Forty Days at Kamas (41 page)

"Did any of you notice that today marks the thirtieth day of the revolt?" the Colonel asked. "What do you suppose they're doing to mark the occasion over in the other compound?"

The remark elicited smiles but no laughter.

"All right then," Majors continued, "Let's start around the table with the Military Department."

Pete Murphy looked unwell. His hair was disheveled, his face unshaven, and the gray circles under his eyes added to the unhealthy pallor of his complexion. He didn’t even glance up from his notes as he spoke.

"Over the past five days, the enemy has added two more battalion–strength infantry units to the forces outside the camp. Training exercises and maneuvers have become more frequent, with many exercises occurring at night. Intelligence indicates that he may have constructed a mockup of the camp nearby to train for an assault.

"To date, we have not seen any evidence that the enemy has brought in the kind of armor that one would expect to be part of an all–out assault on a camp the size of Kamas. Once we see signs that it’s arrived, I predict an assault within twenty–four to forty–eight hours.

"As I reported to you last week, our defensive preparations are complete and we continue to improve our training and readiness. But no one here should be under any illusions about the imbalance between the enemy's forces and our own. If they attack, our losses will be catastrophic."

The moment he finished speaking, Pete Murphy raised his head and looked around the table with an expression of palpable relief. It seemed to me that nothing in his Army career had prepared him for a battle like the one he had been asked to fight.

Majors turned now to Glenn Reineke, who offered a summary of what he had learned from the interrogations of Bernstein, Skinner, and Gaffney, leaving out any speculation about Majors’s possible disloyalty. Reineke also explained the reasons behind the policy of permitting disaffected prisoners to leave the camp through the deserters’ gates. As long as the stalemate continued, he declared, those who opted not to fight would be free to use the gates. But once fighting broke out, anyone who attempted to leave would be considered a deserter and dealt with accordingly.

A moment of awkward silence followed.

Then it was Dr. Schuster's turn to report on medical matters. To illustrate how few drugs or medical supplies were left on hand, Schuster pointed out that Glenn Reineke’s bodyguard was now near death from infection of the knife wounds he received while attempting to disarm Brian Gaffney. The knife blade, Schuster discovered, had been smeared with human feces to bring on sepsis. The faces around the table registered disgust but not surprise.

Next in line was Jerry McIntyre, the Technical Department chief who ventured only rarely from his secret laboratory to attend commission meetings.

"I must say, you technical people certainly do a good job of keeping the lid on your secrets," Majors told him. "What encouraging news do you bring us, Jerry?"

McIntyre, a tall, gangling man with thick, horn–rimmed glasses, peered down at his notes.

"Well, if you're looking for breakthroughs, Colonel, I expect I may disappoint you," McIntyre replied. "Lately we've had to scale back expectations considerably."

"Perhaps then you could start with some of the things you
have
accomplished…" Majors pressed.

"At the moment, every project we've completed has already been passed along to the Military Department and the workshops. The gas masks, for instance, and the crossbows and the compound longbows. And some low–yield incendiary devices. But we’ve been rather stymied in the area of explosives. Given the shortage of raw materials–"

"You mean to say you haven't come up with the anti–tank weapons we talked about?" Majors interrupted. "How about electronic warfare?"

McIntyre shook his head.

"We scoured the camp for electronics and microcircuitry the very first week of the revolt. Not much turned up."

"So all the hype and rumor about secret weapons was nothing more than… hype and rumor?"

Beads of sweat formed on McIntyre's upper lip.

"Excuse me, Colonel, but you led us to believe that rumors were to be encouraged to keep up morale. If there's been a misunderstanding…"

The news came as a crushing blow. We had all wanted desperately to believe the rumors. The techs were our best and brightest. Surely, we thought, they would come up with something ingenious to help even the odds.

"No, there's no misunderstanding," Majors answered wearily. "Just try to wrap up whatever you’re working on by the end of the week. And be sure to destroy your paperwork."

Majors continued around the table until all the Department heads had spoken but by now we were all on the edge of depression. Time was running out and we knew it.

"So, now we come to the question of questions," Majors continued. "Do we fight or do we surrender? You all know the terms State Security has extended to us. If they had offered us even the most minimal concessions I would have had little choice but to recommend them. But they always revert to the same old mantra: ‘First go back to work and then we’ll see…’

Majors turned to Ralph Knopfler.

"Ralph, I understand your people have done some opinion polling to track camp morale. Last week when you asked the prisoners if they wanted to fight or surrender, what did they tell you?"

"Nine out of ten wanted to hold out till we're attacked," Knopfler reported. "They won't go back to work unless the bosses meet all our baseline demands and offer credible guarantees."

"What sort of guarantees would they need?" Majors asked. "Would bringing in a member of the Party Central Committee be enough?"

"We asked that in the last poll," Knopfler replied. "Bringing in a couple well–known Central Committee men might help if they supported our demands."

Majors sat up and his eyes took on a look of renewed hope.

"That's what I pushed for the last time I talked to Boscov," he said. "They're still noncommittal about it but I still think a visit from somebody like Sturgis or Cook could be the key."

Knopfler and I exchanged puzzled looks. Nothing Majors had said so far seemed particularly damning. There was no sly maneuvering or heavy–handed pressure toward capitulation. Nor had Majors said anything disparaging about the prisoners who favored holding out to the end. He seemed to want nothing more than to build a reasonable consensus around the views of a majority of prisoners.

For the next half–hour our discussion continued without bringing us any closer to a decision. I left the commission offices more confused than ever. I was desperate to talk to Reineke about finding a way to leave camp.

On the way out, Pete Murphy took my arm and gestured for me to sit down with him.

"Paul, do you remember the conversation we had a few weeks ago about dreams?"

"Sure," I said. "You dreamed you were getting out. When's the big day?"

"Tomorrow, the eighteenth," Murphy replied with a worried look.

"Are you ready to go?"

"That's just it," Murphy replied. "I'm not. For the past two and a half months I've been thinking that if only I can last to June 18, I'll have it made. But now that it's almost here, I don't know what to do."

"Would it be so awful if your dream turned out to be wrong?"

"Not really. What spooks me is that it may turn out to be right. Because if it is, I can't imagine getting out of Kamas tomorrow any other way but by dying."

"If you're that spooked, why not stay in your bunk or check into the dispensary for the day. Let it blow over. Nobody deserves a rest more than you."

Murphy's face brightened.

"My God, Paul, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. I could say I was in a meeting and nobody would be the wiser."

He set off at once toward the dispensary.

When I arrived a short while later at Glenn Reineke's office I saw Helen Sigler's deciphered message spread before him on the desk.

"Paul, do you remember what I said to you that night when Ben Jackson came to see me about his dreams?"

"I remember you tried to recruit me to hunt stoolies," I said with a smile.

"I did, didn't I? But then our relationship went off in a different direction and I'm glad it did."

"So am I," I said.

"Back then I told you we had enough martyrs in Kamas. I still believe that."

"Then you think I should leave? Stroll out the deserters’ gate, just like that?" I asked.

"You have a chance to live, Paul. Take it."

"I was planning to think about it a bit more. You don't expect the bosses to attack in the next day or two, do you?"

Reineke shook his head.

"Don’t wait a day longer. And don't tell anybody about it. Just go."

C
HAPTER
39

"A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."
—Joseph Stalin

TUESDAY, JUNE 18

DAY 31

The blazing June sun was already high above the eastern hills when I spotted the dust cloud approaching from the direction of Heber. It crept steadily down from the heights of Upper Provo Canyon, trailing distant plumes of reddish brown dust.

"Bulldozers," Jon Merrill reported as he watched their progress through his field binoculars. "Seems the bosses are finally getting serious."

"Let me borrow those," I replied. I focused the glasses on the lead bulldozer and then on the second and third.

"They have Army markings," I said. "If the Warden can borrow a half–dozen dozers from the military, I expect tanks and APCs won't be far behind. It doesn't look good for the home team, Jon."

I gave Merrill the binoculars and gazed out from the barracks roof across the perimeter wall toward the enemy troop encampments three or four hundred yards away. Before long the bulldozers would be piling up new earthworks that would cut off our view of enemy positions. When and if the tanks and APCs arrived, almost certainly by night, we probably wouldn't even see them.

Merrill reported our sighting to the messenger posted at the corner of the barracks and directed him to convey the news to the command post. Merrill returned a few moments later.

"Shift's almost over. Will I see you for the four o'clock watch?" I asked.

"No," Merrill replied. "I've been promoted to a desk job at the command post. I'll still handle the morning watch every day, but afternoons I'll be doing paperwork for Pete Murphy. The Doc says I'm fit to put in a full workday now."

"Congratulations. You certainly look stronger. Too bad Gwen isn't here to see it."

Merrill gazed out at the horizon.

"Yeah," he sighed. "I never expected her to bolt the way she did."

I sensed the hurt in his voice.

"I talked to her a couple days before she left. I didn't expect it, either," I said.

"She let a lot of people down when she walked out," Merrill added. I still love her and feel deeply sorry for her but what she did was wrong."

I opened my mouth to speak but thought better of it. What could I say that wouldn't become a lie the moment I walked out of camp?

Merrill gave me a penetrating look.

"Let's be honest with each other, Paul," he said. "Nobody I know expects to get out of Kamas alive. When the bosses are ready to shut us down, they’ll cut through here like a knife through butter. And there isn't a damned thing we can do about it."

Our watch ended a short while later. I made my way back to the barracks to rest until the mess hall opened for lunch.

I rose when the noon bell rang and followed the stream of prisoners toward the Division 3 mess. The first thing I noticed as we approached was the swarm of men at the bulletin board. A gray–bearded prisoner emerged slowly from the crowd with head hung low to join the flow of those entering the hall.

"What did they post?" I asked him.

"The first batch of case reviews," he replied gloomily.

"Does it show which petitions were approved?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"Only the ones that were reviewed. To find out if yours was approved you have to wait in line."

We entered the mess hall. Along the west wall of the building a hundred or more prisoners stood single–file before a mess table manned by judges Richardson and O'Rourke. While Richardson, a tall patrician with darting eyes, searched through a series of cardboard boxes for the next petitioner's file jacket, the short bespectacled O'Rourke notified each prisoner of the action that the special hearing panel had taken on his petition. From the looks of it, few petitions had been approved.

The lanky young prisoner at the head of the line listened to Judge O'Rourke silently for a minute or more before slamming his fist on the table and turning on his heel to leave. It was Jerry Lee.

I grabbed his arm as he passed me on the way to the door.

"Setback?" I asked.

"Setback, hell," Jerry Lee snorted. "The whole system is a fraud. No matter what grounds you have for appeal, they have a dozen reasons to turn you down. Nothing you could say could ever be enough to win."

"On what grounds did you appeal?"

"Lack of evidence," he replied. "As a fallback, I asked for a reduction in sentence."

"So how did you make out?"

"Zero for two. O’Rourke said if I didn't like it, I was welcome to walk out the deserters’ gate and tell it to the Warden. The old farts are using that line on everybody."

"Come on, let’s have some lunch."

He agreed and we spent the entire lunch talking about the female prisoners Jerry Lee had met so far in camp. Fortunately, Jerry Lee had found more success with women than with the special hearing panel.

After lunch I returned to the barracks. There I gathered my toothbrush, razor, and spare set of underwear and the few belongings that would fit unobtrusively inside my coveralls and headed to the bathhouse for a shower. When I had finished, instead of returning to the barracks, I went to the Service Yard and sat in the shade near one of the warehouses located closest to the main gate.