It went like that most of the night. At first, Gil had to concentrate pretty hard on staying stealthy, but a lot of the old skills came back fairly quickly, and there never seemed to be a hint of suspicion he was there. Steve wasn’t moving quickly – Henry probably wouldn’t have, Gil knew, partly because of the fact that the ground would have been softer, and partly because Henry would have been working at least as hard as Steve to stay covert, which didn’t allow for a lot of running or noisemaking.
At a number of different times, when Steve seemed to be moving in a direction where Gil was unlikely to lose him for a while, Gil ducked into the edge of some cover, checked the GPS for a position, and occasionally checked the map with the red flashlight. He was just a little surprised at the route Steve was taking. It was soon clear that Steve was indeed drifting left of course, but less because of following the drift of the stars, at least Gil suspected, than to follow obvious routes in the shadows at the edge of the tree line. The direct line from the starting point would have taken him right of Puk Me, but Steve came abreast of the village about on the old direct line route from Target One, a little to the left of the village. To Gil, it seemed that Steve was aware he was drifting left, for on several occasions when woods lines going in the right direction were available he made radical turns to the right, obviously in an attempt to get back on course. Past Puk Me, Steve moved to the right, back across the old direct line course, but drifted back across it again, obviously to the left of his course.
It was hard to say how much of an effect the stars were having on Steve’s navigation, and Gil once thought it would be interesting to hear Steve and Mark talk about it in a critique. What with it being a bright, moonlit evening, the star field was washed out, and the North Star was hidden down in the haze. The Big Dipper hung high in front of them, moving to the left like Mark had said it would, but the pointer stars still showed roughly where the North Star would have been. But, it only gave a general idea to the course, and the route tended to follow the tree lines more than it did the stars.
Steve was still moving along slowly, but steadily, and after a while the distance began to accumulate. Gil briefly contacted the cover team in the Toyota three different times, first to tell them to move north of Puk Me, then to the fire base, and then finally, to the west road a couple miles from the intersection. By that time, it was clear Steve was going to miss the fire base, and miss it by a margin of a mile or more to the left, and Gil was beginning to realize that Henry could well have gotten farther away from Target One than they’d thought.
By the time there was the first hint of light in the eastern sky, they were well past the fire base, out in the middle of the left side of the wedge, and still moving along. Only a couple miles more would bring them to the river that they’d always figured was the outer limit of the wedge; it had seemed unlikely that Henry would cross a landmark like that, having not crossed it on the way out from the fire base the day before.
By then, Gil was starting to wonder how he was going to play out the rest of the exercise. All night long, there had been no sign that Steve had detected his presence, but the coming of the morning light would end that. Gil wasn’t sure the exercise would contribute anything to actually finding Henry, but it had proven he could have covered a considerable amount of ground from Target One after being separated from the patrol.
Gil was still wondering how to handle the coming of the light while Steve followed the edge of a tree line to his right, and finally it came to a point in front of a large, open field. It was getting light now, light enough to be picked up easily if Steve turned around.
Steve stood there at the end of the woods for a moment, then started across the field. Gil followed him to the end of the woods, but hung there, wondering if he should follow. From there, he could see it was a long way, a half mile or more, to the far side of the opening, which broke wide to either side, as well – nearly as far as going ahead, if not farther. The sun would be up by the time Steve could reach a tree line in either direction.
A little undecided about what to do, Gil just stood there watching Steve. A hundred yards or more away, he came to a stop, and Gil could see that he was wondering what to do, too. It seemed likely that Steve was going to think about turning around, and with the nightlong habit of stealth upon him, Gil backed into the trees, got behind a thick section of bushes, and hunkered down trying to get out of sight. He turned and looked, just in time to see Steve turn around and head back toward where he was hidden.
Steve walked slowly back toward the point of woods, looking around, obviously thinking hard. He came to a stop a few feet to one side of Gil, looked hard into the woods, and stood there staring for the longest time before he said out loud in a questioning voice, “Somewhere right around here?”
Gil decided the time had come to end the exercise. In a conversational voice, he replied, “Yeah, that’s what I think, too.”
Gil had the pleasure of watching Steve just about jump out of his skin at the surprise. Clearly, he hadn’t even suspected Gil’s presence. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he half shouted when he got over his start.
“You didn’t think I was going to let you do this by yourself, did you?” Gil said, standing up. “I’ve been following you all night.”
Steve shook his head. “Once or twice I thought there had to be something behind me, but I thought it was just my imagination.”
“Guess I haven’t lost the touch,” Gil said, walking out into the open. “And, yeah, I think you may be right. Dawn was coming, there isn’t much cover for a long way, and he wouldn’t have had any idea where he was. If he came this way, he would have thought this was a good place to hide out for the day.”
Steve nodded. “That’d give him a chance to get a new hack on where the fire base was. There might have been helicopters coming or going, maybe some artillery, something to give him a clue. I don’t even know where we are, but we’ve got to be a long way down range.”
“Yeah,” Gil agreed, pulling out a map. “In fact, we’re past the fire base. It’s back over that way a couple miles,” he said, pointing in the general direction of the southeast, somewhat behind him.
Steve shook his head. “I knew the tree lines were drifting me left of course, but I thought I compensated for them.”
“Not enough,” Gil said. “But I can see how you could make that mistake easy enough with no map, and no real knowledge of the area. In fact, on a direct route you’d have gone right of Puk Me, but you went left. You got back on course pretty good for a while, but drifted left again and stayed that way. I think it was understandable, the way the tree lines ran.”
Steve shrugged. “It was sort of guesswork. Of course, we can’t be sure that Henry would have made the same moves.”
“I don’t know,” Gil said. “The first part of the trip, up till you were past Puk Me, I thought you made just about the same route decisions I would have made. After that, well, there were some places I think I might have done different, but they all sort of balance out.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Let me show you something,” Gil said, holding the map so Steve could see it. “OK, we’re right here. You go back, oh, a mile or more, and if you’re following the tree lines, well, this is sort of a funnel. There’s an area here, oh hell, close to a couple clicks wide, if you’re following the tree lines, well, you’re going to come out right here. You were actually a little farther left, but the tree line pulled you back to the right, here. If you’d been farther right, you still would have come here, except you’d have come up to this point from the other side of the woods.”
Steve stared at the map for a few moments. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” he said finally. “Let’s go get the gang, at least Rod and Ryan. I want to have a real good look around here.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Gil said, pulling out the CB.
It had been a sleepless night for everyone in the Toyota. Gil hadn’t called in often, and only a few words when he did, but Ryan, Mark, Binky and Kien Thanh had tried to stay awake for the few soft words to come through the handset. They were all yawning and headachy sitting outside the old fire base in the very small hours of the morning, when Gil had earlier called and told them to move over onto the east road.
“If he wants us over there,” Mark commented as Kien Thanh started the engine, “He’s going to miss the fire base entirely.”
“Looks like it to me,” Ryan said. “My guess is they’re past us already.”
“I can’t believe that they’re going to cross the west road,” Mark said, looking at the map. “It’s a long haul.”
“They seem to be moving right along, though,” Ryan said. “I guess everything is all right, or Gil would have said something.”
“Yeah, I’m looking forward to the debrief on this one,” Mark said. There wasn’t a lot to say after that; they drove over to the west road, found a place to pull off, and tried to sleep a little in shifts of two, while the other two tried to stay awake to listen for the radio, as they had done much of the night.
They were sitting on the west road not a mile from where Gil and Steve had stopped after the sun rose. All of them were awake by now, and the radio was turned up all the way so they wouldn’t miss anything. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, they heard Gil’s voice. “Toyota, this is Gil. Exercise complete. What’s your 20?”
“West road, about five clicks south of the intersection,” Mark replied. “You guys OK?”
“Fine,” came the word. “Go back to base camp, get Rod, and bring him back. We’ve got a patch of woods we want to go through with the search team.”
“You find something?” Mark asked.
“Just a spot that looks interesting,” Gil said, not trying to get hopes up. “It may be nothing. When you come back, head down to about half a mile south of where the west road knuckles down to the south from the southwest, and we’ll meet you. I can give you coordinates, but I’ll have to stop to work them out.”
“That ought to get us close,” Mark said. “If you’re not out to the road when we get back, we’ll drive up and down looking for you.”
When the Toyota made it back from base camp, Steve and Gil were sitting under a tree alongside the road, munching on some of the lunch items from Gil’s daypack. Nhu Lap found a good place to pull off the road, and the four of them who’d been together for the night got out of the Toyota. “Rod’ll be along in a few,” Ryan announced. “He was still getting going. Bud had some coffee ready and sent it out for us, and he’s throwing together some breakfast. Now, what’s this place you want to search?”
“No real evidence,” Gil said. “Just a real likely spot. He unfolded the map and gave a brief summary of the night, and the way the tree lines funneled down to a point. “We figure if he wanted to hole up for the day, well, it’s a fairly likely spot and worth a look.”
“Yeah, well, maybe,” Ryan said as Binky handed out cups and began to pour coffee – Bud had sent the coffee pot and all, straight from the stove. “It’s got to be at least as good as any other ideas we’ve had recently.”
“It might be,” Gil said, the exhaustion of a sleepless night beginning to catch up with him. They gathered around the Toyota, drinking coffee while waiting for the rest of the group.
As they sat there talking, an old Vietnamese man came walking up the road, carrying a hoe over his shoulder. “Wonder if he knows anything?” Mark asked. “We haven’t gotten this far with the contact teams yet.”
“One way to find out,” Binky said, getting to her feet to greet the man as he walked past. As he got closer, they could see that he was not merely old, but an ancient of days. Binky greeted him, going through the routine that they’d practiced for so long down toward Target One. There was a long exchange in Vietnamese between Binky and the old man, with a great deal of talking on either side – so much so that it got their interest. Finally, the old man turned toward the field that Gil and Steve had just crossed, and motioned for them to follow. Binky started after him.
“Got something, Binky?” Gil asked.
She looked back over her shoulder and in one word said all they needed to hear: “Bingo!”