The heat and humidity hit all of them like a sledgehammer as they walked down the flight of stairs from the Air Thai 737 onto the tarmac of Tan Son Nhut. It had been a cold fall and a cold December in Spearfish Lake, and they’d gotten pretty well acclimatized to it. It was actually a cool winter day in Vietnam, only in the nineties or so, but it was like an unending sauna to these north woods people. Even the heat of Bangkok hadn’t prepared them for this. Seven of them had been there before, and knew what to expect; two – Mike and Rod – were new to it.

After Binky had announced she would go to Vietnam with the expedition after all, Steve had made a quiet visit with the family doctor, and without telling Binky had loaded up with both sedatives and antidepressants, just in case. He didn’t plan on telling her he had them unless it became necessary, but as far as he could see, she stayed pretty much her normal self on the flight from Bangkok – except she downed two stiff vodkas in quick succession, this from a person who almost never took a drink, so clearly, there was something going on there. But, she seemed normal.

Once off the plane, they went to pick up baggage. There was a lot of it, 22 Army duffel bags. Mark checked them each off as they were loaded onto an airport cart, and a little to his amazement, all the bags had made it through, and there were some that would have been hard to do without.

They headed off to customs. A little to their surprise, the customs check seemed cursory. Binky was the only one who had the slightest problem, and it was minor. “Born in Vietnam?” the inspector asked.

“Yes,” she replied in Vietnamese. “But my mother and I left when I was very young. I don’t have many clear memories of it here, so I guess this is really my first visit.”

“Welcome back,” he smiled, stamping her passport.

The customs inspector selected a couple bags to look at, one of them camping gear, and the other food, which was tightly packed. It took Bud close to 20 minutes to get it repacked as well as it had been, while Steve and Mike went to see about permits. There was little discussion; the paperwork seemed all in order. “Enjoy your tour of Vietnam,” the official said. It was like night and day, compared to the previous trip.

Best of all, they found Nhu Lap waiting with another Vietnamese man as they came out of customs. “Good to see you again, Nhu Lap,” Steve said in Vietnamese. “This is our group.”

“Good to see you again, my friend,” Nhu Lap replied. “You remember my brother-in-law, Dong Kien Thanh.”

“We met briefly,” Steve told him. “But it’s good to see you again, Kien Thanh. Is your cousin with you?”

“He stayed with the vehicles,” Kien Thanh replied.

“We’ll go get them, while you gather your things,” Nhu Lap said.

Steve looked around. “I guess we’re ready to go if you are.”

A couple of minutes later, a small convoy pulled to a stop in front of the terminal. It consisted of Nhu Lap’s Renault taxi, Kien Tan’s Toyota, that Steve and Nhu Lap had driven out to Target One in July, and an old, battered army 3/4 ton truck, driven by a somewhat older Vietnamese. All of the drivers got out of their vehicles, and Kien Thanh introduced his cousin, Vam Cai Cung, who walked with a bad limp. “Pleased to meet you,” Cung said in English. “We heard the flight was on time. Did you have any trouble with customs?”

“No, none at all,” Steve said in Vietnamese. Based on that one sentence – and as much the sound of it as the words – Cai Cung’s English was much better than he’d expected. “Nhu Lap, when we talked before I told you of the soldier’s body we came looking for. These are his friends, who have come looking for his body with me. He introduced them around, coming at the end to the one woman with the party, wearing blue jeans, sunglasses, and a Green Bay Packers T-shirt. “And, this is my wife,” he said, “Augsberg Binh Ky.”

“Ah,” Nhu Lap grinned. “I wondered why your Vietnamese was so good. You’ve taught him well, Binh Ky.”

“Thank you, Nhu Lap,” she grinned back. “It hasn’t been easy.”

“If you’re all set to go,” Steve told him, “Let’s get moving. We need to get out to Duc Vinh and see about a place to camp before dark.”

“Let’s get going then,” Nhu Lap replied. In but a few minutes, the duffel bags were loaded on the 3/4 ton, and people started piling into vehicles. They were a little shy on space, and Mark and Mike volunteered to ride in the back of the truck with the gear.

Steve and Binky got into the back seat of the Renault, with Gil in the front with Nhu Lap. In a few minutes, they were heading out. “Jesus, Steve,” Gil said. “That was a whole lot easier than I ever dreamed it would be, after last time.”

“Yeah, it did go pretty smooth,” Steve replied. “Actually, that pretty much pays for the last trip, all by itself.” He switched to Vietnamese, and asked Nhu Lap, “Have you heard of any roadblocks or checkpoints out to where we’re going?”

“Nothing, unless they’ve been put up since yesterday,” he was told. “Kien Thanh and I drove out to Duc Vinh just to check, since we knew you were worried about it.”

Steve got a broad grin on his face. “Nhu Lap, you’re a good man,” he said. “Any other problems?”

“Just that bridge when we get off the highway,” he said. “I think it’ll be all right, but maybe the people in the truck had better walk, just in case. Cai Cung hasn’t seen it, so he’ll have to make up his mind. We talked to the villagers in Duc Vinh, and gave them some money so we can camp.”

“How much?”

“Ten thousand dong. Not much.”

It was about a dollar and a half. “We can afford to be generous,” Steve said.

“Don’t be too generous,” he warned. “Or, they will get greedy.”

“We will bear that in mind,” Steve said. “I’m sure we will ask for your advice many times, and we will be grateful for it.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Gil asked, in English, of course.

“Nhu Lap and Kien Thanh reconned out to Target One yesterday,” Steve summarized. “No problems, but there’s a bridge that might be a little iffy. They arranged for the campsite, too.”

“Very good, Nhu Lap,” Gil said in very bad Vietnamese, one of the few phrases he’s managed to learn.

“Thank You,” Nhu Lap said in English.

They drove through the streets of the north part of the city formerly known as Saigon. The streets were more crowded than they’d been on that rainy day six months before, but much was the same. Still, much was different, at least to the way they remembered from long ago. Gil hadn’t come this way in July, but he’d been familiar with the route from way back when.

All of a sudden, Steve found Binky’s face buried in his chest. “You all right?”

“I’ll be OK, round-eye,” she whispered back. “I . . . I just can’t look. I grew up here.”

“Hang in there,” he said, thinking of the pills he had in his pocket. He’d use them if he had to. “It won’t be long, now.”

Back in the rear of the three-quarter ton, Mark and Mike were looking around. Mark was at least a little familiar with it, having been there during the war, but Mike was goggle-eyed at the sights and sounds and smells of the foreign, oriental city, something like he’d never dreamed of before.

“Sure have come down in the world,” Mark said. “The last time I came this way, I was riding in the back of a deuce and a half. Of course, I didn’t mind a hell of a lot, since I was on my way to Bien Hoa and the freedom bird. It’s changed a lot, since then.”

“It’s just hard to believe,” Mike replied. “Hell, back then, well, let’s not say I was trying not to come here, but I sure didn’t particularly want to. Now, well, we’re here, after all these years.”

“Beats coming here to carry a rifle,” Mark said. “I felt half naked on the ride out to Bien Hoa without one.”

“I suppose. I’ll bet it seems like a long time ago.”

“It was a long time ago,” Mark said. A lot has happened since then. It’s even been ten years we’ve been trying to get back, but it looks like most of the pieces have fallen into place.”

“What do you think the chances are?”

“It’s a long shot,” Mark said over the increasing sound of the road noise as the traffic thinned out and the truck speeded up. It didn’t have the greatest muffler in the world, and it was a rough ride. “But it was never more than a long shot. Really, the best we can hope to do is to give it a good look. We’ve done the best we can to get ready. Whether we find anything is in God’s hands.”

It had been a long day, one that had started in a hotel near the airport in Bangkok, where they had tried to let the jet-lag wear off of them a little. It had been a long and hard trip, especially for Bud, and especially for Mike and Mark, who had ridden in the three-quarter ton; they were already sunburned, in spite of liberal applications of sunblock. The trip was slower than Steve and Nhu Lap had made six months before, mostly because the truck wasn’t very fast, although Cai Cung with his bad leg didn’t have any trouble double-clutching the monster. Steve didn’t mind, since that kept Nhu Lap’s NASCAR driver expectations under control. The bridge had creaked and groaned at the weight, but it held, and on the far side the passengers got back aboard, grateful for the chance to stretch their legs for a few minutes.

Evening was beginning to fall as the strange little convoy pulled into the grove of trees near Duc Vinh that Steve had picked out for a campsite. The sun was getting low, and the dust and haze in the sky was well on the way to producing a spectacular sunset. The handful of trees was on a little rise, a few feet above the surrounding, nearly flat countryside.

The camp went together quickly. All of the guys that had spent time in the field found it a little strange to be setting up tents and unrolling sleeping pads in the field in this country – they’d never bothered with it before – but everybody was older now. Mark had come up with a good deal on some lightweight backpacker’s tents that had a lot of mosquito netting and a fly to keep off the sun and the rain, and had gotten a discount by purchasing six of them. They had practiced putting them up, so that went quickly. There was one more tent, an old one of Mark’s that was used for general gear storage. Steve and Binky shared a tent of course; Bud had a good conversation with Cai Cung on the way up, and offered to share a tent with him; and the rest of them paired off in one way or another. As soon as the tents were up, Mark and several of the others took a sheet of light cloth – it was actually an old, tired spinnaker from Ryan’s sailboat – and rigged a shade over the central area of the camp, to give a little relief from the sun which would clearly beat down hard during the day.

The activity drew some curious villagers from Duc Vinh, amazed at the odd sights before them, and Steve thought they might as well make some friends from the beginning. With Nhu Lap beside him to help, Steve asked a couple of the villagers if they might be able to buy some small sticks for fire wood, and a couple of men agreed quickly, heading back to the village for it. Soon, a small fire was blazing. “Might as well get started,” Steve said to Binky in English, and she joined them at the fire.

“In my country, it is the custom in the evening to gather around a fire and talk,” Steve told the villagers. “Please, friends, come and join us.” Soon there was a small circle of Americans and Vietnamese around the fire in the dying light, while Bud and Cai Cung worked on dinner over several Trangia alcohol stoves they’d brought.

For a while, they didn’t talk about anything important; Steve asked about the crops, and they talked of little things, with Nhu Lap doing a lot of the small talk. Finally, after everything started to get a little mellow, Steve got down to business, but this time, he decided to let Binky do the talking, so he wouldn’t have to depend on his relatively limited Vietnamese.

“You have asked why we are here,” she told them. “Many years ago, a friend of these men was here, a soldier with the Americans. He was last seen near here, in a woods not far away. Steve?”

“It was over in that direction,” Steve added in Vietnamese and pointing, “About twice as far as from here to the village.”

“His mother is old and ill and far away,” Binky continued. “She says she will not rest peacefully until she knows what happened to her son. The woman he was to marry still wonders where he is, after all these years. They have asked these men, his friends, to come and see if they can find the body. We know it was a long time ago, but it was just before the Americans went away. Our only hope of finding him is if someone here remembers seeing a body of an American soldier somewhere in these woods around here, all those years ago.”

There was considerable conversation after that, but the upshot of it was no one had seen anything or had talked to anyone who had.

“We will be here for several days,” Binky said. “We will be asking many people these questions. But, I will tell you now – if someone can lead us to his body and we can find it, we will give ample reward. As you talk to other people around the area, please let them know why we have come and what we are looking for.”

“Binky, ask them about mines and booby traps,” Gil suggested.

She turned back to the villagers and talked for a while more, stopping once in a while. She didn’t have the words for ‘mine’ or ‘booby trap,’ but Cai Cung, who had been monitoring the conversation, came over and helped her out. She and Cai Cung talked with the villagers for a long time, with the non-Vietnamese speaking Americans wondering what was going on.

Finally, Binky filled them in. “The booby traps are long gone, mostly rotted away. There were never a lot of mines but there are still a few. Most of them have gone bad, too, but a pig got blown up in a woods not far from the village a few years ago.”

“I don’t know how far we want to trust that,” Gil said. “I guess we just have to be careful and hope for the best.”

There was another long exchange in Vietnamese, mostly with Cai Cung and some of the villagers. “They say there were more mines down around the old American camp than around here,” he reported.

They sat around and talked for a while, and eventually the Americans asked the handful of villagers to join them in supper. It wasn’t much, just macaroni and cheese, but Bud cut the portions a little thin to make sure there was enough to go around. After dinner, several of the villagers said they’d noticed the pack of cigarettes in Bud’s pocket, and asked for a cigarette, and Bud was glad to give them to him. Bud actually didn’t smoke very much, but remembered from years before when cigarettes had been a token of friendship, so the few light smokers and many nonsmokers in the expedition had brought as many cigarettes as they were allowed. Bud was the designated smoker of the expedition, just to keep it from being a nuisance.

They sat around smoking and talking for a while longer, and eventually Gil said it had been a long day and it was time to go to sleep, and the villagers agreed it was late, too.

“We really didn’t find out much,” Steve commented to Gil as they readied themselves for bed.

“No, but it’s a good start,” Gil said.