The Reckoning by Jeff Long

real.
    â€œWe find their pilot for them,” Kleat said, “and like that, adios, pendejos.”
    â€œFor the record, he’s not found yet, only his helmet,” said Duncan. “And one other thing, it was Molly who found him. Not us.” He raised a toast to her.
    Molly gamely lifted her glass. Kleat passed.
    The ice-cold Heineken was like culture shock. She sat there. Her farmer tan torpedoed the dandelion-yellow sundress she had been saving for just such an evening. It jumped up at her, the sunburn and freckles to her upper arms, then the shoulders as white as moons. She looked half naked to herself. And her hair, like something chopped to Goth with surgical scissors, which was what she’d resorted to. She lifted her chin. Nothing to do about it tonight. Beauty, skin deep, all that.
    The sun went on sinking. Only this morning, the sun had seemed like a peasant disease, breaking them down all day, leaving them sore and weary by night. Now, with a drink in hand and the fans cooling the air, she did her best to see the sunset as a thing of great beauty. She tried to savor her postexpedition daze, to relinquish the heat and dust and insects. She put off thoughts of whatever came next. The day was ending. The month. A full month she had spent grubbing after the dead.
    Kleat started in on her. This last supper was his idea. Molly had actually hoped they could part friends. Dumb.
    â€œYou were told,” he said. “Day one. Their first commandment. I heard the captain tell you. No shooting the dead. Anything but them. So what do you do?”
    The scar at his throat turned purple. He never talked about the scar. He seemed to think it spoke for him. Most of the people on the dig thought it came from a sloppy thyroid surgery.
    â€œWe’ve been through this,” Duncan said quietly. “The camera was just their excuse.” He was still holding his World Tribune, five days out of date, devouring every word.
    â€œWe got pulled down with her,” Kleat said.
    Molly sighed. He couldn’t help himself. She only wished he could have waited until after dessert. The waiters hadn’t even arrived with her salad. The restaurant was known for its salad Niçoise. For a month, she had been waiting for it.
    â€œA deal was struck,” said Duncan. “They were given a week to recover the pilot. However they’re getting through those bones, it’s not for public consumption, American or Cambodian. They don’t want outsiders to see it.”
    â€œGet this straight,” Kleat said. “I’m not one of you.”
    â€œI don’t mean this harshly, John,” Duncan said, “but that’s all you are. One of us.”
    The veins stood out on Kleat’s burnished skull. He leaned in. “I belonged.”
    â€œI’ll say it again,” Molly said. “I thought the well was empty.”
    â€œYou knew. Somehow you knew.”
    â€œShe has a gift,” Duncan said. “Leave it at that.”
    It was useless talking about it. The captain had been ordered to make a clean sweep. His three guests had been loaded into a Land Cruiser and sent away.
    She looked from one man to the other, each freshly showered, their whiskers scraped off. The dig had thinned them. Their clean shirts hung on their shoulders like stolen laundry. They looked like sticks of hard driftwood among the last of the Europeans at the tables around them. The package tours had all but shut down. The monsoon season was almost here, and the typhoon was circling in the South China Sea.
    â€œIt was never your brother down there anyway,” said Duncan. “We knew that from the start. You said he went missing along the border. That’s a hundred miles to the east. And this was a crash site. We were looking for a pilot, not a soldier on foot.”
    â€œYou don’t get it.” Kleat was plaintive. “They’ll never have me back again.”
    The sunset trembled.