36: A Novel Read online

  “What about DNA?” I asked. “What if I get shot or cut and leave some blood behind?”

  “Even traces of blood, or hair for that matter, are still part of you that was sent back and will be returned to real time when the clock expires. That will leave the investigators with nothing to test. Assuming they are on the ball and test a sample before you’re brought back, we’ve already erased all records of your DNA. They’d have a panel, but nothing to match it against.”

  “Wait. Won’t my fingerprints come forward with me, too?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “The body is constantly producing oils to keep our skin healthy and flexible. It will be producing those oils in the past. Anything that is produced in that time will remain in that time when you come back to real time. Understand?”

  “I think so. Kind of,” I said. “OK. What if something happens and I’m caught? Arrested?”

  “It’s really best if that can be avoided. But if you can’t, do not resist the police, and do not say anything. If that happens, the me that is in that time will be immediately notified the moment you’re taken into custody and printed. You’ll still be brought forward when time is up, and there is a team of agents on call to clean up any record of you being detained.”

  “You mean I might be in an interrogation room or jail cell and will just disappear when time’s up?”

  “Exactly,” Johnson said. “Not necessarily what we want, but it’s happened before. Now, we need to get you ready to go. The analysts could identify the event point at any moment.”

  We stood and surveyed the clothing available to us. It was Southern California. That typically meant pleasant days and chilly nights this time of year. It also meant casual, comfortable attire. Jeans with a T-shirt, a pair of Nike running shoes and a light jacket. The reflective stripes on the Nikes had been replaced with a dull black plastic, and the shirt was navy blue with no printing. The jacket was also dark.

  The outfit would look perfectly normal in the daytime, and would maximize my stealth once the sun went down. A black, knit cap with a cuffed brim went into a jacket pocket. It could be worn like a beanie, or unrolled and create a ski mask to cover my features. It would hide my identity and conceal my white face which might show up and give me away in the night.

  Dressed, we stepped over to the cache of weapons. Larger items, such as an assault or sniper rifle, were dependent upon the conditions identified when an event point was determined. If I was being sent back to a shopping mall or restaurant, or any public place, it might be difficult to arrive with a long gun hanging down my back.

  But pistols and knives and other goodies are easy to conceal. Soon, three guns, four knives, a stun gun and a steel baton were secreted on my person. Spare magazines for what would be my primary weapon were also added. Unused to being so heavily armed, it took a while of walking around the locker room for me to get everything adjusted so I felt I could move without giving away that I was ready to start World War III.

  “What about body armor?” I asked, pointing at a locker stuffed full of different vests.

  “Depends on the event point,” Johnson said, looking me over and adjusting my jacket to ensure the pistol at the small of my back wasn’t outlined by the fabric.

  “Remember, you’re going to be in California. Gun laws are strict. If a cop even thinks he detects a concealed weapon, he’s going to want a closer look. Be careful to not give them a reason to take an interest in you.”

  “But I’m going to arrive and start fighting. Right? Isn’t that what the event point is all about? A moment in time when I can put them down before they attack?”

  “I thought you were paying better attention than that,” Johnson sighed. “OK. Make sure you get it this time. The event point is a point in time that is determined to be your best opportunity to interdict the terrorists. That doesn’t mean you go hot and start shooting the instant you arrive.

  “It may be decided that you need to be there an hour ahead of the event point so you have time to prepare. Or ten hours early. There’s no correct point to arrive. Each situation is different. Right now, the analysts are looking at everything that has been learned about the perpetrators and back-tracing them from the moment they launched the attack.

  “Once they identify the event point, they will begin running simulations and make a recommendation on when and where you should be sent. Once that is ready, Director Patterson will review the results and make the final call. But in five years, I’ve never seen him not take the team’s recommendation.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Sorry. I was paying attention and I do remember that.”

  “Slow your roll, grasshopper,” Johnson grinned briefly then realized he’d slipped again and the smile disappeared from his face.

  “You’ll do fine,” he said in his officious voice. “Just remember your training and focus on making sure you get it right the first time.”

  “Hey. What do I do once the terrorists are dead? If you send me back really early, it could be a whole day and night before I return. Right?”

  Johnson sighed deeply and glared at me for a moment.

  “You weren’t paying attention,” he grumbled. “When you get back, you’ve got some remedial training to go through.”

  I grinned sheepishly. I kind of remembered the briefing I had received on the subject. But there had been one small problem. The woman who’d delivered it. She was smokin’ hot and it had been a very long time for me. I’d probably been more interested in staring at her tits and ass than paying attention to what she had to say.

  “I kind of remember, but tell me again,” I said.

  “Jesus H,” he began, then took a deep breath. “You know what? You need a blow job worse than any white man I’ve ever met.”

  For a moment I was stunned this had come out of Agent Johnson’s mouth. Sure, he’d shown glimmers of being more than an uptight FBI agent, but this was as much as he’d ever shown of the real person behind the mask.

  “I really hope that’s not an offer,” I grinned.

  “Fuck off,” he chuckled, then wiped the smile off his face and glared at me again. “Once the mission is complete, you are to find a private location and stay out of sight for the duration of your time in the past. You are to avoid contact with any person that is not absolutely necessary for a successful redaction.

  “You will be in the past, Mr. Whitman. There is the potential for a significant impact to time as a result. A chance encounter can set a chain of unpredictable events into motion that were never intended to happen. And as was explained to you, the smallest change to the past can ripple forward through time, growing exponentially. We might not see the results for years or decades to come, but that doesn’t mean the potential for disaster isn’t there.

  “What if, while you’re in the past, you are tired of waiting and decide to go to… I don’t know. Let’s say a bar, to get a drink. While you’re in the bar, you witness a man slap a woman and choose to intervene. You save her from a few slaps, but what else did you just set in motion?

  “Maybe that slap was the only time he ever lays a hand on her, and if you hadn’t stepped in they wound up working things out. And have a child. And that child grows up to be an influential businessman or woman. Or maybe even President of the United States. But because of your interference, that child is never born because the parents didn’t have the chance to work out whatever caused him to slap her.

  “Or what if you inspire her to stand up to an abusive husband and she decides to kill him, rather than pack up and leave in the middle of the night. And winds up in prison for the rest of her life. He’s dead, and she’s ruined. But what would either of those people have done in the future to influence the world? Because of you, they never had the opportunity to do it.”

  “But those are just what ifs,” I protested.

  “Exactly. And if you can’t answer the question, you can’t interfere. Because there’s no way for you to know the impact of your actions. Sending an asset
back in time is a tremendous risk. The potential for unintended consequences is almost assured. Why do you think we don’t go back and prevent smaller events? Like say the murder of one or two people. Or a suicide.

  “We’ve gone round and round about this since the project began. The best minds in the country have argued, and are still arguing, the wisdom of risking a change to time. But what everyone agreed on is that there are some events so heinous that we have a moral responsibility to redact them.”

  “Not everyone,” I said.

  “Ahh, that’s right. You’ve spent time with Professor Riley.”

  He was referring to one of the theological experts I had worked with, learning about the religious beliefs of the primary threat to the safety and security of the US. We’d had several discussions about history and human nature.

  The Professor’s position had been that humans needed horrific events to bring us together and keep us moving forward as a society. Without those, he claimed, man would grow more and more self-centered and unwilling to make the hard choices necessary to preserve the species.

  His favorite argument was that without the Holocaust, there would be one less nation on the planet. That the murder of millions of Jews was the impetus that brought about Israel. He laid out a scenario in which we were able to go far enough back in time to kill Hitler and all of his henchmen before they seized power in Germany.

  Then, based on what was happening in the world at the end of the 1930s, he projected what he claimed would have been the probable events that shaped our modern world. According to his theories, without World War II, the US would not have developed atomic weapons. Would not have mobilized every single citizen to a war footing.

  It would have been Germany, who was scientifically far ahead of America at the time, who created the first nuclear bomb. And facing the threat posed by Stalin, Germany used them on Russia. And didn’t stop there. America was next. Then Japan and the UK. Germany, without the mentally unbalanced Hitler making grievous errors with its military, became the world’s sole superpower and ruled the planet with an iron fist.

  I had no idea if he was right, nor could I argue that he was wrong. But remembering the discussions with him reinforced what Johnson was saying. Every individual has a role to play, no matter how insignificant. Nudging time, by changing the path of even one person, could have devastating long term effects.

  “Got it,” I said. “I’ll be very careful.”

  Johnson nodded, then looked down when his phone beeped.

  “They’ve identified an event point,” he said, turning and heading for the door.

  21

  We met in the same conference room where Dr. Anholts had first told me what Project Athena was all about. Johnson and I sat on one side of the table, Patterson at the head, and a studious looking man named Carpenter opposite me. The projector was on, displaying a frozen image of a large building that I assumed was in Southern California because of the palm trees surrounding it. And that’s where the event had occurred.

  Carpenter was the head of the analyst team that had traced the terrorists and decided upon an event point. He wrapped up a cryptic phone call, and based on Patterson’s patience with him, I suspected it was directly related to the event.

  “I’m Jim Carpenter. We haven’t met,” he stuck his hand across the table after putting his phone away.

  I shook his hand and introduced myself. Well, introduced JR Whitman. At least I didn’t make a mistake and use my birth name. Johnson would have never let me hear the end of that.

  “What’s the final count?” Patterson asked.

  “97 children, eleven teachers and staff, and four police officers,” he answered without having to consult his notes.

  “Dead?” I asked, horrified all over again.

  He nodded and after a moment Patterson told him to proceed with the briefing. He cleared his throat and looked around the table as he began speaking.

  “Gentlemen. We have found an event point with an eighty-three percent chance of success. The next closest point falls below a fifty percent probability of success. The preferred point is the apartment building currently displayed on the screen.

  “We successfully back-traced the perpetrators to this location, fifteen hours pre-event. I will detail the specifics of the event point, but first I have details on the subjects.”

  He pressed a key on his laptop and the screen changed to a collage of photos of eight men. All were swarthy and bearded with closely cropped hair. He quickly ran through a list, providing some of their names.

  “These are the eight bodies identified at the scene of the event. Five are in the country legally, from Yemen, on student visas. Two at USC and three at UCLA. The other three have yet to be identified and appear to be here illegally.

  “There are two possible event points where they are all together in the same location. Once, for a brief time in a parking lot adjacent to the school. Prior to that possibility, within the distance window that can be reached, there is only one other opportunity where they come together. We are recommending the earlier time as our event point, and it is what my briefing will focus on. I can expand on the other option if there are questions or concerns.

  “The apartment building is located in the city of Downey, California, twenty-one kilometers southeast of downtown Los Angeles. City population is 115,000 as of the most recent census. Our event point is in apartment number 2C and occurs from seventeen twenty-three until nineteen twenty-nine, local time. The end of the event point is precisely fifteen hours and eleven minutes before the beginning of the event.”

  “Do we know what they’re doing in the apartment?” Patterson interrupted.

  “No, sir. They appear to have gone operationally silent well before our thirty-six-hour window. No calls, emails, texts, social media posts. Nothing. They seem to be well trained and disciplined.”

  Patterson nodded for him to continue.

  “The apartment is leased to a woman by the name of Janice Bass.”

  He pressed a key and the displayed image changed to one of a poorly framed shot, probably from a cell phone, of an overweight blonde woman in her late 20s or early 30s. She was standing next to a beach, grimacing at the camera with the blue Pacific in the background.

  “Is she involved?” I asked, wanting to know her status when I arrived.

  “Uncertain,” Carpenter answered. “One of our teams has already been through the apartment. She wasn’t there when they arrived. Phone records and social media have been checked and there is no indication so far that she is an accomplice. But there is also no evidence that she is not.”

  Johnson cleared his throat to interrupt the briefing. I turned to see him looking at me.

  “Without evidence to the contrary, if she is in the apartment when you arrive, she is to be considered hostile,” he said.

  I nodded slowly, understanding the instruction but not liking it. After a moment I turned my attention back to Carpenter and he continued.

  “Additional weapons and ammunition, as well as explosives, were discovered in the apartment. Detailed documents on the school, its staff, and surveillance notes from observing the local police patrol sectors were also found. The attack was meticulously planned.

  “Our recommendation is the following. The team in California has identified that apartment number 3F is vacant. It is at the opposite end of the building and one floor above the event point target.

  “We can deliver the asset into the vacant apartment ahead of the arrival of the targets. Unseen.”

  “So, what? I get there a little early, then break into their apartment and wait for them to arrive? Take them out as they come through the door?” I asked.

  “Probably not a good idea,” Johnson said, then turned to Carpenter. “Do they all arrive at the same time?”

  “Negative,” he shook his head. “They arrive individually over a forty-seven-minute span.”

  “That’s why not,” Johnson said to me. “You might get the first
one through the door, and maybe even the second. But what if there’s some code they’re using. A special knock. Maybe the first one in turns on a specific light to let the rest know it’s clear.

  “We have no way of knowing this, and if you get some of them, there’s a very real possibility the remainder are prepared to continue with the attack on their own. Or will pop up somewhere else in the future. You need to be sure you get all of them.”

  I nodded, glad I’d asked and appreciating his experience.

  “Weapons I’ll be facing?” I asked Carpenter.

  “AK-74s. Full auto. This one and this one,” he put up a new image with only two of the terrorists’ photos. “Are both carrying pistols. Browning Hi-Powers in nine millimeter. Other than spare rifles in the apartment and explosives, that’s all they have.”

  I stared at the screen for several long moments, burning the two faces into my memory. When I was sure I’d recognize them, I looked back at Carpenter.

  “What about the explosives? What do they have?”

  “Semtex, plastic explosive,” he said, referring to a small note pad. “One point three seven pounds. But there were no blasting caps or detonators found in the apartment, in their vehicles or on their bodies.”

  “Do I need to be worried about a bullet hitting the stuff and setting it off?”

  “No,” Johnson answered. “It’s very stable. A bullet can’t cause it to go off.”

  I nodded, hoping like hell he really knew what he was talking about.

  “How early are you proposing we send the asset?” Patterson asked.

  “The scenarios we’ve run show that an hour would be optimal. But that’s with an asset who is experienced. In Mr. Whitman’s case, since this is his first time being transported, we are recommending two hours.”

  “Agreed,” Patterson said.

  I listened and kept my mouth shut. I clearly remembered the briefing I’d received about what it’s like to go back in time. They had shown me a video of three former assets, now deceased, who graphically described the disorientation associated with time travel. Two of them described it as debilitating, rendering them unable to function for at least fifteen minutes.