Carpathian (40 page)

Gina reached out and closed the door and then looked Ryan over.

“Are all Americans as strange as you two?” she asked as she took in Jason’s nice features without the cover-up of beard and oil and gold.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

The general manager became serious and then took a step toward Jason.

“The men you dealt with tonight are the type that won’t forget such a slight. The owner didn’t have them removed, so please, watch yourself.” She turned for the door but Ryan stopped her and turned her around and at the same moment kicked the door closed with his foot.

“I’m not afraid of those guys. After all, I’m loud, proud, gay, and I’m gonna stay.” Ryan took her in his arms.

For the next four hours Lieutenant Commander Jason Ryan, USN, proved to one very perceptive general manager of the Edge of the World that, indeed, he wasn’t gay, and also he was still Jason Ryan, naval aviator and king womanizer of the planet.

10

THE TEMPLE ARCH, PATINAS PASS, ROMANIA

Marko stood silently at the camouflaged entrance to the temple. He felt the heat as it poured from the cracks in the scared strata of the mountain as he stepped into the entranceway. His eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the oil lamps that stretched away into the infinite darkness of the immense staircase that wound down into the bowels of the mountain. He started down. Far below he saw the illumination of the temple lighting and he heard the flow of naturally boiled water as it bubbled up through the artesian pools far beneath the earth. The blast furnace of heat and steam made the walk down uncomfortable.

Marko was only halfway down the stairs when he heard a noise behind him. He stopped and peered into the flickering darkness cast by the oil lamps that lined the access to the temple. Seeing nothing, he was about to turn and start back down the staircase when he heard the low growl and this time he knew he had company. He reached out and removed the flaming bowl of oil that sat in a notch in the prehistorically carved tunnel. He held the bowl high in the air and that was when he saw the yellow eyes staring at him. They glowed angrily in the light cast by the oil lamp.

Stanus was standing on the steps twenty feet from Marko. His eyes were watching but the wolf wasn’t moving. The growling low in Stanus’s throat was unnerving.

“I’ve been searching for you, where have you been?” Marko asked as he gently placed the small bowl of flaming oil back into the notch.

Stanus growled once more and didn’t move. Instead of asking anything more, Marko slowly lowered himself to the three-thousand-year-old hewed stone. He took a deep breath and then looked back at Stanus, who was still standing motionless on the steps high above Marko.

“I know you think I have betrayed you, the Golia, and our people.” He held the wolf’s yellow eyes with his own, darker ones. “That ridiculous castle is as far as the human encroachment is going to get.” Marko made sure Stanus was looking at him. He was, intently. “But you will see that tomorrow soldiers will come. These are our soldiers, and a few Americans.” Marko laughed and then shook his head as he smiled over and up at Stanus, who wasn’t growling any longer, but had tilted its head as it tried to understand the words of the man without the spell being cast upon it. “You don’t even know what an American is, do you?”

Stanus flicked his ears as if saying, “Does it matter?”

“They are mapping the pass, as your ancestors once did, as my ancestor Kale once did. They are mapping it for the defense of the north in case war comes to the people not of this mountain. Not us, but the lowlanders.”

Stanus whined and then took three tentative steps down the staircase.

“The Golia must remain inside the temple for the next two days and then the men and soldiers will leave this place of the Golia and Jeddah. Do you understand me, Stanus?”

The wolf sat beside Marko and looked him in the eyes. The beast was a full four heads taller than Marko as he sat and looked down into the man’s face. Marko slowly lifted his hand toward the left side of the massive head of the wolf but the great beast pulled back out of touch. It was as if Stanus would not allow the joining spell to be cast. That made Marko nervous, but not for the first time around the great alpha male.

“We have set in motion events that will secure the safety of our mountain, our people, and our babies. Babies you have in the temple. We will never have to worry about security again. We have discovered after all these years what it takes to make sure we survive—money.” Marko held the gaze of the Golia and didn’t flinch. “You don’t know of money, do you? Think of gold, and gemstones—we have what the outside world craves. Like you crave the company of your Golia, they also must have things of material value.”

The wolf, without Marko casting the joining spell, had to be made to understand.

“This is why we must make sure nothing happens to either the soldiers that will come to map our home, or those men and women down below. I promise you, my friend, there will be no men allowed beyond the castle, just the soldiers, and they cannot be harmed. I cannot say this enough, Stanus—leave them be. I and my men will handle anyone who strays from the path. Keep the Golia babies safe inside the temple.”

Stanus didn’t move. It was like he was looking for the lie hidden inside Marko’s words.

“I know I told you that the newcomers would not breach the mountains and I swear to you it will not happen again. Grandmamma will have us destroy what is ours and abandon our home if threatened, but I say we can keep what is ours and remain where we have for the past three thousand years.”

Stanus surprised Marko by leaning into him and then rubbing its muzzle on the side of Marko’s face. Stanus was smelling him for any deceit, and luckily for Marko this time it was all the truth. He closed his eyes waiting for Stanus to disagree. It didn’t. The great wolf huffed as if to say, “We’ll see,” and then with one leap hopped over Marko and disappeared into the cavern that housed the greatest temple complex ever built by man.

Marko sat for the longest time and prayed he hadn’t made wrong choices in his partnership with the Russian. If he had, he knew he could end the entire dream that was their home and God’s personal dream that is the Golia.

That things would calm after the resort below was up and running and his people had a steady flow of untraceable money and not the artifacts Marko had had to steal from the temple to bribe not only the Russian, but also the interior minister. Tomorrow was Friday and after that if he could survive one more day and night without the Golia showing their fierceness to anyone, they could slide into safety on their mountain again and live in the way they had been denied for three and a half thousand years.

*   *   *

Colonel Ben-Nevin had his men dispersed as he compared his map to the terrain in front of the new resort. He had stopped his small convoy three miles to the west of the hotel and well away from the crowd of reporters and TV crews camped outside the front gates. His secret conspirator inside the Knesset had sent him the coordinates of the area the Israeli army had been alerted to. This information had been taken directly from the mouth of General Shamni himself when he reported to the committee overseeing foreign intelligence. The information was helpful in the fact it gave him a new starting point. He knew if the major was heading for Patinas, this was the only way in.

“Sir,” one of his men said as he approached the colonel.

“What is it?” Ben-Nevin asked as he looked up from the map.

“Our eastern team reports a NATO camp that is just breaking up on the far side of the resort. They say it looks like most of the contingent is leaving the area.”

“Most?”

“There is a platoon-sized element still bivouacked.”

“Our contact was right about NATO being interested in the pass, but I thought they would take a little more time in getting it done.”

The messenger was about to turn away when Ben-Nevin called him over to the hood of the car where he had the map spread out. He hit the gas station–supplied map with a finger of his undamaged left hand.

“I want ten men right here.” He jabbed at a spot he had been studying closely for the past two hours. “If she’s near she will have to pass through right there. It’s the only spot near enough to the foothills to even get close to the road leading to the pass. Yes, this is the spot. Tell the men I will join them soon.”

The man nodded and turned away to gather the men when he heard the sound of an automatic weapon being charged behind him. It seemed the colonel was about to go hunting.

*   *   *

It had taken Charlie Ellenshaw over an hour and a half to fully awaken. He stumbled behind Everett as they slowly surveyed the area to the front of the resort. Carl stopped and studied the hotel and the security situation. Charlie knelt beside him.

“I hope Niles got through to Jack because I don’t think we could get into that place. If that’s their normal security force it rivals several small nations I’ve been to.”

“Impossible to get in?” Charlie asked.

Everett smiled and looked at the professor of cryptozoology. “Impossible? Nah, just formidable, Doc, just formidable.”

Everett stood and started walking once more to the west. The lights of the resort still lit the night around them and Carl felt exposed. Finally he spied the road that led up the steep mountain. He was surprised when he saw two men standing by the side of the trail leading to the road. They talked a moment and then a third man came up and said something to them and then the three left. Everett took a deep breath when he realized how close they had come to walking right into the two men. He shook his head and then waved Charlie forward, silently cursing his stupidity in worrying about the lights of the resort when he should have been concentrating.

“Why don’t we just use the road?” Charlie asked when Everett continued to use the thin trees for cover.

“Well, Doc, if we—”

Before Carl could answer Ellenshaw, the noise of men shouting broke through the nighttime silence. They both heard men running. Everett reached up and pulled Ellenshaw down and they both waited.

“It seems awfully crowded out here in the woods for it being almost dawn.”

Everett had to agree with Charlie on that point.

Suddenly there were two sets of boots standing just above the small ditch they had crawled into. Everett shook his head when Ellenshaw started to move. The men spoke in a foreign language and Everett knew that language was not Romanian. He had heard it just two days ago in Rome. The two men hurried away and Everett rolled over onto his back until his eyes could see the fading lights of the stars as it neared dawn.

“How in the hell did they know to come here?” Carl asked those disappearing stars.

Charlie was about to ask the captain to explain when they heard the yelp of a large dog. Then another pain-filled cry came bursting through the trees. They heard men shouting and then a woman screamed an obscenity.

Everett reached behind him and pulled out the nine-millimeter.

“Come on, Doc, this doesn’t sound good.”

“Hey, do you have a gun for me?” Charlie whispered as loud as he dared.

“Damn, I accidentally issued it to Pete Golding,” Everett joked, knowing that would irk Charlie to no end. Then Carl slowly moved out of the small drainage ditch and into the trees. Ellenshaw looked lost for a moment and then frowned.

“Pete!” he cursed under his breath and then started after the captain.

It took several minutes for the woods along the road and adjoining trail to calm down from the excitement moments earlier, Carl and Charlie managing to keep out of sight.

Everett had a chance to see several of the men up close and he could see that they were not professional soldiers or even militarily trained. They acted like hired men from various professions and that made his job that much easier, as he could track the noisy men without being seen or heard.

After a long wait behind one of the larger pine trees, which were becoming far more sparse the nearer to the mountain they got, they watched eleven men as they started returning to the road in the same place they were before all the commotion began.
All but one man,
Carl corrected himself. This man silently stood his ground and listened to the early morning sounds.

In the weak light of dawn, Carl had a feeling of déjà vu as he watched the dark form standing just ahead of him and Charlie. The tall, thin man placed a hand on the tree and listened, and then suddenly vanished. Everett raised his head a little and tried to find out where the familiar form had disappeared to when he heard something. It was a small cry of pain as someone stumbled in the dim light of morning. Everett gestured for Charlie Ellenshaw to hold his ground and the professor nodded that he understood.

Carl moved slowly away from the last protected spot he had for a hundred yards. He kept close to the ground as he headed toward a large boulder that had tumbled from the mountain sometime in the past thousand years. Everett realized as he ran stooped over that he wasn’t getting enough exercise as he struggled to keep bent at the waist. Finally he placed his hands on the giant stone and knelt to catch his breath. He had felt exposed in the dawn light and knew he had been foolish to try to get as close as he could to where he thought the noise had originated. He finally controlled his breathing enough that he could listen. He heard the birds singing their morning songs and several of them even sprang from the trees above them. But of the strange noise he had heard, there was nothing.

Carl was about to turn away when he heard another cry and then a curse as someone was pushed from the small thatch of trees fifty feet beyond where Everett had pulled up.

“Traveling with a child has never been Mossad policy, Major Sorotzkin, you should know that.”

Carl saw the man and then the woman and boy. The child wasn’t the same but the woman was Anya Korvesky—the Mossad agent from Rome. And the man who held the two at gunpoint was the very same colonel that had tried to kill him and Ryan in the small antique shop near Vatican City.