Once he was out of sight, Gil stopped for a moment to look at the map, just to make sure of where he was. It was only about half a mile out to the south road, so rather than wind around the trees the way they had come, he broke off and headed on the best direction for the road. Although he’d long been away from Special Forces, Gil had tried to stay at least partly in shape. He got in at least a couple miles running each day, but he knew this wasn’t the time to get hot and sweaty, so he avoided running, but headed southwest at a very fast walk.
It only took him a few minutes to make it out to the south road. He kicked a quick marker in the berm on the side of the road, took a look at his surroundings, then headed off quickly for the base camp. When he got there, he discovered Binky’s contact team had returned, along with Mark, Ryan, Bud and Nhu Lap. “Where’s Steve?” Mike asked as Gil came storming into camp.
“Out there, way east of Target One,” Gil replied. “We’ve been trying to go over the route Henry must have taken. He wants to try re-creating the route he must have tried to go to the fire base on. By himself.”
Binky gasped. “You’re not going to let him wander around at night out there by himself, are you?”
“Hell, no,” Gil said, heading for his tent and digging in his clothes bag. “I’m just going to let him think he’s by himself. He may be the best guy to try to figure out what Henry may have done, but I’m the best one to tail him without being noticed. Look, I’ve got to hurry if I’m going to get back out there and in position before it gets dark.”
“What can we do?” Mark asked.
“Get me a radio and the GPS,” Gil said, pulling out a dark red and black checked flannel shirt, meant originally for wearing while sitting around the camp on cool evenings. “It ain’t camo, but it ought to do,” he said. “Never thought we’d need camo paint.”
“Maybe some mud?” Bud suggested as Mark headed off for his tent.
“Have to do,” Gil grunted as he unbuttoned his shirt. “I better have a couple canteens, too. Look, when they get back with the Toyota, take a radio and some spare batteries and head down, oh, about a mile north of Pham Dong. I’ll try to check in once in a while, but just give me two clicks to acknowledge unless you really have to talk to me. These things are only good for a couple miles, but I ought to be able to keep you in range.”
“I better be with the Toyota,” Ryan agreed. “I’ll have the first aid bag.”
“Shouldn’t need it, but you never know,” Gil nodded as he pulled on the flannel and Mark came up with several items from the carry-on stashed in his tent.
“Here, Gil, take this,” he said, showing Gil a small black plastic unit about the size of a soft drink can, with a lens on each end.
“What’s that?” Gil said, starting to button his shirt.
“Russian version of a starlight scope,” Mark said. “Just came on the astronomy market, and I ordered one. It showed up the day before we left. I thought I might want to play with it some.”
“How does it work?”
“Not as well as the real thing, but not that bad,” Mark said, and quickly explained how to use it. “The batteries are fresh,” he finished. “Just use it for a few seconds every now and then, and it should make it through the night.”
“That’ll help,” Gil said, taking it and sticking it in his shirt pocket, and taking the GPS from Mark as well.
“You’re going to want to record the route, right?”
“Hadn’t thought about it. I just wanted to be able to tell where you where to go if we get into trouble.”
‘It’ll record your route,” Mark said. “That might be useful later. The batteries won’t last all night, and you’ll lose the waypoints if they go flat. You know how to record a waypoint, right? Turn it on for a few minutes every now and then, give it time to pick up some satellites, enter a waypoint, then turn it off. Here’s some spare batteries. They’ll work in either the GPS, the scope, or the radio.”
“OK, fine,” Gil said, still hurrying. “Binky, tell Nhu Lap to get the Renault started. He can drive me out there a mile or so, and that’ll save some time.”
“Will do, Gil,” Binky said, then turned and talked in Vietnamese to the driver as Bud came up carrying Gil’s small backpack, a couple canteens and a plastic lunch packet.
“You want a canteen on your belt, right?” Bud asked, stuffing the rest in the daypack.
‘“Yeah, first aid kit, map, compass. Flashlight, I guess. Mark, you got a red one?”
“Here’s a white one for emergencies, and a little red astronomical job,” he said, holding them up. “You want the white one in the backpack?”
“Yeah,” Gil said. “Give me the red one for my pocket. Anybody think of anything else?”
“Guess not,” Mark said. “Good luck, Gil, and be careful.”
“I know this is crazy,” Gil said. “But Steve may be on to something, and I think it’s worth the trouble.”
“Well, good luck,” Ryan added. “We’ll go spot the Toyota as soon as they get back.”
“You’ve got a little while, yet,” Gil said. “I’ll try to check in once he gets moving. Nhu Lap, you ready?”
The Renault was already running, and Gil hopped in the right side. “Good luck,” Mike, Bud and Binky added as they drove off.
Mike hadn’t said much of anything as he watched Gil race to get ready, but there hadn’t been much to say. He stood a little away from everyone as he watched the Renault head up the road, thinking hard.
Although Mike had often used the term “Henry’s Ghost” to describe the more or less unwanted presence in his life, he didn’t really believe in ghosts. But now, whether he did or not, he decided to hedge his bet. “Go with Steve,” he whispered to the presence. “It may be the last good chance for both of us.”
Once Nhu Lap had left him at the spot along the berm of the road that he’d marked earlier, Gil slowed down. He now knew he had plenty of time, and before long he’d have to be thinking stealth and concealment, so he deliberately took his time hiking back over the route he’d taken from where he’d left Steve earlier. He knew he’d have to be especially careful on the last leg, since he’d be coming in from the west, the direction of the now nearly setting sun, and Steve would probably be looking in that direction at the sunset, waiting to get dark. He wanted to be as close as he could be when Steve started moving, but that wasn’t real close and if he got sloppy, he might miss him.
As Gil got around to the back side of the woods where he’d left Steve, he started to get very stealthy, staying in the edge of the woods. This whole deal hinged on Steve’s more or less staying in place until he was in position to follow, and if he’d moved, even a little, it’d make things a lot more difficult. The sun was just setting as Gil crept very carefully around the edge of the woods, and was relieved to see Steve sitting under the tree where he’d left him. That was good enough for now; quietly, Gil edged into the woods just far enough to be out of Steve’s view, probably seventy or eighty yards away. When he got up to move, he’d move back into Gil’s field of view.
There probably would be a few minutes to wait. Gil pulled out the GPS, turned it on long enough to get a position, and marked the waypoint. He spent a few minutes getting familiar with the device. Although he’d carried it in the field several days going out on the search team, he hadn’t been using it much. It was an amazing little gadget, maybe twice the size of a pack of cigarettes, but Gil knew from watching TV before he’d left that it was revolutionizing the war that seemed to be brewing in the Persian Gulf. Typically, the Army couldn’t get the gadget into the troops’ hands fast enough, and there had been reports of people buying them at their local sporting goods stores and mailing them to relatives in the gulf. Gil thought back to the number of times he’d been out in the field, on night patrols and night exercises, not being totally sure of where he was, and now, even this little civilian version was accurate to within a few yards. To have had one back when he’d been in-country over twenty years before would have made life a whole lot easier.
Comfortable with the thought that he could get to a position and take a waypoint in the dark, Gil crept to the edge of the woods again, to confirm that Steve was still in position in the gathering darkness. Pulling back just a little to where he was out of sight again, Gil pulled out the little portable CB radio. It only had a single channel, but in days past had proven to have good range. Now, he turned it on, pulled out the antenna, and spoke softly into it, “In position.”
Almost immediately, he heard two brief bursts of static. No telling where the other station was at this point – it could still have been back at camp, or perhaps they’d gone out to the place where he’d told them to wait. With that out of the way, Gil settled back down to wait, keeping an eye on the field to the north of Steve, waiting for him to get on the move.
Now, there was finally a little time to think, to reflect. This wasn’t a section of woods that the search team had gone through, but he made up his mind that they were going to go through it carefully at the first opportunity.
Even though there was no way of telling if Steve had been right in his suppositions of the way Henry and the patrol had to have moved, they at least made sense. Gil had often been in thick patches of cover and jungle in Vietnam where a man who got fifty yards from his buddy could be turned around and lost forever, so over the years hadn’t really thought all that much about how Henry must have gotten separated from the rest of the platoon. But, since he’d actually been on the ground here, he had problems understanding how a brief separation could become permanent. In country as relatively open as this was, it didn’t really make sense, which was probably why Henry’s unit and then Dennis and Bob had all concentrated on Target One in the past. But, now Steve had proven that separation problems were possible, given the right conditions. This night exercise of Steve’s might not prove anything, and probably wouldn’t, Gil thought, but it could well be interesting to see where Steve wound up.
Mostly, though, Gil tried to get himself mentally prepared. He’d done plenty of night exercises, of course, plenty of night covert maneuvers, but this was going to be a little different. First, it had been a long time since he’d actually done one; it had been over twenty years since he’d last done something like this, monitoring night exercises in Germany without letting the troops know someone was monitoring them. Gil once had been pretty good at that sort of thing, and the skills lasted, to some degree, but it had been a long time. Gil was mostly hoping Steve would be concentrating on what Henry had done and wouldn’t think to see if someone was watching.
The light fades quickly in the tropics, and it was getting fairly dark when Gil saw Steve get up and start across the field in front of him. Once he’d gone a little distance, Gil got up, pulled out the CB and reported, “Moving out,” to a response of two clicks again, and tried to follow behind as quietly as he could.
Gil had no more than gotten around the edge of the woods to where Steve had been than he saw the moon hanging low in the eastern sky. He hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to the moon phase, but it was nearly full, as it had been when Henry disappeared. So long as it stayed clear, they’d have a bright moon all night.
It can get amazingly bright under a nearly full moon, especially out in the country where there isn’t ground lighting to interfere, and this was clearly going to be a brighter night than Gil had imagined. Had Henry been aware that he was going to be facing a bright night? It might have had something to do with a decision to strike out for the fire base, like they’d long suspected he must have done.
While in some respects it would make the going easier, it would also make it harder, especially for Gil. If Steve tried to stay more or less near the edge of the woods, he’d be hard to pick up out of the darkness. On the other hand, so long as Gil stayed in the shadows, it would be real hard for Steve to pick him up, especially if he didn’t suspect he was being followed.
The first obstacle was the fairly small field that Steve had started across. There really wasn’t much Gil could do but follow at the greatest distance he dared and hope that Steve didn’t check his six too carefully. He soon saw that Steve wasn’t walking directly for the tall bunch of trees that he’d pointed out earlier, but to a tree line somewhat to the right of that course. To Gil, it looked like a good balance between the direct route across the field and the shortest route to get into the shadows on the far side. He stayed a respectable distance behind, waiting until Steve got into the dark shadows on the far side and vanished.
There was a clump of taller grass and low brush, and Gil crouched down in it, trying to hide. If Steve were going to look back across the field and see if someone were following, it would be a logical place to do it. While he crouched there, Gil pulled out the Russian starlight scope, pointed it at the tree line, and turned it on.
He could see a green image of Steve slowly walking through the shadows at the edge of the trees, and Gil breathed a silent sigh of relief for Mark’s bringing the gadget. This was going to make the evening duck soup.
Gil had worked with night vision gear years before. The old starlight scope had been pretty good, but it was a bit on the bulky side, where this was a lot smaller and lighter, and, from what Mark said, better on batteries. It may or may not have been every bit as good as the old gear – Gil was willing to defer to Mark’s astronomical eye on that one – but it was more than good enough to do the job. Gil knew, both from TV and from some of the professional magazines he read from time to time, that the Army had a lot better gear out in the Persian Gulf, twenty years and several generations newer, and that must really be hot stuff, he thought. But, who said the Russians had to build gear that was heavy and bad? The Russians must either have needed the green currency bad, or have come along several generations themselves, he thought as he stood up and got moving again.
With Steve trying to pick his way through the darkness at the edge of the tree line, Gil reasoned he’d be unlikely to look behind him too much, so Gil set a straighter route for the end of the tree line that Steve was following.
Steve was only fifty yards or so ahead of Gil when he came to the end of the tree line. He stopped there for a while, with Gil watching from the shadows, as he tried to make up his mind about which way to go. Gil took the opportunity to flip on the GPS and take a waypoint, but he had it off before Steve had moved out again.