Finding Moon

“Yes,” Moon said. “I do.”

Rice appeared at the top of the ladder, looked at them, climbed out, and walked toward the stern, where Captain Teele was doing something at the wheel.

“What did I say to my mother?”

“I didn’t listen,” Osa said. “Of course not.”

“But you heard enough to know I was talking to her. What did I say?”

He decided she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said, “I already told you. You said you were sorry.”

Rice was walking up.

“You decide you’re going to live?”

“With a little bit of luck,” Moon said. “And a little more of that soup.”

Rice sat on the canvas beside him. “Teele’s going to wait until about an hour before dawn. Then he’ll haul in the sail and go as close to the mouth as he can get. We’ll take the rubber boat and ride on into the new R. M. Air base. Then I’ll fire up a copter and we’ll get this business over with.”

Moon didn’t comment. The soup suddenly felt heavy in his stomach.

“If we’re lucky, Bob Yager will be there. If he is, we can get maybe four or five of those copters out of there. You know, fly two of them over to Thailand, leave one, fly back in the other, take a couple more. Keep doing it until we got all of ’em out that are ready to go.”

It took Moon about a second or two to understand the implications of this. What was a military helicopter worth? The army paid about a million dollars each, he guessed, depending on the model.

Used, and a fire sale situation, maybe three or four hundred thousand each. Maybe more. No way to guess.

“Yager,” Moon said. “I thought he was on the business end of things.”

“He was Ricky’s executive officer back when they were both in the service. He’d resigned his commission before Ricky did. Went into some sort of business in Saigon and Phnom Penh, the way I heard it, and then came along right after Ricky started R. M. Air. Chief pilot and deal maker. Last I heard he was in Malaysia, setting up a base down the peninsula for when the South Viets gave up.”

“You told us there wouldn’t be any pilots left,” Moon said. “Remember telling us that?”

Rice’s face showed no trace of embarrassment. “Did I say that? I guess I did, didn’t I. I was thinking you folks would have just left me there in prison and gone on about your business.”

“You’re right about that,” Moon said.

“It’s better this way anyway. First place, Yager will probably be gone by now. So I didn’t lie.”

Moon shrugged.

“No use leaving those copters for the Commies,” Rice said. “I’d rather blow ’ em up. And from what the radio is saying, there ain’t going to be no Army of the Republic of Vietnam after a few more days. They owe Ricky money now, and they’ll be owing a lot more.”

“You going to sell them? Is that the plan?”

“We could. But why not expand R. M. Air to Thailand or Malaysia?” Rice asked. “I guess it’s your company now. You being lUcky’s brother, I guess you inherit it. There’s sure as hell plenty of business out here. Hauling things around. And people.”

“First we go get Ricky’s daughter,” Moon said. “And take care of this other business.”

“Sure,” Rice said. “First things first.” He looked thoughtful. “You still have that map?”

“It’s with my stuff,” Moon said.

Osa brought it, and they spread it on the deck.

“Okay,” Rice said. “Here we are.” He tapped a fingertip on the blue of the South China Sea a half inch north of the westernmost of the seven mouths of the mighty Mekong. “When it gets a little darker, Captain Teele will pull in close as he can safely get this ship, and we’ll run the shore boat up to here.” He moved his fingertip to a dot just upstream from the mouth. “Long Phu is the village. Ricky was starting to move things down there the last I saw of things, so it should pretty much all be there by now. The ARVN general Ricky was working with owned a place down there, a dock sticking out into the Mekong with a warehouse. Had living quarters and a bunch of big sheds Ricky had ’em convert into repair hangars.”

He gri

“I think the general had been into smuggling. Probably still was. Anyway, when Ricky wanted a safer place for R. M. Air he worked out a deal with this fella. So we’ll pull in there about daylight and see what we find. If R. M. Air is still operating, then no problem. We just take a copter and get our business done. if everybody’s gone but some of the birds are left behind, we’ll fuel one up and get on with it. Or, if they didn’t get the birds moved down there then”-Rice moved his fingertip an inch up the river-“we sail on up the Mekong to the R. M. Air hangars at the airstrip outside Can Tho and take a copter from there.”

Rice paused, studying the map. Far out, near the horizon, Moon saw a red light reflecting from a sail. Then two more. Small craft, six or seven miles away, he guessed, and apparently outward bound.

“I’d guess Bob Yager will still be there,” he said. “Wherever the copters are. Yager would stick around until the last dog died.”

“Yeah,” Moon said.

“Sure,” Rice said. “Yager will be there. if he’s not, we can do it just as well without him.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Osa said. “Can you find anything in the darkness?”

Rice shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

Moon was going to say, Because maybe the Vietcong will be shooting at us, but Osa answered the question.

“I remember flying up the river that day you took me to my brother’s mission,” she said. “It was like flying over green wilderness. Everywhere you looked you could see light reflecting off the water. All tangled up with streams and irrigation canals. Like a maze. I’d think you would get lost. Easy enough, maybe, in a helicopter where you can see the sea behind you and the mountains up ahead. But down on the water in a little boat how could anybody tell? Not in the dark.”

“Anybody couldn’t,” Rice said. “I can. I used to live on that goddamn river. Three hitches in the Brown Water Navy. With the Game Warden project.”

Rice looked from Osa to Moon and back, waiting for the question.

“Game Warden?” Moon said.

“The navy called the whole operation Market Garden,” Rice said. “And the river patrol part down here was Game Warden. The idea being to keep the VC from ru

Rice became aware that his pride was showing and stopped. “Shows you how crazy I was,” he added.

“When was that?” Moon asked.

“I started with the project in ‘sixty-seven. Transferred in. Did two hitches in the little PBRs- anybody but the navy would call ’ em River Patrol Boats but the navy made ’ em Patrol Boats River. Then I shifted over to the Floyd County, one of the LSTs they converted as base ships for the boats. We’d anchor way out in the cha

“How’d you learn to fly?”

“Went along as crew,” Rice said. “I was a chief petty officer, a regular navy lifer. You can do pretty much what you want to do after you learn the system. I got friendly with the pilots. Watched how they did it. Took over when the pilot wanted to eat his lunch or take a break. That’s how I met your brother.”

“He hired you out of the navy?”

“I was quitting anyway,” Rice said. “Had in my twenty, and the navy was phasing out to go home. I’d met Ricky when we were transferring our Hueys over to the Vietnam navy and he was doing their maintenance. I told him I didn’t want to go back to the States-nothing for me there, and he said stick around, he could use me. Yager was already part of Ricky’s team by then, and he sort of gave me the finishing touches.” Rice laughed. “Like how to put one down without bouncing it.”