Nhu Lap and Kien Thanh got back in the Renault about midnight on Christmas night, tired from the drive, but they were ready to go the next morning when the contact teams fanned out again. Day followed day; four days and six villages later, the contact teams had worked even farther past Puk Me, but still, hadn’t found anyone who knew anything about a missing American’s body.

By now, everyone was starting to get a little dispirited by the continual inability to find anything. The search team had pretty much given up by now; they’d investigated all of the various patches of woods near Target One, and had not found a trace of anything. They’d gone to rotating in and out of the contact teams, just for the lack of anything better to do. When the contact teams went out in the late afternoon of the fourth day after Christmas, Steve, Gil, and Mike stayed behind in the base camp, and sat around in the shade of the spinnaker, waiting for the day to come to an end.

“As much as I hate to say it,” Gil said glumly as he swatted unsuccessfully at a fly, “I’m beginning to think we’re farting down a dry hole around here.”

“I guess I agree,” Steve nodded. “We’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking about Target One, but I’m beginning to think Henry’s battalion, Dennis, Bob, and all the villagers are right, there’s nothing to be found around here.”

“Maybe we ought to think about moving base camp, like maybe tomorrow,” Gil said. “We’re well over halfway down to the far end of the wedge, and the drive is getting to be a bit on the long side. That isn’t a bad campsite down by the bridge, and we’re wasting our time around here.”

“I don’t know,” Steve frowned, playing with a weed. “The key to the whole thing is still that Target One is where Henry was last seen. The mystery is there, somehow, and what happened there is the key.”

“What are you talking about?” Mike asked.

Steve shook his head. “If I knew, I’d tell you,” he said. “We’ve never really understood what happened there, just that it happened. There’s something there that doesn’t make sense. The place has something to tell us that we’re not hearing. It’s like when you walk across a field with Rod, and he sees an arrowhead or something that you don’t. It’s there, but we don’t see it.”

“You’re not making a lot of sense,” Gil said.

“I know it,” Steve admitted. He sat for a moment and thought, then finally made a decision. “Gil, you want to go for a walk out there?”

“Sure, I’m not doing anything useful. What you got in mind?”

“I’m not real sure,” Steve replied, getting to his feet. “Every time we’ve been out there before, we’ve been looking for Henry. Maybe we need to go out and try to see if we can understand what happened.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” Gil said, getting up as well. “But it beats sitting around here.”

They took a couple minutes to gather canteens, and Gil picked up the backpack with a few items of gear that he’d carried on the search team trips for so many days. They got out to the road, and Gil started for the familiar trail toward Target One.

“No,” Steve stopped him. “Let’s not go that way. Let’s go through Duc Vinh and up the west road, and come in the way the patrol did, and try to see it the way they saw it.”

It was the long way around a rectangle, and they were close to half an hour getting to a point south of Duc Vinh. “We know the platoon sergeant came across this road about here,” Steve said. “They were pretty spread out, more or less line abreast and Henry and Taylor were pretty well to the left, so they were probably a ways to the south yet, but at this point, the platoon sergeant was still in contact with Taylor and Henry. Why don’t you stay here, and try to follow the route the platoon sergeant took, and I’ll go a couple hundred yards to the south and see if I can follow the route Henry took.”

“It’s sort of a guess,” Gil said. “The report wasn’t real clear about the exact route in this area.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “All we know is Henry’s platoon didn’t get near Duc Vinh. That was the next platoon over, and they hit it about center. Thank God they didn’t Zippo the place.”

“Yeah, that would have made things worse for us,” Gil agreed. “The platoon, well, they’d have had to bend to the south around that patch of woods to the east. As far as we know, they stayed pretty much out of the woods, so if the platoon sergeant was in the middle, he’d have had to go about halfway between that one and the next one to the south.”

“That’s how I read it,” Steve said. “We tended to stay out of the woods when we patrolled, as no one was too anxious to make contact if they didn’t have to.”

“Figures,” Gil snorted. “I’ll bet Henry’s sad-ass outfit tried to stay out of the woods, too. No wonder they never found the NVA unit that was supposed to be hiding around here, if they never went into the woods. All Cai Cung’s buddies would have had to do was to keep their heads down and they’d never be found.”

“Think about it,” Steve said. “By then, everybody knew they were buying time, not trying to win, and who wanted to get their asses shot? At least, it was like that when I was there, and I like to think I was in one of the better outfits.”

“It wasn’t like that when I was here,” Gil snorted again.

“No, you still thought you could win. That was years earlier,” Steve said flatly. “This isn’t solving anything, and we could stand around debating it for hours. I’ll hike down a couple hundred yards and cut in. We’ll just go at a good steady walk, not hurrying. Let’s even take it slow. Remember, it was muddy then, so that probably slowed them down.”

A few minutes later, they were walking across the field, Steve a hundred yards or more to Gil’s left. As they neared the patch of woods to the east, Gil bent to the right, and Steve fell behind a little bit, and skirted the edge of the woods, twenty yards or so out. As they got past it, they could see Target One ahead of them, a little to the left of their fronts, and Steve caught up with Gil a little, but was still behind as they crossed the field, which widened as it approached Target One. In a few minutes, they got down to the path back toward the camp, and Steve yelled at Gil to stop, and motioned to him.

Gil walked toward Steve, who was looking around the area, with glances into Target One. “What do you think?” he said as he got close enough to talk comfortably.

“You were staying in there fairly close,” Steve said, still trying to visualize that afternoon more than twenty years before. “The field widens out, and I’ll bet the platoon did, too, so if the platoon sergeant tried to stay in the center, he’d probably have been farther out.”

“Could be,” Gil said. “But we know Taylor saw Henry around here the last time.”

“Right,” Steve agreed. “So he had to be even farther from the center of the platoon than he’d been back at the road. We never knew how close Taylor was, but I’ll bet it wasn’t real close. I’ll bet he was fifty yards or more out there.”

Gil nodded thoughtfully. “All right, I see what you’re doing. Now, I’ve got a question. Why did Henry come over here, instead of staying more closed up to Taylor and the rest of the platoon? For that matter, why did he go into the woods, anyway?”

“Good question,” Steve said thoughtfully. “Maybe he thought he saw something. Maybe he had to take a dump. Maybe it doesn’t matter. We know he went into Target One, right about here. If we’re right, the patrol was moving along, but maybe not all that fast, certainly not running. But, he was behind a little, maybe even a little behind Taylor.”

Gil shook his head. “Why would he go into the woods by himself?” he said. “That would have been a dumbass thing to do.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “But remember, you come at this from being a beret, and good in the field. This was a leg outfit, and, from all we’ve ever found out, not all that good a one. They couldn’t have been or they wouldn’t have screwed up. Maybe they didn’t do coverage that well. Gil, try not to think like a beret. Try to think like a dumbass Spec Four who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. Hell, Taylor could have been smoking a joint. Maybe he didn’t get along that well with Henry. These weren’t berets, Gil.”

“All right,” Gil said with a touch of exasperation. “You made your point. It’s hard, though. I was never that much of a dumbass. Now, what were you getting at?”

Steve shrugged. “I’m just trying to imagine what happened. Just for the sake of discussion, let’s assume he had to take a dump. He ducks into the woods and does his business. That takes a little time, maybe three, four, five minutes. He doesn’t say anything to Taylor and Taylor doesn’t hold up for him. He comes out of the woods, and there’s no Taylor and no squad, and he thinks, ‘Oh, fuck.’ Reasonable?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“OK, you’re standing here, and you’re Henry. How the hell did the patrol get clear out of sight in five minutes or so?”

“They couldn’t have been moving all that fast,” Gil said.

“Right. They must have turned a corner, and Henry lost sight of them,” Steve replied, trying to visualize what had happened. It was still hard, but they both knew something like that must have happened. “So what did the patrol do, anyway?”

“It’s not real clear in the report,” Gil said. “But we know they were staying pretty well out in the open and not in the woods much, so they must have had to bend around the little patch of trees up ahead.”

Steve nodded. “They would have had to bend to the right pretty good to go around it from the direction they came, and the left looks more like the logical route, at least from here. Especially since they could get out of contact a little more quick there, right?

“It’s probably the route I’d take.”

“Me too.” Steve nodded, “And, probably Henry, too. But let’s say the dumbass platoon leader, whatever his name was, the guy who got fragged, decided to go right, for whatever reason. Tell you what – you be Taylor for a few minutes and go right, and let’s see how far you get in five minutes. I’ll stay here and after a few minutes I’ll try to think like Henry.”

“All right,” Gil nodded. “Let me get out where we think Taylor was, first.”

Steve turned and went up to the woods, being careful to not go in it, and turned his back, keeping an eye on his watch. He waited five minutes, and then an extra minute just to be safe. When he turned around, Gil wasn’t in sight. He turned and looked, scratched his head for a minute, and quickly took after where he speculated that Henry thought the patrol would have taken in the – to him – logical direction, to the left. He walked for ten minutes, around the patch of woods and to an open area past it, and imagined that he saw no sign of the patrol, then, still trying to imagine how Henry would have seen it said. “Aw, fuck” again, and turned back toward Target One. As he came around the edge of the patch of woods to his south, he found Gil.

“Jeez,” Gil said. “I thought I’d lost you there for a minute.”

“Yeah, I was thinking I’d lost you, too, but think what Henry felt.” He stopped for a second to gather his thoughts. “OK,” he said finally. “By this time they’ve been out of contact for twenty minutes. If the patrol kept moving, they’re more than half a mile away, and Henry is getting worried, so he takes out after them on the other path, the way you went.”

“Makes sense.”

“Let’s go see,” Steve suggested.

Without talking, they followed the right hand route again, down to where there was another route decision to make. “So, which way now?” Gil asked.

“I wish I knew what route the patrol took,” Steve replied but so did Henry when he stood here, if he stood here,” Steve said. “But then again, maybe, trying to be Henry, I don’t want to know the patrol’s route. Anyway, by now, he’s started to get a little worried and he’s having to guess. Henry was good in the woods – I know from having grown up in the woods with him, and spent years hunting rabbits with him, so again, he does what he thinks the logical route for the patrol would be. What would you think?

“Left again, I guess,” Gil replied. “That’s probably what I’d have done.”

“Me too.” Steve smiled. “I don’t remember the patrol report from this area that well, and from what I can remember it’s not real clear, but what you want to bet they went right again?”

“Where were they going, anyway?” Gil wondered. “Maybe even the platoon leader wasn’t real clear. Maybe from his viewpoint, there’s no advantage either way. He did have a map, and we’re just about dead sure Henry didn’t.”

“Could be,” Steve said. “Let’s go left and see what we see.”

They walked down the left hand route for a few minutes, until the route split again, but this time the more logical route seemed to be to the right, and they followed that.

By now, Gil was getting into the re-creation of the patrol. “OK, he comes around this bend, and there’s still no sign of the patrol. By now, he’s beginning to realize he’s fucked.”

“That’s what I figure,” Steve said. “So, what does he do?”

“Probably go apeshit.”

“Not Henry,” Steve said. “I really doubt it. Both he and his dad told me more than once if you get lost in the woods to sit down and think about what you’re doing. Let’s sit down, have a smoke, and think about what we’d do.”

“I don’t smoke anymore,” Gil said. “Did enough when I was here, though.”

“Me either,” Steve agreed, “But I’d smoke one if I had one right now. Too bad Bud’s not here.”

They were silent for a several minutes. Finally, Steve broke the silence. “As I see it, he has two choices. He can go back to Target One where he’s pretty sure Taylor last saw him, and wait there until they figure out he’s missing. On the other hand, he can head back for the fire base.”

“We’ve always figured he’d head for the fire base if he was well out of contact with his platoon, at least if he got far enough to make that decision,” Gil said thoughtfully. “I’ll stay with that. I’m guessing he doesn’t figure there’s a lot of chance his unit is going to look for him anytime soon. They were not a real sharp outfit from everything I ever heard, and he probably knew that, and figured it could take a while – if they did it at all.”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Steve agreed. “I think he’s going to try for the fire base, from right around here. He knows he’s in Indian country, so he’d better try to be a little covert, so I’ll bet he finds a good place to hide till dark. Maybe, that little point of woods right over there.”

They walked over to the woods. They were far from Target One, now, and this wasn’t some woods that the search team had covered. It was dense and thick, and they walked carefully into the edge of it, looking for old booby traps, but didn’t see any.

“He hid somewhere around here, I’ll bet,” Steve said. “He hid till dark, then headed for the fire base.”

Gil nodded. “That would explain why we never found anything in Target One, why the guys I had go through it in 1970 never found anything,” he said. “He was only there for a few minutes. There was never anything to find there except maybe a turd. All that fucking effort shot in the ass. Now what?”

“There’s only one thing I can think of,” Steve said.

“What’s that?”

“I think I can walk in Henry’s shoes better than you can. After all, I knew him a lot better. I don’t think he had a map, but he probably had at least a general idea of the direction of the fire base. We know they did some shooting in the late afternoon, and he probably would have heard it. I’ll stay here till dark, and then head in that direction, and see what kind of route decisions I make.”

“We can do that,” Gil said. “We’d better go back to camp and let the guys know what we’re up to.”

“No,” Steve said. “I’d better go by myself. I think I can walk in Henry’s shoes, but I may not be able to if I have someone with me, questioning my thinking. I need to be alone and hungry and a little nervous. I couldn’t do it with you with me.”

“Steve, I can’t let you do that,” Gil said. “It’s not real safe.”

“I should be all right,” Steve said. “I won’t go into any woods, and we’re pretty sure that’s where the mines and booby traps were. When it gets light, I’ll head east, and come out on the east road someplace, and you can send one of the vehicles to look for me.”

“I don’t like it,” Gil said.

“I’m not real crazy about it, either,” Steve agreed. “It’s like that time I came up here with Nhu Lap. I’d rather not have done it that way, but I couldn’t think of any other way to do it. It worked out pretty good.”

“At least take a map and compass with you,” Gil said. “I’ve got one in the pack I can give you.”

“No map, no compass,” Steve said. “Henry didn’t have one at all.”

Gil stood there thinking for a moment. Steve might be on to something, he knew. The chain of assumptions seemed pretty good so far. It might have not been the right chain, but it seemed to explain what they knew. But, it just wasn’t a good idea for Steve to be wandering around in the night by himself . . . “All right,” he said finally, making his decision. “We’ll do it your way. You want a compass bearing to get you started? The fire base hasn’t done any shooting this afternoon.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Steve was clearly a little nervous about the idea himself.

“All right,” Gil said, reaching in his pocket for the compass. “Just at a guess, we’re about a mile dead west of the direct line, directly to the right, so we’re well out of the wedge. Without looking at a map, I’d guess the fire base is about 15 degrees magnetic from here. That’s over that way,” he said, pointing to a tall clump of trees in the middle distance.

“That’s good enough,” Steve said. “Henry wouldn’t have had a real good bearing, either.”

“Mark would tell you it’s not the same stars out there tonight,” Gil told him.

“The moon’s about right, though,” Steve nodded. “We can’t have everything the way we want it. I remember Mark saying once that Henry would probably have drifted to the left if he was following the higher stars. I’ll just have to try to account for that.”

“Anything else I can give you?”

“If you’ve got one of the field first aid kits, it probably would be a good idea to take it,” he replied. “And, a spare canteen, if you have one.”

“No spare, but the one I’ve got is about half full,” Gil said. “You can take it.”

“That’ll do, I guess,” Steve said. “See you in the morning.”

“See you in the morning, Steve,” Gil replied, turning to go. He glanced at the sun, low in the western sky. About an hour till sunset, he guessed, and there wouldn’t be a lot of twilight. It’d be time enough if he hurried.