Finding Moon

“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 fu

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 perso

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

“Technically, it’s a Model One-hundred-thirteen armored perso

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.

“Looks all right so far,” Moon said.

Then he saw the ARVN officer was holding a pistol. Rice’s gesture seemed to have been defensive.

“No,” Moon said. “Not so good.”

“A pistol,” Osa said, voice hushed.

The rear hatch of the armored perso

“What should we do?” Osa asked.

“I’d say wait. See what happens.”

“But-” She didn’t finish the thought.

“These are the good guys,” Moon said. “R. M. Air was fixing helicopters for them. Maybe they heard the place had been evacuated so they came by to see what’s going on.”

“Perhaps so,” Osa said. “But he pointed a pistol at Mr. Rice.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” He and Osa should be looking for a place to hide. Under the bales stacked against the wall. Or in the bales. “Our best bet is to get our things together and be ready in case we need to be. Sort of clean this place up.”

“In case they shoot Mr. Rice and Mr. Lee and come looking to see if there is someone else to shoot?”

“Well, yes,” Moon said. He picked up his rice bowl and his map, put them both in his bag, and looked around the floor for any other traces that they’d been there.

“We could hide over there,” Osa said, indicating the mountainous stacks of burlap bags.

“You watch,” Moon said. “Don’t leave any evidence we’re here. I’ll make us a hiding place.”

He moved enough bags to make a narrow crevice against the wall, put his bag in the back of it, and added Osa’s baggage to the cache. He was arranging two sacks atop the pile to be pulled down behind them when he heard an engine starting.

Osa was standing just inside the doorway, pointing. Moon saw Mr. Lee, looking very wet, climbing the steps into the warehouse. The dolly holding Rice’s favored Huey had been rolled out onto the landing pad. The rotor blades turned slowly. Rice was at the controls beside the officer with the pistol. The engine revved, fell to a purr, revved again. As the copter blades picked up speed, the officer with the rifle climbed in through the side door and motioned for the soldier to join them. He ran from the APC, ducked under the rotors, and pulled himself in.

Mr. Lee stood beside them now, watching the copter rise and make a sharp turn out over the Mekong. Over the noise of its engine came the hard crackling sound of automatic rifle fire.

“I believe the Yellow Tiger Battalion has lost one of its company commanders, the leader of its intelligence platoon, and one of its soldiers,” Mr. Lee said.

“And have we lost Rice?” Moon asked. “Or is he going to fly them to safety and then come back for us?”

“I think Mr. Rice will not be back,” Mr. Lee said. “And I think we should find a place to hide ourselves.”

Through the doorway, Moon saw two men slipping through the gate. They carried automatic rifles and wore the black pajamas and conical hats he’d seen in war movies. Five men followed, heading for the hangar.

“Right over here,” Moon said, pointing to the great pile of bales. “And hurry.”

HANOI, North Vietnam, April 28-(Agence France-Presse) A spokesman for the foreign office here said today that the proposal of the new president of South Vietnam for a negotiated peace had “come too late” and that the war would be ended by “a military solution.”

Noon, the Nineteenth Day

MOON SAT ON A SACK OF SOMETHING heavy but soft, with his arms hugged around his knees, wondering if it had been proper to have jammed Osa in the very back of their cubbyhole. He’d done it to improve her safety, but that was accomplished at the price of increasing her discomfort. Putting Mr. Lee in the middle in recognition of his age gave Moon the spot adjoining the sacks that closed the entrance of their cave. There it was more spacious but would be most dangerous if their Vietcong visitors detected them and decided to shoot into the cave-although Moon doubted if AK-47 bullets would penetrate whatever it was (probably rice) that filled the sacks. Would Victoria Mathias have approved of his decisions? A nice ethical question, and better than thinking about a lot of other things.

Moon did not want to think about how the hell they were going to get out of this mess.

By twisting his head, Moon could peer through a narrow space between the sacks and observe a little of the outside world. The most interesting thing he could see was the bottom two-thirds of the Vietcong standing beside the pile of bales across the warehouse. This person wore the traditional VC attire-loose black trousers. His were torn at one knee, wet, and muddy. He sat on one of the bales, rested a U.S. Army-issue M16 rifle against it, balanced a small bowl on his left knee, and began eating from it with his fingers. Now Moon could see almost all of this fellow. By leaning far forward and pulling down on the burlap of the bag in front of him, Moon could also see another black-clad leg. The man with the bowl was old and frail with a kindly face and a ragged mustache that he brushed aside to insert a little ball of rice into his mouth. His hair was short, in what Victoria Mathias had called a “bowl haircut” when she administered them to her sons.