Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

"That's crazy," he said authoritatively. "Your wife sent in a team of Vietnamese gangsters for revenge against the Cades? How the hell did they get in there? On little fairy wings? That whole mountain is sealed up tight as a bank vault."

"My wife is very resourceful," said Karp.

"You're suggesting that she's conspiring to commit murders?"

"I have no knowledge of any murders. Nor do you. I'm reporting my suspicions to you as officer in charge of this operation, which is my duty as a citizen and an officer of the court. The main thing I want to avoid is any more people getting hurt."

"That's very good of you, Karp. Your federal government appreciates it. What you really have up there, in my opinion, is an Asian drug gang transporting dope. Or trying to. They got stuck up there when we locked the mountain down. Now, if you'll excuse me…"

Outside the command post, Hendricks said, "Nice fella. What do you think?"

"Of his theory? I liked the one about fairy wings better. Look, I'm going to hang around here for a while. If you've got stuff to do…"

"I got some sandwiches and Cokes in a cooler. Why don't we sit on that rock over there and have us a picnic. Maybe we can learn something watching how the big boys do it."

They sat and ate as men in FBI jackets and SWAT attire and combat-dressed National Guardsmen strode or rode by. Pole lights were emplaced in the woods and along the road, giving the scene an air of carnival. They watched the bulldozer for a while, then went back to the car. Karp dozed. He awakened to gunfire.

"Sounds like something's going on," said Hendricks. "Sounds like a firefight. Those just now were machine guns, I think. Damn! That's artillery. Mortar fire."

"Yes, all your drug gangs have mortars nowadays. Let's go see what the FBI has to say about all this."

When they found Morissey, he seemed a good deal less confident than he had been, and nearly glad to see Karp's face again.

"I may owe you an apology," he said into his shoulder. "One of our people picked up a kid wandering along Highway 712 in his Skivvies. We just got finished interrogating him. He says he's Bo Cade. He says your daughter's up there in some old mine buildings along with the whole Vietcong. According to him, she's best buddies with the chief Commie in charge. You know anything about this?"

"Not a thing," said Karp with his stomach up around his throat. "They never tell me anything. Did he say whether she was okay?"

"She was alive and well when she helped him escape. We'll need to talk about this at some length, but not now. First light I intend to send a couple of teams up through those woods. Then we'll find out what the holy hell is going on here."

When she heard the firing and explosions die down, Lucy let herself out of the strong room and moved among the buildings. The moon was nearly full and she hardly needed the flashlight. She found a place near the wreck of the coal tipple where she could climb onto the roof of a machine shed and lie down on her belly. Some hours passed. She dozed and was brought to full attention by the sound of men moving through brush. There was a line of them, not as many as there had been, some of them carrying stretchers, some in groups of four struggling with heavy chests. So they had the gold. She strained her eyes to see whether Tran was among them, but the distance was too far to make out anything but silhouettes. She heard the sound of the lift motor and the squeal of its gearing.

She slipped off the roof and went north, using the flashlight now, until she came to a nearly dry creekbed and began walking along it. After ten minutes, she found her first corpse, one of the Lost Boys. She didn't know his name. A little farther there was an older Vietnamese, Vo, who had kept the house in Bridgeport, and who had survived fifteen years of the French War and then the American War, only to die in his enemy's country. She said a prayer for the repose of his soul. Farther on, at just the place she would have chosen, her flashlight picked up a thick carpet of brass. This was where they had placed one of the flanking machine guns. Beyond that, she found the Cades, in small groups or individually, looking like dreamers in the moonlight, or smashed beyond humanity, like props from a horror movie. She passed a place where the ground was torn and bushes were uprooted, and where she had to walk carefully to keep from stepping on viscera and chunks of former people. This was the kill sack. The Cades had been pushed from both flanks back to what looked like a good defensive position, and then the mortar bombs had started to fall on them. Some, she found, had run and been cut down by automatic fire, probably from a squad that had infiltrated to their rear. There was another black-clad corpse, but his head had been so smashed she could not tell who it was. She rolled it over with her foot. There was no Stechkin holster and her heart lifted a little.

It was growing lighter in the east, a hint of dawn. She found a rutted road and walked down it, smelling smoke. As she walked, the smoke grew thicker and more acrid, mingling unpleasantly with the morning mist. A figure came toward her out of the fog, stumbling, a girl in a pink nightgown. Her face was smudged with ash and she was barefoot and grossly pregnant. She looked about fourteen.

She stopped when she saw Lucy. "Everything burnt up. I'm lookin' fer Ollie. Have you seen him anywheres?"

"No. But there's no one alive in that direction." Lucy grabbed the girl gently by the shoulders and turned her around on the road. "Is Ollie your husband?"

The girl was pale, with a wandering in one of her close-set, slaty eyes; there was something subtly wrong with the proportions of her face. "My brother," she said. "Papaw ain't give me no husband yet."

"Papaw?"

"The Cade. I have to carry the first fruits of the Father afore I get me a husband. But it's all burnt up now. The hell devils took it all away." This last syllable rose into a cry. "He has prophesied the end and the end has come!"

And more of that as they walked along, the idiot fragments of an insane faith. Like most such, the main part of it was that the old guys got to fuck all the young girls. The girl said that there were a good number of babies who were cursed by God. The girl hoped that hers would be one of the keepers, as she called them.

After some minutes, they came to a large clearing. On either side were fenced fields decorated by dead cattle and one white horse on its back with one leg in the air. There were mortar craters all around. Ahead, a large wooden structure was burning. Clumps of women and children stood around in nightclothes, wailing around the corpses of men. It looked to Lucy like a scene from Bosnia or Chechnya or Guatemala, someplace far from West Virginia, at any rate. The girl ran to one of the groups of women. Lucy sat down on a stump. She found that her head was still completely empty, all volition gone. A time to wait, then. She watched the dawn start to burn away the mists.

Then it seemed that men in black uniforms appeared as if by magic, poking warily into the smaller houses and mobile homes scattered around, collecting the women and kids. Then vehicles appeared, ambulances, trucks, and vans. A fire engine rolled in and firemen began putting out the fire. A man with a submachine gun told her to come along and she did, and joined the wailing women and children sitting on the ground in a circle, being guarded by black-uniformed men.

Lucy dropped to her knees and said, "Let nothing disturb thee, let nothing dismay thee, all things pass, God never changes, patience attains all that is strived for, she who has God finds she lacks nothing." And repeated, over and over, St. Teresa of Avila's own prayer, not the sort of thing that was ever voiced in the maniac religion that Ben Cade had established on Burnt Peak, but after a time she became aware in a distant way that the wailing had stopped and even the children had grown quiet. All the women sank to their knees, surrounding Lucy as she prayed. Thus her father found her as the sun poked over the edge of the mountains.