Gravedigger Read Online Free PDF Page B

approached them as they clambered out of the truck to look around. It was still raining, although the rain was mixed with snow. It was windy and bitterly cold.
    “‘ See the world ,’ they said,” said Derek. “‘ Be all you can be .’”
    “‘ Find the future ,’” intoned General Johnston.
    “What are you two babbling about?” Noa asked from beneath a poncho.
    “We’re just not seeing the glamour in our current career choices,” Derek said.
    Her dark eyes glared at him. “Can we get to work?”
    “Well,” Derek said. “Let’s see if we can find someone. And if we can’t find someone, maybe we can find evidence of a mass grave. Or weapons. Or, you know, signs of life.”
    They split up. Derek, figuring a mass grave probably would not be in the middle of the village, opted for hiking around the outer rim of the settlement. Noa and Johnston headed into the town, through the gate of the mud-brick surrounding wall, disappearing into the gathering gloom.
    Derek began a counter-clockwise circuit. Marif was built into the side of a mountain. Terraces had been dug into it, undoubtedly for some crops. Now they acted almost like tiers of waterfalls. The route above the village was rough – scraggly shrubs that bore inch-long thorns that grabbed at his legs. The rutted path was a bog of mud and unstable rocks and gravel. Rain pounded on his poncho. Slipping to his knees, Derek cursed and staggered to his feet. Disgusted, he pulled off the poncho, folded it and stuck it in his ruck. It wasn’t doing him any good. He was already soaked to the skin.
    Stopping to peer around, he realized he was now fifty yards or so above the village. He could see the lights bobbing on opposite sides of Marif—Noa and Johnston. He flicked off his light to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He sniffed the air. Ozone and mud. Something else. Smoke. Squinting through the rain, he studied Marif. A few dozen houses with mud-brick and stone walls. Roofs made of tin or timbers or more mud and wood.
    The wind whipped from behind him, further up in the mountains. Something was burning above him.
    Before investigating further, he donned a pair of night vision goggles. The village below him appeared ghostly and green, the two flashlights causing distortion and flare. He adjusted the NVGs and scanned the area. Further below him, on the opposite end of the village, spread what had probably once been crops. Although the NVGs didn’t allow for great depth perception, the earth where there had once been crops appeared uneven and mounded. It would be his first test site for a mass grave.
    Further along, to the west, looked like a pile of trash. A huge pile. Almost like a dump site. Another plate to investigate.
    Turning his back on the village, he studied the ridges and terraces above him. No light appeared, but the smell of smoke was unmistakable.
    Time to find out who was home.
    It was slow and treacherous. He picked his way in the dark along a narrow, muddy trail that wound its way up the mountainside. At times it disappeared in a cascade of rocks and erosion, forcing Derek to carefully climb around ledges that crumbled under his fingers and offered twenty-foot drops if he screwed up.
    Finally Derek rolled over the lip of a rocky ledge. He crouched on the hard ground, breathing in the cold, wet, thin air. Below him the village seemed small, easily two hundred meters below. Turning, he scanned the terrace. Wind whipped the rain against his goggles, obscuring his vision. But he had seen shapes forty or fifty yards away against the cliff wall.
    The terrace was dotted with wind-stripped trees, boulders, and what looked like corn and possibly wheat.
    Because the people here had gone to such trouble to stay hidden, his instincts told him not to stroll unannounced into the camp. Certainly they would have noticed their truck coming into the village, heard the sounds of their doors slamming shut.
    Derek calmed his heart and breathing, staying still,