Chapter 2

SEE PROLOGUE FOR DISCLAIMERS, ETC.

"AL!" Sam shucked the heels so he could pace the small bathroom safely as he waited for his inveterate guide to leaping through time.

Vice Admiral Albert Calavicci materialized beside him in his full dress white uniform. That Al had apparently dressed for the occasion didn't even elicit a smile from Sam.

"Hi, Sam."

"Don't 'Hi, Sam,' me, Al. I'm still not home." There were times he believed that old bar tender's words that Sam himself held the key to getting home. There were times he didn't. Mostly, he did, then he found himself in yet another unfamiliar body trying to save someone's life despite his most fervent hopes otherwise.

The hologram waved his cigar around and punched a few buttons on his ever-present hand-held computer. "No, you're not, and it's a good thing you're not. Remember a while back when I told you the world went to hell in a hand basket?"

"Which time?" He remembered jumping into someone on the morning of September 11, 2001, and feeling helpless when all he could do was save four lives by making a carpool late for their usual train into New York City.

"July 2005."

Sam searched his memory, which was more like a fine authentic Gruyére now than the American knock-off of Swiss it had been when he first started jumping. That didn't always help his recall – Gruyére still had holes, however small – but big things tended to stay in his memory and he was better able to connect dots than he once had been. "Something about a chemical attack on the United Nations?"

Al nodded. "Coordinated attacks on the Secretariat offices in New York, Geneva, Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Santiago, and the International Court of Justice in The Hague on July 7." He punched a few buttons on the computer in his hand. "Ziggy says there's an 87 percent chance you're here to prevent that from happening."

Sam looked back into the mirror. "Not to put too fine a point on this, Al, but how is she . . ."

Al looked him over and gave him two thumbs up around the cigar and the computer. "Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Mackenzie, 'Mac' to her friends. A Marine Corps lawyer with combat experience in Bosnia, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. She's fluent in several languages and is considered a native speaker of Russian and Farsi. According to Ziggy, that coin toss you leaped in on determined that she and the captain out there will be moving to San Diego, where she will be setting up a regional JAG office while he goes into private practice as a criminal defense attorney."

Sam stared at Al. "I have to play a Marine? Al, the closest I've ever been to the military is saving you from . . . whatever it was. You're Navy. That's a far cry from the Marines."

"Not as far as the Air Force is. You've also been a Naval cadet, a Navy SEAL, and an Army medic, but you don't remember any of those. Anyway, Ziggy says that you need to change the outcome of that coin toss."

"Al, I only leap when I've completed a task. I can't exactly go back in time ten minutes to say 'heads' instead of tails." Sometimes, Al's way of delivering news left Sam wanting to strangle him – if he could grasp onto something material to do so.

Al took a drag on his cigar and blew out a perfect smoke ring. That was a new trick, Sam noted as he waited for an answer.

"Okay, so you can't change the coin toss. But you need to convince the captain," Al checked the computer, "Captain Harmon Rabb, Jr., a lawyer and F-18 driver, my kind of guy . . . wait, I think I flew with his father . . ."

"Al!" The heels had come off, but the dress wasn't the most comfortable piece of clothing Sam had ever been required to wear, either. The sooner Al filled him in, the sooner he could get on with the leap.

"Right. Anyway, it says here that Rabb's terminal assignment was seven weeks as. . ." Al stuttered as he translated an obscure military acronym into English as plain as military speak ever got, ". . .the Naval Forces Europe Judge Advocate General in London before he retired with his 20 years and married the colonel."

"I'm still not getting it."

Someone pounded on the door. "Ma'am, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Sam called back. He thought fast. "I just had a wardrobe malfunction." He had no idea why that line made Al laugh so hard.

Or, for that matter, why the woman on the other side of the door spoke through giggles. "Yes, Ma'am, I understand. I'll tell the captain you'll be along shortly."

"Petty Officer First Class Jennifer Coates, soon to be your yeoman in San Diego. The others are Major General Gordon Cresswell, the current Judge Advocate General; Commander Sturgis Turner, an Academy classmate of Rabb's, former submariner, and excellent lawyer; Lieutenant Commander Bud Roberts, Jr., who fought to keep his stellar JAG career after he lost his leg to a landmine in Afghanistan in 2002; and Bud's wife Harriet, who is an inactive reserve lieutenant staying at home to raise the four Roberts children, for whom you and the captain are godparents."

Sam raised his eyebrow. He caught his hostess' reflection out of the corner of his eye and found the corresponding gesture in the mirror disconcertingly alluring. He turned his back to the mirror. "Tight knit family."

"So it seems. There's a lot in these records that's classified, too. Seems that both the colonel and her captain were favorites of the CIA. Which could be why Colonel Mackenzie is so important to stopping the attacks. Today is April 29."

Sam huffed out a breath, ruffling the bangs on his forehead. "Al, we're going to need her help here."

Al's sickly grin unnerved Sam. "Um . . ."

"Al?"

"Sam."

"What happened to Colonel Mackenzie when I leaped into her body?"

Al shuffled his feet and looked anywhere but at Sam, dropping holographic ash from his cigar in piles Sam couldn't see in a future Sam had not yet encountered. "She . . . well, she got violent. Gushie and I had to sedate her."

"Al!"

"I know, I know. But Sam, she's a United States Marine officer. Even without a gun, she's a lethal weapon. We had to do something."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Fine. But wake her up as soon as you can. I can only fake being a female Marine lawyer for so long before I'm going to get her committed or detained."

"Right. Just remember that your goal is to get Colonel Mackenzie and Captain Rabb both assigned permanently to London in time to prevent the attacks on July 7." With that, Al waved his cigar and disappeared.

Sam stared into the space that had always been empty, even when Al was in the room. "Easy for you to say."