Cassie Miles - Footprints in the Snow

Startled, she pulled back and hid in the trees. Why would anybody be shooting up here? It wasn’t hunting season. She thought of Luke and his rifle. He’d claimed to be doing guard duty on a government project. War games? Glancing back over her shoulder, she thought of returning to the cabin and barring the door. Then she saw them.

About twenty yards downhill, two men dressed in black skied across the slope, moving fast and ducking down. One of them turned and fired wildly with a handgun.

Shana ducked. This was crazy. His bullet could have gone anywhere.

Luke appeared. Clad in his all-white parka and ski pants, he was camouflaged against the glittering white snow, but nothing could hide his skill and dexterity on his long, wood skis. He moved fast, bursting out of the forest and onto the open slope. Halfway across, he swooshed to a halt, sending up a spray of powder snow. He dropped to one knee. With one smooth move, he flipped his Garand rifle from a sheath on his back into his gloved hands. Sighting down the barrel, he fired. Once. Then again.

One of the men Luke had been pursuing gave a pained shout. He was hit, but he didn’t go down. He and his partner disappeared into the trees on the opposite side of the slope.

Luke set off in single-minded pursuit.

Shana couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but she was dead certain that she wanted no part of this violence. What she needed was to get the hell away from here.

Desperately, she edged uphill, away from the fight. As she crested the slope, she found herself looking down into a wide valley. There were over a hundred rectangular barracks arranged in neat rows—housing for ten thousand men.

Smoke rose from some of the chimneys, and she saw a soldier leading a mule across the hard-packed snow. An old army jeep chugged on a snow-covered roadway in front of a large two-story house with two separate wings. There was a mess hall. Other administrative buildings. A barn.

This was Camp Hale. From 1945.

This huge army base hadn’t been here yesterday. It hadn’t been here for the past fifty years. It didn’t exist anymore.

Shana blinked furiously, hoping to erase the visual evidence. When she stared down the slope, nothing had changed. Camp Hale spread out before her like a black-and-white photograph come to life. Apparently, Luke wasn’t crazy. She was.

Her mind searched for a logical explanation.

Possibly, the site had been recreated as a historical place. With all those barracks? Housing for ten thousand troops? The cost of running the base would be too high.

If someone had rebuilt Camp Hale, they had to have a lot of cash. A movie? That made more sense. Hollywood people might be extravagant enough to reconstruct the base to make a movie about the legendary 10th Mountain Division.

But when she peered down toward the camp, she saw nothing resembling the lights and cameras needed by a movie crew. Instead of a movie crew led by Steven Spielberg, there were soldiers in fatigues. The only vehicles were vintage army jeeps. And mules.

More gunfire echoed behind her, and she startled. The obvious escape led straight down the hill into the camp, but she didn’t want to go there. Once she entered that 1945 world, she might never be able to return to her own time, her own millennium. She didn’t want to be swallowed up by the past.

This vision had to be an illusion, an aftereffect of altitude sickness. Luke had told her it was 1945. His suggestion must have triggered this fantasy from the photographs she’d seen in Leadville.

A fantasy? That wasn’t the way her mind worked. Shana was a scientist. Her life was based on rock-solid facts and rational analysis. She didn’t believe in fairy tales and had very little need for imagination. Last night with Luke was the closest she’d ever come to a fantasy.

Did their kiss even happen? Or was that a part of this winter mirage? Think, Shana. Somehow this had to make sense. Maybe she’d died on the slopes and Camp Hale was limbo. She wasn’t someone who…traveled backward through time.

This wasn’t happening; she refused to accept Camp Hale no matter how real it looked. The important thing was to find her way back to reality. Forcing her legs to move, she turned away from the encampment. Ignore it. Pretend that you never saw Camp Hale. Ski back to the rental car, back to Leadville.

“Halt,” came a shout from down the hill.

Two men—dressed like Luke in all-white snow gear—charged up the slope toward her. Their movements seemed labored; neither of them were as proficient on skis as Luke. While one man continued to approach, the other dropped to one knee and leveled a rifle at her chest.

“Raise your hands above your head.”

Shana did as she was told. Even in an imaginary world, she had no desire to be shot.

“You’re a girl,” said the guy who reached her first. He turned and waved to his partner. “Lower your weapon.”

He did as ordered and came toward them.

The first man asked, “What the hell are you doing up here, girlie?”

Though her mouth was dry, Shana forced words past her lips. “I’m with Luke. Luke Rawlins.”

“No kidding?” He turned back to his partner again. “She says she’s with Sergeant Rawlins.”

The second man joined them. When he pushed back the fur-lined hood of his parka, she was surprised to see how young he looked. This tall, lanky kid couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He frowned at her. “I don’t believe it. The sergeant isn’t a womanizer, and he knows better than to bring a girl up here.”

“She could be a spy. Take a look at her skis. I’ve never seen anything like those before. They’re made out of plastic.”

“Fiberglass,” Shana said. She’d spent enough time on drilling sites to know how to deal with men who didn’t trust her opinions and skills. It was important to immediately establish that she wasn’t a brainless twit. She kept her voice calm. “I’m sure there’s an explanation for everything, gentlemen. May I lower my hands?”

“Not yet,” said the young guy. He came close and patted her down in a clumsy frisk. “Take off that knapsack and hand it to me.”

She obeyed his order and watched as the two of them pawed through the contents of her pack. The younger man flipped open her wallet. “International Driver’s License,” he said accusingly. “Your name is Shana Parisi?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“Private First Class Henry Harrison.”

She turned to the other man. “And you?”

“I don’t have to tell you my name.”

He pushed back his hood, revealing black hair in a bowl cut like one of the Three Stooges. She decided to think of him as Moe. He took the wallet from Henry and studied her license. “Parisi, huh? Are you Italian?”

“My grandparents were from Italy. Naples.”

“The land of Mussolini.”

Moe and Henry exchanged a meaningful glance and nodded. The land of Mussolini? Oh, please. Anger surged through her veins. “I’m not a spy.”

“Then what are you?” Moe demanded. “You’re not one of those Mafiosos, are you? A girlfriend of Al Capone?”

Could he possibly be more stereotypical and insulting? Obviously, “political correctness” had not been part of the vocabulary in 1945. “Not all Italians are part of the Mafia.”

Young Henry thrust her cell phone toward her. “What’s this thing?”

“A telephone. It’s not working right now.”

“That’s a load of malarkey.” He gave a snort. “A telephone without wires. Like a walkie-talkie. This looks like spy equipment to me.”

Moe snapped her wallet closed. “This license is a bad forgery. They got your birthday wrong. Says here that you were born in 1974. That’s almost thirty years from now.”