He’d almost gained his deck when he felt a tug at his sleeve.
“Beg pardon, sir. Urgent dispatch from CINTEX.” The communications officer had a sheaf of print-outs in his hand. He thrust one forwards to Webster and stood rocking from side to side, awaiting a response. Webster dismissed him with a severe look and resumed his step.
He examined the page as he walked and got as far as the second paragraph before stumbling to a halt. Crewmen shouldered their way past him as he scanned the rest of the report.
Reid had never called in. Webster’s team had arrived at the station house to find no trace of Kennedy or his captors. Malcolm’s Raptor had logged a departure time of 1700 hours from Hot Springs. The flight plan, registered with the Little Rock field office, anticipated a Houston landing. The Raptor had never arrived.
He read the next few lines in astounded disbelief.
How was he supposed to chair a meeting with the Germans when one of his Raptors had crashed three hundred miles off course in the Louisiana wetlands? How could he be sure that Kennedy was dead when the crash site was fried beyond all recognition? And how could he have any hope of wading forwards when the blood-steeped past dragged at his heels with all the promise of the abyss?
XI
April 28, 2012
Outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada
Shine removed a strip from the torn fringe of his shirt and wrapped it around his head. He tied it back and wiped the torrent of sweat from his brow.
He’d waited two nights for the major to show. He’d listened in to the police band as the township of Morning Star was being shut down. There was no point waiting any longer. He’d walked into town and stolen aboard a freight car and watched the limestone bluffs of the Ouachita Mountains give way to Oklahoma’s gently rolling plains.
He’d hitched a ride at the border and spent the night lying on a flat-bed, under cold, slow-moving stars. They’d been forced off the road at dawn, somewhere in Nevada. Within moments a rolling cloud of sand heralded the arrival of a panzer division. He’d availed himself of the confusion to slip away and spent the early hours perched on a sand dune a few hundred yards away from the procession.
All that remained before him was the broken expanse of what had once been the I-15. The tanks had been rubber-shod, but thirty of them had managed to reduce the highway to a stretch of rubble. The little township of Las Vegas lay ahead. Another sixty miles north and west lay Red Rock.
He began the slow trudge into town and paid no mind to the odd rig that rattled along the shattered highway. He passed easily for one of the dispossessed, drifting east and west with the tides of war and loss, so when a truck pulled to a halt before him it took some moments to react. There were already two tac agents on the roadside before he grasped what was happening.
“Don’t even think about it, boy,” one of the agents snarled. He had a submachine-gun cradled in his arms.
Shine looked up at the truck. Its rear had been converted into a holding cage. He spied a group of prisoners through the torn, stretched canopy. The majority of them were indian. He thought he could make out a couple of blacks amongst the men.
“Looks like we bagged ourselves the runt of the litter. Might as well toss him in with the others.”
They ordered him to the ground. They removed the knife along with his boots. They tore off his bandana and ripped open his shirt and ran rough hands over him. The driver emerged from the cab and unlocked the back of the truck while the other agents trained their weapons on the crowd. He mounted the platform under watchful stares. He felt the crowd part as the cage door clanged shut behind him and found himself propelled towards the front of the platform. He caught looks of curiosity or faint surprise. He recognised a few of them from the camps and met their glances with a nod. The truck lurched forwards with a crunch of gears and a spray of loose asphalt.
“I knew you were coming, Martin.”
He turned to address the familiar voice and his father gazed back at him with rheumy eyes and a warm, steady smile.
“Are you alright? What’s happening, Pa?”
“We got the order, son. We’re fading in.” His father reached up to squeeze his son’s bare shoulder and said, “The major’s on his way.”
XII
April 28, 2012
Alamo, Nevada
The voice told him to relax. It told him that the major knew what he was doing. Morgan shook his head, thinking, That’s all well and good, Hardas, but you’re dead, so what the hell would you know?
The voice cackled harshly, the way he used to laugh, but with a touch of genuine amusement. Damn straight. Cold and dead, but you’re going to be alright, so just relax.
Morgan dispelled Hardas’s voice with another shake of his head. He saw the major looking at him curiously and made himself smile back. It should have been me. Peering outside, past the grimed glass, he focused on the slow drift of distant clouds.
“This is it,” Kennedy said, finally. “Check your restraints. It’s going to get a little bumpy from here on in.”
“What about the others?” Agent Malcolm asked. She’d seated herself as far away from them as the small cabin of the cargo plane would permit. She spoke without looking at him.
“They’re secure,” Kennedy replied evenly. He made a quick final survey of the cabin and checked his watch. He caught Morgan’s look and said, “We’re going to be okay, Darren.”
“I’m not worried, Major. Just surprised.”
Kennedy cocked an eyebrow.
“Things seems to be going our way for a change.”
Lightholler laughed. Kennedy winked at him and turned his attention to the cabin’s window.
They were coming in to Alamo low and fast.
Kennedy and Lightholler had been walking on eggshells around him ever since Hot Springs. Lightholler must have told the major what had happened in the interrogation room. Perhaps when things got quiet enough, someone might care to explain it to him as well. He’d heard the shot go off, but was as surprised as anyone else to realise it was he who’d fired the gun.
They’d only asked him about Hardas after they were airborne. After they’d collected the journal from the safe, mopped up the blood from the cell floor, and transferred Reid and the others from the station house to the hijacked Raptor. After Kennedy had wired Tecumseh and ordered the fade-in, had given the Raptor’s pilot his new coordinates, and had Reid and the others—all except Agent Malcolm—bound and stowed in the Raptor’s cargo hold.
Morgan had been sitting in a quiet internal discourse with Hardas when the major had turned to him and asked, “What happened, Darren?”
And he had asked himself, What do I tell them?
And Hardas’s voice, channelled by Morgan’s grief and configured by his subconscious, had replied, Tell them everything. So he told them about the German carrier group and the battles at sea and the Parzifal and the attack on the trawler and Newcombe’s fuddled attempt at betrayal and Hardas’s last stand. He told them how the smugglers’ ship had vanished in a vast plume of smoke and flame, and how he’d found Hardas sprawled, his jacket a honeycomb of bullet holes and his face a bloodied, broken wreck.
He told them how he’d found Newcombe still talking on the radio when the Parzifal herself had been rocked by an explosion. How he and Newcombe, lying side by side on the burning deck, had fought over the heated barrel of Hardas’s pistol and how he’d put a bullet between Newcombe’s wide, frenzied eyes. He told them how he got the idea of stealing Newcombe’s identity while watching the corpse simmer.
He never mentioned the fact that as he was co-opting the identity of one companion, he believed he was absorbing that of the other. That a part of Hardas had somehow seemed to fuse with him while everything else around him burned on the tossing waters.
Catching Kennedy’s careful look, however, Morgan wondered if the major entertained some insight into his peculiar new condition. Hardas’s voice had sustained him through two terrifying days of deprivation and pain an
d he wasn’t about to let it go.
He stole a glance out the window. On cue, he observed a sputter of sparks stream back from the far propeller. A wreath of smoke enveloped the engine. They were going to be cutting it fine.
Alamo’s landing field was a long stretch of dirt that ran five thousand feet before dissolving into scrub and barren soil. Kennedy had had men working at the field since 2010, when the base at Red Rock had gone up, but he’d insisted on making this look good. That was why there was a line of fire engines on what passed for the tarmac. That was why the starboard engines were on fire.
The plane was a Hughes T-7. One of three planes that had been waiting for them at Louisiana when their Raptor had touched down. It was an old four-prop, slow but sturdy. Kennedy had assured them it would make it down on two engines. That would be confirmed or denied shortly.
Morgan forced himself to keep his eyes on the steadily approaching ground. He had a brief flash of his escape from the Shenandoah in what might have been another life, and heard the voice inside say, Keep it together. He saw his face twisted in a savage grin in the window’s reflection. The craft convulsed as a metal plate on the far engine peeled back slowly, and then vanished in a blue stream of flame. Morgan fixed on the horizon’s rising shimmer.
The landing gear rattled into position. He felt the vibration as the air brakes kicked in. The wind screamed. The Hughes crunched strip and leapt skywards, struck earth again and skidded momentarily, sending a shower of dirt into the air.
He was thrown against his restraints. The wail of sirens became plainly audible over the plane’s protesting roar. Out the window—now a barely transparent smear of brown—he saw two fire trucks racing alongside.
Morgan felt faint. His eyes raked the cabin.
Kennedy was already out of his seat and working his way over to Malcolm as the plane continued its smoke-encased careen. She had her head hunched down as she struggled with her belt. He dropped down beside her, grabbing her chair for support. She seemed to fall into him, then sat back abruptly as he loosened the restraint.
He said, “John, Darren, I want you ready when we blow the doors.”
Morgan was on his feet, swaying. The plane was slowing down.
Lightholler had the satchel. He was laughing. Kennedy bustled them to the rear of the plane, using headrests for handholds. The Hughes lurched to a halt. Kennedy twisted the emergency release. The door burst open with a wave of pure heat and strong hands emerged through the thick haze to sweep them from the cabin.
Firecrew and paramedics shuffled them towards a waiting ambulance pulled up alongside the plane while two men played a hose of water and foam across its steaming fuselage. Morgan recognised Tecumseh’s swarthy, sweat-drenched face amongst the emergency crew.
Tecumseh flashed him a smile before turning to Kennedy. “Cargo secured. We’re good to go.”
“Where’s Doc?” Kennedy called back to him.
“Making ready.”
“And Shine?”
“Hasn’t shown.”
A billow of dust at the far end of the strip declared the arrival of the legitimate emergency team. Kennedy, glancing nonchalantly across the field, said, “Get this crate off the strip and torch it. We’d better roll.”
The back of the ambulance had been cleared of beds and two iron benches had been welded in their place. Despite the lack of equipment it was crowded. Two of the emergency crew had squeezed in next to Lightholler as the vehicle pitched forwards and ran a loop around the wounded plane.
One of them said, “What do you do for an encore, sir?” The other nudged him and gave Kennedy an embarrassed grin.
Kennedy seemed about to reply when he spied the expression on Malcolm’s face. He returned the crewman’s smile, but said nothing.
The Hughes was away from the runway now and lumbering unevenly over a patch of dry grass. Tecumseh’s crew had remounted and their motorcade was racing away from the craft in the ambulance’s trail. Morgan saw two men leap from the Hughes’ cabin and within seconds the plane was consumed in a ball of blue-white flame. He watched as the second emergency team, drawing towards the wreck on a tangent path, slowed to a halt.
“Man, oh, man,” the first crewman said.
“What is it?” Kennedy asked.
“Next time I pick you up from the airport, sir, I’ll be damn sure to bring along some marshmallows.”
“Great,” Malcolm muttered. “Dinner and a show.”
Instinctively the others looked to Kennedy, as if seeking permission before bursting into laughter.
“Where’s Agent Reid?” Malcolm asked. “Where are the others?”
“They’re in that ambulance back there,” Kennedy replied soberly, pointing out the rear window.
“And what are you going to do with us?”
“Us?”
Her reply was stern silence.
His face hardened. “You’ll know when I know, Patricia.” He glanced at their surroundings, gave Lightholler a knowing look and said, “Déjà vu.”
The two men’s communications had been minimal but Morgan had noted a new cadence and rhythm to their talk. An undercurrent of understanding through tacit exchange. He envied them.
The ambulance halted at a series of sheds by a barbed-wire fence. Three trucks were arrayed before them. They were a shabby, hyphenated collection of six-wheelers: olive-drab, ex-army and nondescript. The crewmen unsealed the bay door and they all piled out. At the far end of the airfield the Hughes belched plumes of dark grey smoke. A small crowd was forming a perimeter around the smouldering wreck.
“We don’t have much time,” Kennedy said.
Morgan nodded. Red Rock lay approximately forty miles north and west from here. He’d made the trip from Alamo once before, and even then, with no demand for haste or urgency, it hadn’t been a pleasure. Highway 93, a ramshackle scar of blacktop at the best of times, was out of the question. It would be off-road from here.
Tecumseh and another crewman were approaching one of the emergency vehicles. They unlocked the back of the ambulance and began hauling out the prisoners. All three were bound at the wrists and ankles. They all had cloth bags over their heads. Morgan saw the makeshift bandages on the tac agent’s arm and winced with an abrupt fusion of pain and pity. Then he recalled his own transient experience as Reid’s prisoner and muttered, “Fuck them.”
Tecumseh marched them to one of the trucks. A bag slipped back and Reid’s face, blinking and furious, scanned the group and turned on Kennedy.
“What the—”
Tecumseh had the bag back in place and Reid’s question became a garbled rant.
“Bring them along, Chief?” Tecumseh asked, carefully.
Kennedy didn’t look over at Malcolm. He said, “For now.”
Tecumseh nodded sagely and led them up a ramp into the back of the truck.
Other crewmen were carrying Malcolm’s bag and a few of their belongings to another of the vehicles.
“What about you, Tecumseh? You coming with us?” Kennedy asked.
Tecumseh smiled broadly and pulled at his collar, revealing a sky blue ghost-dancer shirt beneath his uniform. “You know I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
He turned away from Kennedy and gave some instructions to his men, speaking in a lilting sing-song dialect, a variation of the Sioux tongue that Morgan couldn’t place. A group of his crew returned to the emergency vehicles. They farewelled Tecumseh with solemn gestures. Four of Tecumseh’s remaining crew climbed in with the prisoners, another three joined him at the second truck, leaving four with Kennedy.
Kennedy was watching as the emergency vehicles coursed back towards the crash site. The remaining crew stood by his side, following his gaze. The look on Malcolm’s face suggested that she’d seen enough.
Lightholler edged up to Morgan and asked, “What was that?”
“I think it was a traditional send-off,” Morgan replied.
“It seemed to take a while.”
“I don’t th
ink Tecumseh expects to see them again.”
They made their way to the last truck.
XIII
April 28, 2012
Pahranagat Mountain Range, Nevada
Thirty miles out of Red Rock
There had been a short stretch of road leading away from the airfield. They hit the checkpoint at the edge of the small township where the phantom of a river gasped feebly beneath an iron bridge. The few vehicles that crawled the streets were military and everyone they passed was in uniform.
Tecumseh hung out of the leading truck’s cab to exchange words with the guard and Malcolm watched in dismay as the two men shared easy laughter. It looked like Joseph had his fingers in any number of pies. The guard waved them over, but only after exchanging a similar, albeit briefer, form of the ritual she had seen at the airstrip.
She recalled Tecumseh from the files she’d gone through in Houston. He was supposed to be a medicine man. That meant more than just a religious figure. The bulk of Joseph’s men at Alpha were supposed to be indians too. What were they doing meeting him at the landing field? Wasn’t Alpha supposed to have been locked down? Director Webster had indicated that they’d found the camp undermanned and Reid had said the same.
They slowed down and the prison truck snaked into view in their trail. Two armed men were stationed on the roof, swaying with the truck’s uneven motion. They had removed their emergency gear, perhaps because of the heat, and now wore bright blue shirts stamped with a series of designs she couldn’t make out with the dust and distance.
She thought about Reid and the other agents, bound and blindfolded since Hot Springs, while she’d been kept close by Joseph’s side. He hadn’t questioned her. He hadn’t laid a finger on her. Was she even his prisoner?
The Company of the Dead Page 43