Binky soon caught up with the old man, and Steve did as well, with Gil and Mark trailing behind. “I’ll wait for Rod and bring him out,” Ryan offered.
“Sounds like you better have someone go get Harold, too,” Gil said.
“Here comes someone,” Ryan said. “We won’t be long.”
It wasn’t the Renault, like they figured, but the rattly old three-quarter ton truck, with Cai Cung driving. “Got something?” Bud said, hopping out of the passenger side as Mike, Harold and Rod got out of the back.
“Didn’t think so when we were down there, but maybe we do now,” Ryan replied. “Let’s go, we can catch them.”
“Let me grab the tools,” Rod said, reaching back into the back of the truck for a duffel bag that to this point had remained unopened. He slung it over his shoulder, and followed the group as it set out across the field.
“Who’s watching the camp?” Ryan asked.
“Nhu Lap,” Bud said. “It sounded like you had something and I didn’t want to miss it.”
The old man wasn’t all that fast of a walker, and soon the whole group had closed up behind him. He and Binky were talking back and forth, and occasionally Steve talked with him. “What are they talking about?” Gil asked Cai Cung.
“How he found American soldier’s body and buried it,” Cai Cung replied. “Long ago.” He waved at Gil to be quiet while he listened to the old man.
“Ask him if the woods is safe,” Gil suggested.
Cai Cung spoke up in a string of Vietnamese. The old man turned and looked back, and still walking, fired back another string of Vietnamese, leading to a question from Cai Cung, and more talking.
Finally, Cai Cung turned to Gil and said. “He say the NVA made him help set out booby traps, but all gone now. Mines, only one left in this in this part of woods, but under brush pile. He put brush over it so no one run into it.”
The old man led them across the field, and into the point of woods where Steve and Gil had conversed not an hour before. A few yards inside the woods, there was an opening a few feet across, with a small depression in the middle. The old man stopped and pointed at it, then turned and directed a string of Vietnamese at Binky.
“He said the body isn’t down deep,” she said. “There was a punji pit with a mine. The NVA took the rifle and ammo, and left the body. He pulled in the sides of the pit to cover the body a little. It’s sort of filled itself in since.”
“Rod, Harold,” Gil said, “I guess this is your show, now.”
“Looks like it,” Rod said, opening the bag and pulling out tools.
“Did you tell him about the reward?” Gil asked Binky.
“Yeah,” she said. “He says the only reward he wants is to know that someone finally came for the soldier.”
“Offer it again, and give him our thanks,” Gil told her.
The old man just smiled, waved a hand gesture that universally signified no, and turned to walk away. Steve caught up with him, and offered his hand for a handshake, and before he left, everybody shook his hand. Then, he put the hoe on his shoulder again, and was gone.
“Well,” Rod said as he watched him go. “I’d like to think I’d have picked out this depression, but it’s nice to not have to wonder.”
“Yeah,” Gil said, “I guess we got lucky on that one, but it ain’t the first time. Steve, look at where we are.”
“I see,” Steve said. “That’s hitting it pretty close, I guess.”
“What are you talking about?” Mike asked.
“Not an hour ago, Steve and I were standing over there, not ten yards away,” Gil said, pointing, “And Steve said to me, ‘It’s got to be around here somewhere.’”
Mike just shook his head. “That’s pretty amazing,” he said.
“Mike,” Rod called. “Before we get started clearing away overburden, you want to get some pictures of the site in situ?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Mike said. “You’re going to want photos all the way through, right?”
“Detailed, especially if we hit major items,” Rod said professionally.
“I only have a couple rolls of film with me,” Mike said. “The rest of it is in my carryon back at base camp.”
“I suppose the breakfast I brought is cold by now,” Bud said. “Cai Cung, is there any reason we can’t bring the three-quarter back here? We could go back to base camp, get the stoves, bring some food, and bring more film. We’re probably going to be here all day, anyway.”
“No problem,” Cai Cung said. “You want to go now?”
“Yeah,” Bud said. “These guys are probably getting hungry.”
Bud and Cai Cung started back for the three-quarter ton, sitting half a mile away across the field. They got a couple hundred yards out in the field before Bud realized something. “Hey, what happened to the old man?” he asked.
Cai Cung looked around. There was no sign of him “I don’t see him,” he admitted finally. “Maybe he went into the trees.”
“Disappeared somewhere, that’s for sure,” Bud said, shaking his head. It felt a little eerie.
Back at the dig site, Mike was taking pictures while Rod examined the depression. “Probably not down very far,” Rod agreed. “There might be as much as a foot or so of inwash and leaves, but we’d just better rake off the surface clutter and start going carefully as soon as we hit humus, just to be on the safe side.”
“You bring a grate?” Harold asked.
“Yeah, a small one, in the bag,” Rod said. “You’ll have to rig a line between two trees and hang it. This is going to take some time. I didn’t bring a lot of tools, and we can’t go quick.” He got down on his knees and began to rake away leaves and twigs and debris from the depression with a garden trowel, clearing a space several yards across. With that done, he had Harold throw him a small plastic painter’s bucket from the bag, and he started digging carefully, throwing the dirt into the bucket.
By then, Harold had the grate rigged, and he spread the pile of dirt over it, working over it with his fingers. “Take it real easy, Rod,” he called. “I got something.”
“That was quick,” Rod said, looking up from the hole. “What?”
Harold held up a little patch of dirty nylon fabric about an inch across. In the center of it was a little brass grommet, less than half an inch across. “What’s that?” Mike asked.
“Look at the sides of your boots,” Harold said.
Mike looked down, and he realized what it was. It was the same in all the jungle combat boots that most of them wore – a drain grommet from the area of the instep of one of them.
“Any other sign of a boot in that bucket?” Rod asked.
“No,” Harold said. “I’m not all the way through it, though.”
“Guess the old man was right,” Rod said. “It’d take something like a mine to rip up a boot like that.”
Steve looked at the piece of boot, then down into the hole, and crossed himself as Mark started to intone, “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .”
Bud and Cai Cung got back in the three-quarter ton after about half an hour, but no one felt much like eating, and no one wanted to get too far from the site. It went slowly at first, but they found small fragments in about every other bucket. Mostly, it was Harold and Rod doing the digging, with Mark or Gil occasionally spelling them, putting to use some of the things they’d learned working with Rod in Montana years before. By now, they were hitting pieces of shattered bone, but it was late afternoon when Rod came to the first large bone, which he had Mike photograph as it lay before he removed it. “Humerus, I think,” Rod said professionally as he began to uncover it.
He cleared away several inches around it before trying to move it, filling several buckets in the process. As he carefully scraped away at the soil, he found a small bit of metal, about an inch and a half long by an inch wide, with a small hole in one end. He handed it up to Gil, who brushed away some of the enclosing dirt. When he was done, he held it up to the light. He stared at it for a long time, then quietly said, “Well, that settles that.”
He handed it to Steve, who took just as long a look. “Guess it does,” he agreed, handing it to Mike.
The bit of metal was corroded, and the lettering was hard to read. Although he’d never been in the service, Mike knew what a dog tag was when he saw one. He could make it out if he got the light just right:
TOIVO, HENRY A
US 348934923
O
LUTHERAN