The Company of the Dead (57 page)

Kennedy removed a stack of combat fatigues from an adjacent cache. He sorted through the pile and selected a set for himself and passed a uniform to each of them. Malcolm gave him an empty look and began to unbutton her shirt. Morgan and Lightholler grabbed their equipment and hurriedly shifted away from her towards the rear of the truck. The two crewmen fixed their eyes on the desert.

Lightholler stole a glance. She had replaced her blouse with the uniform shirt and was leaning forwards. Her legs were outstretched, her trousers at her ankles, and she was inspecting the mottled edge of a bruise on her thigh. She ran her palms along her thighs, brushing away the grains of ubiquitous sand. He turned back to find Kennedy’s eyes on him.

“You and her, huh?” he mumbled softly.

Kennedy ignored him.

Malcolm was trying to tuck in the folds of her shirt. The uniform was at least two sizes too large for her.

“Sorry about the fit.”

She shrugged.

When they were done, Kennedy checked their bandoliers and adjusted the straps on Morgan’s emergency belt. The belt’s pouches, empty for the moment, would accommodate anything from a knife to an anti-personnel mine.

Kennedy knelt down before Malcolm and bade Morgan and Lightholler take a seat. He withdrew the camouflage kits from the cache and handed one to Lightholler. He opened his tin of cream and set it aside, inspecting Malcolm’s features. He reached out and brushed back her hair, looking for earrings, adjusting her collar to check for a necklace. Any bright or potentially reflective surface had to be removed, he explained.

He took her hands, making sure she wore no rings or watch. He stopped short of examining the pale band where an engagement ring might have once sat.

“What happened to your face?” she asked him.

“John hit me,” he replied.

She looked across at Lightholler, and he said, “He had it coming.”

She gave a short laugh and Kennedy told her to keep still but he barely contained a smile. He was smearing a two-shade combination of burnt cork over her cheekbones.

“We have to break up the strong structure lines,” he said, perhaps more for Morgan’s benefit, perhaps just for the sake of talking. “We need to break up the contours along the cheeks, the nose and chin.”

“Joseph.”

“Keep still.”

“This place you’re taking us to...” Her voice trailed off, and Kennedy put the cream aside. He’d been etching a pair of scratch-thin streaks along her neck. “Do you have atomics there?”

“No.”

“Hand on your heart?”

“Hand on my heart.” He reached up to continue applying the mask.

She brushed the hand aside, firmly. “If you have
anything
there— poison gas or biological weapons—anything that’s going to bring great harm to anyone, American or Japanese, just leave me here now.” Her voice was soft and strangely compelling. “Please.”

Lightholler wanted to say,
Tell her
. Suddenly embarrassed, he returned to working on Morgan’s camouflage.

“I swear, I have nothing like that at Red Rock.”

“If you’re lying, Joseph, I promise you, I’ll kill you myself.”

He leaned closer, placing the finishing touches on her cheeks, and said, “Then we have nothing to worry about.”

She looked across at Lightholler and Morgan. Lightholler found her face, broken up by the blotches and streaks of cream, savagely beautiful. His nod of approval was awkward.

After completing Morgan’s face he began to work on his own. The kit mirror was thankfully tarnished. It felt better not having a clear view of his own visage. It was somehow simpler, applying the camouflage to the indistinct reflection in the glass.

It took them twenty minutes to reach the fringe of the battlefield. Their procession ground to a halt following a signal from the first truck. They dropped the tailgate and Kennedy told Malcolm and Morgan to sit tight. Lightholler reached into the weapons canister and withdrew a holstered Mauser. Malcolm suggested, matter-of-factly, that he take another gun.

“There are more than enough spent Mauser casings lying around without you making any further contributions.”

He gave her an odd look and she added. “We’re in enough trouble as it is.”

She said “We”... How do you do that, Kennedy?

He replaced the Mauser and selected a Browning.

Kennedy nodded, saying, “We’re sticking to confed ordnance all the way from here. Shoddy, but serviceable.”

He ordered two of his men to stay with Malcolm and Morgan, and led Lightholler away from the vehicles.

There was the faint sound of a low breeze and the cooling creak of the trucks as they settled. Kennedy dropped down and fastened a paper-like covering over his boots. He indicated to Lightholler to lift his feet and slipped on similar covers.

They moved across the desert floor in silence. He followed Kennedy towards the sloping edge of a bluff that rose away from the trucks. Looking back, he saw that he’d left no clear prints in the sand. He could taste gunpowder on the air—and something else. A subtle, biting scent.

“Stay close by me,” Kennedy whispered. “I want to hear your assessment.”

Lightholler, slightly bewildered, closed the gap between them. He crested the bluff, stooping low by Kennedy’s side. The scent became a stench.

He could make out the rest of Kennedy’s crew, fanned out and working their way down to the smoking ruin below them. Kennedy had the binoculars out again. He passed them over.

Lightholler scanned the carnage. He made out the silhouettes of seven vehicles, charred and smoking, amid fresh shallow craters of blackened sand. One appeared to be a personnel carrier, the other six were jeeps. The burnt-out frame of a mortar weapon, poised amidst the vehicles, was surrounded by a pile of Japanese bodies.

There were more bodies spread out over the mesa, splayed in the graceless posture of violent death. Lightholler counted forty. Kennedy’s men moved among the dead. A dust devil swirled on the furthest ridge, a gloating dervish of sand and smoke. He handed the binoculars back.

Kennedy did a quick once-over before pouching the glasses. One of his crew waved them over, before crouching back down to examine something by the mortar.

Lightholler followed Kennedy’s steps down onto the plain. He tried to keep his eyes on the ground, while tracking the movement of Kennedy’s men. They scampered from body to body, inspecting uniforms and shoes, checking dog tags, ammunition and supply cases. They left little indication of where they had passed but he saw many boot prints: light where men had run; deeper where they had dragged heavy munitions. He saw cigarette butts and crushed ration containers.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a deck of Texas Teas. Made to light one when Kennedy extinguished the flame with a swift movement.

“Not till we reach the Rock.”

He stopped and stood there, his head tilted slightly back as he gave the horrifying tableau a slow three-sixty.

Tecumseh rose from the wreckage of a jeep and gave the all clear. Kennedy signed to one of his men. The crewman vanished back up the broad face of the bluff and returned shortly with Malcolm, Morgan and their escort in tow.

Without a word, Kennedy’s men positioned themselves in a loose circle around the gathering. They stood facing outwards, their rifles and submachine-guns at waist height, bringing to mind Lightholler’s encounter with the Brandenburgs in New York City all those days ago.

Malcolm stood by Kennedy’s side. She had a handkerchief over the lower part of her face and her eyes were wide, pale holes in her camo-darkened face. Morgan was looking at a corpse that lay crumpled a few yards away. He fingered his rifle nervously.

“What do you think, John?” Kennedy asked.

For a moment it felt as if he was back at Sandhurst.

“This was a heavy platoon.” Lightholler pointed at the mortar. “That’s what we heard coming in. Eighty-one mil.” He pointed to the personnel carrier. “That’s the command car, and that’s a medic’s jeep. They had a doctor here as well as the usual medics. Sharpshooters, snipers, radio gear. Judging by the set-up, I’d say they sighted the Rangers first but were overwhelmed by heavier firepower.” Lightholler pointed northwards. “Tyre tracks suggest they were retreating in that direction.”

“Not bad,” Kennedy said. “Not bad at all.”

Tecumseh smiled through pressed lips.

“It was a heavy platoon, alright,” Kennedy continued. “One of three that was bringing up the rear. That puts us right between the other two, so I’ll make this brief. This is reconnaissance in force. They set up first but they were surprised here. The action was all local: sniper fire taking out the mortar team, grenade-launchers for the jeeps. Most of the kills are clean; one to two shots apiece, the occasional knife wound where it couldn’t be helped.”

“I don’t see any Confederates,” Malcolm ventured in a small voice.

“There were never any Confederates here.”

“What about the cigarettes and the rations?” Lightholler said. “Those are confed.”

“False trail,” Kennedy replied. “Just like those tyre markings you pointed out. The crew that passed through here marked the real trail. Only two jeeps made it out of here, four japs on foot, and they were dragging one of their wounded.”

“They didn’t get too far either,” Tecumseh added.

“Okay,” Kennedy said gruffly. “Let’s get out of here.” He brought his fingers to his mouth and gave a long shrill whistle.

Suddenly there was movement all around them. The ground broke open where mounds of earth had been. Fallen foliage parted and fell to one side as more of Kennedy’s men emerged from the wasteland. Lightholler counted twelve of them.

Twelve of his men took down a platoon?

Kennedy communicated with the sign language Lightholler had observed earlier—a rapid exchange before the soldiers drifted back to their places of concealment. As a final coda, Kennedy summoned Tecumseh. “We need to place anti-personnel mines here and up along the false trail.”

Tecumseh nodded gravely.

Clearly Kennedy had no problem with burning his bridges. He said, “From here on in, it’s a clear route to the Rock.” He turned and began trudging back up towards the trucks.

“Why did you bring me out here?” Malcolm asked, falling into step beside him. She cut an unlikely figure walking in his shadow, conjuring up the image of a youth marching off to war.

“I don’t want you kept in the dark any longer, Patricia.”

“The first time I met Webster,” she said, gasping with the exertion of their ascent, “he asked us what we thought an army of your men—scattered through the Union and Confederacy—might be capable of doing.”

“And?”

“With all the information at his fingertips, and all the resources at his command, I still don’t think he has a damned clue what he’s up against.”

“Webster’s not my enemy,” Kennedy said softly. “I see that now.”

Observing her difficulty with the climb, he held out a hand.

She clasped it and said, “What’s going on, Joseph?”

“It won’t be long now, I promise. Just stay with me.”

She fell silent and let him guide her back along the trail. He left her standing with Morgan and Lightholler while he went to inspect the prisoners’ vehicle. He returned after a few moments and said, “They’re okay.”

She thanked him and walked to their waiting truck.

Kennedy said, “We’ll be at the Rock within an hour.”

Lightholler gave a low whistle through his teeth. “Hard to believe we made it this far.”

Morgan’s look became suddenly earnest. “What about Shine?”

“I don’t know.” Kennedy frowned.

“We might have to take one of Tecumseh’s men with us instead.”

“I can’t see anyone convincing a ghost dancer to board the carapace.” The frown deepened.

Some new thought manifested itself in the flash of Kennedy’s eyes. His face took on a less serious aspect as he continued in sonorous tones, “One thing I can’t abide among my men is low morale.” He checked the pouches at his belt and withdrew a pack of cigarettes and tossed it to them.

Lightholler snatched it out of the air with deft fingers. He checked the pack. Crumpled and worn, it bore the lettering of a popular Japanese brand.

“Exhale that way,” Kennedy said, pointing eastwards, in the direction they had come.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Trackers’ll catch that scent from half a mile in this wind.”

“Over
this
stench?”

Kennedy nodded. He turned back to the truck.

Lightholler lit up and was surprised to see Morgan’s hungry look. “You smoke now?”

“A little.”

Lightholler flipped the pack. Morgan shook it and brought a cigarette to his lips. He lit up and cupped the cigarette between his hands as he inhaled.

“We talked about war a while back, you and I,” he said, drawing a deep lungful of smoke. “Had you asked me then what I thought about war, I’d have told you that it describes a situation where two nations, unable to achieve their goals by diplomacy, come to believe that they each have the means of imposing their will by violence. I’d have said that it was a tool used to define the balance of power among adversaries.”

“And now?”

Morgan ditched the cigarette. “Now I think it’s just an absolute fuck-up. Go ask that dead Jap back there if he cares who wins or loses this fight.”

“Even if we manage to go back and fix things,” Lightholler said carefully, “we won’t take any of this away. There’ll always be war. Let’s just hope we only get to fight the right ones.”

Morgan looked down at the crushed butt and remembered where he was. He pocketed the refuse and said, “Let’s just hope no one has to fight any of them at all.”

Shine and his father had been assigned to the commissary. Most of the tables had been disassembled. The remainder were pushed together in the centre of the room to form a single counter. Shine watched as a group of agents streamed into the building and made themselves comfortable. They wore their uniforms open and a number of them had their boots propped up on the tables. They looked exhausted and restless at the same time but there was the occasional burst of strained laughter.