Carl smelled atrocious and as Sarah finally pulled back from her hugs and kisses so Virginia could get her shots in, she turned to face an exuberant Anya Korvesky. They hugged.
“I won’t even ask how,” Carl said as he held Virginia at arm’s length after her battery of welcoming hugs and kisses on his bearded cheek.
Everett allowed Virginia to move away as he reached for the dark-haired Gypsy woman and took her in his arms again. Finally it was Anya who couldn’t take it any longer. She pulled back from Carl and held her nose.
“I tried to be a stand-up trouper, but my God that cologne!” she said as she laughed as did the others who had been too polite to point out the fact that the admiral smelled so sickening that it was hard not to gag on the stench.
Everett acted as if he were hurt for the briefest of seconds, and then he broke out laughing also. He removed the longbow and the quiver of five arrows from his back and then pulled the bear coat off of his large frame. He tossed an empty shortened version of an AK-47 away as he did.
“Sorry, but to get around out here you have to smell like something bigger and badder than anything else — I find saber-tooth lion pee-pee the best.” He laughed as the women recoiled in horror.
Sarah saw the nine millimeter strapped to Everett’s filthy and ragged flight suit. The suit had once been white with red trim, but was now unrecognizable with the exception of the small American flag on his left sleeve and the Overlord mission patch on his chest.
“I guess saving us was worth only six shots? I take it you wanted to practice your Robin Hood thing?” Sarah joked with her right brow raised.
Everett smiled and then removed the Glock from its holster. He tossed it to Sarah. “My last bullets were fired over a month ago. I was lucky to come across a rather gruesome scene a few miles back and found that.” He kicked at the empty AK-47 at his feet. “It only had what you heard in the magazine. After that I had to use my superior mountain-man skills.”
“How long have you been living like this?” Virginia asked as once again Anya was on Carl like a lost puppy.
“A thousand rounds of ammunition were gone within three days. The damn raptors took my MREs the second day, and those damn condors flew off with my enclosure with me in it on the third. That was a close one, I can tell you.”
Sarah lowered her head and then swiped a tear from her eye just thinking what this man had to have endured in the six months he had been here.
“Okay, you’ve kept me in suspense long enough. Where’s Jack and those two low-ranking idiots I call friends and colleagues?”
Anya pulled back from Carl and then looked at him closely. “We haven’t seen the first team since we arrived. We don’t even know if they made it. Jack, Master Chief Jenks, Charlie, and Colonel Farbeaux — we can only hope they’re still alive.”
“Team? Then just what in the hell are you guys, then?”
“We’re an accident thanks to some outside Russian mob interference. They’re the ones who brought that.” She indicated the automatic rifle. “And as a real kicker that’s exactly who is holding your two low-ranking friends at the moment.”
“I’m not following one little bit.” He turned to Virginia and Sarah, who tossed the empty nine millimeter back to Everett.
“Longer story than the first,” was Sarah’s answer. “Right now we have to get Jason and Will back.”
Carl looked around and then leaned down and retrieved the stinky bear coat from the ashes covering the ground. He looked toward the erupting Erebus and shook his head. “Not now, the sun’s getting ready to go down and we can’t chance getting caught out here with only one bow and five arrows for artillery.” He looked at Anya and kissed her on the lips, his red-tinted beard itching her nose. “Unless you have a rocket launcher under that blouse?” Anya blushed like a schoolgirl and then looked embarrassingly at the two knowing women. “No, no rocket launcher? Then I have a place we can hang our coats until daybreak.”
“Where is that?” Virginia asked as she stepped into the small line of retreat from the forest primeval.
“This time it’s you who won’t believe it,” he said as he eased his found charges off into the jungle and the river that flowed not far away.
As the world around them started to come alive with the terrors of the night, Erebus belched smoke and flame and then settled into an uneasy slumber.
Niles Compton limped toward the phone that was held out by Alice Hamilton. He set his demeanor to one of defensive confrontation as he took the receiver. Alice nodded, knowing he had to be firm.
“Mr. President?”
“What in the hell is going on in Brooklyn, Baldy?”
“No ‘Niles,’ no ‘hello,’ not even a ‘how are you doing, my very good friend’?”
“Do not, I repeat, do not act like it’s just a coincidence that a possible terrorist action in Brooklyn happens the same day you find it necessary to raid the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And also at the same exact time you seem to have been avoiding my damn calls. Your commander-in-chief! Now what gives, Niles? I have agencies screaming from here to the Potomac about some mysterious group of people running amok in New York. I can’t cover for you if you don’t keep me up to date. The hundred hours is nearly up.”
“Jim, you agreed to a one-hundred-hour window before we report oversight. We have forty of those hours remaining. If I told you that we had nothing to do with the terrorist action at the Barclays Center, will you stick to our agreement?”
“Don’t you dare hold me over a barrel, I am not one of those schoolkids you have at Group. I happen to be the President of the United States, who is right now getting ready to send the Marines over there and shut you down, among other things. This is getting messy, Niles. How am I going to explain the terrorist action in Brooklyn?”
Niles remained silent as the president, his friend, the best man at his wedding, exploded when he realized Niles was protecting his office over his express orders to keep him in the loop.
“Do we still have our time?”
The quiet on the other end of the phone was telling. Niles felt the sheer heat coming from his friend’s anger at what was possibly going on. He knew as long as the president had full deniability he would be protected.
“Jim, the terrorist action weren’t terrorists at all. It was the Russian mob and thanks to them you have a culprit. Allow the FBI to do their job and that should give us the time we need to complete our mission.”
“Niles, tell me the truth: Are you making headway in bringing Mr. Everett back home?”
“Very much so. Enough progress to say that we should be finished within your time frame.”
“Okay,” came the voice at the other end of the line. “I can cover my ass on this end, but no more buildings are to be blown to hell. I have the press screaming bloody murder.
“Niles, where is my submarine?”
Well, that did that. So much for hoping the president had suddenly ceased being smart. He looked over at Alice, who was listening to the speaker phone across the room. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
“Uh, yes, the Los Angeles. Assistant Director Pollock needed an alternate power source since the explosion and subsequent police response two days ago. She was close by in Groton so I made a few calls. That is in my new directives, along with the proposed allotted oversight time frame.”
“Do not quote to me the very policy that I wrote, damn it!”
“Do we have the time?”
“Of course you still have the time. Congressional oversight can only crucify me once.”
The line went dead. Niles looked at the phone and then sat heavily into a chair. Alice stood and slowly walked over and removed the receiver from his hand and placed it in its cradle.