The Reckoning by Jeff Long Read Free Book Online

nothing to see with the naked eye. The hole was deep and the flash too quick, and when she kicked a pebble, it plunked on water so stagnant it smelled gray.
    She didn’t bother looking at the image on her camera display, just turned it off and returned to her tent. She began packing some of her things, but that only made her feel worse. Lying down, she held the camera overhead and flipped on the display.
    The bones were waiting for her.
    She gaped at the illuminated image. How could a camera see through water? Actually it was possible with a long enough time lapse. But she’d used a flash. The light would have bounced off the water.
    There was a hint of poorly focused white sticks beneath the water. Garbage, she decided. Twigs tossed in by children or the wind. More digital noise. She turned the camera off, then on, to see if the image corrected itself. This time, there was a rib cage and a long tail-like spine.
    An animal, she thought. Then saw the skull.

6.
    First thing the next morning, filled with excitement and disbelief, they lowered one of the marines on a rope, by his ankles, headfirst. He took a deep breath. They dunked him into the water, gave him sixty seconds, and then hauled him, soaking wet, back up the shaft and into the sunlight. He held a handful of human vertebrae. There was more, he said, much more.
    Things got noisy fast. They snaked hoses down the well shaft and the pumps roared. They rigged a klieg light over the hole, and fired up another generator. As the water drained off and small glittering shrimp writhed in the mud and water weeds, the brown tips of bones jutted up like driftwood.
    They lowered a man again. This time he brought up two skulls.
    â€œWhat in God’s name,” a soldier muttered.
    Their forensic anthropologist examined the skulls. Neither was Caucasian. One belonged to a child. The nuchal crest at the base of the skull was rounded, the forehead smooth, the wisdom teeth not yet descended, the whole aspect gracile. Probably female, he said, probably eight to ten years old. He laid it on the ground and went to join the others peering into the hole.
    â€œThe fucking KR,” Kleat said.
    It was a mass grave, not fifty feet from their camp.
    Duncan knelt down and took the skull. “Look at you, poor bug,” he whispered.
    â€œWhat?” said Molly, not sure she’d heard.
    He looked up at her, and there was a streak down his mask of red dust. Through her lens, at first she thought it was sweat. But it was a tear for the nameless girl. She got the picture.
    The find staggered them, the enormity of the murders. They were familiar with the killing fields. All had seen the displays of bones in places like Phnom Penh. But this was slick and shiny. The event of death seemed unfiltered, unprocessed. It could have been yesterday.
    Just the same, it was not their pilot. They switched off the pumps and cut the light. Their eleventh-hour hope went as dark as midnight.
    The captain turned away. “That’s that,” he said. “Let the Cambodians have it. This isn’t ours.”
    But Duncan would not give up. “He’s down there,” he told them. “I’d stake my life on it.”
    The captain turned to him. “Duncan,” he said softly, “the cockpit is two miles away.”
    â€œThe well was used for burial once, why not before?” Duncan said. “Think about it, the morning after the plane crashed. There’s metal and wire lying everywhere, a windfall of riches. But also there’s this body of a stranger, and not just a body. A ghost.”
    â€œGhosts,” Kleat scoffed.
    â€œA serious liability in these parts,” said Duncan. “These are peasants straight out of the tenth century. I’ve spent time among them. They see spirits everywhere. Tiger spirits. Forest spirits. Witches flying in the night, drinking people’s blood. They’ve already got their hands full with ancestors. Now suddenly