Event

into something as mundane as me almost getting a bunch of food knocked onto my head, or is it just you?'

Lisa smiled and batted her eyes. 'Just me, I guess.'

Lieutenant Commander Carl Everett stood six foot three inches, which was how he had maneuvered his tray over Sarah so easily. His blond hair was trimmed short. His arms were tanned and muscular in his short-sleeved jumpsuit. He set the tray with his lunch on it down and pulled out a chair. But he waited for his new boss to sit first and watched Lisa and her roommate, Sarah, the one he had almost run into, walk through the serving line. He waited for Lisa to look back again, but she was too busy talking with those around her, already joking with the cooks serving her. Giving up, he finally sat. He tried never to communicate with Lisa during duty hours because the secret they kept was a serious breach of military etiquette and a court-martial offense.

'Is the mess hall food always this good?' Jack asked.

'Yes, sir, they usually have three or four entrees, and since this is a government-and not a military-run outfit, it's officially called a cafeteria, whatever that is,' Everett joked, then paused with a forkful of mashed potatoes halfway to his mouth. 'But field RATS are still the same, MREs in quantity if not quality.'

Collins smiled. In his time in the service he had eaten enough of the freeze-dried rations to feed Botswana.

'So, Commander, you like the duty?' he asked, then chewed.

'Enough so that I don't want to rotate out. They want to send me back to the SEALs with a promotion and a nice fat training stint, but I've officially requested another six years of detached service.'

Collins's eyebrows rose.

'Yeah, I promised to re-up my enlistment if they cut my orders for another tour in the Group.'

'Don't you miss SEAL duty?'

Everett thought a moment as he placed his fork down. He had learned in the past that while speaking to commanding officers he should take his time and give the answer he wanted to give and not the one they wanted to hear. 'I miss my mates, but this is the duty I want. And to be blunt, sir, there is enough excitement here for three SEAL teams.'

Everett looked up beyond the major's shoulder and saw Lisa and Sarah seated far across the vast dining complex. Lisa looked up briefly and gave Everett a trace of a smile. She leaned over and whispered something to her friend, then continued eating.

By the way, I saw the way you and your Mr. Everett locked eyes just a minute ago,' Sarah said without looking up from her lunch.

Lisa paused, her spoon halfway to her mouth, and looked at her roommate. 'My Mr. Everett?'

Again Sarah never looked up. 'You know, the more I think on it, you're probably better off with duties here at the Group and not aboard any ship. For a navy person you have a bad habit of talking in your sleep, and not only that, if I can notice these things, so can others.'

'I do not talk in my sleep--or do I?' Lisa said, her thoughts turning inward.

'Yes, and remember, you're an enlisted-type person, and your Commander Everett is an officer and a gentleman, at least according to the Congress of the United States,' Sarah said as she finally looked up from her salad.

'I've let it get a little too serious, and we are trying to cut back on our meetings. I just think about that big lug constantly,' Lisa said, placing her spoon back into her bowl of soup and then rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hand. 'So what about that new officer? Carl hasn't said anything at all. Have you heard anything?'

'He's supposed to be some sort of black-operations guru or something.'

'From what I saw just a minute ago, he looked like an ordinary officer to me. But then again, you had a better look at him than me.'

'You better start thinking about how to get yourself out of this thing with Commander America,' Sarah admonished, raising her left eyebrow.

Lisa didn't answer; she just sat and stared at her soup without really seeing it.

The senator told me a few things, amazing stuff to be sure, but I'm not really sold as to the importance of all this.' Everett thought again before commenting and placed his knife and fork down as he slowly wiped his mouth with his napkin, then said, 'Sir, you're no different than I or any other serving line officer that comes on board here. You wonder, are we here just to play games and babysit?'

Collins pushed his plate away and looked into Carl's eyes, then crossed his arms and listened.

'I can assure you, Major, we're not chasing fairy tales here, this is a very dangerous and, at times, deadly business.'

'How so?' Collins asked, still looking intently into the younger man's eyes.

'Well, four years ago, it was maybe my sixth or seventh field assignment. The computer nerds upstairs stumbled onto a dig, an archaeological survey being conducted in Greece. The University of Texas and the Greek government sponsored it jointly. Their team consisted of Dr. Emily Harwell, a few Texas grad students, a couple of Greek professors, and of course myself and one other Event Group doctor, posing as part of their labor force.' Again Everett paused and got a faraway look.

Collins watched him, and the way his second-in-command delivered the story, it was as if he were actually giving a field report.

'The good doc and her students came across a series of mathematical calculations that were buried in clay jars and sealed with beeswax. Now this was a no-name Greek alchemist that had buried them in the cellar of his villa. He wasn't famous for anything and was one of those people that history leaves anonymous for all his brilliant work, but the equations that were found were used to calculate the speed of light, three thousand years ago. The find was amazing and made a few jaws drop, I can tell you. It was a work on papyrus that would have made Einstein proud. How would he have done this? And most importantly, why would this no-name Greek mathematician do it in the first place?'

Jack was amazed. 'I would like to see them.'

'The account was taken by force,' Everett said. 'The Event Group, while unique in the world, does have foreign agencies we work and compete with in an offhanded way through our National Archives front. No one knows we exist, officially. Oh, Great Britain has a pretty good idea, but could never prove it. These other archival groups are basically in it for antiquities, whereas the United States has turned the world's history into a science. We actually change the present by looking into the past. Now, some of the more rogue nations and organizations don't play by the rules. The night in question, we lost the manuscript to a man named Henri Farbeaux. The French deny he works for them so he may just be a mercenary, but he is ruthless in gathering information when the situation dictates. He gets intelligence and equipment from someone, some organization, because his equipment is pure state-of-the-art stuff, right on par with our equipment, and we get the best.'

'I've had operational run-ins with other special ops guys, but I've never heard of this Farbeaux character, at least I've seen no intelligence dossier on him, French or otherwise,' Collins said.

'Totally ruthless, Major. We suspect he hit us with a large strike team while we were in Greece, Men in Black we call them. Hit at night by the book and no one saw it coming. We lost twenty-two people, including one of our own, a lady doc from MIT. I liked her a lot. She was ugly as homemade soap, but the smartest woman I have ever known and flat out the funniest. She could tell the dirtiest jokes in the world.' Everett smiled in remembrance. 'I was held up in the hills surrounding Athens for three hours until a strike team of air force commandos from Aviano in Italy arrived and extracted me.'

'Wounded?' asked Collins.

'Took one in the leg. I swear I'll get that bastard Farbeaux someday. He has a major hurt heading his way, and this swab's going to be the one to deliver it.'

'So he took the documents and got away clean?'

Everett took a breath and leaned back in his chair. 'Yes, sir, he did. And every time before and since, it's almost as if he knows our plans, knows where we'll be and what we're doing, thus the internal mole hunt we have going on at the moment.' Everett closed his eyes in thought. 'The Israelis almost had him three months ago, but missed just south of the Sudan. Fucker has a sixth sense about him. An hour before Mossad nails him to the wall, he skips, just like someone was tipping him. He's very good and travels with an international cast of assassins, and get this, a lot of them are known to be Americans, guys with training, like you and I.'