BackTrek (8 page)

“Phillips! What’s going on?” He yelled above
the ear piercing whine.

“Sir?”

“What is going on? I’m flatlined!”

“Nothing, sir. The Harmonics appear balanced,
sir.” Ted rushed over to Morgan and looked over his shoulder. He
too saw the steady flat line.

“How can this be?” Morgan asked.

“Phillips! Fire the gamma beam!” Ted
yelled.

“But-” Began Morgan.

“Now!” Ted reiterated. Phillips nodded, as he
realized the ramification that the flatline implied. He quickly
keyed the sequence to initiate the beam. “Hold that frequency!” Ted
yelled at Morgan.

“Phillips! Wait! You can’t initiate the beam
now!” Morgan yelled back. “It could blow the entire system!”
Phillips looked up, first at Morgan, then at Ted. His finger
hovered over the enter button. “Wait!” repeated Morgan.

“Do it!” Ted yelled. Phillips let his finger
drop to the button. The lights flickered within the lab as the
power surged to feed the gamma ray beam. An invisible high powered
energy beam shot across the inner lab. The center of the spinning
machine suddenly grew white hot, as if it contained the power of
the sun itself. Ted watched as the spinning of the machine
increased in speed. The bone rendering whine became even louder.
His hands came to his ears reflexively.

“I’ve got a vibration!” Phillips yelled out,
the concern evident in his voice.

“Shut it down!” Morgan yelled, as he came out
of his seat.

“No!” Ted yelled, as he pushed the doctor
back into his chair.

“It’s a Torsional vibration! Magnitude point
zero five!” Phillips yelled over the continually rising pitch of
the machine’s whine. A look of horror crossed Morgan’s face.

“We have to shut it down!” Morgan yelled. Ted
pointed over the Doctor’s shoulder at the screen in front of
them.

“Look!” He yelled. Dr. Morgan turned back and
saw that frequency indicator was no longer flat. As he watched he
began to see it quiver at first, and then suddenly it leapt into a
long asynchronous sine wave, with amplitude readings that were off
of the scale.

“Magnitude point zero nine!” Phillips yelled,
as Morgan quickly adjusted the scale of his readout. The full wave
form became visible.

“Is that...?” Ted asked, unsure how to
complete his question.

“Yes.” Morgan said, almost to himself. “Yes.”
He said again with amazement.

“Magnitude point one three!” Phillips
yelled.

“Kill the beam!” Ted shouted, and Phillips
frantically began to key the sequence to deactivate the gamma beam.
Suddenly the blinding brightness from the inner lab winked out. The
lights flickered again.

“Magnitude point zero eight!” Phillips yelled
out. His expression revealed his relief that the vibration had
begun to recede. Morgan made a slight adjustment to the frequency,
and the machine’s pitch rose quickly and suddenly became inaudible.
Silence filled the room, until Phillips spoke up again. “We’re at
magnitude point zero two and falling.” Ted slowly walked over to
the window and looked into inner lab. The machine still spun at a
blinding speed, and all around the opening in the center, blue arcs
of electricity sparked. He stared in disbelief as he suddenly saw a
figure materialize on the other side of the opening, and walk down
the far side of the ramp. Ted watched as the man turned to look
back into the portal. He could clearly see the face now. The man he
saw, was himself.

“Brandon! Get in there and wash your face.”
Tracey yelled out of her bedroom door. She stepped over to the
bureau, and began to brush her hair in the large mirror.

“I did, mom.” He said, as he ran into her
room. He grinned from ear to ear, as smudges of dirt tried to hide
in his dimples.

“I didn’t ask you if you’d already washed it,
now did I?”

“No, mam. But I-”

“No buts, mister. Get in there and wash your
face.” His smile disappeared, and slowly he let his head hang down.
He turned and walked towards the door.

“Bella didn’t wash her face!” He said as he
disappeared into the hallway. Tracey exhaled in exasperation.

“Bella! Come here young lady!” Tracey said as
she sat the brush aside and picked up her jeans from the where she
had laid them on the bed. She stepped into her jeans, and pulled
them up. “Bella Marie!”

“What?” Bella called from down the hall.

“Did you wash your face?”

“No, mam.”

“Well get in there and get it washed.” Tracey
tucked her shirt in, and reached for her belt.

“It’s not dirty.” Bella called back.

“I didn’t ask you if it was dirty, now did
I?”

“But-”

“Wash it!”

“Yes, mam.” Every day it was the same thing.
Tracey couldn’t understand why it was so hard for them to do what
they had been told to do. But she knew if she took just a moment
and thought back twenty-five or so years, she would remember
exactly how it had been when she was growing up. The only problem
was that she never seemed to have a spare moment to think back to
yesterday, much less reminisce about events that were twenty-five
years old.

“Mommy!” Bella called out. “I can’t.
Brandon’s in the bathroom.”

“Brandon! Let your sister in the
bathroom.”

“The door’s open.” He yelled back.

“But he’s in there.” Bella replied.

“You can share the sink. Now get in there and
get that face washed.” She grabbed her shoes from the closet.

“Mommy! Brandon won’t let me have the
washcloth!” Bella called from down the hallway.

“It’s dirty, Mom! I just washed my face with
it.” He countered innocently.

“Give her the washcloth, Brandon!” Tracey
demanded.

“But, Mom-”

“Now, mister!”

“Yes, mam.” Another disaster narrowly
averted. Being a mother was more like negotiating for world peace,
she thought. But instead of the demise of the entire world at
stake, one person’s sanity hung in the balance, and more and more
Tracey felt that her’s hung on the wrong side of the fence. She
sighed as she sat down on the bed to put on her shoes and glanced
at the picture that sat on the nightstand. Her heart sank as the
image brought her back to the present, and the fact that Jack
wasn’t there. It was a picture that she had taken two years ago
when they had vacationed in Florida. Jack had decided to build a
giant sand castle, and the kids had provided a lot of help for the
first ten minutes, until they got bored with the actual work
involved, and had decided to amuse themselves in other ways. Jack
had labored for hours, as he piled bucket after bucket of wet sand
onto the giant mound. When he had finally been satisfied with the
chest high height, he had begun to intently sculpt the mound into a
monstrous castle. She had taken the photo as he focused on
carefully creating the details of a stairway. His gaze was intent.
His jaw set. His blue eyes lit up by the bright sun. It was one of
her favorite pictures. As she blinked back tears, her focus shifted
from the photo to the clock on the night stand.

“Great! It’s six-forty-five and we’re still
not ready.” She said as she got up from the bed and turned back
towards the hallway. “Let’s go, guys! Right now!”

It had taken an act of Congress, but Tracey
finally was able to get everyone washed up and dressed and to leave
the house with eight minutes left to drive over to the restaurant.
Five minutes later she pulled into the parking lot, parked, and
they walked through the door at exactly six-fifty-nine. A minute to
spare, she thought, as she glanced at her watch. She spoke briefly
to the hostess, and as she expected, Jack had not yet arrived. No
surprise there, she thought. She asked for a table for four, and
the hostess seated them in the main dining room. There was a small
debate over where Brandon and Bella were going to sit, as both
wanted to sit on their mother’s right, until Bella made a big deal
out of sitting on her left. Then, of course, that’s where Brandon
wanted to sit. Soon peace was once again negotiated. Everyone was
seated, and now it was five after seven. She refused to wait any
longer and placed their orders. By seven-fifteen, their food had
arrived, and Tracey suddenly realized how hungry she was.

“Mommy, where’s Daddy?” Brandon asked as he
twisted his fork into his pile of spaghetti, red sauce smeared
around his mouth.

“He’s not here yet, buddy. He’ll be here in a
minute.” Tracey looked at her watch. It was seven twenty. She knew
that she expected him to be late, but she had hoped that for once,
things would be different. It wasn’t fair to her, and it definitely
wasn’t fair to Bella and Brandon. Deep inside, she wondered if
there was any hope at all that Jack would ever change. She hoped
so. With all of her heart she hoped that this separation would make
him see how hard it was on her and the kids. How lonely it had
become, and how much more there was to life.

“Bella, get your fingers out of his
plate.”

“But he said I could have his meatball,
Mom.”

“Yeah. It’s okay, Mom. I said she could have
it. I don’t like those. It’s got moose shrooms in it.” Tracey
smiled slightly at his pronunciation of mushrooms, and nodded her
acceptance. Bella scooped up the meatball and plopped it onto her
plate. Tracey looked at her watch again. The hands read
seven-twenty-five. Twenty-five minutes late, and they had almost
finished dinner. She made a firm decision. They would not wait for
Jack to show up, like they usually did. Not this time. At
seven-thirty, they would leave. Jack or no Jack. This separation
thing was supposed to be an opportunity for him to learn. She
reasoned that if she just sat back and waited for him to arrive,
that she would not help the situation. He had to learn that life
went on with or without him. It did not revolve around him and his
job. At some point he would have to learn that his participation
would be required. And if he wasn’t here by seven-thirty, she
thought, he would just have to find out the hard way.

“You going to stay here all night, King?”
Captain Howe stopped at Jack’s desk. His overcoat folded across his
arm, as his briefcase hung in the other hand.

“No, sir. I’m just tying up some loose ends
before I go.”

“Didn’t I hear you tell somebody earlier that
you were meeting your family for dinner?”

“Yes, sir, but I’m almost through with this.”
Howe turned towards Jack and bent over his desk.

“Let me tell you something, Detective King.
No matter bad this guy is that you’re trying to catch. No matter
how it long it takes to catch him. And no matter what I may say
about the job you’re doing. There’s only one thing that matters
when it’s all over.”

“What’s that sir?”

“Your family, Jack. They’ll always love you
Jack, no matter what else happens.”

“Yes, sir, but I still have to finish this-“
Jack began.

“Have you got the guy in custody yet?” Howe
asked, as a puzzled look crossed Jack’s face.

“No, sir.”

“Then it can wait until tomorrow. Go to your
family Jack. You need them. And they need you.” Howe turned and
walked out of the office. He did not wait for Jack to respond. Jack
knew that he needed to finish the report anyway. He glanced at the
clock and his heart sunk. Six-fifty. He was beyond late, and he
still hadn’t left yet. Hurriedly he saved his work, gathered his
things and grabbed his jacket on the way out the door. He sprinted
to the elevator, and began to repeatedly tap the down arrow, until
finally he heard the bell ring that indicated the elevator had come
to a stop on his floor. As the door opened, he expected it to be
full of people, but for once it was completely empty. He stepped
inside and as the doors began to slide shut he punched the button
for the garage. Tracey was going to kill him, he thought, there
were no two ways about it. He had told her that he’d be there at
seven, and there was no doubt that he’d be at least twenty minutes
late.

When the elevator finally reached the garage
level, and the doors began to open, Jack sprinted towards where his
car was parked. He fumbled with the keys, as he tried to get the
door open, and finally got them in the lock. Once inside the car,
he started the car, and the tires squealed as he backed out of the
parking spot. He stomped the brakes and brought his vehicle to an
abrupt stop. He took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. He was
going to be late, and that’s all there was to it. There was nothing
that he could do now to stop it, and driving like a maniac wasn’t
going to solve the problem. It would only endanger lives. He
reached over and grabbed his seat-belt, locked it into place, then
gently let his foot off of the brake, and slowly headed out of the
parking garage.

Traffic was not on his side as he made his
way towards the restaurant, and he was later than he had thought he
would be. He breathed a sigh of relief when he could finally see
the Pappa Louigi’s sign up ahead. He and glanced at his watch. It
was almost seven-thirty, as he pulled into the nearly full parking
lot. He passed Tracey’s car as he drove down the first full row of
parked cars, but there was no sign of her and the kids. At least
they were still here, he thought, and relaxed a bit. Finally at the
rear of the lot, apparently where the staff parked, he found an
open spot and began to pull into it. His headlights flashed over a
dark figure that appeared to be bent over near the dumpster, and
Jack’s senses flared up. As he brought the car to a halt, he peered
towards the dumpster again, but in the darkness, he couldn’t make
out anything in the shadows. Cautiously he got out of his car, and
locked the door. He hesitated. Should he check out the mysterious
figure, or go inside where he belonged before Tracey left.

Suddenly there was a shriek further back. He
could hear the unmistakable sound of a muffled female scream. His
instincts took over. He crouched, ran, and pulled his weapon
simultaneously. As he approached the rear corner of the parking
lot, he threw off the safety on his Glock semi-automatic. He could
hear a commotion just ahead, and he eased up against the back of an
SUV that was parked in next to the last slot. Suddenly, as he
braced himself to confront the situation, he heard the sound of
silenced pistol fire. In training he had fired pistols equipped
with silencers to learn how they handled and how they sounded. Now
for the first time since his involvement with any law enforcement
agency, he heard that sound in action. He knew that this was not a
good sign. Only the elite of the criminal world had access to such
equipment, so chances were whomever was on the other side of this
van was going to be a professional. He shifted his gun in his hand
slightly, and remembered distinctly that he had chambered a shell
that very morning before he had holstered his gun. Though the
hammer on his pistol was not cocked, he knew that the double action
that this model featured would both cock and fire his gun with one
trigger pull. He braced himself for the confrontation, when from
around the corner of the van, he heard a squeal. He knew that the
danger was not over in any way, but he lunged around the corner
anyway, and looked down the barrel of his weapon. His finger was
taught on the trigger, ready to fire.