within the red coals. A root, she decided. The heat was drying its sap, making the root contract and twist.
Kleat spread the pieces of the broken M-16 on the poncho. The rifle clip was empty. “Once his ammunition ran out, he clubbed the rifle. How many of the little bastards did he take with him?”
“I saw that movie,” said Molly. “John Wayne.
“Explain this then.” Kleat held up the shattered rifle.
“We’ve been there,” she said. “If there was a battle, there should be other signs. Not just in the tower, but down in the city. Bullets in trees or in the sandstone.”
“Laterite,” Duncan corrected her. “Technically speaking. It’s a soft stone when it’s first quarried. Perfect for carving before it hardens.”
“Other signs,” she continued. “Rocket scars on the walls. Things blown up.”
“You’ll see. The bones will tell.”
“They could have left or been taken prisoner.”
“Explain the dog tags then.”
“Explain Luke,” said Duncan.
Circles within circles. The sweat stung her eyes.
Night was a frame of mind. The ACAV flickered in the heights like a box-shaped moon. There were even stars, the fireflies and sparks. And constellations of animal eyes glittering red and yellow in the trees.
Like a museum curator, Duncan began delicately appraising the pages from inside the radio set. They might have been the Dead Sea Scrolls, the four curled pages of lined notepaper. Minuscule termites had wormed their way across the pages, etching in their own account of time. Ink foxed the paper in blotches. Duncan teased the pages apart and held them to the firelight, trying to candle out any legible words. When that didn’t work, he gently pressed them flat, and the pages crumbled like dead leaves.
Kleat seemed gratified. “They wouldn’t have told us anything anyway.”
Duncan pieced the fragments together as best he could, side by side, and pored over them with Kleat’s big krypton flashlight. There was precious little to decipher: “ ‘…can’t not stay anymore, where else…darkest before dawn, oh, God, your false promise…in the life of the stone…’ ”
“No atheists in the foxholes,” Kleat said. “The boy was stoked on the Bible.”
“Here’s part of an inventory: ‘morphine, 7 amps, .50 cal, 3….’ ” Duncan leaned down and ran out of words.
“That’s all?” said Kleat.
It took another five minutes to turn the fragments onto their flip side. Duncan found a little more. “ ‘…he was right, but we were wrong to listen…let him go like Cain, but west, from Eden on foot. Maybe we should have’…And this, ‘another visit last night. They come every night now. I know I shouldn’t speak to them, but we spoke…’ ”
“What’s that all about?” Molly said.
“Regrets,” Kleat said. “The ‘he’ must have been their commanding officer. And it sounds like one of them got out of Dodge before it was too late. Obviously, they wished they’d never listened to their commander. And they wished they’d followed the man who left.”
“But who are his visitors at night, the ones he shouldn’t speak to? Maybe tribal people coming in?”
“Here we go, a bit more in pencil, along the margin.” Duncan read several lines of a poem, something about wild cats growling, wind howling, and two riders approaching. He looked up. “They must have heard a tiger. The monsoon was coming. And they were the two riders, you know, their two ACAVs approaching the city walls.”
“Useless,” Kleat said. He seemed, Molly thought, glad to be done with it.
But Samnang bent closer. “Bob Dylan,” he said.
They looked at him.
“Yes, those are the final words of a famous song.” Samnang was excited by his discovery. ‘All Along the Watchtower.’ One of my students wrote an essay on its true meaning.”
“What true meaning?” said Kleat. “It’s plain. They were trapped. They were dying. They wanted out of here.”
“And yet the soldier chose this song,” said Samnang. “A song about revolution. Why?”
“Forget the watchtower crap,” Kleat said. “Forget last wills and testaments. What we need is positive identification.”
“Let me take a turn,” Molly interrupted.
“You have better eyes?”
She held up her camera. “Let’s see what it sees.”
She knelt above the fragments and took a picture of the front side of each page. Duncan began patiently turning them over.
Out by the fire, Doc snapped a command. Hands planted on his folded legs, elbows out, he looked almost like one of the kings she’d seen carved in the stone. His voice was too loud. He was drunk.
Vin hopped to do his bidding, shoveling at the coals with his machete. After a minute, he levered up the edge of a helmet. At least that’s what Molly thought it was, the helmet that Kleat had found. They were using it to cook their dinner. She was wrong, though. It was a turtle.
They must have trapped it from the
It was still alive.
Molly kept the camera between her and it. Through its glass and mirrors, she could stand almost anything.
The turtle filled her frame. There was no mistake. Its legs paddled at the air. Its neck stretched and moved. That explained the embers stirring.
The middle brother snatched the machete from Vin. He gave a light, expert chop across the belly plate. The turtle opened like magic.
The firelight pulsed. The stewpot of organs pulsed separately from the light. Alive, still alive. They used sticks and knives to spear pieces. Doc saw her shooting and, with exaggerated hospitality, held up a slippery organ to her. She shook her head no, and they laughed. Kleat laughed, too.
“There,” announced Duncan, unaware of the little incident. His puzzle of fragments was ready for her. She leaned over and snapped pictures of the reverse sides. A drop of her sweat fell on one page, staining it as black as blood.
Samnang was frowning at her. He’d noticed her sweat. She rested against the box.
“Whoever the man was,” Duncan said, “he rolled the pages up, closed them in a layer of condoms, and hid them inside a radio that was dead. A message in a bottle.”
“No name, no date.” Kleat shrugged.
“Did Samnang show you the name at the base of the tower?” Molly asked. She referenced it on her camera display. “ ‘C. K. Watts. August 20.’ It gives us some context. And the monkey remains,” she added, keeping her eyes away from the turtle, “more context. We’re not without clues.”
“It’s a dead end, I’m telling you,” Kleat said. He fished a cigar butt from his shirt pocket and whistled at Vin, who brought a lighted twig.
Molly frowned. Kleat was acting so oddly, so detached, even hostile to the possibilities. But, to borrow Samnang’s French, this was her
“A bad decision.” With the stogie and the flak jacket, Kleat made a poor General Patton.
“Once the decision was made,” she went on, “they were stuck with it. They tried to radio for help, but the radio was dead. They tried to signal passing aircraft, but no one saw them.”
“A lot of nothing.” It was as if he were trying to sabotage her.
“Seven weeks later,” she said, “at least one of them was still left to carve his name on the tower. We know they were hungry, and despairing. There’s that fragment about darkest before dawn and God’s false promise. The boy sounds so desolate, like there’s no hope on earth.”
