The Jefferson Allegiance (26 page)

Evie was staring at him.

“What?

“We had a moment there with the coin,” she said. “But—“ she shook her head, and took the gun. She slid it into a pocket on her long coat. “Let’s go visit some graves.”

“Wait one.” Ducharme grabbed some more ordnance, stuffing the pockets on his vest. Kincannon did the same.

“All right,” Ducharme said. They walked past some trees into the cemetery.

A concrete pyramid about 20 feet high was directly in front of them. Walking toward it, Ducharme noted a fresh grave. The marker indicated it was for a member of the class of 2010, killed in Chile. The Long Gray Line was giving more bodies to the country.

The pyramid was a mausoleum. Beyond it was an elaborate marker consisting of several clusters of columns holding up an intricately carved, arched roof, upon which was perched a stone eagle.

“Somebody liked themselves,” Evie muttered, diverting to take a closer look.

Ducharme and Kincannon followed. The marker indicated it was the burial place of Major General Daniel Butterfield. The name triggered something in Ducharme’s mind, reminding him of Arlington for some reason. He struggled to connect the dots, and then it came to him in the form of a remembered sound. “Did you know,” he began, earning a roll of the eyes from Kincannon, “that General Butterfield wrote Taps? And that he was awarded the Medal of Honor.”

“Exciting,” Evie said. “Did he get the Medal for writing the bugle call?”

“No,” Ducharme said with exaggerated patience. “For grabbing the regimental colors and rallying his troops during a battle in the Civil War.”

Evie turned to him with challenge in her eyes. “Did you know, if he’s the Butterfield I think he is, that his father started American Express?”

“A point each,” Kincannon said.

Evie wasn’t finished. “And that Butterfield himself was heavily involved in Black Friday in eighteen sixty-nine 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 who or what 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 7
^th
CAVALRY

BVT. MAJ GENL., U.S. ARMY

BORN

DECEMBER 15
^th
1839 HARRISON CO. OHIO

KILLED

WITH HIS ENTIRE COMMAND

IN THE

BATTLE

OF

LITTLE BIG HORN

JUNE 25
^TH
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 Seventh 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 to it, 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.

“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 ain’t 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, and listened for a moment. He received his instructions, a look of displeasure on his face.

He switched off the phone 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, and then nodded. “You’re right. Let’s take these terrorists down.”

***********

The Bell Jet Ranger landed on the East 34
^th
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 classmate’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, but halted as a flight of helicopters roared overhead, two Blackhawks and an Apache.
Bringing 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.