by Bob Mayer
“A point each,” Kincannon said.
Evie wasn’t finished. “And that Butterfield himself was heavily involved in Black Friday in 1869 when, as Assistant Treasurer to the United States under President Grant, he tried to sell insider information about government gold selling? Nothing much ever changes. It’s always about money and the people who have it wanting more.”
“She’s ahead again, Duke.”
“You do know your history.” Ducharme moved forward toward his destination. “By the way, Butterfield wasn’t a West Point graduate.”
“Then what’s he doing in here?” Evie asked, hurrying to keep up.
“Probably gave someone some gold,” Kincannon said.
The markers were getting older as he went further into the cemetery. A large tree hung over an obelisk at the next row of graves. A small placard was nailed on the trunk of the tree identifying it: Fagus, Sylvatica, Pendula, A Weeping Beech.
Ducharme walked around the tree and looked down, to see whom the tree wept over. The bronze plaque on the base of the obelisk told him he had reached his destination:
GEORGE A. CUSTER
LT. COL 7th CAVALRY
BVT. MAJ GENL., U.S. ARMY
BORN
DECEMBER 15th 1839 HARRISON CO. OHIO
KILLED
WITH HIS ENTIRE COMMAND
IN THE
BATTLE
OF
LITTLE BIG HORN
JUNE 25TH 1873
Chapter Fourteen
“The man himself,” Kincannon said.
“It’s not true.” Ducharme was walking around the obelisk.
“What isn’t?” Kincannon asked.
“His entire command wasn’t wiped out. Just the part that rode with him. Troops C—commanded by Custer’s brother Tom, L—commanded by his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Calhoun and E, F, I. The rest of the 7th Cavalry survived.”
His therapist would be proud that he could recall all that. He could remember distant facts, but anything that was close, that had emotion attached, was another matter. His mind skipped a track and he remembered Evie talking about Jefferson’s Head-Heart letter. He was beginning to understand there was a strong line connecting the two. Unfortunately for him, the line was twisted in a Gordian knot he couldn’t comprehend and was afraid to cut through.
“Right,” Evie said, looking around, distracted.
“It was important to those who lived,” Kincannon noted sagely.
“Robert Anderson.” Evie was a few markers down with Jiggs.
“Yeah.” Ducharme searched for any sign that the area had been recently disturbed. “Commander of Fort Sumter when his former student, General Beauregard, fired on him from the Battery in Charleston.” He was feeling better about his brain that it could bring up this old information so easily.
“This is like a who’s who of history,” Evie said, beginning to drift further away, looking at other markers.
Ducharme rubbed the back of his head, another thought trying to bubble up. He looked over at Kincannon. “Some say Custer isn’t actually buried here. It wasn’t like they recovered the bodies right away after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The relief column buried the dead where they lay, a tad worried that the force that wiped out Custer was still in the area. And I’m sure they didn’t bury them deep as they were kind of in a hurry. More like throwing some bushes and a handful of dirt over the maimed bodies. No one was exhumed until the following summer, when they think they recovered Custer’s body and brought it back east. Could have been damn near anyone’s corpse after a year in a shallow grave in the Black Hills.”
“Poe wasn’t in his grave,” Kincannon said. “But there aint no other monument to Custer around here like there was for Poe in Baltimore.”
Ducharme’s eyes narrowed as he noticed that the earth seemed to have been disturbed at the rear of the marker next to Custer’s:
ELIZABETH BACON
WIFE OF GEORGE A. CUSTER, MAJOR GENERAL U.S.A
APRIL 8, 1842: APRIL 4, 1933
Ducharme knelt and began to dig in the almost frozen ground with his knife.
************
Back at the parking lot, an unmarked CID—Criminal Investigation Division—car rolled up next to the Blazer. The junior man in the car pulled out his satphone and made a call. He reported the Blazer, then listened for a moment. He received his instructions, a look of displeasure on his face.
He switched the phone off and looked at his partner. “The FBI wants us to hold here and await reinforcements.”
“Bull,” his partner said. “This is our turf.”
“Orders.”
“It’s our turf,” his partner said once more. “Fucking FBI. This is military jurisdiction. We protect our own.”
The younger man frowned in thought, then nodded. “You’re right. Let’s take these terrorists down.”
***********
The Bell Jet Ranger landed on the East 34th Street heliport and Lily exited, carrying a large plastic case in one hand and her carry-all in her left. A black government Suburban was waiting for her, keys in the ignition. She got in and started it. She accessed the GPS unit and typed in the address for Trinity Church cemetery: 74 Trinity Place. She saw it was located where Wall Street and Broadway came together in the southern tip of Manhattan.
Anticipation filled her. She reached down and loosened the wakizashi in its scabbard, breaking the bond her class-mate’s dried blood had made between metal and leather.
***********
Ducharme kept digging with his knife. He pushed deeper, cleared more dirt away, and was rewarded as the tips of his fingers numbly registered something plastic. He dug further and pulled out a shoebox-sized container, wrapped inside black plastic.
“Inbound,” Kincannon warned a second before Ducharme heard the sound of helicopter blades.
Could be just a normal flight. Ducharme quickly dismissed the hopeful imagining. “Your friend?”
Kincannon cocked his head, listening. “Nope. Apache and Blackhawk from the sound.”
“What the hell is she flying?” Ducharme muttered. “A duck?”
“Huey,” Kincannon said.
“Close enough.” Ducharme stuck the package in the butt pack on the back of the vest and looked for Evie. She was about fifty meters away, near the stone wall, looking at another grave.
“Ground company,” Kincannon said, drawing his MK-23.
Ducharme looked back the way they had come. Two men in civilian clothes, pistols drawn were coming through the cemetery. They were close together and the way they held the guns told Ducharme they weren’t well trained. Run of the mill Military Police.
“Easy Jeremiah,” he muttered. “Let’s take them out as peaceful as we can.”
“’Peaceful’,” Kincannon said. “Right. Peace is my middle name.” He slid the MK-23 back into its holster.
Ducharme drew out his identification card. “Colonel Ducharme,” he yelled as he headed toward the two men, holding the card up. Kincannon was at his side.
The two men had their pistols half at the ready, unsure. Ducharme walked toward them, not breaking stride. His confidence fed into their uncertainty. They lowered their weapons just as Ducharme and Kincannon arrived. Without breaking stride, Ducharme slammed the one closest to him in the solar plexus with a cat’s paw strike, knocking the wind out of him. Kincannon was more direct and violent, drawing his pistol and rapping the man in front of him on the side of the head. He dropped like a stone.
Ducharme knelt next to the gasping man, going through his pockets. He looked up at Kincannon: “CID.” He looked down at the man. “What were you told?”
The man tried to speak, gasped, then managed to get out: “Terror suspects. FBI alert. They’re on their way.”
Ducharme hit him with a sharp blow on the temple and it was lights out. “Let’s go,” he ordered.
They ran for the Blazer, then halted as a flight of helicopters roared overhead, two Blackhawks and an Apache. Bring
ing out the big guns, Ducharme thought. One of the Blackhawks came to a hover right in the PX parking lot, the side doors sliding open.
Two thick ropes tumbled out.
“Back to the cemetery,” he ordered and they reversed course.
Looking over his shoulder he could see a line of men fast-roping down to the ground, dressed in black and with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. Not good odds, he thought as they sprinted past grave markers toward the stone wall at the rear of the cemetery.
“Over?” Kincannon yelled.
“Yes,” Ducharme replied. “Target Hill Field. Tell your friend.”
Kincannon vaulted the wall, then turned to help Evie but she hurdled it easily, MP-5 in one hand, briefcase in the other. Ducharme looked over his shoulder—ten men spread out in tactical formation coming toward them at a dead run. Then he was over the wall and scrambling downhill. Despite the steep incline, Kincannon was on his satphone. They tumbled downslope, narrowly avoiding impacting on trees.
They reached flat ground and the edge of the trees. A large soccer field was in front of them. Beyond it a road, and then the Hudson River. To the right, the sewage treatment plant. And the wind was blowing the wrong way, which was the least of their problems. He could hear the FBI personnel making their way down the slope behind them.
“Kincannon?” he yelled as they sprinted across the frozen soccer field.
“She’s inbound,” the Sergeant Major yelled back. “Two minutes.”
“I don’t think we’ve got two minutes.” Ducharme drew the MP-5 out from underneath the coat as he ran and glanced over his shoulder. No one yet.
They reached the fence next to the road where Ducharme used to be tested as a cadet on his two-mile run and max out his score. He was breathing hard. It’d been many a year and many a war since he’d been in that kind of shape.
“Not much cover,” Kincannon noted as they went through a gap in the fence and stood on the road facing back the way they’d come. Dead end to the right, sewage plant to the left, Hudson River behind them. Bad guys coming from the front.
“No shit.” Ducharme pulled out the telescoping stock of the MP-5 and tucked it into his shoulder, looking toward the tree line at the base of the cemetery hill. “No killing,” he reminded Kincannon and Evie, who had the MP-5 to her shoulder.
“Right,” Kincannon said. “Almost forgot. What do we do when they try to kill us?”
Ducharme fired a controlled three-round burst at the first dark clad figure that came out of the tree line. He hit center of mass in the body armor and the merk was punched back into the trees by the impacts.
Ducharme could hear blades now, a different pitch than that of the Apache or the Blackhawk. He glanced to the right and saw an aging Huey helicopter coming in low over the Hudson River, under the thick clouds.
“One minute,” Kincannon said.
Three black clad forms broke from the tree line. Ducharme, Kincannon and Evie fired in concert, efficiently, accurately, and all three went down with shots to their body armor.
“I think they’re a gonna get pissed soon enough and shoot back for real,” Kincannon said in a level voice, as if he was commenting on the weather.
“Likely,” Ducharme agreed.
A voice yelled out of the woods. “You’ve got no way out. Lay down your weapons or we will use deadly force.”
“We’re going STABO,” Kincannon said to Ducharme and Evie, ignoring the voice.
Ducharme reached over and grabbed her, no time for niceties. He ripped her coat off, turned her around, and peeled back the Velcro enclosure on the rear of her combat vest. A nylon strap with a snap hook on the end of it was exposed. “You’re first. Kincannon second. I’ll be last.”
“What about this?” she asked, holding up the briefcase. Ducharme hooked the two handles through the snap link.
Kincannon had thrown his coat to the ground and retrieved his rig. He hooked it into a loop on the bottom front of Evie’s vest. Ducharme hooked his strap into the loop on the front of Kincannon’s vest.
“We’re only gonna get one pass,” Kincannon said, eyeing the chopper which was banking hard toward them. A rope dangled below it, barely above the frigid waters of the Hudson.
Ducharme was totally focused on the rope as it came racing toward him. There was a loop on the end and the wind and downdraft from the blades and the forward momentum of the aircraft had it flying all over the place.
The pilot was good. The Huey flared as it came over land toward them, slowing down abruptly. Ducharme ran forward ten feet and slammed down the snap link on the rope, getting a solid connection. He gave a thumbs up even though he knew the pilot couldn’t see him, and the chopper was moving again. With or without them, the pilot was getting the hell out of here as a half dozen streams of tracers arced out of the woods toward it.
Evie yelled something as she was lifted off the ground. Then she gasped as Kincannon was lifted off below her, jerking her vest taut around her. Ducharme fired blindly and high toward the woods, trying to give some semblance of covering fire.
He was lifted off his feet.
Like vertical dominos, the three of them dangled below the Huey as it banked around and then started gaining altitude. Ducharme saw a string of red tracers go by, less than five feet away, hearing the crack of the bullets.
The pilot was heading toward Storm King Mountain. The turbine engine whined, straining for power as the blades clawed for altitude. The chopper banked once more, averting the direct route to Storm King and staying below the clouds. Ducharme’s sigh of relief was brief as he saw something moving behind them. An Apache helicopter was lifting above the tree line at the PX, a Blackhawk beside it.
************
“They’ve got friends,” Burns noted. The three people dangling below the helicopter were like little beads on a string.
“Friends aren’t going to help them,” Turnbull said.
“They’re doing pretty good so far.”
“So far is over.”
***********
They passed over Washington Gate and Route 293 was below as the Huey descended. The pavement was coming up and Ducharme bent his knees as his boots hit and he stumbled, his knees scraping on the road, then he was on his feet. Kincannon hit the ground running, unhooking himself, then grabbed Evie, unhooking her and the briefcase. The Huey settled down in the middle of the road, blades racing.
“On the chopper!” Ducharme yelled.
They ran to the chopper and piled on board. As soon as they were in, the Huey was airborne again.
***********
“There it is,” Turnbull said.
The Huey had disappeared below the trees for a few seconds, but now it was ahead of them, about a mile away.
“They’re on board,” Burns calmly noted. “Why are we chasing them? They’re not suspects in the murders.”
“You’re not that stupid, are you?” Turnbull asked.
Burns pulled an apple out of a pocket and flicked open his switchblade, meeting Turnbull’s eyes. “Nope. I’m not.”
Turnbull nodded. “Good.”
*************
The chopper shuddered hard, banking at the limits of its design structure. There was one pilot; all Ducharme could see was her helmet and strands of red hair poking out from underneath the back of it in haphazard directions. She looked over her shoulder, face hidden by a dark visor.
“We got company,” she yelled. “You have a plan?”
Ducharme looked out of the cargo bay. The Apache and Blackhawk were closing fast. Evie was against the rear bulkhead, clutching the briefcase, which held the disks they’d found so far, the library book and McBride’s computer. Ducharme connected his strap to a bolt in the ceiling, while Kincannon hooked in to one on the floor of the chopper. Ducharme slipped on a headset.
“Paul Ducharme,” he said as he went to the left edge of the cargo bay and cinched the strap so that it was at the limit of its play as he leaned outward. Then he tucked t
he stock of the MP-5 into his shoulder.
“Jesse Pollack. You are not going to take on an Apache with a submachinegun.” A short pause. “Are you?”
“You got something better to get them off our tail?” Ducharme made a quick estimate. “Cause they’re going to be on top of us in 30 seconds.”
“Hang on,” Pollack said.
Ducharme saw Long Pond flash by on the left and knew they were getting close to Camp Buckner where he had spent his ‘yearling’ summer at the Academy. His stomach did a lurch as the Huey abruptly dropped altitude, now skimming just above Route 293. The chopper flared, then turned hard right into Camp Buckner, below treetop level, right above a road.
The Apache and Blackhawk screamed by, missing the turn. The Apache looped, doing a roll, coming after them. The Blackhawk was forced to do a more conventional turn.
They’d gained probably ten seconds with the maneuver. Lake Popolopen appeared ahead and Pollack skimmed it. A gash in the ridgeline ahead beckoned where a creek ran into the lake and Pollack flew into it, trees at eye level on either side, dangerously close. Ducharme glanced at Evie. She was staring back at him.
“Having fun?” Ducharme yelled back at her.
“No.”
So much for small talk, Ducharme thought. The Apache was in the gash about a quarter mile behind them. The large snout of the 30mm chain gun poked out below the cockpit. It moved ever so slightly, ‘slaved’ to the gunner’s helmet. Hellfire missiles dangling on the stubby wings on either side. If the pilots wanted, they could have splashed the Huey a long time ago with either weapon. Which meant they wanted to force them down.
The radio crackled. “Huey helicopter, this is Agent Turnbull of the FBI. You are ordered to set down or you will be fired upon. Over.”
They cleared the top of the ridge and Pollack pushed them down. “You gonna reply?” She asked on the intercom.