Day followed day, much like the first. They changed their operating pattern a little after the first day. The search team went out early in the morning, and went through other patches of woods around Target One, but found nothing. They usually came back in the early afternoon, when the heat got oppressive, as did the contact teams. Usually, they just lay around and sometimes slept during the peak heat of the day, but once it began to abate, in the late afternoon, the contact teams would head out again and stay till after dark. There would also be a little switching off; Bud or one or more of the group from the search team would replace members of the contact team, just for the sake of something a little different to do.
They pretty well covered the ground they could cover in Pham Dong and Duc Vinh after the first day, and fanned out to some of the smaller villages they’d identified from the overhead photos they’d mysteriously received years before. Back then, the first night, they’d identified twenty-four villages, and further careful study had found nine more in the years since, some scattered as far away as beyond the old fire base. Only now were they learning the names, and they still called them with the terms they’d dubbed them with when they found them on the aerials – Village Alpha, Village Bravo, and so on, in the order that they’d located them. When everything went well, the contact teams could each make it to two of the smaller villages in a day. Things rarely went that well, since many of the smaller villages were so far off the main road that only the Toyota could get close, and Steve’s team still often had to get out and walk, up paths so narrow that even the four-wheel drive was useless.
The plan had been to start near base camp and work their way down the wedge of probability toward the old fire base. The “wedge” as they’d taken to calling the angle, was wide, and the farther they got from base camp the wider it got. The centerline of the wedge went out well past base camp, to the river with the rickety bridge they’d crossed on the way into base camp. They reasoned if Henry had gotten that far, he wouldn’t have crossed the river, since he hadn’t crossed one on the way out of the fire base.
By the end of the week, they’d gotten down past Puk Me, which was more than halfway down the route to the fire base, but were getting away from base camp more slowly, since the wedge was much wider here. Each day, they tried to make quick revisits to villages they’d visited two or three days earlier, just to see if someone not present on the earlier had heard of something.
After a week, they’d learned nothing more than they’d known when they came to base camp. No one remembered anything about finding an American body twenty years before, back about the time the Americans and the ARVNs left the area. A couple of times, they thought they might have seen some hint of recognition on some of the people, but in the end, it turned to nothing.
They went out like normal on Christmas morning. Most of the people in the area were Buddhist, so Christmas wasn’t a big deal. Nhu Lap and Kien Thanh were both Catholics, and had small children, so after the evening contact team sessions on Christmas Eve, and with everyone’s good wishes, they’d hopped in the Renault for a fast trip back to their homes, and the chance to spend the holiday with their families, promising to be back late the next night. But, for the Americans, there were only a limited number of days they had to spend in the area, so they couldn’t afford to waste one. Besides, it seemed a day much like any other, just now. On Christmas morning, Steve and Binky took one contact team in the Toyota out to the village selected for the morning, while Cai Cung took the other out in the 3/4 ton to another.
By midafternoon, all the teams were back, hot, tired, and of course, without anything to show for their efforts. They ate a light lunch to cool off, and most people took naps; Mike wrote in a notebook, as he did almost every afternoon. Mark had a small sketchpad, and often drew sketches of the people or the countryside. It was no surprise; Mark was a closet painter, turning out a painting as the whim gripped him once or twice a year, and three of the vets had one of Mark’s paintings hanging in their living rooms. Probably one or more would result from this trip.
As the sun sank lower, Bud and Cai Cung started the alcohol stoves and began on dinner. It wasn’t part of Cai Cung’s job, but he enjoyed doing it and he and Bud developed a certain friendship in the process.
Dinner proved to be special – freeze-dried turkey slices that Bud reconstituted, along with gravy, mashed potatoes, reconstituted dried peas, and chocolate pudding. “It’s not the Christmas dinner we’d have had in Spearfish Lake,” Bud said. “But, hey, it’s not Spearfish Lake, either.”
“Where’d you get that turkey?” Ryan asked. “It’s not bad.”
“That was part of the package from Mountain House we were waiting for,” he replied. “You would not believe how many places Mark and I looked for it.”
It was getting dark once they finished dinner which had taken longer than planned. “Since it’s Christmas,” Gil said, “And, since it’s getting late anyway, I move that we skip the evening contact session today and take the evening off.”
“Might as well,” Steve said. “By the time we got out to Village Item, it’d be dark, and we’d still have to walk in. It’d be pushing it to get to Village Quebec, too.”
“Maybe we ought to think about moving the base camp closer. The running back and forth is getting a bit long. Say, somewhere down near that intersection this side of the bridge.”
“It’d take half a day to move,” Harold said, “Maybe more. And the contact teams still have to revisit villages up on this end. Maybe when we get a little bit closer. Anybody want a fire?”
Everyone did, and since it was Harold’s idea, he got to build it. Once the dishes were done, they gathered around the growing blaze, thinking thoughts of home. “I wonder how the dogs are getting along.” Mark mused.
“Tiffany and Josh are taking good care of them, I’m sure,” Mike smiled. “I don’t know that they’re giving them the workout we’d give them, just to sandbag a little, but we’ll just have to live with that.”
“I kind of wonder about doing the Warsaw Run anyway,” Mark smiled. “We’re going to be here for almost a month, just in time to get used to the heat, and we get back there, and mark my words, the thermometer won’t break zero all weekend. Think how cold we’re going to be.”
“Oh, well, that’s the price we pay,” Mike agreed.
“Cai Cung,” Bud smiled. “Perhaps I should explain about these two crazy people. They each have teams of dogs, and sleds, and they race them through the snow, oh, about as far as from here to Ho Chi Minh City each winter. You would not believe how cold it is. Hell, I don’t believe how cold it is, and I grew up there.”
Cai Cung smiled. “I have seen pictures of snow, but I have never seen it.”
“Consider yourself lucky,” Binky told him with a grin. “I was excited the first time I saw it. It was so pretty! But then, I got out of the car that took me to Albany River, and found out how cold it was. That took some getting used to. Until I got used to it, I usually wore almost everything in the house when I went outside. Now, well, I still like summer more than I like winter. This is pretty close to a hot summer day at home.”
“It’s not that bad once you get used to it,” Mike said. “I was never much of a winter sports nut until Mark got me hooked on dogsledding.”
“What do you mean I got you hooked?” Mark smiled. “Your daughter hooked you, and you hooked me.”
“Come on, guys, let’s not go around that block again,” Gil smiled.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a thin wallet, and took out a picture to show Cai Cung. “This picture of my daughter was taken when she won the big race last year. The dog is her lead dog, George.”
Cai Cung took the picture, looked at it for a minute, then handed it back. “She’s very heavily dressed.” he asked “Is that for the cold?”
“It gets very cold. Even the dog has a thick coat of fur, you see.”
“It would be nice to take the dogs out for a run on Christmas day,” Mike mused. “Cai Cung, do you know of Santa Claus?”
“It’s not a Vietnamese tradition, but I remember it from when I worked with the Americans.”
“The tradition is that Santa rides in a sled pulled by eight reindeer,” Mike explained. “We had a parade at home, just before we left. We don’t have reindeer where we live, but my daughter brought Santa into town on a sled pulled by eight sled dogs.”
“That was cute. Hunter and Tabitha got a big thrill out of that,” Binky smiled. I wonder how they’re doing.”
“Considering the time differential, probably sleeping right now, waiting for Santa,” Steve said. “I hope they don’t miss Mommy and Daddy too much.”
“They’re going to have a pretty good Christmas,” Mike assured them. “Kirsten was buying stuff right and left for them.”
“We sort of had Christmas before we left,” Binky said. “Tabitha is still a little young to understand all of what’s happening, but Hunter, well, we told him Santa came early, just for him.”
“Then Santa will visit twice,” Mike smiled. “Hey, I miss my kids, too. I just think of all you guys who had to miss Christmas when you were here. That had to have been hard.”
“It was hard,” Mark said. “I was here for Christmas both times. We had a stand down, and I guess there was a sort of agreement between Charlie and us that we’d lay off each other. But still, it was lonely, and hard to be away from home.”
“It’s harder when you have kids,” Gil said. “I was way the hell out in the bush, and I felt so sorry for Carrie being alone with the kids back in Spearfish Lake, and I wanted to be back with her.”
“I was away from home for Christmas one year, too,” Cai Cung told them. “I was very young, and we did nothing to celebrate, but I missed being home as well. That was not long before I was hurt. After that I was in Saigon, so I was home.”
The Americans were not into war stories – not so much because of the delicate nature of their being there, but because they’d told each other all they wanted to tell years before, and nobody wanted to hear the same old stories any more. But, this gave Bud a little opening he’d been looking for. “You seem to get around pretty well on your bad leg,” he asked. “A bullet, right?’
“Yes a bullet,” Cai Cung replied. “From a flying dragon, back at a place called Dien Bat, in the spring of 1963.”
“I was at Dien Bat, about that time,” Bud said. “I remember a night with a dragonship firing. It sprayed bullets all over the place, but I don’t remember any getting in the camp.”
Cai Cung looked a little flustered, then said, “Bud, I was not in the camp. I was one of those attacking.”
It might have been an awkward moment, but Bud handled it beautifully. “Cai Cung,” he said. “Do you remember a helicopter crashing on the airstrip in front of the camp earlier that day?”
“Oh, yes,” Cai Cung said, obviously relieved a little that his revelation was being taken in stride. “I remember it well. It came in very fast, and slid a long way and rolled over several times. A couple men got out, one carrying the other, and we were surprised anyone was alive. We shot at them many times, but a jeep came out from the camp and carried them away.”
“Cai Cung,” Bud smiled, putting out his hand. “May I congratulate you on your poor aim.”
“What?” Cai Cung replied as he took Bud’s hand, a little confused. “Why?”
Bud just laughed. “You see, Cai Cung, my friend, I was one of the men on the helicopter.”
“Were you the one carrying the other man? We thought that was very brave.”
“Not brave,” Bud said. “I just did what had to be done. I thought the sergeant in the jeep who came for us was brave, but he just said he did what had to be done, too. But, those were old days, and bad days, and best behind us.”
“Jeez,” Gil said. “Small world, ain’t it? Then you worked for the Americans at Tan Son Nhut for ten years after that?”
“Not only for the Americans, of course,” Cai Cung smiled.
“Yeah,” Gil smiled back, “It was that kind of war, wasn’t it? But, as Bud said, those were other days.”
“I have a little Christmas present I was going to save for later,” he said. “But I think now is the time to give it out.” He’d brought a small paper bag to the fire with him, and now he opened it, pulling out one by one miniature bottles of blackberry brandy.
When he’d handed them all out, he said, “Cai Cung, I suppose that since we fought in the same battle, even though on opposite sides, that we are comrades of a sort. I’d like to drink to remember all those who no longer can sit around a campfire and put the past behind us.”
“Yes,” Cai Cung said. “And to your Henry Toivo, that brought us together.”