Tony Hillerman - Finding Moon

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.

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.

“I’ll be careful,” he said. The rear ramp had been lowered. He ducked and walked out of it. Osa said something loud-probably Dutch, and probably an expletive.

He kept to the roadside brush, angling toward where he’d seen the tank. Ahead of him among the trees, something rustled. Moon crouched behind a growth of young bamboo. It was Mr. Lee. He squatted beside Moon.

“A tank is parked on each side of the road,” Mr. Lee said. “And then there is a small bamboo building in the middle of the road.” He described it with his hands. “You know. The road goes on each side of it. It is open on the front and both sides. To collect duties, I think.”

“Is it empty now?”

“No one is in it unless they are sleeping on the floor. Empty, I think. But there is one other house, made of planks with a palm roof. Is anyone in it? I don’t know. One cannot see the inside.”

“What kind of tanks?”

“What kind?” The question came as a surprise. Mr. Lee seemed not to have been aware that tanks came in varieties.

“Are they both alike? Do both have round turrets on top?”

“Yes. Just alike.”

“Do they have tractor treads, like ours? Or do they roll on big wheels? How big? Try to describe them.”

“Treads,” Mr. Lee said. He described what sounded to Moon like an M48 tank, mainstay of the U.S. Army and the model it provided its allies. It was what Moon had hoped to hear. if Mr. Lee had described the rounded shape of a Russian-made T54 it would almost certainly have meant the Khmer Rouge were there.

“Did you see any sign of the crew?”

Mr. Lee shook his head. “But maybe they’re inside. There was no way to tell that, of course.”

“They’re not inside,” Moon said. “We can bet on that.” No sane person would sleep in a tank if there was another place to bed down. Certainly not in this awful climate. “Now we need to find out if anyone is in the house.”

Mr. Lee looked at him thoughtfully. “They did not hear our engine when we came up,” he said. “I think we could back slowly away. Then turn around. Then we can find another way to cross the border.”

“We didn’t find another way when we studied the map. No track we could use without gong miles back toward the Mekong.”

“True,” Mr. Lee said. “But that was the map. Just lines on paper. Now we are here. We try, and try again, and try again. And we finally find a way.”

“No,” Moon said. “We finally run out of diesel fuel.”

“Oh,” Mr. Lee said. He made a wry face, shrugged. “There is not enough extra oil in those cans you brought along?”

“We have enough to get there. If the roads aren’t too steep, I think we’ll have a little bit left.”

Mr. Lee considered this. He’d pushed the conical hat to the back of his head, and the slanting early morning light emphasized the lines age had left around his eyes. Moon had thought from that first night in Los Angeles that this man’s face was unusually expressive. Now it registered something between despair and sorrow as realization sank in and hope drained away. Then he shrugged and managed a small laugh.

“Ah, then,” he said. “I think you could carry your brother’s little baby out.” He thought again. “And Mrs. van Winjgaarden could lead out her brother-although I really think she no longer has any hope that he’s alive. But how can I carry out the kam taap that holds my ancestor’s bones?” He smiled weakly at Moon. “I think Mr. Nung would be happy to help me, but with those injuries it would not be possible.”

“Nguyen couldn’t carry much,” Moon agreed. “I could help.”

“Then we go on?”

“There must be fuel in those tanks,” Moon said. “Almost certainly they’ll have fuel in them. Why would they park them there empty?”

“Yes,” Mr. Lee said. “Of course. Do you know how to get it out?”

Moon laughed. “That’s within the range of my talents,” he said.

“I would think that when the Cambodian government broadcast the surrender order and Pol Pot took over the government in Phnom Penh, these soldiers just went away,” Mr. Lee said.

“Just climbed out and went home,” Moon agreed. And hoped fervently that he was right.