Twilight Page 4

  Peter stepped around the side of the Toyota. “What’s going on? And what sort of a spoof?”

  “There,” Jean-Paul said. “Charlie saw this before we ran into it.”

  I got closer and saw the “it.” A length of heavy string or fish line, stretched across the road. My throat tightened up and I stepped back. A tripwire. I remembered a slide-show briefing for us new arrivals, weeks ago, on booby traps and their uses. The other end of the tripwire could be attached to anything from a land mine to an artillery shell to homemade napalm. They were called IEDs: Improvised Explosive Devices. Rumor had it that some were built from the firsthand knowledge of local veterans who had served in Iraq years back. Some of the photos in the slide show displayed graphically what could happen to you after a tripwire had been used and one-inch-diameter steel ball bearings had come scything at a human target at waist height. I cleared my throat and said, “Charlie, how in hell did you see that?”

  Charlie smiled, rubbed at his strong chin. “Lucky for us it’s been a wet morning. The dew collected on the string, so I could see it before we ran into it.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Peter breathed.

  Charlie kept on smiling. “Doesn’t make much difference,” he said. “Still looks like a spoof.”

  “Like Peter said, what kind of a spoof?” Jean-Paul asked, still with that schoolmaster’s voice.

  Charlie motioned us to the string and we walked to the left side of the road. One end of the tripwire was tied firmly around a sapling, and when Charlie tugged the other end I flinched and both Jean-Paul and Peter swore and backed away, like me, expecting the sudden crump of a booby trap going off.

  But nothing happened. The string became limp in Charlie’s hands, and he tossed it to the side, among the tall grass and brush. “A spoof,” he said. “A fake booby trap, maybe to slow us down, maybe to give somebody amusement.”

  “Maybe those two boys,” I offered.

  Charlie nodded in my direction. “Perhaps. A spoof,” he repeated.

  “Fine,” Peter said. “A damn joke. Can we get moving, see if that farm is for real—or is that a spoof, too?”

  Charlie looked over at Jean-Paul, giving him a knowing glance. I wasn’t sure what was exchanged in those looks, but Jean-Paul gave a little nod, as if something had been settled earlier. “All right, we move on. But we move on in helmets and body armor.”

  Peter protested. “What for? That bloody stuff’s hot and heavy.”

  Charlie looked at Peter, and the gaze made me flinch. “Better to be hot and heavy than be on the side of the road, bleeding out, waiting for a medevac chopper to dust you off,” Charlie said. “I’m the military advisor and escort to this little outfit, and right now I’m advising helmets and body armor, and your team leader’s agreed with me. So. You’ve got a fucking problem with that? Sir?”

  Peter shook his head, and I decided I liked Charlie even more. “No, no problem,” our Brit said.

  WE RESUMED DRIVING after about fifteen minutes or so of digging through our gear, pulling out the black body-armor vests and the light blue helmets with the white UN crest. The helmets were dented and faded, the crest depicting the globe and olive branches chipped and worn away. Miriam held up hers and shook her head. “Makes me wonder what places this helmet has traveled, what horrors it has witnessed.”

  Peter said, “Is it clean? Is it whole?”

  “Yes—why do you ask?”

  Peter smiled, showing his teeth, which needed a good brushing. “Just be glad there are no bloodstains or holes or flecks of brain matter inside. I’ve seen it before. Bad luck and all that.”

  I saw the sweat stains on the green webbing inside my helmet and thought about what Miriam had said. She was right, whatever Peter might say. These helmets had been used and re-used. With money tight for peacekeeping, allowances had to be made. I put on my helmet, tightened the chinstrap, and instantly felt ridiculous, like an impostor. My buds at the Star would probably wet themselves laughing at seeing me dressed like this. We helped each other with the Velcro straps of the body armor, making sure that our radiation monitors were not obstructed by the material. I was pleased when Miriam turned down Peter’s offer of assistance and asked me to help.

  Peter pretended that it didn’t bother him when I stood behind her and gingerly pulled the straps tight against her. It seemed a special, intimate moment, and I had an urge just to stand there, my hands around her slim waist. Then Miriam turned and smiled and said, “Fine. Let’s go, then.”

  We followed the lead Toyota again, though slower, and Peter said, “I still don’t like what happened. Spoof or no spoof, someone’s fucking with our heads. This place is supposed to be pacified. I don’t like it, not at all.”

  “Maybe it was the kids,” I said again, seeing how the land was beginning to rise up, fences with barbed wire and fields all around us. Some of the mist started to burn off.

  “Well, maybe it was the daddies of those kids, looking to see what we do in case we spot a booby trap or obstruction in the roadway. Now they know our hand signals, how we’ll disperse, the distances we aim to put between each other. Easier for them to take us out.”

  “So,” Miriam said, trying to lean forward to talk to us without bumping her helmeted head on the roof of the Toyota. “What should we do? Go back to the hotel? Try to fill the swimming pool? Is that it?”

  “No, but Jean-Paul could get on the horn there and get us some backup, besides that Marine,” Peter said. “I’d feel a hell of a lot better with an APC in front of us, that’s for sure.”

  I folded my arms, saw brake lights come on again up front. “Aren’t enough to go around, you know that.”

  Miriam added, “Besides, this area’s pacified. That’s what all the maps said.”

  “Sure,” Peter said. “But remember what Sammy here said last night. Did anybody tell the paramilitaries what kind of maps they should be using?”

  Then we all shut up as the lead Toyota turned right and started going up a dirt driveway. We followed and I swung my head around, to check on the third Land Cruiser. Sanjay and Karen were back there but I didn’t see any laughter, any smiles. It’s hard to stay in a good mood while wearing a helmet and body armor. I saw something else I didn’t like: two black mailboxes, torn from their wooden posts and flung to the ground.

  The driveway went up about a hundred meters, and Peter said, “I surely do take it all back. That sure don’t look like a spoof to me, mates, does it now?”

  I didn’t answer, just trying to take it all in. There had once been a large farmhouse here, with a barn and a couple of outbuildings. But the windows were all shattered and there were scorch marks where fires had burned. In front was a large dirt turnaround and all three Land Cruisers maneuvered so that they were facing back down the driveway, for easy escape. A tractor was on its side, and a pickup truck was on flat tires, its body rust-red from having burned some time ago. We got out and Jean-Paul motioned us to stay behind. I felt my hands quivering as Charlie went into the rear of his Toyota and came out hefting a utility belt from which hung various items of equipment. He was also holding an M-16 rifle. Unlike the rest of us, his helmet looked like it belonged on him. Karen and Sanjay joined us, standing behind the front of the Toyota where the tires and engine block might protect us if something bad were to happen.

  Karen said, exasperation in her voice, “Damn it, there he goes again. A man with a gun. Ninety percent of the world’s problems—and one hundred percent of our particular problems—would be eliminated if we could figure out a way to get rid of men with guns.”

  I think I surprised everyone there—including myself—by saying, “Don’t be so quick to get rid of this particular man. He’d die fighting to protect you, Karen, so show some appreciation, why don’t you?”

  Karen made a dismissive noise and looked to Sanjay for something, maybe reassurance. But Sanjay was watching with the rest of us as Charlie carefully walked around the buildings, stepping in and out for a moment or three. He then w
ent into the two-story farmhouse. The building was painted bright yellow, which made the scorch marks around the broken windows that bit more dramatic. I looked out beyond the trees, wondering if the gunmen had come from there or if they had been so blatant as to come right up the driveway.

  Charlie came out of the house, the M-16 slung over his shoulder, and I realized then that my legs had relaxed—earlier they had been threatening to start shaking. Charlie met with Jean-Paul and they talked for a moment. Then Jean-Paul came over to us, shaking his head.

  “No bodies, but there looks to be evidence in the barn and in the downstairs living room,” he said quietly. “Time for all of us to get to work.”

  There. For the first time since I had joined the team I had heard those quiet words. I went with Peter and Miriam to the rear of our Toyota, where each of us pulled out our work rucksack.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I wasn’t sure who to follow—those going into the house or those going into the barn—but when Miriam headed to the open doorway of the barn I joined her, my heavy rucksack dangling from one hand. We stood there for a moment, letting our eyes adjust to the gloom inside. I was surprised at the concrete floor of the barn: such an expenditure wasn’t to be expected in such a poor part of the country. Before us were empty stalls, bags of feed and fertilizer, and one area piled up with hay bales. One wooden wall was splintered and broken, like something had battered it fast and with great violence, and on the concrete below the wall hay had been spread around.

  Miriam stood by the wall, started toeing away some of the hay. “Peter, Samuel,” she said, her voice as serious as I’d ever heard it. “We’ve got bloodstains here.”

  Peter started undoing his rucksack. “And we’ve got impact rounds in the far wall. Looks like someone got lined up and shot.”

  “Yes,” Miriam said.

  I felt like I could not say a thing. They had been to such places before, had had experiences, had a history with each other. All I had was my own rucksack and my own pitiful tools. I spared a glance as Peter started working, examining the bullet holes in the chewed-up wall, making soft little exclamations of delight as he found empty brass casings on the concrete. Each casing was picked up and placed inside a tiny plastic bag. Miriam worked just as diligently but much more quietly as she gently brushed away the strands of hay covering the floor. Each of them was now wearing latex gloves.

  I took out my own tools: a small laptop, a digital camera and a portable satellite uplink station. I powered up everything and when the camera was ready I input the day’s date and time and our coordinates—with the GPS signal they were accurate to a meter or two. Then I got to work also, photographing Miriam and Peter, and then photographing the evidence as well. It was quiet in the large barn as we worked, and I tried not to let my imagination take hold of me. I concentrated on the documentation that was required of me. Miriam was a forensic pathologist, Peter was a forensic analyst, and I was a former newspaper reporter, just trying to keep records of what had happened here. And all of us were UN employees. Not much in the way of peacekeeping, but it was something that had to be done. Peter and Miriam had their own laptops out and talked cryptically to each other about blood spatters, tissue samples, angles of trajectory and round sizes. I tried to stay out of their way and document as much as I could, letting everything exist only within the tiny screen of the camera. Somehow it made matters just a little bit easier.

  Twice I stopped and went over to the laptop and uplink station. There I downloaded the images from my camera, sorted them out and made sure that the correct captions were attached. Then they were uploaded and I got a reply within a minute, saying the photos had been successfully received in Geneva. I wiped the sweat that had collected on my brow, underneath the brim of the helmet. The latest in digital and transmission technology, recording for all time—as long as things were recorded in bits and bytes—a type of massacre that had happened on this planet for millennia. I imagined some sour little Swiss bureaucrat in a cubicle somewhere in Geneva, idly looking at what I had submitted and then placing it in some file or e-mail attachment to The Hague. One more atrocity among thousands. We sure as hell still didn’t know how to prevent war crimes, but at least we were experts at recording them.

  Charlie came over, his M-16 slung over his shoulder. “Break time,” he announced. “Jean-Paul says it’s time for lunch and some debriefing.”

  Miriam said nothing but Peter was on his knees with a small flashlight, looking for more shell casings underneath a piece of farm machinery. “We’re rather busy here, Charles. Perhaps later.”

  Charlie grinned. “Nope. It’s now, sir. Like the good man said. Lunch and a debrief.”

  After spending time in the barn with the blood and bullet holes and the scent of decay, I couldn’t imagine being hungry, but Jean-Paul had taken control of lunch and had cooked up some sort of broth, with hard rolls and cheese to accompany it. Maybe it was something to do with his unerring ability not to let the job get in the way of being fed. Someone had placed a canvas tarp on the ground and we leaned up against the sides of our vehicles, eating quietly. Overhead a flock of ravens flew to the south, croaking and calling, and Sanjay said, “I hate the birds in this country. They are all so fat.”

  Karen said, “It’s no wonder. There’s so much to eat out in the open now.”

  Miriam moved to take off her helmet and Charlie said, “Sorry, ma’am. Body armor stays on.”

  “But this place is quiet,” she said. “Nobody is here. Nothing.”

  Charlie nodded, his weapon at his side. “Nothing we can see, ma’am. It’s the stuff we can’t see that worries me. The helmets and body armor stay on.”

  Peter said, “How much longer do we stay here, Jean-Paul?”

  Our team leader wiped some broth out of his metal bowl with a piece of bread. “We stay until the job is done.”

  Peter said impatiently, his eyes flashing, “I know that. But how much longer?” He waved a hand. “Not meaning to sound crude, but this is one more farmhouse, one more dead family, in a very long and sad list of other farmhouses and dead families in this state and other states. So sorry and all that, but it’s not Site A. Not by a long shot.”

  Jean-Paul munched on his bread, stood up. “We stay until the job is done. Site A will take care of itself. Samuel?”

  “Yes?” I said, stepping up quickly.

  “We need you now in the farmhouse, if that is all right with you.”

  “That’ll be fine,” I said. Peter looked glumly up at me, like the former British police officer he was, being overruled by a superior he didn’t respect. I walked away.

  I FOUND IT harder going in the house. In the barn one could distance oneself from what had happened, what horrible things had gone on in there among the hay and tools and machinery. Nonetheless, it was a different kind of place, a place for animals and tools. It wasn’t a home. But inside the house there was no barrier, no distancing, nothing that could act as a buffer for what I saw. Among the couches and kitchen tables and bookshelves and television sets, among the day-to-day comforting items of reasonable and safe life, madness had broken in. Madness that had ripped everything asunder, that had left broken dishes and torn furniture and piles of clothing and shattered photos and twisted toys. Some spray-painted slogans had been left on the walls, some of the letters dripping into fresh bullet holes in the plaster, other letters oozing into the spatter of dried blood. The paint was black and the blood spatter was now a dark brown. I paused, holding my digital camera in my hands. Where to start? Where to even begin? Sanjay was by the wall, measuring the distance between the bullet holes. I think he sensed my hesitation, for he looked over at me.

  “I know how it is,” he said softly. “You see this home and you wonder who they were. You wonder what kind of man the father was, you wonder how the mother treated their children. You wonder how old the children were, what kind of games they played, how they lived here. You wonder what it was like when the men with guns broke in. Who they w
ere. Angry refugees from one of the cities? Or angry neighbors, upset that this family had given aid and comfort to those now considered enemies, outsiders? Then you wonder what happened. Was the mother raped in front of the children? Was the father killed first? Were the children taken away? You wonder how men could do this to people who were fellow citizens of their country, who were civilians, simple farmers. Fellow Americans, as they would say. Samuel, you are wondering all this, and you cannot let it happen.”

  My words sounded like they were being strangled in my throat before I uttered them. “How? How do you do that?”

  Sanjay looked around him, looking so serious and proper, even though he was still wearing his helmet and body armor. “By doing what we are doing. By remembering them, by paying witness. You do your job as best as you can, but you don’t dwell on what you can’t see. You cannot let your imagination take over. You have to do your job with what is there. Trust me, that is more than enough.”

  I just nodded, picked up my camera. Like before, in the barn, I took photos of the living room and the blood spatters and the bullet holes. I went to the other rooms as well, a children’s room and a bedroom for the parents upstairs, where the fires had been set and had sputtered out. The smell of burned wood was nauseating. I made a special point of taking photographs of the few framed pictures I could find: photos of weddings, of school graduations, of family celebrations. I tried to heed Sanjay’s advice not to dwell on the implications of what I was taking shots of. I just made sure that the photos were in focus and were framed properly and had the correct captions. In a narrow hallway I moved between Jean-Paul and Karen in mid-conversation, with Jean-Paul being his usual pompous self:

  “ … Agree with Peter, we can’t spend all this time here with no bodies, no additional evidence. Site A is supposed to have more than a hundred bodies and the evidence …”

  “ … Won’t ignore this site. So, sorry, Karen, but that’s the way it’s going to be …”