Time Skip

by Craig L. Seymour

  There was a pretty decent composite sketch being circulated. Except for the false eyeglasses and the hat he wore throughout out the process, it was a fair likeness of Lovelle. But, to the rest of the world, he had absolutely no known motivation for killing Bin Laden. For that matter, there was no reason to believe that he would be capable of such an operation. The believed they were looking for a skilled assassin, not some low level soldier. Since he was never going to be on anyone's short list for suspects, Lovelle believed that the sketch would never lead to his door.

  His only real concern in the aftermath of his mission was the possibility that his wound might give him away. This had occurred to him almost immediately after he had received it, and occupied his mind for much of the journey to Asmara. He worked hard to keep it effectively hidden once he was back on duty in Iraq. His plan was to keep it hidden until it was healed enough that he could invent a plausible non-gun related story for its presence. He was keenly aware of the need to keep anyone from thinking that it had occurred during his leave. This was the only piece of evidence that could now connect him to the assassination. If it were discovered right away he would have to explain it away as an accident, but, he did not want to go through the trouble and take that risk if it could be avoided. He was determined that it go undetected until the healing process made it indistinguishable from a nasty puncture wound from a routine accident. Good fortune had kept the bullet from creating an exit wound, so time would make that explanation plausible.

  Lovelle’s official duties did not usually call for much in the way of exertion, so it was only his Airborne buddies that had to be put off. He needed to forgo any further training without seeming suspicious. Since he no longer had any need of their assistance, and he felt no particular urge to continue it any time soon, he only needed to excuse himself deftly. He did not want to offend his friends, who he respected greatly, and to whom he owed a great deal, including almost certainly his very life. And he definitely did not want anyone looking into his recent activities. So he invented a cover story.

  Lovelle knew by experience that Mononucleosis, the ‘kissing’ disease, could effectively incapacitate someone for a couple of months, so he told everyone that he had contracted it while on leave. This gave them something fun to tease him about rather than harassing him about his work ethic. It also bolstered his cover story of having gone home to visit with his fiancée. It gave him plenty of time to recover, and before long he was feeling fine and back in the swing of things with his friends.

  Once he was comfortable that he was no longer in danger of detection, he told his family that he had fallen on a pallet with a protruding nail. He knew that the untrained eye would never know the difference between a random puncture wound and a gunshot one. By the time he saw them, or rather Charlene, he could be comfortable no one would ever be suspicious.

  EPILOGUE

  As expected, nothing ever came of the search for Bin Laden's killer. It faded from the news in short order, and Lovelle never heard of it again. Meanwhile, Captain Morris and his detachment ended their overseas tour in March 1993. Although Morris’ team was actually only a portion of the clique that Lovelle had been running with, Morris was the glue that held it together. Upon his departure, the group splintered into smaller ones, and Lovelle found himself a bit on the outside of all of them. Because he had been so closely tied to Morris and his team, he was still perceived as a member of that group, and of no others. While everyone of those splinter groups welcomed his presence, he did not have the same level of comfort with any of them. He was terribly lonely.

  Lovelle was himself transferred back to a base in the U.S. the following June. He was given two weeks leave in advance of the move. He called home and made his arrangements, then waited the two days for his flight with a sense of anticipation and hope.

  Lovelle stepped out of the jet way at Detroit’s Metro Airport and found his parents waiting for him. The first thought that crossed his mind was that this was one little convenience he may have saved. With any luck, there would be never be any cause for airport security to be ramped up the way it had been after the September 11 attacks. It was a funny thought to cross his mind, and he realized this as he smiled and waved to his folks. Then he saw that Charlene was with them and the next thought that crossed his mind was that he really was going to marry this girl. Despite anything he had ever said to her, it was only now that he really believed it. It was only now that he could allow himself to believe it. He was finally free from his self-imposed burden. It was a feeling of freedom he had only had in small doses over the last 26 years. He hoped he would never lose it again as he shook his father’s hand, hugged his mother, then embraced and kissed his bride to be.

  During his leave, Lovelle stayed with Charlene. That next morning he took a seat at her kitchen table. She was working on her new portable computer. It was the latest and greatest in laptops, something she could not afford, but which her company provided to her. She was showing off the amazing operating system, believing Lovelle would never have seen anything like it. He feigned attention, expecting to be underwhelmed by an early version of Microsoft's Windows. But, what he saw really did catch him off guard. While there were the telltale drop down selection boxes and desktop icons, the names were different than anything he had ever seen, and the look was more advanced than he had expected. He looked at the brand on the computer, Compaq. As far as he knew, they had always been Windows machines. But, this clearly was not Windows.

  “What's that operating system?”

  “It's Pages '93.” She answered, “Just when you think they can't make these things any better they come out with this. I had Pages 3.0 on my last one, and I thought that was user friendly. But, this software is super fast and the new office suite is incredible.”

  “I thought all these things came with Windows on them?” he said curiously.

  “What's a computer window?” She seemed confused.

  “You know, the Microsoft operating system.” He answered.

  “Sorry Baby, I've never heard of it,” She shrugged.

  From the Author

  Thank you for reading my book. If you've enjoyed the read, won’t you please take a few minutes and leave me a review at your e-book retailer.

  Craig Seymour

  Now available - The Time Skippers. The conclusion to Curtis Lovelle's time traveling saga is now available at your favorite e-book retailer. You'll find a sample on the pages that follow.

  Check out my author page @ http://craiglseymour.wordpress.com/

  Follow me on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/CraigLSeymour

  THE TIME SKIPPERS

  The vigilante sat patiently in his black sedan. He had arrived shortly after sunset and parked under a broken street light. He had personally seen to the light a day earlier. From his vantage point he could clearly see the front entrance of the bar where his quarry now undoubtedly sat, drinking straight scotch whiskey. The vigilante had watched him walk through the front door only a few minutes earlier. The man would likely walk, or rather stumble, back out in two or three hours. For six days the vigilante had been observing the man’s ritual. Two nights ago the he sat at the end of that bar himself, watching the man pour drink after drink down his gullet. And he had watched the drunk precariously navigate the 30 some miles to his trailer in the woods a half dozen times now. It was amazing that the irresponsible ass had never killed himself, or anyone else, as he traversed the twisting mountain roads.

  But, drunken driving had nothing to do with the vigilante’s interest in this man. It was the man’s fondness for a certain type of illegal magazine that brought the vigilante to his door. More precisely, it was the fact that this fondness was eventually going to lead to the abduction and murder of several young boys in that out of the way trailer. This was not something the vigilante suspected. It was something he knew, absolutely. And he wasn’t about to let that happen.

  The drunk finally left the bar at a little before midnight. The vigilante followed a f
ew moments later, keeping a healthy distance between their vehicles. He did so despite the fact that the inebriated driver was exceedingly unlikely to notice a tail. The vigilante was engaged in high stakes business, and he didn’t take unnecessary risks. He watched as the battered truck swerved into the oncoming lane a couple of times without consequence. At that late hour, in this little backwater town, there was no one else on the road. After a few minutes the drunk reached the edge of town and the vigilante pulled over. He didn’t have to worry about his target getting away. Not only did he already know exactly where the man was heading, but, there was no place for the man to go, even if he did have other ideas. He would be twisting through the hills for the next 25 miles with no exits or cross streets. In a very real sense, the vigilante had his target right where he wanted him.

  After a couple of minutes of delay, the vigilante felt confident that no one would be following close behind. The short lead time was all he would need to complete his job. He took off, racing to catch the truck. He caught sight of it a few minutes later and pulled up close on its tail. It wouldn’t matter now if his quarry noticed him or not. There was no place to go.

  The two vehicles arrived at just the right stretch of road, and he passed the man on the left and took up position a short ways ahead. They were approaching a sharp curve in the road which overlooked a steep drop off to a ravine. Following that curve, there was a little straight away. This was the place the vigilante was waiting for. He raced further ahead, taking the curve at a precarious pace. The distance afforded him a moment to be sure there was no oncoming traffic to interfere with, or witness, what was to come. Confident that he would endanger no innocents, nor be witnessed, he activated a small black box, not too dissimilar from that used by the killer in China. This triggered a signal from a directional antenna attached to his trunk lid.

  A millisecond later a small explosion occurred in the left front wheel well of the target’s truck, shredding the tire and causing the drunk to lose control. The truck tumbled over the edge of the road. It rolled several times before it settled, up side down, among a tangle of broken trees some 60 feet below the road.

  Seeing the truck disappear, the vigilante eased to a stop, careful not to leave any suspicious skid marks near the accident site. He backed to the edge of the road and pressed a second button. This time the small explosion occurred in the engine compartment. Just as with the first device, the bomb case was virtually obliterated by the explosion. What remained of the container and receiver would be almost indistinguishable from the rest of the wreckage. Particularly after the fire it had just sparked did it’s work.

  Certainly there were people, FBI and BATF experts, who would be able to spot the remains of the explosives. They could figure out pretty much exactly what had happened if they started looking. But, no one like that was going to be sniffing around this accident. His target was a known drunk. There would be no shortage of witnesses to his final night at the bar. There was every reason to believe that this was a drunken mishap, and no reason to suspect that it was an execution. Only the vigilante knew about the unspeakable crimes the man was going to commit. Others might find his collection of child pornography, but, there would as yet be no evidence of any overt actions by the would-be molester and murderer. And now there never would be.

  Curtis Lovelle knew what this man was. He knew because he had lived this life before. Six times before, to be precise. And he had made a point of finding men like this and stopping them. Although this was the first time he had killed this particular predator, he had removed others several times over. That was how he had come to think of it, removal. It was hard to really consider it killing when they kept coming back. He was removing them from this timeline and nothing more. In a few years, time would skip back again. All the murderers and molesters he had removed from this seventh pass through time would be alive again, with no notion that they had ever been killed, and, fortunately, with no notion that they needed to be wary of a time traveling vigilante.