Now that the noise of the APC's diesel was gone he could clearly hear the engines. And over that the night sounds. The sky was mostly clear now. The moon was almost overhead, but still a lopsided disk and not the bright white rock that lit the landscape of the Rocky Mountain high country. It would be midmorning in Durance now. But what day was it? He'd lost track of that. Debbie would be at work or, if it was a weekend, off somewhere with J.D. or one of the other men who chased her. How about Shirley's dog? How about J.D.'s engine? How about Rooney being fired? For that matter, how about being fired himself? None of it seemed important. He shifted to another question. What was going on with Osa van Winjgaarden? Her brother dead and let's go home; then her brother alive and requiring her attention.
Moon heard a single distant explosion. It echoed and died away. He heard gecko lizards making their obscene-sounding mating calls, frogs, the song of insects. And then another sort of song. The men on the passing trucks were singing. He bent down into the APC. Lum Lee was standing just below him. Osa and Nguyen Nung sat on a side bench, looking at him.
"You hear that?" Moon asked.
"I think I hear someone singing," Mr. Lee said. "Four truckloads of Vietcong," Moon said.
"It sounds like one of their songs," Mr. Lee said. "Like their national anthem?"
Mr. Lee laughed. "I think more like `Waltzing Matilda.' It has lots of dirty verses. The song is about chasing out the French, and then chasing out the Japanese, and then chasing out the French again, and now-" Mr. Lee, always polite, didn't complete the sentence. Instead he said, "We have been listening to their radio transmissions. I think they have captured Can Tho. They say the Tiger is dead."
That changed Moon's plans a little. He would tag along behind the convoy. No more worry about mines. The VC would know where they'd laid them.
He ran with lights off about half a mile behind the last truck. Nguyen Nung perched in the machine gun hatch as lookout. In the utterly flat terrain the road followed along this arm of the Mekong, there was no problem keeping the lights in sight. A little after midnight Moon noticed another light, a glow on the horizon visible even through his small, smeared viewing window. Can Tho, or some part of it, was burning. The map showed an airport on the north side of town. Probably its fuel dump was ablaze. Probably that was the explosion they'd heard.
He stopped the APC and spread the proper artillery map over the rice sacks on the floor. They studied it. Nguyen proved to understand maps far better than he understood English. He also knew his home landscape. He corrected their present location, moving Moon's marker to a point six kilometers farther west of Can Tho. The narrow road of packed earth that intersected their path just ahead led directly to paved Route 80, which skirted the coast toward the town of Ha Tien right on the Cambodian border. There would be a border crossing checkpoint there. They'd avoid Route 80 by using farm roads through the paddies and dodge the border guards the same way.
"Okay," Moon said. "Let's everybody relieve themselves who needs to. Men to the right, women to the left. And off we go."
Nguyen was grinning. "Hunner klicks. No much time."
The road was drier here. Moon stood with his back against the metal flank of the APC looking through the moonlight at the orange glow of whatever was burning at Can Tho. No explosions now, just the geckos and the frogs and the insects. He was thinking that Nguyen's hundred kilometers was about right. Sixty miles to the border. There the hills began. Another twenty miles, more or less, to Eleth Vinh's village. Another ten or twelve into the higher country to the Reverend van Winjgaarden's mission. The range on the APC he'd worked with at Fort Riley was 120 miles fully loaded, with twelve men, their weapons, spare ammunition, food, water, and gear. This model was the lighter version, made for the swamps. It should do a little better. He'd strapped eight GI cans in the racks the ARVN had added. Forty gallons. Full tank when they left the hangars, but if the gauge was right they'd already burned about 30 percent of that. Enough fuel to get there. There would be some left for getting back. Enough? Probably not.
The glow at Can Tho flared brighter. Perhaps a gasoline tank going up. It died away. Moon thought about what they'd find at the Cambodian border. And across it. Lum Lee said the radio had reported that Pol Pot's new government was announcing it had executed eight members of the old cabinet. A public decapitation. Someone broadcasting from Bangkok had described the Khmer Rouge sending the capital's residents out into the country, setting up labor camps for them, killing the stragglers, killing the Chinese, killing those who were not ethnic Khmers. Killing those who had "the soft hands of the capitalistic exploiters of the people."
Well, maybe they would never reach the border. A dozen things could happen. if nothing bad happened, they should be there about moonset. Then they'd see what they would see.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, April 29 (Agence France-Presse)-The Cambodian government today ordered the immediate deportation of more than 600 foreign refugees being sheltered in the French Embassy. The refugees are being trucked to the Thai border. Before Dawn, the Twentieth Day May 2, 1975 THERE HAD BEEN A COUPLE OF HOURS of cautious, tense, uneventful driving. Moon sagged in his seat, fighting off the drowsiness of twenty-four hours without sleep, wondering about how his mother's operation had gone, working over the problem of Osa's odd behavior, and considering how to recover his lost job, his mind drifting far from the unreality of the Mekong Delta, far from the tension of running without lights down this rutted dirt road, depending on the moon, with Nguyen Nung perched above him behind the machine gun, giving directions sometimes with a bare foot tapping the proper shoulder, sometimes shouting over the mutter of the diesel.
Moon shook his head violently to drive away sleep and, glancing back, saw that Osa was still sleeping curled on the bench and Lum Lee was studying the map spread across a rice sack on the floor. Then Nguyen yelled a warning and kicked hard at both of Moon's shoulders.
Moon slammed the APC into neutral, hit the brakes, flicked on the headlights. Two hundred yards down the road, a group of men were pushing an army truck backward across the narrow road. Some wore steel helmets. ARVN soldiers. Probably one of the fragments left from the Yellow Tiger Battalion. Probably the survivors of a platoon fleeing Can Tho. How should he handle this?
Nguyen was shouting something unintelligible.
"He says rocket launcher," Mr. Lee said. Then Moon could see it himself. The man holding it was just behind the truck, wearing a helmet. Kneeling now to aim. Moon cut the lights, slammed the APC in reverse, did the push-pull "bugout" maneuver they'd practiced a hundred times at Fort Riley, felt the machine begin its spin. He heard something like a curse from Nguyen, then the sound of bullets ricocheting from the side armor, then the staccato roar of Nguyen's machine gun.
The APC lurched into the ditch, tilted at an angle of almost forty-five degrees. From behind Moon came the sound of things clanging and crashing as they fell, the slamming, whanging sound of bullets hitting the armor, of sudden bursts from Nguyen's gun, of the left tread spinning in the mud, the groan of twisting metal plates.
Then the deafening blast of an explosion.
Moon's nostrils were filled with the smell of smoke, his ears with Nguyen's scream.
Moon thought, So this is how it ends.
He felt a strange, illogical sense of peace. Behind him Osa was sprawled on the rice sacks. Mr. Lee was invisible. Nguyen's legs were thrashing. Then he realized that the diesel was roaring, both treads were holding again, the APC rolling down them, tilting back to level, moving. Now the whang of bullets hitting steel was coming from the closed rear ramp. Whatever had exploded hadn't killed them. Not even Nguyen. The blood trickling down the man's arm and dripping on Moon's back must be from something relatively minor because Nguyen was still at the gun above, firing efficient short fifty bursts.
It had probably been an antipersonnel grenade, designed to kill men but not to penetrate even the thin armor of an APC. They'd decided that after fleeing a mile down the road and turning down an e
ven narrower side road and sitting, with the engine cut, to listen. Moon, who rarely remembered to pray, prayed now not to hear an approaching truck. The truck could easily outrun them on the road. The grenade had merely frightened them and gave Nguyen another shrapnel slash across his shoulder. But if the soldiers had an antitank rocket it would punch right through this thin-skinned little vehicle and turn it into a great blaze of burning diesel fuel.
Which, it occurred to Moon as he sat straining to hear something and hoping not to, was why they were still alive. The truck must be out of fuel. The roadblock was being formed either to snare an operating vehicle or refuel the truck.
Now sounds began to emerge from the eerie silence. No truck, no shots, just the rain-country lizards resuming their lustful shouts, insects taking up their nocturnal songs, and finally the frogs issuing their interrupted mating calls.
Nguyen was sure the blast had been a rocket grenade. He had seen it coming. He had seen them coming before out of the mangrove thickets, out of the half-burned hooches lining the creeks and canals and the Mekong itself. Seen what they would do when they hit the fiberglass hull of a PBR or one of its occupants. That's why he had screamed. But he was embarrassed by that now, because only a little piece of shrapnel had cut his shoulder.
While Osa added to his collection of bandages, Nguyen gave them his analysis of the action, which seemed, despite his wound, to have left him joyful. They had come upon what was left of a Yellow Tiger infantry platoon on the run from their lost war at Can Tho. They were headed for the coast, Nguyen believed, hoping to steal a boat. Their truck had run out of fuel. They had heard the APC coming and were preparing a roadblock to ambush them. Nguyen emphasized that he was navy, not army. A sailor, not a soldier. He had Mr. Lee translate that distinction twice. Even so, he would not have fired upon those cowardly soldiers had they not shot at him first.
They mapped a detour, following the network of little capillary dirt tracks that kept the delta peasants in touch with the villages. It avoided the roadblock, reduced the risk of running into such problems, and added about twenty kilometers to their journey. Moon pushed himself up from the bench, trying to do the math in his head, converting kilometers to miles and dividing the miles per gallon of diesel fuel burned. He felt dizzy. And pessimistic.
"Well," he said, "let's get going."
Osa caught his arm. "My turn," she said. "I've slept. I'm rested. You're exhausted."
"You think you can drive an APC?" Moon's tone implied he didn't.
"Why not? Because I'm a woman?"
"Because you don't know how," Moon said. "There's the ignition," she said, pointing past him at the switch just left of the driver's seat. "There's the fuel control. The right post controls the right tread, doesn't it? The left post the left tread. And there's the thing to shift the gears."
"I better drive," Moon said.
"Why? You'll go to sleep. We'll run off the road."
"Things might happen," Moon said. To his dismay, he had to stifle a yawn. Being sick on that ship had taken something out of him.
"If something happens you should be up there in the hatch. Nguyen must lie down. He lost blood. I think he is all used up for a while."
"Mr. Lee can be lookout in the hatch," Moon said.
"Mr. Lee lost his glasses."
"Oh," Moon said, lost for words. The other alternative was to have Osa stand in the machine gun hatch. He rejected that. Someone might shoot her.
"You be in the hatch," she said. "Away from the engine fumes. The fresh air would be good for you."
He made sure Osa understood the gearing system, and how to handle the tread control steering if they needed to go into reverse, and how to take directions by a foot tap on a shoulder. Then he climbed onto the pedestal seat, heard the engine start below him, and felt the APC begin to lumber forward.
The moon was lower now but they were driving westward, almost directly toward it, and it made the track they were following a ribbon of light between the dark brush of the ditches alongside. Nguyen had jammed one of the rice sacks between the hatch rim and the machine gun mount, either for padding or protection. Something had torn the sack, allowing rice to dribble out on the APC's steel roof. But it was soft. Moon rested his arms on it and thought.
First he completed the fuel computation, dividing his estimate of round trip miles remaining by the gallons remaining. He came out short of fuel. Nothing to do about that. He thought about Victoria Mathias. if his mother hadn't survived the operation, who would arrange the funeral? if she had, who would be there to take care of her? He should know more about her friends. He should have taken more interest in her life. Too late for that now. And if he didn't make it back, how would she ever know what had happened to him? Would she ever know that he had tried, that he had not simply absconded with her tickets and her eight thousand dollars?
That led him to think about the long odds against getting back to his house in Durance, and about what he'd have to say to get Shakeshaft to rehire him, and about what to do about getting Rooney back on the wagon and reemployed.
He left thinking about Debbie for the last. Nothing had changed in that department. Only that now he knew he didn't really want to marry her. He would, if that was the only way to save her. But now he hoped for some other salvation-just as in Manila he had longed for something to save him from this hopeless duty.
He remembered the subtle way Osa had pushed him to keep him on the hunt for Ricky's friends. Ah, Osa! If only things had somehow been different a long time ago. If only he had been the man Ricky's tall tales made him out to be. And thinking about that, with his nostrils full of the smell of gunny sacking and rice, Malcolm Mathias drifted Off into an exhausted sleep-into a dream dark with sorrow and loss.
SAIGON, South Vietnam, April 29 (UPI)-A helicopter shuttle service began evacuating Americans from the roof of the U.S. Embassy today while marine guards kept thousands of desperate Vietnamese from breaking through the gates. The evacuation began as North Vietnamese tanks and infantry units began fighting their way into the city. Dawn, the Twentieth Day May 2, 1975 SOMETHING WAS JERKING AT HIS PANTS leg. Someone was saying, "Moon, Moon. Wake up. There's a tank!"
Tank! Moon jerked wide awake. It was dawn. Silent. The APC was motionless in the brush at the very edge of a road, the engine not running. He saw no tank.
Nguyen Nung's bandaged head and torso were within touching distance-in the other roof hatch of the APC. Nguyen had the binoculars to his face, aimed down the road and to the left. Moon saw trees, saw that they were among low hills now, out of the delta's flatness. He saw that the road curved away to the left. And then he saw a flutter of motion. A thin black line extended upward, a green pennant flying from it moving in the breeze. And at the base of the line a gray-green shape that could only be the top of a turret.
Osa was tugging at his pants leg again. He looked down.
"Mr. Lee has gone to take a look," she said.
Damn! "Why didn't you wake me? Where are we?"
"At the border. On maybe just inside it. Mr. Lee said he thinks this must be a Cambodian checkpoint."
Moon took another look. Beyond the pennant, the hills rose into the morning mist, green and forested. That would be right, he thought. The map had showed the land rising sharply where Vietnam and its rice delta ended. It showed the Cambodian highlands rising abruptly there, forming a barrier between the Mekong and the Gulf of Siam.
Osa guessed what he was thinking.
"We're right where we are supposed to be," she said. "The map was accurate."
"But there wasn't supposed to be a border control point here," Moon said. "That was supposed to be down on Route Eighty where the traffic is. Down on the coast."
"There's probably one there too," Osa said. "Probably a big one. Here there seems to be just a tank."
"Yeah," Moon said. "Just a tank." He lowered himself stiffly from the machine gunner's pedestal "I'd better go and help Mr. Lee scout things out."
"Two," said Nguyen
Nung from his perch. He held his hand down, two fingers extended.
"Two tanks?"
"Two tanks," Nguyen agreed, sounding pleased by this linguistic advance, if not by the news.
"I wouldn't go," Osa said. She was twisted in the driver's seat looking back at him. "Mr. Lee is wearing peasant clothing. And he's small. if they see him, he will just look like a local farmer. If they see you-" She left that hanging, unfinished.
Tony Hillerman - Finding Moon_v4 Page 25
