 Recorded Books Presents Finding Moon by Tony Hillerman Narrated by me, George Goudel. An Apology, Acknowledgements, Denial, and Dedication To my fellow Desert Rats, my apologies for wandering away from our beloved Navajo Canyon Country. The next book will bring Jim Chi and Joe Leaporn of the Tribal Police back into action. I acknowledge the help of Professor Jack M. Potter, University of California Anthropologist, and author of Wind, Water, Bones, and Souls, The Religious World of the Cantonese Peasant, and of Bernard Saint-Germain and Rick Ambrose, who patrolled the Mekong in the Brownwater Navy. Thanks to Sergeant Chris Hidalgo of the New Mexico National Guard for familiarizing me with a vintage armored personnel carrier. Finally, thanks to my friend and cardiologist, Neil Shadoff, for helping my fictional physicians sound genuine. The Denial. While former members of Sea Company, 410 Infantry will recognize some of the names herein as those of our fellow grunts, I have borrowed only the names of these old friends and not their personalities. All characters herein are fictional. This work is dedicated to the men of Sea Company and to all those who earned the right to wear the Combat Infantry badge. Phnom Penh, Cambodia. April 12, as Jean's France Press. The United States abandoned its embassy here this morning with six helicopters sweeping into the embassy grounds to evacuate the ambassador and his remaining staff. The action came as the last resistance of the Cambodian Army collapsed and Khmer Rouge troops poured into the capital, many of them riding on captured tanks and trucks. On the first day, April 12, 1975, Shirley was giving Moon the caller-on-hold signal when he came through the newsroom door. He acknowledged Shirley with the I'll Call Him Back signal, threw his hat on the copy desk, sat down, and looked at D. W. Hubble. Nothing much, Hubble said, AP has an early tornado in Arkansas, pretty mediocre, but it could get better, things are still going to hell and am. The Ford has a press conference scheduled for 11 Washington time and Kissinger issued a statement in General Motors, what did Henry say? Hubble did not bother to look up from his duties, which at the moment involved chopping copy from the teletype machine into individual stories and storing them into trays. The trays were variously labeled page one, sports, features, funny, sob stuff, and pig iron, the pig iron being what Hubble considered seriously dull stuff that the League of Women Voters reads. Hubble said, what did Henry say? Let's see. He glanced at the top item in the pig iron file. Henry said that Dick Dixon was correct in declaring we had won the war in Southeast Asia. He said the North Vietz were just too stubborn to understand that, and the press was playing up the current setbacks to make it look like a disaster and it was going to be the fault of the Congress for not sending more money, and anyway don't blame Kissinger. Words to that effect. It looks good for the play story. Moon asked and sorted quickly through the front page tray. The United States seemed to be evacuating the embassy at Phnom Penh. Moon saved that one. The new president of South Vietnam, something or other, T.U., was picking a fight to the death bunch for his cabinet. Moon discarded it. A bill to put a price ceiling on domestic oil production was up for a vote in the Senate Committee. That was weak, but a possibility. The South Vietz were claiming a resounding victory as Suan Laok, wherever that was. He tossed that one too. Senator Humphrey declared that we should establish a separate U.S. Department of Education. There'd be some interest in that. The Durant County commissioners had moved the road to the ski basin up a notch on the priority list. Most of the 28,000 subscribers the paper claimed would be interested in that one. And then there was the colorful, gruesome feature on the plight of refugees pouring into Saigon from points north. There was good human interest stuff, but even as he read it, Moon was conscious of how quickly these accounts of tragedy from Vietnam had become merely filler, like the comics and Anne Landers and the Crossword Puzzle. A few years ago they had been personal. Then he'd searched through the news for references to Ricky's airmobile brigade for actions using helicopters, for anything involving the Da Nang sector where Ricky's maintenance company was stationed. But since Ricky resigned his commission in 1968, Ricky had been out of it. And since 1973 the United States of America was also out of it. Sample complete. Ready to continue?