They trod farther, on the balls of their feet. Lett followed. At this point a red cord hung horizontally along the tunnel wall to guide anyone who might be getting lost in this maze. They saw other shafts blocked off but made to look natural; the engineers chipped away at these to reveal walls of concrete. Lansdale had a map out, Lett saw, and they consulted it more often, stopping to gather around it, leaving Lett in the dark. They hadn’t bothered to offer him a flashlight. It made him feel more comfortable somehow.

Eventually they reached another access tunnel like the one they’d entered. Rounding the final bend, the group stopped in their tracks. Lett followed up behind, his eyes widening at what their flashlights revealed.

Piles of skeletons appeared, some wearing nothing but loincloths, but then Lett noticed it was their ragged underwear. Others wore the shreds of dungarees and uniforms. These were POWs—they had to be. Lett could imagine the way it went down. Like slaves had built the pyramids of old, these poor fellows labored to fill this cave for their Japanese masters before being walled inside. Their rags were so worn and meager that he couldn’t be certain these were Allied POWs. He thought he saw a Marine cap but didn’t want to get close enough to look. They could be Korean, Filipino, Australian, American. He suspected all of the above. Labor was labor.

One of the Corps of Engineers officers was vomiting, which brought more smell.

Lett couldn’t stop staring. They must have numbered in the hundreds. Had they been clawing at the wall and gassed somehow? Or had they been left here to run out of air and starve, and here they lay to die? Or had they turned on one another, for the scraps of raw meat that would keep the last of them going?

Lansdale was standing close to Lett, so close Lett felt his breath on his ear. “May they rest in peace,” Lansdale said. “This is why we fought.”

He looked to Lett for some equally solemn confirmation. Lett could only snort. As victors, the Americans had and might still have all the best reasons for appropriating these spoils, he thought, on account of plenty of crimes. There was what the Japanese did in China, to Nanking alone. How they took no prisoners. The kamikaze terror. Not to mention Pearl Harbor. And there were these poor POWs left to die. Seizing spoils had surely been going on over here since the war, just as in the ETO. But the spoils part of this? No, this was not “why we fought.” These so-called spoils belonged to their original owners.

Oddly, the gleam in Lansdale’s eye returned. He patted Lett on the shoulder again. It was all Lett could do not to recoil. Then Lansdale stroked Lett’s M1 carbine. “You know, you will have to use that thing eventually,” he said.