether you tell me or not. You have a choice, my friend. You speak and I take you under my wing or you die. Now tell me who do we have to deal with to break security in New York harbor and get the device on Manhattan?

O’Hanlon hung his head as Carlos nudged him with the weapon. He said nothing for a few moments. Intelligence in New York. Tom Shea. He can give the order.

Carlos smiled and nodded to his men back at the van. The Irishman says Tom Shea. You have a big mouth, you son of a bitch. He swung his pistol out of a side holster and fired once into the kid’s head. His body rocketed backward onto the grass. Carlos picked up the automatic weapon and looked down at O’Hanlon’s frozen green eyes. You were too trusting, my friend . . . much too trusting.

Shea, Carlos? asked Ian, cigarette positioned in the corner of his mouth.

Carlos left O’Hanlon’s motionless body sprawled on the grass. He returned to the van with the satisfaction of having forced the kid to reveal Shea’s name. The wipers swabbed the accumulating mist. At the window, he tucked his pistol in the side holster. We will call Eric and tell him. Shea will be forced to get the device to midtown. Shea do what we tell him and tell us what we need to know before Higgins’s other devices are detonated.

He opened the side door and squeezed in with his men. Each man high-fived him. The exhaust spewed out as the van circled back and sped out the rest area. Once on the highway Carlos swigged the tequila and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Viva Fidel! Viva la Revolución! Kennedy is in New York and does his radio show from New York. We are heading west to Sector 13!

Santos turned from behind the wheel. Viva El Leopardo!

Gracias.

If Kennedy is in any American city, he is a dead man.

Carlos raised his knees upward and laughed. Yes, yes. You are right, Santos. Higgins said he could do it, and he has. Higgins is a genius . . . Our genius.

3

Golden Gate Park

San Francisco, California

July 18, 1986

3:06 p.m.

Like a fleeting dream before dawn, the park’s late afternoon shadows swept the grass surrounded by an amber glow. Patch walked upright in his uncomfortable white tuxedo, as if he were in a marching drill. The music trio tuned up behind a small table’s white linen tablecloth, and tuxedoed waiters hovered over steamy metal-covered food containers. Crystalline champagne glasses glistened, and the chilled Dom Pérignon bottle, laden with water droplets, lay nestled in an open white linen wrap.

Patch smiled as the extended white limo rounded the corner and slowed at the curb. Right on time. He thought for a moment about Meinkewitz’s dire warning, as the driver opened the rear door and helped Kate outside. Her pinned-up hair, dark strands tapering down her bare neck to her flowing yellow dress, intrigued him. He nodded to the violin maestro, and a lively Brahms piece filtered through the pleasant late afternoon air.

The deepening sunlight only enhanced her beauty. The driver escorted her to the table, and Patch gently kissed her forehead. She smiled slowly, her white teeth between her smooth lips, and her green eyes twinkled. He felt her touch, as he slipped his fingers around her smaller hand. You’re perfect.

This time she smiled without exposing her teeth, and her eyes moistened. You’ve outdone yourself, Captain.

Patch motioned for Angelo, a man with the thin mustache and maroon vest, who pulled back Kate’s chair. Once seated, Angelo popped the champagne and poured a cascade of pink bubbles into the glasses. Patch lifted his glass upward.

To my lady, a woman who possesses both beauty and intelligence.

They clinked glasses, and the twenty-five-year-old champagne tickled his lips. Patch lowered the glass and removed a green velvet box from his tuxedo pocket. He clicked it open, and a clear-cut diamond reflected the sunlight into crisp linear colors. They had talked about marriage many times, and she beamed, as he gradually placed the ring onto her finger.

Will you marry me?

Yeah. She now smiled broadly and nodded her head. I’ll marry you, Patch.

Next month . . . That garden chapel at Chatre is reserved, Kate.

Just like we talked about. Going to Europe. You have a penchant for planning. She sipped the champagne again.

Complaints?

None.

The music sauntered softly through the warm air. He held her hand, gazing into her eyes, and Meinkewitz’s bizarre reports of nuclear devices finally evaporated into the afternoon sky. As Angelo and his people served dinner, Patch talked about the wedding and how a few close friends would fly to France. He assured her their busy lives would merge into a gentler pace. She spoke about having children and living in Connecticut. The future beckoned, and Patch, gazing over