KIA

by Thomas Holland

  “Thanks. How’s it here?”

  “Haven’t killed myself or anyone else. Yet. Though I’m startin’ to see the wisdom of makin’ people wait a week to buy a handgun.”

  “Glad to hear it. I assume that the commander’s being his usual thick-brained self.”

  “Too nice a day to get me talkin’ about that prick—so don’t.”

  “Bad?”

  “Bad. It’s official. Not only is Colonel Botch-It not leavin’ early, the sonofabitch is extendin’ for another year.”

  “Crap.”

  “Crap is right. I said don’t get me started.”

  “You got it. Crap.”

  “We get Tenkiller?” Kel asked after a pause.

  “Maybe,” D.S. whispered. “Won’t know until we get it into the lab.”

  They watched in silence as the honor guard slowly emerged from the back of the plane carrying a flag-draped aluminum transfer case. It took precisely one minute and fifteen seconds to traverse the distance from the plane ramp to the rear door of the waiting blue bus. Another forty-five seconds to secure the door and salute the bus. The Joint Forensic Review had resulted in three cases’ being repatriated. They watched the procedure repeated three times in silence.

  When the last of the transfer cases was loaded, the buses departed and the honor guard stood down. The crowd dispersed slowly, knots of people talking and shaking hands.

  “You don’t sound so sure. About it bein’ Tenkiller.” Kel resumed the conversation as they walked across the headquarters’ lawn to his car.

  “I dunno. I’m optimistic, but I’ve just got that feeling. You know when you get that feeling? Guess it doesn’t look quite right. It certainly isn’t textbook Vietnamese, that’s for sure, but I can’t say that it really looks American Indian either. Plus, teeth are in poor shape.”

  “Accordin’ to the records, Tenkiller had a pretty hard childhood. Indian boarding school, runaway…I doubt he had the best dental care.”

  “Until he got into the army, anyhow.”

  “Even then,” Kel said as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Goin’ to the lab or do you want to go home? I can give you a lift and we can talk on the way.”

  “Lab first,” D.S. replied. “At least for a little while. I want to hear your opinion when you see the case.”

  Kel turned left past the Pacific Air Force headquarters building. The CILHI is located almost at the southern edge of the base in an area known historically as Fort Kamehameha—Fort Kam—and it required driving almost the length and breadth of the base. He glanced over at D.S. “About the dentition. What I was sayin’ is that Tenkiller didn’t make master sergeant at age thirty-somethin’ by not knowin’ how to work the system, and he wouldn’t be the first kid from the country who managed to elude dental call.” He paused. “So, explain this ‘feeling’ of yours.”

  “Just a feeling,” D.S. replied. “Everything says it should be Tenkiller, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Right. But you know what’s weird? I mean as in just plain friggin’ weird? Your good buddy, Doctor Dang, really didn’t want these remains—Tenkiller’s, I mean—or not-Tenkiller’s—to get repated. I mean, he did not want to let them go.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Oh, hints here and there. When you know him as well as I do, you can pick up on subtlety. Subliminal clues and all.”

  “Like?”

  “Like—‘I don’t want you to repate these remains, Running Pig Dog—things like that,” D.S. answered.

  “You’re right. Subtlety like that would sail clean over my head. I haven’t heard Pig Dog in a while.”

  “Yeah, he kept saying they were Vietnamese remains and that we didn’t want them.”

  “D’you and Ken explain that Tenkiller was Indian?”

  “Of course, but he didn’t want to hear it. I can’t remember him ever being so adamant about a case before.”

  “I don’t recall him ever tryin’ to stop somethin’ from comin’ back before, “Kel agreed. They waited silently a few minutes until the slow-moving bus caravan carrying the remains arrived in the CILHI’s rear parking lot, and then Kel killed the engine and looked hard at D.S. “Any idea why?”

  “Not a clue, Kel, not a goddamn clue.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D.C.

  SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 1970

  It was cool for so late in June. Not uncomfortably so, but noticeably so, at least if you were familiar with District weather in the early summer. Noticeably so if your mind was free to wander down loosely worn memories and focus on the pleasantries of the day.

  Penny Kendrick’s mind wasn’t. There was nothing pleasant about the day.

  The walk from the Fort Myer Old Post Chapel was short but interminable, made more so by the practiced formality of the Old Guard’s measured lockstep; the synchronized metallic clicks of polished shoes sharp against the quiet grumble of the hushed procession following behind. The six dark horses snorted quietly, and the wheels of the glossy black, flag-draped caisson creaked and eased like an old rocking chair devoid of comfort. It had rained earlier and the asphalt was still moist and puddled, and the drying rays of the morning sun brought out the pleasant smell of the clipped, bright-green grass and new growth. In the trees banking the road the birds were chattering and tweaking their enthusiastic curiosity. In the distance, high school students and other cemetery visitors could be seen walking in little clots or running along happily, oblivious to the parade of raw sorrow slowing making its way to an open plot of earth. It was a scene played out all too frequently of late.

  First Lieutenant Patrick Kendrick had left his parents’ home in Lexington, South Carolina, in November, 233 days earlier, bound for the Republic of Vietnam. It had been early on a cloudy morning and although Penny had been awake to see him off, they had decided not to rouse the children. They were too young to really understand, and Lieutenant Kendrick had instead quietly stood by their bedsides and stroked their fine wheat-blond hair and looked carefully at their sleeping profiles, intent upon memorizing their features against the inevitable fading that he knew would come, and then he had left. One year’s tour of duty. One year with the Twenty-fifth Infantry Division. One year to get his ticket punched and then home to his family and his promising career.

  He’d arrived at Cu Chi in South Vietnam eight days later. His assignment was to take command of a rifle platoon whose lieutenant had been injured and returned stateside. It had been a tough assignment; the men were well-tempered and weathered with the cynical grit of months of combat, and he was so very fresh. To make matters harder, he’d found himself stepping into the sizable boots of a man who had been not only admired but also loved by the men; they trusted their former leader with their lives in a way that Lieutenant Kendrick doubted that he could ever realize.

  But he’d been wrong. The men had come to respect him over the short months that he’d led them and to trust him. They respected his honesty; they respected his awareness of his limitations and his unabashed willingness to listen to them. He was a natural leader who knew when and how to follow, and in turn, they trusted him and followed him.

  As it turned out, they’d followed him to their deaths.

  Sixteen men dead. Lieutenant Kendrick one of the first to fall.

  Penny Kendrick didn’t know all the details. Some nice men in starched khaki uniforms and gold-braided saucer caps had visited her on a clear Sunday morning and said some nice things about duty and honor and courage and how proud she should be and how grateful the country was. They probably had provided some of the details of his death as well, but she hadn’t heard them. She’d tuned them to a low murmur, and all the while that they’d talked, she’d focused her attention on a photograph of Patrick that she kept in the living room, trying to memorize his features against the inevitable fading that she knew would occur.

  She was thinking again of the photograph when she felt something brush against her hip, tugging
at her hand, pulling her back to the here and now; it was her oldest, three-year-old Michael, looking about in great wonder at the men in their crisp blue uniforms and the magnificent chestnut-brown horses that pawed and snorted and rattled their harnesses. She reached out and cupped her hand on the nape of his neck and pulled his small body tightly in against her leg. Two-year-old Meredith, thumb in mouth, blue blanket draped over her shoulder, was firmly tethered by her free hand to Penny’s skirt, going nowhere.

  The ceremony was short and punctual, honed fine by what had become daily repetition—the horses impatiently scotching the asphalt, the honor guard carrying the casket with precise efficiency, Taps echoing off the thousands of otherwise mute white markers, the sharp crack of rifles, the folding of the flag, the soul-rending words On behalf of a grateful nation and the United States Army…Even Penny Kendrick moved mechanically—this was her third funeral in two days.

  Sergeant First Class Tommy Amaker and Specialist-Five Leslie Scott had been buried the day before, one hour and six minutes apart. Tommy had been first. Penny hadn’t known either man, though she’d come to feel as if she had. Patrick had credited Tommy with saving his life on more than one occasion. Leslie, Patrick had discovered, had played against him in the South Carolina state high school basketball semifinals eight years earlier, and Patrick mentioned him often enough in his letters that she felt connected. Now, all three men were dead, along with thirteen others. Sixteen men in all, scythed down like sun-dried millet.

  As the ceremony drew to a close, Penny’s eyes began to work the faces of the assembled well-wishers. There was family present, both Patrick’s and hers, and a good show of friends, some old and some more recently minted, and there were various military officers in flat dress caps and loops of braid and colorful bands of ribbons, some attending out of respect, others out of official perfunctoriness. She thought again of the photograph in her living room, the one of Patrick smiling, almost beaming, holding one-month-old Michael. She thought of Tommy Amaker’s young wife, whom she’d met the day before. Six months pregnant. She thought of her children’s wide-eyed wonder at the guns and bugles and magnificent horses and deliberate, synchronized commotion. But mostly she thought of fate and happenstance and why it had been her Patrick who had drawn the short straw. She thought of another officer whom she’d never met; the one Patrick had told her about; the one he’d replaced; the one who’d been careless and gotten himself injured; the one who’d gotten a trip back home to his family while her Patrick had returned home in an aluminum box. She thought of the sealed casket that they wouldn’t even allow her to open; she thought of how they told her it was best to not remember him that way. The hate began to build and throb, and she felt her face flush and had to swallow the knot in her throat—to force it down.

  Well-wishers began filing past her, squeezing her hand gently and mumbling something and patting her children on their heads. She searched each set of eyes for an answer, for something that would make sense of it all, for something that would make her whole again, but found nothing. Finally she gave up and stared at the one thing that she did understand—the yawning maw of a newly excavated grave—and that’s when she saw him, out of the corner of her eye, a thin, copper-headed soldier, cap in hand, standing alone, a few feet from the coffin, staring intently at something only he could see.

  She had never met him, but she recognized him somehow. It was him, she knew it; somehow she knew it; he was the one who’d been careless, the one who’d come home, the one who’d grow old watching his children, while her Patrick would slowly fade from memory and thought, his image growing fainter with each broken breath that she took.

  It’s better that you don’t remember him that way.

  She felt her face flush again but was unable to swallow away the knot in her throat.

  CHAPTER 13

  U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii

  THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2008

  Kel stood at the far end of the lab, arms crossed, watching through the thick glass that separated the offices from the analysis tables. His lab coat was soiled and wrinkled and resembled a cheap motel sheet. His hair had a perpetual messiness that had once looked boyish but now bespoke exhaustion. Still, his eyes were keen as he watched the cases containing the skeletal remains being off-loaded from the buses and brought into the lab. Usually the double rear doors that opened into the lab’s receiving area were kept closed for security reasons. There were two occasions when they were opened: repatriations and departures. There had been a time, Kel could recall, that repatriations from Vietnam numbered ten, twelve, fourteen transfer cases at a time. It was an ironic testament to the lab’s success that the numbers were dwindling; with fewer men still unaccounted for, fewer were left to be found.

  Most of the scientific staff knew to stay clear. The evidence-receiving area in the main examination room wasn’t very large, not much more than an open space amid the twenty or so work tables, and even the few individuals who were required to be there to accession-in the remains filled it to the point of near inefficiency. The evidence manager was there, along with a photographer, a couple of people to help open the transfer cases, and someone to fill out the arrival paperwork, but the rest of the staff either went about their normal work on the fringe or clotted together at the far end of the lab floor to watch the remains being accessioned.

  The first transfer case was slowly lifted down from the rear of the bus by three army sergeants and a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. All were dressed in their Class-B uniforms, and they wore white gloves. An American flag, its corners discreetly taped to hold the fold against any disrespectful breeze that might have an occasion to disrupt the solemnity, covered the long, rectangular aluminum case. The honor guard slowly rotated the transfer case so that the foot end crossed the threshold first. It was the time-honored tradition of the military that the foot should always enter first—whether it was the C-17, the bus, or the back of the lab.

  Once inside the main exam room, the case was settled onto two low stands that stood twelve inches off the floor. They were made of lengths of two-inch metal pipe welded together and painted silver to match the color of the aluminum transfer cases. Two of the sergeants flipped up the ends of the flag, freeing the folds from the tape, and removed it. They then stepped back outside while the next bus exchanged places with the first.

  Gretchen Lee, the lab’s evidence manager, had been standing to the side, impatiently thumbing a sheaf of brown folders containing the accessioning documents. With the military escorts out of the way, she moved to the end of the transfer case and inspected the numbered aluminum car seal fastened to one of the butterfly compression latches. She checked the embossed numbers against the ones written on the copy of the chain of custody document that D.S. had hand-carried back from Hanoi. Satisfied that they matched, she motioned for the photographer to document the condition of the seal before she broke it.

  “Can you see the number?” D.S. asked as he walked up beside Kel. Jet lag was about to catch up with him, and he was running on fumes.

  Kel raised slightly on his toes, trying to get a better angle on what was happening at the far end of the lab. Gretchen and another member of the staff were raising the lid from the transfer case and a light-brown wooden box was visible, lashed tightly in the center of the base with strips of white nylon webbing. The end of the box bore a rectangular piece of paper on which the Vietnamese had written a number with a large-tipped felt pen. The number bore no relationship to the case but merely assisted their customs officials in the departure ceremony at Noi Bai airport in Hanoi.

  “Looks like box number two,” Kel finally said.

  “That’s the one,” D.S. answered.

  “Now if we can just prove it’s Tenkiller.”

  “Might be easier said than done.” D.S. spoke over his shoulder as he pressed his lab ID against the door sensor. The sensor beeped, and a soft metallic click indicated that the door had unlocked. He walked through while Kel scanne
d his badge across the sensor and followed.

  “I was lookin’ at Tenkiller’s file last night,” Kel retrieved the conversation on the other side of the glass. “Not much in it. Like I said earlier, it seems he didn’t like visitin’ the dentist.”

  “That may be a problem. This guy’s got a fair amount of dental work, pretty poor dental work, maybe, but a fair amount of it. If that’s your guy Tenkiller, then he’d have had to have had a lot of undocumented treatment. A whole lot. Still…”

  “Still…he could. I just read the search-and-recovery report. Caroline seemed to think that the circumstantial evidence for its being our guy was good. Is good.”

  “Maybe,” D.S. said. Gretchen Lee had opened the wooden box and photographed the contents before moving on to another table and another case, and the two men were able to examine the remains. They both snapped on latex gloves to guard against contaminating the remains with their DNA. “Here, take a look at this,” D.S. enthused. “What do you think of that? Gorgeous, isn’t it?” He picked the cranium up gently from the examination table and turned it so the gunshot wound was facing Kel. D.S. was the sort whose pure enthusiasm for his work sometimes bordered on the childlike, and he could routinely use words like gorgeous and beautiful when describing gunshot wounds and compound fractures with absolutely no sense of incongruity.

  “That is nice—for a gunshot wound. How about an exit? Or was it a one-way ticket?”

  D.S. rotated the skull slowly. Toward the back there was an irregular hole the size of a small fist with spidery radial cracks running in all directions.

  “Ouch,” Kel said. He reached for the skull.

  “Careful. It’s not all that stable.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Yeah, but you’re replaceable.”

  “Jet lag’s showin’.”

  “Just be careful, will you?” D.S. gingerly handed over the skull.

  “Got it. Single shot. Am I right? Anythin’ postcranial?”