Duncan smiled. “In that case, I’m not one of us either.”
“Come again?”
“I’m just a visitor like you. One more civilian.”
“You’re not a soldier?” Her eyes flicked down at the Che shirt.
He flashed her a peace sign. “Ever heard of Kent State?”
She connected the dots. He was talking about the event, not the place. “You were there?” she said. It dated him, though she couldn’t remember the date. Before her time.
“On the grassy hill, on the very day,” he said. “May 4, 1970. I heard the bullets cut the air. I saw the blood on the lawn. It took me all the rest of the spring and summer to come out of hiding.”
According to the information officer, Joint Task Force-Full Accounting and the Central Identification Lab based in Hawaii deployed their own military investigators, linguists, anthropologists, and assorted other experts. At a cost of tens of millions of dollars per year, JTF-FA and CILHI were the official forensic archangels of Vietnam and other foreign wars. They were very territorial about it, she had come to learn. The bones were holy relics. “Sacred Ground” was her working title for the piece.
“They have their rules,” Duncan said. “They make their exceptions. I’m not the only one. You’ll meet the other soon enough, John Kleat. The captain took us in. We like to think we’re of some small use.”
“You came together?”
“Kleat and me? Nope. I just happened to be in the neighborhood, an archaeologist down from the jungles. My specialty is temple restorations. But I know my way around grid strings and a hole. I help where I can. And I try to keep my place.”
“And Mr. Kleat?”
“Kleat,” said Duncan, “has come searching for his brother.”
Molly pricked her ears up at that. “His brother was the pilot?”
“No, we know that much. But Kleat, he’s philosophical about it. The digging season is like an annual pilgrimage for him. He believes one of these years his brother’s bones are bound to surface.”
“Have you done this before, gone digging for them…the others?” She fumbled, unsure of what to call them. The dead? The fallen heroes? They would have their own lingo.
“The boys, you mean?”
“The boys,” she repeated.
“Oh, I keep my eyes open when I’m out with my temples. Sort of a professional courtesy, don’t you think?” Duncan looked off across the labyrinth, then back at her. “And what about you, miss?”
“Me?”
“Camp is on the far side of the road. I can take you there. Or if you like, we can go on to the dig site.”
She told him the dig site. They started walking. He carried his steel briefcase in one hand, the trowel in his other.
“They’re all waiting for their fifteen minutes, you know,” he said. “They think you’re going to make them immortal.”
2.
Duncan led her along a succession of paths toward a surf roar of men’s voices and clattering tools and the drumbeat of earth being chopped and a generator snarling to pump away water. They arrived at a small army of locals pick-and-shoveling through more paddy walls, raising a cloud of orange dust. Molly curbed the impulse to reach for her camera, waiting to meet the head honcho and get the inevitable ground rules.
Duncan called “Captain” at two Americans on a dike above the toil, but neither heard. They were busy consulting a map with a wiry village elder, or a Cambodian liaison officer. The old man had a dark brown moon of a face with burr-cut white hair and one pink plastic leg. Somehow he heard Duncan over the din. He lifted his head abruptly and looked at Molly as if he’d been waiting for her.
“Old Samnang,” Duncan told her, walking closer. “He’s the work boss. In the old days, before Pol Pot, before Nixon, he studied at the Sorbonne and taught music and math at the Royal Academy in Phnom Penh. That was then.”
The two Americans noticed her now. Molly figured the taller one to be the mission leader. He looked commanding with his sun-bronzed skull, photogenic as hell, a seamed scar looping across his throat. He wore black cargo pants bloused in his boot tops, a close second to the American uniforms that were forbidden on these military excavations.
But it was the squat younger man dressed in a Hawaiian-print shirt, Gargoyle sunglasses, and a baseball cap who descended to them. Molly took in the cap, the veins, and the wedding band. The captain was an Orioles fan, a gym rat, and married. And a hopeless legs man. Even the Gargoyles could not disguise his stare.
“Welcome to the kingdom, Ms. Drake.” The young captain didn’t mention that she was badly overdue. He didn’t try to own her. She liked that. His eyes flickered at Duncan’s
“Mr. O’Brian saved me. I was about to go off chasing phantoms.”
“The gypsy kid,” said Duncan.
“Some poor mother’s son,” the captain said.
She had not meant to apologize, but since all seemed forgiven she saw only merit to be gained by it. “The week got away from me,” she offered.
“No problem.”
She looked around at the mounds of dirt. “I was praying I wouldn’t be too late.”
“If you mean have we found the pilot, we have not.”
She tried to read his tone. Was he optimistic? Discouraged? They had been here for nearly three weeks. Generally their digs didn’t go longer than a month, which was a blink of the eye compared to other digs she’d covered. At Canyon de Chelly, Yellowjacket, Little Big Horn, and elsewhere, it took years and even decades to lay bare the past. Coming over on the plane, she had worried about their quickness. She had sold her editor on a find, not a hit-or-miss process. She needed bones for her story. But she could not say so, not to these bone hunters.
Duncan seemed to read her mind. “We’ll find him,” he said.
“If he’s here,” the captain qualified, “we’ll find him.”
“He’s waited long enough,” Duncan said. She sensed a subtle tug of war between the captain, under deadline, and this long-haired middle-aged archaeologist who did not even wear a wristwatch.
The captain didn’t take it personally. He clapped Duncan on the shoulder. “A true believer,” he said.
“They’re talking about the July Fourth issue,” Molly said. She offered it as information, but also motivation. The captain needed to understand she was under deadline, too. She didn’t volunteer that the next big patriot slot wouldn’t come until Thanksgiving, and no one at the magazine wanted to wait that long. This was just another Vietnam rehash with a short shelf life, less a war story than a nostalgic nod to the Rolling Stone generation. And she needed bones. It came down to that.
The captain said, “We’ll be long gone by July. Once the wet season starts, we close shop.”
“When does the monsoon come?”
“Every year’s different. Sometimes May, usually mid to late June. The meteorologists are forecasting a late arrival this year. That gives us a little more wiggle room if we need it. But there’s time for all that later. First let’s see to you. We’ve got another three hours left to the workday here, but let me suggest you get squared away at camp. Rest up this afternoon. Drink lots of water. Wash the dust off. I should warn you, the shower sees a lot of action around seventeen hundred hours. I’ll make the introductions at dinner.”
She was more grateful than she allowed herself to show. Her body was still operating on mountain standard time, as in 2:00 A.M. And this heat. Three mornings ago, she’d scraped frost off her windshield. Now she couldn’t
