The Reckoning by Jeff Long Page A

too primitive,” Duncan said. “See these stones? It was a cantilever design. That dates it to a thousand years ago, or earlier. A bridge like that couldn’t have taken the weight of a tank. And look at how the building stones have been shoved down-river over time. Some of them are huge. No, this fell to pieces centuries ago.”
    â€œThe closer we get, the less you care,” Kleat said. “Or are you afraid of something?”
    Molly stood away from them. The night air was a joy to breathe. She actually felt cold in her sundress.
    â€œEven if they got across thirty years ago, it doesn’t mean we should follow them,” Duncan said. “Look at the width of that riverbed. It carries some major water. Once the rains begin, we’ll never be able to cross back. We’d be stuck over there for the next six months. And that, not a bombed bridge, would explain why they were never seen again.”
    â€œI don’t see any rain.”
    â€œIt’s coming.”
    â€œJune 23, 1970,” Kleat said to him. “That’s the day they went missing. They were part of the Cambodian incursion. Nixon sent them. That’s what Kent State was all about.”
    â€œI remember.”
    â€œSomehow these nine soldiers got separated from the main body. Maybe night was coming on. The enemy was out there. They couldn’t stay in the open.”
    â€œAnd you think they drove this far north? We’re halfway to Laos.”
    â€œMaybe they were going for the high ground. Maybe they saw the trees. Maybe they were being pursued.”
    Molly left them arguing. The night, the dark morning, was too fine to spoil. Venus stood bright. The constellations beckoned. For a month, swamped by haze on the plains, she had missed the stars. Down there, in another couple of hours, the dawn people would be plundering the site, dodging through the mist. Up here, she felt free. She clutched her arms across her chest and meandered along the broad rim.
    At first she didn’t notice the strange ribbing under her shoes. It rose out of the ground only gradually. At last the notches threatened to trip her. She bent to run her fingers across the imprints and they were as hard as ceramic.
    â€œDuncan,” she called. “Kleat.”
    They were arguing. She called louder.
    â€œWhat?” said Kleat.
    She showed them the marks on the ground.
    Kleat had a six-battery bludgeon of a flashlight. He shined it on the rows of corrugated imprints, each the same fourteen or fifteen inches wide, leading off like dinosaur footprints. The track marks ran a hundred yards before sinking back into the earth. The clay had captured the passage of vehicles. The sun had baked it and made it impervious to three decades of weather.
    â€œBlackhorse,” Kleat said. He identified the prints as the marks of two armored cavalry assault vehicles, ACAVs, both the same size, one following the other.
    â€œThey came this way, up the hill, along the river, chasing a way to cross without the bridge. What more do you need?” he said to Duncan. “They’re over there. They’re waiting.”

12.
    They came to the pass where the stream spread across the wide riverbed, and the Eleventh Cavalry strays had left more prints in the clay. The water, at the deepest point, came axle high to the Land Cruiser, though it built against Molly’s door on the upstream side, slapping and gurgling. The moon made a skin of silver on it. Dangling her hand out the window, she found the water had the temperature of blood or bathwater.
    â€œIt’s got to be one of these drainages,” Duncan muttered at his map. She could hear him back there, twisting the paper to try to fit it to the terrain. Couldn’t he see the handle of the Big Dipper, the stars skipping up to the North Star? They weren’t lost, only in motion.
    She closed her eyes and, midstream, they seemed adrift on a raft. Her feet were wet, and she saw an inch