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Chapter 80
Mark had learned the hard way to load up on Bromo even before he left the house for one of the Toivo Expedition meetings. He really didn't care much for Vietnamese food, and it didn't set well with him, but it was part of the planning. For his own part, if the
expedition ever came off, he didn't intend to eat Vietnamese any more than he could help it. In the permanently-packed baggage he kept ready for the trip, there was a good two weeks supply of backpacker's freeze-dried meals. That, and a willingness to lose a few pounds, and he
thought he could survive.
In spite of Mark not caring much for Vietnamese food, he did enjoy getting together with the Expedition team once a month. Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, there wasn't much new to report, but they'd kept at being ready, in case they should ever get the
permission to search for traces of Toivo. It could have easily degenerated into a monthly poker game, but the handful of veterans hung in there, and all of the Expedition staff, except for the archaeologist, Rod Matson, who could rarely attend, was present in Steve and Binky's living
room once they were through with dinner.
"No progress on getting permission," Gil reported. "Our last contact with the embassy at the U.N. got nowhere, but our inquiries to the one in Ottawa at least got a polite response. I was sort of told that it would be easier to get permission for just one of us to go, and
I'm wondering if we ought to pursue that route."
"One of us would be more than we've got now," Bud said. "The heck of it is, if it's just one person, who do we send? Gil, it just about comes down to you."
"Yeah," Gil said. "I know that. If we could even get permission for three, I think I'd be a lot more comfortable, but there's going to be a limit to what I could do by myself. I figure with three, I go, I've been in the area, got a good idea of what I'm looking for. Steve
goes, so we're not dependent on interpreters. Rod goes, because I'm about ninety-nine point nine percent sure that it's going to involve excavating a dig, if we get that far."
"All I can say is try for one, try for three, try for all of us," Bud said. "Take what we can get."
"It gets damn frustrating," Gil said. "But, we've been around that block so many times before that there's nothing new to be said, when I do have something new to show you. It's kind of interesting."
"What might this be?" Steve asked. "Something good, I hope."
"Pretty good," Gil said, getting onto his knees. "Afraid I'm going to have to lay this out on the floor. He opened a briefcase, and took out a thick pad of large photos, and started laying them, one overlapping each other, across the floor.
"Came up with some overheads, huh?" Mark asked, getting up to look them over. They were remarkably detailed; you could make out individual people in the photos, working in the rice paddies and whatnot. As a pilot, Mark spent a lot of time looking down, and he was
familiar with the view. "Looks like they were taken down pretty low," he said. "Couple of thousand feet, maybe?"
"I doubt it," Gil said. "These ain't real new, but they ain't that old, either."
Mark took a closer look at one of the photos. There was a notch cut out of the corner of each of them, apparently with a pair of scissors -- obviously, to remove identifying marks. "Where'd you get these, Gil?" Mark asked.
"Would you believe it if I said they showed up in the mailbox one day, with no postmark and no return address?" Gil said.
"I'm not sure whether I would or not."
"Let's just say that I've still got friends, and maybe one of them took pity on us," Gil said. "OK, this is Pham Dong village, and over here is Duc Vinh. This here is the patch of jungle where Henry got separated from his platoon." He got up, and walked to the other end
of the line of photos, nearly twenty feet long. "Clear down here, you can see what's left of the fire base. It's pretty well grown over, but you can still make out some of the bunkers."
Mark walked down to look at that imagery. "Got a magnifying glass?" he asked, and Gil produced one. Mark studied the fire base carefully. Things grew fast in Vietnam, and there was a lot of rain, so things got obliterated quickly -- and what was left of the fire base
where Henry Toivo's company had left on patrol was all but gone. At a guess, it had to be at least ten years since the fire base had been abandoned. That made these photos fairly recent; no wonder Gil wasn't saying where they came from, if he did even know.
They had to have been taken from high up, with a hell of a lens. From a U-2 at a minimum, maybe an SR-71. They could even be satellite imagery, but if they were, they were better than any satellite photos Mark had ever seen. If they came from a satellite, they came
from a real good satellite. A Keyhole, maybe?
"OK," Gil said. "I know you're just seeing these for the first time, but just look over the general route. We know Henry had a good sense of direction, and I've guessed that he must have realized that he was separated from his unit and tried to get back to the fire base.
If he went on a more or less direct line, it'd be along these photos. There's plenty of cover, and you've got to figure, he'd have wanted to stick to cover."
"Yeah," Ryan Clark agreed. "But I was in that general area, too, and cover in that neck of the woods was just lousy with every booby trap and punji pit known to man, so you got to figure these were, too. Hell, it might still not be too safe to go into those woods."
"If we get there, we've got to be damn careful," Gil agreed. "I mean, real damn careful, since everything will have grown up so much. But, I hope we don't have to search the woods at all. I still think that someone there in Pham Dong or Duc Vinh knows right where
to look. Steve, I know you've been working hard with Binky, but I hope we draw a good local interpreter, and you just have to keep them honest."
"That's kind of the plan," Steve said.
"In fact, Binky, I really wish you'd reconsider going," Gil said.
Binky shook her head. "I got three words for you on that," she said. "No way, baby."
"Well, I can understand," Gil said.
Mark looked at the maps some more. The direct line of the route from the patch of jungle to the abandoned fire base ran straight down the middle of the photos. It would have been easy for a plane to fly right down that line, but the astronomer in Mark realized that the
direction of the route was perfectly feasible for a satellite in high-inclination orbits, as most satellites were. Gil could be shy, but Mark wondered what favors he'd pulled in to get these photos.
They spent an hour or more going over the photos, comparing them with maps that dated from the late sixties, and almost worn out from study for lack of anything better to do. Though Mark had never been within fifty miles of the site, sometimes he felt like he knew
that corridor, that area, better than he knew the woods in back of his house.
After a while, even the interest in the photos started to pall. "Well, I got to get out of here," Bud Ellsberg said finally. "I got a run real early tomorrow morning."
"You know, Bud," Gil said, "You ought to hire yourself an engineer or two, so you could stay in the office more."
"That's the point," Bud said. "Gives me the best excuse in the world to get out of the office."
"Guess I won't see you for coffee, then," Gil said. "You going to the game?"
"The way they're playing this year?" Bud smiled. "I wouldn't miss it."
"Well, maybe we'll see you there," Gil replied.
"I suppose I ought to get going, too," Mark said.
"Oh, stick around and have a cup of coffee," Binky offered. "I promise you, it'll be Columbian, not Vietnamese."
Mark smiled; he hadn't put anything over on Binky. "Since you put it that way," he said, "I guess I will."
They picked up the photos and maps and put them away, while Binky served coffee. "Well, have you figured out how you're going to set everybody's teeth on edge this year?" Ryan asked their hostess.
"I have," Binky said, "But it wouldn't be any fun to tell you what it is. Let's save that surprise for the Halloween Party."
"You sure got me going three years ago," Ryan said. "That was a corker."
"It'll be pretty good," Binky promised.
"You know, Gil, those Halloween Parties have gotten to be a lot of fun," Steve said. "I'm glad you and Carrie came up with them."
Gil shook his head. "They've sure gotten way beyond what we expected when we started them, but I've gotten to the point where I really look forward to them."
"Yeah, me too," Steve said. "Mark, do you go to the Halloween Party?"
Mark shook his head. "Never have," he said. "Jackie and I aren't really party people. Mike and Kirsten have invited us this year, but Jackie and I don't know if we want to go."
"Aw, you might as well go," Gil said. "There are a lot of stories floating around about the party, and some of them are even true. You ought to take them up on it, just to see what's really going on."
"Yeah," Ryan agreed. "If you ever want to get well and truly blasted, that's the best possible time and place."
"That's what I've heard," Mark said. "I hear that everybody gets bombed out of their minds."
"Aw, that's not true, although some people get a little out of it," Gil said. "You don't have to get shitfaced if you don't want to. Just steer clear of the punch."
"That punch has got punch," Binky said. "It sort of sneaks up on you."
"Seriously, you ought to go," Gil said. "You just don't want to sit out there in the country and look at your dogs all the time. There's other things in life."
"It's a ball," Binky said. "All of us have been for years, and we've always had a good time."
"Well," Mark said. "I'll talk to Jackie. Mike and Kirsten have made a lot of offers for one thing and another, and I don't want to have to turn them all down."
