Carpathian: An Event Group Thriller (Event Group Thrillers) Read online

  “Colonel, do you have a moment?” she asked when she caught him at the elevator tube.

  “Lieutenant?” Jack said without turning to face her.

  “You didn’t come to see me last night at the Ark. You stood me up, Colonel Collins–again.”

  Jack finally turned to face Sarah. He forced a smile and knew it had been a miserable attempt.

  “Short stuff, I was just swamped last night,” he said, the lie easily flowing from his lips, something he had never developed a talent for over the years, even for security-oriented situations, much less those on a more personal level. “That’s not true,” he corrected his lie quickly. “We’ll talk later, okay?” With that he attempted to smile and again failed.

  The elevator hissed to a stop and the doors opened. Collins stepped back to allow the passengers off and then quickly stepped in and then the door closed on Sarah.

  * * *

  Sarah McIntire slowly lowered her head as others in the hallway passed by on their way to breakfast. After a moment she turned away from the closed doors of the elevator.

  “McIntire!” came the call from down the curving corridor.

  Sarah turned toward the voice and saw Captain Everett and the deputy director of the Event Group, Professor Virginia Pollock. The tall but beautiful assistant director looked worried as she and Carl approached. It was strange seeing Virginia out of a lab coat while on duty.

  “Come with us, Lieutenant.” Virginia didn’t wait for Sarah as she stepped quickly into the next empty elevator. The trip to the vault area was silent as they rode the air-cushioned elevator to Level 63.

  “We’re losing Jack,” Sarah said as she leaned her head against the polished aluminum of the elevator doors.

  “I know,” Carl answered as he pulled McIntire back from the doors. “He won’t let any of us inside.”

  “His sister’s murder has reacquainted Jack with his recent combat past and no one is going to stop him from finding out who the traitor was at either the CIA or FBI,” Virginia Pollock said as she looked at Sarah, and then tried to give her a reassuring smile, but like Jack a few moments before it failed. The doors slid open to Level 63.

  The sister of Colonel Jack Collins, Lynn Simpson, was murdered three weeks before and the only clue left behind was a memo generated from either a computer desk at Langley and the CIA, or D.C. from the J. Edgar Hoover Building and the FBI. Someone in one of those two dark agencies had lured Jack’s sister to her death because she may have uncovered something at one, or even both departments, and Jack was determined to track down the killer and administer his brand of justice to the scum that ambushed his sister in Georgetown.

  “We have to let him play this out for now and then we’ll see if he comes back to us,” Everett said and looked down at Sarah and knew that was a point she didn’t really care to hear about. Carl reached out and squeezed her small shoulder. “And he will come back. Besides, I think there may be more to his shutting me out than either you, Mendenhall, or Ryan. I can’t place it but he’s pushing me away from him even harder than he is you or the others.”

  Sarah nodded. She had noticed the distant way Jack treated Carl since his sister’s murder. As the three reached Vault 22871, indicated by the illuminated light blue numbers to the left of the vault, it stood open, and they entered to see Alice Hamilton on her hands and knees retrieving papers that had spilled to the tile floor. Lance Corporal Allen was assisting her.

  “What’s up?” Everett asked as Virginia and Sarah entered one of the smaller vaults on this level.

  “I’m afraid I startled Mrs. Hamilton when I came inside the vault. She was engrossed in looking at the specimen and I must have caught her off guard.”

  Everett leaned over and gently helped Alice to her feet. “Come on now, the lance corporal can get those. What are you doing here this early, Alice?” Carl asked as he looked her over. The captain shot a quick look at Sarah and Virginia and then gestured by a dip of his head that he needed their help with her.

  “Oh, I’m all right, just startled me is all. I wasn’t expecting someone to come up behind me when I’m looking at that,” she said with a nod of her head toward the specimen inside the glass enclosure.

  As Everett released Alice into the more familiar arms of Alice’s closest friends at the complex, he glanced at the contents of a vault he had never been in before. He saw what looked like a display of bones laid out inside a hermetically sealed Plexiglas enclosure. His eyes went from the bones to the lance corporal as he handed the captain the large file.

  “She was carrying this file like she had nuclear launch codes stashed in here,” the Marine said quietly.

  “Thank you, Corporal, you can return to your duties.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Everett looked over at Alice, who was being helped into one of the many seats lining the interior of the vault. She was shaking and insisting to her two friends that she was fine, repeating that she had just been startled by the sudden appearance of the corporal. Carl then glanced at the file he held in his hands. He opened it, not really wanting to see anything of a private nature but he considered Alice the mother he had never had and his worry drove propriety out of his thoughts. His brow furrowed when he saw the first few pages. After reading it he shot Alice another look. Everett shook his head and then walked over to where Alice was sitting and knelt down in front of her.

  “How are you doing?” Carl asked, slapping her knee lightly with the thick file.

  Alice started to answer and then saw the file in Carl’s hand. She reached out but Everett simply moved the file a few inches away.

  “Alice, I need to know what you’re doing here,” he said pointedly with a glance toward the open vault door—it was empty.

  “I … I need to make a presentation to Niles and the other department heads … I…” Alice’s words trailed off and she looked confused and then just as quickly snapped out of it. “This is important,” she finished, looking first into Carl’s eyes and then Sarah’s and Virginia’s in turn. The sadness and determination were set deep in Alice Hamilton’s face. “Can I talk to Niles?”

  “Well, of course you can, why in the hell would you think he wouldn’t see you?” Virginia asked, angry at the thought that Niles Compton’s oldest friend in Alice would ever think that.

  “Of course she can see me anytime she likes.”

  Everett squeezed his eyes closed. Even though it was on his orders that Niles be notified about Alice’s presence in the vault area when she wasn’t scheduled to come in at all for the next three weeks, he realized now it had been a huge mistake. Now there would be no way to keep the contents, or at least the pages he quickly scanned over, out of the chain of command. Niles Compton stood in the doorway. His white shirt and black tie were freshly cleaned and pressed and everyone could see that he was getting ready for the start of the day at the Event Group complex. Beneath his glasses all could see that his eyes were focused on Alice. As they looked up, Jack Collins stepped into the vault right behind Niles. He looked at Alice, Carl, Virginia, and then Sarah in that order. She could see his jaw muscles clenching and she knew something wasn’t right.

  Everett stood and faced Collins. He held up the file and everyone saw Alice flinch and almost start to reach for it once more.

  “Colonel, I think you need to see what’s—”

  “Carl, we’ll be placing Alice into protective custody. For the time being she will be restricted to the complex. Her house will be secured by our personnel.”

  “What?” Everett asked, incredulous at what he had just heard. Carl was so highly trained it was a shock for everyone watching how fast his reaction to Jack’s order was. Never had he questioned a command from Collins in front of anyone.

  “This is a joke, right?” Sarah asked as she stood to face Jack.

  “No, Lieutenant, it’s no joke. The action is on my orders.” Niles Compton walked into the vault and most noticed him give the specimen enclosure a look; then his eyes moved quick
ly away and he walked over to Alice. He smiled down at one of his closest friends and the woman who had trained him in the art of running a federal facility unlike any in the world. Niles held out his hand and Alice nodded as if in resignation, and then allowed Niles to help her slowly to her feet. He placed an arm around her and turned her away from the other shocked occupants of the small vault.

  “You’re angry, Niles,” Alice said. “You and Garrison have that same I’ll disarm them with kindness approach.”

  Niles squeezed her closer to him as they walked to the vault door. “Angry? Not at all, and I know better than anyone here that I would never try to psych you into submission. Hell, Garrison knew that also.” He glanced up at Jack as they slowly walked by him. Collins’s look softened and at the same moment he reached out and also squeezed Alice’s shoulder as they passed by.

  “Jack’s pretty hot too, I can tell,” Alice said quietly as she stepped over the threshold of the vault and into the curving corridor.

  “Not mad, Alice. He’s just concerned with certain activities you’ve been up to lately.”

  As the soothing voice of Niles Compton slowly faded away in the hallway outside, Collins turned to Everett.

  “Carl, get that file up to the conference room. Also get three security men dispatched to Alice’s house. I want her Europa link to the complex severed. Her off-base security clearance is hereby suspended until further notice.”

  “What in the hell is—”

  Jack held up his hand while not looking at Sarah as he cut her off. “Look, Alice and a few others may have compromised security. They also may have placed an agent in jeopardy. This is just temporary until we find out what she’s up to.”

  The look on Sarah’s face and also that of Virginia made Jack cringe.

  “Short stuff, she’s not under arrest, she’s in protective custody.”

  “Yeah, a nice euphemism, Jack … I fail to see the difference.”

  “Damn it, Lieutenant, Alice just may have compromised the most important deep cover agent the Group has ever placed, and to tell you the truth that operative is in a rather unforgiving place to be caught and accused of being a spy.”

  “Jack, it’s Alice Hamilton for crying out loud.”

  Collins lowered his head and didn’t wait for Sarah to catch up as he headed for the vault door.

  2

  SOUTHEAST ROMANIA, DACIAN HOT SPRINGS QUADRANGLE

  The medieval castle was nearing completion. The magnificent one-half-scale stone structure was built right into the solid but craggy face of the mountain. The stone had been aged by the artisans at a cement and stone plant in Bucharest, making the facing look as if the ancient defenders of Walachia would rise to the parapets to do the bidding of their prince, Vlad Dracul, or as he was known to history: The Impaler. One of the many items that immediately smashed the illusion was the eight cable car lines running from giant tower to giant tower as it snaked its way a mere three miles to the art deco nightclub and restaurant that would entertain guests the year-round, snow or sunshine. The new cable car system was one of the more expensive developments of the massive main project far below in the small valley—The Edge of the World Hotel Resort and Casino.

  The castle-nightclub was the only element of the project that was behind schedule. With the opening a mere three weeks away electricians were still fighting to get the power on and stable. Running the thick electrical lines up the side of the mountain had cost money and, much more importantly, time. With the lines placed dangerously close to the cable cars the safety factor had been ignored due to those very same time pressures. Presently there were sixty-two workers housed directly inside the castle to save the time of moving them about at the end of every work shift by cable car. The makeshift plan for the electricians had worked and it looked as if Dracula’s Castle would be online and on time.

  As over fifty of the workers slept on cots inside the massive nightclub, several of the men were still completing some last-minute work on the outside floodlights that would highlight the scarred cliff face the castle was pressed into. Two of these men walked silently to the patio stairs and hopped over the old-fashioned wooden railing that was actually tube steel and made their way out of the glare of the floodlights. One of the men pulled out a small bottle.

  “Here, this ought to help you sleep tonight.”

  The second man accepted the bottle and, tilting his hat back on his head, turned up the container of fiery liquid. The Romanian equivalent of American moonshine called Ţuică burned its way down the small man’s throat. He held the bottle up until the second, much heavier man pulled it away.

  “I said help you sleep not put you in a coma,” his friend hissed as he wiped his dirty sleeve over the mouth of the bottle and then capped it. He looked around at the ancient rock face. “This wouldn’t be the place to be if half that mountain decided to come down on top of this damned monstrosity.”

  “Landslides and avalanches in the winter aren’t the real danger here and you know that. As beautiful as this place is, the valley below, the pass above, even the villages scattered throughout both mountain and valley can’t hide the fact that something is wrong here.”

  “Ah, it’s just rumors and old wives’ tales the old-timers inside told you about that’s got you going. Stop staying up late listening to those old beards and you’ll find sleeping may come a little easier. Now,” the man burped and then slapped the smaller man on the back, “we better get back up there before they cut the power to the lights.”

  The two electricians looked at the deep shadows cast by the lighting hitting the crags and deep scars in the face of the small mountain, and at that moment you could understand the tension the workers at the makeshift construction site felt when the old stories were repeated. Even the old Hollywood films from Universal Studios were brought up and why those old films had always turned their nation’s legends into running jokes. The old-timers said the entire world had always underestimated the tales coming out of Romania and that the world most definitely had it wrong about this area of the Carpathians.

  As they started to make their way up the small incline of loose rock to the railing above to pull themselves back onto the outdoor patio they both heard the sound of falling rubble from above them in the darkness of the mountain. It wasn’t a large slide, but enough that it echoed in the crags and minute valleys of stone above their heads.

  “Maybe it’s a few more of the men leaving in the middle of the night—it’s always on this shift that they quit and make their way down to civilization.”

  The younger man was clearly frightened and just hoped that was the case. His friend knew just like everyone else that indeed several of the night shift work detail had quit and moved on, with several leaving their small bags, backpacks, and a suitcase or two—one even left some very expensive tools behind in his haste to leave the mountain and the hard conditions working inside the castle.

  As the large electrician reached the rail a few feet above his head, the floodlights illuminating the mountainside went completely out.

  “Damn it!” hissed the man as his hand missed the rail on his first attempt. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t break our necks out here.”

  “Hurry up, it’s not that dark, I can see your hand, it’s only—”

  Suddenly a shape that was just a blacker spot on the black night shot out from the patio deck and grasped the large man by the wrist, snapping it in five places. Then to the horror of the second electrician the man was pulled straight up and over the railing of the darkened patio. The action only took three seconds and not a sound was made outside of the snapping of bone and the sharp intake of breath from the man that was now gone.

  The smaller man’s eyes were wide and he felt the shivers start as he neared a state of shock brought on by the suddenness of the assault on his friend. The young Romanian swallowed and then slowly started shaking as he reached up and removed his hat just to keep his hands busy.

  As he placed one foot in front of
the other he allowed the hat he held in his left hand to fall to the loose shale at his feet. He held tightly to the stone facing of the fake blocks making up the castle walls as he slid first one, and then the other foot along. His left hand rubbed the wall as the night seemed to get even darker than it had been before. His hand touched something that wasn’t the fake veneer of the stone blocks. Whatever it was it moved and that was when the floodlights above flickered and then came back on. The man closed his eyes, refusing to see the thing that he knew was blocking his path to the front of the castle. He heard some soft clicking noises that moved to his front and then disappeared above him. The man opened his eyes to nothing ahead of him except for the shadows cast by the bright light from above.

  “God,” the man whispered in his native Romanian. And that was all he could say in his relief at being alone. He turned his head back toward the patio to make sure there was nothing there staring back at him.

  The small electrician took a deep breath when he saw that the night was perfectly normal behind him at the rear of the castle. As he turned his head to start forward again he felt the wetness as it struck his hatless head. He reached up and felt his hair and pulled it away. A clear substance was running off his shaking fingers as he looked up to see what exactly had drooled on him. His eyes again widened as he came face-to-face with his own personal nightmare. The beast was actually hanging upside down, its claws dug so deeply into the stone veneer that it held itself perfectly straight above the frightened man.

  “Oh,” was all that was uttered in shock before the claws and teeth went to work.