Legend: An Event Group Thriller

by David L. Golemon

  “Good, high-level jumps?”

  Ryan closed his eyes and remembered Jack and Carl’s laughter as he did his three required high-altitude jumps over the Nevada desert. He also remembered screaming for almost two miles through the air before he realized it would do no good.

  “Yes, Dr. Compton, high-altitude rating.”

  Niles smiled at Ryan’s fidgeting. He then slid over a large yellow envelope containing the lieutenant’s travel orders that instructed him to report to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to the officially nonexistent Delta force operational team complex there.

  “With the apparatus you’ll be flying in, you have to have high-altitude jump training for emergency reasons.”

  Ryan read his orders and then looked at Niles. He started to say something and then stopped, and then decided to ask the question anyway. “I’m not going to help on the Amazon River thing?”

  “No, Mr. Ryan, you’re helping on the Black Operations …thing.”

  Twenty minutes later, Alice stuck her head in through his office door.

  “The president is on the red phone.”

  Niles nodded and Alice disappeared. He hesitated before touching the phone on the right corner of his desk. The report was in front of him on the physical comparison check Europa had completed on the girl in the picture taken in San Pedro, and the news had confirmed their worst fears. And now he would have to tell a worried father about his missing daughter. He wished he could have told him before, but that was when they were only guessing as to her identity. Now they were sure. Ninety-six percent accuracy was as sure as the supercomputer could be. And that meant Kelly was indeed in the Amazon with Helen. He steeled himself and picked up the phone’s red receiver.

  “Mr. President. I have several updates for you. But first I have to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind, and request that you prepare your computer to receive an e-mail attachment.”

  “Fine, Niles, ask and e-mail away. I only have more shmoozing to do for our esteemed secretary of state. It never ends.”

  “Mr. President, your oldest daughter is in Washington on summer break?”

  “Kelly? No, she’s out at Berkeley for the summer. As a matter of fact, she’s in deep with me. She went and ditched her protection team to see some boy out there. She called and said not to worry; we traced the call and it was from a pay phone in Los Angeles. It’s a secret around here, but I have about three hundred agents of the secret service and FBI trying to track her down before the press gets ahold of it. Why do you ask about her?”

  Niles e-mailed the still frame through to the president. “Is this your daughter, sir?”

  The president looked closely at the enhanced image. “Goddammit, where is she?”

  “That photograph was taken on the very same ship that Professor Zachary sailed on a month ago.”

  A shocked silence, then, “I’ll get the secretary of state down to Brazil and see if we can have their cooperation to send some troops into that area. In the meantime, Niles, get your people moving!”

  The connection was terminated and Niles replaced the receiver on his phone. He ran his fingers across his bald scalp.

  “This job never gets any easier,” he mumbled.

  Niles opened his computer’s monitor to a large map of South America. His hand reached up and touched the jagged course of the Amazon River; the clear plastic of the touch screen felt cool to his fingertips. As he crossed the open flow of the giant river, his fingers traced red lines that were reactive to his light pressure. Then he saw that wherever he ran his finger, the tracking line followed, and he realized just how much the computer graphic looked like blood.

  He removed his hand quickly and looked at the spots his outstretched fingers had been. The flow of red was not only the color of blood, but it was also in the shape of four long claw marks.

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

  The man sat in the forward compartment of the Learjet. He listened to a single headphone jack and smiled as he caught the only intelligible side Everett’s conversation. But it was enough. Captain Juan Rosolo, former commander of the Internal Security Division of the Colombian government and inside man for the Cali drug cartel, had the destination for his special squad of men. He made sure the team he was sending to Montana understood in no uncertain terms what the price of failure would be. The quest for the map would end tonight even at the cost of all their lives, either by this Major Collins’s hand, or by his own.

  FIFTY MILES SOUTH OF BILLINGS, MONTANA THREE HOURS LATER

  “Where are you, Jack?” Niles asked into the scrambled security phone.

  “Right now we’re about five miles out of the battlefield on US 212; we landed at Logan airport in Billings about six forty. Why, what’s up?” Jack asked, looking over at Mendenhall, who was driving. Sarah and Dr. Allan Nathan were in the back debating the merits of General Sheridan’s ruthless three-pronged attack method used for the campaign against the hostiles in 1876.

  “Jack, I’m getting ready to call the president. We have received some disturbing news about a couple of the passengers onboard the Pacific Voyager. They are Department of Defense employees, Jack, that’s all I’ll say on this line. Now more than ever, watch your behinds out there; you’re a long way from help.”

  “Warning received and appreciated, Niles, thanks.”

  The connection was terminated and Jack closed his cell phone. No one spoke for a moment as Mendenhall turned off the highway at the battlefield exit. Jack reached out and turned up the air conditioner, then closed his eyes in thought.

  “Look at this, Major,” Mendenhall said, indicating a faraway sight outside of his window. The passengers in the backseat were also quiet as they, too, had caught the same image against the darkening eastern sky.

  An eerie silence filled the rental car as they followed the asphalt track. A sense of history wasn’t the term Jack would use; it was something else. He felt this way very rarely but he did recognize it. He gazed at the monuments sitting atop a small rise in the land, with the tallest in the center catching the late afternoon sun, and the whiteness of the grave markers gleamed. He had a feeling of loss, or more to the point, a feeling of being near a happening, a moment in time that transcends mere history.

  The Little Bighorn Battlefield was a place that will be forever remembered. At Last Stand Hill, a man named Custer once stood and fell with over 265 of his men. It was also a place where countless indigenous peoples had fought and died for their right to exist.

  Sarah and Nathan knew beyond any doubt it had to be one of the most haunted spots in the world. A small shudder traveled down Sarah’s spine as their car traveled over a steel cattle guard that spanned the flowing Little Bighorn River.

  “I always heard from people that this place was creepy; now I know what they meant,” Sarah said as she watched the monuments fade over the rise.

  “I don’t know if soldiers were ever meant to be here, for any reason, Major,” Mendenhall said, looking out of the window.

  Jack didn’t comment, only because he thought the sergeant was right— soldiers weren’t meant to be here, then and maybe even now.

  As they drove up the winding road, several cars passed them. As they entered the gate, they could see more than twenty Native Americans place picket signs into the backs of pickup trucks and vans, as they made ready to leave. A few even waved as Jack’s car drove past them.

  As they went through the gate and toward the visitor’s center, they failed to notice the two large SUVs waiting about a mile away, well off the dirt road and outer RV camping area.

  Jack, Mendenhall, Sarah, and Dr. Nathan walked down the path after parking in the lot next to the visitor’s center. It was now close to seven thirty and the area was deserted with the exception of a green pickup truck that had a National Parks Service emblem on its door.

  Jack tried the door to the battlefield museum first and found it locked. He leaned close and peered through the glass but could see the building was empty. Construction mat
erials were strewn about, as the visitor’s center and museum were readying for a much-needed expansion. But the workers had all left for the day hours before.

  “Hi there, sorry, the museum closes at six on weekdays,” said a man walking down the path toward them. He wore a Smokey the Bear hat and a tan uniform.

  Jack stepped forward and held out his hand. “I’m Jack Collins; I believe you were contacted earlier by my boss in Washington,” he said. He noticed immediately that the man was armed.

  “You the army, Major?” the ranger asked, shaking his hand.

  “That’s me.”

  “We expected you before closing time, Major; my partners out front are locking up the gates right now, and the others are around on Reno Hill making sure no one gets locked in.”

  “Well, we have to see the exhibits. It’s very important,” Jack said, releasing the taller man’s hand.

  “National security, I heard your boss. What department did you say you worked with again?”

  “The Smithsonian Institute, and Ms. McIntire and Dr. Nathan here represent the National Archives,” Jack answered, the small deceit rolling easily from his tongue.

  “Well, my boss in D.C. said to let you in, so I guess we’ll let you in,” said the ranger. “But I must ask that none of you handle anything in the museum. You’re to look only, that clear?” he asked, looking beyond Jack at Sarah, Mendenhall, and Nathan.

  They all nodded.

  “Good, then welcome to the Little Bighorn. I’m Park Ranger McBride, and you’re in for a treat if you’ve never been here before,” he said proudly as he pulled a large ring of keys from his pocket.

  McBride opened the door that guarded the past of Custer, his men, and the American Indians who had pulled off the biggest upset in the history of the American West, and they followed the ranger inside.

  Another ranger was at the front gate saying good-bye and joking with a group of Northern Cheyenne protesters who were a part of the revitalized American Indian Movement (AIM), men the park ranger had come to know by name, as many were there every day in rotating fashion, just like clockwork, to let the public know their discontent on the current state of Indian affairs in Washington, which as always was nearly nonexistent and what little was there was very poor. The ranger laughed with them; he had grown very close with a few. About five of the AIM discontents were members of their separate tribal council police departments and wore their badges inside their coats. As the ranger started to swing the gate closed, he stopped when he saw two large Mercury SUVs coming down the paved road, nearly missing two of the Cheyenne as they drove past, drawing angry glares and a few curses. The ranger stopped with the gate partially opened and went out to greet the park-goers. He held up his hand as the first vehicle pulled up to the gate.

  “Sorry, folks, we open again at eight in the morning,” he said as he stepped up to the passenger window.

  The window rolled down and the ranger was face to face with a man with a thick mustache. The ranger saw the silenced pistol as it was raised and aimed at approximately his right cheek. The rear door of the SUV swung open and he was quickly pulled inside. The ranger was knocked unconscious and stripped down to his underwear. A man of approximately the same size and weight quickly dressed in the ridiculous ranger uniform and then stepped from the SUV. He walked over and pulled open the gate, and the two vehicles entered the park, and then the man closed and secured the main gate with the keys that were still hanging from the lock. Then the imposter walked over to the ranger’s truck and followed the first two vehicles as they went toward the visitor’s center.

  The strange scene at the front gate had not gone unnoticed. Fifteen Cheyenne Indians no more than three hundred yards away knew the park was closed to visitors at night. And they also knew that a place they held as sacred was filling up with white men once again, and that was bad news.

  As the four visitors entered the exhibition hall, McBride turned on the fluorescent lighting and the museum came alive around them. There were magnificent representations of all the tribes that had taken part in the battle. Also mannequins dressed in uniforms of the Seventh Cavalry were there, and others were garbed authentically as Plains Indians. Behind glass enclosures were artifacts that had been recovered from the many sources they had eventually come to after June 25, 1876. There were horse bridles, several rusted and broken Springfield rifles, and Colt pistols. Bullets and balls of every caliber were on display, along with very old powder horns for old flintlocks used by some of the tribes. Broken lance points and arrowheads were well protected behind glass. There were reproductions of the Regimental flag, the blue and red swallowtail flag sporting Custer’s personal choice of two crossed sabers. Jack perused these items and then turned to McBride.

  “The artifacts we’re interested in are the recent finds from the dig that was just concluded.”

  “Ah, I see, those are removed every day to the storeroom so work can be continued on them until noon every day; that was the price we had to pay to keep them on display. They’re right back through here.” He gestured to a door at the back of the museum.

  “This is a going concern here; I didn’t expect all this, to tell you the truth,” Sarah said admiringly.

  McBride stopped with keys in hand as he turned toward Sarah.

  “We found out a long time ago that there is something that has lodged in the cumulative American psyche about the battle here, be it Indian or other cultures. It’s hard to put a finger on because there have been so many far more devastating defeats on this continent for the American military,” he said as he inserted the key into the lock and opened the door. “But for some reason the Little Bighorn haunts this country, maybe not because it was the last stand for Custer and his men, but maybe because, as it turned out, it was the last stand for the men and women he fought against. The tribes here may have won this battle, but it doomed them as a free-roaming people, thus in truth, destroying them. My personal belief is that Americans have always pulled for the underdog, and this place reminds them of what we did to these great people. Besides, all the men, no matter what side they fought on, in this place at least, had to have been the bravest there were at the time. You feel them here. You can even see them here when you’re alone.”

  Sarah knew what the ranger was talking about. She knew they all did, from the moment they laid eyes on the fenced monuments on Last Stand Hill. This place was alive and they all felt it.

  McBride turned on the overhead lights as he escorted the quartet into a room that had examination tables from one end to the other. The artifacts they had come to see were in varying positions on the tables, left as they were when the lab was closed for the day. Jack and the others took all this in with a feeling of awe.

  “There you are, the latest field finds. Some amazing stuff, to be sure,” McBride said.

  Jack’s eyes went immediately to the time-worn and -eaten saddlebag. The bottom was nearly rotted completely through as it lay under a circular magnifier-lamp. He walked over and snapped on the light, which lit up the lens, and then he pulled out a chair and sat.

  “Hey, I said you’re not supposed to touch anything!” McBride called out.

  “Easy, chief, we’re not here to harm anything,” Mendenhall said as he grabbed the larger man’s arm, restraining him. With his free hand he reached out and deftly removed the ranger’s nine-millimeter handgun.

  “What the hell is this?” McBride protested.

  “I believe you were told there were national security issues involved,” Mendenhall said.

  “Really, we’re not going to harm anything,” Sarah chimed in, in an attempt to calm the ranger.

  “Oh my,” was all Dr. Nathan could muster, staring at the pistol that Mendenhall had removed from McBride’s holster.

  Jack was meanwhile engaged in looking through the magnifying glass. “Has anything been found in this saddlebag?” He looked across at the ranger, who was still in Mendenhall’s arms.

  “No, it hasn’t even been examined y
et.”

  Jack nodded and took a deep breath. He leaned over and examined the old leather pouch again. Taking a large pair of tweezers, he carefully lifted a small corner of the leather flap. It tore away and Jack cursed.

  “You’ll destroy it!” the ranger said angrily.

  Nathan stepped forward and removed the tweezers from Jack’s fingers.

  “I think we can probably x-ray that, Major. That should show us the contents pretty clearly.” Professor Nathan gently carried the saddlebag to the lab’s X-ray area that was behind a screen.

  “Just like a bull in a china shop,” Sarah mumbled as she leaned over the table to examine the old steel box that had been recovered along with the saddlebag.

  Jack shrugged his shoulders at Sarah’s halfhearted reproach.

  It took Nathan all of five minutes to get the shots of the saddlebag done. He reported, “The only items left in the saddlebags were more than likely organic in nature, perhaps field rations the Indians didn’t find. Nothing even remotely resembling a cross, I’m afraid. There was no metal left on the leather at all; even the leather rivets had rusted away.”

  “Damn.” Jack turned and looked at Sarah.

  She was turning the metal box over and Jack saw it was the same box as they had seen in the pictures back at the complex. The initials W.K. were on the back in between the rusted hinges.

  “Open it,” Jack ordered.

  “I’m not opening this; I can’t do it without destroying it,” she protested.

  “So why don’t you put it down?” McBride asked, fuming over the destruction these people could be causing to the valuable finds he was in charge of protecting.

  “You know we’re looking for a cross,” said Sarah. “Why won’t you help us?”

  “Because my job description says nothing about assisting thieves and vandals, whoever you are,” he said to Sarah’s back. Then he turned halfway around and faced Mendenhall, who twirled the ranger’s automatic on his right index finger and then quickly placed it back in McBride’s holster.