He swung the jeep into a side street and squinted ahead. The half-mile of visible pavement seemed clear of roadblocks. He rammed forward, slipping wildly around a delivery van parked in the street and trusting pedestrians to dodge out of his path. The street lay cluttered with obstacles—motor scooters, parked vehicles, ox-drawn equipment, an enormous ancient tractor-trailer rig. After eight or nine blocks he judged he had been on the street long enough. He turned off, narrowly avoiding a crash with a farmer’s cart.
The jeep jockeyed in and out of alleys and short streets. Rounding a corner, he felt the pull of his arm and shoulder muscles; fifty feet ahead of him he saw a line of sawhorses across the road, two riflemen, and a machine gun. “Sergeant.”
“Gung ho, Skipper.”
Tyreen slowed smoothly. Before the jeep stopped, Khang was half out of the door, hanging onto the windshield and spitting fast, hard talk at the soldiers. The corporal in charge made a ragged salute and shoulder-slung his rifle to swing the sawhorses open. Khang got inside and closed the door. They drove through. Tyreen kept his head down. Khang had swung the steel-frame canvas door open to look back; he said, “They’re talking it over. Giving us a pretty hard look, Colonel. Better give it a little more gas.”
Tyreen downshifted and pressed the accelerator. Khang’s voice lifted sharply. “They don’t like it. They’re swinging that machine gun around. Get off this road, sir!”
Tyreen spun the wheel. The jeep went across the street at a sharp angle, and he cranked it around into the mouth of a cross street. The machine gun started to bang. He heard bullets scream off the walls. He was racing down the narrow street at high speed. The jeep took a corner raggedly; he heard Saville talking in back, but he paid no attention to the big man’s words. He whipped the jeep in and out of intersections, laying a zigzag pattern of travel through the oldest part of the city. Pedestrians scrambled out of the way. They began to climb, going up the eastern hill that would take them out of the city. He glimpsed a roadblock four blocks ahead and turned off. Aching weakness flowed through all his fibers. He roared uphill through a crazy turn into an avenue and found himself not a dozen yards from another roadblock.
Saville barked something. Tyreen rammed the accelerator to the floor. He saw the soldiers’ mouths drop open. The jeep blasted a path into the sawhorses. A splinter of wood came up, clung momentarily to the windshield, and slid away. The impact flung him against the wheel. The wooden horses flew aside, and he heard the clatter of a machine gun flopping in ungainly spin across the pavement. One soldier was rolling out of the way. He wheeled the jeep into a wide square, cut across it with the engine roaring, scattered pedestrians in flight. Bullets whacked into the jeep. He swayed it into a lane and went up the hillside at a precarious pitch, spraying mud out from the wheels.
Saville was squirming around, plugging up a bullet hole in the fuel tank with a wad of cloth. Tyreen shouted above the din:
“Anybody hurt?”
“All present and accounted for,” said Saville.
The clouds were moving fast. A shaft of sunlight came down, hard and unbearably bright. It changed the looming hills into a brass surface that boiled to liquid before his eyes. His vision seemed to darken slowly with spreading poison. One side of the jeep lifted off the street in a curve. Tyreen clenched back his pain and urged the roaring jeep up the hill. He could see Saville’s matter-of-fact face in the chattering mirror. The wheels began to skid around in mud, but then he was onto the main road, flipping over the hilltop, and Chutrang was below them. Tyreen went wheeling past a litter of huts, crossed a narrow plateau and a rock field, and plunged into a series of wicked turns. Sergeant Khang was talking:
“A couple jeeps coming after us, Colonel.”
The girl spoke quickly. Tyreen said, “What?”
Khang said, “She says turn off to the left down here.”
It was a narrow, rutted track, twining into the jungle. Tyreen slid the jeep into it. They rushed breakneck across jagged lifts and drops. Matted treetops shut out the sun. The girl spoke instructions, and Tyreen took a left fork, another left fork, a sharp right turn. At every fork the trail became narrower and rougher. The tires clawed across foot-high roots. Branches scraped the canvas at both sides. The dark speckling of light made everything hard to see. At a tight bend in the road, Tyreen swiveled the jeep hard against a tree. He jammed the shift lever around, hunting for reverse gear. The engine roared and quit.
In the sudden silence Theodore Saville said, “I think we ran out of gas. Must be another puncture down low in the tank someplace.” He got out to have a look. Tyreen stood in the mud rubbing his face. Saville said, “All dried up, David. We’re out of gas.”
Tyreen held up his hand for silence. He was listening for the sound of vehicles in pursuit. “Hooker.”
“Sir?”
“Hear anything behind us?”
“No sir. Not right now.”
“Maybe we lost them,” said Theodore Saville.
Tyreen said, “It won’t take them long to find our tracks in the mud.”
The girl climbed out of the jeep. She had lost her hat. Her dark hair hung tangled over one shoulder. She said, “We could not have driven much farther. The path becomes thin. I will show you the way to the caves.”
Hooker said suspiciously, “What caves?”
“We use them for hiding,” was all she said.
Hooker was in the back seat with Captain Kreizler’s head in his lap. “What about him?”
“We’ll carry him,” Tyreen said. “Let’s go.”
“What about all this demolition equipment, Colonel?”
“We lug that too.”
“Jesus,” said Hooker.
Chapter Thirty-eight
1500 Hours
TYREEN’S eyes were lacquered with fever when he lay down. There was a deep, drained ache in his legs. He had a stitch in his ribs from climbing. He hardly noticed the shape of the cavern. It was dry and dark. Sleeplessness surrounded him with a semitransparent glaze; people and objects and voices seemed distant and not altogether in the present. Saville was talking to him: “Eddie’s still knocked out. The Seconal won’t wear off before tonight. He’s got some burns and cuts—we’re patching him up the best we can. What do you figure about that bridge, David?”
Tyreen’s voice was drowsy and slow. “If Eddie talked, they’ll expect us to try again. They’ll have everything within miles zeroed in on that bridge, and they’ll expect a night raid. We’ll hit them tomorrow in daylight.”
“How? From where?”
Tyreen made an understatement: “A tired brain doesn’t plan very well, Theodore. Let’s sleep on it.”
The girl was nearby. He could not see her. He heard the sound of her voice. “Rest well, Colonel.”
He closed his eyes. Her whisper to Saville reached him faintly. “He is ill.”
“Acute fatigue,” Saville judged dispassionately.
Tyreen’s tongue caressed the hollow poison tooth. He lay back, wrapped in coats. There were many things to think about. McKuen and Shannon—what of them? What of Eddie Kreizler? And the bridge on the Sang Chu. But his mind was sapped by lethargy; his spirit had abandoned him.
He fell into a sleep as profound as a drugged coma.
He suffered a nightmare in which he was unable to step out of the path of an onrushing locomotive.
Somewhere in the course of the afternoon he awoke drenched with sweat. His fevered flesh felt like molten glass. He thought he saw Lin Thao spreading blankets over him; perhaps he smelled or felt her. A chilling ague shook his extremities. He thought he heard himself speak. In time he lost consciousness.
He came awake in complete blackness, sharply alert. “What?”
Saville’s voice came out of the obscurity: “Nothing. Must have been a dream, David.”
“What time is it?”
“After dark. Maybe eight o’clock.”
In the full darkness, fear brushed Tyreen’s eyeballs. Breath heaved in and out of
him. Saville said, “How do you feel?”
“Tired.” He stretched out and went back to sleep.
He lay drawn up, foetal. An annoying light flickered against his eyelids. He opened them. His eyeballs seemed to scrape their sockets. A candle burned; Saville crouched over a prone, blanketed man. Tyreen got up and walked across the uneven floor of the cave. He felt chilled through; he carried his blankets with him, huddling.
Eddie Kreizler’s eyes were open. Saville glanced up. Tyreen sat down as though genuflecting. “Eddie.”
“Colonel.” Kreizler’s voice was pitiably weak.
Hooker and Khang were sprawled some distance apart. Hooker snored. Tyreen said, “Where’s the girl?”
“Standing watch,” Saville said. “Eat some of this.”
“What is it?”
“Snake. Khang killed it.”
The meat was sweet and tender. “How are you, Eddie?”
“Mouth so dry I can’t spit,” said Kreizler. “So you still want to knock out that bridge.”
“That’s the order.”
“David, you’d charge hell with a bucket of water.”
Saville said, “Better not talk too much, Eddie. Save your energy.”
“I’m pretty good at talking,” Kreizler said. “Pretty good.”
Tyreen said, “Take it easy.”
“Next time you send somebody on a job like this, get a guy with spine all the way up.”
“Let’s talk about it,” Tyreen said.
“Trung was a pretty smart boy.”
Saville said, “David—”
“Never mind, Theodore.”
Eddie Kreizler said, “First they beat you up a little. Not too bad. Just enough to sting. Then they give you a needle. Ten percent solution of sodium pentothal.”
“That’s a big dose,” Tyreen said unemotionally.
“It is what the medics call a massive dose, David. It’s supposed to produce narcosynthesis. It didn’t. I guess I’m tough, up to a point. Always had a lot of resistance to drugs. It takes six or eight aspirins to get rid of a headache when I get one.”
Rreizler’s face was shadowed. Tyreen thought he was smiling a little. Kreizler said, “Trung beat me up some more, and then he got a little impatient, the way that kind does. He threw a little tantrum, and then they tied me down and he started poking around at my balls with the lighted end of his cigar.”
Kreizler’s voice was lifeless. He stopped talking. He did not seem to be looking at anyone. Tyreen heard Saville swallow. Saville said, “Looks like we got you out just in time, Eddie.”
“No. Not in time. Not nearly in time.” Rreizler stirred in his blankets. Tyreen, looking away bleakly, heard him say, “Give me half a cap of morphine, will you? It’s pretty bad just now.”
Saville reached for the medical kit. Kreizler said, “David.”
Tyreen’s head came around. Kreizler said, “I was tough. It took me a long time to crack. I’m sorry, David. I spilled my guts out to the little bastard.”
Saville plunged a needle into his arm. He had to move the candle. The light fell on Kreizler’s face—hollow and vacant-eyed. Kreizler’s right hand was broken, splinted up. His nails were burned away. He said, “I guess it’s cut the heart out of me. I just want to sit by myself and listen to the tears splash down my face. You know what I was thinking when I talked to Trung? I didn’t know what the hell it was all about, David. I didn’t care one shit for these Goddamn Vietnamese, North or South. But I’ve got Marie and the four little girls, and I care about them. That’s all I was thinking about. I’m no soldier. I guess I’m pretty corrupt.”
His voice diminished and trailed off. His tongue was a little thicker: “Trung knew. I wanted to die—he knew that. He laughed at me. I did my Goddamn best to die, David, but he wouldn’t let me. And maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I was still alive, and maybe that’s what told Trung I’d crack. If you haven’t got the guts to die, then you haven’t got the guts to live, either.”
Saville said, “You’re all right now, Eddie. You’re all right. You’ll make it.”
Kreizler laughed off key. His eyes were dull as slate. Tyreen looked across the cave. J. D. Hooker lay on his side with his legs scissored like a man running. He had rolled over and quit snoring. Khang, on the other side of the cave, sprawled as if boneless. Tyreen’s jaw muscles stood out like cables. “Can you remember what you told him?”
Saville said angrily, “If he was drowning you’d throw him both ends of a rope, wouldn’t you, David?”
Kreizler said, “Leave him alone, Theodore. He’s paid his dues.”
Saville wasn’t listening. “What’s happened to you, for God’s sake, David?”
Tyreen said viciously, “Fermez la bouche, Theodore. Understand? Keep your Goddamn mouth shut. That’s an order, Captain.”
Saville shook his head. “I thought I knew you. I don’t know you at all.”
Kreizler said, “He does pack a pretty tight suitcase. Leave us a while, Theodore. I’ll be all right.”
Saville got up and went out of the cave. Kreizler said, “If it was anybody else but Theodore, you’d bust him back to the ranks for insubordination. You let him get away with it. I wonder if he appreciates that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tyreen said.
“I’ll bet he wouldn’t have talked.”
“Any man alive would have talked, Eddie. It’s only a question of when.”
“You think I could have held out longer? Is that what you think?”
“I don’t think about it at all,” Tyreen droned. “I’ve got to know how much you told them. Colonel Trung is dead. How much information did he relay out of there before we killed him?”
“He had the whole enchilada on a tape recorder.”
Tyreen nodded. “Tell me whatever you can remember.”
“A lot of it won’t matter. Details of the demolition plans for the bridge. Names of men on my team. They’re all dead, anyway, all but one.”
“Corporal Smith. He’s dead, too.”
“A full house, then,” Kreizler murmured.
“What else did you give them?”
“A lot of personal history. Me, Marie, the kids. The home town. They seem to want a lot of that stuff. Then he went to work on bigger stuff. He wanted the number of guerrilla teams we’ve got operating in this sector. Plans, commanding officers, locations. I gave him the whole smear.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Every one of those units is being shifted—or has been, by tonight. It was on the planning boards two weeks ago. A complete shake-up. Whatever information you gave Trung is obsolete by now.”
“I didn’t know.”
Tyreen said, “The way it worked out, that’s a good thing.”
“When did the orders go out?”
“To the field? By radio—this morning.”
“And one other thing,” Kreizler said. “Who planned this?”
“General Jaynshill.”
“Sure,” said Kreizler.
“Anything else?”
“We got a radio flash from the General a few days ago. Orders to be ready to meet a paratroop battalion. Urquhart’s outfit. They’re dropping in behind the border next Tuesday. Spearpoint for an invasion.”
“Crap,” Tyreen said.
“What?”
“There’s no invasion, Eddie. You got your message garbled, or maybe it was a phony from some infiltrator in the Saigon radio room. Nobody’s dropping paratroopers into North Vietnam. Not this Tuesday or any other Tuesday. Urquhart’s battalion went into action last night within earshot of Saigon.”
“I see,” Kreizler said bitterly.
“Is that all you told them?”
“All I can remember.”
Tyreen said, “Then I guess it won’t do us much harm.”
“It wasn’t intended to.”
“What?”
“I want to think,” Kreizler said. “I feel kind of dopey. The morp
hine, I guess.”
“All right. Get some sleep.”
Kreizler pulled his blankets up with his broken hands. “You ever hear of a Judas goat, David?”
“No.”
“Blow out that candle, will you?”
Tyreen cupped his hands around the flame and blew it out.
Chapter Thirty-nine
2330 Hours
HE stepped out of the cave into a jungle clearing washed by moonlight. A dappling of mackerel cloud made patchwork of the sky. He swallowed a quinine capsule and drank deeply from a canteen and set it down. Saville crouched with his back to a boulder. There was not much to see; jungle guarded three sides of the clearing, and the mountainside stood behind them. The girl Lin Thao walked up the slope with a carbine across her arm. Saville said, “You ought to get some more sleep, David.”
“I’ll spell you. Turn in.”
“Hooker can stand guard. You need—”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d quit questioning every order that comes out of my mouth, Theodore.”
Saville got up without a word and stooped to enter the cave.
Tuesday, Tyreen thought. He had four days to limbo. The General would ship him home on the first jet. If I get back.
He sat down and dragged the submachine gun across his lap. The girl was walking back and forth, stopping here and there to turn her head slowly, trying to catch the night’s small sounds on the flats of her eardrums. Her hair was tied back with string. She seemed fierce and proud.
It was a country where the people made child-slaves of orphans; where no one had ever been free; where in four thousand years there had never been a government obeyed by all the people; where the Montagnards hunted gibbons with crossbows and bribed the army with packets of opium. He watched Lin Thao’s lithe movements. She came toward him and knelt down. “You would like a cigarette?”
The Last Bridge Page 21