“So much for the pure flame of the revolution,” teased Muir as he began walking behind Condley and Colonel Pham.

“Greed is its very own philosophy, Professor.”

“Another little toll booth on the road toward fulfillment.”

Condley chuckled. “If you’re going to get screwed, you may as well get kissed.”

They trudged up the narrow, muddy trail behind the two tough former soldiers, fighting rocks and brush as they made their way toward the fog-shrouded crest of the mountain. The cooling effect of the recent monsoon was kind to them as they struggled up the slope. If they had been forced to make this trek during the dry months, it would have been so punishing that Hanson Muir and possibly even Colonel Pham would have succumbed to a blistering tropical heat.

In front of them, a rickety wooden footbridge connected two peaks above a rushing stream. Reaching the bridge, they crossed it slowly, one man at a time. The water in the gorge below was as clear as glass, pouring over piles of rocks and churning into froth as the stream made tight turns. Looking upstream as he walked across the little bridge, Condley recognized a pile of huge, distant boulders. To Condley’s trained eye such rocks and boulders had their own signatures, particularly around streambeds. In his other life they had provided important landmarks when he was navigating his platoon underneath the blanketlike jungle canopy.

And Condley had no doubt that he knew those rocks. He had waded knee-deep up the same stream a lifetime ago as his company bypassed a piece of jungle too thick to hack through with machetes. The very jungle on the ridge just below his feet. In June 1969.

Reaching the far side of the bridge, he called to Muir, who was now crossing it. “I’ve been here before, Professor.”

“I know, Brandon,” teased Muir, panting greatly as he walked toward him. “I saw your initials carved on the bridge.”

“There wasn’t any bridge. And the road back there didn’t exist either.”

“So they didn’t drive you up here in a car?”

“I remember the rocks. If you follow that streambed to the other side of them you’ll find the ambush site.”

“My best guess is that you’ll drown if you try to walk in that stream.”

Then and now. Now and then. The professor was right. He was living in two worlds again. “In December, maybe, but it was late June. The dry season. There wasn’t as much water in it. It was knee-deep, refreshing. We filled our canteens in the stream as we walked. It looked so pure. Later on, half of us caught shrimp fever.”

Muir reached him. They paused for a moment, catching their breath. “The rocks are telling you all this?”

“Bones talk to you. Why can’t rocks talk to me?”

“I’m fine with that, Brandon. Really. It makes perfect sense.”

“Liar.”