Muir stood slowly, shifting his gaze from the skeleton to the leaden sky that showed through the shed’s doorway. Along the pathway in front of them the children were gathering again, staring excitedly as if the two Americans were visitors from Mars.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Now Condley knelt next to the remains, beginning to fold them back inside the old poncho. “Roger that. I’ve seen absolutely no women in Ninh Phuoc that you should spend the winter with.”

The trip downriver was quick and fun, like falling down the far edge of a roller coaster. The typhoon ended up stalling just off the coast, then turning north in late afternoon and heading inland toward Vinh. Condley made the flight to Sai Gon, leaving a depressed and disconcerted Muir in a leaking, broken-down old hangar at the Da Nang airport, where he was tasked by the American Embassy in Ha Noi to await a military aircraft. The Joint Task Force for Full Accounting had already summoned a cargo plane that would take the remains back to the Central Identification Lab in Hawaii, and Muir, who lived and worked in Hawaii, would accompany it.

“You bastard,” grunted the bulky scientist as he shook Condley’s hand to say good-bye. “I deserve at least one night of R and R for all my efforts.”

“Take care of them bones, boy,” joked Condley.

“That’s my job.”

“Exactly. You’re the scientist. I’m just the tour guide.”

Muir, ever the dramatist, came to a respectful version of attention as he looked over at the wrapped remains. “But let me remind you that these are not mere bones. Lying there inside that poncho is somebody’s son, Brandon. Maybe someone’s husband and father. Someone who served his country and lost his life in the process. An American hero, at this moment unrewarded for his sacrifice. We will have the honor of rendering him that award.”

“Even if you don’t get laid in Sai Gon.”

“I didn’t even want to do that. What’s wrong? Why are you being so adamantly cynical, Brandon?”

“I don’t know,” answered Condley, staring pensively at the poncho that held the pile of bones. “I just keep wondering how he ended up in that village when Hao said there wasn’t even a fight that night.”

“Or why his hand is gone.”

“What does that mean?”

“His left hand is off,” said Muir, obviously intrigued. “It appears to have been severed cleanly, as if by a knife. Very strange, on a combat casualty.”

“Maybe some villager souvenired it,” mused Condley. “Or an NVA soldier. You know, like some of our guys used to cut off ears.”

“A gruesome thought.”

“It was a gruesome war.”