Shift (ChronoShift Trilogy)

by Zack Mason

  “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 28th, 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 24th, 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.”

  “I’d say so. How in the world did you do all that with just six shifts?”

  “Spent a night camping in the desert. That gave us twelve shifts each.”

  Mark shook his head. “Amazing,” he muttered. They'd left him just one minute before, but had lived a full day and a half outside of his presence in that minute. It felt different when you observed the effect as a bystander.

  “Relax, man. We know what we're doing.”

  Mark smiled. “Yeah. You sure do.”

  Just because He doesn't answer doesn't mean He don't care

  Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

  “Unanswered Prayers”

  ~ Garth Brooks

  4:07 AM, September 30th, 2012, Boston, MA

  The woman would be here soon.

  In less than two minutes, a man would attack her somewhere along this block, but so far, Mark hadn’t been able to determine where he was hidden.

  He would have to wait until the perp made his move. In this current version of history Mark hoped to correct, the attacker would grab her from behind, clamp his hand over her mouth and force her into a vehicle. He’d drive her to a nearby park, force himself upon her, and then dump her in the gravel, unconscious and half dead. She would never see his face nor the exterior of his car, which would make it impossible for the police to catch the animal.

  Hardy was handling most of the current crimes like this, but Mark couldn't get started on historical tragedies until Savannah completed some research he needed. In the meantime, he’d been splitting the crimes with Hardy, and there were plenty to go around.

  The woman’s name was Laura Kingsley, and Mark intended to make sure this tragedy never befell her.

  He saw her. Her stride was purposeful. Even in the dim light emanating from the windows of businesses closed for the night, he could detect a slight sashay to her walk. The faint glow illuminated her left side while her right half remained eclipsed in the darkness of the street.

  Her beauty was exotic and striking. Glossy, dark auburn hair flowed down in long, loose, wavy tresses, a perfect frame for her well-chiseled face. Her skin was the color or silky caramel. Her figure....was perfect. She strode confidently, oblivious to the danger lurking nearby.

  She passed in front of a small alleyway, and the attacker showed his hand. He suddenly leapt from the black opening like a trapdoor spider on its prey, ripping her head back and strapping a hand over her mouth before she could scream. She fought with the strength of a tigress to escape the man’s grasp, but he proved too strong.

  She managed to stomp the insole of one of his feet, causing him obvious pain. That move almost allowed her to get away, but he recovered too quickly and merely tightened his grip.

  The very moment Mark had seen a flicker of movement in that alley, he’d launched into motion. This vigilante business had refreshed his military training well, honing the skills he’d acquired years before. He no longer had to think about what to do in moments like these. His body just went into action, like a natural dance.

  Mark crossed a distance of about fifty feet in under five seconds. Before the attacker knew what was happening, Mark had struck two successive blows to his head and kidney. The man lost his grip and dropped to the pavement. As he released her, Laura fell as well, landing flat on her back.

  WHAM!

  Something heavy struck Mark in the back of the head. He tried to step forward, but was too stunned from the blow. His vision swam and his right knee gave out unexpectedly.

  He was falling. He landed on top of the woman. There was no time to think. If he passed out, the guy would kill him. Dazed, he reached for his shifter, hit the red button, and shifted out.

  ***

  He experienced all the sensations that normally accompany a shift, but curiously, Laura Kingsley didn't disappear out from under him. Which was strange. It was hard to think. His mind felt muddled.

  “Your eyes are purple,” he mumbled vacuously, transfixed.

  They were indeed a bright, sparkling violet, and the unexpected brilliance of their hues stole his breath. His mouth was very close to hers. Light scents of lavender nestled in her hair drifted up to meet his senses, like a tantalizing invitation to something fresh and invigorating.

  Somehow, she had shifted with him. They still lay on the sidewalk, but the time was now dawn, two days later.

  There must have been two assailants.

  The attacker he’d seen must not have been working alone. That was scary. A team working together to assault women. Another guy must have been waiting in the wings to make sure there were no problems with the grab. When Mark took down the first attacker, the second had emerged and smashed him with something in the back of the head.

  Wide-eyed, Laura was screaming bloody murder now, scratching and scrambling, trying to get out from under Mark. Her initial state of shock had worn off. Weakly, he rolled over onto the pavement beside her, doing his best to fend off her blows. He was recovering, but still somewhat incapacitated.

  “Calm down, lady. I saved you,” he groaned.

  She scooted herself away as fast as she could and jumped to her feet. Furtively, she looked up and down the street, trying to get her bearings. Not seeing any other attackers, she slowly calmed and then stared at him, chest heaving from fear and adrenaline.

  It suddenly occurred to her that it was now daylight, which caused her mouth to fall open in astonishment
. Her lips worked silently as if to ask a million unvoiced questions all at once. Finally, she shut her jaws and let out an odd gasp.

  Mark had always made it a practice when shifting to use a base time when no one would be around. For this mission, he’d chosen a few minutes after sunrise two days after the attack. He knew seven minutes would pass before the next car came down the street. For the time being, they were alone.

  “Sit,” he croaked, motioning to a bench.

  She obeyed, dumbfounded. “What just happened?”

  “A man attacked you. I saw it and tried to help, but there must have been a second guy, ‘cause somebody walloped me from behind. Hard, too.” He sat up, massaging the back of his skull.

  She rubbed her eyes and blinked repeatedly, probably trying to wipe away what she thought must have been a bad dream.

  Goodness, she was gorgeous. Exotic. That was the word that kept coming to mind. Intriguing, magnetic, it had been a long time since he’d seen such hypnotizing beauty.

  “No, I mean, what happened after that?” she said, “I know I was attacked. You....I mean....I don’t know....but what happened? It was....night. I was coming home from work. Now, it’s morning.”

  Mark knew she worked at a gentlemen’s club a few blocks over. He acted groggier than he really was in an attempt to divert her questions. “I don’t know. We must have both been knocked unconscious.”

  She swiveled her head back and forth, searching for signs of other people. “No, I fell. You fell. Then, we were here. I never closed my eyes. I know it. You didn’t either. The light just changed and things got quiet.” She massaged her brow and stared at her feet. “Who are you, anyway?”

  He hesitated. There wasn’t going to be an easy way to get out of this.