The Last Bridge Page 3

  Warrant Officer Shannon’s hair was brown. McKuen’s was brick red; it stood straight up from his head like a curry brush. Saville said, “You were born in Cincinnati, George, and I haven’t got time for yarns.”

  “Well, in that case, let’s us be getting to business,” McKuen said with high cheer. He turned and waved to a waitress. She stopped by Saville’s shoulder. Warrant Officer Shannon said, “Three cognacs, mademoiselle.”

  “And I’ll have the same,” McKuen said.

  “Belay that,” Saville growled. He waved the waitress away. “No more for these two, Miss.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” McKuen exploded.

  Saville studied Shannon’s face: reserved, young, good-humored in a quiet way. And bold enough. Shannon said, “When you get through, Captain, tell me if you like what you see.”

  “I haven’t got much choice,” Saville said. “I need you two.”

  “It’s nice to be needed,” McKuen observed. “What for?”

  “A parachute drop in the Sang Chu valley.”

  “Where?” McKuen’s hands became still. “The Sang Chu? Captain, correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s so far north that if we overshot by two minutes we’d be over Red China.”

  “Not quite, but close.”

  “You’re off your bloody head,” McKuen said.

  “This is a volunteer mission,” Saville murmured. “You volunteer, or you get me for an enemy.”

  McKuen stared at him without humor. “I’ve my choice of you or Ho Chi Minh, have I? I think I’d prefer Uncle Ho.”

  “Uncle Ho can’t get his hands on you as easily as I can, Lieutenant.”

  McKuen sighed. “What’s the craft we’re to fly?”

  “The gooney bird we captured last week.”

  Warrant Officer Shannon glanced quickly at McKuen and then turned an angry glance on Saville. “I’ve seen that crate in the hangar, Captain. I wouldn’t ask my worst enemy to fly that thing. It’s falling to pieces.”

  “It flew down here. It’ll fly back. And remember this—the plane’s unmarked. The Reds won’t turn their antiaircraft on it if they think it’s one of their own planes.”

  McKuen said, “How much time do we have to think about it?”

  “You don’t,” Saville said. He stood up. “Let’s go.”

  Shannon looked at McKuen. McKuen’s shoulders lifted, and he pushed his chair back. “Anything for kicks,” he said. “After you, my Captain darling.”

  Chapter Three

  2030 Hours

  BRIGADIER General Martin Jaynshill was a powerful man with a blunt head and cropped iron-gray hair. His face, elegant and arresting, had the texture of a honing stone. He stood by his desk with the resigned expression of a man who had not been permitted to go to bed when fatigue demanded it of his body. His eyes flicked across Colonel David Tyreen’s face. “I was expecting to see you yesterday.”

  “General, you’re always expecting me yesterday.”

  “I gather it’s pretty urgent?”

  Tyreen waited for the sergeant to close the door on them. The General smoked a cigar, showing his teeth around it. Tyreen said, in a very dry tone, “One of our captains is missing.”

  “That seems to be the name of the game.” The General sat down and nodded toward an armchair. “Even benzedrine loses its effectiveness after a while. Did you know that? How are you feeling these days?”

  “All right,” Tyreen said offhandedly. He started to go on, but the General cut in:

  “Bill McQuestion will be swinging through here next week. That’s why I asked. It wasn’t just an idle question.”

  Tyreen said, “I’m as healthy as you are.”

  “David, nobody’s as healthy as I am.”

  Tyreen squinted at him, expecting trouble. General Jaynshill said, “One of the reasons I asked Bill McQuestion to come by here was because I wanted him to have a look at you.”

  “I had a physical a couple of months ago.”

  “Which you passed with flying colors.” The General turned hard: “David, have you got your brains up your ass or what? How much did it cost you to get a clean bill of health?”

  “General,” Tyreen said carefully, “I hope you don’t think it’s easy to bribe medical officers. Because—”

  “I didn’t say it was easy. But I did read the report. It said ‘Recovery complete’—and that’s not what I expected to see. Do you want to know what the last hospital report on you was? I can quote it for you. Tertian malaria. Incurable. I asked Bill McQuestion what that meant. You can’t get rid of it, David. You can control it, like diabetes, if you know how to handle it. It takes care. Care and rest.”

  Tyreen’s chin lifted. Tautness and anger were ground into the lines around his mouth. He said nothing. General Jaynshill said, “Doctor McQuestion will be here early next week. I’ve made arrangements for him to see you. I expect you to be there—Tuesday at ten.”

  “And it hurts you more than it hurts me.”

  “Maybe. I’ve got no right to keep you on duty, the shape you’re in. Hell, David, you’re not even in shape to get in shape. You need three months in hospital, six months convalescence, and then a nice routine job where you can put your feet up on a desk until you retire. And that’s exactly what you’re going to get.”

  “Thanks,” Tyreen said bluntly.

  “You’re physically unfit to hold your job. It comes right down to that.”

  “Martin, I’ve seen baboons that wouldn’t claim you for a friend.”

  The General put the heels of his palms against the desk and stood. “I’m sick of this war and weary of fools. I don’t have the energy to argue. You’re stubborn—you’ve got the courage of righteousness—you’ve done a pretty good job down here. But we’re going into new phases all the time. You’re being phased out. That’s as clear as I can make it, isn’t it? Phased out the way any component gets phased out when it’s rusty and needs repairs.”

  Tyreen shook his head. “You’ve never beaten around the bush with me before. Don’t tell me any of this comes as sudden news to you—you’ve known my condition for months. Somebody put you up to this. It came straight down from Washington, didn’t it?”

  “Don’t take that hurt attitude with me, David. You know what a man has to do when he sits behind my desk.”

  “It was the Cambodes,” Tyreen said. “Wasn’t it?”

  The General replied with unreasonable violence, “Drop it, David. Drop—it.”

  But the General’s face colored under Tyreen’s stare. Tyreen knew, with brittle-clear prescience, just how it would go from there. But he had to push it through; to accept it without hearing it aloud would be an affront to his own orderly dignity. He said, “I ordered the raids across the border into Cambodia. To bust up the VC concentrations over there. And you’re sacking me for that?”

  The General glanced at the spiral of smoke rising from his cigar. Tyreen said, “Before it was issued, you knew I was going to give the order. You could have countermanded it any time.”

  “I knew nothing of that order until after the raids had come off,” General Jaynshill said woodenly.

  Tyreen sat bolt upright. Then, meeting the General’s hooded stare, he sat back. All he said was, “I see.”

  “Maybe you don’t.” The General crammed his cigar into a big glass ashtray. “It wasn’t a question of your job or mine. If I passed the buck to you, at least it wasn’t to save my own hide.”

  The General came around the desk and planted himself in front of Tyreen. “I ask you to believe in me that much.”

  “God damn it, of course I believe you.”

  Jaynshill put his back to him and clasped his hands. “A cardinal rule of guerrilla warfare—you’ve got to cover your tracks. You forgot that rule when you ordered those penetrations into Cambodia.”

  “All right,” Tyreen said slowly.

  “I didn’t countermand that order, David. I deliberately put your neck in the noose.”

  “Why?”

&nb
sp; “Because the job had to get done. Someone had to order it done.”

  “And we are all expendable.”

  “Cambodia raised hell. We violated their neutrality. They are pissed off, David. Somebody’s head has to roll. Cambodia knows who ordered the raids. They have your name and your photograph, thanks to their friends in South Vietnamese intelligence. And they are patiently waiting to see whether we do anything about you or not. And yes, you’re expendable—more expendable than most, because it was only a matter of weeks or months before I’d have had to ship you home in a casket if I’d kept you on duty much longer. Look, David, you know the rules out here. They’re the same as the rules you played by when you were a little kid. You can do anything, so long as you don’t get caught. The only punishable crime is getting caught.”

  “Who caught me, Martin?”

  The General stared at him. “We’ve got a dirty little war here that ought to be wiped off the books and forgotten, but it won’t be, because it’s taking place inside a glass fishbowl. People who live in glass fishbowls can’t afford to get caught. The Army can’t take this kind of pressure. The country can’t take it, and my command can’t take it. You’ve been convicted, and if we don’t pass sentence on you, then the sentence will be passed on the rest of us. If that happens enough times, we’ll lose this war no matter how hard we fight out there in the jungle.”

  Tyreen lighted up a cigarette. A chill passed. He said stupidly, “Do you really think sacking me will solve the problem? Do you think anybody will believe those raids weren’t okayed by my superior?”

  “Generals only salute what their subordinates run up the pole. We haven’t time to watch you stitch the flag. The Cambodes may not believe that, but they’ll accept it. All they want is enough to appease their injured vanity.”

  “And I’m just a white poker chip.”

  “In a no-limit game,” the General agreed. He added softly, “Please, David, don’t escalate my problems.” He wheeled away and tramped heavily across the room.

  Tyreen said, “Do I have anything to say about all this?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Tyreen nodded. A bright glint pushed out of his eyes. “All right. I’ll go home and prop my feet on a desk. I won’t go to work on McQuestion to whitewash my medical report. Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t want it. I’ve got to have it.”

  “Then let’s forget it,” Tyreen said.

  “I won’t forget it, David—but I’ve got a job to do.” The General parted the blinds and peered out at the rain. He murmured, “We’re in a Goddamned lonely business.”

  “You’re a bastard, Martin.”

  “What else do you like about me?”

  Tyreen closed his eyes momentarily. He heard the scrape of the General’s shoes. When he opened his eyes, the General was coming away from the window. Tyreen said, “Captain Kreizler is down, up north. Remember Unit Seventeen?”

  The General’s big head lifted slowly. “Eddie Kreizler? Was he assigned one of those kamikaze units of yours?”

  “If that’s what you want to call them.”

  “Christ, I wish I’d known. I’d have reassigned him to something with a reasonable life expectancy.”

  “He’s the best officer I’ve got up there,” Tyreen said. “If you’d tried to pull him out of there, I’d have fought you.”

  “Eddie Kreizler,” the General said. “He was my exec in Korea. A hell of a good fullback at the Academy.” He turned. “What’s happened to him, David?”

  Tyreen’s dark eyes flickered. “His unit reported tonight. Not too much to it. We’ll get another report at eleven. Captain Saville tells me Kreizler’s outfit walked into a Vietminh trap. One corporal got away. Kreizler may not be dead.”

  Jaynshill gave him a lacquered look. “He might be best off, dead.”

  “If they’ve got him alive, you can imagine what kind of information they’ll be getting out of him.”

  “Maybe they haven’t got him. Maybe he’s lying out there in the boondocks bleeding.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tyreen said.

  “Find out.” The General’s teeth clicked. “Find out. If he’s alive in their hands, it kills the value of every piece of expensive, dangerous work he had anything to do with.”

  “And he had plenty of that. His ‘A’ Team was coordinating headquarters for all our units in the area.”

  “What was his mission, specifically?”

  “The bridge,” Tyreen said.

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “You told me to put my best team on it,” Tyreen said quietly.

  “You son of a bitch,” Jaynshill said. “Eddie Kreizler, wasted on a suicide job. Christ, David.” His eyelids dropped, covering his thoughts. He had a way of working around a subject when it was distasteful. He said, “I’m getting old, I guess.”

  “It’s not pleasant.”

  “I stopped expecting life to be pleasant when I was ten years old. But this—you don’t let things hit you like this. At least I never did. But you get old, I guess. But at least I can still press a barbell. If I looked half as old as you do, I’d quit without anybody urging me. How old are you—forty-three?”

  “I don’t feel a day over ninety.”

  “Forty-three. Still a colonel. If you hadn’t argued with too many generals, David, you’d be a brigadier by now.” Jaynshill rubbed his eyes. “All right. About Kreizler. You’ll have to send a team up there. The best you can find. If you find the VC have him prisoner and he’s still alive, it can only mean they plan to make further use of him. You’ll have to get him out fast. If your team can’t get him out immediately, they’ll have to kill him.”

  “Kill Eddie Kreizler?”

  “Those are your orders.”

  Tyreen said slowly, “Do you really think that fruit salad on your hat gives you the right to do that? You set yourself up as an august body of one to—”

  The General cut him off: “The things that keep troubling you, David, are standards that are totally irrelevant in war.”

  “Simple to state,” Tyreen said viciously. “Martin, you—”

  “You think I’m cold-blooded, don’t you?”

  “I’d have used a shorter word.” Hot anger sawed through Tyreen. “General, the basic principle is—”

  “Don’t try to shout me down, David. You can’t do it. The basic principle—and you ought to know this—the basic principle is that there are no basic principles.”

  “You’re playing your part fine, General, but I’m a pretty poor audience. First you get all broken up when you find out I put Kreizler on the line, and now you want me to send an assassin up there to finish the job. It doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t make sense to me that you didn’t know Eddie was the man I sent up there to blow the Sang Chu bridge. You had to know. All my rosters go across your desk. And Eddie being almost as good a friend of yours as he is of mine, he wouldn’t have left Saigon without dropping by here first. You didn’t know about Eddie like you didn’t know about my orders to raid into Cambodia. Maybe you’d better let me in on the secret.”

  “No. I’m sorry, David. I’m sorry for you, but I’m a hell of a lot more sorry for Eddie Kreizler. He laid himself on the line.”

  “Well, then, that’s okay,” Tyreen said. “Everything’s fine, just so long as you’re sorry.”

  “Can it, David.”

  “All right. I’ll never tell a soul. Let it be our little secret, just you and me and the firing squad that gets rid of what’s left of Eddie after they’re through milking him for information.”

  The General said brusquely, “At ease, Colonel.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tyreen said acidly.

  The General pinched the bridge of his nose and said in a suddenly quiet voice, “It’s going to be a thorny job.”

  “Captain Saville’s getting up a team. I’ll want Major Parnell to command it. Wayne Parnell.”

  “That’s bad arithmetic, a major for a captain.”

  “Under the ci
rcumstances Eddie Kreizler’s a pretty important captain.”

  The General took a new tack: “Who’s this Parnell?”

  “He was transferred to us a month ago. He’s been working with a tribe of Montagnards in Laos.”

  “Under the Agency,” General Jaynshill said with distaste. “But he’s not under my command. I’ve never heard of him.”

  “He’s one of that bunch on temporary assignment at Nha Trang for medical treatment.”

  The General stared at him. “And you want to send a sick man into North Vietnam?”

  Tyreen said, “He’s due to be released to duty in a few days.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “The same thing wrong with half our people. Skin rot, infected feet, dysentery. And a Pathet Lao arrow wound in his ribs.”

  “An arrow wound?”

  “Crossbow. The Montagnards use them.”

  “He sounds as if he’d be a very sick man, if he were alive.”

  “He’s healthy enough to complain. And as long as a man’s got something to bitch about, he’s all right. Correct me if I’m wrong, General?”

  Jaynshill poked a thick index finger toward him. “That’s my line, David. You’re quoting my own speech. You ought to know better than to throw a man’s own words back at him.”

  Tyreen said blandly, “Can I have him?”

  The General threw his head back to study Tyreen’s face from under lowered brows. He said, “It’s your baby, David. I’m giving you a mountain, and you’ve got precious few hours to make a molehill out of it. Is this man Parnell the best you can get?”

  “I think so.”

  “Is he as good as you were?”

  “Are, General. Not were.”

  “All right,” Jaynshill said. “Can that kind of talk, David. I’ve told you to slow down, and that’s an order. You’ll be headed home in a few days.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tyreen murmured. “I guess I will. Can I have Parnell?”

  “You can have him, but only on one basis. It’s on a volunteer basis only, David, and I mean volunteer. You do not have my permission to twist the man’s arm. If he doesn’t want to go, send Captain Saville to command the team.”

  “Theodore wouldn’t take the job. He doesn’t want to command—he hasn’t got the brains for it, and he knows it.”