EVENT GROUP COMPLEX NELLIS AFB, NEVADA FOUR HOURS LATER

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.

“According to eyewitnesses, mainly a few Northern Cheyenne and Sioux, Keogh and his men fought bravely, with the captain standing firmly in the center of his dismounted troopers. Some say the image of him like that was the mistaken reason why Custer has always been depicted that way, but the Native Americans swear it was Keogh and not Yellow Hair that was directing the hardest fight.”

“Professor, please, we can go over the Seventh’s exploits at a more convenient time,” Niles said impatiently.

“Yes, of course, I was just trying to set the stage somewhat for you.” Now the photos of the total recovered artifacts replaced the map of the battlefield. “These items were recovered inside the areas defended by Keogh’s three companies.” As he said this, the computer images began to drop away, until only thirty-seven artifacts remained. “We have several items here that could have possibly contained the map: two army-issue saddlebags, ten leather pouches, most for tobacco storage, and three bottles. We do have several Christian crosses, but the most interesting item is this box here.”

A yellow circle centered itself on a metal box that appeared rusted shut and heavily dented. As they watched, the item rotated 160 degrees to show the back, below the old hinges. In the center they could barely make out three letters. The first letter was totally wiped out due to rust, so all they could clearly see was “W.K.”

Nathan continued. “So the initials were a blank, then W and K. Do you see what I mean? This may be the best lead we have, as it just might have belonged to either Myles Walter Keogh or a sergeant by the name of John William Killkernan, a sergeant attached to L Company. The odds are fifty-fifty.”

“Have you contacted the Parks Service and asked if the metal box contains anything?” Niles asked, trying to hold down his excitement.

“That’s the bad news, I’m afraid. They say they haven’t examined the items as of yet, beyond the initial cleaning and photo stage. They are currently displayed at the battlefield as is, before any forensic work is performed. We requested access but it was denied by the University of Montana, as it was their dig, and the Parks Service gave us lip service about shared responsibility.”

“Thank you, Professor Nathan. Pass along to your people that you may have saved our butts on this one, and continue your research. I’ll get someone out there. Can you spare someone to accompany?” Niles asked.

There was silence at the other end of the speaker. Then Nathan came back on. “Yes, I can spare me. My team has their chores to do and I’m only in the way.”

“Good, I’ll set you up with security and another volunteer that knows something about the Little Bighorn. Again, thanks, Professor. Be ready to leave within the hour.”

Niles walked a little more briskly back to his chair than when he had left it. He took a deep breath and looked at Jack.

“Major, I think it’s time you get to Montana.”

“I’ll take Mendenhall and Jason Ryan along so I don’t have to talk too much to Professor Nathan.”

“Take Mendenhall, but I would appreciate it if you leave Mr. Ryan here. I need him to do something and I need you to plan it before you leave here.”

“Okay. Alice, you said you had a candidate that knows something of the Little Big Horn?”

“Yes, Director, a certain Second Lieutenant McIntire,” Alice said, looking at Jack.

“Good, gather your things and alert Mendenhall and the lieutenant. You’ll have transport in thirty minutes at the base. And take care of Nathan, will you, because he’s not really a field man.”

Jack nodded and started for the door.

“Jack?” Niles said as he hesitated with the phone halfway to his ear.

“Yes?”

“You and Ryan come right back after you’ve alerted McIntire and Mendenhall as to your travel plans. Mr. Ryan will also be traveling, but a little farther south. And while you’re at the battlefield, be careful, we don’t know who else is after the map. If Farbeaux is in it, things could turn ugly real quick, and we don’t need to lose more soldiers at the Little Big Horn.”

“You have something for Ryan I need to know about?” Jack asked.

“I want him to liaise with a rescue element in Panama. I don’t know how yet, but we need something in place down there.”

“Good idea. We have to come up with a way to feed them real-time intel on what’s happening, if we can get down there.”

“Jack?” Carl had said nothing until this very moment, on speakerphone from New Orleans.

“Yeah?”

“Watch your ass, buddy. There are bad guys out there looking to stop you hard. The way they went after Niles and Ryan says they mean business.”

“I’ll do just that, and you and Ms. Serrate stay put and watch yourselves; they may be onto you, as well. Did you start getting the equipment we’ve started sending out from our stores?”

“Yes, sir, the master chief is like a hog in mud; he’s working now with our techs, getting the first of our gifts installed.”

“Very good, Commander Everett, see you as soon as we get back from Montana.”

Jack winked at Alice and left the conference room, feeling pretty sure that the Little Bighorn could not claim any more U.S. soldiers.

Ten minutes later, Niles had fully explained to Jack his and the president’s plan for Jason Ryan. Jack had concurred and he left quickly, going into Signals to request the equipment needed for Niles’s South American safety valve, leaving Ryan standing in front of the director’s desk. The plan was contingent upon Ryan and his team’s meeting up with an experimental platform that might or might not be used. It was all they had, and using it would be a long shot, but Niles still wanted something, anything, set up in case Jack and his team ran into trouble down there.

“I have a job for you, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve seen your training record. Jack’s been running you ragged, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir, he’s a real hard—”

“I see you’re up-to-date on your jump training, is that accurate?”

Ryan looked at Niles and became a tad off balance. He had indeed finished his jump training, but had quickly found out, after his ejection over the Pacific last year in a naval mishap, that he hadn’t taken to parachutes all that much.

“Accurate …I…uh, yes sir, the record is accurate.”

“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.