“Maybe I was wrong.”
Kleat was talking nonsense. He wanted things to make sense. He wanted them to connect even if they made no sense.
He strode ahead, arms swinging, that machete like a pendulum. The blade sparked against a wall. She wanted to get it away from him. Regardless of whether they escaped today or in a week or in six months, they were going to need the machete to build camps and cut wood and butcher game and keep them sustained. In Kleat’s hand, it was only a weapon.
“What if he’s one of them?” Duncan asked from the back. He had been quiet ever since leaving their shelter.
“One of who?” Kleat’s voice was cautionary. He’d had a bellyful of ghost talk.
“One of the Blackhorse men.”
“Christ.” Kleat quickened the pace, leaving the thought behind.
Molly pondered it. “One of the original soldiers?”
“We know they were here. What if not all of them died?”
“A living MIA?”
She felt boosted. Amped up. Here was the ultimate survivor tale. A Robinson Crusoe in fatigues, subsisting in a lost city for thirty years, dodging enemies, and eluding the $2.6 million reward for his capture. In Luke, not the city, lay her story. If it was true.
But it couldn’t be. That quickly, she dismissed it. “He’s just a boy. Twenty years old.” Except for his eyes, the thousand-year-old eyes.
“I thought of that, too,” said Duncan, undeterred. “But what if he’s a different kind of MIA? What if he’s Luke’s son? Or the son of one of them?”
She stopped. Kleat came back to them.
“You’re saying Luke came looking for his father?” she asked. Then she remembered his young face. The war was thirty years ago, and the boy was twenty, not thirty. Once you’ve crossed the thirty mark, you know the difference. “He’s still too young.”
“Not if his father did survive.”
“I don’t get it.”
“They were trapped. Some of them died. Maybe only one was left. He didn’t dare descend. One war after another raged out there. Maybe he went mad. Maybe he was injured and suffering from amnesia. What if he went off into the mountains and some tribe took him in? And twenty years ago, he had a son. A son who could watch over the remains.”
A son dressed in peasant pants and Vietcong sandals.
“A half-breed guardian angel?” said Kleat.
“I’m only saying what if,” said Duncan.
“Okay, what if he is the sentinel and this is like his own tomb of the unknowns. That doesn’t explain why he went down and chose us and gave away his secret.”
“Maybe that was his job. To find someone to take them home.”
“That’s crazy,” said Kleat. “The kid’s a Westerner. Blue eyes, blond hair, white skin. And where did he learn his English?”
“That’s a problem,” Duncan admitted.
“Not just his English, his American,” said Molly. “You can’t fake an accent like that. I heard it. He’s from West Texas, not the Cambodian highlands.”
“You’re right,” said Duncan. “I was just trying to come up with something other than ghosts.”
33.
A surprise awaited them partway down the staircase. From there they could see into the clearing, and the brothers had not left. The Land Cruiser stood ready to go, its engine running. Molly could smell its exhaust through the rain.
“By God,” Kleat said.
Her relief took over. She wanted to collapse. She didn’t have to hold it all together anymore. Everything was going to be fine. They were going to drive out of here.
“Hello,” Kleat shouted down. He waved the machete in the air. A tiny figure appeared on the far side of the truck and waved up at them.
“There’s luck for you,” Duncan said.
They passed the ledges, and Molly saw the splintered poles and shredded fabric of their tents among the relentless vegetation. Across the way, Kleat’s immense bonfire was nothing but mud and charred logs. The thatch hut looked as desolate as the ACAV stranded in the tree above.
The next time she came, the forest would have consumed it all, the hut, the fire pit, and the leftovers of their tents. It would be as if they’d never been here. She felt a twinge of regret. Above and behind her, the waterways were coursing and gurgling. She wanted to see the city the way the people had seen it twenty centuries ago, with the water animating its canals and gargoyles. The city would never belong to her again the way it did at this moment.
At the base of the staircase, Kleat paused. “All right, listen up. We’re going to have to work as a team on this.”
“We are a team,” Molly assured him. She heard the havoc in his voice. And now he had the machete.
Raindrops spattered off his scalp. The veins were rising. He took out a bundle of dollars. “We’re coming down empty-handed. But we still have cash. Don’t offer anything at first,” he said to Duncan. “Let’s see where we stand with them.”
“Good idea, John,” Duncan said.
“You stay to the right. I’ll go in from the left.” He fastened the flak jacket shut.
“That won’t be necessary, John.”
“Stay separated.”
“It’s going to work out,” Molly said.
“We’ve got what we came for,” Kleat said. He patted the pocket along his thigh. It bulged with the scalp and teeth and dog tag.
“Don’t do anything,” she said.
Kleat looked at her with his one fogged lens and that aged eye. He started across the clearing.
“He’s going to kill them,” she whispered to Duncan. “Or get us killed. Warn them.”
“They’d shoot us for sure.”
“But we’re not with him.”
“We’re Americans, Molly. Do you think they see a difference?”
“We should go back up the stairs.”
“How far do you think we’d make it?”
“Stop him then.”
They hurried to catch up with Kleat. In their absence, Doc and So had shimmed wood and stones under the wheels of the Land Cruiser and rolled it down to safety. The engine was idling.
The truck was another matter. Its front end pitched up like the stem of a sinking ship, deeper than ever. It was a goner, but the brothers weren’t giving up. With axes and shovels, they had spent the morning chewing down to the wheels and axle. Their hole looked more like a grave than true hope. A rusty cable fed from the front hitch, ready to attach to the Land Cruiser for a heroic tow.
As the three Americans approached, Doc climbed from the muddy pit, ax in hand. Molly’s stomach knotted. Their rifles were probably on the front seat of the truck, out of the rain. She looked for Vin, a friendly face.
So poked his head up from the pit. Plastered with black mud, the two Khmers looked the way God’s Adam must have looked like in his first moments, mud with two eyes. Molly did not reach for her camera.
Duncan greeted them. Doc spoke. “He wants to know, where’s their cargo.”
