It was still hot, but it felt good to sit in the shade of the trees in Ryan Clark’s back yard, where they could look out on the clear blue waters of Spearfish Lake. It was fairly quiet out there; a couple of jetskis were buzzing around, and some water skiers, but nothing like as busy as it could get on a summer weekend. There was a tang of burgers being grilled, and some of the wives had brought along baked beans and potato salad. The expedition members – with the exception of Rod Matson – and most of their wives, sat around drinking iced teas or cokes – this was a business meeting, after all. The beer, if any, would wait for later; for now, they were talking business. Kate Ellsberg had even taken over Bud’s traditional spot at the grill so he could give full attention to the debriefing session of the first Henry Toivo expedition.
The trip back had been as easy as the trip out had been difficult, and they got back on schedule Sunday, to find Bud waiting for them at the airport in Camden. They were tired and jetlagged, so they hadn’t been real talkative, and Steve had been anxious to get some sleep since he knew he was going to be facing a tough Monday. But, on the way, they decided to hold a formal debrief and expedition meeting on Tuesday, but let Bud work out the details.
Earlier, Harold had briefly summarized the trip out and the early difficulties with Hong, but Steve took the second part, finding Nhu Lap and the trip out to Target One, passing around the photos he’d taken. “Pretty lousy photos,” Steve said. “They don’t really show much besides the fact that I was there, but the photos at Target One show the woods are a little more open than I think we’d assumed.”
Kirsten took a long look at the photos, especially those of Target One, but didn’t say anything.
Steve went on to describe the trip back from Target One, and the arrangements he’d made with Nhu Lap to pick the expedition up at Tan Son Nhut in December, then Gil summed it up. “On the whole, the trip was a failure as far as finding any evidence of Henry is concerned, and I think if we’d all gone with an all-out expedition, it probably would have come out pretty much the same way. But that’s not a surprise. However, as a reconnaissance, the trip was a big success. We learned a lot – well, let’s be honest, Steve learned a lot – that will considerably improve the odds next time. We discovered a lot of difficulties, and know how to deal with them. There are still plenty of loose ends, but I think we’re in a position to go ahead.”
“Looks like it to me,” Ryan agreed, and turned to the grill. “Kate, how are the burgers coming?”
“Ready when you are,” she replied. “I hope everybody likes well done.”
“Sorry,” Steve said, “I guess I ran a little long.”
“Well, let’s eat,” Harold suggested, “Then we can get down to planning.”
There was a bustle for a few minutes as Kate served up burgers, and everybody dug into potato salad and baked beans and chips. The next few minutes were casual, and the expedition didn’t come up at all. “So, what’s the football team going to look like?” Ryan asked Harold.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk with Johansen yet,” Harold reported. “But don’t look for a trip to the state finals this year. We graduated some good ones last spring, and the JVs that are coming up to replace them – well, they had a lousy year.”
“That’s too bad,” Gil commented. “It happens, I guess.”
“In fact, look for several lousy years,” Harold added. “The seventh and eighth graders couldn’t find their hind end with either hand last fall, either.”
“Bound to happen sometime,” Gil said, shaking his head and sipping at an iced tea. “Mark, that business deal you were so secretive about before we left – anything happen on that?”
“Yeah,” Mark said, “It’s all inked. I’m not ready to announce it publicly yet, since I’ve got quite a bit of hardware work to do, and more software work, and the details are pretty technical, but around the first of the year we’ll have local dialup internet access in Spearfish Lake, Albany River and Warsaw.”
“That’s interesting,” Ryan said. “We’ve been running up a pretty good phone bill for Internet access as it is, and we could use it more.”
“Is that going to be such a big deal?” Mike asked, then took a bite out of a burger.
“I think it’s the coming thing,” Harold told him. “From what I’ve seen, it’s not quite ready yet, but I can see the day when we’re going to want to have it available at the school. You and I need to talk about it some time.”
“We’ll have the bandwidth to run it into every classroom,” Mark smiled. “I agree, it’s not mature yet, but there’s a lot of useful stuff on there now, and that’ll only improve. I’m sorry I couldn’t have gone with you guys, but I guess the way it worked out, it’s just as well.”
“Yeah,” Gil agreed. “There wouldn’t have been that much you could have done anyway, except maybe have a second person to go to Target One.”
“And then, it might not have worked out as well,” Steve commented. “I don’t know if I could have gotten as much out of Nhu Lap if someone else had been along who didn’t speak Vietnamese.”
Eventually, they finished eating; Linda, Carrie, Marge, Kate and Jackie cleared away the mess, and went to do dishes, while the expedition meeting got down to business. The expedition never had elected officers, but for years, Gil had been conceded to be the chairman, and he started it off. “OK, as I see it, there’s no reason not to do the expedition in December, like we talked about. Anyone disagree?”
“It’s about the best time for everybody,” Ryan agreed. “The only problem is it means being gone over Christmas, but we’ve all done that before, at least the ones who were in the Army there.”
“While we were gone, Carrie talked to Rod,” Gil reported. “He’ll be available, and can make arrangements to have his classes covered if we run late. Classes break the fourteenth, and Steve set up with Nhu Lap to meet him the seventeenth or eighteenth, so considering the date line difference, that fits pretty good. I’d say, target to get back here the nineteenth of January.”
“That’s getting to be a pretty big hole for me,” Harold said. “I mean, I could do it if I had to.”
“Me, too,” Mark agreed. “At this point, I have some flexibility on starting up the Internet service, but if I plan to put it off till February 1, well, I still need to be here a couple weeks before it starts up.”
“And, that’s getting a little long for Steve and me to be gone,” Ryan said. “At least one of us should be back earlier, and considering Steve’s language skills, that means me.”
“OK,” Gil said. “How about if we target getting back the twelfth. If we’re hot onto something, maybe a small group of us could stay behind. I could stay on, Bud, you could stay on, right?” – Bud nodded, and Gil continued, “Mike, since you’re officially the tour guide, could you stay on?”
“Yeah, probably,” Mike said. He’d been coming to the meetings for a couple years now, and had gotten as familiar with the problem as anyone, but he hung back, since he really wasn’t a member of the core group of six veterans. “It depends on the reporter situation. If we have a full staff, fine, but that’s a slow time of year, and if we’re short one, well, the rest of the staff should be able to cover.”
Gil nodded. “We figure on leaving around December 15, and we’ll have to work out how we meet up with Rod, and shoot to be back here the twelfth. Does that work for everybody?”
There were nods and affirmations, and Gil continued. “Well, all right, I’ll get with the travel agent in the morning, and get the flight nailed down.”
“Don’t,” Mark said. “You guys got screwed big time on flights.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean your travel agent was looking for the biggest commission, not the best route, or the cheapest,” Mark said. “I spent some time on the Internet, on EasySabre. That’s an airline ticket service that’s run through the Internet; actually, I got to it through CompuServe. I could have gotten you better connections outbound, at a savings of at least eighteen hundred, but by then you were in the air. A big group like this, and with some time to work on it, well, I think I can shave it down well under a thousand a head.”
“That’d make a big difference on the money,” Ryan commented.
“Give it a shot,” Gil said, conceding the point. “We do need to nail it down fairly quick. And, remember, Steve said we want to go in and out through Bangkok.”
“OK, we’ve got eight, right?”
“Figure ten,” Steve said. “We’ve got visas for Binky and Kirsten. I don’t know if either of them wants to go . . .” – he looked at the women, and both shook their heads – “. . . but they might change their minds. We can always cancel a seat or two.”
“It might give us a better shot at group rates,” Mark said. “Now, here’s sort of a neat thing. From what I remember of studying it earlier, about the cheapest route is Lufthansa, Chicago to Frankfurt to Bangkok. It’s the long way around, but it’s a fair savings.”
Gil shook his head. “I don’t care if we go out that way, but we need to plan to come back across the Pacific, through Hawaii.”
“Why’s that?” Ryan asked.
“If we get lucky and find Henry’s remains, they’ll have to go to the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii,” Gil said. “They’re the best in the business for a positive ID, and that’ll get him into their records. Look, we need to plan for a success.”
“Fine with me,” Mark agreed. “I always wanted to visit Hawaii.”
“If we go back across the Pacific, we probably wouldn’t have to plan to go out through Bangkok,” Steve offered. “That might simplify things; but you know, I just realized we’re talking an around-the-world trip.”
“We’ll see,” Mark said. “Let me spend some time on EasySabre. Things could change.”
Bud had been doing some figures on a pad. “OK, the way I see it, that gives us 23 days in-country, assuming we leave the ninth to come home. I’m assuming we’re planning on spending most of the time out in the target area?”
“I’d say, unless we find him sooner, and then we can come back sooner,” Gil agreed.
“OK,” Bud said. “What’s the status on living on the economy out there?”
“Lousy,” Steve said. “Oh, we could run into town and get stuff, I suppose, but Phuoc Lot has to be an hour off, and we never got there. But, out around Target One and the fire base, well, we might buy a chicken or two from the villagers, but I think we’d better be pretty self-contained.”
“We want to figure on feeding your Vietnamese friends, too?”
“Well, I’d say so,” Steve replied. “We didn’t talk about it much.”
“Well, figure 300 man-days food, then” Bud said. “If we figure two pounds a day, that’s about 600 pounds we’re going to have to take from here, plus packing. Add all the other gear, and it’s going to come to some excess baggage charges.”
“Doesn’t have to be that much,” Mark said. “We can take backpacking stuff, maybe get down to a pound and a half a day.”
“Yeah,” Bud said. “But at what cost? They don’t give that stuff away. It might be cheaper to pay the excess baggage charges. You’re going to have to find out what that’s going to run.”
“How are we doing on money, anyway?” Gil asked.
“We can spend the money if we have to,” Ryan said. “Other than the waste on the airline tickets, you guys didn’t spend anything like as much as we figured. While you were gone, Bud and I worked on Kate and Jane a bit, and when we need it we’ll get a nice check from the Donna Clark Foundation. The Record-Herald will cover Mike’s basic expenses, plane ticket, hotel rooms, food, like that. We still may have to chip in individually to cover the costs, but in the end, we shouldn’t have to. Clark Plywood will make a donation, but I’m going to try for matching funds from the union b-fund. That won’t be settled till we’re done with negotiations. We should be fairly careful with money, but we can spend what we need to. We’ll come pretty close to zeroing out the account, but we’ll still have our own funds if we run over.”
“Well, that’s a major headache we don’t have to worry about,” Harold said. “We watched every damn dime we could. My back is still hurting from sleeping in airline terminals.”
“Look, I’ll take care of working up the food,” Bud offered. “I didn’t spend all that damn time in the grocery business for nothing. We may have to take some backpacker stuff, and Mark, you work with me on that.”
“We can save a bit if we don’t figure in Binky and Kirsten,” Mark suggested.
“Yeah, but let’s figure them in anyway,” Bud said. “If they don’t go, that’ll leave us some reserve in case some of us have to stay over. If the food does run out, well, then we’re just going to have to live on the economy.”
“You want to figure on doing the cooking, too?” Harold asked.
“Might as well,” Bud shrugged. “Someone’s got to, and it’ll go better if only one of us has to do it, and I’ll have a better idea of what we have.”
“I guess that makes you base camp manager,” Gil said, “Which is just as well. I think we need someone to stay at the camp at all times, just so stuff doesn’t walk off. Maybe one of us can fill in so you can go out and help look. We’d better figure on breakfast and supper in the camp, but we’d better have some sort of field rations for midday.”
“Figured that,” Bud said. “Like I said, I’ll work on it, especially if Mark can help with some of his backpacker tricks for keeping weight and volume down.”
“Work out with him what gear you’re going to need for base camp, cooking stuff and like that,” Ryan suggested.
“Yeah, I know some lightweight backpacking stuff that’ll help keep the weight down, and maybe I can even get a deal on some of it,” Mark agreed.
“I think that’s most of the major outstanding issues,” Gil summarized, “Except for the toughest one: interpreters. Right at the moment, there’s only Steve. If we’re going to interrogate villagers, which seems to me like the only way we’re going to find anyone, we’ll need more.”
“Well, there’s Nhu Lap’s brother-in-law’s cousin, who’s supposed to be able to speak some English,” Steve submitted. “I don’t know how good. I didn’t meet him. When I write Nhu Lap, I could ask him to find someone else.”
“And, we still wouldn’t know how good his English would be till we met him. Besides, neither of them would know anything like what we do about the situation.”
“We could look around when we get there and maybe hire one,” Ryan suggested.
“Do that, and we wind up with the risk of having another Hong,” Harold said. “Plus, they wouldn’t know anything about the situation, either. Steve would pretty well have to ride herd on him to make sure he wasn’t lying through his teeth, and we’re back to square one. If we’re going to cover the ground, we need to have two or three teams.”
“They might want to stick us with a Hong, anyway,” Gil said. “Even if Steve does speak the language this time, they might not think it’s good enough. Frankly, I only see one solution.”
Several pairs of eyes turned toward Binky. “You all know I don’t want to go back. I’m afraid they’ll keep me, even being an American citizen with an American passport. Please don’t make me go.” She was silent for a long moment, then made a big concession, “But, I will think about it, and I will pray about it.”