Chase (ChronoShift Trilogy) (31 page)

The static of another shift caused Mark to pause.  A burly figure appeared, a strangely familiar and completely unexpected figure.  It was Randall Cook, the purser from the HMS Huntingdon back in 1814.  Mark shook his head in disbelief, even as the burly sailor charged.

***

Ty was alone back at headquarters.  Mark and Hardy had left a while ago to execute the new plan.  Operation Rialto Round-Up was how Hardy had dubbed it.  Savannah had gone out to run some errands.

Ty would remain in the protective confines of their building until Mark and Hardy returned.  He was their safety net and couldn't take a chance on getting himself killed on some other task.

He was taking the news of his own death fairly well, considering.  Mark had written his reaction off as more of Ty's weirdness, as usual.  Hardy had learned long ago not to comment. Ty couldn't explain, but knowing when and how he would die didn't really bother him.  It actually brought an odd peace to his spirit.  Being more of a glass-half-full kind of guy, he viewed the news as assurance of another 15 years of life, which was much more than he'd had before Mark had saved him in ’Nam.

He'd just begun a game of solitaire when the intercom buzzed. 
Was Savannah back already?
  Why was she using the intercom?

He pushed the button to talk.  "Yes?"

"Ty?  It's me, Laura."

"
Laura?
 What in the world do
you
want?"

"Can I come up?  I need to talk."

"Mark's not here."

"That's okay.  I doubt he'd want to see me anyway.  That's why I need to talk to
you
, Ty."

"I don't know..."

"
Please. 
I feel really bad about the way things ended between Mark and me.  Hardy too for that matter."

Ty paused and then finally hit the buzzer to let her in.  "Come on up," he relented.

A minute later, she was on the second floor with him.  Ty certainly understood why Mark and Hardy had both wanted her.  She was a beauty, whatever a man's tastes might be.

"Speak, girl.  You got one minute."

Sheepishly, she fiddled with a gold bracelet on her wrist as if searching for the right words.  "Like I said, Ty.  I feel really bad about..."  She swiftly drew a taser from her purse and squeezed the trigger.  The prongs flew through the space between them and plunged into Ty's chest.

"...having to do this," she finished.

Electricity coursed through his body, spasming every one of his muscles.

I never should have trusted her
was the last thought to run through his mind before he collapsed to the floor.

Bending over his inert form, she examined his watch.  The face of it had turned red, indicating it had gone into "inoperable" mode. 
Interesting.
  The electric shock had shut it down.  She hoped she hadn't damaged it permanently.

She went back downstairs, opened the front door to let Randolph in, and led him up to where Ty lay.

"What now?" she asked.

"We wait for Rialto.  He said he wanted to be here when we kill him."

Cook slammed into him, driving an elbow into his stomach and knocking the wind from his lungs.  Mark's plan was going bad fast.  Desperately, he tried to draw breath, but couldn't. Torino would have shot him by now if Cook hadn't gotten himself in the way so rashly.

As winded as he was, all Mark could do was shift out.  Thankfully, he had the presence of mind to activate the jammer in his pocket before he did.

Torino shouldn't be able to track him, assuming the little devices Prescott had made for them worked correctly.  Unfortunately, since Cook had landed on top of Mark, he came along when Mark shifted.

Cook had a full ten seconds to land as many blows and kicks as he could while Mark got his wind back.  Fed up, Mark swung the butt of his rifle into Cook's face and knocked his attacker back.  He stood and followed it up by ramming the rifle into the sailor's stomach.  The final blow was a full swing of the weapon, as if it were a baseball bat, into the back of his neck. Cook fell limply to the roof.  Angry determination pressed Mark's forearm hard into the unconscious man's throat as he dragged him toward the edge of the roof, fully intending to throw him over the knee wall.

Then, he spied the silvery shifter shining on Cook's wrist. The sailor certainly hadn't had one back in 1814.  Somehow, the man had hooked up with Rialto and was working with him now.

If I kill him, somebody will shift in, save him, and the battle will go on.

He knew leaving Cook behind was the best bet to elude them.  He didn't like the realization, but there it was.

Right now, Rialto didn't know where Mark was.  Mark just needed to evade so he could get back to Hardy.  This fight could wait for another day.

Releasing the choke hold, he chopped down on the back of Cook's neck once more for good measure to make sure he stayed out of commission for a while.

Using the jammer again, he shifted to yet another time and made his way to Hardy's rooftop.  He guessed about where one of the figures had phased in behind Hardy and tried to shift in right behind that man.

Bingo!  He'd only been off by about a foot.  Two more of Rialto's men surrounded Hardy, and in the moment Mark arrived, his friend was still turning to face them.  He wouldn't be able to do much.  Both men already had their pistols aimed at Hardy's head.

Mark recognized Graves as he brought the butt of his pistol crashing down on the back of Graves' skull.  The second goon was another newbie.  His cruel, ugly sneer was uncannily familiar, but Mark couldn't quite place where he'd seen him before.  His more immediate concern was the gun in the guy's fist.

Mark's bullet hit the man in the leg, eliciting a loud howl from the unexpected pain.

"Shift!"  He called to Hardy.  Hardy would know to use his jammer.  They'd agreed in planning that jammers would be standard procedure in a battle like this.

Once he was sure Hardy had gotten out, he shifted out himself to a time different from Hardy's.  They'd meet back at headquarters.  The sinister guy he'd shot in the leg didn't even have time to recover and reaim before Mark was gone.  The whole ordeal took about five seconds.

He was frustrated — and more than a little concerned.  Rialto was still out there.  Their mission to end this war once and for all was a complete failure.  Not only that, but Rialto had at least two more thugs working for him now, thugs with shifters,
thugs that Mark apparently knew
.  Rialto had superior numbers, which meant besting him would now be infinitely more difficult.

He brooded all the way back to the office.  They'd lost the element of surprise.  It wouldn't take much of a brain for Rialto to figure out Mark had jammers now.  Someone had designed the shift detectors for Rialto, and that same someone could make him jammers too.

Mark slammed his fist on the console of his car.  They’d lost every advantage they had in that battle, and with nothing to show for it.  And the truce was off.

Where had all those extra guys come from?  Where had they gotten their shifters?  How many shifters did Rialto have?  He'd watched Rialto steal Ty's shifter and slip it on his own wrist. Until now, he'd had the sneaking suspicion that Graves and Torino had procured their shifters from his and Hardy's dead bodies, but he couldn't find any death certificates to prove it.  Now, he wasn't so sure.  Rialto’s team had at least five different watches, so where had Cook and this other man gotten theirs?  And who was that last man?  Mark could swear he knew him from somewhere.

He slammed on the brakes and twisted the steering wheel sharply to the left, sending his vehicle into a sliding u-turn.  He was going to Washington D.C.

***

The sharp point of the Italian's angled nose was just as prominent as ever, but this version of Rialto had much less grey hair.  Mark even saw a modicum of kindness still remained in the younger Rialto's eyes, but Mark would have no pity.

There was more than one way to skin a cat.

He'd driven to Washington D.C. and shifted back to 1990 when Rialto was still a rookie agent with the IRS, before he ever had a shifter, before he had even ever heard of Mark Carpen.

For several evenings, Mark tracked Rialto from work to home, looking for the best point of attack.  This "innocent" Rialto had no reason to suspect he was being stalked.

The tax agent had a bad habit of cutting through a particularly narrow and dark alley on his way home each night to his apartment in Georgetown.  Mark chose an especially dark evening to execute his plan.

He waited in the recess of a doorframe which was partially blocked by a dumpster, dressed in solid black. 

At the ideal moment, Mark emerged from the shadows like a nocturnal panther ready to pounce upon its prey.  The sight of the automatic pistol drained enough blood from Rialto's face that Mark could see him paling even in the limited moonlight.

"Wha...What do you want?"

Mark did not answer.  There was nothing to say.

"Here...t…t...take my wallet, take whatever you want," he stuttered.

Mark squeezed his trigger several times in a row, and joy swept through him as the explosive retorts of bullets successfully fired rang in his ears.  No misfire had occurred this time, and the acrid aroma of burnt gunpowder smelled so sweet.  Only five feet separated the men.  There was no way to miss.

Yet...Rialto still stood.  Why was he not down?  Mark fired again, and again, and then two more times.  Rialto took a step back, almost stumbling over himself, and screamed curt shrieks of bloody murder with each successive shot before racing for the other end of the alley.  He didn't appear to be wounded.

Disgusted, Mark slung his weapon to the pavement where it clattered to a stop against the brick wall of the opposing building.  He'd worn gloves, so there would be no prints.

It was time to shift out.

Alexander Rialto stumbled in mid-run and almost crashed to the sidewalk, more from an excess of adrenaline than any injury, though he did feel a stinging sensation in his side.  Reaching down, his hand came away bloody.  Terrified, he stopped and ripped his shirt up to inspect the damage.

Relief came like a flood.  It was nothing more than a crease in his skin, a long, shallow bloody cut.  One of the bullets had narrowly missed causing some real damage.

How that man had missed at such a close range, and after so many times, he had no idea.  How many shots had he fired?  Six?  Seven?  He'd lost count in his panic.  All that mattered was he was safe and the guy hadn't followed him.  He was even more relieved to see a police cruiser parked a little way up the street.

***

"That you, Hardy?"

"Yeah."

The stink of Boston's sewers wafted around them, its nasty little tendrils periodically assaulting their noses.  The smell seemed a little worse today than usual, though the underground entrance to their headquarters was in a section of pipe currently not in use, and the paths they blazed in these forgotten tubes tended to stay far away from actual refuse and sewage.

"I've been thinking, we need to get some air freshener spray for when we come in," Hardy said.  "This stench is in all my clothes."

"Yeah, good idea.  I'll ask Savannah to pick some up."

"Why, ’cause she's a girl?"

"No, because she's the office manager."

"Get ’em yourself, man."

"Why don't you get them?"

"Fine."

Irritation still lingered from their failed plans as they ascended silently in the elevator.  Just one more of the many safety features Mark had installed in their secure facility was a top-of-the-line elevator which made almost no sound as it operated.  They fully expected Rialto would invade their inner sanctum sooner or later, so they did their best to stack the deck in their favor.

Door hinges were well oiled, squeaky floorboards were immediately replaced.  In addition to all the electronic security, there were a plethora of hidden cameras throughout the edifice, and numerous secret passageways and hiding places.  The only people who knew about these things were himself, Hardy, Ty, and Savannah.

If either Laura or Randolph DeCleary had shifted into their time anywhere near the headquarters or the remote sensors, Mark and Hardy would have been alerted to the unfriendlies by a silent alarm long before they got to the upper floor.

Yet, since Laura and Randolph had simply walked in, no alarm was triggered.  The alarm sensors couldn't detect a shifter when not in use as the shifters were normally passive devices.  They emitted no traceable signal unless activated.

So, when the elevator doors opened, Hardy and Mark were quite stunned to see Laura and Randolph DeCleary standing over Ty's inert body.  Uncharacteristically, both men stood motionless instead of jumping into action.  Perhaps if it had been anybody but Laura standing there, or Randolph DeCleary for that matter, who they never expected to see in this modern era, they wouldn't have been taken off guard so completely.