Carpathian (32 page)

She felt the presence behind her as her thoughts had betrayed her and allowed someone to come upon her without notice. She slowly turned and faced the intruder.

“Identification, please,” said a man dressed in the gray and black uniform of the Poli
ţ
ia, the local law enforcement. The policeman was accompanied by another who sat in the passenger seat of a small, white-painted patrol car parked by the river. Anya had walked right past them without realizing it. She tried to smile but she knew her appearance was a major concern to the policeman.

“I’ve lost all of my identification,” she said trying to disarm the young man with her warm smile.

“Lost, huh?” The officer pulled out his notebook and rummaged through the pages as he searched for something. He stopped and read what it was he had written and then looked at the woman. He looked back to his notepad and then closed the book and fixed Anya with a stern look as his partner joined them at the river’s edge. The sun slowly went below the horizon to the west. “You fit the discription of a woman who caused several thousand leus in damage to a train car.”

Anya wanted to curse her luck.

“It happened on the Sarajevo limited from Bosnia. Have you recently been to Bosnia-Herzegovina, young lady?”

“No, I travel north. My home is there,” she said hoping that their conversation didn’t awaken Mikla and her nephew.

“And where is that?” The policeman continued the questioning as his partner moved to the side and then slowly started to get behind Anya.

She knew she was between the proverbial rock and hard place and also knew it would be far better, at least for these two innocent policemen, for her to be taken into custody. The alternative for the two law enforcement officials was not to be contemplated.

“We will have to take you in until we can be sure you are not the woman we seek.” The first man held his ground while the second uniformed officer went behind her. Anya was going to allow them to cuff her and take her in because she was out to save the lives of these two innocents who didn’t deserve to die for doing their jobs. She swallowed and waited.

Suddenly and without warning Mikla was there. The beast had jumped clear of the stand of trees they were hiding in and landed between Anya and the man in front of her. The action had been so fast and so unexpected that the second officer fell backward toward the flowing Danube. Mikla, his right rear foot and leg holding steady off the ground, bared its six-and-a-half-inch fangs at the men and then dipped its front half as it lowered its large frame closer to the ground. Anya knew Mikla was about to spring.

“No, Mikla!” she called out but it was too late as the beast jumped over the first policeman and then Anya herself and landed in front of the second stunned officer, who was still on his back trying to scramble away from the monstrous scene before him. As Mikla landed on the riverbank Anya heard the giant beast yelp as its injured leg came down hard after the leap. As she watched, Mikla quickly recovered and started limping toward the frightened man. The young policemen tried desperately as did the first to reach his holstered sidearm. Anya could only deal with one man at a time. Again she told Mikla to stop and then she spun and deftly removed the handgun that had just cleared the holster of the policeman that had questioned her. The man’s eyes widened at the speed at which he had been disarmed. Anya then reached out and hit the policeman with the edge of her right hand, sending the young man to his knees grasping his throat. Fighting for a breath would incapacitate him for the time she needed to bring Mikla back under control.

She moved quickly as the great Golia forgot all about its own injury and started to slowly walk toward the man on his back. Anya saw the policeman finally clear his weapon from its flapped holster and bring it up.

“No!” she shouted and was raising the pistol before she realized she had been about to shoot an innocent over her stupidity at getting caught before she reached home.

Mikla reacted so fast that the man saw his empty hand before he realized the gun was being held by the animal’s long and articulate fingers. The beast had narrowed its yellow eyes and was just holding the pistol in front of the man, who could not fathom what it was he was seeing—a giant wolf with the hands of a man? No, the policeman thought he may as well check out of this nightmare right now. He closed his eyes.

“Mikla, come now, we must leave,” Anya called out.

The great Golia, its hind leg and paw still a foot off the ground, turned to face Anya. The yellow eyes narrowed at her. She could see Mikla was having none of it. The wolf again lowered its white-tipped ears and then tossed the weapon into the river. As the beast was preoccupied with trying to decide if it should obey the order it had been given by Anya, the second policeman gained his feet at the same moment the first recovered from the blow to his throat. Both men stumbled, fell, and stumbled again to get back to their small Audi police car. Mikla turned and growled. The Golia jumped once more toward the police car as the two men managed to scramble inside with shouts of fear, joy, and terror all mixed together.

“Let them go, Mikla!” Anya shouted but knew the beast had its hackles up and there would be no calming it. She knew how wonderfully wild the Golia were and how uncontrollable the entire family could be when confronted with danger. The two men would suffer for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Her nephew came out of the stand of trees with tears streaming down his face as the boy realized just what it was he was about to witness—the dismembering of two human beings. Anya tossed the pistol she had taken from the first officer toward the riverbank and watched as Mikla covered the thirty feet to the patrol car in one long leap. The animal landed on the hood of the small white Audi, crushing the metal into the engine compartment and sealing the two policemen’s fate. As the front tires of the car exploded under the tremendous force of the animal’s landing on the car, Anya could hear the terrified screams of the men inside.

“Mikla, leave them alone,” she shouted, but the Golia was now frenzied through its pain and confusion at having awakened to find Anya gone and then finding out that two humans had successfully penetrated the animal’s perimeter without it being aware of it. That told the Golia it was dying, something the Golia clan had learned as man had, that they, above all animals of the world, knew they would someday die.

Anya tried with all of her ability to link with Mikla but the distance was too great without the use of touch. It was enough to get the animal to spin on the hood of the crushed patrol car in confusion as its thoughts were invaded. It suddenly stopped and then faced Anya and growled knowing it was she that was intruding on its thoughts. Anya swallowed and tried her best to get the beast to respond.

Mikla stopped its agitation momentarily as Anya’s thoughts entered its angered mind. The beast shook its head and then turned on Anya once more and this time the roar was something she had never heard in all her time with the Golia. Mikla was close to jumping from the car and killing her. He thought this was a betrayal. She made his mind see the men as they were. She forced the Golia to see that the men were not evil, but just men that meant them no real harm.

Mikla stopped moving in a circle and then jumped free of the hood as the men inside screamed again at the sudden departure of the wolflike creature. Mikla then used the crushed hood of the Audi and its humanlike hands to gain leverage and stood on both hind legs still favoring the broken ankle. Mikla towered over the crushed Audi.

“Mikla, let’s go home,” she said as calmly as she could and allowed her thoughts to change to the temple buried deep within the mountain. She projected thoughts of Patinas and the pass above it. Mikla seemed to calm with visions of home running through its thoughts.

When it looked as if Mikla had spent the anger and animal savagery it was feeling, the men inside the car made a horrible mistake. The first officer removed a shotgun from its bracket in the center console and when he charged a single round of double-ought buckshot into the chamber Mikla suddenly turned its attention back to the car. This time Anya couldn’t control the Golia as it reached out with both hands and took hold of the Audi’s bumper, lifting the front end of the car four feet off the ground and sending another wave of screams from the throats of the two policemen. Limping horribly on its broken ankle, Mikla roared again and this time used its massive weight advantage and spun the car up and over onto its top. The Golia roared as it limped back toward the upside-down Audi. Then with one last act of defiance the beast went to all fours and started ramming the smashed vehicle with the shocked and stunned policemen inside. The battering was horrendous as Mikla slammed into the patrol car again and again. Finally at the edge of the Danube the car slid into the river.

Anya saw the great Golia fall to the ground with an earth-moving crash and then lay still. Its energy was spent and it was in a total state of exhaustion. In the river the two policemen were still screaming as the white Audi started its run down the river.

Anya ran to Mikla and knelt beside the animal but before she could place a hand on its neck to soothe it, the right hand of the beast came up and took hold of her wrist, stopping her from making contact. The animal slowly let go and Anya withdrew her hand.

“Thank you. We cannot kill innocents; otherwise what good are we, Mikla? You’re not Stanus, nor am I my brother. We are not like them.”

“What is wrong with Mikla?” her nephew asked.

Anya stood up and watched as the sun vanished behind the mountains of Sarajevo to the west. She reached out and took her nephew and brought him to her and hugged the boy as she watched Mikla. Then she looked up and watched the police car vanish around the bend in the Danube with the shocked men still inside.

“He wants to go home,” she said hugging the boy closer. “He just wants to go home and not die out here in the flatlands.”

Mikla raised his head as Anya’s thought struck its mind. It whimpered and then lay still for a moment and then just as suddenly it stood, still favoring its leg, which had swollen two times larger than it had been before the confrontation. The beast looked toward the distant mountains and then shook its massive head as it tried to clear it of the residue of thought emanating from Anya. The Golia eased into the Danube and started swimming across.

Anya and Mikla were only twelve hours away from seeing a home she had not laid eyes on in nine years.

EVENT GROUP 747-C 200, 650 MILES OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

The 747-C conversion was broken into four distinct parts. The forward section housed communications, meeting rooms, and a research area. The center section was more of the same with small well-equipped laboratories complete with the latest carbon-dating equipment delivered special to the Group from the Sperry-Rand Corporation, and also a complete world library and hostile computer penetration expert thanks to the presence of Europa in the computer center at the top of the spiral staircase. The third area was for dining and the kitchen module. Complete showers and restrooms were next, followed by the sleeping area that could accommodate well over a hundred people in stacked and curtained private bunks. The bottom cargo area held everything from weapons hidden in the main and stern bulkheads and a complete document forgery section also run by the criminal mastermind Europa.

The soothing drone of the four General Electric engines had hypnotized most of the teams and they slept soundly in their bunks. The Air Force pilots attached to the Group had two full crews to man the giant jumbo jet on its long haul across the Atlantic and then over the boot of Italy to the eastern mountains called Carpathian.

Jack was sitting upstairs on the second deck reading a classified report that Niles had managed to get ahold of for him. They were national security briefing minutes from the White House. Collins sat and wondered as he read the report if the minutes to the national security meetings about the inclusion of Romania into NATO were offered voluntarily by the president or were they absconded by Niles, Pete, and Ma Barker—Europa? Jack was beginning to think the supercomputer was starting to like the criminal life, she was that good at it.

Jack heard someone coming up the spiral staircase to the second deck and he looked up from the small table that lined the communications center. It was Jack’s watch in operations and he thought everyone with the exception of the Air Force flight crew was asleep. He lowered the report on the NATO concerns about the inclusion of Romania when he saw it was Alice slowly making her way to him.

“Well, company at last,” Jack said as he tossed the highly classified report on the small desk in front of him. “Can’t sleep?”

Alice looked around and decided to sit at the computer station. She turned the chair and then smiled at Jack. She said nothing as she studied him.

“You remind me so much of that old bastard, Garrison,” she finally said as she looked away for the briefest of moments and then back at Collins. “You have the very same traits.”

“Well, I think I’m quite a bit behind the senator in most departments,” Jack said, embarrassed that she would compare him to Lee. “I think—”

“He was an ass at times also,” Alice said with her smile still in place. “As a matter of fact, Jack, he was a real dick when he wanted to be.” Alice batted her eyes at the colonel. “Just like you.”

Collins was taken aback by the sweet and innocent Shirley Temple approach used by Alice to get his attention with false flattery. He smiled and wanted to laugh at the innocent way she looked at that very moment.

“Now wait, Alice, I have explained my reasoning to everyone concerned when it comes to my sister’s murder. Everyone here knows what’s going to happen and I will not drag them into it. I have an expendable asset and source that will be used to find her killer and that’s it. None of my friends are going to get involved.” He paused and then leaned forward in his chair to make sure Alice saw him and heard his words. “And that goes double for Carl. I have reasons beyond which you cannot imagine. No, I’ll do it my way.”