Jude Hardin - The Reacher Code - Timestream 1

Nobody except Top.

But then he didn’t really consider it stealing. He didn’t feel any sort of remorse for taking the things he’d taken. He’d done most of the work on the project, after all, and it was his Neocortex Frequency Adjustment Theory that had led to the breakthrough in the first place. If it wasn’t for Top, time travel never would have happened.

And everyone knew that.

Even Victor, who’d taken a lot of the credit for Top’s work.

Top opened the door and stepped into the lab. He had called in his lead technician to assist with tonight’s launch. Kyle Harrison had been around since the beginning, back when Top had first decided to leave the agency. Twenty-eight years old, smart as a whip. And he knew which side his bread was buttered on, which was as important as anything else.

Le Machine was parked out in the middle of the floor. Harrison was making some final pre-launch adjustments.

“Everything’s looking good,” he said. “Should be able to spin you in there in about an hour, right on schedule. Once you get there, you’re only going to have fifty-seven minutes to work with, so you’ll have to move quickly.”

“I know that,” Top said. “I helped develop most of these codes and frequencies, remember?”

“Yes, sir. Just a reminder. I wouldn’t want you to get stuck in—”

“Don’t worry about me. Just focus on the work you’re doing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If we can complete this first mission successfully, we can pretty much write our own ticket,” Top said. “But we have to get this one right. If we don’t get it right tonight, we’ll have to try a different timestream, which I would prefer to avoid. At any rate, we have to get rid of Reacher, no matter what. Even if it takes a hundred spins into a hundred different timestreams.”

Harrison nodded, leaned in and tightened something with a wrench.

A series of folding tables had been lined up against the wall opposite the door. Harrison walked over there and lifted a garment bag from the top of one of the tables and brought it to where Top was standing.

Top already knew what was in the bag.

His uniform.

Tonight, he was going to be a janitor.

He unzipped the bag. Dark brown pants, light brown shirt. Belt, socks, shoes. He took a closer look at the shirt, examining the buttons and the tag sewn on the inside of the collar. There was a patch above the pocket with the name Ed embroidered on it.

“Are you sure this is exactly like the uniforms the housekeeping staff wears?” Top asked.

“Positive,” Harrison said. “Right down to the color of the thread used to stitch the patch on the shirt. There’s an employee ID card in there too, in case you need it, and a key that fits all the housekeeping closets. You’ll probably want to get a mop bucket to push around, or some rags and a spray bottle or whatever. Reacher’s still on Ward B on the third floor, so you shouldn’t have any problems getting to him.”

“What about the FCYYC?”

“We took care of the operative named Wahlman three days ago, and we took care of the one named Nilke three hours ago. Wahlman’s in a coma, and Nilke is dead.”

“Stahler?”

“They have him out in town right now, for some reason. He’s miles from the hospital, shouldn’t be a threat. You should be able to get in and out, no problem. At this point, I can’t think of a single person who could stop you.”

11

Wahlman had started remembering some things on the way to Diane’s apartment. By the time he parked his bike on the cobblestone street in front of her building and walked up to her stoop and reached for the doorbell, most of it had come back to him.

He’d been recruited by a secret government agency called the Federal Commission on Yesteryears and Years to Come. The FCYYC. He’d been sent back in time on a series of reconnaissance missions in preparation for a bodyguard assignment that had been scheduled for tonight. He’d been slated to protect a man named Jack Reacher from an assassination attempt.

Reacher.

The man Diane had mentioned in the elevator.

You wouldn’t believe how much you look like one of the patients on the third floor.

Wahlman looked like Reacher because he was Reacher’s clone—an exact genetic duplicate, produced in 2057 from a blood specimen that was drawn in 1983.

From a specimen that was drawn tonight.

Which meant that if Reacher was killed before the blood was drawn, Wahlman—along with thousands of eighteen-year-old Special Forces candidates, Reacher clones that were produced in 2083—would cease to exist.

A group called Topple, headed by a former FCYYC senior scientist named William Top, was determined for that to happen. Nobody seemed to know exactly why. Something to do with monetary gain. That was the theory. Top wanted to alter the past in an effort to make the future more profitable for himself and his group.

In this particular timestream, the one Wahlman was in right now, the one where today’s date was 27 October 1983, the one that the Director of the FCYYC had labeled The Reacher Code: Timestream 1 , Wahlman was roughly twenty years older than Reacher. Which was why Diane had thought that Wahlman might be Reacher’s dad. In Wahlman’s home timestream—the one where today’s date was 18 October 2101, a hundred and seventeen years and three hundred and fifty-four days from now , the one where Wahlman had grown up in an orphanage and had spent twenty years as a Master-At-Arms in the United States Navy, the one where Wahlman himself had been targeted for assassination three years ago—Wahlman had a wife named Kasey and a stepdaughter named Natalie, and they were the world to him. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened to them, only that the agency was somehow keeping them safe, in another timestream, an earlier one where the fifty-seven minute rule didn’t apply.

During one of the recon missions, Wahlman had been involved in an accident that had left him in a coma. But as he pressed the button to ring Diane’s doorbell, he started thinking that maybe the accident hadn’t really been an accident. He started thinking that an enemy operative might have intentionally tried to take him out of the picture.

The door swung open. Diane was wearing pink sweat pants and a t-shirt with the logo of a popular soft drink printed on the front. No shoes. Her hair was a mess and her face was a little red on one side and marked with pillow creases.

“Come on in,” she said, yawning. “Is that your motorcycle?”

Wahlman ignored the question. He stepped into the apartment. The television was on. Some kind of western. The cowboys were speaking German. There was a plate on the coffee table with about half a sandwich on it and about half a glass of milk beside it. Apparently Diane had been eating her dinner and had dozed off on the couch. Wahlman had talked to her on the phone just a few minutes ago, so he knew she hadn’t been asleep very long.

“I’m in great danger,” he said, hooking his thumb around the shoulder strap of the M16 he’d taken from the compartment under his motorcycle seat, guiding the rifle into position to check the magazine. “Which means that you’re in great danger. We probably don’t have much time, so I need you to do exactly as I say.”

Diane’s eyes got big.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “Why do you have a machinegun?”

“I don’t have time to explain. Where’s your car parked?”

“In the carport. Around back.”

“Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the base. I need to get back to the hospital right away.”

Wahlman would have gone straight back to Ramstein on his motorcycle as soon as his memory started coming back, but he knew that Security Forces was looking for him. He’d clobbered one of their officers and had broken into their impound lot. They probably had standing orders to do whatever it took to take him down. He figured he wouldn’t make it past the sentry posted at the front gate. His motorcycle was fast, but it couldn’t outrun a bullet.