by Joe Corso
“Yeah. I feel the same way.”
Lucky thought about what had just happened. He discovered that he had a glaring weakness, a weakness that he hadn’t known about. Now he was anxious to hear what Mickey had to tell him. But before they left to have their talk over a cup of coffee, Lucky had a feeling that he just made a terrible mistake. He had let his guard down, and he said things that could be used against him. He didn’t know what was going on, or what exactly happened, but this could have been a setup. “Mickey, was anyone here that shouldn’t have been here?”
“Yeah we were taken by surprise by a team of professionals. It was just the three of us here. Nicky, Dukie, and me. We put up a good fight, but there were just too many of them for us. They took Nicky and Dukie, but not me. I guess they thought I might have been killed in the fight because I was pretty banged up.”
“Or . . .” Lucky said. “They could have left you here on purpose. Knowing that if I came back, I’d ask you a lot of questions and maybe say things that I shouldn’t have, like I just did. If someone recorded what I said a few minutes ago, then they’ll know that titanium affects my abilities to create portals and they could pass that information on to whomever is paying them. Mickey is there a gun here somewhere?”
“Yeah, wait a minute and I’ll get it.” He returned a minute later with a Sig Sauer P230. “Nice little carry piece. Reminds me of a Walther PPK,” he said as he handed it to Lucky.
Lucky sat on the couch, holding the Sig in his hand and laid his head back in an attempt to get comfortable. He was going to try something that he had never tried before. He relaxed, and as he did, he coaxed his mind to attach itself to anyone who had been listening to what he said in the last five minutes, and then attempt to create a portal that would take him to wherever the listener now was. The portal appeared before him and he stepped into it and disappeared before Mickey’s eyes. His effort paid off because it worked. He reappeared in the back of the black van behind the two men in the front seats. “Pull over and park the van.” Lucky’s voice startled the two men, who hadn’t expected anything as dramatic as this happening to them. They thought their job was over. Now they knew that they had a problem. When the van came to a stop, Lucky ordered them to hand him the disc.
“What tape are you talking about?” one man said. The other guy mumbled something that Lucky couldn’t make out.
Lucky pressed the Sig against the driver’s shoulder. “The tape, please. Or I start by putting one through your shoulder and then I’ll start on your knee caps.” The man in the passenger seat opened the glove compartment and handed Lucky the tape. “Headphones please.” The man in the passenger seat handed Lucky a set of headphones. “Put the disc in the player and plug the headphones in. I want to make sure you didn’t pull a fast one on me.” Lucky listened to his voice on the disk. “Okay, that’s enough. Did you make a copy?”
“No. That’s the only copy.” Lucky smiled. The men weren’t lying when they said that they hadn’t made a copy. What they didn’t tell him was, as they were recording his conversation with Mickey, it was being streamed live to their corporate office.
“Now what am I going to do with you two bozos?” He hadn’t decided if he would take them to King Robert in the 12th Century. He thought about leaving them there until this was over and then bringing them back, but he was still undecided. First, he needed information from them. “Who hired you?”
The men seemed cooperative and they appeared to be willing to answer his questions. “Our firm was hired by a foreigner for this job. We never met him, but our boss did.”
“What’s the name of your company?”
“Hi-Tech Industries.”
“Were you the guys that kidnapped my friends?”
“It wasn’t us that did it.”
“But it was men from your company, right?”
“Yeah, well, that’s not what we do. We do surveillance and collect information, that’s all. Some of the other guys do the hard stuff.”
“Where are they being held?”
“We don’t know. I think the German guy took them with him on his plane.”
“I heard enough. Start the van and let’s go see your boss.”
Hi-Tech Industries was located in Hauppauge, Long Island, and as soon as they got there, Lucky stepped out of the van, placed the disk on an angle against the curb, and he slammed it with his foot, breaking it into pieces. Then he picked up the pieces and dropped them down the drain near the entrance to the facility. Before they took another step, Lucky grabbed both men by their arms and pushed them forward, stepping into a portal. When they appeared without warning in the safe house, Mickey looked up as if nothing special had just happened and asked, “What took you so long?”
“Come on, Mickey. I want you with me when we talk to their boss.” The two men were in shock. First because of the constrictions of the portal, and second because they never experienced anything like this before in their lives. Before they had a chance to relax, they were standing in the lobby of the two-story Hi-Tech Industries building. “What’s your boss’s name and what floor is he on.”
“Second floor. His name is Martin Kelb and his office in the corner at the end of the floor. Room 200.”
Lucky handed Mickey the Sig and told him to keep it trained on the two men. Before they entered the office, Lucky whispered to them, “If you ever attempt to record, follow, or come anywhere near me or my friends again, I’ll take you back to the beginning of time and leave you with the dinosaurs, or maybe I’ll leave you in a dungeon, a dungeon unlike anything you have ever imagined in your life. Here, let me show you what I mean.”
Mickey smiled, knowing what was about to happen. Lucky motioned to Mickey, who immediately took hold of their arms while Lucky held onto Mickey’s belt. Lucky nudged them forward and suddenly, they were gone. They reappeared in one of Vlad the Impaler’s dank, damp, filthy cells, among flee bitten, lice infected, skin and bone prisoners, who were more dead than alive. “Look around. Would you like to spend the rest of your lives in this miserable cell? Or maybe this would be more to your liking?” The next thing they knew was, from the safety of the portal, they were looking directly at a T-Rex, who although he couldn’t see them, he sensed that there was something there. Sensing a meal, he sniffed and hunted for the cause of the scent, just the same.
Lucky leaned over and said ominously to the two very frightened operatives, “Like I told you before, don’t ever come near me or my friends again, or so help me God, this is where you’ll wind up.” The next instant, they were back in front of their boss’s office door. “Now open it and go on in before I get mad and do something you’ll regret.” The two men instantly regretted not telling him about the recording being automatically sent to their corporate office. They looked at each other, their eyes trying to convey the message that maybe they should tell him - but it didn’t happen. Instead, they opened the door and were about to walk into the room.
Lucky decided at the last minute to take them to the Compound. The Compound was an acronym for “Command Ordered Military Program Organized Under National Directive.” Jack Kinsey, who got the job because of Lucky, ran it. Jack was Dirk Sommerville’s assistant, and as such, he helped Sommerville when he tried to assassinate Lucky while on a job. Jack’s son was dying of a rare disease and he needed a very expensive operation, so Jack went along with Dirk because of the money. When Jack was instrumental in helping to capture Abu Bin Sadhr and the three suitcase nukes he brought into the country, Jack explained everything to Lucky; why he did what he did, and how he was then coerced into going along with Dirk. Jack fully expected to go to prison for the crime, but Lucky had him sign a confession explaining his part in what transpired. Lucky promised him that if he ever got out of line, the confession would be turned over to the authorities. With Dirk no longer sitting in the director’s chair, Lucky recognized an opportunity, and he made sure that Jack replaced Dirk as Director of the Compound, but with the proviso that Jack would act in Lucky’
s best interest. Lucky told Jack that he was to come first before a civilian or a government. Lucky spelled out what he expected from Jack, making it clear the he was to contact Lucky immediately if any person or agency inquired about him either here or off shore, and from that moment on, Jack, to his credit, kept his word.
“Good God, Lucky. You have to stop doing this. You scared the life out of me, appearing like this out of nowhere.”
“Good to see you too, Jack. I brought you two guests that I want you to keep on ice for a while. It seems that I have a foreigner that’s interested in me. I was just about to pay a visit to their boss,” he said, pointing at the two men. “Then I thought that it would be better if I brought these two birds here; this way, I wouldn’t have to watch my back every five minutes.”
“How long do you want me to hold them?”
“Hold them until I get back. I’ll decide what I’m going to do with them then. Is that old jail at the back of the compound still serviceable?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, it is.”
“Good. Put them in there and make sure you have someone check on them periodically. But first, I’d like you to give them a dose of that knew truth serum you guys have been working on. Let’s find out if they’ve told me everything. If you find out anything different, then get back to me right away.”
“Will do, Lucky, but before you go, take this with you.” Jack pulled a small box from his desk drawer. Wear this at all times.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the new iWatch that Apple has been working on. Only this one is a one-of-a-kind experimental watch that was made especially for us by Apple’s research and development team. It looks like a regular digital watch, but when you push the stopwatch button twice, the face disappears and a menu appears. You can use it to log on to the Internet, or as a watch, a phone, a GPS, a projector, and if you press the stopwatch button and hold it down for ten seconds, it acts as a panic button. It will alert us here at the Compound that you are in trouble and it’ll give us your location. It does some other neat things too, but you’ll have to play with it to find out what they are. Pretty neat, eh?”
“Yeah, it sure is. Thanks, Jack. Hold my Rolex for me. I’ll pick it up next time I see you,” Lucky said as he handed Jack his gold Rolex and then put the iWatch on his wrist. “Thanks again for the iWatch.”
“Don’t mention it. When you get back, I’d like you to bring me up to date on what you’ve been up to in the past year, okay?”
Lucky nodded at Jack’s suggestion. “When I take care of this unpleasantness, we’ll sit down over a drink and I’ll tell you everything.”
CHAPTER 7
BLACK HILLS, GERMANY
After some well-placed bribes, Adolph Mueller invested some of Hermann Goering’s stolen Nazi gold after the war to buy a construction company and helped to rebuild sections of West Berlin by building a series of high-rise apartment complexes. After construction was completed, people hungry to be able to live in a decent home either bought or rented an apartment. He re-opened his father’s foundry business, started an import-export business, and smuggled the goods into Germany that he couldn’t bring in legally. And for the next fifty years, he acquired businesses with the single purpose of building his many enterprises into one of the largest conglomerates in the world. But the likable young man he once was grew into the mean, vengeful, vindictive, old man he had morphed into, and any vestige of the respectable, likable little boy that once waited in Heinrich Himmler’s office for him to return was long gone. Mueller never married. He was too busy amassing billions of dollars. His loneliness was replaced with the driving goal of implementing his vengeance against Russia, but he had no opportunity to so - until now.
Mueller was interested in buying Wolf’s Lair in Ketrzyn, Poland, Hitler’s 600-Acre command center from where he commanded the Third Reich for three years. But he decided against it when the Polish Government extended Wolf Lair’s lease on the property for another two decades. Instead, he bought a one-hundred-acre parcel of land near Wolf’s Lair in the Black Hills, which he named Wolf’s Den. He used his construction company to build a compound, which included a research laboratory, a building for his trucks and cars, a recreation center and gym, which he rarely used, buildings for guests, and most importantly, a castle that he rarely left, and from which he ran his multi-billion-dollar empire.
“The American is back,” Mueller said to Hans Freidrick, his bodyguard and chief enforcer. “I just received a telephone call confirming that we will soon have him.”
“How can you be sure?” Freidrick asked.
“Because we have his friends. I have read his background. He is absolutely loyal to his friends and will do anything to free them - even coming here to rescue them, which is what I’m counting on. Now here’s what I want you to do. Go to the Forge, see Willie, and give him these plans and the two microcircuit boards in this plastic bag. Tell him to follow the plans carefully and make two titanium bracelets, which in reality will be nothing more than handcuffs without the chain connecting them. He’ll know what to do with the circuit boards. Tell him that I want them as soon as possible. Then I want you to ask him to assign some men to make enough six-foot by eight-foot titanium sheets to construct a small office and he’s to attach the titanium to three-fourths-inch plywood - and tell him to put a rush on it. When they are completed, I want him to bring them here to the castle. When Willie arrives with my items, I’ll take him down to the dungeon and show him where I want the room built. Maybe if it’s more practical, he could convert one of the cells into a special room just for this Lucky Campo - but I leave that to him. The entire room, the walls, ceiling, and door will have to be built and lined with the titanium lined three-fourths-inch plywood.”
“What are you going to use the titanium sheets for?” Hans asked. “I just discovered that this Lucky Campo person is helpless when he is surrounded by titanium. I had no idea of this and there is no mention of it in his file. I believe no one knew how titanium affected him, including Campo himself. That is why I need Willie to put a rush on these items. I have no idea when Mr. Campo will visit us, but he must never be underestimated.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Mueller, but I find it very hard to believe that a man can dematerialize, or travel into the past at will. What are your thoughts on the subject?”
Mueller took a long moment before answering. “I know it’s hard to believe, Hans. I too have trouble believing these old wives’ tales. But I’m an old man and I have seen many things in my life, and one thing I have learned is never to doubt the same report, told by numerous individuals, all attesting to having witnessed his disappearing before their eyes. You are too young to remember when television first came out. The first set I owned was three inches with a ten-inch magnifying glass placed in front of it. I thought it was fascinating and I remember sitting for hours staring at that little picture. Then a few years later, I read that color television would soon be available and I remember thinking that it was a flight of fancy. How could the color blue know that it had to represent the sky and the color green somehow knew that it was supposed to color the grass? These colors have no intelligence; how could they know where to place themselves? They couldn’t possibly know their role in coloring a picture and I refused to believe it. Then, one day, I passed a store and saw a color television playing and I promised myself that from this moment on, I would believe anything until proven wrong. I will wait until Lucky Campo comes to visit me and then I will make up my mind if he is a magician or a charlatan.” Mueller had said more to Hans just now than he said to most people. He usually kept his thoughts to himself. People, especially employees, are your friends now, but tomorrow they will be selling your story to the newspapers. No, he reminded himself. It’s better to be silent and let the other person do the talking. “Go now and give Willie my instructions. I want the room built by this afternoon, if at all possible.”
Normally, a company would not have cause to keep titanium in stock, but Mue
ller owned a company that forged metal into different objects and, having to have a variety of different metals on hand, he had a supply of titanium sheeting on the shelves gathering dust in the back of his warehouse. It was a simple matter for Willie to make the panels Mueller had asked for. The titanium bracelets, however, were another story. That afternoon, the small room Mueller wanted built was complete. It was ingeniously disguised as just another corporate office located in the prison’s holding area that contained the cells. Mueller theorized that Lucky would first attempt to free his friends, and then when they were safe, he would return to question Mueller’s motives, and to see how much he knew about Lucky and his gift. Mueller smiled. “So what if he is successful and manages to take them? They served their purpose. By having his friends here, I’ve used them as bait to lure the big fish to my lair, and to free them, Lucky will do anything I ask him to do.” He smiled at the thought. Soon Lucky would be Mueller’s instrument to make the Russians pay for the atrocities they committed against his beloved Third Reich.
Lucky stepped out of Jack’s office and opened the exit door that led to the stairs. He picked a spot where there were no security cameras and he immediately created a portal that allowed him to bypass the secretary’s office and placed him directly in front of the door to the President of HTI’s office.
CHAPTER 8
12TH CENTURY
Spain: The Church of the Inquisitor General.
The sun’s rays shined through the church’s large multicolored lead glass windows, causing a symphony of color to reflect off of the walls, tables, and floor, thus giving light to the great room where twelve priests clothed in black sat along a large darkly stained oak table.
