The Rule of Three (35 page)

Herb continually told me what he saw. The neighborhood was deserted. He saw bodies, but he hadn’t seen any signs of life. Over three hundred people had been living there. I could always make out movement before when I passed over at this height. Now there was nothing moving except for the rising smoke. I couldn’t even conceive that they’d all been killed. Some must have run away, and others might still be hiding in the houses where we couldn’t see them.

With each pass we could see more of what was on the ground. It was so obvious that I didn’t need binoculars. Large sections of the perimeter wall had been broken down. The gate blocking the street entrance was completely smashed. Houses scattered throughout the subdivision had been burned down or had gigantic holes in them or were missing an entire side. Vehicles were burned and the roadway was covered with debris—smashed brick from the collapsed houses, and bodies, lots and lots of bodies. I couldn’t see those, but Herb was narrating what he was seeing for me.

“Okay, I want one more pass,” Herb said. “I want it low and slow.”

“How low and how slow?”

“Make it just above the roof level and just above your stall speed.”

“Do you see something?” I asked hesitantly.

“If I did we wouldn’t be flying so low. Just one more pass to be sure. If there’s a problem we can certainly have some help pretty quickly.”

The away team, along with two dozen other armed guards, was divided into two groups, one just west and one just south of the community. They were waiting to hear from us if it was safe for them to proceed. Brett was leading one group and my mother the other, behind the wheel of my car. She had insisted on going out this time. I would have been happier to have her back at the neighborhood. It was bad enough to risk one of us.

Our neighborhood was on full alert, and the guards on our walls had been doubled. Everybody knew something had happened, but they had no idea yet that our friends had been wiped out.
Wiped out
. That echoed in my head.

I made the final turn and aimed straight across the subdivision. I eased off the accelerator. I wanted us to be slow but still well above stall speed. Stalling out from that low an altitude would leave no room for error, no time to restart the engine, and no time to find a safe place to let down.

As it was I didn’t know where we
were
going to put down. The streets inside the subdivision were filled with debris, and I didn’t want to put down on any of the streets surrounding it. Funny how in the last couple of weeks I’d felt safe when I was down there inside their walls. Now the walls were ruptured and breached, and my sense of safety had just as many holes in it.

We came in so low that I could see which houses needed their roofs patched. Others just didn’t have a roof anymore. There were multiple homes that had been gutted by fire and some where I could clearly see the blast marks from explosives. It looked like there wasn’t one car remaining that hadn’t been set on fire. I knew they had had a lot more vehicles. Those must have been used for escape or taken by the attackers.

What hadn’t been taken were the bodies that littered the streets. Now, at this height and speed, I could see them for myself. There were dozens and dozens. Some were by themselves, away from other bodies, alone in death, but there was also a mass of bodies all clustered together, fallen into one heap at the end of a street. They must have stood and fought there and been cut down by a barrage of fire. We passed beyond the back fence, or what remained of it.

“I didn’t see anything,” Herb said. “No movement. Pull it up and I’ll radio down.”

Simultaneously I gave the plane more gas, pulled back on the stick, gave it left rudder, and banked to the left.

“You can proceed,” Herb said into the radio. “Be cautious. We’ll reconnoiter and then land. Can you clear a space for us to land inside the area, please?”

“Will do.” It was my mother. “Keep safe.”

I straightened out so that we were parallel to Burnham. “How far do you want me to go?”

“Go five minutes. Far enough to make sure nothing is coming, but well away from the city, from their base of operations.”

“Are you sure it was them?” I asked.

“I think what I saw down below fits with what I saw when we flew over their compound. They have the men, machinery, and weaponry to do that sort of damage. I’ll keep an eye on the ground, and you keep an eye on the sky. I don’t want any surprises from above.”

I’d been so focused on the ground that I’d momentarily forgotten about the sky. That’s where the real danger for us would come from. We could outrun or hide from anything on the ground. A shot or two at most and we’d be past, hidden or out of range. A Cessna could go farther, faster, and higher. I wouldn’t be able to outrun or outdistance it. With renewed anxiety I scanned the horizon and above, looking for anything else sharing the sky with us. All I could see were a few birds. No danger there.

“The road is definitely clear,” I said. “There’s nothing and nobody; but you could hide dozens of people along here and I’d never see them from this height. Do you want me to drop down or double back?”

“No, keep going.”

As we traveled I started to catch glimpses of movement on the ground. There were people moving along Burnham. On both sides, on the little streets there were more people, going about their business. I wondered how much they knew about what had happened just a few miles away. Life went on. What was more important was what we didn’t see. There were no convoys of trucks, no masses of armed men, coming along Burnham toward our away team. Of course I hadn’t really expected to see anything approaching us, but I thought we might catch a glimpse of them moving away.

“Do you want me to go farther?” I asked Herb.

“This is far enough. You can go back and put down.”

“Shouldn’t I stay in the air to keep watch?”

“I need to be down there. Besides, I think it’s better that you’re on the ground. Maybe you can see more from up here, but you have to remember, the more you can see, the more you can be seen.”

That sounded ominous, maybe because it was so right. There was no way of telling who on the ground was watching us.

I banked again, losing altitude and gaining speed. I wanted to get back and down as quickly as possible. It wasn’t long before we came up to Olde Burnham again, and I could see movement. It was our vehicles and our people spreading out. One of the streets—the place where I usually landed—had already been cleared. I corrected my course until my front wheel was aimed right down the center of the street. Slowly, I brought us down, lower and lower. There was a slight bounce and then we touched back down, the road rumbling underneath the wheels. I had flown over hell. Now I was landing in it.

We slowed and came to a stop. I turned off the engine, and the motor gurgled and then the roar faded away. Herb and I both undid our buckles and climbed out of the plane. As Herb walked away, I went to the back of the plane. Gently I grabbed the tail and lifted it, walking around and turning the plane until it was aimed back down the runway. I wanted to be ready to take off.

I rushed after Herb, catching up just as he reached my mother.

“What can you tell me?” Herb asked.

“We’ve found a few survivors,” she answered.

“A few? But there were over three hundred people living here,” I said.

“We’ve already counted more than one hundred bodies,” she said.

“They had fewer than thirty people with weapons,” Herb said.

“It’s not just the guards who were cut down. There are women and children dead. They must have been caught in the crossfire.”

“Where are the survivors?” Herb asked.

“We’ve brought them to that house right there,” she said, pointing to one of the buildings that seemed to have escaped unscathed.

“Keep looking for other survivors,” Herb said. “There are probably more, but they’re hiding, afraid to come out. Be careful—they must be terrified, and terrified people with weapons might mistake you for somebody else. Were there any bodies that didn’t belong here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did any of the attackers get killed?” Herb asked.

“I’m not sure if we can initially identify a body as being one of the attackers,” my mother said.

“If it’s the people we flew past, they’re in darker clothing that almost looked like a uniform.”

“They might have taken their dead with them,” my mother said, “but we’ll look around.”

“And do any of the bodies have weapons?” Herb asked.

“None that I’ve seen. It looks like the dead have been picked over. Some of them don’t even have shoes. Those were taken, too.”

“That fits. They’ve probably taken everything of value they could find. What they couldn’t take they destroyed.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Why destroy things?” my mother asked.

“If you attack an enemy, you are best to destroy that enemy. Now nobody here is in any position to pose a threat to them, to even try to enact any revenge. This sort of thing has been done by conquerors since the dawn of time. Right now I want you to search for the people you know, the leaders of this community. I need to know if they are dead or still alive or—”

Almost on cue, out of one of the buildings a group of people emerged. There was a man, three women, and a few children. The man was carrying a rifle. It was hanging down at his side. There was something about the way they were moving, as if they were drunk or drugged, and then I looked at their faces. Each held the same expression—empty, open eyes reflecting fear and shock and disbelief.

My mother identified herself and the rest of us.

One of the children started crying, and another was swept up into his mother’s arms.

“They’re gone,” my mother said. “You’re safe.”

She said that with no confidence.

“They just came so suddenly,” the man said. “We couldn’t stop them … we … we…” He started crying, large sobs from deep in his chest.

“There was just so much, so many,” one of the women said. “Bullets and rockets and—” She started crying as well, and that set off the child in her arms.

“My wife, have you seen my wife?” the man asked. “Is she okay?”

“We’re still getting all the survivors together,” Herb said.

“We’ll take you all back to our neighborhood, where you’re safe,” my mother said.

“Are you afraid they might return?” one of the women asked. Involuntarily she stepped back and looked all around. She looked terrified.

“They’re gone,” Herb said. “They’re not coming back, not now. We just want to take you to safety, provide medical treatment if it’s necessary.”

“Come with me,” my mother said. “It’ll all be okay.”

She led them away. They didn’t put up any opposition.

“Stay close,” Herb said.

I fell in beside him.

“The blast patterns on the walls indicate that they had multiple RPGs and weren’t afraid to use them,” Herb said. “I count dozens and dozens of explosions, which would mean they must have so many rounds that they don’t even need to count.”

“Maybe they just lost control.”

“No, this is very controlled and deliberate. There are multiple explosions but not multiple explosions on individual buildings. One hit per building. It’s the same with the external walls of the neighborhood. They were breached in a very specific pattern, right where the guards were posted along the wall.”

There were bodies along the crumbled sections of the wall.

“They simply launched an RPG at any section that was firing at them,” Herb said.

“How do you possibly defend against that?” I asked.

“You don’t.”

We continued to move, past more bodies scattered along the road. We walked along and Herb stopped, looking at each one. Not looking,
studying
. He turned a body over and I gasped. Herb looked at me.

“That’s Sam. I know him from school. Is he…”

I let the sentence trail off. It was so obvious there was no point in asking.

“Judging from the wounds it was fast,” Herb said. “Your friend didn’t suffer.”

“He wasn’t really my friend. I just knew him.”

“It’s harder when you know them. We’re going to know many of them. You don’t have to do this. You can wait by the plane.”

I shook my head. “No, I’ll come. I’ve seen bodies before.”

Was that really me saying those words? What was I trying to prove to Herb or myself?

“Stay right by my side,” he ordered.

We started to walk again. I was aware of the bodies but tried not to look at them as we passed. Herb stopped and examined each one. With a few he reached down and felt for a pulse, searching for life where the wounds hadn’t obviously killed the person. Each time he stood up and walked away.

Up ahead there was a mass of bodies. Somehow there being more bodies made it less upsetting, like I couldn’t focus on an individual. I started counting to make them into a number instead of people. There were eleven men who had fallen so close together that they were practically intertwined, gaping holes visible in them. Already there were flies buzzing around.

“These men were executed.”

“What?”

“They were lined up against the wall of this house and shot. Look at the wall and you can see the bullet marks.”

There were marks, chips in the brick.

“Each man was shot in the chest, and then a second bullet was put into the back of the head. See?”

I did see, but I just couldn’t believe.

“Those bodies on the perimeter and on the street were killed in battle. These men had already been captured. The attackers weren’t interested in taking prisoners. They didn’t want to leave anybody behind. Do you notice that there are no wounded?”

I hadn’t noticed, but he was right.

“There had to be people wounded in the battle,” I said.

“If they found anybody wounded, they just killed them,” Herb said. “Wounded are inconvenient. Depending on the wound it could have been merciful, although I suspect there is little mercy with the people who did this. It was all very cold-blooded. They didn’t even take their own dead with them. Judging from the uniforms, I’ve counted nine of their dead.”