Time Change Book One: The Jump

by Alex Myers

  Jack oversaw the treatment and care of seven of his men and, despite the best effort of the doctors, two died. Jack was devastated because the one man had a family with two small children who lived with him on the site.

  Jack was sitting in the corner watching a doctor treat one of his men when Scott O’Leary, a former Norfolk police captain and head of security at the site, came hurrying into the room.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” Scott said, looking grim, “but there’s something you should know about the accident.”

  “What’s to know?”

  “It wasn't an accident that caused those tanks to explode. They were sabotaged. We've found explosives not only by the tanks, but also all over the compound. Someone was planning to blow the entire complex to pieces. It was just bad luck, or possibly good luck, that they set off the ones near the boilers because we've searched and found several more before they had a chance to destroy everything. I have no clue who might have done this."

  Jack was distraught—there was a small measure of relief that it hadn’t been a design flaw or an oversight of his that had caused the accident. But he realized he should have taken the threat from the SAC more seriously. "I know who’s behind it."

  “Who did this—and why?” Scott asked.

  “Scott, you’re a smart man and I know you don’t have to ask those questions. Take away all the guns and weapons we’re working on and there is still plenty of reason someone would do this. What I think you’re trying to say is it’s hard to believe the extent someone would go to.” Jack told him about his run-in with the SAC. I suppose we’ve got to assume that either Cooper is with them or has sold them everything he knows.

  “If I’d only known,“ Scott said looking away.

  “I think this is bigger than what we’re set up for—I’m so sorry I didn’t bring it up with you. They threatened me two weeks ago. I just didn’t think they would do something like this.”

  “I only have six men.”

  “I know. Hire as many men as it takes and let’s keep a real tight perimeter around the compound and see what you can dig up about the SAC.”

  After two days, Scott O’Leary met with Jack in his office. “These are very dangerous men, Jack.”

  “I’m not going to be pushed around by a couple of goons,” Jack said.

  “They are a lot better organized than a couple of goons. Winston Creed is head of the group and he rarely leaves his headquarters in Williamsburg. His ties run deep, though; he’s connected as high up as the President. The other guy, Adkins, is a patent lawyer.”

  “Yeah, I know about him. He’s Frances’s ex-husband.”

  “OK, that sounds messy.”

  “It may be.”

  “Oh, and Miles Drake is the big bloke. I remember him from the force. He was probably the most violent man ever hired by the Norfolk Police Department. Killed six people, not all at once, over the years and four with his bare hands. You broke the big boy’s wrist, by the way.”

  “I should have done more, especially if they’re responsible for this.”

  O’Leary was a mountain of a man himself, with ham hocks for upper arms and forearms that would have made Popeye proud. He was topped by a flame of bright red, meticulously combed, hair, looking every bit the Irishman he was. “Word on the street has it that he thinks you killed his brother.”

  “That’s a long story, but I can assure you that I didn’t,” Jack said.

  Scott O’Leary abandoned all pretenses. “This group of people is well-known for routinely torturing runaway slaves before they hang them. The Confederate land owners believe they send a message to the other slaves to think twice before they make a run for it. The organization is financed through the big plantation owners. Killing is a way of life for them and they seem to enjoy it. Other than pumping out products of which they have stolen the patents, they do some nefarious experiments.”

  “So what are you suggesting? Should I ignore them, press charges, or what?” Jack asked, defiance in his tone as well as subtle challenge.

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just saying that security around your compound here has been essentially nonexistent. My six men work in two shifts—that’s three men max in the field at any one time. And how many acres do you have here?”

  “When you add in Murphy's, seven hundred acres.”

  “Two square miles, I see. And how many buildings? Twenty?”

  “Twenty-five, I think. And if you count the living quarters, the townhouses, apartments, and single family free-standing units, we have over sixty.”

  “Jesus, that’s worse than what I thought and with only seven of us? Basically, anyone can come and go as they please. Our problems likely originated inside the company. From what I’ve been able to deduce, the people who planted the explosives were temporary construction workers.”

  “Bob Cooper brought in people from Richmond and Williamsburg," Jack said.

  "Williamsburg?”

  "Yeah, I know,” Jack said. “In light of what’s happened it seems foolish.”

  “With researchers, inventors, railroad men, people dredging Broad Creek—all told, I bet there’s close to five-and-a-half hundred, not including their families.”

  “Closer to seven hundred,” Jack said.

  O’Leary whistled and shook his head. “Sounds like you could use a man or two just to check out the employees.”

  Jack was feeling the gravity of the situation. “That’s why I said hire more people.”

  “I can’t find enough trustworthy people fast enough. The way the company’s growing and all, I think you need to bring in someone from the outside. I do know a good security force you can hire out. I’ve used them for overflow in our Chicago office. A man named Allan Pinkerton runs it; he’s from Glasgow, Scotland, but we can overlook that. They do a lot of work for the railroads. It’s pretty well known that the “Pinks” will chase down a criminal from one end of America to the other.”

  “I know them,” Jack said. “Are they available?”

  “They’ve just opened a big New York office and they can have fifteen men here by the weekend.”

  “You’ve looked into it, I see. Good job, and thanks for all your help, Scotty.”

  “And I thank you for the bicycles. My family will enjoy them.”

  “These are for you and your men.” Jack took the lid off a small wooden crate stamped with ‘Colt Firearms.’ He took out what looked to be a 1911 Model Colt 45. He then pulled a similar crate stamped ‘Smith & Wesson’ and pulled out several boxes of bullets. “Gather as many of men as you can and I’ll meet you over on the test range this afternoon after lunch, say two o’clock. I’ll show you and your men how to use these.”

  “Is this a revolver?”

  “No, it’s a semi-automatic. Watch this.” Jack unpacked a pistol, opened a box of bullets, and loaded them into the clip. He engaged a bullet in the chamber, walked to the window that looked out over the water, opened it, and rapid-fired off ten rounds. Though smoke filled the room and the loud report still rang in their ears, the men were grinning ear-to-ear.

  Kaz was down by the dock. He waved and yelled, “You got the guns?”

  “Just came in,” Jack yelled back.

  Dozens of workers stood dead in their tracks trying to figure out what had caused all the noise.

  “Just me, no big deal,” Jack said to the multitudes.

  “But it is a big deal,” Scott O’Leary said. “That’s a large caliber gun.”

  “It’s a 45. I’ve got rifles coming any day now from the Winchester Company and bullets from Remington.”

  “I haven’t seen anything like this before—I’ve never even heard about things like this.”

  “Because Kaz and I came up with them. I picked the four biggest arms companies and gave them all a little piece of the pie.”

  “How many people should I hire?”

  “Get us ten great ones and another ten good ones—and get Allan Pinkerton.”

 
“I almost forgot. We’ve lost one more employee.”

  “Because of the explosion?” Jack asked.

  “No, the docs say his heart just stopped beating.”

  “Who was it? Do I know him?” Jack knew almost everyone.

  “Charles Goodyear.”

  “No, it can’t be!” Jack said as he collapsed into his chair. He felt like he had been punched in the gut. “But I saved him.”

  “Saved him? How so?” Scott O’Leary asked.

  Jack realized that he was talking out loud and covered. “Ah, just that I hired him out of that squalor on Staten Island. I have some things I need to do—see Clarissa, Charles’s wife, make sure she’s OK. Are the kids all right?”

  “Other than the obvious, they’re doing fine.”

  “Thank you, I’ll see you this afternoon, Scott.”

  Jack was deeply affected. He knew that in his version of the past, Charles Goodyear had died penniless of a broken heart over the death of his daughter. While Goodyear’s daughter was still alive, Goodyear had died right on schedule. If Jack couldn’t stop the death of one man, what chance did he have of stopping the Civil War?

  CHAPTER 50

  May 1857

  Allan Pinkerton

  The number of workers at the complex had now grown to eight hundred and Jack was able to purchase the rest of the land up to and including the Westminster Inlet. In his effort to expand, he purchased several single-family homes and several farms and structures. He incorporated these into his complex and its ever-expanding need for space. He now owned over two thousand acres on which to grow.

  Other than the railroads, Jack was the biggest employer of Allan Pinkerton’s security guards. Ten to twelve “Pinks” were always on duty; most were visible to anyone happening by while others were a bit more clandestine. They also conducted background checks on employees, issued security passes, and established levels of access to privileged information. Scott O’Leary and Allan Pinkerton were of very like minds. Scott became Allan’s man in charge; he oversaw all the operations at the compound including the “Pinks.” In addition to the Pinkertons, Jack had a high security fence installed around the compound’s perimeter and alarm systems were put in place nearly everywhere.

  The background checks instigated by the Pinks turned up two potential infiltrators and two other corporate spies. The “Pinks” put in a special field office and Jack met several times with Allan Pinkerton and told him as much as he could about twenty-first century security. Jack would have loved to install video cameras, but the low-tech alarms were a good start.

  “Another attack by the SAC? Where this time?” Jack asked.

  “At the Anti-Slavery Fair in Boston,” Allan Pinkerton said.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Jack said. They were in Jack’s office in the original warehouse building by Murphy’s house. There were also offices for Elisha Root, William Stuttgart, Scott O’Leary, Murphy, and Kaz.

  “It was a fundraiser put on by the Women of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Over sixteen people died, most of them women. That was last week and just yesterday at the Convention of Delegates from the Abolition Society in Philadelphia, a man walked into the meeting and blew himself up.”

  “A suicide bomber,” Jack said.

  “Suicide bomber? That's a good name for it. Six more people were killed, about three dozen people were hurt in the two incidents, and that doesn’t include a family that lived in a house next door that perished in the subsequent fire.” Allan Pinkerton seemed really upset.

  “And the SAC has claimed responsibility?” Jack asked.

  “They have, but I’m not sure if it’s the same SAC as our SAC. Southerners Against Compromise has grown into a group of—what did you call them? Terrorists? The SAC we were dealing with were industrialists and patent pirates.”

  “Why don’t you think it’s the same people?”

  “This SAC seems to be everywhere in the North; it’s spreading. They seem to be pushing us toward war. They are becoming very brazen in their threats.”

  “Tell me about the explosions. The one at the Anti-Slavery Fair—were there any witnesses?” Jack asked.

  “A speaker had been orating for twenty minutes and no one had been in or out of the hall. The bomb just exploded in the middle of the room.”

  “And the suicide bomber?”

  “He walked into the church crying, saying how sorry he was, and without warning, he turned into a fireball,” Pinkerton said.

  “I think they must have used remote detonators on those bombs, but as far as I know, that doesn’t exist yet.” Jack noted the confusion on Pinkerton’s face. “It’s a device that would activate a bomb from up to a half a mile away.”

  “Such things are real?”

  “They are now and I think they got them from me. We made our first ones about a month ago,” Jack said.

  “This scares me. Your big meeting is less than a month away.”

  “And I guarantee the SAC will be there.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Tuesday, June 16, 1857

  The Meeting

  The Church on Washington Square

  Wind and rain crashed against the city of New York; it was not a good night for a meeting. People entered the church on Washington Square soaked, their hair plastered against their scalp, their dripping wool suits smelling musty. However, the weather did nothing to deter those invited from attending; only the newly-elected President Buchanan, in New York on official business, declined the invitation.

  The meeting was being held five months nearly to the day of Jack’s meeting with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Almost everyone in attendance was handpicked to attend and personally invited by Emerson. It was a testament to the man’s influence and power .

  Emerson had suggested they convene at the Washington Square Reformed Dutch Church, next to NYU on the corner of Washington Place and Wooster Street. It was one of the great architectural spaces in the City of New York, with a capacity of fifteen hundred. It was almost two hundred feet long and sixty feet wide, and the ceiling soared to a height of over sixty feet. The walls were lined with large, ornate stained- glassed windows that came to a point. Pointed arches, spires and windows were characteristic of the Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages. The most dramatic elements were the two rows of majestic white columns that lined both sides of the cathedral running parallel to the outer walls and windows. It was a bigger space than they needed and too dimly lit, but Emerson knew the minister and had gotten them the space for free.

  Jack would have been more impressed if he’d recognized some of the faces of that filled the room. While the dress of the men and the few women that attended were the fineries of the day, they still looked like costumes from a movie to Jack. The men’s hairstyles and facial hair did nothing to lend distinction; most of the men themselves moved like gods. Some were full of features striking and harsh, others were strikingly handsome, but all glowed in their virtue. The few that he did recognize, like Lincoln, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, seemed like alien figures from the past, somehow less than real.

  Emerson, despite the fact that he’d organized the assemblage, would have been at its center regardless. His dynamic energy lit the room and attracted groups to him. Every person in the room was extraordinary in some form or fashion, whether through intellect or their influence on the masses.

  From politics, there was Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglass, Jefferson Davis, William Seward, Salmon Chase, Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee and several senators and representatives along with a few spouses.

  Former slaves included Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman. Writers included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Emerson’s friend Henry David Thoreau who’d built his hut on the shores of Walden Pond on land that Emerson gave him.

  From industry, there was Cyrus McCormick and his former arch rival John Deere, Conrad Poppenhusen, Samuel Colt of Colt Firearms, Ezra Cornell of Western Union, and chemist
Charles Pfizer. Inventors attending included Joseph Henry and twenty-two-year-old George Westinghouse. Frenchman Louis Pasteur and Belgian Etienne Lenoir, inventor of the gasoline engine, had been invited, both of whom worked with Jack on his complex. George Templeton Strong and Mary Chestnut from South Carolina were invited because Jack remembered their names from watching Ken Burn’s Civil War documentary on PBS.

  Jack had pitched the list of people to Emerson from memory, according to how much influence they would have on history. Emerson was surprised by the list and insisted on a few names himself, including Sam Houston from Texas and famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. The only name Jack vetoed was the radical abolitionist John Brown.

  Notably absent from the assemblage were members of the press; either they had not been alerted or had stayed away because of the bad weather. Carefully planned press releases were to be handed out in accordance to the predetermined plan.

  They eventually sat in pews as Emerson called the meeting to order. Only someone with a personality as strong as his could hope to hold a gathering like this together. There was not one man more powerful than another, sitting in a place more prominent; they simply sat in the seat that was closest to where they stood. Abraham Lincoln sat two people away from Jefferson Davis and Jack was the only person in the room who understood the irony.

  Fifty of the most influential men and women in America were gathered to hear the plan that Emerson would describe. He stood at a podium to the right of the altar. His voice was, clear, loud, and commanding.

  “Gentlemen and gentlewomen, we are gathered here tonight to discuss a vision handed to me from a higher power.” This wasn’t a lie because Emerson believed that Jack’s presence was part of God’s plan. “I recently had the good fortune to hear the esteemed Mr. Crittenden, the regarded Senator from Kentucky, speak.” Emerson gestured with his open hand to the Senator sitting directly in front of him in the second row. The Senator acknowledged Emerson’s words and the murmurs of approval around him. “Thank you once again for those wonderful insights into the Southern mentality, but how can such a question as the slave trade be debated for forty years by all the Christian nations without throwing the great light of ethics into the general mind? The fury with which the slave trader defends every inch of his bloody deck and his howling auction platform is a trumpet to alarm the ear of mankind, to wake the dull, and drive all neutrals to take sides, and to listen to the argument and the verdict. I say no, gentlemen; I say no compromises. It is a compromise for me to rise every morning with such cruelty as the slave trade in my world.”