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owned shares of massage parlors in Qui Nhon, a truck wash in Long Binh, two laundries in Saigon, a bar in Kontum, and a piece of a saloon and a film-production shop in Bangkok. I didn't want to know what kind of films.
    Nam, he argued boozily, was wide open and free in ways only a besieged society could be. Regulations were lax. Hell, everything was available, removable, salable. Nobody sweated the small stuff, he said, and launched into a pitch on how he could get noncoms going on Riot and Recreation to smuggle gemstones back for him. He said it was nuts to risk our butts for the kick alone and the simple thanks of a grateful nation. We were entitled to bennies from all the sweat and risk.
    "Back in loosey-goosey Nam," Miser said, "the whole fucking thing is to make it work for you."
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    The Otter whined across the sky. I yawned and said, "Can you find out where the hell this windmill is going next? We're cranking east. Cheo Reo's south."
    Miser talked to the crew chief, the two shouting over the engine, then came back to me. "We're going to the freakin' coast," he said. "Qui Nhon. Gotta pick up some priority stud."
    The VIP passenger was a full-bull colonel, a beet-red newbie just arrived. He loaded on and we climbed over the azure ocean before turning back inland high above the several hundred thousand citizens of Qui Nhon City toiling in the heat. A hundred supply ships stretched across the horizon, waiting their turns to unload. Some would wait months. I knew how they felt. The Otter wasn't taking us anywhere soon either.
    The crew chief beckoned us over. Cheo Reo, he promised, was next. For sure. Half an hour. Miser gave me a cynical glance. I occupied myself lightening my load of new issue. I jettisoned my shelter half, abandoned the tent stakes, tent cord, collapsed air mattress, and carrier, my gas mask and its pouch, the poncho, and six pairs of olive-drab underpants. Cutting the plates out of my flak jacket, I reduced it from nearly seven pounds to three, thought on it, and threw the flak vest away too, dumping everything into a wooden trash box in the back.
    Columns of red dust rose behind long convoys of trucks and armor; the pilots spotted a wide dirt road off the major route and followed it south. No plumes. Aside from a lone bus or rickety truck, nothing. Everything bound for Cheo Reo arrived—like us—on a military air transport or helicopter, whether it was cases of Coke, grenades, or help in the event of an attack. Volcanic plains floated by, green jungles, and dry scrub. We followed the road and the lazy coils of a river looping across the flat land toward its junction with the larger Ea Pa and the province capital.
    Cheo Reo. Finally. We landed and deplaned. The crew chief threw a bag of mail out after us. A spec-4 idled in a small truck. Farther on, a Vietnamese sentry box stood empty, its barrier pole vertical and unattended. No air-control tower, no other planes, no buildings, not so much as a forklift. Only a lone walk-in cargo container.
    "You think that's the f-ing arrivals terminal?" Miser said, jutting his little knob of a chin at the CONEX. "What do you think we did in a former life that Buddha sent us to this shit hole?"
    The light was a stiletto after the plane's dark innards. I made my way across the perforated steel planks that were latched together to make the runway. The sixty-five-pound planking was patched and worn, some of it blasted and jagged, the target of heavy bombardment.
    "Well," Miser said, "at least somebody thought enough of the place to shell the shit out of it."
    "Pilots must hate this strip," I said, grateful we hadn't blown a tire. A new asphalt runway was under construction, and dirt fill was being trucked in. A grader and backhoe belched diesel smoke as they worked.
    A jeep sped toward us, churning dust, its windshield lying flat on the hood. The driver, red-haired and hatless, jumped out and greeted us with a genial smile without saluting. He had on threadbare