Shift (ChronoShift Trilogy) (28 page)

            “It's too risky,” Mark concluded, “I think we should stay away from that kind of thing.”

The reality of how easy it might be for them to screw up history, the whole world even, began to sink in.

Ty capitulated, “I see what you mean.”

Hardy nodded in assent.

Mark was scribbling notes on a pad.  “Okay, so are there any other possibilities?  Or is it just ‘Crimes’ and ‘Major Historical Events’?”

“We could help the government with espionage and special ops,” Hardy added.

Each of them looked to the others, considering whether or not they wanted to use this new power that way.  The idea died a silent death in the air between them.  Each had been in the military and knew how the government operated.  In a heartbeat, all three men would jump to help the U.S. government if it were needed to protect the American people, but if they weren’t careful, the
wrong
people in government would get a hold of the technology.  Then, they’d be sucked in.  Slaves to the system.  And when that happened, it was always for the wrong causes.

“Okay ‘Crimes’ and ‘Major Historical Events’ it is.”  Mark slapped the desk for emphasis.  “I think we ought to break the ‘Crimes’ category into present day crimes and historical crimes.  The current ones will be pretty easy to research, but the historical cases will be a little tougher to figure out.  Granted, I’ve already got the Harvard Institute for Historical Studies doing reams of research for me.  I can redirect Savannah and them to give us reports listing the most tragic crimes and tragedies across the country for each year.”

“So, how are we going to distribute the work?  Are we going to rotate assignments, or are we each going to specialize?” Hardy asked.

“Good question,” Ty added.

“I think we ought to specialize.  The military trains that way because it’s the most effective method,” Hardy commented.

“What do you think, Mark?”

“Hardy’s right.  We each need to pick a category and take it by the horns.  Who wants ‘Current Crimes’?”

Hardy raised his hand.

“All right.  Ty, what do you want?”

“If it’s okay with you, I want ‘Historical Crimes’.  Not only does it sound good, but I just don’t feel comfortable with all this new-fangled technology you’ve got here in 2012.  I feel more at home....back in the past.”

“Guess that leaves you with Major Historical Events, Mark. You happy with that?”

“Yeah, I think we all got what we wanted.  But I don’t think we should work in isolation either.  We should all try our hands at each type of case from time to time to keep ourselves fresh and versatile.  Plus, there will be a lot of cases that require the involvement of the whole team, so we need to build team unity and be familiar with every environment.”

“So, where would the MLK assassination fall in these categories?  Would that be a historical crime, or a major historical event?”

“What’s MLK?”  Ty asked.

“Martin Luther King.”

“What?”  Ty jumped out of his seat, clearly upset.

“Ty didn’t know about that yet, Hardy.  He shifted out of 1968 three months before it happened.”

“Oh, sorry, man.  I would’ve figured....well, I figured you would have heard about it by now.”

“Well, I didn’t!  I can’t believe it!  Who killed him?”

Mark motioned to the chair.  “Have a seat, Ty.  There’s a lot I need to tell you
both
.”

***

September 28
^th
, 2012, Boston, MA

Rialto had followed Carpen for several weeks now.  Discreetly, of course.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t find anything amiss.

If Carpen was a front for some mob organization, it was cleverly disguised.  In addition to shadowing him, Rialto had used laser directional listening devices and even wiretapped his phone, but had turned up nothing.

In fact, it seemed that Carpen managed most of his financial transactions himself.  He had an accounting firm, but it was a reputable firm that had been around for decades and served many of Boston’s larger and most respected companies.  He doubted they would be willing to jeopardize their entire reputation by corrupting themselves for one guy.  Unless it was a rogue agent inside the firm forging the signatures, but they wouldn’t trust an account of Carpen’s size to anybody other than a senior CPA, and no single accountant would have been at the firm for seventy years.  No, the answer did not lie with Carpen’s accountants.  The man himself was the source of the mystery.

Rialto was able to identify a couple of men who met with Carpen on a regular basis, Ty Jennings and Hardin Phillips, both of whom were ex-military.  Whenever they met, though, they remained deep inside Carpen’s office building away from any windows, so the directional listening devices were useless.  Somehow, he needed to get inside that building and plant some bugs.

***

June 24
^th
, 2010, Juarez, Mexico

            “You guys ready?”

            They gave him the thumbs up.  Hardy and Ty crouched on the broken sidewalk of a small alley, their backs to a pockmarked, concrete wall.  Mark squatted facing them and was in a better position to observe their target.  It was his turn to train them, and this was their first mission.

            “All right.  Run through the rules one more time for me.”  Mark said.

            “Minimize your number of shifts,” Hardy offered, “Don't shift in front of others.”

            “Don't contaminate a historical scene with modern weapons.  Never use the shifter for personal gain in a way that will harm others,” Ty finished.

            “Good.”

            “You've only gone over it about fourteen times,” Hardy said dryly.

            Mark laughed.  What they didn't know was, with the exception of the last rule, he wasn't very good at following them himself.  So what?  Hardy had made
him
learn them.  It was their turn, and they were pretty good guidelines anyway.

            Mark's eyes narrowed as he turned his gaze back to the object of their mission.  It was a squat four bedroom house, built of concrete in the style of most middle class Mexican homes.  It'd been a while, however, since this home had been occupied by someone of the middle class, not that there was much of that particular gentry left anywhere in Mexico these days.  The exterior paint had once been white, or cream, but was now mostly peeled off, revealing large areas of bare, butchered wall.  Thick, black iron bars covered the windows and blocked every opening in the partition wall separating the front yard from the street.  Sharp, broken shards of glass had been imbedded in the concrete along the top of that wall, which was also crowned by various layers of curling razor wire.

            In the States, this house would have stood out as especially ugly, the dwelling of a paranoid security freak.  In Mexico, it was the norm.  The fact that it was so run-down wasn't even out of the ordinary.  What did make this house stand out was the level of luxury apparent in the types of vehicles parked in front and the frequency with which they changed out with others, also just as luxurious.

            Juarez was dominated by drug cartels that smuggled narcotics and other illegal items into the United States.  The Mexican police and military had proven completely incapable of reining them in or even dampening their influence.  Every now and then, under pressure from the United States, the Mexican government would launch a new initiative to root them out of the border towns by sending in the army, but the cartels always won in the end.  If soldiers wouldn't take bribes to look the other way, they weren't asked again.  The cartels simply put them in an early grave.  The police were even less of a challenge to dominate.

            This house was a base of operations for one of the cartels.  This particular cartel had just committed an act that would be extraordinarily heinous in the eyes of most decent people, yet unfortunately was just another day in the life of Juarez.

            They had kidnapped a pair of teenage American girls who lived across the border in El Paso.  The girls had come to Juarez to attend a concert that evening and had approached a local police officer to get directions.  Instead of helping, the corrupt official immediately radioed his boss in the Alvarez cartel, which was none other than Antonio Alvarez himself, to advise him of the presence of the two attractive young teens.  Within ten minutes, the girls were swept off the streets and brought to this safe house where bad things were about to happen to them.

            Mark guessed the vehicles coming in and out were bidders.  The girls were being auctioned off.

            “I'm going to hang back here,” Mark informed them.

            “Chicken.”

            “It's good policy for one man to stay back in case the other two get in trouble.  Plus, I've had plenty of experience fighting with a shifter.  You guys are the newbies.”

            “Yeah, yeah.”

            “Now that you've got the rules down so well, we're going to break the first two like crazy.”

            “Thank goodness.”

            “Those jokers have got top of the line assault weapons, as well as a healthy stash of grenades and even RPGs, I'm sure.  They're armed to the teeth.  Any ideas on how to breach?”

            “Just shift in,” Ty said.

            “Good, but how?”

            “We’ll shift in at opposite sides of the house,” Hardy added.  “We’ll each take out one or two bad guys, shift out, then shift back in somewhere else in the house, and repeat.”

            “Good.  Never, and I mean
never,
shift into a fight on your sixth shift.  Having your watch shut down in the middle of a battle would be....problematic.”  They chuckled.  “Instead, take a twenty-four hour break in another time before going back in.”

            From his equipment bag, Mark pulled out several pair of what looked like overly thick binoculars.

            “These might help.”

            “Night vision goggles?”

            “Infrared.”

            “What do they do?” Ty asked.

            Infrared technology had not yet been in wide use during his time in the Marines.  Hardy had used infrared vision before while in Delta, but never equipment this sophisticated.

            “Put them on.”

            They did.

            “They detect heat signatures, even through walls.”

            “Awesome!”  Hardy was elated, counting in the air with a finger the colorful figures he now saw inside the safe house.

            “See anybody that looks like they could be one of the girls?”

            “Yeah. There's two smaller figures lying down in a back room,” Ty confirmed.

            “I'd shift into that room to start.  That way no one can slip in and execute them while you're fighting elsewhere.  Once you've cleared that room, the girls will be safe as you clear the rest of the house.  Got any questions?”

            They didn't.  He didn't have to train them on how to perform an assault or insure a successful rescue; they already had plenty of training and experience in those areas.  The only new factor was the shifter, which was a powerful new weapon in their arsenal.  They just needed to get used to using it in a battle scenario.

            The men grabbed their weapons and disappeared from Mark’s view as they shifted out.  They would use the year 1900 as a rendezvous year for this mission.  In 1900, this neighborhood was nothing but empty, arid terrain, so the task should be an easy one for them.  They only had to walk about fifty yards into the desert and then pop into the middle of that back bedroom.  Piece of cake.

            Plus, he knew from his own past that Hardy and Ty would survive to recruit him later.  Still, he found himself a bit anxious, like a mother hen releasing her chicks into the wild for the first time.

            A few moments later, the hollow staccato of rapid gunfire erupted within the house.  Which was
not
good.  Ty and Hardy had silenced weapons.

            Then, an explosion roared behind the house.  Two more blasts tore out the front rooms.  Shards of window glass showered the street like jagged strips of hail.  The roof lifted off its moorings and collapsed back in on itself, caving in the walls as it went.  Then, one by one, each of the luxury SUVs parked in front burst apart in a torrent of unexpected explosions.  The force and heat of these explosions set Mark back on his heels.  It was like the apocalypse had descended onto that house and that house alone.  No one inside could have lived through that.

            “Hey, Mark.”

            He whirled.  Ty and Hardy stood behind him, smiling proudly.  Each held one of the girls, both of whom were very much alive.  Hardy cradled one in his arms; Ty was hugging the other, comforting her.  The girls’ faces were pale and fearful, but they were safe.  Seeing their clothing intact, Mark was thankful.  They had mostly likely gotten them out before the cartel had time to touch them.  Needless to say, he doubted these girls would be coming back to Juarez any time soon for another concert.

            “What happened?” Mark asked.  “You were just supposed to get the girls out.”

            “We did.  First thing.  That only took a minute.  Snuck ‘em out a window in the side wall of that back room after just a couple of shots.  But....we decided we couldn't let that garbage go unpunished, so, we went back.”

            “What was with all the automatic gunfire?”

            “They were firing at ghosts.  Couldn't figure out where we were.”

            “And the explosion in the back?”

            “They were having a cookout in the back yard, so we crashed their party.  Threw a grenade underneath their propane tank.” 

            “It was a big tank,” Hardy added.

            “I reckon.”

            “Then, we put a couple of strips of C-4 in the front rooms, as well as under the vehicles.  I think we got them all.”