I pull out ten one-hundred-dollar bills and return to the other room. “If you need more than this, let me know,” I say, handing the money to RJ.
His eyes widen when he sees how much it is. “This should be more than enough. I’ll bring you receipts and change.”
“Don’t worry about it. Whatever you don’t spend, you can keep.”
“I can’t do that,” he says uneasily.
“We’re not asking you to do this for free. Keep the money.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Thanks, man.” He walks over to the door, but hesitates before opening it. “So, um, if we can power that thing up, any chance we might be able to go back and watch an Apollo launch?”
“If you fix the charging problem, I’ll take you anywhere you want.”
CHAPTER THREE
I would rather not use the chaser again until RJ’s given us a working charger, but the lack of adequate cash in the safe means it’s time to go on another collection run.
Over the past few months, we’ve created a long list of potential “donors” by searching through newspaper databases and online archived news footage. Each entry has been chosen carefully, but none are without their dangers.
The list is broken up into groups based on how much cash I should expect to find. The higher on the list, the larger the potential haul. To this point, I’ve stuck to the lower half, with the occasional venture near the middle, but today I’m selecting a name from the top five. In the event that something goes wrong with RJ’s attempts to alleviate the chaser’s power problem, it makes sense to stockpile enough money to cover Ellie’s upcoming medical bills and the rent through the end of the year.
Exhausted from a day that has been stretched even longer than normal due to our trips with RJ, and knowing that my task ahead will require my total focus, I decide it’s best if we wait until morning and get some sleep first.
Upon waking, I pack my satchel with the items I think I’ll need, grab some clothes, and then head into the bathroom for a shower. Moderately refreshed, I grab my satchel and carry it over to the closet. Along with the standard med-kit and notebook I usually take on a mission, I add in a few specialized items I think I’m going to need and then head out into the living room.
There, Iffy gives me the once-over. “You might want to change shirts. Something with a crew neck.”
I’m currently wearing a dark gray, V-neck T-shirt, which, apparently, will stand out in the year we’re headed to.
After I change, I check in on Ellie and am happy to see that she’s sound asleep. Again, I’m not concerned about leaving her alone. While the trip might take several hours, we’ll be gone from our home time no more than a minute.
Back in the living room, I make sure my new T-shirt meets with Iffy’s approval and then pick up the chaser. “Ready?”
She puts her arms around me. “Ready.”
The year is 1998, and I am walking through a building in Tampa, Florida, that is under construction. I’ve left Iffy in 1996, where she will be safe from any shifts in the time line if something goes drastically wrong. I wish we could bring Ellie with us, too, but I don’t want to do anything that might affect her recovery, so to prevent any time line problems, we never tell her specifically where we go or what we will be doing.
In exactly six years, two months, and seventeen days from this moment, a joint task force of federal and local law enforcement officials will surround this building. A shoot-out will result in the deaths of two police officers and seven of the gunmen inside. The remaining four occupants will be arrested. In the days that follow, their boss, Victor Munoz — who, until then, had been running a very successful drug distribution operation — will flee the country and spend the following five years fighting extradition from Guatemala. Ultimately, he will be unsuccessful.
I witnessed the shoot-out already and watched Munoz sneak away from his house as he began his journey out of the country. The latter was unnecessary on my part, but the historian in me is ever curious, and sometimes I just can’t help wanting to see things for myself.
I am back on task now, though.
It is the middle of the night, and there is no construction crew on-site. There is, however, a solitary guard stationed in a hut by the gate of the temporary fence surrounding the property. Periodically he walks through the building to fulfill his duties, but I already know his schedule. I watched each time he left on his rounds and documented them in my notebook. He will not be venturing out of his hut again for another twenty-three minutes, more than enough time for me to do what I need to do.
While the outer walls of the building have already gone up, most of the rooms inside have only been framed out. I draw a rough map of each floor in my notebook.
The largest rooms are on the third level and will eventually be accessed by a hidden elevator at the back of the building. From the newspaper stories that Iffy discovered detailing the raid in 2004, I know these are the rooms in which the illegal product will arrive in bulk and be prepared for distribution.
The fifth floor is the one I’m most interested in, and part of me wants to rush right there. It’s the floor where the money will be counted and where Munoz’s private office will be located. But information is the key. One small detail could be the difference between my success and my never going home again, and for that reason I take my time on each of the lower four floors before finally making my way to the top.
Those same newspaper articles that described the workrooms noted that the building contained a safe, but though Iffy and I searched through everything we could find, we never discovered a mention of its exact location. Logically, it will be on this top floor, too, so I search for anything that might indicate where its future home will be.
Outside the space that will become Munoz’s office is a long room. If I had to guess, this will be where the money is counted. In addition to the doorway into the boss’s office, there are two others. One leads to the central hallway, while the other opens into what will either become a small office or a large closet. Off this room is yet another, even smaller, space — three feet deep by four wide. Unlike elsewhere in the building, the floor of this tiny alcove has been reinforced and stands a good three inches above those in the other rooms. Clearly, it’s intended to hold something heavy.
The safe. What else could it be? It’s easy enough for me to check for sure, however.
I pull out my chaser, use the calculator to determine the location number for the exact spot I am now standing, and store it in the machine’s memory. I then call up the locator for a hidden position a block away from the building and set the time for a forward jump to exactly 3:00 a.m. three months from now.
After checking my notes and satisfying myself that I’ve collected everything I need, I hit the go button.
Iffy once showed me an old movie called The Time Machine, in which images of the world whip by as the traveler moves forward or backward through time.
What a nightmare that would be. If that happened to me every time I traveled, I would squeeze my eyes shut for the whole trip. Thankfully, the only thing I see is a gray mist or nothing at all.
The street is quiet when I arrive. I walk silently to a position from where I can see Munoz’s building. The construction fence still surrounds the property, but the building itself appears to be almost done. I look for lights in the windows but see none. Just to be safe, I walk around the block and check the other side. The only illumination is the flicker of a television set in the guard’s hut. I can see the man on duty sitting in front of it, and from his profile am pretty sure it is the same guy I saw twenty minutes earlier or, from his perspective, three months before.