Finding Moon

Rice cut the motor.

It was off somewhere to their right. Coming toward them but farther out in the cha

“There,” Osa whispered, pointing.

A dark shape, looming above the water. And then it came out of the shadows into the moon path: a sampan, Moon guessed. It had a high round bow and a roof from which the light reflected. Probably tin, Moon thought. It moved steadily past them, loaded with whispers, with someone sobbing and someone scolding, the sounds of sorrow and despair. And then they could see only its stern, quickly disappearing again into the shadows of the mangrove trees.

“Well,” Rice said, “I wish them luck.” He restarted the motor.

“Refugees from that dreadful war,” Osa said. “Probably no place to go. They must be frightened.”

“Scared to death,” Rice said. “Ghosts are out in the dark at night. They call ’em kwei, the Hungry Ones. They’re the spirits of folks who die without any children to take care of their bones. They get out of the underworld after dark and go around causing bad luck, making people sick.”

“And us,” Osa said. “I think you should also wish us to be lucky.”

“I think we’re already being lucky,” Moon said.

About dawn they saw a flare arc into the sky, across the river and maybe a mile to the east. Two more flares rose and died away, and then there was the sudden sound of a machine gun. Moon reached out his hand, touched Osa’s arm, and she rewarded him with a strained smile. But the gunfire lasted only a few seconds. It aroused frogs and night birds and provoked challenging calls from the same sort of lizards he’d heard on Palawan Island. That, too, quickly died away.

Silence then. Only the purr of the motor, the hiss of the hull sliding through the brown water, the small clatter when Mr. Suhua

Rice noticed him staring at it.

“Used to be a house,” Rice said. “The VC used it, and we flushed them out and burned it.”

The sky was reddening now in the east. A rooster crowed somewhere nearby, exuberant. And awoke another rooster. A dog barked. Something bulky was floating past, a hundred yards out in the current. Cloth. A human body too far out in the river to determine gender. And beyond it something else that looked like a floating bundle. Another body? Too far away to be sure. He glanced at Osa. She was looking inland. So was Rice.

“There’s a few rice paddies back there behind the mangroves,” Rice said. “Eight or nine hooches, best I remember. The ARVN boys thought they might be Vietcong, but then they thought everybody might be Vietcong. It’s the way they stayed alive.”

“Do you think the army will still be here?” Osa said. “They must know they’ve lost the war.”

“I don’t know,” Rice said. “They had this Yellow Tiger Battalion stationed here. Part of an airborne regiment. If they were normal ARVN, I think they’d just shoot some civilians and steal their clothes and pretend to be just plain folks. But these Tigers were tough cookies. Had a colonel named Ngo Diem. Supposed to be mean as a snake.” He chuckled. “Even the marines liked ’em, and the marines didn’t like nobody.”

From far across the river came another sound. It sounded to Moon like a truck engine starting.

“We got to stick close to the bank now,” Rice said. “Around that bend behind that bunch of palms there’s an old LST anchored. LST,” he repeated. “Landing Ship Tank. The U.S.S. Pott County. They anchored it out there and used it as a base for our river patrol boats. Then in ‘seventy-three they turned it over to the Vietnam navy.”

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. Suhua

“What did you see?” Moon asked him.

Mr. Suhua

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. Suhua

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

Mr. Suhua

“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.”