Nelson Demille - The Quest

They stopped for a break and Mercado wondered out loud if the trail had gone off in another direction and if they’d missed the fortress.

Purcell assured him, “My compass says we’ve been heading generally due east.”

Gann concurred and added, “It always seems longer on the ground than on the map.”

Purcell looked at Vivian, whose white skin was now alarmingly red, and asked her, “How are you doing?”

She nodded her head.

He looked at Mercado, who also seemed flushed. The jungle, Purcell knew, sucked the life out of you. Theoretically, according to a Special Forces guy he’d interviewed in Vietnam, the jungle was not a killing environment, the way a frozen wasteland was. The jungle had water and food, and the climate, though unpleasant, would not kill you if you knew what you were doing. Snakes and animals could kill you, but you could also kill them. Only disease, according to this SF guy, could kill you, and if you got malaria or dengue fever, or some other fucked-up tropical disease, then you were just an unlucky son of a bitch. End of story.

Gann stood and said, “Press on.”

The trail seemed to be getting wider, and there was more headroom now, so they were able to walk upright. Within fifteen minutes Gann held up his hand, then he pointed up the trail. He got down and crawled the last ten yards, then raised Mercado’s binoculars and scanned to his front.

Gann got up on one knee and motioned everyone forward. The head of the trail was wide enough for everyone to kneel shoulder to shoulder and they looked out across a clearing to Prince Theodore’s fortress-a blasted mass of stone and concrete sitting under the noon sun.

Gann was looking through his binoculars again and said, “Don’t see any movement.” He handed the binoculars to Mercado, who agreed, and he gave the binoculars to Vivian, who said, “It looks so dead.” Purcell took the binoculars and focused on a section of collapsed wall that allowed a peek into the fortress. If anyone was in there, they weren’t moving around much.

Gann wanted to go in first, with Purcell covering, but Purcell said, “My turn.”

Vivian grabbed his arm, but didn’t say anything.

Purcell stood and began walking the fifty yards across the clearing to the fortress walls.

There were wooden watchtowers at intervals along the parapets, and he kept an eye on them as he was sure Gann was doing with his binoculars. As he got closer, he could see more clearly through the opening in the wall, and there didn’t seem to be anything living within the fortress.

He reached the pile of rubble from the collapsed wall, pulled his revolver, and climbed to the top. Inside the fortress he could see stone and concrete buildings with corrugated steel roofs in various states of ruin. The whole compound seemed to cover about two acres, which was not large for a fortress, but it looked imposing here in the jungle.

He satisfied himself that the place was deserted, and signaled everyone to join him.

Gann, Mercado, and Vivian began crossing the clearing quickly, and Purcell came down from the rubble pile.

He said to them, “No one home. There’s an open gate around the corner.”

He led them along the wall and they rounded the corner, where large iron gates stood open in the center of a long stone wall.

They passed cautiously through the gates and into the fortress. In front of them was an open area, a parade ground, where grass now grew. As they moved farther into the compound, they saw bleached white bones and skulls lying in the brown grass. The smell of the dead was barely noticeable after five months, but it still clung to the dusty earth.

Gann looked around and said, “This is what a half-hour artillery barrage will do.” He looked at the collapsed section of wall where Purcell had stood atop the rubble, and said, “Gallas probably came through that breach.” He added, “Nasty combination of Getachu’s modern artillery and primitive, bloodthirsty savages waiting like jackals to get in.”

Purcell could imagine the artillery rounds falling into this tight compound, blasting everything to rubble as the sun set. He could also imagine Prince Theodore’s soldiers being blown to pieces by the explosion, or ripped apart by shrapnel. And when the barrage ended, there would be a minute or two of deadly silence before the Gallas came screaming over the walls.

Gann, too, was imagining it and said, “The Gallas who got in first on foot would have opened those gates, and the mounted Gallas would have come charging in.” He added, “A Galla war cry is something you don’t want to hear more than once in your life-in fact, if you hear it once, you will not hear it again.”

Purcell saw Mercado looking over his shoulder at the open gates, as though expecting a horde of Gallas to come charging in. Also, Henry’s face had gone from ruddy to pale. Henry was remembering Mount Aradam again.

Purcell shifted his attention to the field of bones. Indeed, it must have been terrifying, he thought, for the soldiers here who had survived the barrage to see Galla horsemen pouring through the open gates with their scimitars raised. Death on horseback.

Gann said, “I don’t see any horse bones, so it wasn’t much of a fight.” He let them know, “Even if your walls are breached and your gates are open, you must maintain discipline and put up a good resistance. Better than being slaughtered like lambs in a pen.”

Purcell didn’t think that was information he could ever use, but he was glad to see that Colonel Gann was wearing his brass military balls.

Purcell said, “The question is, how did Father Armano survive this slaughter?” He said quickly to Vivian, “Do not say it.”

“Well, I will. God spared him.”

Purcell was getting a bit impatient with her divine explanations for everything, and he pointed out, “God wasn’t looking out for the Coptic Christian soldiers of Prince Theodore.” He suggested, “Maybe God is Catholic.”

Vivian seemed annoyed and didn’t respond.

Mercado said, “It does seem a bit of a miracle that Father Armano escaped this.”

Purcell speculated, “It might have something to do with his prison cell. Certainly the Gallas did not spare him.” He suggested, “Let’s look around.”

They walked through the small fortress which held only about twenty buildings, consisting mostly of barracks and storage structures. A large water-collecting cistern had been shattered by an explosion and it was dry. An ammunition bunker had been hit, and the secondary explosions had flattened everything around it. The headquarters was identified by the Lion of Judah painted in fading yellow over an open doorway. They looked inside and saw that whatever had been there had been burned, and a fine layer of ash lay on the floor and on the skeletons of at least a dozen men.

Gann drew everyone’s attention to the pubic bones of the men, and pointed out the hack marks, saying, “They use their scimitars to do their nasty business. Sometimes the poor buggers aren’t even dead.”

Purcell said, “Thanks for that.”

They continued on between the shattered structures and came to an almost undamaged building that measured about ten feet on each side. It was the only building whose door was intact and closed. The door was rusted steel and there was a hasp on it, but the lock was gone. At the bottom of the door was a steel pass-through with an open bolt.

Purcell said, “Looks like a prison to me.”

Purcell stepped over several disjointed skeletons that lay near the door and pushed on it, but it would not give. Gann joined him and together they put their shoulders to the door, but it was stuck, probably rusted shut.

Vivian suggested using the pass-through at the bottom, and Purcell knelt and pushed on it until it squeaked open.