Finding Moon

binoculars from somewhere, steadied them against the gunwale of the shore boat, and spent a long time looking. Moon could make out nothing in the dim light except flat dark shapes far out from the distant shore. Mr. Suhuannaphum, however, occasionally muttered under his breath, or sighed, or made disapproving sounds. Finally he handed the binoculars to Rice.

“What did you see?” Moon asked him.

Mr. Suhuannaphum grinned, struggled for words, shrugged, said: “I think bang.” He threw up his hands to demonstrate. “Some fire. Nobody home.” He shrugged again and added, “Maybe so.”

Rice was more expressive but less informative. “Well, shit,” he said. He put down the glasses. “Let’s get a little closer.”

He maneuvered their boat out into the rougher current, angling upstream. Moon picked up the binoculars. First he noticed the smoke. Not much of it, but it rose from the midsection of the Pott County, and the Pott County seemed to have tilted sharply toward them. He could see the flat deck of a helicopter pad and a half dozen little boats lined against a system of docks tied to the ship. There was no sign of life.

“Sons of bitches,” Rice said. “You gotta protect those things from shore attacks. Got to have outposts out there to keep people with rocket launchers from doing that to you.”

“Is that what happened?” Moon said. “Hit with a rocket?”

“Probably half a dozen rockets, which set the sucker on fire, so the PBR crews got in their boats and headed for safety.”

Moon said, “But they’re still there.”

“Four or five,” Rice said. “Usually there’d be about thirty tied up at the docks. Probably they had a bunch of people killed in the attack. I guess they took as many as they needed.” He sighed. “Well, hell,” he said. “Let’s get a little safer,” and he turned their boat back toward the shore.

It was almost full light now, the eastern horizon bright. Upstream, Moon saw a little boat sailing along the far bank, tall mast in front, short one behind. Behind it, farther out in the current, two other boats moved downriver. Rice accelerated the engine to full speed.

“Well, here we are,” he said, and pointed to the left bank ahead. A large concrete building stood there, tile- roofed and raised on the stilts that the rise and fall of the Mekong made necessary. A wharf extended from the building into the river, and behind the building stood a row of bamboo structures roofed with tin and surrounded by a high fence surmounted with barbed wire.

“If our luck holds like it’s been, Yager will be waiting here,” Rice said. “And he’ll have a bird all fueled up, and we’ll get going on this before the sun gets hot.”

Their luck didn’t hold. Yager wasn’t there. Neither was anyone else. No one came out of the building to greet them as they docked. Rice looped the anchor rope of the shore boat over a piling. Old Mr. Lee hopped onto the planking, helped Osa out, and offered Moon a hand. Rice tossed their gear ashore. Mr. Suhuannaphum reversed the outboard engine and began backing the shore boat away.

“I’ll go see if anybody’s home,” Rice said, and trotted down the dock and into the warehouse.

Mr. Suhuannaphum was also in a hurry. He held up his left hand with his thumb folded in and three fingers extended and shouted something that sounded like “Tree dee.”

“Right,” Mr. Lee shouted back and held up three fingers too.

“What’s that about?” Moon asked.

“That’s the promise Captain Teele made,” Mr. Lee said. “He will keep Glory of the Sea out in international waters for three days. And then he will come back to the mouth of the Mekong to look for us.”

“If something goes wrong,” Moon said.

Mr. Lee nodded. “Just in case the wind and water have not been right for us.”

And then the motor on Mr. Suhuannaphum’s shore boat was going vrooom. Racing down the river, back toward the clean, clear blue water of the South China Sea. Toward the Glory of the Sea. Toward safety.

Special to the New York Times

BANGKOK, Thailand, April 28-In an implicit warning to both North Vietnam and international relief organizations, the new government of Cambodia served notice that no “foreign intervention” would be allowed in the country.

The warning was broadcast over Phnom Penh radio and came as refugees flooding into Thailand reported mass executions by Khmer Rouge troops of those accused of being “exploiters of the people.”

Morning, the Nineteenth Day

May 1, 1975

WITH THE MORNING LIGHT UPON it, the Mekong was busy despite the rain. Little boats were everywhere, being sailed, rowed, poled, pushed along with outboard motors. Moon sat on a bundle of something wrapped in burlap, hungrily eating a sticky mixture of rice and pork with his fingers and thinking about the bodies he’d seen floating past in this morning’s darkness.

“It’s no use trying to be neat,” Osa said. “Eating with your fingers neatly, it is simply not possible.”

Osa was sitting on the next bale, eating exactly the same rice mixture neatly.

The rain pattered steadily on the tin roof above them, dripped from the warehouse eaves, splashed in the puddles formed on the dock. Moon heard a thumping sound, far away but too regular to be thunder. He recognized the sound of artillery fire, or perhaps heavy mortars. According to Moon’s map, the only major town upstream was Can Tho, where Highway One bridged this arm of the Mekong. Perhaps they were fighting for that. Anyway, it must be a lot quieter here than around Saigon. The radio Rice had turned up loud in the hangar was full of bad news. The Tan Son Nhut air base had been bombed. That was next door to the capital, and apparently the planes that bombed it were U.S.-built fighter bombers-either turncoat pilots of the Vietnam Air Force or planes captured on the ground up north when Phan Thiet and its air base were taken. It didn’t seem to matter much. One radio report said ARVN marines had seized a C-130 trying to take off from Nha Trang with a load of refugees, forced the civilians out, and flown away. Big Minh, the new president since yesterday, was on the air. The reporter on Rice’s wavelength said he appealed to all citizens to be courageous, not to run away, not to abandon the tombs of their ancestors.

Everything was coming apart. Moon didn’t want to think about it.

What time would it be in Los Angeles? Evening. if she was lucky, if Dr. Serna had made no mistakes, his mother would be recovering now. Her heart pumping blood through unclogged bypasses, her surgical incisions healing. She might be out of the intensive care unit, in a regular room, reading the L.A. Times about disaster in Southeast Asia, watching television news, perhaps thinking of how alone she was, wondering what had happened to her unreliable elder son. Had Dr. Serna given her his promise? And what would she think of it?

Or the other possibility. Messages awaiting him at the hotel in Puerto Princesa and the embassy in Manila regretting to inform him that Victoria Mathias Monck had not survived the operation.

That would release her, at last, from her burdens.

“You look sad,” Osa said. “I think you are remembering something unhappy.”

“Oh, no,” Moon said. “Just thinking.”

“Of your mother,” Osa said. “I remember today is the day you said they would have her in the surgery. She is all alone. Of course you worry about her.”

“There’s nothing I could do if I were there.”

“You would hold her hand,” Osa said.

“I should finish here and go back and help Rice,” Moon said. Actually there wasn’t much he could do right now to help. Rice was stripping the heavy stuff out of the copter he had chosen for their rescue project. There had seemed to be plenty to choose from in the R. M. Air repair hangar, ranging from a little Cayuse too small for their