EIGHT
M
OST RURAI. ARMY POSTS ARE PRETTY BIG. EVEN IF THE BUILT
infrastructure is compact, there is often a huge
acreage of spare land reserved around it. This was
my first tour at Fort Bird, but I guessed it would be no
exception. It would be like a small neat town surrounded by
a county-sized horseshoe-shaped government-owned tract of
poor sandy earth with low hills and shallow valleys and a thin
covering of trees and scrub. Over the post’s long life the trees
would have imitated the grey ashes of the Ardennes and the
mighty firs of Central Europe and the swaying palms of
the Middle East. Whole generations of infantry training theory
would have come and gone there. There would be old trenches
and foxholes and firing pits. There would be bermed rifle
ranges and barbed-wire obstacles and isolated huts where
psychiatrists would challenge masculine emotional security.
There would be concrete bunkers and exact replicas of
government offices where Special Forces would train to rescue
hostages. There would be cross-country running routes where
out-of-shape boot camp inductees would tire and stagger and
where some of them would collapse and die. The whole thing
would be ringed by miles of ancient rusty wire and claimed for
110
the DoD for ever by warning notices fixed to every third fence
post.
I called a bunch of specialists and went out to the motor pool
and found a Humvee that had a working flashlight in the clip on
the dash. Then I fired it up and followed the private’s directions
south and west of the inhabited areas until I was on a rough
sandy track leading straight out into the hinterland. The darkness
was absolute. I drove more than a mile and then I saw
another Humvee’s headlights in the distance. The private’s
vehicle was parked at a sharp angle about twenty feet off the
road and its high beams were shining into the trees and casting
long evil shadows deep into the woods. The private himself was
leaning up against its hood. His head was bowed and he was
looking down at the ground.
First question: how does a guy on motor patrol in the dark
spot a corpse hidden way the hell out here, deep in the trees?
I parked next to him and took the flashlight out of the clip
and slid out into the cold and immediately understood how.
There was a trail of clothing starting in the centre of the track.
Right on the crown of the camber was a single boot. It was a
standard-issue black leather combat boot, old, worn, not very
well shined. West of it was a sock, a yard away. Then another
boot, another sock, a BDU jacket, an olive drab undershirt. The
clothes were all spaced out in a line, like a grotesque parody of
the domestic fantasy where you get home and find abandoned
lingerie items leading you up the stairs to the bedroom. Except
that the jacket and the undershirt were stained dark with blood.
I checked the condition of the ground at the edge of the
track. It was rock hard and frosted over. I wasn’t going to
compromise the scene. I wasn’t going to blur any footprints,
because there weren’t going to be any footprints. So I took a
deep breath and followed the trail of clothes to its conclusion.
When I got there I understood why my guy had thrown up
twice. At his age I might have thrown up three times.
The corpse was face down in the frozen leaf litter at the base
of a tree. Naked. Medium height, compact. It was a white guy,
but he was mostly covered in blood. There were bone-deep
knife cuts all over his arms and shoulders. From behind I could
see that his face looked beaten and swollen. His cheeks were
111
protruding. His dog tags were missing. There was a slim leather
belt cinched tight around his neck. It had a brass buckle and
the long tail looped away from his head. There was some kind
of thick pink-white liquid pooled on his back. He had a broken
tree limb rammed up his ass. Below it the ground was black