The Last Bridge Read online

  “That won’t do us a hell of a lot of good, Sergeant. If we can stop a truck, we’ll want it in one piece. Sergeant Khang, if a truck comes along, you’ll walk out on the road and flag them down. Tell them you’re a noncom from the Third Volunteer Regiment—the one that infiltrated south about a week ago. Tell them you got sick, and the regiment left you behind. Get them talking—try to get everybody out of the truck and arguing it over.”

  Khang’s smile was lopsided. “What happens if they decide to shoot first and argue afterwards?”

  “Why should they?” Tyreen said.

  “Colonel, you don’t know this country too well after all, do you?”

  “You just act like a North Vietnamese sergeant who’s lost his outfit. You’ll get along fine. Get rid of your equipment and peel down to your undershirt.”

  Khang said, “Okay, Colonel. I’ll do my best to save the Goddamn world for democracy.”

  He turned away, and Tyreen watched him lug his gear into the bush. Tyreen felt faint, not altogether present. He wheeled on Saville: “Set up the machine gun to command the road, and post the men.”

  Saville turned to J. D. Hooker: “Deploy the men, and get that machine gun set up.”

  Tyreen barked at him: “If I’d wanted the sergeant to execute that order, I’d have issued it to him, Captain!”

  Saville’s mild glance swiveled around and rested against him. Saville didn’t say anything. He walked over and picked up the machine gun as if it were a light carbine and carried it back into the grass. Tyreen slung his submachine gun over one shoulder and walked angrily off the road. Hooker and Sergeant Sun watched him speculatively. Corporal Smith stood back with his hands locked around his gun, and Saville, coming by, spoke to him: “Post yourself across the road, Corporal, and don’t do any shooting until the Colonel calls for it.”

  Out over the sea, the rim of the sun was a red hump on the horizon.

  Chapter Thirteen

  0635 Hours

  “BEGORRA,” said George McKuen. Engulfed in cloud, the gooney bird plowed forward. McKuen peered downward with his face touching the glass.

  “The needle says six thousand feet, Lieutenant. I can’t see a damned thing. Suppose the mountains—”

  “Quit supposing and help me fly this thing.” McKuen put the nose down, and the old craft went into a glide like a safe going down an elevator shaft. The engines started to whine, and Shannon screamed at him:

  “What are you doing?”

  McKuen leveled off; the altimeter swayed around to five thousand feet and hovered there. “Trying to bust through under these clouds,” McKuen muttered. “There—there. See it? A hole, Shannon.”

  He circled into the wind and pushed the elevators down and abruptly they plunged through the undersurface of the clouds.

  Cold rain was awash on the windshield. The wipers made brief arcs of visibility. Ten miles to the west loomed the mountains, vague heavy masses in the half-light. “Navigate, Mister,” McKuen said curtly, with none of his brogue.

  “Damned hard to tell. Can’t see any landmarks.”

  “That’s a town down there, about two o’clock. That help you?”

  Shannon pored over his map. “Could be Thot Nuoc. Or maybe this one, Cai Dam. It depends on how far north we drifted on that crosswind while we were up in those clouds. I wish that direction finder worked. Have they got any radio beacons around here? Jesus, Lieutenant.”

  McKuen said very mildly, “Make a guess, Mister, and make a good one. Make it soon, now, because if you don’t, we’re going to fly right into one of those mountains, and if I pick the wrong gorge to fly up, we might as well kiss the whole wake goodbye.”

  “There’s a pair of twin peaks over there,” Shannon said. He pointed with his arm. “Eleven o’clock. If you want me to make a guess, then I’d put that landing strip on the north side of the far one.”

  “If that’s a wrong guess, you’ll get no chance to apologize.”

  “Cut it out, Lieutenant. You want me to shit in my pants?”

  McKuen made a dry chuckling sound. “At least the bloody wings haven’t iced up. Temp gauge reads thirty-four outside. Three degrees less, and we’d be icing. Shouldn’t we be able to see that runway?”

  “I can’t see a damned thing.” Shannon wiped at frost on the inside of the windshield.

  A crosswind took the plane. It crabbed in toward the mountain. McKuen hit the ailerons and sideslid to starboard, losing altitude as he did so. The number two engine began to run unevenly. “Two or three cylinders not firing over there,” McKuen said. “Where in hell is that bloody landing strip? Mother of God.”

  The plane rattled and struggled to maintain altitude. Rain battered it, and visibility became worse as they flew under a darkening bank of cloud. They were well below the mountaintop; it reared up out of sight into the storm; the slope of the mountain slipped past their left wingtip, black with rocks and foliage. There did not seem to be a single break in the rain forest. Shannon said, “I’m cold. My ears are cold. Do you think we overshot it?”

  “I’ll turn around if it don’t turn up pretty quick.”

  Ahead of them loomed the serrates of higher mountains. They would have to climb quickly—could the gooney make it? Number two sputtered. “Give us a richer mixture,” said McKuen.

  “I hope it’ll—” Shannon began, and then lunged forward in his seat. “That’s it—there it is, Lieutenant. The strip.”

  “Where? For God’s sake where?”

  “Down there, Lieutenant. See it? Right beyond that ridge.”

  The gray top of a sloping ridge slipped beneath the wings, and McKuen saw it then, an uptilted ribbon of dirt and steel sliced into the rain forest, and he said, “Jesus. A cliff droppin’ off at the lower end and a mountain at the upper end. Ducky—ducky.”

  “What are you doing? We’re going past it, Lieutenant!”

  “Got to circle around and come in from the north. The air up here’s just about thin enough to hold us up if we maintain a hundred and ten miles an hour. How are we supposed to land on that postage stamp at high speed?”

  “Lieutenant, are you asking me?”

  McKuen looked at Shannon and felt a sudden impulse to pat the young man on the head. “All right,” he said, “just you relax now, Mister. Turn down the cabin lights so I can see out. Flaps.”

  “Full?”

  “Half. Damn it.” He put the propellers on low pitch to grab as big a bite of air as they could swallow; he swung around in a narrow skidding circle and lined the rattling plane up with the runway and cut his engines back. Number two coughed. “If that engine packs up now,” he said, and did not finish the statement. “Full flaps, now.”

  The plane seemed to stop; there was no sensation of movement, only sight of the runway climbing toward them. “Mother of God, do see to it we don’t stall, hey? Cut those lights, Mister. Bloody hell. If I overshoot the near end by as much as a hundred feet, we’re greased.” He nudged the nose down a fraction more. “Gear down, Mister.”

  “Gear down.” McKuen heard the sluggish snapping of the wheels locking into place. The runway came up fast against them now. He glimpsed the face of the glistening cliff dropping down away from the near end of the airstrip. “What’s our airspeed?”

  “Hundred and five,” Mister Shannon said.

  Number two coughed and jangled. A downdraft in the unstable mountain air shoved the right wing down, and McKuen fought to level it. There was nothing now but the lift of his own hard-breathing chest and the rush of wind and the plane, threatening to stall and plunge them into the gleaming cliff face at 105 miles an hour. McKuen lifted his eyes momentarily to the mountain heaving up, high and solid at the far end of the strip—“One way to stop an aeroplane,” he muttered. “Thank the saints they put reversible props on this crate.”

  “I hope the wheel brakes hold,” said Shannon.

  They roared down upon the brink of the cliff, and McKuen pushed the props to high pitch, purposefully stalling the plane.
It would be rough and nose-down, but it was the fastest way to stop. The nose dropped, and for a moment he wondered if he had miscalculated, if the wheels would catch the edge and the plane trip on them and flip over on its back; that instant’s horror froze in his mind, and then the wheels touched ground, very hard, jarring him in his seat. He raced the engines to bring the tail down. The tailskid bounced, and McKuen applied the brakes gently at first, and then when the tail settled down and he was halfway up the tiny uptilted airstrip he reversed the propellers and gave the engines every bit of power he could slam into them. Number two sputtered and would not get up to full power, and the plane began to skew around; he had to reduce the fuel flow to number one. He heard Shannon shouting something in a hysterical voice. The wheels drummed on the perforated-steel mesh of the airstrip, making a scrubbing noise. Thick, dark forest rushed past on both sides. He had his rudder braced hard over to compensate for the weaker pull of number two. And when the plane jolted to its halt he saw the black rim of the forest not twenty feet in front of the nose of the plane.

  He broke his grip on the wheel and wiped an unsteady hand across his forehead.

  Someone turned the engines off; it must have been Shannon. Shannon said, “That makes it two cases of Irish whisky I’m buying you, Lieutenant. Holy Jesus.”

  McKuen sat and trembled. He heard Shannon unsnapping the seat belt and clicking switches off. McKuen turned and put his hand on Shannon’s arm with brief pressure. He took a long swallow. “I feel as limp as a bloody wet Kleenex.”

  “A fine job.”

  McKuen grinned. “I let the bloody Government take me under its big protecting wing, but that was before I found out what kind of aeroplanes they sweep under it. Remind me to resign when we get home.”

  “You mean that?”

  McKuen shook his head. “It’s entirely academic, me boy. We’re a far way from home yet.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  0640 Hours

  TYREEN sneezed. The air was damp, and he felt the touch of chills under his sea-soaked clothing. He moved through the elephant grass, batting it aside furiously. Sergeant Sun was bellied down behind the machine gun. Tyreen came by and stood above him. “All set, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know how to handle that thing, do you?”

  “I learn in jump school.”

  “Good. Remember not to fire until I start shooting.” Tyreen gestured with his chattergun.

  “I remember, sir.” Nhu Van Sun watched him with boyish anxiety.

  “You have a family, Sergeant?”

  “Fam-lee?”

  “Wife. Children.”

  “Oh, yes.” Nhu Van Sun smiled. “Wife, children. I have. In town call Ba Dong. Wife, three little girl.”

  “I hope you get back to them in one piece,” Tyreen murmured, and moved away. His body had no spring left in it. He cursed his weakness with rising anger.

  He looked both ways and crossed the road boldly. Theodore Saville lay burrowed into position in the ditch beside the road, concealed by a wadding of turf he had upheaved as a breastwork. The submachine gun looked like a toy in Saville’s enormous hands. Tyreen spraddled his legs and stood looking up the road. “What time is it?”

  Saville did not look at his watch. “Quarter of seven.”

  “Think there’ll be anything coming down this road that we can use? We can’t get far in an oxcart or a motor scooter.”

  “Something had better come along, David, because you’re not going to make it from here to Chutrang on foot under full pack.”

  Tyreen said very distinctly, “Theodore, I can outwalk you and outclimb you and Goddamn it I don’t want to hear any more about that from you.”

  “All right,” Saville said mildly.

  “If I get knocked off, you’ll have to take over. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I figure to see to it you don’t get knocked off.”

  “I wish I could find some way to hate you,” said Tyreen. He walked up the road a few yards and turned into the bush. He made a full circuit, inspecting his men in their positions, and returned to Saville’s post, bellying down beside the big man and wiping his face with a crumpled handkerchief. “What time is it?”

  “Five of.”

  “Five of what?”

  “Zero-six-fifty-five,” said Saville.

  “Sorry,” Tyreen snapped.

  “Okay.”

  Saville put down his gun and took out his waterproof cigarette pack. He offered one to Tyreen. They lit up, and Saville said, “I ran into Harry Green last night. Drunk out of his mind. An M.P. told me he’d lost half his company out in the boondocks. Harry was in pretty bad shape.”

  “That’s what you get for being soft,” Tyreen said.

  “Uh-huh,” Saville said listlessly. “I wonder what’s bugging Corporal Smith.”

  “He’s on the near edge of combat fatigue.”

  “I wish we could send the kid home.”

  “We can’t.”

  “David.”

  “What?”

  “Suppose we can’t get Eddie out of there.”

  “The orders are to silence him.”

  Saville nodded. “That’s what I figured.”

  Tyreen swore. “Jaynshill’s got something in the hole. He knows a lot more than what he let me see in his hand. He’s too anxious to shut Eddie up. I’m an old hand, Theodore, but I don’t see butchering your best friend, no matter what excuse you’ve got. If it was my job, I’d do my damnedest to get him out, and then if I failed I’d let it go at that.”

  “But it isn’t your job,” Saville said. “So quit worrying about it. We’ve got our orders, that’s all.”

  “No,” Tyreen said. “That isn’t all.”

  “What else is there?”

  Tyreen made no answer. His hand shook. He swallowed a quinine capsule, and Saville, witnessing his act, said: “Better go easy on those. You don’t want to pass out on us.”

  “Worry about your own skin, all right?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  Tyreen’s tongue licked the poison tooth in the back of his mouth. Storm clouds were socked right down on the mountains and coming forward, toward the sea. A flight of birds soared overhead in close formation, white bellies and wings against a gray sky, moving without sound. Tyreen turned his head slowly to watch them glide out of sight. He glanced up the road; the light was murky and uncertain, a poor light for shooting. Sleepy, he opened a ration and ate. Saville said, “How much time do you think we ought to give it?”

  “Another half-hour. Then we’ll pull out.”

  “I hate to think of what the gooks can do to Eddie Kreizler in the hour we waste here.”

  “I hate to think what they could do to him in the time it would take us to get to Chutrang on foot,” Tyreen answered. “It’s worth the risk.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t have to decide that.”

  J. D. Hooker snaked into sight through the grass. “Something coming up the road, sir.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” said Tyreen.

  “Some kind of wagon, I guess.”

  “All right. Get back to your post.”

  Hooker disappeared. Grass waved, marking his route. In time a faint squeaking reached Tyreen’s ears, and Saville said, “Hooker’s’ got radar. Like a bat.”

  A fat water buffalo came around the bend and plodded up the road, pulling a cart with two huge wooden wheels. A wizened little Vietnamese walked along beside the animal. “Let them go by,” Tyreen said.

  At a leisurely gait the cart rattled by and presently disappeared to the north, leaving deep ruts in the muddy road. After it was gone, nothing remained but the silence and a needle-thin beginning drizzle. Tyreen’s vision swam, and he closed his eyes until the spell passed. Saville said, “Well, we might try praying.”

  Tyreen said nothing. It had not occurred to him to pray. He had always found the idea of God vaguely improbable; he did not believe in a benevolent deity wh
o laid down millions of years of evolution in order to prepare for Ho Chi Minh and the submachine gun, and General Jaynshill’s order to free Kreizler or, that failing, kill him.

  Tyreen believed in one thing: he believed that what he did would leave its mark. It was as unquestionable as the stones in the road.

  Chapter Fifteen

  0655 Hours

  CAPTAIN Eddie Kreizler’s face was a bitter mask. The narrow cell was crowded and smelled of many things. It had a small population of rats that had to be driven back into their holes periodically. The darkness was almost complete; there was only the small slot-shaped hole in the door. If a man listened above the snores and groans of other prisoners, the growling of their bellies, and the occasional exhausted whispers, he could hear a sound or two that came from outside and gave reassurance that the world still turned: the drip of rain on the roof, an occasional tramping of boots across the compound, now and then the rumble of a motor vehicle.

  The others were North Vietnamese political prisoners, crowded in like corpses. A young man kept talking nervously to Kreizler until Kreizler spoke rudely to him. The young man spat on him. “Dey kok me-ey,” he said—“American imperialist.” The young man’s teeth were black from chewing betel nuts. He climbed over several prisoners, stepped on a rat and squashed its head, and hunkered down in a far corner.

  Offensive smells assaulted Kreizler’s nose, and he wondered what the PANVN interrogators had done to his executive officer, Lieutenant Chinh. He rubbed his aching jaw. The North Vietnamese captain had bruised him painfully, prying his mouth open and extracting the cyanide pill before Kreizler had got a chance to work it out and swallow it.

  Eddie Kreizler thought, They won’t get a thing out of me.

  He was thick-chested, long-legged. A small premature bald spot showed at his scalp lock. He had shrewd eyes and a square, amiable face, very wide across the cheeks and forehead. His nose was hooked; his mouth was made for easy smiling.

  When the PANVN soldiers brought Lieutenant Chinh back to the cell, Kreizler focused his full attention on the South Vietnamese officer. They opened the door and pushed Chinh inside and slammed the door; made of metal, it clanged like a Chinese gong. Lieutenant Chinh sprawled across a prone man too starved and sick to move away. Chinh picked himself up and stood there, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He did not seem badly hurt. They had bandaged his wounded arm. Kreizler’s solemn features lost their weariness, and he watched with great care, trying to catch some hint of expression on Chinh’s cheeks.