Remember The Alamo by William W. Johnstone;J.A. Johnstone

gravesite. Be strong, Dieter told himself. Be strong
for your little girl. She needs you.
    But it was difficult when he had just gotten out of the hospital the day before. The bullet that had lanced through his side
had not damaged any major organs, but the wound had caused
Dieter to lose a lot of blood. The doctors told him later that he
would have died if Mike Belkowicz had not gotten to him,
wadded up his VFW vest, and crammed it into the wound to
slow down the bleeding.
    Belko had saved his life.
    There were times when Dieter wished that he hadn't bothered-because Dieter really didn't want to spend the rest of
his days on earth without Beth.
    The coffin, piled high with flowers and resting on the apparatus that would lower it into the grave, was closed because the
bullet that had struck Beth had ripped away most of her face
as it killed her. There had been no way to make her look like
herself, and Dieter didn't want Amber to remember her mother
the way she was now. Dieter didn't want to remember her that way. Better to think of her as beautiful and smiling and happy,
as she had been most of the time.

    As she had been the day of the picnic, before the Reconquistadores came.
    Amber squeezed Dieter's hand as the minister's longwinded prayer continued. He glanced down at his daughter,
whose head was bowed. Her long, dark hair shone. He felt
ashamed of himself for wishing that the monsters had killed
him, too. Amber needed him. Bad enough that she had lost
one parent.
    The prayer was finally over, and the service was concluded.
Dieter's father put a hand on his shoulder and patted it. There
had always been a certain awkwardness and restraint between
father and son, and after all these years, not even tragedy could
bridge it. But Gerald Schmidt was there, and that was what
mattered.
    Dieter's mother was there, too, of course. Margaret swooped
in and picked up her granddaughter, holding Amber against
her as the mourners began to come by and exchange solemn
handshakes with Dieter. He forced himself to say hello and
thank them for coming, and he managed a sad smile as he
nodded in response to their low-voiced condolences, but in
truth he barely heard what anybody was saying to him. He was
still too numb for that.
    He heard a full-throated roar of engines, though, and turned
his head to see several motorcycles passing by on the blacktop road that led through the vast, sprawling cemetery. Beth's
service wasn't the only one going on today. Two more victims of the atrocity had been buried earlier in the afternoon, in
nearby graves. The men on the big choppers wore military uniforms, and Dieter realized they were members of the group
that provided escorts and protection for veterans' funerals, to
keep them from being disrupted by protesters.
    One of the bikers swung his Harley to the side of the path and brought it to a stop. He got off the motorcycle and walked
over to shake hands with several of the men who had attended
Beth's service. The way he shook hands with Mike Belkowicz, gripping Belko's forearm with his left hand while using
his right to shake Belko's hand, told Dieter that the man was
already acquainted with the Vietnam vet.

    Belko brought the stranger over and introduced him to
Dieter. "Dave Rodriguez," Belko said. "He was in Desert
Storm"
    "Yeah?" Dieter said as he shook hands with Rodriguez. "I
was over there just a few years ago"
    Rodriguez nodded. "You guys had it rougher than we did.
Our part was over quick enough, we got home before the civilians could turn on us"
    "Yeah," Belko said. "Some people never get tired of saying
they support the troops while doing everything they can to
make it harder for the guys with their boots on the ground."
    "Anyway," Rodriguez went on, "I didn't mean to drag politics into this. But I heard about your wife, Mr. Schmidt, and
I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about what happened"
    Dieter said, "Sometimes it's still like ... a dream. A