The Time Portal 2: Escape in Time (18 page)

Lucky quickly pressed the dial, as he was instructed to do, and the phone automatically dialed the number on the screen. A voice picked up on the second ring and said sarcastically, “You finally decided to call.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been kind of busy. Now, where are my friends? I hope you haven’t hurt them, because I really wouldn’t like that.”

The voice on the phone laughed at that and said, “Mr. Campo, you are in no position to make idle threats.”

“I never make
idle
threats,” Lucky emphasized. “And I take it personally when my friends are kidnapped. Now whadda you want?”

There was a snicker from the other end of the phone and the voice said, “Do not threaten me when you are powerless to do anything about it. But to answer your question, first we want you, and second, we want the inventor of the flying machine. Come visit us, bring the inventor with you, and we’ll let your friends go unharmed. If you don’t, we will subject them to some rather, how should we say, unpleasant business.”

Lucky shot back, “Give me an address and I’ll be there.”

The voice replied in a condescending tone, “You
will
bring the professor when you come, won’t you?”

“Just give me the fucking address and shut up!” Lucky yelled.

This time, the man didn’t chuckle. He laughed . . . loudly . . . as if he were enjoying this little verbal cat and mouse game.

“Just give me the address, laughing boy, and when this deal is over, I’m gonna make you one sorry son of a bitch.”

The man laughed again, this time a more forced, tentative laugh. It was as though he believed the man on the other side of the phone. Whoever these Russians were, they had Lucky’s history. They knew Lucky was a dangerous man, certainly capable of making good on his threats.

The man asked, “Do you have a pen?”

Lucky shot back, “Look, are we going to play this stupid game all night? Just give me the fucking address or I’m hanging up and you can keep my friends!”

“Patience, Mr. Campo, patience. Here is the address.”

Lucky wrote down the address and repeated it, making sure there weren’t any mistakes. He hung up the phone and ripped the paper from the pad on the desk. His hand was shaking from anger. He turned to the professor.

“Did you install a GPS system in that spacecraft of yours?”

He nodded yes.

“And are the invisibility suits ready?”

“Why of course, the suits are ready. They are always ready. I even padded the bottoms covering the shoes so that footsteps won’t be heard.”

Lucky made a few calls. First, he called Casey, then Sal, then Nicky, who was out searching for the group, and told them all that Dukie had been kidnapped. Did they want to come along to help, was the question? He knew the answer before he asked it. He just wanted to get their juices flowing, to get them pissed off enough to understand the gravity of what he was asking them to do.

“When are we leaving?” was the standard response.

Lucky did not want to leave Anastasia, but felt he had no choice. He took her aside and explained the situation to her, telling her that he had to journey to Russia to find his friends. Bobby Boots would stay with her while they were gone. That seemed to calm her a bit. She had come to trust Bobby Boots. He had this relaxed, quiet confidence. But Anastasia did not know his secret. Bobby Boots was a world-class karate champion with a double black belt in two different disciplines of the martial arts. His body was as deadly as any a weapon.

By the next morning, the professor, Mickey, and Lucky were in Lucky’s BMW, heading for the Farmingdale Republic Airport (FRG on Long Island, New York). The rest of the crew, Nicky, and Sal had gone ahead to the airport, but were waiting for them at the hangar, anxious to get going. The professor had suits for everyone but Lucky. They all suited up and headed into the spacecraft. They seated themselves and buckled up as the professor turned on the cloaking device, pushed the activating lever, and brought the craft to a slight hover above the ground. Slowly, he began to maneuver the machine out of the hangar. Once clear of the hangar doors, the professor pushed the remote button on the instrument panel and the hangar door clanged noisily to life as it automatically began to close.

The professor expertly adjusted the lever and the spacecraft shot up vertically so fast that it made Lucky dizzy. Lindstrom then flipped it on its side and took off at a speed that caught all his passengers off guard. There was no question about it – the professor had really learned how to fly this ship. When Lucky asked how fast they were traveling, the professor simply said, “Routine. A little over fifteen hundred miles per hour. I could go faster, but I don’t want to push it.”

“How long before we get to Moscow?”

The professor stared straight ahead and without looking at Lucky, tapped into his photographic memory and recited, “Distance between Lubyanka, Russia and New York, NY is 5,698 miles. Figure we should arrive there in approximately four to five hours.”

As he flew across the sky at fifteen hundred miles per hour, he began to describe his new technology.

“Everyone ready?” Lindstrom called out. “I have a little surprise for you. Before I proceed, I want to tell all of you that this ship cannot be picked up or seen by radar because of the stealth technology incorporated into the shape of the craft, and the metamaterial used in its construction and of course the modifications I added to it.”

The professor reached over and pressed a button on his console.

“Now observe,” he said.

Everything surrounding the spaceship suddenly disappeared, yet the outside world became visible in a three hundred sixty degree panorama. The effect was unexpected and dramatic. Mickey even jumped a bit as the whole thing caught him completely off guard. Nicky dug his hands into the armrests of his chair, not really knowing what to expect next.

The walls of the ship seemed like a large fish bowl, creating the illusion that sitting inside of the spacecraft was similar to sitting in a living room. The cloaking setup the professor had installed into the craft’s electronics made it seem as though they were sitting in a multiplex 3D movie. They could see everything clearly, wherever they looked, without the outer shell of the ship impeding their view. There was no question about it – the professor had really hit the mark with the current modifications.

Lindstrom described how he had produced this amazing affect, explaining that he had installed thousands of pinhead sized, state-of-the-art, video cameras all constantly taking pictures of what was in the front, in the back, and all around them.

“I have the receivers set up to behave like windows allowing us to see everything around us. Since we are flying this ship, we are primarily concerned with what is in front of us, but the limitations became quite annoying to me, so I decided to change that,” the professor said. “Now, no matter where you look, the view around you is unobstructed at any angle, so now, what you see is what you get.”

The walls, floor, and ceiling of the ship just disappeared, as per the illusion that the professor had so cleverly created, and the group saw everything around them. Not only did they see it, but it looked and felt as though they were flying through it! They climbed above the endless ocean toward the blue canopy of the sky, a continuous vein of turquoise extending into the horizon as far as the eye could see. But that wasn’t all. They could see below,
underneath
the craft as well. Ooos and ahhs filled the spacecraft as just when the gang thought they had seen it all, something else even more exciting appeared before their very eyes. Here they sat, strapped into chairs, in the middle of this flying space machine, which was somewhere in the middle of the universe, affording them sights unlike anything they’d ever seen. It was sci-fi at its best, only it wasn’t a movie; it was real. The view was spectacular.

“It works with gyroscopes. To refresh your memory, gyroscopes work when magnetic compasses fail to work. Simply put, a gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation based on the principles of angular momentum. I have used and incorporated some sophisticated screen technology for the ship but I had a major electronics firm take it a step further. They modified the screens and developed the system you see working before you. As soon as I received the completed material, I immediately installed it throughout this ship, but because it is so new, I couldn’t test it. This unexpected trip gave me the opportunity to see how it works. I’ve modified the inside of the ship using the same technology that I used on the outside. As the ship was being built, I realized I didn’t want a Plexiglas® observation deck as the Plexiglas® might hinder my ability to steer the ship. So, I leveled up a notch and designed a special type of periscope, in order to determine an easier way to see what was in front of us, and placed the controls inside a Plexiglas® bubble. The bubble was not a good idea because of its restrictions – the difficulty of steering while viewing the forward motion through the Plexiglas
. And so what you see now is the result of trial and error, error, error,” he said with somewhat of a laugh, something quite out of character for the serious-minded man. “Even though the illusion is of us sitting in our captain’s chairs, looking out into space, nothing could be further from the truth because nothing of the sort is taking place. The modified metamaterial allows our cameras to transmit pictures, convert them into signals that are sent to television screens that encapsulate the interior of this ship and voila! There you have it – the ability for us to see whatever surrounds the exterior of our spacecraft transportation vehicle. It’s as if we’re looking through a window, as if we’re traveling through space on a magic carpet.”

For what seemed like hours, the group sat patiently, listening to Lindstrom excitedly describe his invention, its modifications, and his genius retrofits that all made this possible, and yet, not one of them understood a damn thing he said.

The professor waited for questions or a response or a reaction of any kind. He received none. He simply added, “I know. It takes a little getting used to, but it works much better than I anticipated. But . . . in case of an emergency, I can always fall back on the Plexiglas
system,” he said proudly.

Lucky reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a slip of paper. He had repeated this ritual many times. It was becoming more of a nervous habit than anything at this point,
that
, or he needed the reassurance that it was still there. There was a slight fear of losing it somehow, so by now, he had committed the address to memory.
This address
, he thought,
is singlehandedly responsible for this little spaceship excursion
.

The spacecraft’s GPS was taking Lucky and gang across the ocean, over Europe and into Russia. Ah, the ocean. It was at this point that Nicky asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.

“Hey, professor,” he said. “What would happen if we lost power and the ship fell into the ocean?”

The professor’s answer was not at all one that was expected.

“The ship would fly underwater.”

“Wh
aaa
t?” Lucky responded as he looked up.

“Yes, just as easily as it flies through the air, but it would move much slower because it would be subject to substantial drag due to the density of the water. Density of water is fiercer than density of air,” the professor added in a matter-of-fact tone.

There were murmurs all throughout the craft. Nicky’s eyes bolted wide open, clearly unprepared to hear this. Lucky, still as surprised as anyone, said, “Well, Lindstrom, all that money that was put into your little contraption here, well, it might just turn out to be the best investment I’ve ever made.” He smiled and shook his head. It was his way of saying, without saying it, “Great job.”

“Of course, while we, at present, could fly underwater . . .” The professor not acknowledging Lucky at all, but concentrating on his navigating. “. . . We couldn’t visit the deepest parts of the ocean floor because the ship isn’t pressurized for depths of that magnitude. But I appreciate the question, Nicky, because the pressurization of this ship will be my next modification, so that even its ocean floor capabilities will never be in question. How fascinating it would be to be able to explore the ocean floor at its deepest level, don’t you think?”

“Nah,” Nicky said. “I’m fine without seeing that. It’s enough to have me up here in this thing, flying around in the air, in a flying saucer that was just created. Nah, no thanks. Glad there are people like you, though, professor, else we wouldn’t have all the great things we have now. Damn, I can’t imagine life without a coffee machine.”

Everyone laughed.

“Nicky,” Lucky said. “Out of all the inventions to be grateful for, you picked a coffee machine? Boy, you need your priorities in check,” he said with a laugh.

“I do have ‘em in check, Lucky,” he answered. “I can’t do a damn thing without my coffee. And it has to be freshly perked coffee, old style. Can’t concentrate, can’t chase bad guys. It’s almost like it gives me supernatural strength. You know, like Popeye. What spinach is to Popeye, coffee is to me.”

The whole room erupted in laughter, except for . . . the professor, the serious mad scientist who never laughed at anything.
Wonder what it takes to get a smile out of him
, Lucky thought. His mind then wandered back to his friends.

The spacecraft remained on course, and headed directly to the Lubyanka, more specifically to the gray stone building
behind
the Lubyanka, site of the KGB museum. The KGB operated under the supervision of Oleg Karpov, the Head of Security for the KGB, from his office on the upper floors of the building. The ground floors were used for conferences and housed a clubroom with a disco for retired KGB officers. This was where Lucky’s friends were being held.

Eventually, the ocean view was behind them as they flew high above land, following the ship’s GPS, guiding them toward their approaching destination. The professor slowed the ship and descended to an invisible hover right over the KGB headquarters. Lucky handed each of the men a small canister and a cloth, compliments of his CIA buddy, Jack Kinsey. He had supplied Lucky with a dozen of them. Each canister consisted of a combination of chloroform and other chemicals that the doctors at the compound created.