The Last Bridge Read online

  “It won’t take too long for them to find out the Vietnamese doesn’t know half as much as Eddie knows about our operations up there. If Chinh starts to talk, that’s the first thing he’ll tell them. It’ll be the quickest way he can get them off his back.”

  “That’s assuming he’ll break.”

  Tyreen said, “Everybody’s got a limit. He’ll break, if they get the idea that it’s worth the effort to break him down. And since they picked him up with Eddie, it won’t take them long to reach that conclusion. Still, it may give us a few hours’ break. Maybe we can get to Eddie before they crack him open.”

  “Maybe,” Saville said, without warmth. “I told Corporal Smith to get down to the coast below Lak Chau and wait for a HALO-SCUBA drop offshore. I gave him the coordinates. He’ll just have time to make it if we figure to parachute in before dawn. I’ve got a couple of pilots and three enlisted men down here with me. We’re just about ready to take off. What about Major Parnell?”

  “He’s at Nha Trang.”

  “Oh, Christ. Does he know about this?”

  “Not yet,” Tyreen said. “I’m flying up there by jet. You pile your boys in the gooney bird and fly up there. You can top up the tanks at Nha Trang while I’m talking to Parnell. With any luck I can get him out to you in time to fly north and make the drop before daylight.”

  “My pilot’s worried about that typhoon, David. It’s scheduled to hit the coast about eight-thirty or nine.”

  “He should be back before that. He can land at Da Nang before the storm comes in.”

  “Maybe. You know McKuen—cocky as hell, but underneath he worries a lot.”

  “Keep a lid on him, Theodore. Any other chatter from Corporal Smith up there?”

  “No. He had to keep his broadcast down to two minutes on account of the time span of the Hanoi broadcast they were using for cover. The Reds have got pretty good radio detection gear up there.”

  “I know,” Tyreen said. “All right. Take off, Theodore. I’ll see you at Nha Trang in an hour or two.”

  He held down the phone sprocket for a moment, looking into space. Then he got the General on the wire.

  “Some news on Eddie Kreizler,” he said.

  “Spill it,” said the General.

  “The Reds have got him in jail in Chutrang. They picked up his Number One with him. The exec’s a Vietnamese. Maybe they’ll concentrate on him long enough for us to get up there and have a crack at getting Eddie out.”

  “I hope so,” General Jaynshill said. “If you can’t, David, remember my orders. Spell it out to Major Parnell. I can’t afford any misfires on this.”

  “Keep your receiver channels open on the half-hour,” Tyreen said. “If Parnell gets Eddie out of jail, he’ll want to know how you figure to pick him up. I’ll tell Parnell to broadcast on the blue frequency.”

  “Right. Good hunting, David.”

  Tyreen put down the phone and glanced at the unconscious Air Force officer on the cot. A rash of sweat covered Tyreen’s face. He tugged a matted handkerchief from his pocket and wiped himself. Feeling weak, he left the office.

  Captain Grove sat hipshot on a desk corner sipping coffee; his eyes were shuttered and dark. He stood up when Tyreen entered the big room, and nodded curtly. “You’ve got your pilot, Colonel. Never mind where I found him.”

  Tyreen nodded. A sudden grin flashed across Grove’s boyish face. “Just remember one thing, Colonel—the Air Force is on your side.”

  Tyreen looked at him. “I guess we all tend to forget that now and then.”

  “Your plane’s warming up now. The corporal on the door will take you down there.”

  “Thanks, Captain.”

  Grove waved a hand and turned away, charging determinedly toward the bank of radar screens; his voice lifted and smashed across the room: “Where in hell is that flight of peckerhead Sabres?”

  Tyreen gathered his hat and coat on the way out. It was still raining.

  Chapter Six

  2330 Hours

  MCKUEN was not used to flying a DC-3 without radio contact with the ground, at night, with rainclouds socking the coast in. He scowled at the silent radio dial. His instructions were to keep radio silence and stay as far from main-traveled air corridors as he could. It was typical Army work, the brass not letting the left hand know what the right was doing—he was spotted by coastal radar five minutes after takeoff and tailed for ten minutes across the sky by a pair of Skyraiders. They had looked him over carefully, buzzed him to indicate he was out of ordinary, flight patterns, and finally returned to base, after which Captain Saville had come forward to the cockpit and told him to fly a zigzag course. McKuen had said, “And who is it we’re trying to fool, my good Captain?”

  The old gooney bird had no numbers or insignia on its battered shell. He was under explicit instructions to keep no log, which was well enough because the automatic gyropilot was in poor working order, and he and Shannon together had their hands full navigating and flying through the soup. The thought of bucking the old plane all the way to the Chinese border put a sour tilt on his customarily jaunty lips.

  Four passengers rode in the fuselage—Saville and three sergeants, two of them Vietnamese. Half the remaining space was littered with equipment, packed into parachute harnesses—Russian rifles and AK submachine guns, Czech grenades, East German radios, American drugs repacked in Chinese-made containers—all of it captured from the enemy over a period of years. Just like this plane, McKuen thought. Probably none of it worked right. He looked at Shannon. Shannon’s young imperturbable face was half-lighted by the worn-out panel illuminators. McKuen said, “Chewing gum, rubber bands, and paperclips. That’s all we’ve got to hold this crate together with. If this old gooney lasts another six hours in the air, I’ll kiss its tail.”

  Shannon didn’t answer. He was shooting the stars. When he got through he said, “Hell of a crosswind through here. What time’s that typhoon supposed to hit?” He put the sextant down and made notes on his knee-clip pad. “Time to go down,” he said. “Nha Trang’s under that goop somewhere. I hope the ceiling hasn’t dropped.”

  “If it dropped much, me boy, it’d be underground.”

  McKuen pushed the wheel forward and grinned. “I hope nobody put a chimney in that cloud.” They roared down into the gray layer.

  Shannon said, “Easy, Lieutenant. I don’t trust that altimeter.”

  “It’s only off by one or two hundred feet,” McKuen said. As he spoke the last word, the nose broke through the clouds and through the splash of rain he saw dim reflections on the crests of ocean waves. The sea was not more than two hundred feet below them; the altimeter needle was just wavering downward past the 1,000-foot mark. As McKuen leveled off, the needle swayed down to ground-level and bounced back up to two hundred, where it settled.

  “Pretty good altimeter,” McKuen said, “long as you be giving it plenty of time to make up its bloody mind.”

  “I just took a bath. Don’t need another one.”

  “Mister Shannon.”

  “Sir?”

  “Who’s after navigatin’ this aircraft?”

  “Oh,” said Shannon. “Sorry. Nha Trang ought to be over to port somewhere.”

  “I can see that all for myself,” McKuen said, banking slowly toward the lights of the landing field. “Give me wind speed and direction.”

  Saville popped his head into the cockpit. “You can break radio silence,” he said.

  “Thank ye,” McKuen said drily. He reached for the headset.

  Saville went back into the plane. Shannon squirmed in the right-hand seat. “Wind’s coming off the ocean, Lieutenant. Pretty stiff—about twenty miles.”

  “About, Mister?”

  Shannon flushed. “Lieutenant, we’re lucky to get any reading at all with these gauges.”

  McKuen ran craggy fingers through his red hair. He spoke into the radio: “Hey, Tower. This is Yankee Six Four.”

  “Reading you, Yankee Six Four. That you, Irish?�
��

  “Give me the wind, Tower.”

  “East twenty-three miles. Ninety degrees exactly.”

  The wind was off the sea, which meant he should come in from the west, but the buildings and trees were there, and the hills, and the sluggish old plane would not drop fast enough after going over the top of the tower. And so he had to come up the beach from the south and make a sharp turn onto the landing strip. The landing gear was slow, and the controls, bucking the twenty-three-mile crosswind, reminded him of flying a reconverted Liberator—than which there was no more difficult truck of the air. The slant of the rain and his own drift confirmed the tower’s report on the wind. He said, “The strip will be slick as oil. I hope these bald tires hold on it.”

  Number two engine, on the right, was clogged with oil or water or rust or something and not running up to par. From the rattles coming out of the fuselage he knew it was long past time to go around replacing rivets and tightening bolts, and he said in a thin voice, “It’ll be ever so nice if the wings stay on tight.”

  Shannon tipped his head into the center space to yell back at the passengers, “Brace in, back there.”

  McKuen said brightly, “Anybody got a little white paper bag?” And then he hit the field, not very neatly, on one wheel and then the other, because he was aileron-against-the-wind, and on the runway the plane heaved into a brief side-skid before the tail touched ground. He turned rudder and wheels into the skid and applied brakes gently, and just managed to avoid stopping the airplane against a weatherbeaten hangar, though his wingtip missed it by only a few yards. When he cut the ignition off both engines, he sat and ground his jaws for a moment. “Much as I dearly love Mr. Douglas’s finest airplane, I can think of types I would rather fly at such a time as this. I’ll thank ye for your gratitude, Mister.”

  “What?”

  “You are alive,” McKuen told him, “and on the ground. I believe you owe me a drink for that.”

  “Lieutenant,” Shannon said, “I’ll buy you a Goddamn case of Irish whisky if I ever get the chance again.”

  Saville came forward. “How’s it fly, George?”

  “It won’t be needing much,” McKuen told him. “Maybe new wings and engines, maybe new controls and fuselage.”

  “It’ll do,” said Theodore Saville. “Top up the tanks and make whatever maintenance repairs you can.”

  “How long have I got?”

  “Maybe half an hour, maybe an hour.”

  “Captain, it’ll take a month.”

  “Then you’d better get busy,” Saville said. “As soon as Major Parnell gets here, we’re taking off.”

  Chapter Seven

  0015 Hours

  MAJOR Parnell’s dream was filled with pit-traps in the jungle, bottomed with upthrust poisoned pungi stakes of bamboo. He rolled over on the sweat-damp sheets, half-awake, reliving moments of fear. The sizzle of bullets cutting through undergrowth, the smell of rotting infected feet, the dull completeness of pain. He was vaguely aware of a steady traffic of jet-powered rescue helicopters chugging back and forth over the hospital. He turned onto his side and drowsily picked at a blood scab on his throat, possibly an infected insect bite.

  Between flights of HUEYs he heard the slap-slap of the surf beyond the fine screens, the patter of rain on the wooden roof, the splash of water rushing through gutters and downspouts into puddles in the sand. The warm air was close and sticky. He moved again, uncomfortable on the limp sheets. Somewhere in the building a patient cried out; the cry offended Parnell’s solitude, and he tried to put it out of his mind. He fixed in memory the image of a woman, his wife, dancing with him, balancing her highball glass on his shoulder and smiling into his eyes. He recalled the way she had of tossing her head.

  The reverie passed. Parnell slipped deeper into sleep. He suffered dreams of scorpions and cobras, strangling jungle vines and spiraling hordes of insects.

  “Major?”

  He opened his eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Just after midnight.” The nurse switched on the lamp. She was overweight and horse-faced; she looked, he thought, like an elephant’s caboose. She bent over him to put a thermometer in his mouth. Parnell reached for the lamp chain, but the nurse intercepted his hand. “Leave it on, Major. You’ve got a visitor.”

  He mumbled around the glass stick, “Visitors? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “He’ll be here directly. He’s down with the hospital commandant now. If he could get the commandant out of bed, he can get you out of bed.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. Some colonel.” She straightened the sheets at the foot of the bed: he had kicked them loose.

  “Am I getting out of here?”

  “I don’t know. Do you want to?”

  “Depends,” said Major Parnell. He took the thermometer from his mouth and turned it around in an attempt to bring the red line into view. The nurse came around the bed and made a grab for it. Parnell held it away from her and said, “I’ve got a right to know if I’m dead yet.”

  “Ninety-nine point four,” she said without hesitation. He handed her the thermometer. She said, “It seems to be your normal temperature. You’ve carried it for the past six days.” She grinned; her teeth were uneven. “You’re a hot-blooded one, Major.”

  Parnell rubbed his eyes. The nurse said, “I warn you, Major, I’m a very jealous woman.” She gave him an arch look and said, “Always leave ’em laughing,” and went.

  Parnell slid his legs off the bed, clawed his swollen feet into his slippers, and reached for his underwear. He was a small, wiry man, dark-skinned and crag-faced, pitted by the jungle. His hands were as gnarled as an old peon’s.

  A HUEY fluttered overhead. When he looked out through the rain, he could see its exhaust flame reflected fragmentarily on crests of surf.

  The weak lamp made his hands appear jaundiced. He did not feel particularly ill. He climbed into his drawers, found his uniform, put it on, and zipped up his trousers. He winced when he hiked his foot up to tie his shoe. A piston plane droned overhead. Parnell rammed his shirttail down into his trousers. Inside the orthopedic shoes his crippled feet felt crushed. His side was stiff with a healing wound.

  No one seemed to be around. He lay back on the bed and smoked a cigarette down to a stub. He studied the shine on his shoes and listened to the copters overhead and scratched the scab on his throat. It was just like the Army to wake a man up in the middle of the night and then leave him nothing to do but lie waiting. He made a vague inventory of his ills. The Army had given him precious little besides a poisoned-arrow wound and several diseases.

  A gaunt officer in a raincoat came by, obviously looking for the right room. He was almost past Parnell’s open doorway when he saw Parnell, stopped, and turned in. “Here you are.”

  “Hello, Colonel,” Parnell said. If he was surprised to see Tyreen he did not show it.

  Tyreen’s face creased into a long-jawed frown. His raincoat was dripping on the floor. He slipped it off and hung it over the back of a chair. His uniform was rumpled, as if he had sat in a cramped space for some time. He said, “How do you feel?”

  “I’m still eating and sleeping.”

  “The medical report says you’re just about ready to go.”

  “Does it,” Parnell said without much interest.

  Tyreen sat down on the chair like a cowboy, straddling it and folding his arms across the top of the chairback. He tipped his hat back. “I need you for a job, Major.”

  Parnell had a sardonic expression that lay on his face like a permanent crease. “Last time I let you talk me into something, Colonel, I got foot rot and a Montagnard arrow in my middle.”

  “This one’s important.”

  “They’re all important,” Parnell said. “Let me tell you something. You get out there in the boondocks with plenty of bugs and enemies and rain, and pretty soon you start changing your ideas about what’s important. You stay alive. That’s all you think about—staying al
ive.” He spat. “For what?”

  Tyreen’s face was tight. Wound up, Parnell sat bolt upright on the bed and said, “Tell me just what the hell we’re doing here, Colonel. What happens when northern agitators come to the south and disturb the peaceful status quo? Well, we’ve got one answer for Vietnam and another answer for Mississippi. You tell me which one’s important, okay?”

  Tyreen said, “Eddie Kreizler’s in a Red prison in North Vietnam, Major. Somebody’s got to get his ass up there and get Kreizler out. Tonight. I haven’t got time to argue politics with you.”

  Parnell said very distinctly, “Eddie Kreizler took the same chances I took. I was lucky enough to get back alive. I’m not going out again, Colonel. And you can’t force it on me.”

  Tyreen stood up, pitching the chair away from him in anger. His raincoat fell to the floor. “Just who in hell do you think you are, Major?”

  “I think I’m a man who’s had enough. I’m sick of this grubby little war. Okay—so you’re not bleeding for me. I didn’t ask for sympathy. I just want to be left alone. To hell with you, Colonel, and to hell with Eddie Kreizler. I’ll drop in on his wife when I get back home and pay my respects. But I’ve had enough of this war. More than enough.”

  “There’s a bridge up there. A railroad bridge. Your specialty, Major.”

  “I’ll drink to it,” Parnell said.

  “You’re refusing to volunteer?”

  “Yes. I am refusing to volunteer. You can put that in my record. By God, Colonel, you can put that down!”

  Tyreen stooped to pick up his coat. He smoothed it out. “I’ll tell the General you’re too sick to do the job.”

  “I don’t need any favors.”

  “It’s not a favor,” said Tyreen. “You are sick, Major.” He went to the door. Parnell’s voice halted him:

  “Jesus, Colonel. You like this Goddamn war, don’t you?”

  “It’s the only war I’ve got,” said David Tyreen, and he went out. Parnell lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. After a moment he began to untie his shoes. His feet hurt.