The Company of the Dead (56 page)

“I’m okay.”

Kennedy worked his way up to the truck’s cab. There was a tremor as the vehicle resumed its stuttering pace. A moment later he clambered back towards them. “A long-range confed patrol came through the checkpoint before us. Jap patrols have been sighted in the area.”

“This far east?” Morgan exclaimed.

Kennedy shrugged. “The main Confederate defences are being set up along the Grand Canyon. This region’s up for grabs.”

He spoke about the Confederacy in an abstract fashion, as if it was something he could be no part of. Wherever his allegiances lay struck Malcolm as a cold and distant place.

“What about the Rock?” Morgan asked.

“Clear,” Kennedy replied, guardedly. “We just have to take it slow. We may run into some hot spots.” He searched Lightholler’s and Morgan’s faces. They both appeared to take his news with worn resignation. “I’m setting up a corridor between here and the Rock. We’ll be okay.”

Lightholler grunted a response.

She found herself giving Joseph a supportive look and wondered what the hell was wrong with her.

Despite her boots, she had sand between her toes and her feet ached. She had sand on her face, in her hair, and grit lined the corners of her eyes. The air in the truck’s hold was stale and dry and hot, yet she saw with some disbelief that Lightholler and Morgan were nodding off. She spied the pistol on Lightholler’s belt, just out of reach. His eyelids fluttered. He caught the quick movement of her eyes, and the look he gave her was one of almost disdainful challenge.
Go on,
it seemed to say,
let’s make this trip a little more interesting.

Really
, she thought,
I just want to go home.

It was hard to imagine she had ever had one; harder yet to imagine ever finding her way back.

They’d been travelling for almost two hours before they heard the first bursts of artillery; soft crumps that scarcely made themselves heard over the truck’s incessant rattle. No one commented at first, as if such an observation might be impolite. She flinched with each muffled blast.

Joseph was unmoved. “Mortar fire,” he finally growled. “Eighty-one millimetre.”

“Yep, heavy weapons,” Lightholler murmured. “They’re outgoing.”

There was the deep whistling decrescendo of more shells.

“Incoming,” Morgan corrected. He looked over at Kennedy.

Kennedy scurried up to the cab. Scurried back. “They’re incoming.”

“What did I just say?” Morgan scowled.

The truck heaved sideways and rolled onto rougher terrain. Kennedy, braced against a chair, reached an arm out to Malcolm before she could be thrown from her seat. The truck groaned to a halt in a thick swirl of sand.

“Everybody out,” he commanded.

They poured out onto a shallow sand-drift thrown up by the truck’s passage. His men had already formed a semicircle around the vehicles, crouched low. They unrolled three sheets of dirt-brown canvas and threw them over the trucks, securing the edges with a piton here, a pile of rocks there. They gathered her together with Lightholler and Morgan and motioned them towards a furrow between the trucks that lay under camouflage.

They dispersed, moving fast and low out over the sand, establishing a perimeter. At a hand signal one of them went to check on the other prisoners. He appeared at the back of the truck with a thumbs up gesture before dropping to the ground close by. The men were disciplined, they kept close order. They operated with a cohesion she hadn’t expected.

These aren’t terror troops
, she told herself.
They’re veterans.
Veterans of the 4th Mechanized Cavalry. They might have been without their tanks and banners but they were the men who’d marched into Mazatlan.

Tecumseh scrambled towards them and offered Kennedy his field glasses. Malcolm saw him peer in the direction of a coil of black smoke under the lowering sun. After a few moments scanning the horizon he said, “Can’t see shit for sand.”

“I’ll have an update any time now,” Tecumseh said.

Joseph nodded and Tecumseh disappeared. He was back in a few moments.

“We’re picking up a lot of local radio chatter, jap and confed. Looks like a couple of recon patrols bumped noses up ahead.”

The artillery fire grew more sporadic. Some of the men had reappeared and one was talking to Joseph. He came into the trench and emptied the contents of his backpack onto the ground. Military rations. She gave Morgan a confused look.

“Sleep when you can, miss,” Morgan said. He wiped his hand against his shirt, broke open a ration and tore off a strip of dried beef. He handed it to her with a surprising amount of grace.

“Eat when you can,” Lightholler concluded.

The beef tasted like sand. She tried to look grateful.

The barrage lasted forty-five minutes.

And still the men were singing. It was a dark melody they took up in turn, their throaty voices wringing subtle tones from the prayer. Occasional snatches were reprised.
Wicahcala kin heya pe lo maka kin...

They had skirted Las Vegas and found the I-15 intact further west where the panzers must have gone cross-country. Earlier, the truck had pulled over onto the side of the interstate and one of the agents had emerged with his gun and instructed them to stop singing. The tune was maintained, a low whispered harmony, and one of the indians had asked, “Will you shoot us if we continue?”

The agent had looked at their faces and looked at his feet and then stared out at the mountain range that never seemed to move and said, “No, but keep it down,” and the men had resumed their expectant hymn.

The song was transforming. Shine might be the prisoner of white men, but somehow the melody dispelled the taint of slavery and replaced it with a spark of hope.

The turn-off to Alpha, once little more than a faint flattening of the desert floor, was now well advertised with an assortment of tyre markings that indicated the passage of cycles, trucks and armour. They followed it into the afternoon sun.

Alpha had the air of abandonment. The motor pool bristled with an array of tracked vehicles and the guard towers were manned, but there was a new desolation about the place. The truck was waved through the gates and motored on past the training grounds and field hospital to the barracks. They were intercepted by a squad of tactical agents and directed to Block C.

His father told him that half the barracks had been converted into a temporary prison; the rest were being used by the agents and rotating long-range recon patrols. He said that there were approximately forty agents, three platoons of recon and a detachment of Texan armour watching thirteen-hundred corralled men. The rest of the crew were still out in the desert but had been giving themselves up or taking up new positions.

When Shine asked him how he could know all this, his father leaned in close and replied, “We know about the
other place
. We know it’s close by.”

Shine didn’t let his face betray his knowledge.

“Some of us are in contact with Tecumseh. He told us the major is coming and bringing the end of days.” He sounded like one of the ghost dancers. That was their creed: that the major would bring about some great and cataclysmic change.

Shine made to speak but his father hushed him with a gesture.

“I don’t need to know no more than that, and I know it ain’t that simple, but Tecumseh says the japs are closing in. He says we may need to buy them some time. This is the best way we know how.”

Shine’s glance took in the rest of the prisoners. “How many of them are ghost dancers?”

A negro, tall and rangy, who’d squatted alongside Shine earlier, spoke while picking at his teeth. “Enough, my brother. Won’t be too long now.”

“They got to know they fucked up,” one of the indians said. “Can see it in their eyes.”

“Big time,” another added, and there was a chorus of low chuckles.

“They wanted to send us south to fight the Mexicans. They talk about sending us out west now to fight the japs, but they just talking. Fact is, they too scared to give us back our guns.” His father laughed until it became a hacking cough.

The tall negro sucked at his teeth dismissively. “Got the japs on their doorstep and they shitting their pants.”

His father spoke again, softer now. “They don’t know we don’t need guns.”

An agent came round and told them to shut up. He unlocked the cage and the men were marshalled into a cordoned area in front of the blockhouse.

“You going to process them now?” the agent asked one of the guards stationed there.

The guard sniffed the air. “I ain’t doing jack till these redskins been scrubbed down.”

“Not my problem,” the agent said and walked off with a leer. “Get it done, bud.”

The guard ran his eyes over the prisoners, making a show of his displeasure. He counted them off, “Redskin, coon, coon, redskin, redskin,” marking a list he carried with him. He rapped against the blockhouse door and two more men came out of the building.

“Redskins to the showers, coons to processing.” His eyes sought Shine among the knot of men and he added, “Watch that one, he’s a killer.”

The two men shared cold laughter and began dividing up the prisoners.

Twenty miles out of Red Rock

It had been thirty minutes since the last round had detonated. They were perched in a narrow gorge just beyond the encampment. Lightholler had watched as Kennedy tracked the spurt of sand with his field glasses.

Kennedy’d said, “Stray shell,” and kept his eyes on the distant ridge.

Tecumseh worked his way back to their position with a radio operator in tow. Lightholler shifted to give them some room. The operator squatted down and passed his headset to Kennedy. “What do you make of it, sir?”

Kennedy listened intently, fussed with the frequency and listened again. “I make at least two platoons of jap recon.”

The operator nodded.

“They’ve taken heavy losses. They’re pulling out,” Kennedy said. “The confeds sound like Rangers but there’s a lot of chatter.”

“Rookies?” Lightholler ventured.

“Green enough,” Kennedy replied. “But they dislodged those japs.” He paused for a moment, as if weighing his options, then said, “Let’s move out.”

The men broke camp swiftly. One moment Kennedy was giving the order and the next the crew were rolling down the camo and loading up the vehicles. Everything was taped down or tied with thick rope to diminish movement.

Lightholler watched as one of the crew affixed a rake to the back of the prisoners’ truck. It was a wide, low structure. Anyone following would have difficulty determining their number. Another crewman was working his way around their trench, gathering the remains of their rations.

Kennedy inspected the rake and then climbed into the back of the prisoners’ truck. He spent a few minutes inside and returned in deep conversation with one of his crew.

He drew Lightholler aside and said, “I’m thinking if we’re in a pinch we arm the prisoners.”

“Needs to be a tight fucking pinch.”

“I know it, but we have no real idea what’s up ahead, and this is the only way through to the Rock.”

“What if we’re facing Confederate forces?”

Kennedy cast an eye over his men. Tecumseh’s truck was grinding its way back onto the trail.

“Would you fire on them, Joseph?” Lightholler pressed.

“We’re twenty miles out of Red Rock.” Kennedy clapped Lightholler on the back. “
Twenty
. Hell, John, this close, I reckon I’d fire on
you
.”

Lightholler nodded, slowly. “I do believe you would.” He followed Kennedy back to their truck.

Morgan and Malcolm were already seated and secured. There were four of Kennedy’s men with them, carrying assault rifles; scuffed and non-reflective. Decked out with magazine cartridges and two grenades apiece. They had their goggles slung around their necks and wore combat fatigues so that their cobalt blue shirts were only a glimpse at the lapels. Each carried a tomahawk secured to his belt. Their face camouflage was composed of thin black streaks and their dark features looked as though they’d been raked by shadows.

Kennedy made a rapid gesture with his hand and they rose as one and approached the tailgate. Two took positions at the back of the truck, and Lightholler could hear the scrabble of boots on metal as the others clambered up the ribbing into position on top. Kennedy took a seat next to Malcolm. Rather than her customary recoil she seemed almost relieved to see him.

The truck’s engine shuddered to life. They would be tracing a wilder tract of desert floor now, skirting the gulch beyond the faint path they’d been following.

Kennedy began to speak in measured tones. He explained that they had to move slower now; that the afternoon sun threw long shadows but nightfall would leave them just as exposed. He told them they would all have to suit up: fatigues, camo, the works. They were about to pass through a battlefield. He unlocked a canister battened to the truck’s platform and removed two rifles.

“You have to be out of your fucking mind, Joseph,” Malcolm said.

He told them that while he was sure it wouldn’t come to that, he wasn’t taking any chances.

He made no mention of the fact that the soldiers they might encounter had a reasonable chance of being Confederate.

He opened the breech, revealing the swollen maggot of a five-fifty-six round, and showed them how to change the magazine for reloading; explained the importance of squeezing the trigger rather than pulling it. He replaced the guns in the canister and left it unlocked.

“What about a pistol?” Morgan asked, eyeing the rifles with distaste.

“If you’re close enough to use a pistol, you’re too damn close. Without the right training, you’re less than useless and more of a liability.”

“He can handle a pistol well enough,” Malcolm added icily.

“How are you with desert camo?” Kennedy asked Lightholler.

“I’ll manage.”

“You do Darren. I’ll take care of Patricia.”