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Limbaugh looked helplessly at Gramm, who shrugged. “Eleven-thirty at night, fatboy,” scoffed Buchanan from the bottom of a fourteen-foot foxhole he had dug in the floor of the cave.

“Yeehaw!” Gramm shouted. “We’re goin’ to Saigon, boys! This time tomorrow we’ll be knee-deep in slant-eyed pootie!”

“Uh, Brave Eagle, you’re on an unsecure radio frequency.” Kerry’s disgust came through loud and clear. “And FYI, Four Corps Intel reports beaucoup Victor Charlie movement in your area.”

Limbaugh shat himself.

“Jesus, Limbaugh,” Gingrich gagged. Any suggestion of war or fighting always did that to Limbaugh. The acrid stench even penetrated Stoner’s opium-induced delirium. He leaned over and vomited copiously into Buchanan’s foxhole.

“Hey, Pat. Incoming,” Gingrich shouted, cracking up both himself and Gramm.

“Listen up, Brave Eagle. When you approach the rendezvous point, remember the signal. Three clicks on the handset. Do you copy?”

Limbaugh clicked the handset three times. There was another pause.

“No, not now. At the rendezvous. Click the handset three times at the rendezvous. At twenty-three thirty. That’s eleven-thirty at night. Sea Lord, over and out.”

As dusk fell, wisps of mist began to rise from the slack brown water of the canal. At the helm, Kerry steered a middle course between the heavily jungled banks. In the fading light, Gore noticed that Kerry’s mood seemed to darken as well.

“Sometimes I wonder if this war was such a good idea.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gore guardedly. He had heard this kind of talk before, back at Harvard. Specifically, in a folksinging workshop taught by Pete Seeger, class of ’42.

“I keep reading in Captain Ailes’s column that victory is just around the corner. But for those of us in country, it just doesn’t seem that way.”

“I don’t know, Lieutenant. If you imagine Asia as a row of dominoes, we’ve lost China, we’ve lost North Korea. If Vietnam falls, then Cambodia could be next, followed by Thailand, then Burma, Ceylon, India, Pakistan. Then . . .”

As Gore continued to list countries, Kerry’s mind wandered. “I just wonder why we’ve lost the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people.”

“Give it back!” Thomas’s squeal broke their reverie. “Give me back my magazine!”

Kerry and Gore jumped topsides and saw Ashcroft holding a cheaply printed magazine featuring teenage Vietnamese prostitutes putting hard-boiled eggs in their vaginas. “Filth!” roared Ashcroft. “Blasphemous filth!” He hurled the magazine into the swirling waters.

“Motherfucker!” shouted Thomas, preparing to dive after the egg magazine. But before he could, Kerry grabbed his arm in an iron grip.

“What’s going on here?” the lieutenant asked as he hurled Thomas onto the deck.

“Let me explain, Big Guy,” Bush said as he crumpled a beer can against his forehead. “Jesus Freak here’s been gettin’ on Bill Cosby ’bout his choice of reading matter.”

“Skipper,” said Ashcroft indignantly, “article eighteen, section twelve of the Uniform Code of Military Justice specifically forbids active duty personnel from possessing pornography. I plan to file a full report with your superiors when we get back.”

“That’s your prerogative, sailor. But until then, I’m ordering you to respect other people’s right to privacy.” Kerry and Ashcroft stared at each other. “Do you get me, Ashcroft?”

“Yes . . . sir,” said Ashcroft, snapping off a sarcastic salute.

With a last hard look, Kerry turned and walked forward to the helm, where Gore was helplessly spinning the wheel, sending the boat in circles. “What was that about?” Gore asked as Kerry pointed the boat back upriver.

“Tell you what.” Kerry said with a twinkle in his eye. “Maybe you want to go back and ask them about it. Might make a funny article for Stars and Stripes.”

Back on the fantail, Thomas had confronted O’Reilly. “Why didn’t you stick up for me? It’s your magazine.”

“Listen, Thomas, here’s something you gotta know. Bill O’Reilly looks after one person and one person only. Bill O’Reilly. Besides, I was sick of that particular