The Time Portal 2: Escape in Time Read online

  “Well, I suppose,” the professor added. “It is remote. The seclusion itself provides a safety net of some sort, I suppose.”

  “Hey, Lucky,” Mickey said. “Are you thinking of . . . oh. . . I get it – the Charlie Hodge Ranch.”

  Lucky nodded. Sam asked no questions.

  “Call up some of the gang, Mickey. Ask them if they’d like to head back to Charlie’s, sip a little more Australian wine, partake in some ‘shrimp on the Barbie’ and maybe even see an Aboriginal tribe or two on this trip. Good history lesson. Lindstrom, you’re just a friend tagging along who wanted to get away for a while. You and I are thinking about becoming business partners in a project. Got that?”

  The professor nodded in understanding.

  Mickey immediately phoned Booby Boots, Lucky’s pilot, and instructed him to be on the airport tarmac, two mornings from now, waiting for his passengers. Mickey then made a call to the old gang, Jimmy Lamb, Dukie, Nicky Bell, the ones Lucky knew he could count on for eyes and ears that saw and heard everything. It was another all-expenses paid vacation. These were street guys and even though they did not have the training that Mickey and Lucky had from the CIA, they were just as good on another level. This was why Lucky enjoyed being wealthy. It was the pleasure and comfort of having his childhood buddies around, the gang from the old neighborhood. Even though some of them had done well in life, they could not afford to take the type of extravagant vacations of this nature. For Lucky, it was a three for one – loyalty and street smarts – while having fun with those he could trust. Lucky loved sharing with his friends and thanks to his merchant friend’s priceless artifacts in twelfth century England and to present-day Sotheby’s, Lucky was a billionaire. From CIA agent to billionaire. The best thing his ex boss ever did was try to kill him for it was that event that had landed him in the hospital with the severe head injury that led to the vision problem that led to his supernatural ability. Yes, life was good now. He had the freedom to do whatever, whenever, with whomever he chose.

  All Lucky’s friends knew was that they were going on another of Lucky’s adventures. Mickey had been forbidden to say anything more. Lucky needed the assurance that the plane would take off without fail.

  “Mickey,” Lucky said. “Just tell them to pack a suitcase with enough clothes to last them for a month or so because we’ll be staying a while.”

  His friends knew all too well what that meant. A month might mean three. Thank goodness, they had the liberty to just pick up and take off.

  Chapter Five

  President Vladimir Putin read Oleg Karpov’s report and asked him how he had received this intelligence.

  “I had one of our operatives placed in the U.S. patent office in case anything interesting came across his desk that we should know about. He called me yesterday and told me about an American who created plans for a machine that does not need fuel to operate. It can be used in cars, aircraft and even operate in outer space. He calls it a Magnetic Propulsion System. The Arabs offered him a billion dollars for his patent and he refused their offer. Seems he doesn’t want any one group to have exclusivity on it. The Arabs threatened to kill him if he doesn’t come forth with his design recipe and accept their money. As of yesterday, it seems he has disappeared. Now everyone is looking for him, including the U.S. Government.”

  “Is this man credible?” Putin asked.

  “Very. He has a doctorate in astrophysics, highly regarded by the government. Since his retirement, he’s devoted his time to inventing. But there’s more. I found out quite by accident that there is an American who has the ability to travel through time.”

  “What? Surely, you’re joking. How can anyone travel through time?”

  Oleg waited for his President to calm a bit and continued with his report.

  “I didn’t want to come to you until I had the proof and, just this morning, it was delivered to me. The CIA, and in particular, his superiors, destroyed all records on this man. Seems he is a CIA operative currently on an extended leave of absence from his job. We copied the contents of a diplomatic bag, unbeknownst to its courier that we drugged, and found that it contained a video showing the man disappearing, poof, vanishing into thin air just like a ghost or something. The video, along with all the other records regarding this man, was destroyed. If I hadn’t made that copy, before returning it to the courier’s pouch, there would be no evidence proving that this man has this ability. Lucky Campo is his name and, as I mentioned, he’s CIA. A curious inconsistency is that both his superior and the chief-in-charge have disappeared from the face of the earth after they attempted to kill him. He survived their assassination attempt, but there seems to be an interesting byproduct of it all – this peculiar ability of his. After they discovered his new talents, they arrested him and held him for a while with the intention of doing reverse engineering. They were going to dissect him to find out more about his ability to disappear at will.”

  Putin was silent a moment, but rose from behind his desk and began to pace the floor, his hands behind his back, muttering to himself. After a few moments of this routine, he turned to Karpov.

  “How did you find out about this if all of his records were destroyed?”

  “We tried hacking into the compound’s computers, but they had a firewall we couldn’t penetrate, but we did manage to break into the doctor’s computer who was assigned to do the dissection. A copy of his report was given to me by our top computer expert.”

  “I see. Do you have anyone watching this Campo guy?”

  “Yes, I have two men watching him now. He apparently believes he is in no danger and has no idea that he is being watched. He has a couple of men staying with him, as well as one woman, who sometime travel with a group of friends, supposedly, but if he leaves his house, we can follow him and easily capture him. I couldn’t act on anything until I received your orders. I believe this information, included in my report, may be of some value to our government, so I await your orders, sir.”

  Putin was silent again. He breathed heavily and spoke.

  “You did well, Oleg. Now we must learn what the doctor inventor knows and if he has a working model. If so, we must secure it. Send a team to get him and bring him to me. As far as Mr. Campo is concerned, if he can indeed travel into the past, which I find extremely hard to believe, we must know how that, too, is done. Bring him to me as well. Send your best men to handle this matter, but, Oleg, make certain that it is done quietly. We will disavow any knowledge of this matter should it blow up. Understood?”

  Dukie and Nicky showed up at the safehouse the following morning, happy to be back with Mickey and Lucky. Mickey let the men in and immediately pointed to a pot of coffee on the counter, signaling them to help themselves.

  “Lamb couldn’t come. Hopefully, the two of us will do,” Dukie said.

  “We have doughnuts over there, in the pantry,” Mickey said.

  Nicky brought his coffee and a doughnut to the table and took a seat. As he sipped on his coffee and occasionally dunked his doughnut, Dukie seemed distracted by something, staring out the kitchen window. Nicky glanced out the window as well.

  “You better check out what Dukie’s looking at, Lucky,” Nicky said. “It may interest you.”

  “What’s up, Dukie?” Lucky asked.

  “You see that DirecTV van directly across the street from us? Well, we walked past that van a little while ago and the guy had the driver’s door open and the back door was also open and, as he bent over to pull something out, I noticed the handle of a gun in the crook of his back. And another thing – the van had no equipment in it. You want me to take care of this problem for ya, Lucky?”

  “Yeah, Dukie, I do. Do it quietly and bring him here.”

  Nicky and Dukie immediately got up from the table and left by the back door. Beyond the door were some garages. Across it was a narrow road that was really nothing more than a tiny path used by the narrow cars of the twenties and thirties, cars that had much shorter wheel bases. Behind
the houses that lined the street, there was a dirt road that ran the entire length of the block, and while modern cars could drive along the path, their drivers could not turn or maneuver the automobiles into a garage, thus the garages remained devoid of cars, and through the years, had became nothing more than junk holders.

  The boys walked around to the left, which led to Nineteenth Street, adjacent to Astoria Park. They made a left onto Nineteenth and walked to the corner and crossed the street. They turned left and started to walk east on Twenty-Third Drive. The van was parked about three houses down from the corner. Dukie approached the vehicle and stopped, glanced, and gave a quizzical look. He walked right over to the van’s driver and said, “I noticed the sign on your van and I was wondering how I can go about ordering DirecTV. Can you help me? Do you have a brochure or phone number that you can give me?”

  The driver fumbled a bit and began to mutter a few things about how he was only an installer. Dukie saw that only one man was in the front of the van. He nodded to Nicky. Nicky quickly walked to the other side of the van to the open window, pointed his gun, and quite politely ordered the man out of the van. The man opened his driver’s side door, but as he stepped out, he suddenly lunged at Dukie, sending him sprawling to the ground. The man hurried to his feet and started to run, but a fast-reacting Dukie lunged back, grabbing him by his feet, and causing him to fall face down onto the street pavement. Both men were now on the ground. Dukie hopped back up and found himself face-to-face with a big guy; a big guy who appeared to spend a lot of time in the gym. Dukie dusted himself off, stalling for time. Nicky, off to the side, stood watching with relaxed indifference. Dukie was always tense for the first few seconds of any fight, but he hoped that this time, like all the others, the nerves would work for him. Dukie was known for his great jab. He always had a strategy and that was to use his left jab and wait for the right moment to unleash his lethal right hand.

  The man uttered a few unkind words to Dukie. Now he knew, Dukie, that is, that the big guy was Russian, or at least he appeared to be. Whatever he was, he seemed to be well conditioned. One look at his guns, and not the shooting kind, would tell you that.

  Dukie was patient. He circled the Russian and toyed with him a bit, using his left jab a little here and there. Dukie knew from experience that these big musclebound guys tired easily, became arm weary after the first few minutes of a fight like those in the boxer’s ring. Sure enough, after circling and jabbing for a while, Dukie sensed that the man’s strength was beginning to wane; he was becoming a bit winded and beginning to weaken. The big man began having some trouble defending himself from Dukie’s flurry of punches. Dukie didn’t let up. He taunted the guy, round and round, in a circle, lunging forward, stepping back, covering his face until unexpectedly, the Russian landed a strong right hand flush on Dukie’s chin. Although the punch landed solidly, it didn’t hurt Dukie, but it infuriated the hell out of him that this amateur punk could land such a good right hand. Dukie was now through playing games and he came back at him with a fury, sending left and right combinations to his gut that staggered the Russian sending him down. The Russian, with one knee on the ground, breathing heavily, looked up at Dukie and as he began to stand up, reached down toward his ankle and grabbed a gun from its holster. The Russian raised his arm, aimed right at Dukie, and BAM! The man fell right over. He never saw Nicky or the barrel of his gun headed right for his head. Nicky looked at Dukie, smirked, and said, “You must be losing your touch. What took you so long?” He casually looked around to see if there were any onlookers, but there was no one on the street. The two buddies patted down the man and found another gun, tucked in the crook of his back. They each grabbed one arm and dragged the Russian, sandwiched between them, back to the safe house.

  Once inside the house, Lucky had Mickey thoroughly searched the man again. As expected, he carried no ID. He sat emotionless, showing no fear. The big Russian had no idea that he had been duked by a professional fighter, thus the name Dukie. Mickey, too, had been a tough street brawler prior to his agent days and Nicky, well, he was a reformed criminal, thanks to Lucky. Sure, he had killed, but always in self-defense, never backing down from a fight and never losing a second of shuteye as result. He was tough.

  Mickey blindfolded the man, had the guys walk him around the house a few times, and turned him around in circles. Lucky opened the door to the saferoom and motioned for the professor to leave and put his index finger to his lips signaling the professor not to speak. Lindstrom did as told. There was no way that Lucky could have the two men in the same room, no excuse for sloppiness regarding Lindstrom’s security. Inside the

  saferoom, Nicky chained the guy’s right hand to some bars, similar to those found in prisons, anchored and drilled into a cement wall – the one ugly wall designed for this purpose, should it be needed one day. Dukie removed the blindfold and while Nicky kept his gun trained on the man, ordered him to take a seat in the chair that Mickey shoved next to him.

  Lucky broke the silence.

  “Do you want to die?”

  The man looked at him, laughed, and in his slight accent, answered, “I do not fear dying.”

  It was a safe guess that the man was Russian so Lucky decided to go with it.

  “What does Putin want with me?”

  The man seemed a little surprised by the question.

  Lucky knew what the answer might be. It was something that had concerned him for a long time. He lived each day knowing that someone might discover his secret, his ability for time travel and he, like the professor, would or could become a highly treasured commodity.

  Lucky had learned from his trials with CIA officials Dirk Sommerville, Jack Kinsey and Director Stewart, to always have a secret weapon. For Lucky, that something was a truth serum. He had seen its effects many times – an ultra short-acting barbiturate that produces general anesthesia, also used in narcoanalysis for psychiatric disorders. Its name was thiopental sodium, also known as sodium pentothal – a yellow crystal, with a garlic-like odor, that dissolves in water or alcohol. The doctors at the agency’s hospital compound had added another chemical to it that caused the patient to talk quickly, speaking the truth without reservation and without deliberation, yet would leave the patient with no recall of any of the conversation or events. Lucky had absconded with enough of this serum to disarm his enemies for the rest of his life. It was the ace up his sleeve and no one, not a soul, other than his childhood friends, knew of its existence.

  The Russian smiled as Mickey inserted the needle into his vein.

  “I have been conditioned by our best technicians,” he said, “to overcome the effect of any formula or truth serum. Sorry to disappoint, but you will not get anything from me.”

  Lucky and his gang waited a few moments for the drug to be absorbed into the man’s system and then Lucky began.

  “What is your name?”

  There was no answer.

  Lucky, Nicky, Mickey and Dukie all stood around patiently, waiting for the liquid blabber to kick in, generally around ten to fifteen minutes. Mickey kept looking at his watch and every few minutes gave the guys a countdown.

  “Okay, should be good to go,” he said to Lucky.

  Lucky asked, “Are you an American citizen or are you Russian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?” Lucky asked.

  “Yes, Russian.”

  “Is that your van that you’re driving?”

  “No.”

  “Do you live in New York City?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is your name?”

  He answered slowly, “Marcov.”

  The Russian was a tall man, blonde, well built, with blue eyes and close-cropped hair. He looked exactly his nationality, Russian.

  “Did Putin send you?”

  “No, Oleg Karpov.”

  “Who is Karpov?”

  “Head of Security for KGB.”

  “Did Putin order Karpov to bring me in?”

  “Yes
, I believe.”

  “What does he want with me?”

  “He has tape. It shows you disappearing. He wants to know how you do it.”

  Lucky shook his head and said under his breath, “Not again.”

  Lucky continued, “Is that all he wants from me?”

  “No, he also wants man who invented system.”

  “What system?” Lucky asked to make sure the man knew what he was talking about.

  “Propulsion system,” the Russian answered.

  “How many of you are there?” Lucky asked.

  The man ignored that question and kept talking, “I was contacted by Karpov with assignment because I live here, New York City. They will deny involvement if any of us, or them, are caught.”

  Lucky asked him. “Are there any others coming to get me?”

  “Yes, there will be others coming to relieve me. They will be here tomorrow.”

  “Will your people split up into groups or will there be one group?”

  Marcus answered slowly, trying unsuccessfully to fight the drug. “Yes. No. There will be two different groups.”

  “How did you intend to get us out of the country?”

  “We have Russian jet at Kennedy Airport to take you and scientist to Russia.”

  Lucky left the room and walked into the kitchen where the professor, Sam and Bobby the pilot were sitting.

  “Bobby,” he said, “I want you to go now and get the plane ready. File a flight plan for Monte Carlo. We’ll change it once we’re in the air. I have to make some phone calls, but I want to leave as soon as soon as possible.”

  He walked back inside the hidden, saferoom and asked Dukie to step outside. “Dukie, take a few Heckler and Koch G. 36 automatic rifles. Make sure we have plenty of ammunition and give each of the guys an automatic with four full clips.“

  The G. 36 is fed from the standard NATO thirty round magazine. The original German magazines were made from translucent plastic with special studs placed on each side. They allowed the shooter to clip together two or three magazines so as to have ninety rounds of ammunition at the ready. The G. 36 can also be fed from one hundred round dual drum magazines. The men were taking a condensed version of a larger gun. This one fit inside a topcoat, was easy to reload, and was a killing machine, which is precisely why Lucky wanted it (them) on the plane. Should the Russians come looking, there would be a heavy toll in body count.