The Reckoning by Jeff Long

were staring at the grass on all sides of them.
    Then Kleat waved at the night. “Bugs. Nothing.”
    The clouds opened to the moon, and the distant mountain revealed itself as a pile of low hills crowned with dense forest.
    â€œOkay?” Kleat said. “It’s there. The man said it was there. There it is.”
    Molly gazed up at the mountain.
    â€œAn oxcart path,” Duncan said, dismissing it. “A mountain.”
    Kleat was having none of it. He grabbed a handful of grass and gave a fierce yank. It was a foolish gesture. The roots were deep and this was saw grass, with firm, sharp blades. His fist slid up and came away empty. Kleat snapped his teeth in pain and opened his cut palm. When he shook his hand, drops of his blood spattered into the dust like petite explosions.
    Â 
    They followed the oxcart path. The convoy climbed through grass growing higher than the doors. The grass stroked the windows like fingers of seaweed. Behind them, the truck’s headlights swam through an ocean of brilliant green lines.
    Their pell-mell highway dash slowed to a crawl. The path was rutted and winding and hard to see, but it rose gently. The shovels and jerry cans piled in the rear quit clattering. They merely rustled at the curves. Molly could practically feel the grass slithering along the undercarriage.
    She relaxed, grateful for the quiet and the sinuous path. With each looping turn, the moon shifted in the sky. It seemed to have grown to twice its normal size, as if they were rising off the planet.
    â€œWe’re farther north than I thought,” said Duncan. “We’re reaching into the Annamite range. The mountains run all the way to China. It’s wild country. The lowlanders stay clear of it. The hill tribes live up here pretty much the way they have for ten thousand years, taking animals, throwing down a little corn between the trees.”
    â€œHistory,” whispered Luke.
    At three-thirty they crested a ridgetop and stopped. Ahead stood all that remained of a bridge, a single stone pillar rising from the wide riverbed. Beyond that, higher up, a tall forest took over the grassland.
    â€œNow where?” said Duncan.
    They got out, except for Luke, who once again left them to their own conclusions. Molly faced back the way they had come, expecting their path to be flattened by the tires. But the grass had folded shut behind them. They would have to hunt their way down just as carefully.
    To her surprise, the logging road lay far below them. Winding back and forth, they’d ascended hundreds of vertical feet. From this height, you could see moonlit paddy fields far to the west, and curious rows of ponds. They were not ponds, she realized, but bomb craters.
    Kleat paced along the riverbed rim like a trapped tiger. “We’re close,” he said. “It’s right there in front of us.”
    â€œIt’s just a forest,” said Duncan.
    â€œIt’s cover,” said Kleat. “It makes sense. We’re looking for the remains of an armored cavalry unit.”
    â€œHow do you know that?” asked Molly.
    â€œWho do you think the Blackhorse Regiment was? The Eleventh Armored Cavalry. They were famous, George Patton’s men. ‘Find the bastards and pile on,’ his orders. Nine men, Luke said. That would have been enough to crew two tanks or armored personnel carriers. That’s what we’re looking for. Anything that large, left in the open, would have been spotted by plane or satellite years ago. I don’t know how these guys got lost. But those trees are where they went.”
    â€œNot across that bridge, they didn’t,” Duncan said.
    â€œWhy not? Bombs were falling like rain all through this area. Our pilot was returning from a run along this very borderland. Sometime after the Blackhorse soldiers crossed over, the bridge must have caught a bomb. That would explain why they never got out.”
    â€œExcept the bridge is