Tony Hillerman
Finding Moon

AN APOLOGY, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 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 Chee and Joe Leaphorn 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 St. Germain and Rick Ambrose, who patrolled the Mekong in the Brown Water Navy. Thanks, too, to Sgt. Chris Hidalgo of the New Mexico National Guard for familiarizing me with a vintage armored personnel carrier. Finally, thanks to my friend and cardiologist, Neal Shadoff, for helping my fictional physicians sound genuine.

The denial: While former members of C 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 C Company and to all those who earned the right to wear the Combat Infantry Badge.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, April 12 (Agence France-Presse)-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.