A Time of Fear: Book Three of The Time Magnet Series Read online

  A Time of Fear

  Book Three of The Time Magnet Series

  Russell F. Moran

  Copyright © 2014 by Russell F. Moran

  Coddington Press

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN-10: 0-9895546-4-3

  ISBN 13: ISBN-13: 978-0-9895546-4-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014916051

  Coddington Press, Islip, New York

  Preface

  A Time of Fear is Book Three in The Time Magnet Series. The Gray Ship is Book One, and The Thanksgiving Gang is Book Two.

  A Time of Fear picks up where The Thanksgiving Gang left off, and joins the gang on their next adventure through time. Like the other two books in The Time Magnet series, this is a novel about time travel. Is time travel possible? Theoretically, yes, but I wouldn’t try it. What I would try is jumping into this wonderful genre of fiction and lose yourself in the endless possibilities.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  You will see some familiar characters in A Time of Fear if you’ve read the other books. If you haven’t, fear not – A Time of Fear, although part of a series, can be read as a stand-alone book. Once again you’ll meet Ashley Patterson, the beautiful African American Navy Captain. Jack Thurber is back and he’s now Ashley’s husband, a man she calls The Time Magnet, because he can’t seem to avoid wormholes. Dr. Bennie Weinberg, the NYPD psychiatrist reports for duty, with a much larger role. You will again meet the lovely and feisty Janice Monahan, as well as Wally Burton the reporter from The New York Times. Buster, the mega spook CIA Agent and Thanksgiving Gang Leader is here, and he hasn’t slowed down. Yes, the gang’s all here, and they’ve really gotten themselves into it this time.

  Strange as it may sound, I feel a kinship, a real friendship, with these characters. But my job isn’t complete unless you, the reader, feel that you’re part of the gang as well.

  Once again, as I do in all of my novels, you will see a Cast of Characters. Nothing is more annoying than reading a book and trying to remember a character that you met briefly – a couple of hundred pages ago.

  So welcome to the gang. Join me as, once again, we slip through a wormhole.

  Acknowledgements

  The creative process doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but is a result of your experience with life. An ongoing joy of creating fiction is, for me, creating a different world with the help of my wife. After my first draft, Lynda and I spent hours discussing the characters, the scenes, and the story itself. Lynda gave me more than her editorial skills and critiques; she was part of the process, part of the creation. One of the main characters was the result of one of our brain storming sessions.

  I also thank my editor and friend, John White for his enthusiasm and dedication to the project.

  Characters – A Time of Fear

  Abboud, Ayham – Al Qaeda official.

  Allheimi, Sheik Abdul – al Qaeda operative, runs a recruiting school.

  Akhbar, Gamal – CIA Agent, aka Buster

  Billings, John – Navy SEAL lieutenant

  Bouchard, Woody – Captain, The Sea Bounder

  Bradley, Jerome – Shooting victim at CIA

  Carlini, William – Director, Central Intelligence Agency

  Cropsey, Wayne – Yacht Captain, retired CIA agent

  Crowley, Marcus – FBI Agent

  Haddad, Abbas – Senior al Qaeda operative

  Jefferson, Ezekiel (Zeke) – Commander, aide to Admiral Thompson

  Jones, Gordon– Yachtsman

  Kabani, Abdul – al Qaeda gunman

  Lopez, Phil – Buster’s assistant

  MacDevitt, Molly – Physics professor and nuclear bomb exert

  McMartin, Trevor – Australian bank examiner

  Monahan, Janice – HVAC Expert/ Provisional CIA Agent

  Monahan, Joseph LCDR – Imprisoned would-be terrorist

  Mulrooney, James – NYPD Bomb Disposal Unit

  Reynolds, Michael – Professor, Virginia Tech

  Thompson, Frank – Rear Admiral, United States Navy

  Weinberg, Benjamin – Psychiatrist, NYPD

  Williams, Max – Warden, Leavenworth Prison

  Prologue

  If you think that time travel sounds like fun, I suggest you take up something tamer like skydiving, snake charming, or raising scorpions. Maybe you could catch a ride on top of a moving train or play Russian Roulette with an AK-47. Perhaps you could walk into a radical mosque, loudly reciting the Hail Mary.

  There are a lot of things that you could do that are safer than time travel. Other things may be safer, but sometimes time travel is useful.

  My name is Jack Thurber, and everybody knows me as a time traveler. I’ve done it four times to date. My wife Ashley even calls me a “time magnet.” I don’t time travel intentionally; nobody does. It just happens. Step on a wormhole and you’re in for a wild ride, a sickening, weird ride.

  Avoid wormholes. How? I’m not sure I’m the guy to tell you because I sure can’t seem to avoid the damn things.

  Right now I’m relaxed and happy and living in the present. It’s October 18, 2015, and I’m with the woman I love, my wife Ashley. Until recently we thought we were dead. How can you think you’re dead when you’re alive? I’ll explain. Well, I’ll try to explain.

  About four months ago on July 1, 2015, I was on assignment as a reporter for the Washington Times, on location in Manhattan to do research for an article I was writing on underutilized real estate. Exciting? No, but soon it became a thrill that I wasn’t looking for. As I walked through an abandoned lot I stepped on, you guessed it, a wormhole. Like a flash, and it really was like a flash, I was standing there in the lot on July 1, 2017, two years into the future. I didn’t plan it, didn’t think about it, didn’t try to make it happen. The future just showed up, and I was in it.

  Confused, as I always was on one of my time trips, I called my old friend Bennie Weinberg, a psychiatrist and detective with the NYPD. Bennie knew about my time-tripping proclivities, but he treated me like some kind of an apparition, a freak, a ghost. It seemed that, according to Ben, I had been killed about two years prior to arriving in 2017, along with my wife Ashley and about 26,000 people on five different aircraft carriers in a series of nuclear terrorist attacks. That’s right, according to Ben, Ashley and I were blown to bits on November 26, 2015. Ashley was the commanding officer of one of the ships and I was aboard as her guest for a Thanksgiving Cruise.

  Bennie and I teamed up with my friend Wally Burton, a reporter with The New York Times, and a woman named Janice Monahan, the wife of one of the terrorists. We called ourselves The Thanksgiving Gang, and proceeded to go back in time (thank God I remembered where the wormhole was) and prevented the disaster.

  It worked. With help from the FBI, the CIA, and a lot of other agencies, it worked. I’m here, Ashley’s here, and we’re both alive and in love.

  My good friends and fellow “gang” members, Ben, Janice, and Wally decided to go back (back?) to 2017 where they came from. They left for the future on October 18, 2015.

  So that clears it all up, yes? No? Wait. It gets weirder.

  Chapter One

  Something’s wrong.

  Something’s terribly wrong.

  This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

  My name is Janice Monahan, and I’m scared out of my mind. I just went through a wormhole (or time portal) along with my friends Wally B
urton and Ben Weinberg. We came from October 18, 2015 and arrived in October 18, 2017. I realize that sounds insane, and I would agree that it is, but it’s also true. The three of us just time tripped two years into the future.

  I’m living an exciting life, and I owe it all to my terrorist, would-be mass murdering husband. More about him later. Until about a month ago I was a diligent HVAC engineer working on a major project and minding my own business. I had no idea where my husband was, nor did I care. I had fallen out of love with the man, a man who I didn’t know anymore, a man who turned his back on me and his country.

  It was only three weeks ago that I answered the doorbell at my house in Brooklyn. Three guys, Jack Thurber, Ben Weinberg, and Wally Burton appeared at my door. They gave me a story that they were reporters from The New York Times and were writing a magazine article on the impact of what we knew as the Thanksgiving Attacks, nuclear attacks on five American ships. Actually, Wally Burton really is a reporter with the Times. They wanted to interview me because I was the widow of Joseph Monahan, an officer on one of the ships. What they didn’t know, and what I didn’t know at the time, was that my husband was one of the murderous bastards who conspired to bomb the ships. Their ruse about writing an article was just that, a ruse. Jack Thurber and his friends were trying to find out everything they could about the attacks. It seemed that Jack Thurber, in our “then history” of 2017, was known to be dead. He was killed, along with his Navy captain wife, on one of the ships, the one my charming husband was supposed to be on. Jack convinced Ben and Wally, and eventually me, that he actually travelled two years through time, skipping over the attacks on the ships and avoiding his death. Jack wanted to go back to 2015 and prevent the disaster. Who could blame him? He believed he had the power to undo a tragedy, his death and that of his wife. After many discussions and meetings that included the FBI and CIA, we all decided to go back in time with Jack to help him prevent the attacks.

  Along with Jack, we dubbed ourselves the Thanksgiving Gang, a collective Mighty Mouse that would save the day and avert a big disaster on Thanksgiving Day 2015.

  We pulled it off. The Thanksgiving Gang, along with the FBI and the CIA, stopped the attacks on the five carriers and saved about 26,000 people, including Jack and his wife Ashley. We all thought we’d live happily ever after. Nice thought. Or was it a dream?

  ***

  As I stepped on the wormhole, I felt like I was plunged into ice water. Ben and Wally agreed with my assessment. The temperature was fine, a typical late October day, about 60 degrees, bright and sunny. But we may as well have landed on the surface of Mars.

  We expected to arrive at a construction site on 1st Avenue and 118th Street in Manhattan. It appeared somewhat familiar, until we looked south. Instead of the endless view of monumental skyscrapers, there was rubble, except for some buildings a few blocks from us. In large part, lower Manhattan had been destroyed. I looked up at a strange instrument on a telephone pole. It was marked “radiation meter.” It indicated that we were in a place of low to moderate radiation. We guessed that what happened to lower Manhattan was a nuclear explosion.

  We expected to arrive in a different 2017, a happier 2017, a year that didn’t have a history of five aircraft carriers destroyed two years before. The Thanksgiving Gang had saved the day. But what were the carrier attacks replaced with?

  Chapter 2

  I feel like I’m going to throw up. The three of us concluded that a nuclear attack happened in Manhattan and God knows where else. We all figured that it was a nuclear attack because of the devastation. The radiation meter on the pole seemed to confirm our conclusion.

  When the gang tripped back the last time we found that time in the past goes faster than the present. Don’t ask; it just does. Three weeks of 2017 time amounted to three months in 2015. Oh my God. In a matter of weeks (2015 weeks that is) Manhattan will become a nuclear target. From our view, in 2017, it already had.

  ***

  Ben, Wally, and I went to Wally’s office at The New York Times on Eighth Avenue. We needed to find out exactly what happened, and figured what better place to get information. Because we had discovered that time goes by faster in the past, our recent journey to 2015 was only a matter of a couple of hours in 2017.

  “Long lunch?” asked Gloria, Wally’s secretary. From her perspective, she hadn’t seen Wally for two hours.

  Wally introduced us and then told Gloria that he was planning a long article about the Thanksgiving Day attacks. “You and every other reporter in the world,” said Gloria.

  Wally asked her if she could save him some time by finding a video about the event. Obviously he didn’t want her to think that we didn’t know anything about the disaster.

  “Here,” she said, reaching into a cabinet for a CD. “This documentary is probably the best. It covers everything in three hours.”

  Wally inserted the first disc into his computer, and we began to watch the scariest horror movie we’d ever seen. It was a collaboration of CNN, CBS, and Fox News. At the beginning, the narrator explained that so many reporters lost their lives in the attacks that they had to pool some journalistic talent. The film was produced by Steven Spielberg and narrated by James Earl Jones and Al Pacino.

  “Each of the bombs, as we now know,” said James Earl Jones, “was a suitcase nuke, each about 10-kilotons. By way of comparison, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was between 12 and 18-kilotons. Part of what we know came from the bombs that were confiscated from the Detroit factory, the ones that were supposed to be used on the five aircraft carriers. Well, that plot was broken by a group of people who called themselves the Thanksgiving Gang.”

  We all looked at each other and smiled.

  “From what we understand,” said Jones, “there was a lot of rejoicing, back slapping, and high- fiving from that Thanksgiving Gang as well as the CIA, the FBI, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. A horrible attack was avoided. There was some concern that Ayham Abboud, the al Qaeda leader who was in charge of the operation, escaped. The thinking was, at all levels of government, that he would eventually be captured, just like Osama bin Laden. Everybody sat down to Thanksgiving dinner that day with something to be thankful for. But at the same time the ships were supposed to be hit, at 3 PM Eastern Time, America had its heart ripped out.”

  “Before the attacks,” Jones continued, “numerous engineering studies predicted the result of different size nuclear blasts in various American cities. But the studies underestimated the impact of a nuclear blast in a city of skyscrapers. What we now know is that every piece of metal or cement that wasn’t vaporized became part of a high-speed cloud of flying projectiles, taking down building after building in its path. That’s why lower Manhattan was devastated.”

  As he spoke, aerial views of the crumbled cities appeared on the screen.

  “I’m now going to give you the results,” Jones said, “city by city.”

  “The first is Chicago. The bomb was detonated next to the Willis Tower, once known as the Sears Tower, the eleventh tallest building in the world. It now seems obvious to us that one of the terrorists’ objectives was to destroy American icons. You’ll see what I mean as we look at the other cities. The death toll in Chicago, which keeps climbing as people succumb to radiation sickness and develop cancers, is just over 200,000. The number was kept down because the attack happened on a holiday in a business district. About a quarter-mile radius from the Willis Tower is total devastation, and other large buildings were destroyed as far as three-quarters of a mile away, with major damage for a mile around. It would take hours to list the areas that were destroyed so I won’t. Just know that LaSalle Street, the Daley Center, Roosevelt University, the Chicago Art Institute, almost all of South Wacker Drive – they’re all history.”

  The film was nauseating. I’ve spent a lot of time in Chicago on various projects, and always enjoyed taking long walks through the city. I loved the architecture in Chicago. On the screen in front of me, instead of beautiful building
s, there was rubble as far as the eye could see.

  He then turned to Los Angeles.

  “Los Angeles didn’t suffer the enormous devastation that Chicago and New York experienced, only because there weren’t as many tall buildings near the detonation point. But parts of the city were clearly destroyed, including the iconic Hollywood sign. People have speculated about Hollywood as a target because the attackers wanted to strike at the heart of a unique American institution.”

  Al Pacino narrated the attack on New York.

  “After two attempts on the World Trade Center, one in 1993 and the plane attacks of 9/11, the terrorists apparently wanted to destroy the site once and for all. The blast, because of all the surrounding tall buildings, took out much more of the city than anybody would expect of a 10- kiloton bomb. Just as in Chicago, the materials from the buildings were turned into a fire storm of flying debris. Wall Street is now a vacant lot.

  The municipal buildings, including City Hall and the court buildings were damaged beyond repair.”

  As he spoke, the film showed the names of the destroyed buildings on a graphic overlay. Federal Hall on Wall Street, the site of George Washington’s inauguration, was rubble. These bastards wanted to destroy our history. That’s me talking, not Pacino.

  I’d seen enough. From the introduction at the beginning of the narration, I knew that the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was destroyed, as well as the Washington Monument and the Capital Building in Washington, D.C. The White House sustained heavy damage. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, only 50 Congressmen and 12 Senators were killed. The President and First Lady were at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, celebrating the day with the troops of the 82nd Airborne Division.