“All right. We’ll break here,” Toland called out. Daylight revealed him to be more than just a voice in the dark. He was a tall, thin man, his hair completely white — unusual for a man of thirty-six, but not for someone in his line of work.
Faulkener placed out flank security on either side and the rest of the men slumped to the ground, exhausted. Faulkener was the opposite of Toland in body type: short and stocky with heavily muscled arms and legs. He’d been the heavyweight boxing champion of the regiment before Toland.
“I suggest everyone take a bath and get cleaned up,” Toland said.
“Hell, we’re just going to get dirty again,” one of the new men replied, pulling his bush hat down over his eyes. Those who had served with Toland before were already beginning to strip down.
“Yes, but cleanliness is very important,” Toland replied, keeping his voice neutral.
“I’ll clean when I get out of this pigsty of a country,” the Australian joked.
Toland pulled the bolt back on his Sterling, the sound very loud in the morning air. “You’ll clean now.”
The Australian stared at him. “What the hell, mate? You queer or something?”
“I’m not your mate. I’m your commander. Take your clothes off, put them on the riverbank, then get in line.” He centered the muzzle of the submachine gun on the man. “Now strip.”
Soon there was a line of naked men standing waist deep in the water. The white ones had farmer’s tans, their torsos pale, their faces and forearms bronzed from the sun. Toland and Faulkener went through the men’s clothes and gear, very slowly and methodically.
Toland held up a plastic canteen and shook it. He turned it upside down. No water came out. He took his flashlight and peered in. “Ah, what do we have here?” Toland asked. He drew a knife and jabbed it into the canteen, splitting the side open. A plastic bag full of brownish powder fell out.
“Whose gear?”
The men all turned and looked at one of the Australians who had just joined them for this mission. The one who had complained about taking a bath. “Come here, mate,” Toland called out with a smile.
The man walked out of the water, his hands instinctively covering his groin. “I told you no drugs, didn’t I?” Toland asked.
“I didn’t—”
The first round caught the man in the stomach, and Toland casually raised his aim, stitching a pattern up the chest. The man flew backward into the river, arms splayed, blood swirling in the brown water.
The men redonned their clothes and gear. “Make sure you drink upstream from that,” Faulkener advised the men, pointing at the body of the Australian, which was slowly floating away downstream. “We’ll rest here for a few hours.”
Toland retired to the shade of a tree. Faulkener joined him there and handed him a sheet of paper. “The message Andrews received last night.”
Toland looked at it — a long list of letters that made no sense. “They encoded it. Must be getting worried about someone listening in.”
Faulkener didn’t reply. He took his knife out and began sharpening the already gleaming edge.
Toland retrieved a Ziploc bag from his breast pocket. Inside it was a small notepad. He turned to the eleventh page — equaling the day of the month they received the message on — and began matching the letters of the message with the letter on the page. Then, using a tri-graph, a standard page that had three letter groups on it, he began deciphering the message. It was slow work, made more difficult by the need to figure where one word ended and the next one began. After twenty minutes he had it done:
TO TOLAND
FROM THE MISSION
LINK UP WITH PARTY VICINITY PACAAS NOVOS ACROSS BORDER IN BRAZIL AT COORDINATES SEVEN TWO THREE SIX FOUR EIGHT IN TWELVE HOURS
FOLLOW ALL ORDERS OF PARTY TO BE MET
BONUS ASSURED A MILLION A MAN
TIME IS OF ESSENCE
CONFIRM ORDERS RECEIVED
END
Toland pulled out his map and looked at the coordinates. About fifty kilometers north and east. He handed the message to Faulkener.
“Why don’t they just drop this party off at one of these dirt runways in-country?” Faulkener asked.
“The Americans have this area blanketed with radar. To track drug runners. Whatever The Mission is up to, they must want to keep it secret.”
Faulkener looked at the map. “It’s a long walk and not much time. What’s the rush?”
“We can do it.” Toland rubbed the stubble of his beard. “I wonder what they want us to do after we link up with this guy?”
Faulkener nodded toward the merks. “Some of these boys won’t want to go farther into the jungle.”
Toland laid a hand on the stubby barrel of his Sterling. “Anyone says anything, they can talk to my complaint department. We move out in fifteen minutes.”
“They are afraid.” Lo Fa lowered the binoculars. “But they are many. More than we have here.”
“Are you afraid?” Che Lu asked.
Lo Fa laughed. “Mother-Professor, I am not one of your stupid students to be manipulated so easily by your words.”
He pointed to the west, where the bulk of Qian-Ling was highlighted against the setting sun. It rose out of the countryside, over 3,000 feet high, so large it was hard to imagine that human hands had made the mountain. And it was not a mountain, but a tomb, a monument built before the birth of Christ to honor the Emperor Gao-zong and his empress, the only empress in the entire history of China.
Or at least that was what Che Lu had thought. Now she wondered why it was really built and who was behind the building. The man-made hill dwarfed even the Great Pyramid of Giza, making it the largest tomb in the world. The amount of labor needed to move that amount of dirt and rock was staggering to conceptualize. Trees and bushes had taken root on the mountain, and it looked almost natural except for the symmetrical shape. Around the tomb were various statues, particularly on the wide road leading up to it, where rows and rows of statues were lined, to symbolize all the people and officials who had come to honor the funeral procession of Gao-zong when he was buried in A.D. 18.
What Lo Fa was pointing to, though, was not the tomb or the statues, but the soldiers, tanks, and trucks surrounding the tomb.
“They fear to enter, but they will kill us to keep us from doing so,” Lo Fa said. “And your ridicule will not make me throw myself under the treads of one of their tanks. I have not gotten to be this old without a little bit of common sense.”
Che Lu shook Nabinger’s notebook in front of Lo Fa. “But we have to get in.”
Lo Fa squatted. His guerrilla band was spread out around in the grove of trees they were hiding in. They were five kilometers from the tomb, having force-marched here after recovering the notebook.
“I came here because you insisted,” Lo Fa said. He looked around to make sure none of his men were listening. “I came because I respect you, Che Lu. We made the Long March together.”
Che Lu looked at her comrade in surprise. In all their years he had never called her by name.
Lo Fa continued. “But if I am to go further, if I am to ask these men to go further, I must know why. I must know what is so important about this old tomb. What was so important for the Russians and the Americans to send men to die getting into and out of it? Why does the army flutter about like moths around a fire — attracted but scared of the flames?” He leaned close, his wrinkled face close to hers. “Tell me about Qian-Ling.”
Che Lu rested her back against the rough pack she had carried. She was not young anymore. Her body ached from the march. “You have a right to know, old friend. I will tell you as much as I know and as much as I can guess. But the truth is inside, and that is why we must get in.