Hillerman, Tony (25 page)

He looked at Moon.

“What do you think? Should we check in with the good gooks, tell ’em what we’re doing here?”

“Maybe we should,” Moon said, doubtfully. “We’re in here illegally, of course. But maybe they’d be too busy this morning to think about that. What do you think?”

“I think first we should sort of take a look and see what we can see,” Rice said. “Could be Charley’s taken the place over by now.”

They took the first look from almost a mile away. Mr. Suhuannaphum extracted a set of very large, very heavy binoculars from somewhere, steadied them against the gunwale of the shore boat, and spent a long time looking. Moon could make out nothing in the dim light except flat dark shapes far out from the distant shore. Mr. Suhuannaphum, however, occasionally muttered under his breath, or sighed, or made disapproving sounds. Finally he handed the binoculars to Rice.

“What did you see?” Moon asked him.

Mr. Suhuannaphum grinned, struggled for words, shrugged, said: “I think bang.” He threw up his hands to demonstrate. “Some fire. Nobody home.” He shrugged again and added, “Maybe so.”

Rice was more expressive but less informative. “Well, shit,” he said. He put down the glasses. “Let’s get a little closer.”

He maneuvered their boat out into the rougher current, angling upstream. Moon picked up the binoculars. First he noticed the smoke. Not much of it, but it rose from the midsection of the
Pott County,
and the
Pott County
seemed to have tilted sharply toward them. He could see the flat deck of a helicopter pad and a half dozen little boats lined against a system of docks tied to the ship. There was no sign of life.

“Sons of bitches,” Rice said. “You gotta protect those things from shore attacks. Got to have outposts out there to keep people with rocket launchers from doing that to you.”

“Is that what happened?” Moon said. “Hit with a rocket?”

“Probably half a dozen rockets, which set the sucker on fire, so the PBR crews got in their boats and headed for safety.”

Moon said, “But they’re still there.”

“Four or five,” Rice said. “Usually there’d be about thirty tied up at the docks. Probably they had a bunch of people killed in the attack. I guess they took as many as they needed.” He sighed. “Well, hell,” he said. “Let’s get a little safer,” and he turned their boat back toward the shore.

It was almost full light now, the eastern horizon bright. Upstream, Moon saw a little boat sailing along the far bank, tall mast in front, short one behind. Behind it, farther out in the current, two other boats moved downriver. Rice accelerated the engine to full speed.

“Well, here we are,” he said, and pointed to the left bank ahead. A large concrete building stood there, tile-roofed and raised on the stilts that the rise and fall of the Mekong made necessary. A wharf extended from the building into the river, and behind the building stood a row of bamboo structures roofed with tin and surrounded by a high fence surmounted with barbed wire.

“If our luck holds like it’s been, Yager will be waiting here,” Rice said. “And he’ll have a bird all fueled up, and we’ll get going on this before the sun gets hot.”

Their luck didn’t hold. Yager wasn’t there. Neither was anyone else. No one came out of the building to greet them as they docked. Rice looped the anchor rope of the shore boat over a piling. Old Mr. Lee hopped onto the planking, helped Osa out, and offered Moon a hand. Rice tossed their gear ashore. Mr. Suhuannaphum reversed the outboard engine and began backing the shore boat away.

“I’ll go see if anybody’s home,” Rice said, and trotted down the dock and into the warehouse.

Mr. Suhuannaphum was also in a hurry. He held up his left hand with his thumb folded in and three fingers extended and shouted something that sounded like “Tree dee.”

“Right,” Mr. Lee shouted back and held up three fingers too.

“What’s that about?” Moon asked.

“That’s the promise Captain Teele made,” Mr. Lee said. “He will keep
Glory of the Sea
out in international waters for three days. And then he will come back to the mouth of the Mekong to look for us.”

“If something goes wrong,” Moon said.

Mr. Lee nodded. “Just in case the wind and water have not been right for us.”

And then the motor on Mr. Suhuannaphum’s shore boat was going
vrooom.
Racing down the river, back toward the clean, clear blue water of the South China Sea. Toward the
Glory of the Sea.
Toward safety.

Special to the
New York Times
BANGKOK
, Thailand, April 28—In an implicit warning to both North Vietnam and international relief organizations, the new government of Cambodia served notice that no “foreign intervention” would be allowed in the country.
    The warning was broadcast over Phnom Penh radio and came as refugees flooding into Thailand reported mass executions by Khmer Rouge troops of those accused of being “exploiters of the people.”

WITH THE MORNING LIGHT UPON it, the Mekong was busy despite the rain. Little boats were everywhere, being sailed, rowed, poled, pushed along with outboard motors. Moon sat on a bundle of something wrapped in burlap, hungrily eating a sticky mixture of rice and pork with his fingers and thinking about the bodies he’d seen floating past in this morning’s darkness.

“It’s no use trying to be neat,” Osa said. “Eating with your fingers neatly, it is simply not possible.”

Osa was sitting on the next bale, eating exactly the same rice mixture neatly.

The rain pattered steadily on the tin roof above them, dripped from the warehouse eaves, splashed in the puddles formed on the dock. Moon heard a thumping sound, far away but too regular to be thunder. He recognized the sound of artillery fire, or perhaps heavy mortars. According to Moon’s map, the only major town upstream was Can Tho, where Highway One bridged this arm of the Mekong. Perhaps they were fighting for that. Anyway, it must be a lot quieter here than around Saigon. The radio Rice had turned up loud in the hangar was full of bad news. The Tan Son Nhut air base had been bombed. That was next door to the capital, and apparently the planes that bombed it were U.S.-built fighter bombers—either turncoat pilots of the Vietnam Air Force or planes captured on the ground up north when Phan Thiet and its air base were taken. It didn’t seem to matter much. One radio report said ARVN marines had seized a C-130 trying to take off from Nha Trang with a load of refugees, forced the civilians out, and flown away. Big Minh, the new president since yesterday, was on the air. The reporter on Rice’s wavelength said he appealed to all citizens to be courageous, not to run away, not to abandon the tombs of their ancestors.

Everything was coming apart. Moon didn’t want to think about it.

What time would it be in Los Angeles? Evening. if she was lucky, if Dr. Serna had made no mistakes, his mother would be recovering now. Her heart pumping blood through unclogged bypasses, her surgical incisions healing. She might be out of the intensive care unit, in a regular room, reading the
L.A. Times
about disaster in Southeast Asia, watching television news, perhaps thinking of how alone she was, wondering what had happened to her unreliable elder son. Had Dr. Serna given her his promise? And what would she think of it?

Or the other possibility. Messages awaiting him at the hotel in Puerto Princesa and the embassy in Manila regretting to inform him that Victoria Mathias Monck had not survived the operation.

That would release her, at last, from her burdens.

“You look sad,” Osa said. “I think you are remembering something unhappy.”

“Oh, no,” Moon said. “Just thinking.”

“Of your mother,” Osa said. “I remember today is the day you said they would have her in the surgery. She is all alone. Of course you worry about her.”

“There’s nothing I could do if I were there.”

“You would hold her hand,” Osa said.

“I should finish here and go back and help Rice,” Moon said. Actually there wasn’t much he could do right now to help. Rice was stripping the heavy stuff out of the copter he had chosen for their rescue project. There had seemed to be plenty to choose from in the R. M. Air repair hangar, ranging from a little Cayuse too small for their purpose to a huge banana-shaped Vertol Chinook with its twin rotors, which was obviously too large. In between were four Hueys, familiar to Moon from his days with the Armored, an ugly Cobra in camouflage paint, and a Bell Kiowa. All stood on wheeled dollies. Some were obviously in the throes of repair, with panels removed and parts missing. The Kiowa seemed ready to go, but Rice had picked one of the Hueys. It had apparently been left behind by the U.S. Navy, and its original Marine Corps markings showed through the Vietnamese paint job.

“I remember this one,” Rice had said. “The radar’s off waiting for parts to come down from Saigon, but we won’t need radar, and these navy models were modified to increase the range.”

Moon had said he hadn’t thought they would need the range either. Weren’t they just hopping over the border thirty minutes into Cambodia?

“You hear that artillery upriver a while ago?” Rice had asked. “We may not be able to get back here to refuel.” What then? Moon had said. And Rice had shrugged and said the best bet would probably be to try for Thailand. So now Rice was removing the machine gun mounts and, as he put it, “everything else that us peace-loving neutrals don’t need to get us the hell out of here.” The less weight, the more miles, Rice had said.

Now Moon was aware that Osa had been staring at him. “Or maybe you were thinking of your sweetheart,” she said. “You must be missing her.”

“No,” Moon said. He chuckled and shook his head, thinking how Osa, who often was so uncannily right about what was on his mind, could be so wrong on this one. He tried to imagine how he’d deal with Debbie in this damp, odorous warehouse. Or how Debbie would deal with him. And with Rice, and Mr. Lee and the others.

“Not missing her?” Osa was looking surprised. He guessed she hadn’t expected his amusement.

“It’s not the kind of relationship you’d normally expect. I own a house. The bank and I own it. I rent out two of the rooms: one to a man who works with me at the newspaper and one to Debbie. Well—” He couldn’t think how to finish this explanation. How much had he said when he had that fever?

“Just sex then?” Osa said, looking very wise. “I don’t think so. When you were so sick you talked about when you would get married. You talked about love.”

Moon found himself embarrassed. “Did I?”

Osa too. Her face was flushed. “I apologize,” she said. “I am sorry. This is not my business. Why am I prying into your private life? This is terrible of me. Don’t answer any of my questions. I am terribly sorry.”

“No, no. It’s all right.”

Osa wasn’t saying anything. Moon suspected she might be crying. Or trying not to cry. Why not? Fatigue. Fear. Dirt. Discomfort. Worry about her brother. Too damn much stress for a woman. Too damn much stress for Moon too. He wasn’t going to look at her. What was her last question?

“Sometimes love and marriage don’t go together,” he said. “Sometimes other things have to be considered. For example, my mother married a man she didn’t love. Her second husband.”

“Oh,” Osa said. She made a sniffing sound. Trying not to cry, Moon thought.

“How about you?” he asked. “You ever think about marrying somebody you didn’t love? Or not marrying somebody you did love? Or any combination of the above?”

“Yes,” Osa said.

“Which one?”

“I guess it was a combination of the above. I was going to marry him, but he went away.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t come back.”

Well, at least she wasn’t crying anymore. But Moon didn’t know exactly how to stop this.

“Was this recently?”

“I was nineteen,” she said. “Going to school in Jakarta. He was a teacher there. He taught French.”

Moon digested that. Or thought he had. “I think something like that would happen to Debbie,” he said. “She’s a very pretty girl. Small and blond. The kind of girl that when she walks into a room all the men look at her. But she doesn’t use her head. She picks the wrong kind of man and she’s going to get dumped. Have her heart broken.”

Osa said, “You are a very funny man,” and when he looked at her, surprised, she was laughing at him.

She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Men,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She laughed again. “I mean you don’t understand women.”

“Like how?”

“That’s not what happened to me at all. That’s not what’s happened with Debbie.”

“How the hell do you know?” said Moon. He was not in the mood to be a source of Osa’s amusement.

“Of course I don’t know,” she said. “You see, I am doing it again. I’m sorry. We will not talk about it any longer.”

“Well,” Moon began, but the noise of an approaching vehicle interrupted him. For a former sergeant in an armored outfit it was a familiar noise. A tracked vehicle, which meant armor. Here that meant trouble.

He stood out of sight at the truck entry door of the warehouse. An armored personnel carrier wearing mottled gray-green camouflage paint splashed with mud had stopped with its nose almost touching the gate in the high wire fence that barred access to the compound. Rice was hurrying out of the hangar toward it. As Moon watched, Lum Lee emerged from the door of the little Quonset hut that housed the R. M. Air offices. Mr. Lee stood just outside, watching.

“What is it?” Osa whispered. She was standing just behind him.

“Technically, it’s a Model One-hundred-thirteen armored personnel carrier,” Moon said. “Armed with one fifty-caliber machine gun on that little mounting on the roof. The one we drove had two benches, six men on each side with their gear stacked in the middle. Driver jammed in against the engine, peeking out through dirty bulletproof glass and no headroom for anyone to stand up unless the roof hatches were open.”

Rice seemed to think it was good news. He unfastened the chain holding the heavy gate. A small man wearing the U.S. Army—model helmet of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and an officer’s uniform climbed out of the roof mounting, hopped off the vehicle, and walked through the gate ahead of it. Rice thrust out his hand.