The Reckoning (15 page)

Vin returned with a coil of frayed, greasy brown Perlon. Molly walked to the tree and everyone followed. She turned it into a high-wire act, something to lift them from the morning of threats.

Lodged in the middle branches, the ACAV looked like a strange, small fish caught in talons of coral. She circled the tree, running her palms over the tan and white bark. “This will do.”

She shook the coil loose and, without looking, tied a bowline around her waist. She shifted the knot around to the small of her back so the rope would trail behind, not between her legs. She wouldn't need it for anything until she got to the vehicle. The brothers squatted down to watch through a cloud of fresh smoke.
Razzle-dazzle 'em,
she thought.

She shucked her shoes and socks and placed them neatly by the tree. The bare feet were for extra grip, but also a bit of theater. Patting the dewlap folds of wood, she hopped up onto a massive root. “Feed me the rope,” she said. “Make sure there aren't any knots.” Duncan stepped forward. She started off.

The climbing went quickly. The men grew smaller, their heads tipped back, mouths open. Partway up, double-checking her grip, she faked a slip. That got an audible grunt from the audience. “No problem.” She pretended to grapple her way past a perilous crux.

It was easy. The tree offered itself to her in phases, its knots and boles and branches forming a natural ladder. A whole metropolis appeared in the canopy, with limbs and looping vine bridges inter-locking the great towers of trees.

It felt good to open her wings, good to get away from the men. Things seemed much saner up here. It occurred to her that she could keep on climbing. She could vanish into the upper branches and outwait the gunslingers.

The thought grew into a temptation. Untie from the rope and she could enter the canopy and they'd never get her back. The place abounded with food and niches for shelter. Nuts and mangos and other exotic fruits nestled like Christmas ornaments.

“Molly.” Her name, so faint. Like leaves rustling.

The forest was so beautiful, and when she glanced down, her holds had withdrawn into the tree. Pathways led off along the great branches. She felt drugged.

The forest was her answer, she comprehended. But it went beyond that. The message built like a heat. All she had to do was take to the trees. Forget the men, they were deceivers. Forget the rains, they would pass. Forget the past. The forest would provide.

The ACAV broke her fantasy of dancing off into the heights.

More quickly than she'd expected, its squared metal corners and sprockets and pipes and bulldozer tread emerged around the corner. Her temptation snapped. This brute thing—not escape—was what she'd come for.

The metal ramp at the back invited her like a sturdy porch. One step and she would be inside.

“Moll-lee.” The rope tugged at her waist. It was Duncan, invisible beneath the foliage. He called again, more insistent this time.

She took a breath. It was like pulling herself from a dream. “I'm good,” she shouted down.

She peered at the inside of the thing. An open hatch on top helped illuminate the recesses. Stenciled warnings read
DANGER—MONOXIDE GAS
. She sniffed the air, and there was only the slight odor of fuel and oil and fertilizer. Dung, she realized. Animal dung. The green dragon had become a nest for forest creatures.

“I'm going in,” she called down.

“What?”

She pulled up some slack and made the small leap, landing lightly, barefoot, on the cool metal. The wedged vehicle didn't shift an inch.

The rope tugged again, Duncan fretting.

“I'm off,” she shouted, and realized that the climbing lingo might confuse him. “I'm in. I'm up.” She untied from the rope and knotted it to an eyebolt on the back of the ACAV. “Come on up. The rope's anchored.”

Branches had infiltrated through the open cupola, and white orchids with red pistils grew here. Butterflies spiraled above the war machine, their wings bright blue and the size of her hand. Death and life. She wanted her camera.

She peeked on top, and the head was jammed onto an exhaust pipe. Its eyes and face were aimed forward, and she was grateful for that. Let the others deal with it.

As it turned out, once she'd hung the rope straight down from the ACAV, the line was too greasy and thin for them to ascend. Kleat wrapped it around his fists and hauled himself up a few feet, and the rope creaked, but that was as high as he could get. Duncan had no more luck. The brothers wanted nothing to do with it. Without a climber's Jumars to grip it, the rope was only good for a one-way ride, down.

“You've done your job,” Duncan called up to her. “Come down.”

“Wait,” Kleat shouted. “What about the bones?”

“It's too dark to see,” she called out.

“We'll send up a flashlight,” he said. “And a bag for the bones.”

That was the part she'd been hoping to avoid. “My camera,” she shouted down on a whim. Through it she could filter any horrors before having to touch them.

“What?”

“I want my camera. And some water. And a PowerBar.”

The burlap sack came to about fifteen pounds. She pulled it up hand over hand, and someone, Duncan, no doubt, had included the bag of M&M's. There were two more burlap sacks stuffed inside. Kleat was expecting a lot of bones.

She sat on the edge of the ramp with her back to the ACAV, her bare feet swinging, and ate the PowerBar and candy and drank the water. Then she stood and turned on the flashlight and went to work inside.

Over the next hour, Kleat called up periodically, impatient. “What's keeping you?” she heard his tiny voice say. “Are they all there?”

Duncan only wanted to know if she was okay.

She didn't answer them. A ripple of thunder sounded in the far distance. That meant it was approaching noon. The monsoon was working up its nerve. Or else the typhoon was nearing. Would it announce itself or just open up on them?

She was thorough, exploring the deepest bay of the ACAV, poking with a stick where she was afraid of snakes. With each discovery, it became more obvious that the armored box held only questions. Their answers hid elsewhere.

She saved the head for last, climbing onto the top through the opening with the machine gun.

After an hour, there was no more to find.

She started to wrap the rope over one shoulder to descend, then had a thought. Untying the anchor knot, she threaded the end of the rope through the pistol's trigger guard, and retied the rope. Then, dangling the burlap sack from her belt, she backed off the ramp and rappelled to the ground.

As she descended from the canopy, she looked across to the top of the terraced walls and saw the city waiting for her. Her view lasted only a few feet, then she sank lower into the terminus.

Kleat and Duncan waited for her at the bottom.

“Well?” said Kleat.

She opened the sack like Santa Claus and handed him the head. “You were wrong,” she said.

Kleat held it at arm's length. “What the hell is this?”

“It's a trophy. They had it mounted on their exhaust pipe.”

It was one of the terra-cotta warriors' heads, its neck a long, rounded plug with a hole at the bottom. The jade pebble eyes glared up at them. The painted circles had mostly washed away, but the expression was still ghastly.

“Is this some kind of joke?” Kleat said.

The brothers, watching from the fire, saw that the head was safely inhuman. They came over from the fire. Hunkered down by his water pot, Samnang saw it, too. He approached more slowly, his expression incredulous. “Those eyes,” he said.

“You've seen them before?” Molly asked. He couldn't quit staring at them.

“Once,” he said. “I can never forget.”

“The soldiers must have brought the head down from the gate,” Duncan said. “Like Molly said, a souvenir to show they'd been here. It means they were getting ready to leave. But for some reason, they never left.”

“That's all you found?” Kleat said to Molly.

“No bones,” she said. “It was mostly empty. There's a big machine gun, rusted solid. And these.” She gave him a handful of rotted currency.

“GI scrip,” said Kleat. “They didn't use dollars in the field.”

“And these.” She pulled out a set of maps in plastic.

Duncan took those. “Nice,” he said. “Very nice. These could tell us where they were going and why they came here. And where we are.”

“Do you think that's the end of it?” Kleat said. He tossed the currency away. “Funny money and a piece of pottery and some maps?”

“No.” She had wanted the city for herself and Duncan. But for a little longer they were going to have to put up with Kleat's hunger and the brothers' ransacking. Somehow she and Duncan could turn this to their advantage, but it would come at a cost. The question was, how much of a cost? “We'll keep looking for the soldiers. That comes first.” His departure came second.

Kleat held out his hand. “My gun.” He hadn't forgotten.

She reached behind her. She planted her feet. She'd rehearsed it in her mind. He would go ballistic when she confessed, would maybe even hit her, but not if she could help it.

Without a word, she brought her fist around in a long arc. It wasn't a graceful boxer's roundhouse, and it wasn't very fast. His surprise was almost sad. His face turned slightly away. She landed against his ear. The shock of it ran up her arm bones.

Kleat dropped to the ground with a bellow. The terra-cotta head fell from his hands and rolled across the leaves.

The brothers fell silent, astonished. First she'd slapped him, now she'd brought him to his knees. It was so strange to them, the alpha-femme twist. It was strange to her.

“I didn't bring it down.” She was breathing hard, wondering how it could have come to this.

Kleat looked at her. His blank expression was changing, the rage getting traction.

“I left it,” she announced loudly. “Before someone got killed.”

The worm veins surfaced. “Do you know what you've done to us?” he shouted at her.

Duncan came alive, thankfully. He stepped between them, pressing his back against Molly, forcing her back. He faced Kleat. “There,” he said, “it's done. Not finished, just changed. I'm with Molly.”

“You two.” He spat at Duncan's feet. A drop of blood trickled from his ear. She hadn't meant to draw blood. She hoped his ear was okay.

“The gun was a crutch,” Duncan said. “You were a threat to us all.”

Off to one side, Doc picked up the head and was gawking at the jade eyes. His brothers gathered around him.

“You're going back up that rope,” Kleat said.

“No, she's not,” said Duncan. “There's nothing more in the ACAV for us. The soldiers went someplace else. We'll do what Molly said. We'll keep searching.” He paused, with a glance at Doc. “And plundering.”

He offered his hand to help Kleat stand, and of course Kleat pushed it away.

They ate a hurried lunch while the brothers rooted through their truck for sacks to carry relics. Molly could see the terra-cotta head resting on the front seat, a baleful passenger. Duncan studied the map she had brought down.

“You can still see traces of grease pencil,” he said. “They went east at Snuol and kept on going. Who knows why? The fog of war. But the interesting thing isn't the map itself or where they thought they were or weren't. It's this little bit of marginalia.”

He turned the map for Molly to see, and the old, creased plastic reflected the light. She had to separate one layer of reality from the other, the underlying contour lines and typeset names on the map from the red smudge marks on the plastic. There were four numbers beside a circle on a road.

“ ‘Oh-six, twenty-four,' ” she read out loud. “Map coordinates?”

“It's a date, as good as an entry in a logbook. June twenty-four.” She gave the map back to Duncan to give to Kleat. He was brooding over his meal, convinced they were now the Khmers' prisoners.

Duncan tried to bring Kleat into it. “You said they went missing on June twenty-third. This means that a day later they were still trying to find their way.”

“But to where?” she asked.

“Not here,” said Kleat. “That's certain. They were under deadline.”

“How do you know that?” asked Duncan.

“Because six days later the U.S. forces pulled out of Cambodia. Nixon was under siege at home. The traitors at Kent State had started a firestorm.”

She had wondered how he might get back at them.

“Those were American children who got shot there,” Duncan said.

“Pawns,” Kleat said.

“It's old history,” she said. “You keep going backward.”

“I'm dissecting an event. Establishing connections. And deceptions,” said Kleat. “History is our clue. Kent State is the reason the Eleventh Cavalry men died here. While our troops were getting slaughtered in these jungles, the college spawn in their bell-bottoms and tie-dyed T-shirts were tying the hands of our president.”

Duncan didn't rise to it. He let Kleat vent.

“Invading Cambodia was a masterstroke,” Kleat said. “Then Kent State blew up and we had to give the hiding places and sanctuaries back to our enemy. June twenty-nine was the fallback date. That was the day the last American troops pulled out of Cambodia. All except for these men.”

“I thought the motto was ‘Never leave a man behind,' ” Molly ventured.

“Within reason,” Kleat said. “But the clock was ticking. This whole borderland was about to return to enemy control. These guys had two options. Keep driving around the countryside. Or hole up and pray. Their commanding officer chose to hole up. He made the choice. Whoever the bastard was, he as good as pulled the trigger on them.”