Authors: David Lynn Golemon
Carpathian (86 page)
As everyone read the words they all knew so well, Niles opened a second lid on the box and then acting as though he were afraid to touch it slid the box over to Collins. Collins took a handkerchief from his pocket and removed several gold links that at one time made up the wristband for the expensive watch. He held them and looked the links over and a sad smile crossed his lips as he set the items down.
“What is it?” Ryan asked, standing to get a better look at it.
“That, Mr. Ryan, is the reason Captain Everett and I have to stay separated until we reach some conclusions here at Group. I have been suspended from duty by Dr. Compton and restricted to base for the foreseeable future. Commander Ryan will take over my duties.”
The room erupted as all questions were directed at Niles Compton, who sat next to Alice not looking at anyone.
“Again, what are those?” Ryan asked, becoming scared because for the first time he was seeing extreme unease in the face of Colonel Jack Collins.
“Those, Mr. Ryan, are the remaining links to the wristband of that watch. And as you can see they are covered in a brownish stain that we analyzed. Virginia, would you explain your findings on what kind of stain that is on the links?”
Virginia cleared her throat, as she hated discussing this with anyone, much less the friends inside of this room.
“The stain consists of O negative blood. The bloodstain was preserved by being frozen for such a long period of time.”
“Captain Everett’s blood?” Jason asked.
“No. The DNA profile was matched to a person here at Group, but not the captain.”
“Who?” Sarah asked, knowing she wasn’t going to care for Virginia’s answer.
“Mine,” Jack said as he finally sat in his chair.
The shocked faces around the room made Collins feel terrible as he knew he had just turned the worlds of everyone in the conference room upside down.
“At some point approximately three hundred thousand years ago, Captain Everett and possibly myself may have been killed in the prehistoric past.”
Sarah felt as if her blood had stopped coursing through her veins as she looked at Collins in stunned silence.
Director Niles Compton rapped his knuckles on the conference room table to get their attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the president has authorized an immediate Event alert for this department—the location to begin the investigation is Antarctica. Pete, your departmental team will lead the investigation. Virginia, we have to have all theories no matter how ridiculous or mundane on the science of time travel and I need you to figure out with the rest of the engineers just what in the hell that ship is under the ice and where it came from. The president has authorized any expenditure in this endeavor. Until then as the colonel said, he has been relieved of command and is under house arrest. We cannot take any chances having him out in the world. As for the captain, we think he’s pretty safe for the time being inside Romania.”
The room was silent.
“We all know about the theories of time travel and their obvious flaws. However, if Albert Einstein said it was theoretically possible to travel backward in time, then we can assume that somehow our friends ended up in the past, especially after this discovery in Antarctica.”
Sarah took Jack’s hand and didn’t particularly care about military protocol or who was watching.
The friends and colleagues of Colonel Jack Collins and Captain Carl Everett had a new mission—find out how both of their friends ended up buried under a mile of solid ice that hadn’t seen the sun in three hundred thousand years.
The Event Group was now on a war footing.
ALSO BY DAVID L. GOLEMON
Event
Legend
Ancients
Leviathan
Primeval
Legacy
Ripper
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID L. GOLEMON grew up in Chino, California. He raised three great children and now makes his home in New York.
Carpathian
is the eighth novel in his Event Group Series. Visit David online at
www.EventGroupFiles.com
.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
CARPATHIAN.
Copyright © 2013 by David L. Golemon. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by Jerry Todd
Cover photographs: wolf eyes © S-Belov /
Shutterstack.com
; castle © Davor Lovincic / Getty Images
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Golemon, David Lynn.
Carpathian: an Event Group Thriller / David L. Golemon. —First Edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-250-01300-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-01301-9 (e-book)
1. Event Group (Imaginary organization)—Fiction. 2. Quests (Expeditions)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3607.O4555C37 2013
813'.6—dc23
2013009117
e-ISBN 9781250013019
First Edition: July 2013
