David Golemon - Legend

Ryan pulled the wheel to the right just in time as the two men again opened fire. Several bullets hit the windshield and spider-webbed the safety glass. One of the bullets grazed by his head, only inches from his skull.

Niles reached out and pulled the gun out of Ryan's hand, swinging the weapon out of his broken passenger window. He was cursing up a storm, already angered by the futility of his computer search and, on top of that, at the indignity of being shot at in this hallowed place.

"Son of a bitch!" he screamed as he fired off the last four rounds in the Colt's clip.

Ryan quickly glanced out the side window and was amazed to see one man grab his face and careen into the other, sending his fire off target. Then an amazing thing happened. Ryan didn't see the tree and they slammed into it. It was a rear-right-side quarter-panel graze, but enough to stop the car. At the same time, the dark green pickup truck found the road and came screeching toward them. Ryan figured in a split second that was it, as he turned the ignition and there was nothing but the clicking of the solenoid. The car was as dead as they soon would be. As he thought this, the truck suddenly swerved, as loud popping noises sounded from a distance away. The truck's front window blew inward. The man in the passenger seat grabbed his chest just as his face disintegrated in a hail of large-calibered bullets. The driver of the truck slammed on his brakes and turned the big vehicle around, stopping only to retrieve the one man who was standing and carrying his partner. The driver waited only long enough for the man to throw his buddy into the back and climb in, and then sped away toward the front gate.

Ryan closed his eyes as the silence grew around him. He heard the ticking of the cooling engine and the heavy breathing of Niles, but that was all. He looked around and took stock of the damage. He shook the director until Niles looked at him with a blank stare.

"You okay, sir?" Ryan asked, himself a bowl of jelly.

"How does Jack do it? I mean, that's the first time I have ever been shot at," Niles said as he slowly laid the gun on the glass-covered seat.

"I'm sure he hates it as much as us, sir."

As they watched, several Arlington guards and the Group's undercover marines made their way to the car. Ryan opened the car door; it creaked loudly and fell to the grass. In the next second, the black hand of the lance corporal who had moments earlier seen them off was helping him out of the car, and then the director.

"Ballsy bastards, weren't they?" he said.

"Yeah," Ryan said. "They must have wanted us stopped from leaving here pretty bad."

The lance corporal checked Niles for injuries. "A few more minutes, you might have taken up permanent residence here."

Niles remained blank faced. How in the hell could someone send a team into a covert site, and how in the hell did they know he was there?

"We've got to get back, Corporal. Get us some transport, please," Niles ordered, "before the Parks Service starts asking questions about us."

"Yes, sir," the corporal said as he sprinted off back toward the maintenance shed.

"Mr. Ryan, someone knows what's up here in Washington."

"Yeah, and I would sure like to know who it is. I could have that F-16 trainer armed with no trouble…"

"I admire your sentiments, but we have to get back to the Group, ASAP!"

Three hours later, Ryan and Niles were in the F-16 somewhere over Nebraska when they received a scrambled transmission from the Group's information center. The director was surprised to hear Jack's voice on the other end of the call.

"Major, I thought you were heading out to Montana."

"Copy that, Doctor. We delayed in the hope of tracking down the identity of the man Lieutenant Ryan shot in Arlington."

"And?" Niles asked from twenty-eight thousand feet.

"Niles, the body was gone by the time our security arrived up top. Someone beat us to it."

"Who in the hell are we butting heads with? Major, we'll talk again when we arrive; hang tight until I arrive, then we'll figure out how to proceed."

"Roger. By the way, Mr. Ryan tells me you may have saved both of you with some good shooting."

"I was scared to death!" Niles said quietly into the face mask.

"All battles are fought by scared men who would much rather be somewhere else, Mr. Director. And pass along to Ryan, well done."

Ryan smiled under his mask. Praise from Caesar.

Niles had showered and was sitting in the conference room with Alice, Jack, Pete Golding, and Virginia Pollock; Lieutenant Commander Everett was on the speakerphone from New Orleans. The director filled them in on the details of his trip and the murderous attempt on his life in the cemetery. After they were all updated, there was a knock on the door. An army signals officer entered and gave Niles a sheet of paper. Niles read it and then reached for the remote. He punched a button and a ten-by-six-foot liquid crystal screen slid down from the ceiling at the head of the conference table. He then pushed another button and the numbers 5156 appeared on the screen. Then suddenly a face appeared, blurred and then refocused and stabilized. A woman smiled into the camera and she stepped aside and allowed an elderly man to step into view.

"Director Compton?" the man asked. "I can't see you; we have all of our monitors in use at this time. There is quite a bit of excitement going on here at the moment," the gray-haired man said as he turned and hushed everyone behind him.

"I can hear and see you, Nathan," Niles assured the excited professor as he looked around the table and spoke in hushed tones to the others. "Dr. Allan Nathan, expert on American history, has combined his department with Anthropological Studies to see what can be found out about the Little Bighorn archaeological projects."

"Good, good. We have just received the pictures from the National Parks Service on items they recovered on their most recent dig." Nathan disappeared from the screen for a moment, but his voice could still be heard. "I am forwarding the pictures to you now."

As they watched, over 150 small images of items filled the entire liquid crystal screen. Some were easily recognizable, such as arrowheads, a rusted navy Colt pistol with the wooden handgrips missing, a boot that had deteriorated to the point that it had no leather upper any longer. Buttons with "U.S." embossed on them, belt buckles with the same, and, most disturbing of all, bones. Finger bones, a pelvic bone, and what was easily recognized as a large femur.

The room was quiet as they looked at the images.

"The Parks Service had a real good dig this time out, as heavy rains removed even more topsoil than the fires had a few years back. Now what's so exciting here, Mr. Director, is the fact that for the first time they concentrated heavily on area 2139." As the professor spoke, the images of the artifacts disappeared from the screen and a Parks Service rendering of the battlefield took their place. On the illustrator, at a spot just north of Last Stand Hill, where Custer and his companies had met their grisly fate, was a yellow circle. Inside the circle was a legend with the letters C, I , and L . "This is where Captain Myles Keogh made his stand with the remnants of the three troops, or companies. We have found quite a few artifacts besides the brass and copper shell casings, which indicated, by the way, that the three companies had put up one hell of a defense; the Parks Service discovered thirty-seven military-issued and nonmilitary items in this group that they believed had been carried to the Little Bighorn by Seventh Cavalry troopers."

Niles stood and walked closer to the screen. Jack Collins remained seated, and was writing down the details of what the history department was saying. He had never studied the battle in 1876 the way he should have, only tactically at West Point, never thinking of, or trying to imagine, what it must have been like to have fought and died there.