Tony Hillerman - Finding Moon

“Yes,” the man said, and something else which Moon didn’t understand.

Moon picked up the grenade launcher. The same model, he noticed, that they’d trained with at Fort Riley. He leaned it in the corner of the closet.

“Can you stand?”

The man looked puzzled. “Stand?”

Moon helped him up, helped him into the bedroom, helped him sit on the rumpled bed. Mr. Lee was standing in the bedroom door. Osa reappeared beside him, still barefoot but wearing her khaki pants now and a bra, with her shirt over her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said to Moon, looking slightly embarrassed. “I guess neither of us have any secrets now.”

“No,” Moon said.

She smiled at him. “But you didn’t have to push me so hard.” She went into the bathroom, turned off the shower, and came out with a wet towel.

“First we need to clean off the cut places,” she said to the man. “Mr. Mathias here will go and find the medical box, and then we will see what we can do for you.”

He found four of the kits the U.S. Army issues to its aid men in the kitchen cabinet over the sink. Mr. Lee was standing behind him, looking pleased.

“I think we may have some help now, finding a boat,” Mr. Lee said. “Our man is one of the Sealord sailors.”

“I thought a soldier,” Moon said. “He was carrying a grenade launcher.”

“Did you notice the tattoo on his chest?” Mr. Lee asked. “It said sat cong. That was the slogan of the river sailors of the Republic’s navy from the very first. So I think he’s one of the men from the base down the river.”

“Sat Cong,” Moon said. “Means what?”

“It means Kill Communists,” Mr. Lee said. “I think that VC officer with his ear cut off would like to capture this one.”

WASHINGTON, April 28 (UPI)-President Ford today ordered the emergency evacuation of all Americans remaining in Vietnam. The plan called for picking them up at assembly points in helicopters and flying them to carriers lying off the coast.

IF OSA VAN WINJGAARDEN’S DIAGNOSIS was correct, Nguyen Nung had suffered two cracked ribs, concussion, multiple wounds caused by some sort of shrapnel on his face, neck, chest, and scalp, plus assorted bruises and abrasions.

By Lum Lee’s analysis, based on cross-examining Nguyen Nung before the shot of morphine from a U.S. Army aid kit took effect, these damages had been caused when a Vietcong rocket hit the superstructure of the LST where his PBR was based just as Nung was scrambling up a ladder. He remembered being hit by something and flung from the ladder to the deck. The next thing he remembered was awakening in a PBR somewhere out on the river and being aware that they were being shot at.

The last time he revived, he’d found himself on the bottom of the boat, with the legs of a dead man across his own. He had extracted himself to find that the PBR had been run aground on the bank of a very narrow, very shallow creek. He had walked. He had come to the warehouse compound about dawn, found the gate unlocked, and entered. When he heard voices, he’d hidden himself in the closet. Could he find the boat again? Of course. How far was it? Nung was too hazy from the morphine by now to answer that coherently.

Osa picked bits and pieces of debris from various wounds, washed everything with soapy water, applied copious amounts of antiseptic, and swathed his face and neck in U.S. Government Issue bandages. Finally, with Moon holding the groggy Nung erect, Osa wrapped his chest in strips torn from a bedsheet.

“We let him down now,” she said, glanced up at Moon, and instantly looked away.

“I shouldn’t have screamed like that,” she said. “I am embarrassed.”

“I would have screamed a lot louder,” Moon said. “You open a door and see a guy pointing a grenade launcher at you. I might have fainted.”

They lowered Nung gently to the bed and were rewarded with a grimace, followed by a dopey smile. Nung said something that sounded to Moon like “tenk,” closed his eyes, and surrendered to the morphine.

Osa, leaning over him, closed a long gash on his cheek with the careful application of an adhesive bandage. She stood straight, stretched her back, shook herself.

“We should leave him to sleep a little,” she said. “I will go now and take that shower.” She laughed. “This time I look in the closet first.”

“Good idea. Nothing to do now but wait until we find out if our friend here can help us.”

“That tattoo on his chest,” she said. “You saw it?”

“Mr. Lee said it means Kill Communists.”

“That’s what I thought,” Osa said. “Poor man. What does he do now?”

Moon hadn’t given that much thought. He watched her close the bathroom door behind her and went back into the office. Through the doorway he saw Mr. Lee prowling the warehouse, checking bales and sacks. He had no desire to talk to Mr. Lee at the moment. What could they say? That they were lucky in connecting with this sailor? Probably it was great good luck. Now there seemed to be some chance, at least. He stood at Ricky’s window looking out at the armored personnel carrier parked by the hanger. An M-1 13, the same model they’d used in training at Fort Riley. The ARVN soldiers had left the hatches open, which meant it would be wet inside. Halsey had done that once, leaving Lieutenant Rasko’s bedroll to serve as a blotter, soaking up the rainwater from the metal floor.

Moon smiled, remembering how Halsey had talked his way out of that one. What would Halsey suggest to get out of this situation? He’d say something like “Que sera sera, so don’t sweat it.” As good advice as any. And what would Halsey think of Osa van Winjgaarden? He would have been impressed. She was the kind of woman Halsey always wanted him to chase. He’d point them out across the dance floor when they dressed up and went to the classier places. The tall ones wearing pearls. The ones with the long patrician faces, Bermuda tans, and the high-fashion jackets. The ones who handed the parking lot attendant the keys to the Porsche, who knew exactly how to walk, and hold their heads, and tell the world they owned it. The ones who, when they caught him staring, examined him with cool, disinterested eyes.

“Why not?” Halsey would say. “Maybe they can kill you but they can’t eat you.” He’d say, “Not my type, Gene.” And Halsey, who enjoyed the role of philosopher, would say, “Like hell they’re not. Unlike myself, a pragmatist happy with the attainable, you are a victim of divine discontent. You yearn for the perfect. But you ain’t got no guts.”

But in fact, they really weren’t his type. He knew it and they knew it. He learned it when he was younger. The hard way. He had been calmly and efficiently rejected. The duck rebuffed by the swan. He’d learned fairly fast, because Moon Mathias was unusually sensitive to the pain of humiliation.

But the water was still dripping into the M- 113 armored personnel carrier, getting things wetter and wetter. Moon slid open the warehouse door. Seeing nothing dangerous on the muddy road beyond the fence, he walked out into the rain to check it out.

The rubber cushion on the driver’s seat beside the engine was soaking wet, but by then so was Moon. He sat on it and looked around. Basically it was identical to the ones they had driven at Fort Riley. The ARVN outfit had installed racks for GI gas cans, welded a mount beside the second hatch for an M60 machine gun, and covered the floor with bags. Moon widened a tear in one of them and checked. Sand. Something to stop the shrapnel if the treads triggered a mine. He switched on the ignition. The fuel indicator showed two-thirds. He shifted into low gear, drove the APC into the hangar, tugged the big door closed behind it, and went to work. He’d refuel it, get it ready to go. It was good to feel competent again.