The Company of the Dead (67 page)

“I’m fine, Captain.”

Lightholler nodded. “Perhaps you could join Doc down in the cavern, then, and see if he needs a hand. He had to send his engineers to assist with the decoy.”

“I have other skills, you know.”

“You have other duties too.”

“Yes, sir.”

Morgan lingered by the door. “You okay with this, Captain?”

Lightholler felt a tiny twitch in his eyelid. Any sign of weakness now would be the ultimate betrayal. He said, “I’m almost enjoying myself.”

“Just wanted to say, I’m glad you came aboard with us.”

“Well, I’m glad
one
of us is.” Lightholler folded away the files and followed them out of the room.

The plane was small, with wide, slender wings. Morgan peered up at it through the fine slit of the camouflage. It seemed to hover, slow and careless over the base.

“Scout plane,” one of the ghost dancers muttered. He dropped the binoculars and returned his attention to the transmitter, his movements becoming feverish. All he produced, however, was a series of high-pitched whines.

“Doesn’t
look
like a scout,” Morgan offered.

The ghost dancer glanced sideways at him. “It ain’t one of ours.”

“Getting anything?” his companion asked.

“Nope.”

They all looked up. The plane had completed a turn and was winging its way back westwards.

The radio operator delivered a sharp clout to the side of the transmitter. He made a final attempt to locate the plane’s frequency before shutting the machine off with a shower of curses.

“Think they made us?” Morgan asked.

“We’ll know soon enough.”

Besides a few rounds of artillery fire, discharged earlier that morning, this was the first real sign of interest from the outside world.

Word was that another patrol of Japanese recon had been ambushed, out by the decoy site. Tecumseh’s men had waited long enough for the patrol to sight the buildings and send out a report, before putting the hapless soldiers into the ground.

The radio operator turned to Morgan. “We’re due at the west tower. Did the captain want you coming out that far?”

The truth was that Morgan had no idea what Lightholler wanted. He’d joined Malcolm at the prisoner barracks, as requested, only to be told to stay out of her damned way as she combed the rooms. After an hour of watching her stare at furniture arrangements and sift through ashtrays, he’d made his excuses and left.

He’d wandered for a while until he was co-opted into a labour team, refreshing the camo over the skeletonised remnants of the south barracks. It was there that he’d happened upon the two ghost dancers. They’d all huddled down at the first sound of the approaching aircraft.

The labour team, their work completed, were heading back to the armoury.

Idle hands do the devil’s work, bud.

Morgan responded to the voice inside his head, saying, “He didn’t tell me
not
to.”

The radio operator shot him an odd look. “What’s that?”

“I’ll help you with the shortwave.”

The ghost dancers took it for an answer. He slung the transmitter over his shoulder and followed them away from the concealment. He stumbled across the pitted remains of the grounds. Dug up overnight, they would present an uneven plain to eyes in the sky.

At the west tower he let the transmitter ease to the floor with a sigh of relief, and listened as the men gave their report. He felt like slinking away. He wanted a drink, badly. He wanted to wheedle a cigarette. His ears pricked up at the news that the decoy had come under further attack. Lightholler was somewhere out there.

Watching him, a ghost dancer said, “Didn’t think you could turn any whiter, man.”

“Leave him be, Everett,” the radio operator said.

“Don’t you worry ’bout him, Frost,” the dancer said. He turned on Morgan. “Soon you’ll be on your merry way.” His laughter was brief.

Morgan had an idea of the incongruous image he struck. His recent wounds were a mantle, and word had already circulated about his role in the escape from Hot Springs. Now Hardas kicked in, wresting Morgan’s tenuous control.

“What have you got for me?” he demanded.

“I’m headed out to relieve the watch on the ridge. Thought you might want to see what we trying to hide from.”

“Ain’t nothing he needs to see,” the operator said. “Thanks for the assist, Mr Morgan. Now you better go on back to the office and wait it out.”

“I’d like to take a look, if that’s alright.”

The radio operator addressed Everett directly, saying, “You don’t bring him back, you don’t bother coming back yourself.” He stared at Morgan again, bleakly, and added, “Shit, I better tag along.”

White sand lapped at bare knuckles of broken rock. Sunlight glanced off the low ridge that braced the western horizon. Morgan glanced back at the culvert. The radio operator put his binoculars to his face and did a rapid scan. He gave the all clear and they stepped out onto the sands, then began to work their way from dune to dune. He instructed Morgan to stick close to their trail.

“Minefields,” he offered, by way of explanation.

Morgan observed their movements—the light steps, half-sliding, that left little trace in the sand. His approximations were laboured and clumsy and he gave up after the pain in his leg mounted to a steady throb.

Everett, observing his attempts, gave a wide smile and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll clean that shit up on the way back.”

Morgan nodded back thickly.

Ten minutes’ march brought them to the foot of the ridge. He wiped the beaded sweat from his forehead and looked back again, cheered to see that the base was lost from sight. The cliff presented a moderately difficult climb and that was good too. The ridge was part of a rocky wall that encircled two-thirds of the base. It wouldn’t be any easier for Japanese troops to descend this face—especially under fire—and there were dancer gun emplacements trained in this direction.

Morgan ascended to where the others were already perched. Everett was calling across to two sentries spread flat across the summit. They signalled back and one began crawling towards them along the ridge’s brow.

“Gee, but they sure glad to see me.” Everett turned to the radio operator and said, “Slip Mr Morgan the ’scope, Frost.”

The radio operator unslung the binoculars and handed them across.

Morgan skimmed the horizon. An undulating profile of purple blue greeted him, untenanted and bare, melting into cinnamon skies. Strangely disappointed, he made to hand them back.

“Pan down,” Frost suggested.

He returned the viewer to his eyes. There was an area of grey and brown that could have been scrubland at the edge of his field of vision. He panned across and adjusted the focus.

“Don’t forget to breathe, man.” The ghost dancer’s voice was a whisper in his ear.

Morgan let the binoculars slip. “Has to be hundreds of them out there.”

“Thousands,” Frost grunted. “But they’re right where we want them to be.” He took back the binoculars and slid them into their case.

Morgan tried to catalogue the vision. A tent city stretched out to the west and south. Tanks and trucks, clearly operational, arrayed in loose formation. Smaller figures of men milled back and forth in large knots between dark pavilions that may have housed more vehicles or munitions.

“Been gathering together since dawn,” Everett said. “
Pre
-dawn. That’s how they deal with what we bring them. Draw their supplies together under one central picket. Keep their command local and covered. They stopped our lightning strikes cold, but they all in the one place.”

“Look where that column’s headed,” Frost said.

Everett studied the movements with his own set of binoculars.

“They’re making to assault the decoy.”

Frost said, “Won’t be pretty.”

The sentry had reached them and was scrambling down next to Everett. “Going to be damn ugly, if you’re asking me.”

Everett handed him a fresh canteen and said, “I’m thinking you’re a glass half-empty kind of guy. Tecumseh’s got the decoy covered.”

The sentry took a swig and replied, “I’m the guy what’s leaving you up here on this hilltop while I’ll be taking a dip in Doc’s old pool.”

The ghost dancers all laughed.

Morgan smiled weakly.

“Anything else you’d like to see?” Frost asked him.

Everett had already begun snaking his way over to the sentry post.

Morgan said, “Think I might be done here.”

“Then let’s move the fuck out.”

Frost led them back down the slope.

“Martin, can you work that equation for me again, incorporating the new variables?”

Shine gave Doc a questioning look.

Doc slumped heavily at his desk, his forehead supported on an outstretched palm. He removed his reading glasses and said, “Re-enter those coordinates I just gave you and try them against the location data set.”

Shine typed in the numbers as requested. The computer, patched together from salvaged terminals, was barely serviceable. He instructed it to operate the stats parcel and hit the
enable
key. Its components, narrowly compatible, seemed to shudder within the machine’s metal casing.

“Sorry, Doc. I’m never sure what you mean by the variables.”

“That’s okay, Martin, they ... vary.” Doc rose from his slouch and approached the printer. “Whenever we select a point of view, whether it be time, location or the insertion angle, whatever’s left varies. But as long as the resultant equation equals Pickover’s Constant, it’s workable.”

They both stared at the paper tray, waiting for the results to come in.

“We need to get this right,” Doc continued. “The two staging runs between here and 1911
have
to correlate. The first stage has to be a small jump—real short, like a couple of hours back. It’s a pilot study, a test run, calibrating the relatively minute changes between the new time–space location and the point we started from. Then we can proceed further with a second-stage jump. But this second insertion has to be placed in exponential series between our baseline and destination.”

“Two weeks, right?” Shine said.

The printer began hammering away. A curl of paper wound its way through the machine.

“Give or take,” Doc said. “That’s why I have you doing calculation after calculation.”

He snatched the results sheet from the reel. His eyes raced across the spreadsheet and he pored over the graphs.

“How’s it looking?” Shine asked.

“Grim.” Doc crushed the paper in his hands and tossed it onto the floor.

Shine glanced down. Paper scraps were scattered everywhere.

Doc went over to the keyboard. He fussed with the insertion angle and retyped the question. “All the equipment is already stowed aboard. We’ll be fully charged in just over two hours, but without the math, what we’ve got here is a strapless slingshot.”

“What about all that stuff? Want me to pack it while we’re waiting on the next print-out?”

Doc followed Shine’s eyes to the grey canisters that lay arranged around the carapace’s struts. “Trust me, you don’t want to go anywhere
near
that shit.”

The printer began to rattle again. Shine tore his eyes away from the canisters and examined the results sheet. Doc stood at his shoulder.

“Any better?” Shine asked the question with little expectation.

“Could be worse,” Doc said.

It was with some relief then that Shine watched him strip the sheet delicately away from the spool and take it back to his station.

“Okay, let’s try bringing the first stage a little closer.”

Malcolm had gone over the prison barracks with a fine-toothed comb. Studied the composition of the rooms, noting with interest that in one of the larger cubicles three chairs had been arranged against a wall. She had pictured Joseph, then, standing before the three prisoners. Pacing back and forth. But had he been interrogating them?

There was no overt indication of violence. No scratches, scrapes or bloodstains. Just the ash that might have fallen from Reid’s cigarette, ground into the floor.

What could he
possibly
want to know that she couldn’t tell him? Why would he violate a basic tenet of information-gathering by having all three prisoners present at the one time? The room’s set-up brought to mind her meetings back in Houston.

This was no Box, she reasoned. This was a briefing room.

What terms had he arrived at that justified his releasing them?

Malcolm trod another circuit of her own room. Joseph’s office, empty now, lay across the hall. All of his files—all the documentation pertaining to the whole sordid affair—were hers for the reading.

She didn’t know what else to do. Walking past her bed to the door, she felt reprimanded by the disarray of her bedsheets.
I’m not coming back here
, she told herself, smiling sadly. She straightened the sheets, but only found the letter after arranging the pillow.

The paper, a leaf torn from her notebook, shook in her hands.

She read his letter with dazed wonder, and heard again last night’s earnest request. “Will you come with me?”

You’ve consigned us all to hell, Joseph, and
you’re
not going anywhere.
What choice does that leave me?

She went out to find Lightholler.

Lightholler handed the field glasses back to Tecumseh. “That’s impressive for a morning’s work.”

“We’ve had practice. This was going to be the original location of the installation.”

Lightholler gave the expanse a general once-over. The prefabs had been thrown up on a level plain, ensconced within moderately high shelves of rock. A trail wove its way into the ravine from the southwest. The plain itself was just a wide digression in the path. It squeezed back to a narrow stretch of desert, and continued to wind its way to the northeast. Following it would bring you up behind Red Rock, but between the trail and the base rose high cairns of broken stone, impenetrable to any mechanised vehicle.