Authors: Mitchel Grace
Wrong Time
Book 2 of the “Wrong” Series
By
Mitchel Grace
Other Titles by this Author
Wrong
Place
Wrong
Life
Wrong
Regrets
Strange
Visions: The Beginning
Strange
Visions: Yesterday’s Sins
Strange
Visions: False Endings
Coming Soon
Strange
Visions: The Calm
Wrong Time
By Mitchel Grace
Published by Mitchel Grace
Copyright 2013 Mitchel Grace
License Notes
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of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses,
companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
I would like to thank God and my family. I also
want to thank any and all readers out there. For anyone else, you know who you
are.
If you like my books, I hope you will recommend
them to your friends. Visit my Facebook page at
www.facebook.com/Mitchel.Grace.Author
.
Chapter 1
The group stood there staring at the
computer screen in disbelief.
“What time does it start?” Sam asked in
a panic.
“It starts at twelve,” Nathan said.
“It’s already seven. There’s no way that
we could make it there in time, but maybe we can still warn them,” Zane said.
“It’s worth a try at least,” Nathan
said.
Jason took out his cell phone and made
a call to the CIA headquarters.
“Hello,” Campbell answered.
“This is Jason, and we’ve recovered the
device, but there’s a huge problem.”
“What is it?”
“There’s going to be a terrorist attack
in Dallas in a few hours.”
“What? Where in Dallas, exactly?”
“Think about it. What will be the most
crowded place this afternoon in Dallas?”
“Oh, God! I’ll get on it right now.”
“Thank you,” Jason said and hung up the
phone.
They all sat there in awkward silence. No
one could believe the reality they were being faced with. Finally, Nathan
spoke.
“Well, this sucks. There has to be
something that we can do to help.”
“I know what you mean. I just don’t
feel right sitting here and doing nothing when all of those people are in danger,”
Sam said.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice
but to sit here,” Lee said.
“I think that Dan, Jason, and I need to
go back to Washington and see if there’s anything we can do there,” Zane said.
“I’ll go with you,” Sam said.
“What? You’re just leaving?” Michael
asked in surprise.
“I can’t sit here and do nothing. I
have to go do something or at least plan to do something useful right now.”
Surprisingly, Nathan didn’t have a sad or
worried expression on his face. Michael was very puzzled by this. He only asked
about her leaving on Nathan’s behalf. He thought that Nathan would be
absolutely crushed by the prospect of Sam leaving him behind.
“So what time are we leaving?” Nathan
asked.
“What?” Sam asked.
“Wherever you go, I’ll go.”
“I don’t know how Washington is going
to feel about a civilian just walking into our main office.”
“Honestly, I don’t really care. I’m
going.”
Sam only nodded. The truth was that she
hoped Nathan would come with her, but she didn’t want to make him feel as if he
had to. If he had wanted to stay there and help his friend recover and then go
back to a normal life, she would have been sad, but she would have understood.
“So can you guys take care of Lee while
I’m gone?” Nathan asked while motioning to Michael, Jess, and Trish.
Michael and Jess gave him a nod. Trish,
however, looked a little bit lost. She didn’t know where her place was in all this.
She couldn’t go with them because she obviously wasn’t the CIA type. In fact,
she was working against them just a few days ago. She also wasn’t that close to
Lee. Where do I stand in all of this, and where should I go from here, Trish
wondered. Jess grabbed her shoulder, and it was just as if she could read
Trish’s mind.
“Don’t worry. You’ve got a place with
us here,” Jess said to her newest friend.
Trish nodded. It was decided where
everyone would go.
“Do you mind if I borrow your laptop
for the plane?” Sam asked Lee.
“No, not at all. Just bring it back to
me in one piece.”
“All right, guys. I’ll see you soon,”
Nathan said as he and Sam walked out of the hospital room.
* * * * *
Back in Washington, John Campbell was
in the middle of a frantic phone call.
“Look, I’m telling you that you have to
cancel!” John exclaimed.
“We’re not going to cancel just because
of some document that you
think
you’ve
found. We pay our security for a reason. We’ll inform them of a potential
threat and increase the security for the event. There’s nothing else that can
be done,” the man on the other end of the phone said.
“I am telling you that if you don’t
cancel that game a lot of people, including yourself, are going to die!”
“Look, I don’t know who you think you
are exactly, but I don’t tell you how to run your business, and you’re not
about to tell me how to run mine. We’ll take all the precautions that are necessary,
but this conversation is officially over.”
“Hello? Hello? Damn it!”
* * * * *
Nathan and the others had just boarded
the plane on their way to Washington and were getting ready for takeoff.
“I can’t wait to get in the air, so I
can look through the rest of this flash drive,” Sam said.
“If we’re going to find more of the
same bad news like we found earlier, I don’t know if I want to know what’s on
that thing,” Nathan said.
“But don’t you see that if we know
before these types of attacks are about to happen, we may be able to prevent
them?”
“I hope that you’re right, but why
would these people even do something like this?”
“I think the answer to that question will
probably be on this,” Sam said while motioning to the flash drive.
Soon the plane was in the air, and the
passengers got the okay to use electronic devices. Sam inserted the flash drive
and began looking through all the files.
“Oh my God! Look at all of this,” Sam
said.
There on the screen were past business
transactions.
“They sold long range missile plans to
North Korea just last year, and these are transactions for actual hits on U.S.
agents,” Sam said.
The list didn’t seem to discriminate.
They had done jobs for everyone from the U.S. to extremist groups. These people
had even been involved in paid terrorism on many different occasions.
“I think that I’m starting to understand
these people now,” Nathan said.
Sam looked at him with confusion in her
eyes. How could Nathan, or anyone for that matter, understand why these madmen
would do some of the things that they had done?
“If you play both sides of the coin,
you stand to gain maximum profits. They aren’t motivated by nationality or
loyalty but by money and power,” Nathan explained.
“I can kind of see that, but I wouldn’t
say I can understand it.”
“Well, I didn’t mean that I agreed with
it. They’re really walking a fine line, though. I wonder what all of their
buyers would do if they knew that they were being double-crossed.”
“I think that maybe we should consider finding
out,” Sam said with a smile.
* * * * *
It was 11:45 in Dallas, and the
security teams were talking amongst themselves.
“Get this! The owner says that there’s
supposed to be an attack today and that we should be on high alert,” one of the
men said.
“What an idiot! Say, what time does
this place go up anyway?” the other man asked.
“The bomb goes off at twelve. As a team,
we’re all going to make our exit through the tunnel at 11:50.”
“I would hate to be the guy who was
late for that one,” the other man said while laughing.
* * * * *
Nathan and Sam were exiting the plane
when they saw it on the television monitors in the airport.
“Stop. Here it is,” Nathan said.
It was 11:57, and the two football
teams were preparing to kickoff.
“Why in the world wouldn’t they cancel
this game?” Zane asked while looking up at the monitor.
“It’s Dallas and Washington. I think that
it would take an act of God for this game to be canceled,” Nathan said.
“Yeah, well, I just hope that those people
don’t actually meet God soon,” Jason said.
The kicker sat his tee up, and then he
kicked the ball into the air.
“Nothing happened,” Nathan said in
surprise.
“Maybe Campbell was able to stop it,”
Jason said.
As the returner caught the ball, a
bright light engulfed the screen, and then there was nothing.
“Oh my God!” Sam said.
“There were roughly one hundred
thousand people in that stadium,” Nathan said in disbelief.
“Come on. Let’s go. We have a lot of
work to do,” Sam said with a face that was full of determined rage.
* * * * *
Back in Lee’s hospital room, the four
friends were in absolute disbelief at the images they were seeing on the
screen. It was the worst attack in American history. There, on the screen, a
news report was showing what used to be a stadium but now only looked like an
inferno.
“It’s like hell on earth,” Jess said in
shock.
“I can’t believe I was actually a part
of that,” Trish said.
“You weren’t. You helped us try to
prevent it.”
“No, in a small way, I was. I helped
the company that made this happen. I am responsible, and I can’t escape that.”
She knew that even if she wasn’t a
direct part of the operation that had led to the deaths of so many thousands of
people, she was definitely an indirect part of it. In that moment, she saw the
fire on television, and she could feel all the people there burning. The weight
of all of their souls was just too much for her to bear. She broke down and
collapsed to the floor. There the almost always composed Trish sobbed like a
child.
“I don’t know exactly how you feel, and
I don’t think that this was your fault, but I can tell you one thing. If you
feel responsible for this, then you should spend every waking moment doing
whatever you can to make up for it,” Michael said.
Trish hadn’t expected something so
smart and true to come out of Michael’s mouth. She was still in turmoil on the
inside, but she knew that she had to collect herself and do what was right.
“You’re right. I’m going to meet Sam
and Nathan in Washington and tell the CIA everything I know. Then I’m going to
offer my services to them,” Trish said.
“You know, if you wait until Lee is
better, I’ll go with you and do the same thing,” Michael said.
“I don’t know what I have to offer, but
I’ll go with you, too,” Jess said.
Trish was relieved to hear that she wouldn’t
have to go at this alone. She was also confused as to how she had found such decent
people when she had never done anything to deserve them.
“Thank you . . . both of you,” Trish
said.
* * * * *
While sitting at his desk, Campbell
received a phone call.
“Hello,” he said.
“You know that you and everyone you
love are going to die very soon, right?” an irate Markus said.
“No. The way I look at it is that I
have you on the defensive, Markus.”
“Have you seen what happened in Dallas?
That is the kind of power I hold, and I’m going to take that power overseas
where I’ll pour all my resources into destroying everything about your country,
your organization, and your little world that I possibly can.”
“So you admit that you had a direct
hand in what happened today?”
“John, I admit that some associates of
mine gave me money to get a job done, and I got it done. I used to get jobs
like that done for you, but I suppose those days are over.”
“I just have to ask you. How did you
get it done? How did you get a bomb past the security?”
“That security company was a dummy
company.
We
were the security.”
“Well just know, Markus, that what
happened today will be your own undoing. I’ll use every single resource within
my power to hunt you down and anyone else who has helped you. Then I’ll have
all of you brought to justice.”
“Do you really think I fear you, John?
I have people inside the CIA who are working for me. Look at the person next to
you, and ask yourself if you feel safe. When you turn on your television, do
you feel like you’re in a position of power? Because if I were you, I would be
thinking about what hole I was going to hide myself in for the rest of my life.
Be ready because the wrath that you saw today in Dallas is nothing compared to
the wrath that I’m going to rain down upon you in the coming weeks,” Markus
said and hung up the phone.
Campbell sighed and felt a bit
helpless. With what he had just seen on television, he truly did feel powerless,
but if there was any chance of stopping this madman, he knew that he had to take
it. He walked out of his office and gathered everyone around him.
“Listen up, people. We are at war, and
there are going to be a lot of casualties over the next few weeks, but if you
stick with me, I promise that the people responsible for the crimes committed
today will burn for them.”