Spoils Of War td-45 Page 3

  Smith looked at Remo acidly. He took a deep breath. 'To a man, the commanders swear that a sweeping change comes over the recruits after the two-or three-day period of chaos. Discipline shoots to an incredible high. Every order is obeyed without question, even the slightest suggestions.

  "At Fort Beson, a drill instructor told one of the recruits to go fly a kite. The private wandered off and came back tö the identical spot an hour later with a box kite made of newspaper and plywood. He started flying the thing in the middle of dress parade, and wouldn't stop without a direct order."

  "That's doing it the army way," Remo said.

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  Smith's expression was without a trace of humor. "See if this strikes you as amusing," he said, pressing down the "play" button on the recorder.

  As the tape began to wind, a man's voice rang tinnily out of the recorder. The man was obviously frightened out of his wits. His voice quavered as he tried to keep it under control. The man was talking wildly about zombies and a foreign plot to take over the U.S. Army, but the focus of the speech was the murder of the man's top aide, a Lieutenant Andrew Fitzroy King. The man on the tape insisted over and over that his aide had been stabbed to death in front of him while he was submitting a report about the weird goings-on at the base.

  Smith shut off the recorder. "That was the base commander at Fort Tannehill," he said. "A two-star general. He sent this recording to the president by special courier. The president gave it to me this morning."

  "I suppose Lieutenant King disappeared without a trace, too."

  Smith closed his eyes and opened them again slowly. "There is no military record of Lieutenant Andrew Fitzroy King on file at the Pentagon," he said. "According to the army, he not only disappeared, he never existed. Of course, I have a few such Kings on file at Folcroft, but I can't determine which one he is, since no one on the base will acknowledge his existence."

  "Where's the general now?"

  Smith exhaled slowly. "About a half-hour after he sent this tape, he was discovered in a bathtub full of warm water, with his wrists slashed. The report was filed listing it as suicide."

  Remo rewound the tape and played it again, lis-

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  tening to the fear in the general's words as they told the bizarre story. He stared thoughtfully at the machine as the general's speech ended and was replaced by a long hiss. After a moment, the recorder clicked off.

  "He could have been mentally unbalanced," Remo offered lamely, haunted by tíie voice on the tape. He wanted to shake the feeling of desperation the general's words had communicated. "Maybe this Lieutenant King person never did exist, as they said."

  "I hope you're right," Smith said. "Because if the general was telling the truth, it means that someone's been tampering with the Pentagon files. Only a handful of the most powerful people in the country have private access to those files." The worry ünes in Smith's face deepened. He looked very tired.

  "Look, Smitty. How sane could the general have been, with that crazy talk about zombies? This guy's suicide probably has nothing to do with the missing chaplains."

  "Unfortunately, that's the one word that appears consistently in each of the reports from the bases," Smith said. "Zombies."

  He got to his feet and struggled back into his heavy clothes. "Wait here until you hear from me," he said. "This line is secure."

  Smith opened the squeaky kitchen door. "By the way, Remo, I expect you to return that car you took from the airport. Automobile theft is a serious offense." He left. In a few moments, the roar of the pickup truck's engine punctuated the still night.

  "I'm surprised he didn't make a citizen's arrest," Remo said.

  "He should have," Chiun said, rolling out the thin

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  tatami mat he used for sleeping. "Anyone who drives as you do should be behind bars."

  Remo smiled, but his mind was on something else. As he left the house to retrieve the stolen car from the ditch where he had left it, he thought again of the voice on the tape and of the terror behind it. Instinct told him that the general's death was no suicide. Whatever was going on was serious enough to warrant the murder of three chaplains, a commissioned officer, and a base commander.

  And Remo had the feeling that this was just the beginning.

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  Three

  Father Malcolm McConnell sighed as he stepped up to the pulpit and looked over his congregation.

  The army manual on "Chaplains, Unreasonable Expectations Of," had warned him that the churchgoing rate at an army post was in direct proportion to the soldiers' proximity to enemy bullets, but it had not prepared him for this, not even in peacetime.

  The Fort Wheeler Army Chapel was not large, but the spare, boxy hall looked as big as a warehouse this Sunday morning. There was no one inside except for McConnell and the grizzled old sergeant who sat in the second pew.

  Where had he gone wrong?

  In the beginning, when McConnell had first been transferred to Fort Wheeler, the little chapel had been at least half filled every Sunday, even on the Sunday following the opening of the topless go-go bar in the neighboring town. But in the past two months, attendance had dropped so radically that McConnell was beginning to worry that he had lost his touch.

  He tried to revitalize his sermons by focusing on

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  the zestier episodes of the Bible—the Apocalypse, the Creation of the World, the Song of Solomon— that had always been a hit with his congregations in the past—but he continued to lose his audience despite the racy patter.

  He'd practiced his delivery, booming, stage-whispering, pausing for dramatic emphasis. . . . No luck.

  In a last-ditch effort, he'd even—God forgive him—hired a pretty 20-year-old folk singer with legs that would stop traffic to play the Meditation on her guitar.

  Nothing. The men on the base just weren't interested.

  As he watched his flock dwindle from 150 restless recruits to ten reluctant soldiers who'd promised their parents they would go to church come Hell or high water, he became depressed. And when those ten became five, then three, then one, McConnell slipped from depression into despair.

  He began to doubt his calling. He had lost his gift. The Lord had entrusted a great many precious souls to him, and he had allowed those souls to drift away. He looked again to the lone soldier occupying his usual spot in the second row, and McConnell's eyes filled with tears. He felt himself an unworthy shepherd, caring for only one lamb.

  Struggling to gain control over his emotions, McConnell cleared his throat. The sound echoed through the bare chapel, causing a bird to flutter out of her nest in the rafters and fly chattering over the altar.

  "Welcome to the Lord's House, sergeant," He said as cheerfully as he could.

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  "Another big day at Prayerville, Padre, huh?" the sergeant said.

  "Looks that way."

  It had been looking that way for three weeks running. McConnell lifted his head, searching for a shred of divine inspiration to carry him through the next hour. He saw the bird land on a lamp, look around, then spatter an offering into the fourth row of seats. The sergeant settled into his pew, his arms folded across his chest, his head already beginning to nod.

  "Today," McConnell began, forcing his voice to oratory level through sheer strength of will, "we will discuss the mystery of ..." His yoice quivered. "God's Will . . ."

  The soldier snored loudly, weaving in his seat.

  "Oh, what's the use," McConnell said, and ripped into quarters the notes he'd made for today's sermon. He rested his head in his hands.

  The old sergeant frightened himself awake with a snort, his lips smacking sleepily. "Amen," he said.

  McConnell stepped off the pulpit and down the three steps leading to the pews. "Do you want me to go through with this, sergeant?" he asked.

  The soldier shrugged. "Don't make no difference to me, Father. I just come here out of habit, anyhow. I been going to church every Sunday for
twenty years."

  Suddenly McConnell felt ashamed of himself for denying the soldier his church service.

  "It's kind of a deal I made with the Big Guy up there when my wife got in a bad car crash. They didn't think she'd live, so I made a deal that if she pulled through, I'd go to church every week of my

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  life." He winked and elbowed McConnell in the ribs. "Even if I was the only guy in the church, hey Padre?" McConnell smiled wanly. "Anyways, it ain't right for you to be preaching all by yourself, Father. Looks like the troops went AWOL on you."

  "I'll say." McConnell stroked his chin. "Sergeant—ah—"

  "Grimes, Father. Bill Grimes."

  "Sergeant Grimes, I know this is a little irregular, but I'd like to ask your opinion about how—that is, why—" He blushed.

  "How come there ain't nobody here but me, you mean?"

  "Exactly. You see, I've been noticing the diminishing attendance, and I've tried literally everything I could to bring the men back to the Church—"

  "Oh, the men are in church all right," Sergeant Grimes said with a smile. "These recruits are the goddamndest bunch of churchgoers I run into in twenty-five years in the military. Sunrise services, evening prayer meeting, Wednesday night testimonials, Sunday night communion, Saturday night spirituals—"

  "Saturday night? They go to church on Saturday night?"

  "Every night of the week, Father. The bunch of them are always in church. They just ain't going to your church."

  Father McConnell was taken aback. "But this is the army chapel!"

  "Beats the hell out of me, too," Grimes said. "Every goddamned night they get all spruced up to walk five miles out of camp to hear some preacher in a goddamned tent, for Christ sake."

  "Sergeant," McConnell cautioned.

  ¦ * 32 '

  "Sorry, Padre. It's just that it's the god—the weirdest thing I ever seen." He shook his head. "Sometimes they don't even stick around for mess hall, just so's they can shine up their shoes and head for Reverend Artemis. You ought to see 'em, marching on over that hill at sunset like a pack of zombies. Spooky."

  "What did you say the Reverend's name was? Artemis? Like the Greek goddess?"

  "Hell of a name for a man of the cloth, ain't it?" Grimes said disgustedly. "These here yo-yo recruits are always trying to get me to go along to prayer meeting or some damn thing with them, but hell, Father, it ain't normal."

  "I'm not sure I follow you. What's not normal?"

  "It ain't normal for a thousand twenty-year-old recruits to get so all-fired excited about going to church. No offense to your profession, now, but there's sure as hell more ways to get a laugh than by going to prayer meeting, if you ask me."

  McConnell saw that he had a point. Even divinity students didn't go to church every day and twice on Sunday. At least Protestants didn't. "Why do you suppose they're all going?" he asked.

  The old soldier rose slowly to his feet. "Well, it could be the recruits. Not all there." He tapped his left temple with his finger. "You know, this volunteer army is pulling in some characters I wouldn't trust to cross the street. Back in '44, you wouldn't catch regular army soldiers slinkin' off to church every goddamned minute like a bunch of—"

  "Now, sergeant ..."

  "Zombies, I tell you. You just watch them tonight at sunset, marching over that there hill." He pointed eastward, toward the gates of the army bar-

  33 .. .

  racks. "Zombies. Hundreds of them, marching five miles to listen to Reverend Artemis."

  "Must be a hell of a preacher," McConnell said, awestruck. "I beg your pardon. A heck of a preacher."

  A thousand recruits? Father McConnell tried to picture a cleric who could draw a crowd like that from the brawling, exuberant young soldiers at the base. Whoever this Reverend Artemis was, he had to have the charisma of Moses.

  "Zombies," Grimes repeated, pulling McConnell out of his reverie. "Well, seeing as there's no service, Fd like to get back home. The wife's cooking a pot roast." He winked.

  "Of course, Sergeant Grimes," McConnell said. "And I'm sorry about the service."

  "Don't make no difference. I'll be back next week. That's my deal. Even just you and me, maybe we can play gin."

  "Thank you. Thank you very much for telling me about . . . everything."

  "Don't mention it." The old soldier sauntered up the aisle. "Sergeant?" "Yes, sir."

  "Do you think you could bring along a couple of friends next week?" he asked timidly.

  "I'll try, but it won't be easy. Most of these zombies would sooner have their legs shot off than miss Reverend Artemis. And that goes for some of the officers, too. They're all in on it. Goddamndest thing I ever seen."

  Father McConnell stood still as the soldier's footfalls receded and disappeared behind the closing

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  door. He felt very lonely in the chapel, his chapel, which was once so full of promise.

  His mind wandered back to his first commission, as chaplain to a commando unit in Vietnam. He had been scared then, scared from the beginning. When the attacks came thundering out of nowhere and he watched his men being blown to pieces before his eyes, when he'd had to take an M-16 into his own hands and murder a Cong foot soldier to save one of his own men, he'd regretted enlisting, with all his

  heart.

  After that incident, when he discovered for the first time that he was capable of killing another human being, he had wanted to die. He thought of his friends from the seminary, gathered around rock concerts, protesting the war in the safety of the United States, and he wished himself among them, smiling and talking peace with middle class college students. What was he doing in the middle of the jungle, learning how to murder?

  It was then that the shell exploded and Father McConnell watched an 18-year-old boy from Mississippi dissolve into flying fragments next to him like a bursting balloon.

  The damage from the attack was vast. Twelve men dead, 15 wounded. Most of the wounds were too serious to treat with the unit's exhausted first aid kits. Two of the 15 died minutes after the attack subsided. And in the groaning, bloody sore of a makeshift hospital where the sickly sweet smell of death hung in the air like smoke, Father McConnell realized that he was the only comfort on earth that his men had, and the thought made him boil with rage and hate. He hated the protestors back home in their warm apartments, talking politico over dinner

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  of duckling. He hated the war with its senseless horror day after unrelenting day. He hated the seminary that taught him about communion and confession and absolution and never told him that one August morning an 18-year-old boy was going to blow up in his face.

  Father McConnell cried, and he cradled the head of a soldier who had just lost both legs and would probably never leave that stinking, death-sweating jungle, and the soldier cried, too.

  Then he prayed. He prayed through the night as he worked feverishly to patch up the holes and cuts on the bodies of his men. He prayed the next day as he dug the graves where his dead would be buried. He prayed as he crawled with the survivors, dragging the man who now had no legs through the jungle marshes..He prayed loud, so that all his men would hear him; and he prayed often, because that was all they had.

  And when the war was over, the man who had no legs miraculously was still alive. He told Father McConnell that the priest had saved his life.

  And then Father Malcolm McConnell understood why he had joined the army.

  His thoughts returned to the empty chapel. This was going to be where he made his home, serving the soldiers who served their country. But the soldiers didn't need him now, it seemed.

  Maybe he just didn't have it anymore. The recruits weren't denying God. They were simply ignoring Father Malcolm McConnell, which was certainly their prerogative, especially since this Reverend Artemis was doing the job of ten Father McConnells.

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  He tried to fight the feelings of envy that rose in his throat as he left the chapel. He tried to main
tain a cheerful dignity in the mess hall as he ate his dinner alone, while the soldiers at the adjoining tables extolled the virtues of Father Artemis. He tried to tell himself that God's will was sometimes difficult to understand, as he sat on the grassy hill at sunset, watching an army of young soldiers march past him toward the gates leading from the base.

  They were going to Father Artemis.

  With blinding clarity, Father McConnell knew what he must do. He would go to Father Artemis, too.

  In one swift motion, McConnell was on his feet and marching with the recruits through the gates. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, he thought. He would find out what made Father Artemis such a sensation with the troops. Oh, the man was undoubtedly more talented a speaker than McConnell was, but just watching Father Artemis in action might help to bring at least a few recruits back to the little army chapel.

  "Hey!" a freckle-faced young man called. "It's

  McConnell!"

  "Glad you got the spirit, McConnell," another young recruit said, rumpling the priest's hair like a puppy dog's.

  "Father McConnell," he corrected.

  "Don't worry, McConnell. Artemis is all-loving. Even heretics like you he will take into his heart."

  "Reverend Artemis," he corrected again, but no one seemed to hear him.

  The services were being held in a huge striped 37

  circus tent bearing the words praise artemis in five-foot-high block letters. The tent was set up in a remote spot in the desert.

  The congregation that waited for Father Artemis was packed to bursting inside the hot, airless tent. There were no seats inside, and the stifling desert heat, combined with the sweat of more than a thousand bodies, very nearly caused Father McConnell to pass out. He would have sunk to the floor, had there been room. As it was, he bobbed and weaved upright, supported by the crush of the surrounding congregation.

  From across the massive tent someone shouted, "Praise Artemis!" and a thousand voices took up the chant.

  "Praise Artemis!" they called, clapping their hands in rhythm. "Praise Artemis!" they screamed, stomping their feet. "Praise Artemis!" they cheered, their bodies convulsing crazily, their eyes rolling in ecstasy.