by James Rouch
“You should take an escort, Major. And if you find a dump, watch out for booby-traps. I have lost men that way.”
Replacing the buckshot round in his shotgun for a cartridge filled with flechettes, Revell nodded agreement. It was Ripper his gaze lit on first. It wasn't the best choice he could have made but it was the quickest. Within a couple of minutes he was wondering if it would have been better to take his time and pick some one else instead.
“Sure nice of you to invite me along, Major. Sergeant Hyde had me cramped up, all alone, on radio watch in the Land Rover all day. I feel like the original dead-end kid. Like I told the Sarge...”
Revell let him rattle on, taking little notice. Not that telling him to shut up would have made any lasting difference. He'd only start up again with a few minutes. If indeed he could hold out that long. Burke described the young PFC as having verbal diarrhoea. It was apt.
Most of them had got used to him, but the non-stop chatter, the never ending stream of peculiar stories about his weird family back home, it got to you occasionally. That was very likely why Hyde had set him in such an isolated post all day.
To reach the beaten track Revell had spotted they'd have to skirt the scene of utter devastation that was all that was left of the Warpac position.
Although well trodden where it wound beneath the trees, the path was only wide enough for one. Now Revell reconsidered the merits of his choice of companion. Ripper had the eyes of a hawk. If the route had been mined he'd spot it in good time.
At a cautious but steady pace they followed the track. No others diverged from it. Several times, at irregular intervals they passed discarded vodka bottles. Most were broken, many were cloudy with age.
In their condition, Revell saw further evidence that this was not some fall-back position. Obviously the enemy had been in occupation for a lengthy period.
The path climbed steadily, but they didn't have to exert themselves. Now and again there were unidentifiable scraps of rag caught on low branches, or trampled into the ground.
After a half kilometre Revell felt sure that it would only lead to some outpost situated on high ground, perhaps with a view of the road. He could imagine the troops of the relief detail swigging from the bottles as soon as they were out of sight of their officers and NCOs.
The track reached its highest point, but there was no machine gun nest or observation post. Down a steep slope lay a small lightly wooded valley. A stream ran through the centre of it.
Of all the sights that in a moment of idle speculation, Revell might have thought he'd see, this was by far the least expected.
Filling the floor of the valley was another scene of total destruction, but a very different one from that they had recently left.
THIRTEEN
The refugee camp had been put to the torch. A few shelters had escaped and they stood forlornly amid the mass of charred wreckage.
“It's the first one I've ever seen with defences like that.” As they walked nearer, Ripper could see the ribbons of rusted razor wire roughly fastened to crude stakes. At regular intervals stood the half burned stumps of watch towers.
Revell too had been noting the unusual features of the place. Experience led him to estimate that it had once held two and a half thousand displaced people. That was twice the number the casual observer might have hazarded, but he was familiar with the lean-to building techniques the refugees used. The method led to a lot of people packing into a surprisingly compact area.
They passed through an opening, stepping across a toppled, strongly built gate. A few curls of smoke still rose from the ruins.
“Those towers wouldn't give them much of a warning.” From the remains of one close at hand Revell made a calculated guess at the height it had stood. “But it would give someone a good view of the camp.”
“Like a Red with a machine gun.” Ripper plucked a Cindy doll from the remains of a hut. Half the face had burnt away and the little dress had crisped to a brittle shroud.
“So now we know how the Russians could put so many man hours into the defence positions by the road.” Walking across the wreckage, Revell was at least glad to see no evidence of bodies. “Looks like they took their slave labourers with them.”
“At least they're still alive then.” Scuffing his foot through a pile of cinders Ripper uncovered smouldering fragments of thick cardboard. He placed the disfigured doll on top of the smouldering ashes. Flame broke out about it, and it shrivelled to nothing. The air filled with black specks of plastic as the miniature pyre completed the immolation.
On the far side of the camp, out beyond the wire, was a small marked off area containing a sprinkling of crude crosses, and headstones made from scraps of chipboard.
It was not something Revell could regard as sinister. The death rate among refugees was high, from many causes, the majority natural. The numbers represented in that pathetic graveyard were in no way exceptional.
They turned to leave, stepping over the wire where it sagged after posts had burned away. A movement caught Revell’s attention.
On a broad freshly turned tract of the valley floor, two dogs were scratching and growling at the ground. He'd noticed the bare earth on the way down, but had dismissed it as simply a vegetable patch. Now the animals' actions drew it to his attention.
Even as the hounds turned toward them he was un-slinging the shotgun. Foam flecking the sides of their mouths, tongues lolling over bared teeth, the dogs bounded toward them.
The storm of steel darts caught them when they were still thirty meters away. Deforming into hooks as they penetrated, the flechettes ripped them open and sent them bounding and twisting into the air. The one that was still alive when they crashed back to the ground, Ripper dispatched with a single round through the tormented creature's skull.
“Why would a couple of brutes like them be interested in grubbing up carrots?” Ripper followed the major toward the site of the dogs' attempted excavations.
“Let's find out,”
Picking up a scrap of splintered timber, Revell scraped aside a few clods of earth. Within a moment his efforts revealed a forearm, then the remainder of the limb. A little more effort uncovered the remainder of the body.
“Hell, those dogs have been making a meal of it.” Above the bloodstained collar of a civilian jacket, the corpse's throat was almost severed. Ragged edges of flesh surrounded a wound that exposed shattered vertebrae.
“They hadn't dug down to it yet.” Revell knelt to make a closer examination, wrapping his scarf across his face against the stench. “This was done by a bullet, heavy calibre, fired from very close range.”
“I can see something underneath it, Major. Can I have that length of wood.” Ripper worked hard for several minutes, finally levering the body aside. It flopped over onto its front, to reveal portions of at least two more beneath it.
“Jesus, what have we lit on here?” Ripper looked at the dimensions of the plot, and lifted his feet uneasily, as he realized the ground gave beneath them. It had an almost springy consistency, like standing on a really deep mattress. “You don't think they're all in here, do you. Better then two thousand civvies?”
“Could be.” Revelled indicated the first body, the one the ravenous dogs had been after. “He must have been the last of the working party the Commies used to do the heavy work. If they'd made a better job of burying him we'd probably never have stumbled across this... this war crime.”
“So what we going to do about it, Major? We ain't just going to let it alone, are we? Let them get away with it?”
“No way. This time we've got the Reds dead to rights. This territory has been in their hands for better than a year. Soon as we get back I'll slap in a report. Then we stand back, well back. Come the morning there are going to be a lot of very excited people running about here.”
“The one thing we don't want is for anyone to get excited.” Not even unfastening his seat belt, the senator spoke to Revell through the open cabin door of the Blackhaw
k helicopter. “How many of you men know about this... this incident.”
The use of that carefully considered last word put Revell on his guard immediately. “All of them. Is there some reason it should have been kept quiet?”
Behind the politician, visible only as dark outlines in the shadow of the cabin, were two other figures.
“You're here to investigate, aren't you. Lay the blame for this where it belongs?” Having watched a squad of fatigue-clad civilians uncovering the charnel pit, Revell was at a loss to understand why they had stopped work at that point, and stood back. “What about identifying them, or autopsies ... No one is even doing a body count.”
Now some of the civilians were placing what looked like bulky incendiary devices at close spaced intervals across the top layer.
“What are they doing? How come there are no photographs being taken. Just what the hell is going on?”
One of the vague figures at the rear of the cabin leaned forward to whisper in the senator's ear. He returned an inaudible reply before turning again to Revell.
“No need to get excited, Major. Truth is we're not here as any sort of inquiry commission. In fact, officially we're not here at all.”
“We're here...” Again the senator was involved in a muttered exchange with his unidentifiable companions... “We're here to impress upon you, and your men, that in the public interest news of your discovery must go no further. You and your outfit are doing a fine job, a fine job. But just you get on with what you're supposed to be doing and leave this little matter to us. It's all being taken care of.”
“So why destroy the evidence without making any record of it?” A strong and ugly suspicion in Revell’s mind was fast gelling into a certainty.
“What we have here, Major, is a serious health hazard...” With an effort Revell kept his voice down, but he could not prevent an edge creeping into it. “Senator, we are not talking about violation of a city health code that you're fixing for a friend or relative. There are around two thousand dead people over there. The Reds did it, only a few days ago, so what are you intending to do about it?”
The senator's tone abruptly changed, from an ingratiating friendliness to hard impatience. “You've been told, Major. You go along with us in this or...”
“Perhaps I can deal with this, Senator.” Unbelting himself, one of the chopper's passengers alighted. Revell wasn't surprised, after hearing the accent, to see that it was a British officer. He was though, to see that he was a full-blown lieutenant general.
“Let's have a word in private, shall we, Major?” The general led away from the Blackhawk. “These damned civilians don't speak the same language as you and me.”
“A mass grave, a war crime, carries the same meaning in any language, who ever says it, sir.” Revell had made a quick scan of the general's medal ribbons. Of the twenty or so only two were combat or campaign decorations. The most recent was the Falklands ribbon, so for a long time the general had been a staff officer.
“Don't get clever, Major. I don't like it and won't put up with it. And you'd do well to heed the senator's words. He had a lot of people breathing down his neck on this. If he has to break you to keep this filthy mess under wraps, then that is what he will do.”
“Why does it have to be kept under wraps anyway?”
“What we have here, Major, is a very delicate situation. I've had a word with your CO, Colonel Lippincott. Not a man to mince words. He said he spoke to you only recently. Says he gave you some idea of the big picture. I get the impression he considers you to be rather a wild man, but that he admires your fighting qualities.”
“You were saying it was a delicate situation.” “So I was. And you had best believe it. Not that I'm involved in the PR side of things, but every general officer has to bear such implications in mind. There has been a lot of difficulty selling the idea of a truce to the population in Europe's unoccupied territories and in the U.S. When we were tagging along behind the Warpac retreat the press laid it on rather too thick. Gave every armchair strategist the impression that we had them beaten.”
It was tempting, Revell almost interrupted with the names of his men who had been killed or disabled while “tagging along” behind the Warpac withdrawal.
“So consequently when we signed the truce papers there was a considerable body of opinion that couldn't grasp why, if we had them on the ropes, we didn't put them down for a count.”
“A puzzle that was not confined to civilians, sir.” “Quite. The whole blasted thing is not made any easier by the Communists already having committed three flagrant breaches of the truce. And that is in the first forty-eight hours. What we don't need are the spectacular headlines your find would create. Stoke the fires of the public's righteous indignation only a little higher and we'll all get singed. Are .you with me?”
“Every dirty inch of the way.”
“Yes, I could see you were getting up the senator's nose. Don't try to do the same to me. I understand you've upset one general already this week. You won't get away with it a second time.”
“Do you expect my men to stand by and see this murder swept under the carpet?”
“That is exactly what I want them to do. What they'll be ordered to do by you.”
Picking a sprig of heather, the general gazed to where final preparations were being made for the destruction of the remains of the refugee victims. “Look, Major. I find this business every bit as distasteful as you do. But you and I know that if the damned politicians smother this episode, the Communists will get caught out doing the same or worse elsewhere.”
“Who's the third passenger?” Revell could see that the senator was once again in earnest conversation with the unseen member of the delegation.
“The one doing the nudging and whispering? Not too sure myself. A big noise in the West German coalition government I believe, high up in the Green Party. Acts and speaks more alike a deep pink to my way of thinking.”
“Will this ever be made public?”
The general shrugged. “Who knows, perhaps when the truce collapses a few lines will be issued.”
“Then it'll be swamped by other stories. Won't even make the back page.” “You're catching on, Major.”
“What about your workforce. Can you be sure they'll keep their mouths shut?” Revell almost gagged as an eddy of wind brought the stench of the charnel pit. He noticed some of the men in fatigues were taking off their respirators and throwing up. “How have you explained it to them?”
“We don't have to explain the situation to them, any more than we needed to in your case. Far as they're concerned they're simply clearing up a mass grave after an epidemic. The reason we made a point of seeing you is that you and your bunch of cowboys have a reputation for writing your own orders. In this case I'm telling you it is not going to happen. You've got an order. You'll follow it to the letter.”
At the bottom of the valley the first of the charges detonated. There was no noise, just a sudden eruption of dense white smoke. It had hardly begun to spread on the light breeze when another followed it, and then others at three second intervals.
The pall merged to hide the surface of the grave, then began to turn dark at its base as the furnace heat of the thermite ignited the corpses.
On the far side of the valley the last of the fatigue party were boarding a battle- weary Huey. As the last of them scrambled aboard, the chopper lifted, creating a local storm of twigs and dust. The ferocious downdraft gusted the bonfire smoke toward the officers.
“When we flew in,” the general took out a handkerchief and made as if to hold it over his mouth and nose, then decided against it, “we passed over the Russian battalion you're supervising.”
Revell sensed there was more to the general's remark than a mere polite observation. He expected there was more to come and waited, not expecting good news.
“You seem to have them working well. I know that's not easy. But if I were you, I'd get them to slow down. The chances are that with b
oth sides needing this truce it could, despite everything, continue for quite a while.”
“We've ten days to finish this work, then we go back.” Tm afraid it's not quite that straightforward, Major Revell.” The general dabbed at his streaming eyes with a corner of his handkerchief as the acrid smoke swept about them.
“As I said, your combat company has an unfortunate reputation in some circles. And of course the fewer people in circulation who know about this discovery, the more likely it is to stay a secret...”
“So we are going to be left to rot out here until the truce is over, and what we know can't be an embarrassment to anyone.”
“Those are not the words I would have chosen to use, Major, but they convey the gist of the idea, except in one respect. The time scale. Two days, two weeks, two months: who knows how long the truce is going to last. What I can tell you, though, is that if it lasts two years you'll still be stuck out here. And there are no guarantees about you returning then.”
“Seems like my combat company has got enemies on both sides.” “How right you are, Major. How very right you are.”
FOURTEEN
“What are we looking for?” Sergeant Hyde stood with the major and watched the progress of the excavation.
The explosion that had buried the bunker had loosened all the surrounding soil and the Russians were having to shore-up as they dug deeper.
“I want to find out what Warpac unit was here when that happened.” He knew he didn't have to explain what “that” was.
“Then we should know soon.” Hyde shouted a warning to the diggers and they scrambled clear as a side wall of the pit collapsed. “Fairly soon, that is.” He had to shout again to get them back to work, and away from the water bucket. “Pity no one at HQ can tell us; this has taken fifty men off the work on the road.”
