Twilight

by Brendan DuBois

  And then the surprise was on me when Charlie shook his head and said, “No, sir. Not at all … Oh, the delivery system was a surprise, using modified weather balloons to raise up the suitcase nukes to a high enough altitude to cause damage with the EMPs. Simple and imaginative delivery system. Everybody thought the suitcase nukes would be placed in the cities but, except for Manhattan, they weren’t. Still, that’s the lessons of war. Always surprises. Pearl Harbor. Tet. Second World Trade Center attack. But you wanna know what the real surprise was?”

  “Sure.”

  Charlie leaned in a bit. “Surprise was—we still don’t know who did it. We got the usual and customary blowhards. Islamic Sword of Justice, the Sword of Justice from Islam, neo-Nazi creeps—standard crap like that. But no, none of ’em. Oh, we know where the suitcase nukes came from. Our smart boys can actually analyze the fissile materials and determine their source—like a DNA analysis—and those bad boys came from an old Soviet Union storage facility that secretly got raided years ago. By using the right contacts and the right amount of money, almost anybody could have bought them on the black market.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not knowing much more what to say.

  “And that created another problem,” he said. “After the balloon strikes, you had all that death, all that destruction, all the cell phones, computers and even car engines fried, airliners crashing in your backyard, so people are pissed. They’re angry. They want to strike back. And if you can’t strike back at who did this to you, well, you strike back at whatever’s convenient. And if that happens to be refugees who roll into your village or town from some urban center and demand food and shelter and whatnot, well, there you go. A better recipe for disaster you probably couldn’t come up with.”

  We stood there then, a bit quiet, and I said, “One more thing? To change the subject?”

  “Yeah?” Charlie asked.

  “Do you want to leave a weapon with me? A gun or something?”

  He chuckled. “When’s the last time you fired a weapon, young man?”

  It felt cooler. “Couple of years ago. Did a story about the RCMP, the new weapons they were being issued. Ten-millimeter Glocks, I think. I got to fire off a few rounds at a firing range. Before that, some rifle shooting with my dad. That’s it.”

  Charlie tapped me on the shoulder. “Well, you’re ahead of everybody else in the crew ’cept for me and maybe Peter, and I’m still not letting you have anything you can shoot. You’re doing well up here with the scope. Just keep an eye on things and come get me if you see anything. All right?”

  “You’ve got it,” I said. “You go catch up on some sleep. When do you want to get up?”

  “You let me decide that, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Charlie started to move down the hill. Then he stopped. “Oh. And one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re depending on you,” he said. “Don’t fall asleep on the job.”

  I shivered again, hugged myself, felt like the whole world was out there, watching me.

  “No problem of that,” I said.

  “OK,” Charlie said, and in a few seconds I was alone up on top of the hill.

  And pretty much scared shitless.

  CHAPTER NINE

  For the first few minutes I kept myself occupied, sitting on the table, checking out the scenery, looking for any movement, anything at all. But soon I got a feeling for our surroundings, out there beyond our little sanctuary. The parked Land Cruisers were behind me, hidden by tree cover, and I could see fairly well over the tops of the trees. All around the hill the slopes fell away either to a treeline or to the road. I did as Charlie instructed, raising the scope to my eyes every few minutes, feeling a bit of power in my grasp as the nightscape came alive in the green glow of the instrument.

  But after a while the novelty of using the night-vision scope began to wear off, and I became conscious of how cold and hard the picnic table felt against my butt, and I felt the breeze that chilled my arms and legs. I wished that I had thought earlier of bringing up a blanket to keep myself warm, but that might have made me sleepy and I had promised Charlie that I would stay awake. No falling asleep on the job. But something else in the nether regions below my waist was demanding my attention so I got up from the table and walked down the far slope for a minute or two until I came to a low clump of bushes. I undid my pants and let loose, the stream of water arcing out into the foliage, and I felt such a sense of relief.

  As I did my pants up I heard the low roar of jets flying overhead, and I looked up and saw nothing but blackness. No stars, no moon, nothing but the cloud level that prevented an extraction by helicopter. We’d been warned when we’d started that we would have few friends or allies out here in the countryside; nobody had told us that the weather would be against us as well.

  I started back up the hill, walking carefully, feeling the darkness all around me, and I wished I had brought the night-vision scope with me. But soon enough I banged my knee against the table and got back up on top. The scope came up, my hands grew colder—and then I saw movement, down there in the field, about a hundred meters or so from where I had been relieving myself.

  I moved to get off the table and to go get Charlie, but hesitated. Movement, all right, there was movement. But what kind of movement?

  I put the scope back up, saw shapes down there, moving around. I felt along the side of the scope and found a little knob, and by experimenting with it I learned that it was a zoom-feature control. I moved it slowly, focusing in on the group of shapes, and let out a breath as I saw it was a pack of dogs, running and chasing around. I watched them as they played, as they fought each other over something, and then the lead dog ran away with something in its jaws. It looked like a tree branch. I hoped it was a tree branch. In my neighborhood in Toronto, dogs were cheerful little critters, kept under control by their human masters. In this particular bleak district, these dogs were out on their own. And I tried to shake off the image of that dog, with something large in its jaws, remembering a story that Karen had told about her service in Rwanda, where packs of dogs would haunt the roadways and alleyways of destroyed villages, devouring and gnawing at the human bodies heaped up in bloody piles.

  I dropped the night-vision scope in my lap, rubbed my hands. Another flight of jets went overhead, and I envied the pilots up there, warm and safe and secure, far away from the ground and the animals that feasted on the dead.

  ONCE AGAIN DURING the night I went into the bushes for relief, knowing it was the stress of being up here, responsible for everyone, that had made my bladder overactive. The sounds kept me jumpy too—the few insects out there, the sound of night birds on the prowl—and other things as well: the growl of jets overhead, another engine of some sort—an APC? a truck?—from beyond the line of trees, and once, the far-off thump of an explosion. In some ways I was flashing back to when I was eight, not believing that my own father had forced me outside and had locked the door after me.

  I checked my watch, saw that nearly three hours had passed. I was tempted to go down and wake up Charlie but he’d said he would get me when it was time. And I should let the poor guy sleep. He was right: he wasn’t some robotic Rambo, out here protecting us with only an oil change and a dusting-off every three thousand kilometers or so. I could sleep during the day, maybe, if we did get back to the motel by a different route. And Charlie? He’d be on the job, like he was all the time.

  So I sat, shivering occasionally from the cold, and then I raised the night-vision scope for a scan of our neighborhood. Still nothing.

  Then, when I lowered the scope one more time, I noticed a lightening of the overhead cloud cover. It seemed as though dawn was approaching. I could make out the planks of the picnic table, the thin grass cover on the ground and even the clump of bushes that I had used as a urinal. I rubbed my hands, thinking that my job was nearing its end. Charlie would probably be up soon and then I could come off the top of this dam
n hill and let somebody else worry about safety for a while. I didn’t much care what was for breakfast; I knew that we had enough tea and coffee for something hot to drink, and that was all I cared about.

  I brought the scope up to my eyes again, and then my hands began to shake. Something was going on, down by the road. I lowered the scope, rubbed at my eyes, and then looked again. The damn light was giving me a problem, for with the approach of day the image was fading. I focused as tightly as I could without losing the definition and I wished I had thought of bringing my own photo gear up here. I moistened my dry lips and continued looking. I only had them in view for a few moments. There was a line of people walking along the side of the road. There looked to be about six or seven men and women bunched together in the middle of the column. Nothing unusual, except I could tell that the men leading the group and those following it had weapons. And the central group itself moved oddly—even in the lousy image I was getting through the scope I could tell that they were bound together. A line of prisoners, moving along in the dawn, their captors secure in the knowledge that the cloud cover was preventing any surveillance.

  Damn them, damn them all.

  They disappeared around a curve in the road. I lowered the scope for the last time as birds began chirping and moving about. I heard a rustle and turned to see Charlie coming up the faint trail, his assault rifle slung over his back. He was yawning but he looked good, and in his hand he had two metal cups, steaming. He came up to me, passed one over, and said, “How was the night?”

  “Quiet,” I said, the cup shaking in my hands.

  Charlie raised his own cup to drink and then paused. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just saw something.”

  “Nearby?”

  “No, down there on the road. It’s gone now.”

  “What was it?”

  “It … it was …” I paused, swallowed, conscious that no matter how upset I was it sure felt good holding that warm mug of coffee in my cold hands. “Damn it, Charlie, I think I just witnessed a war crime.”

  Charlie nodded, sat up on the table next to me.

  “Considering where we are, that sure makes sense,” he said. “Anything’s possible in the dead of night.”

  WE WENT DOWN and talked to Jean-Paul. He called in my sighting and didn’t say much else as he and Charlie looked at a map spread out over the hood of one of the Land Cruisers. There was a frightened feeling to the group that was beginning almost to ache through my bones. I remembered the first time we had gone out, a few weeks ago, and how at that time nothing would have stopped us from doing our job. Back then, if I had come down with a sighting of some prisoners being led along the roadside we would have roared out after them, no matter what. We would have depended on our brashness, on our confidence that we were on the side of right, to do what had to be done. But not this morning. Jean-Paul just called it in and stayed there by the Land Cruiser, cup of coffee at his elbow, while he and Charlie looked over our options on the map. Their conversation seemed depressing enough, so I didn’t stick around.

  I yawned a couple of times and joined Miriam who was leaning against the door of the closest Toyota. She smiled at me, warming me right up. “You do OK?” she asked.

  “I did,” I said. “Quiet night, except for what I saw just before daybreak. A line of people, being led off. It looked like they were under armed escort.”

  Miriam’s face looked white in the early morning light. “Does Jean-Paul know?”

  “Yep. And so does the regional office. So here we sit, all of us, while those people are being led away.”

  “We can’t do everything, Samuel. You know that.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said, feeling an urge to yawn again. “But I hate it when people keep on reminding me about it. It sounds so—”

  Karen came up from the trail that led to the road, buckling on her helmet with shaking fingers. “There’s a white van, coming up the trail. Looks like it’s full of men.”

  Jean-Paul looked up from the hood of the Toyota. Charlie moved away and grabbed his binoculars and M-16. “Stay here,” he commanded. We obeyed him for about a second or two and then we followed him. The van coming up the road slewed from side to side on the dirt path. It was white but, like our own vehicles, it was filthy with mud along the sides. Charlie looked back at us, shook his head in apparent amazement that none of us could follow directions, and then raised his binoculars to his eyes.

  Karen stood next to Sanjay, and Peter was with Jean-Paul. Miriam was behind me and I felt an odd protective urge, making sure that I was in front of her. Karen said, “Who are they, Charlie? UN? Local people? Militiamen?”

  Charlie lowered his binoculars and said slowly, “Well, none of the above. How’s about that?”

  Sanjay said, “Is it good? Or bad? Can you tell us that?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Up to you to decide if it’s good or bad. It’s the press, that’s who. Television.”

  Which was true, we realized as the van slowed to a halt on the slope of the hill and the sliding door on one side opened up.

  WE CAME DOWN to meet them, and the mood of our little group instantly changed. After all the dark events these past couple of days, seeing the press was a good thing. It meant contact with someone from the civilized outside, someone who wouldn’t take a shot at us because we were the wrong religion, ethnicity, political party—or because we were from the UN. We soon learned that the television crew consisted of an older cameraman, a female producer and a polished young man who was apparently the “talent.” On the windshield and side windows of the van the words AUSSIE TV were displayed with letters made from masking tape, and even the radio antenna flew a small Australian flag.

  They seemed as short on sleep as we were, stumbling out of the van. The cameraman seemed to be in his fifties, with a thick beard and a red nose that looked like it had been rearranged a couple of times in a barroom brawl or two. He carried his camera in one beefy hand. The woman producer was about twenty years younger than the cameraman, and seemed to be the same age as the on-air talent. She had on tight blue jeans, knee-high leather boots and a thick red down vest, and she had a clipboard in her hands. The talent yawned and rubbed at the back of his head. He had on dress shoes, dark slacks and one of those thigh-length trench coats that foreign correspondents must be issued with each time they get their passport stamped. There was a flurry of introductions and though I’m bad at names—I often forget them the moment I’ve heard them—I remembered that the cameraman’s name was Mick, the woman producer was Alice and the talent was John. Alice and John started to talk to Jean-Paul and Charlie, while Mick stayed behind, scratching at his beard.

  Karen said, “How long have you been out? Did you see anything this morning? Is it safe?”

  Mick grinned at her. “And g’mornin’ to you, luv. Let’s see. We’ve been out in this countryside for about a week now. What did we see this morning? Whole lotta nothing. Is it safe? Christ on a crutch, is anything safe in this country? Hmmm? All I know is that we’re Aussies, and so far nobody out in these woods has got a beef against Aussies.”

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked. “Looking for Site A?”

  Mick laughed, gestured to his two companions who were still talking loudly to Jean-Paul and Charlie. “Maybe they are, but you want to know a big secret? We’re lost. We’ve been lost for days, rumbling around all these deserted roads and little hamlets. Site A, Site B—who friggin’ cares? All those two care about is a good story, and we’ve had diddly these past few days. It’s like everybody either moved east or north, crossing the border. You boys and girls up to anything interesting?”

  Peter, with his arms crossed against his chest, said dryly, “Well, we found a couple of dead cows the other day.”

  I thought about what I had just done these past several hours, and the photos I had taken of those militiamen driving up to that farmhouse. I said, looking right at Peter, “And besides that we’ve been eating some swill, day after day, that som
eone claims to be food. You got anything good to eat in the van?”

  I saw Miriam cover her smiling mouth with her hand as Peter’s face turned red, and then he strolled away. Sanjay said, “Samuel’s telling the truth. You’ve got any food in there? We’re running kind of low.”

  “Sorry, mate, all we’ve got left is oatmeal and instant coffee,” Mick said. “I think we was hoping we could—Oops, time to get to work. Hold on.”

  Curious, I followed Mick as he went over to the producer and the correspondent. With a practiced move, Mick tossed the camera up and balanced it on his shoulder, and like magic, Alice, the producer, passed over a wireless microphone to John who held it under Jean-Paul’s chin. The microphone had the logo of their Australian television network, ABC, on one side. John looked over to Mick and said, “Ready?”

  “Yep. Count off, will you?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Three, two, one … All right, your name, please.”

  “Jean-Paul Cloutier.”

  “Could you spell your last name, please?”

  “Certainly. C-L-O-U-T-I-E-R.”

  “Your position?”

  “Section leader, war crimes investigative unit four, United Nations Force in the United States. UNFORUS.”

  By now all of us were grouped in a semicircle, watching Jean-Paul and the Australian television crew at work. The correspondent said, “Mister Cloutier, have you had any success in locating Site A?”

  “No, not yet,” Jean-Paul said. “Though we are confident that we will be able to find this particular war-crimes site.”

  “Before the deadline in a few days, when the current batch of war criminals in the dock are due to be released from The Hague?”

  “If not us, then someone else,” Jean-Paul said.

  Beside me Sanjay hid a smirk, and even Peter shook his head in disbelief at what Jean-Paul was saying. I think we were all feeling like we were having trouble finding our asses with our hands, and here he was, making a ridiculous prediction like that. What respect I had for Jean-Paul just took a little hit—like finding out your high-school biology teacher believed in creationism.