Just a quick reminder, Assassinating Yesterday is currently on pre-order at half price of just $2.99. After it release on November 28, it will jump up to full price of $5.99. If you’d like to make sure you get it at half price, here’s the link to pre-order:
https://storiesrulepress.com/product/assassinating-yesterday-project-gateway-1-0/
In the meantime, here’s the first chapter. Enjoy!
Mark
*****
RIGHT UP YOUR ALLEY
SPECIAL AGENT RYAN COCHRANE
RALEIGH-DURHAM INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
TERMINAL #2, GATE #7
OCTOBER 6, 2015
5:45 AM EST
The bright lights and pristine appearance of Terminal 2, Arrival Gate 7 in Raleigh-Durham International Airport was both a welcome and unwelcome sight. It was great to be on American soil again after so long in Afghanistan. But, bright lights and the noise of travelers deplaning sucks so early in the morning.
I could have caught a military flight home, but after fifteen years in the field, I can’t shake the us vs. them mindset that pervades both the military and the Central Intelligence Agency. Plus, my paranoid instincts insist I have a cover in place at all times when I’m in public.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a passport in my own name. Traveling as Richard Mackey, I can unobtrusively enter the country and go through Customs and Immigration with a backpack over my shoulder. I can be out of the airport as soon as possible. With the CIA-supplied Mackey passport, no way would anything get flagged. I could sail on through.
“Good morning.” I put on my best tired smile for the TSA agent and shoved the Richard Mackey passport through the opening in the glass.
“Morning.” He didn’t quite scowl but it seemed like this early in the morning wasn’t his cup of tea either. “Where you coming from?”
“Paris.”
“Anything to declare?”
“I’m glad to be home.”
He nodded, scanned the passport, and waited. His eyes snapped to the top corner of the screen, to my face, and to the passport. “Mr. Mackey, can you step to the side, please?” He indicated another TSA agent. She also had the early-morning scowl.
“Sure.” I held out my hand. “Just need my passport back.”
He lifted his chin to the other agent and she strolled forward and took the passport from him.
She opened the passport and glanced at it. “Mr…. Mackey. Please come with me.”
“Is there some problem, officer?”
She kept walking to a door behind the Customs stations. She keyed in the lock code and opened the door for me. “In here, please.”
It looked like an interrogation room. One table, two chairs, one on either side, and, of course, the one-way mirror on the wall. Before I could ask what the hell was going on, the door shut behind me.
“What the actual fuck,” I muttered as I slung my backpack onto the table and boosted myself up beside it.
Not even five minutes later, a kid in an ill-fitting suit stepped inside. He didn’t look old enough to drink. He clutched the Richard Mackey passport. “Special Agent Cochrane?”
Poorly trained, too.
I shook my head. “No, sorry.” I held out my hand. “Richard Mackey.”
He looked like a deer in the headlights. “But, I was told…”
I straightened up and snatched my backpack off the table. “Look, you’ve mistaken me for somebody else.” I slung the backpack over one shoulder. “Am I being detained?”
“Detained?”
“Am I free to go?”
He stepped to the side and opened the door. I’m not sure if he was about to leave or if that was his answer to my question. In either case, I took the opportunity to snatch my passport, shuffle past him and into the concourse.
Somebody’s going to hear about this shit show.
*****
I grabbed a random cab half-way back in the lineup, over the protests of drivers in front of it.
On the way to an address a couple blocks from my assigned meet up, I dug out a hoodie and ball cap and swapped them for the many-pocketed hiking jacket I was wearing. No sense being easy to spot.
Out on the sidewalk, after paying the cabbie, I checked my watch, sent a text and looked up something on Google Maps. I was really scanning the area for unfriendlies. Not much chance of that here. This was not Afghanistan. Only, letting my guard down always ensured something bad happened.
After a circuitous route, I entered a bodega and turned my ballcap backwards. There were no customers in the store, so the guy behind the counter said, “They’re waiting for you.”
I made a beeline toward the backroom, yanked the curtain aside, and stepped through.
The Director of the CIA was there along with someone I did not recognize. Both of them were wearing the usual paper-pusher suit. At least they fit better than junior’s at the airport.
Having a stranger at the meet-up made me wary.
“Director. What’s up?” I glanced at the stranger.
“Special Agent Ryan Cochrane meet Director Derek Brophy of the National Security Agency.”
I shook Brophy’s offered hand. “Director of the NSA is a military position. You’re out of uniform, aren’t you?”
They both stiffened. “Least obtrusive way to get him in here,” the CIA Director said.
“What’s the NSA want with me?”
“Your being temporarily assigned to an NSA project. It’s right up your alley.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see when you get there,” Brophy said. “Report to the Temporal Research Facility out in Swans Mill. Dr. Stanley Robinson’s heading up the project. He’ll read you in.”
Just then, the kid from the airport snatched the curtain aside and barged into the backroom.
I reacted.
He ended up on his back, eyes wide, with my knee on his chest.
I’m sure both directors jumped but I was focused on the little shit I had on the floor.
“That’s twice today you’ve almost died, kid.”
“Agent Tambolini, this is Special Agent Ryan—”
“Cochrane. I know. Gave me the run-around at the airport.” Then he glared at me. “Gonna let me up?”
I glanced up at the Directors. “Recruiting them straight out of high school these days?”
Tambolini struggled and tried to push my knee off. I put my full weight on that knee and he stilled. “Son, if we were in any other country, you’d be a corpse on the floor now, and I’d be wiping the blood off my Ka-bar knife.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he shoved at my knee again.
I let him up.
When he got to his feet, rubbing his chest, I grabbed him by the throat and shoved him backward against the wall. “And the next time you use my real name instead of my cover name, being in America won’t save you. Understood?”
He was pale and his eyes were wide, because I was restricting the flow of blood to his brain. He nodded.
I glanced at Director Brophy. “How do I get to this Temporal Research Facility?”
*****
Remember, Assassinating Yesterday is currently on pre-order at half price of just $2.99. After it release on November 28, it will jump up to full price of $5.99. If you’d like to make sure you get it at half price, here’s the link to pre-order:
https://storiesrulepress.com/product/assassinating-yesterday-project-gateway-1-0/