The Reckoning

He stood in the doorway. Something about the room troubled him. It disrupted his bravado. He wouldn’t come in.

“Where’s Duncan?” she asked.

“Halfway up the stairs. Crawling. I’ve never seen such a fear of heights.” Kleat would not cross the threshold. “You shouldn’t have come here alone. You could have destroyed evidence.”

Duncan appeared, and there was indeed dirt on his knees. The two men stood there, blocking the light. Did they need an invitation?

“They were here,” she said.

Samnang arrived last. Edging between the two Americans, he caught sight of the ruined Buddhas, and his palms clapped together like magnets. He bowed his head solemnly.

Samnang’s entrance seemed to break the spell. The other two stepped inside. Molly imagined Kleat would set upon the room like a wolf, but he moved tentatively, scarcely nibbling at the relics.

She watched what drew them. Kleat went for the rifle with the broken stock. Samnang gravitated to the wall holding the statues. Duncan vacillated. He moved along the edges. He lifted the web gear and dropped it, and ran his fingers along the foot of one damaged Buddha, and shook his head sadly. Then he found the husk of a radio set propped against one wall, and that occupied him.

Molly remained near the center, surrounded by their motion, shooting them making their discoveries, waiting.

The radio was partially disassembled. Duncan flipped switches on and off and the thing was dead, of course.

“There are two hands,” she said, pointing at the fire ring.

“Hands?” said Kleat. He took the pieces of rifle with him to the corner. He nudged aside the sticks of firewood and laid one of the dried hands along his outstretched palm. It was small. Too small, she realized.

“Monkeys,” Kleat said.

“Monkeys?”

“The men ran out of food.”

Kleat glanced from the hand to her. “Did you think they were human? Don’t tell me. Ghouls in camouflage.”

“No.”

Duncan returned to his tinkering. “Huh,” he said and pulled out a transistor tube. He held it up to the light. “Look at that.”

Duncan brought it over to Molly, and Kleat joined them. He heard the crunching sound underfoot. “What’s that?” He pressed at the leaves with his boot.

Duncan held out his find. “It’s a condom,” he said. “And there’s something inside.”

It was in fact a condom stretched long over a short tube and knotted at the end. He tore off the knot and peeled down the sheath, baring a roll of papers torn from a pocket-size notebook. The pages were brittle, and he didn’t try to force them open.

“It must have been a journal. Or a will.” He studied the outside of the roll. “But the rain got in. The ink’s run. It’s spoiled.”

“There are still some words,” said Molly. “Maybe with better light—”

“What is this?” Kleat said again, rocking his weight over the leaves.

Bones breaking, she thought. Monkey or squirrel or parrot bones, whatever hungry men might take from the forest. Kleat worked his fingers under the carpet of leaves.

He lifted a long fragment to expose the red stone of the floor. They weren’t bones, but cartridge shells. Duncan pocketed the papers, and Molly helped clear more of the floor. Brass shells littered the floor.

“Now we know where the side guns on the ACAV went,” Kleat said. “These are shells from an M-60. They must have pulled the big guns out of the tracks and brought them up here. Look at it all, like Armageddon in here.”

Molly picked one of the cartridges from the floor, and a beetle crawled out. She dropped it.

“There’s something more here,” Duncan said. He ran his fingers along a wide black stripe.

The three of them rolled back more of the thick mat. A big serpentine line emerged, painted onto the floor with engine grease. To its side, another line appeared.

“It’s an SOS,” Duncan said. They didn’t need to unpeel the whole thing. Stretching thirty-feet from end to end, it lay directly beneath the skylight. They looked up at the forest ceiling.

“They must have chopped a hole in the canopy, or burned it open with fuel,” Kleat said. “They were trying to signal for help.”

“But who would see it?” said Molly.

“A passing helicopter. Spotter planes. Our pilot.”

Like a child’s prayer, Molly thought. The soldiers had died making wishes to the sky.

“It’s coming together,” said Kleat. “They made their last stand in the tower. You couldn’t ask for a better field of fire. The enemy would have had to come up the stairs one at a time. But how long could nine men hold out? It must have been hand-to-hand combat in the end.”

“I thought of that, too,” said Duncan. “But then there should be bones all over the place.”

“This is quite odd,” Samnang said behind them. He had moved from the Buddhas to the doorway and was running his hands along the back wall. He walked over to them.

He stirred the shells with a stick, and a whole colony of beetles began scuttling around their feet.

“All of these come from American guns,” Samnang said. “M-60, here, M-16, this one, and this.”

Molly felt Kleat’s eyes on her, and knew what he was thinking: KR. The old guerrilla was exposing himself.

“This is detonation cord for plastic explosive.” Samnang held up a coil. “That explains the damage at the far end. C4 plastique. And these I dug from the wall.”

Samnang opened his hand to show a half dozen lead slugs. “All from American guns. Also, you would think their fire would be directed at the door, yes? But the walls are smooth and untouched, you see. Only the wall of statues is scarred. They alone were targeted.”

“What are you getting at?” Kleat said.

“I have looked,” said Samnang, “and there is no sign of an enemy.”

Kleat’s voice dropped to a growl. “They were fighting for their lives.”

“Perhaps,” said Samnang. “But against whom?”

“Okay.” Kleat mocked him. “Whom?”

Samnang let the mashed slugs fall from his palm. “Ame damnee,” he said. His French sounded like a song.

Kleat jerked. “What?” His voice thinned to a whisper. His hard-boiled expression crumpled. He stepped back as if the slugs were poisoned. Molly saw he was retreating from Samnang. Eyes round behind his thick lenses, he looked stricken.

Not certain what to make of Kleat’s sudden affliction, Molly said, “Damned men?”

“Fallen from grace,” Samnang said. He acted oblivious to Kleat’s recoil. “It is only my conjecture. But what if the men turned against one another?”

“Bullshit,” Kleat said. Molly wasn’t sure what he was denouncing though, the guesswork or its author. Or something else. He was staring at Samnang.

“How then to interpret the knife?” Samnang asked.

Kleat blinked. “What knife?”

They followed Samnang to the wall of Buddhas. Molly had not spied it through her telephoto. You had to see it from the side, jammed to the hilt in a seam between the stone blocks, the handle protruding.

Samnang let them consider the knife. Up close, the Buddhas looked eaten by disease. The knife’s presence was deliberate, like a judgment rendered, or a desecration.

“A K-Bar knife,” Kleat said, his certainty returning. “That’s how I interpret it.”

“But why would anyone stab it into a stone wall?” said Molly. “Here of all places, this wall.”

“How would I know?”