The Company of the Dead (68 page)

“This would have been the place to build it,” Lightholler said.

The carcasses of gutted trucks and jeeps had been made to appear outfitted in the semblance of a motor pool. Heat demons shimmered along the trail so that the distant prefabs looked as though they might have been etched upon water. “Echo” was as apt a name as any for the decoy; this
Fata Morgana
of Kennedy’s hidden place.

“I’ve had word. Shouldn’t be too long now.” Tecumseh was using the field glasses again. He studied the bodies of the Japanese patrol he’d eradicated, spread haphazardly where the path broke through the western cliffs.

The ghost dancers were dug into the earth approximately fifteen yards away from the trail, concealed in a similar fashion to the men Lightholler had encountered on the previous afternoon. Thirty men comprised the team. Ten more, occupying Echo site itself, had taken up posts throughout the installation. Lightholler considered the fact that this particular venture was going to expose almost a third of Red Rock’s total complement.

If it failed, the Rock would be left wide open.

Delay and electronic detonation mines had been positioned to either flank of the two-hundred-and-fifty yard region Tecumseh had designated as the kill zone. Heavy machine-gun teams had been placed between and behind the line of explosives. A few nested in select breaches, higher up along the rock wall. An assault squad, located just in front of Tecumseh’s surveillance post, lay in wait for deployment, while two-man security teams covered the escape routes where barbed wire had been impractical.

“How’s this going to play out?” Lightholler asked, his voice a whisper.

“They know where we are,” Tecumseh said. “Way the major wanted to run this relies on the assumption that the japs want to take this place, not destroy it.”

“Why is Red Rock turning into the world’s worst-kept secret?” Lightholler asked.

“That’s the nature of secrets, Captain. Revelation is only ever a matter of time.” Seeing Lightholler’s frown he added, “They probably know about Alpha camp. But if they
really
knew what was going on here, they’d have more than two divisions on site, believe me.”

“True enough.”

“They’ll use artillery to soft en us up. Fire wide, if they can help it. They don’t want to demolish the only way in, and they don’t want to wipe the place out.”

“Are we going to be safe here?” Lightholler asked. The trail was only a stone’s throw away.

“If they aim straight we’ll be alright.”

Lightholler didn’t find that entirely reassuring.

There were less than six hours to go, by Doc’s last estimate. They might have done nothing, Lightholler reasoned. Left off building decoys and marshalling defences, let the minutes slip by until the carapace was fully functional. The Japanese might have held off on any further advance.

The ongoing delays in Doc’s progress made that course look more and more like a long shot.

Tecumseh was nudging his shoulder. Lightholler looked over at him. The medicine man had a hand cupped to his ear. Lightholler strained, but all he heard were the soft sighs of dry desert breeze.

There.

The distant drone rose rapidly. Tecumseh pointed upwards as a recon plane soared briefly into view.

“Secure your goggles and keep your head down,” he said.

The first shell smashed into the rock face across the way, not a hundred-and-fifty yards from their position. Striking midway up, it sent showers of stone and sand down onto the trail. The Japanese guns found their range, dropping shell after shell across the plain. Fountains spewed sand and debris high into the air as a block of prefabs embered cinder-red on Echo’s edge.

Five minutes of heavy fire, then everything faded to silence. Smoke and ash lay thick on the ground, cloying at Lightholler’s lungs, clouding his vision. He suppressed a cough and adjusted the goggles.

The smoke thinned, seceding to grey vapour. A low, intermittent rumble manifested at the threshold of perception, intensifying his unease. He placed the palm of his hand on the wall of their concealment and felt the earth tremble.

The clank of tracked wheels became distinct.

Other sounds carried: the voices of men. Tones of command, bawled in unfamiliar speech.

Lightholler peered carefully out of their burrow. A few samurai moved in and out of the unsettled dust close by. They crouched down, taking bearings, searching the sides of the trail and the way ahead. Clued in now, perhaps, to the mysterious apparition of enemy soldiers who seemed to manifest and melt away as readily as their namesakes. They scoured the terrain and then moved on, towards burning Echo.

The crack of rifle fire rolled suddenly through the ravine, muted, and one of the figures dropped. The rest scattered along the trail and began answering with suppressing bursts of machine-gun fire. The rifle fire, episodic and short-lived, was choreographed to suggest a limited number of men and munitions. The Japanese vanguard might suspect that they were dealing with assassins and saboteurs; brothers to the men that had been sniping their officers and burning their fuel depots these last long hours. Then again, they might smell a trap.

The invading vanguard lay longer bursts, spraying the prefab walls, advancing again into the face of diminishing replies from Echo. The rifle fire was confined to intermittent shots. Lightholler watched the figures disappear into the smoke-shrouded construction. He glanced at Tecumseh.

The medicine man had his eyes fixed on the trail’s western extremity. He raised an arm, penetrating the roof of their shelter. Any casual onlooker might suppose that a grave was unwillingly releasing its tenant. Vigilant eyes, however, would recognise the first signal.

Heavy machine-gun fire chattered within Echo, answering the summons. Lightholler tried to imagine the thoughts flitting through the minds of the Japanese officers. There was clearly more here than met the eye. Pull back and bombard, or press on?

Do it
, Lightholler urged.
Bring what you have.

Scampering feet answered his plea. More figures rushed along the trail before the unseen armour resumed its fearful clatter.

The burrow shuddered. Grains of sand began sliding down the walls in widening streams. Spears of light penetrated the burrow’s cover, spotlighting dancing motes of dust.

Steadying himself, Lightholler looked out along the trail. Tanks rumbled by slowly in two columns. Men advanced in file beside them. There were no Union uniforms included in the mix. Long crimson-snouted Dragon tanks rode beside stub-nosed light battle armour. Track-churned sand raised thick clouds of dust. Lightholler counted twenty-five vehicles in all.

“They’re packed in pretty tight,” he said through gritted teeth.

Tecumseh nodded. His eyes narrowed decisively. He punched a closed fist through the roof. Phase two. Echo’s occupants had thirty seconds to evacuate.

Lightholler was forced to his knees as the blast rocked the narrow chasm, its energy funnelled along the trail. The den began collapsing around them in earnest. Cries filled the air, a confusion of commands and curses, all in Japanese.

Tecumseh called across to him, “Be ready.” He had his submachine-gun tucked under his right arm.

The fifteen-second delay between the charges at Echo and the flanking mines seemed to stretch into an indefinite period that found Lightholler flailing for balance on unsteady ground. He secured his weapon and scrambled up the burrow’s buckled edge.

The mines detonated in sequence, catching both edges of the convoy in a ripple of destruction.

Heavy machine-gun fire slashed out from the dancer emplacements, raking the sides of the convoy in a devastating broad fire that sought the vehicles with automatic weapons and poured on the hapless soldiers.

Tecumseh was up and out of the burrow, perched on its crest and ululating a fearsome war cry. His gun coughed bright death, selecting choice targets among the chaotic mass. Lightholler painfully clawed his way up and dropped to one knee by Tecumseh’s side. He trained the muzzle of his weapon across the mass, but held his fire. He was superfluous.

He watched the withering fire move across corpses that only responded reflexively to the scorching metal. Incendiaries and anti-tank weapons ranged along the arrested armour. The tanks popped and sizzled. Peeled like overripe fruit, revealing the pulpy contents of bodies mixed in metal.

Return fire was clumsy, striking where the dancers weren’t. A Dragon tank sent a shaft of red flame along the rocks, catching a machine-gun nest before bursting into flames itself. Three light tanks were working their way towards Lightholler’s position when the second line of mines ignited.

They settled into their craters on ruptured bellies. Caught between the inferno that had been Echo and the assault team, the Japanese soldiers were carved to a man.

Tecumseh gave a new signal and the assault team descended into the kill zone. They moved rapidly among the dead and dying, searching for officers and couriers. Rifling through the blood-crusted uniforms for documents and maps that might yield further knowledge of the enemy.

Lightholler let his gun slide down to his side. He hadn’t loosed a single round.

Probing fire from the western boundary of the trail, light at first, heralded enemy reinforcements. Encountering one end of the ambush, the fresh soldiers began to dig in. Lightholler turned to alert Tecumseh but the medicine man was already calling for extraction.

The assault team dispersed, working their way back from the trail and siphoning towards the various escape routes that led out of this place. Heavy machine-gunners dismantled their weapons and withdrew in good order, pulling back in teams of two and three. Security teams provided covering fire.

Within moments, only Lightholler and Tecumseh crouched by the kill zone. Tecumseh gave the ground a last contemptuous look before leading Lightholler up to the first checkpoint.

The Japanese reinforcements, perhaps emboldened by the sudden stillness, began infiltrating the lines of broken armour. Hitting the checkpoint, Tecumseh gave the final command and all along the perimeter of the kill zone and further back up along the trail the last of the mines detonated. From Lightholler’s vantage the ravine was a river of flames. The pungent odour of unspeakable death flayed at his senses.

Tecumseh said, “This will give them food for thought.”

“Let’s get back to the Rock,” Lightholler said.

Malcolm barely got as far as the communications centre before she was intercepted. The sentry began herding her towards the carapace’s enclosure.

“But I have to see Captain Lightholler,” she pleaded before the shack’s entrance.

He didn’t reply, but his eyes flicked to the south. She followed the movement and saw another trail of smoky haze rising there, seeking to join the murky helix that now almost encircled the base.

“There’s no seeing him now,” the sentry replied.

The sky flamed—a brief, bright flare. She sought the sentry’s eyes for an explanation and found herself reaching out to him as the ground pitched beneath her. He caught her clumsy movement and swung her around, propelling her back towards the shack. Hayes, the large engineer, filled the doorway.

She shot the sentry a last glowering look. “If the captain doesn’t get my message, we’re all dead.”

“Doesn’t matter. The dance has begun, ma’am.” He nodded in the direction of the latest inferno.

Somehow, between the horror of Joseph’s letter and the aftershock of distant explosions, there was time for new dismay. “Where in all your teachings did you learn to welcome death?”

“It’s not death I welcome—it’s rebirth. If I come across the captain, what should I tell him?”

She didn’t have an answer.

Joseph seemed content enough to forfeit his own life. Content enough to bargain with the devil himself, if it might bring his dream a little closer. She understood now that she loved him more—and less—than she’d ever realised in the past. His letter had been meant for her alone. It was rationale, apology and, most definitively, goodbye.

“Are there any underground shelters here, apart from this one?” she asked.

The sentry shook his head.

“Then tell Captain Lightholler that everything the major and Commander Hardas saw here will come to pass. He can deal with it accordingly.”

The sentry made ready to go.

She heard Tecumseh’s healing song again, a whisper in her ear, and called out softly, “May your dance bring good cloud, soldier.”

“Thank you ma’am.
Pilamaya. Wankantanka nici un.
”

Hayes was smiling as she turned to enter the building.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He thanked you for your words, and asked the Great Spirit to watch over your journey.”

“Journey?”

Hayes drew her into the antechamber.

Doc was testing the virtual model of the machine against the latest algorithms. Shine divided his time between entering the occasional data sequence and monitoring the carapace’s restoration.

It hummed. It glittered. In the sporadic flicker of generator light, he could swear it was moving. The cables twisted around its struts seemed to stir. Stare long enough and there was the sense of falling inwards, as the carriage shifted silver to black and back again: mercurial. He could almost convince himself that he was observing a physical manifestation of the machine’s peculiar influence, as if time itself might be fraying at the carapace’s edges.

He wondered how Doc dealt with protracted exposure to the machine; how he managed to skate along the perception-shifts while trying to remain rational and restore its function.

“You’ll give yourself a headache.”

Shine broke free of the enchantment and looked over to see Morgan’s dour expression.

“Seems like you’re almost done here,” the historian added.

Shine nodded slowly. “It’s almost charged. Doc’s finalising the equations. Where’s Captain Lightholler?”

“Working his way back from the ambush.” Morgan gazed at the pile of grey canisters stationed by the carapace. “Please tell me that those are extra supplies.”