David Golemon - Ancients

Everett sighted the first of his targets. A tall, very thin man was just turning to take aim at Jack and the young woman he was hurriedly helping to her feet. The 9-millimeter round caught the man between the eyes just to the right of his nose. At the same moment, Mendenhall outdid Everett by dropping two men who were already firing on Ryan. Both rounds struck the men in the backs of their heads. Others had turned their attention to their leader and were starting to take aim at Jack.

Carl and Will opened fire in earnest, hoping to drop as many as possible, but they were torn between the men with rifles and those who were starting to turn their attention, and their machetes, on the Ethiopian students.

Jack pushed the small woman away and charged the nearest man threatening the students. As others started to succumb to the withering fire from the knoll, Jack struck the nearest man and drove him into the ground, pounding at him with his fist. One of the young students tried to reach for a fallen machete to assist Collins, but immediately another mercenary got between him and the weapon. Then the assailant was brought down by a round from Everett.

The leader, who had been the first man dropped in the makeshift assault, started crawling away unnoticed. The killing blow that Jack thought he had inflicted guaranteed only a slow death--too slow to stop the man from doing what he needed to do. As he stumbled and tried to stand, he brought out the cell phone and struggled to his knees, just as Mendenhall and Everett shot down the last of his men. He opened the cell phone and, with his wound bleeding nastily, smashed it against a rock. Then he raised his arm to throw the remains into the river; but he hadn't noticed the changing sounds from the river as the angle and loud sounds of "Take It Easy" had changed direction.

Unknown to everyone, a stray bullet had finally found its mark and struck Ryan. The heavy round had only grazed his temple, but it was enough to leave him dazed and to send the large boat straight to the riverbank. The bow struck the small rise of sand and sent the boat full speed into the air. It rose over the scrambling students and the shocked face of Collins, who was pulling a machete out of the hand of the man he had just killed.

"What the hell?" Everett started to cry as the large boat, its motor screaming with exertion and traveling at thirty-five knots, went airborne by thirty feet.

As they all watched, the boat came down with a crash right onto the Sudanese leader, catching him in midthrow. The boat crushed him underneath as it split in two, sending the unconscious Ryan flying into the top of the nearest tent. Just like that, the assault was over, as quickly as it had started.

Collins rushed over to see if Ryan had survived his improvised diversion. Everett came down from the knoll with Mendenhall covering him and started checking the bad guys for life.

In all, the assault by the Event Group security team had taken less than two and a half minutes.

Half an hour later, as the sun was just dipping below the Ethiopian horizon, Jack, Everett, and Will Mendenhall, with the help of the Event Group dig team, assisted the stunned Ethiopian students. In the distance came the gentle thump of helicopters coming from Addis Abba, to the south.

Collins was kneeling beside a bandaged Jason Ryan and was angrily shaking his head.

"When I say 'improvise,' it doesn't mean to stand on top of a boat and have people shoot at you, Ryan."

"Did you like the choice of music? That's all that matters, Colonel."

Jack smirked and shook his head as he stood. "Yeah, as a matter of fact I did."

Ryan then grimaced, as he allowed one of the women of the Event Group to assist him to his feet.

"Jack, the doc says that we have four army Blackhawks inbound to take everyone out, courtesy of the American consulate. The Ethiopian government has been notified about the assault on their university students and the doctor also said that Niles was quoted as saying, 'Leave those idiots in Ethiopia, I have no need for them back in Nevada,' " Carl said.

"The director's not happy with our choice of vacation spots, huh?"

"Not exactly." Everett started to turn away and then stopped. He tossed Jack a small black object. "The head asshole was using this just before you started to play Tarzan with your knife. It's broken, but with a little bit of Event Group magic it may lead us to whoever was running this team of mercs."

"Colonel, I have someone here who would like to say thank you," Professor Leekie said as she placed her hands on the shoulders of the young African student who had put up the brave front against the leader of the mercenaries. "Colonel Collins, Captain Everett, I would like to introduce you to Hallie Salinka, daughter of Ethiopia's vice president, Peter Salinka."

"I ... would ... like ... to--"

That was as far as the young woman could go. She broke down crying as she threw herself into Jack's arms. She sobbed uncontrollably and Collins knew that she was still feeling the shock of the assault. He looked at Everett, not really knowing what to do, but Carl did not offer any advice. He just watched the scene stoically. Leekie placed a hand over her mouth as she imagined the terror this child must have endured. Feeling awkward, Collins finally and very slowly reached up and patted the girl on the back. Slowly her sobs lessened and then Leekie pulled her away.

Jack watched as Leekie slowly led the bloodied girl away. He looked at the cell phone in his hand for a long moment before he pocketed it. Lord, I know it's too much to hope for, but let me have that number. I want to have a very intimate conversation with the person on the other end of that call.

The hidden complex that housed the Event Group sat a half a mile below the desert scrub of Nellis Air Force Base. Its location underneath the northern firing range was not by accident. The mere fact that you could end up setting off one of the experimental missiles deployed by the air force was reason enough not to go snooping in the area. The complex had been finished in late 1944 by the same design team as had built the Pentagon complex. They had used the expansive natural cave system that dwarfed its more famous cousin in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Housed along with the military and science teams that made up the secretive Event Group were secrets that the world had mostly forgotten or that lived on only in folklore and legend. Behind thousands of banklike vault doors and inches of reinforced steel, the secrets of world history, once buried in time, were studied and cataloged. The charter of Department 5656: to make sure mistakes and civilization-altering moments from the past were never again repeated. The Group had been in existence officially since the time of Teddy Roosevelt, but their roots went far deeper, extending to President Abraham Lincoln.

The president of the United States handled the Group personally. The person who occupied the Oval Office--that person alone was trusted with the secrets studied in the ancient cave system below the sands of the high-desert airbase.

For every sitting president since the time of Woodrow Wilson, the first tour of the magical wonders of the Group, a subdepartment of the National Archives, always amazed and usually won over a new president.

The current director of the Event Group was Professor Niles Compton, recruited from MIT. Compton had been chosen by his predecessor, Senator Garrison Lee, and groomed specially to become the head of the most secret agency in the world outside of the American NSA.

He escorted the newly elected president past the third-vault level of the underground complex.