The Last Bridge

Chapter Ten 0430 Hours

Forty minutes beyond Da Nang, and within easy radar range of the Red Chinese air base at Sama on the island of Hainan, the gooney bird’s number two engine sputtered, coughed, spat blood, and finally caught again. It kept running. McKuen kept one eye on it. A jaunty, cavalier, cocked-eyebrow d’Artagnan, he grinned at Mister Shannon and said, “Flying is so dangerous around here, even the bloody pigeons travel on foot.”

“A guy could get killed,” Shannon complained, “which is no way to die. I thought I was going to puke when that number two cut out on us.”

The engines chugged reassuringly. They had lost eight hundred feet of altitude, nursing the sick number two; now McKuen climbed again and leveled off at seven thousand feet to cruise. “Look there — break in the clouds.”

Shannon looked down. “Ship down there,” he said, “or a big boat. See the lights?”

“That’ll be one of those Russian trawlers. They must catch a lot of fish. I flew over one of them just out at the three-mile limit at Guam. Plenty of radar domes on them, but not a stick of fishing tackle.”

They passed over the opening in the clouds underneath. Shannon spoke slowly: “What do you think of our chances, Lieutenant?”

“I came, didn’t I?”

Shannon’s face moved. He looked out at the night. “I’m cold,” he said. “I wish the heat worked. I don’t think we’ve got the chance of a chicken in a fox’s den of getting this thing back to Da Nang, typhoon or no typhoon. That number two engine’s going to pack up damn soon.”

“It’s human to sweat a little,” McKuen said cheerfully.

“What about you, Lieutenant? Do you sweat?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t show it.”

McKuen said, “There ain’t much that can harm you after you’re dead, darlin’.” The plane slid between layers of wispcloud, cutting off the star shine. The plane became a raft isolated on a black sea. There was the smell of rain, but no water on the glass. McKuen’s face was reflected faintly in the window. Another break in the lower cloud deck showed nothing but darkness; the clouds sealed up once again. Shannon’s hand moved to rotate the stabilizer wheel back a fraction of a revolution. Before McKuen’s feet the rudder pedals moved slightly, one in and one out, under Shannon’s direction. Engines throbbed monotonously. Shannon said, “I’m getting spooky.”

“You’ll steady down.”

“Maybe.”

“Look at it this way,” said McKuen. “If you get killed, at least you won’t have died of anything serious.”

“You are very funny, Lieutenant.”

McKuen looked sharply at him. After that he said nothing until, with the clouds pinching in on them from above and below, he said, “Switch on the receiver. I want to get a weather report.”

The earphones crackled and he heard a distant voice: “Tighten up this formation. Jimmy, I want your wingtip in my Goddamn window.”

McKuen said, “Wrong band, Mister,” in a very gentle voice and watched Shannon’s nervous hand twist the radio dials. After a moment he looked at his watch and said, “Ought to be a report about now.”

The radio only blatted landing and takeoff instructions. He listened to it with half his attention and muttered aloud: “Manifold pressure.” He moved the throttles. “Twenty-two hundred rpm — how’s that number two behaving?”

He was remembering a blonde in San Francisco who had left his quarters at 5 a.m., thereby earning for him the silly admiration of his acquaintances. Shannon’s voice broke in:

“I’m as jumpy as a virgin in a men’s room.”

When McKuen made no reply, Shannon said, “I was thinking about getting married before I left the States. Now I’m glad I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“And leave my girl a widow?”

“At least she’d have a pension,” McKuen said.

“Do you think women go for Army pilots?”

“Well, now,” McKuen said, with his brogue waxing, “I was after takin’ a survey of seventy-five young ladies on that very question, would you believe it? And seventy-three of them responded the same way. Would you be wantin’ to know what it was they said? They said, ‘Shut up and rape me, darlin’,’ is what they said.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“Gee, I wish I’d said that. Hold on.” McKuen’s hand snapped to the radio dial, and he tuned it with slow care. The headset scratched in his ear:

“Typhoon Carlotta has changed course and speed, is now expected to hit the Vietnamese coastline north of Da Nang at approximately oh-six-thirty hours this morning. Repeat, the typhoon is expected to strike the coast near Hué at approximately oh-six-thirty hours this morning. All operational aircraft are ordered to ground at runways of opportunity. All takeoffs after oh-five-thirty hours are canceled by order of...”

McKuen took the headset off and slung it on its hook. He looked at Shannon and said, “What ho.”

Shannon’s face was dour. McKuen said, “What’s your opinion, Mister?”

“I don’t get paid for opinions, Lieutenant. Just follow orders. But if I was to think about it, I might suggest hara-kiri.”

“Very good, Mister. Take the wheel, like a good fellow.” McKuen unstrapped himself, climbed out of the pilot’s seat, and made his way back into the passenger cabin.

“That typhoon must be due south of us right now, sir,” McKuen said to Colonel Tyreen. “Due to strike Hué at six-thirty. Sir, it’s ten after five right now, and by the time we reach your drop zone it’ll be six o’clock, at least. I’d like permission to abort, sir. If we turn around and hightail back right now on a course of one-nine-oh we can land on one of those emergency strips in South Vietnam west of Hué before the typhoon gets there.”

Tyreen said, “Negative.”

“Colonel, this plane can’t swim.”

“You’ll make the drop on schedule, Lieutenant. After that it’s up to you. I’d suggest you bring her down on that airstrip up in the mountains — the one I pointed out to you on the map. That’s friendly Montagnard country up there, and as I said, we’ve got an ‘A’ Team operating in the area. They’ll pick you up and look after you.”

The plane vibrated strongly. McKuen had one hand braced against the slope of the ceiling, his back bent and his head tilted down to catch the run of Tyreen’s voice. McKuen said, “And what then, sir?”

“If you’re picked up by the ‘A’ Team, put yourself under their orders. If not, stand by the plane and listen to the weather reports. If the typhoon¹ moves on before the Reds come up to find out who you are, you can just take off and go home. If the Reds come first, your orders are to disable this aircraft and then get the hell out.”

“On foot?”

“On foot.” Tyreen’s eyes were dark and bleak. “You’ve got another option if you prefer. You can head out to sea after you drop us. If you’re lucky you may be able to find some elements of the Seventh Fleet cruising the Gulf of Tonkin. You can ditch in the Gulf and be picked up by the Navy.”

“I can’t swim.”

“You’ve got life jackets and parachutes. You won’t have to swim.”

“And what if we cruise out over the Gulf and don’t happen across any Navy ships? What then, Colonel, sir?”

“Then you run out of gas,” Tyreen said. “You yell for help, Lieutenant, and then you float around and maybe pray a little.”

“I wish I had enough gas to fly around until that typhoon went away. But we’re pretty close to the fuel limit just getting you to your drop zone and then going home. Only there isn’t any home left to go back to.”

“Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir?”

“What happened to your Irish accent?”

McKuen flushed. “Sometimes I tend to forget it. You’ll be understandin’, sir?”

Tyreen gave him a grin with his teeth. “It’s your choice,” he said.

“For which I’m greatly obliged to you,” said McKuen sourly. He turned around and went forward.

Theodore Saville said, “The poor kid. I’m glad I ain’t in his shoes.”

J. D. Hooker snapped an irritable glance at him. “You think we better off jumpin’ into North Vietnam, Captain? Me, I’d sooner take my chances with the Lieutenant.”

McKuen was coming back from the cockpit. He said, “I forgot to ask you something.”

“Go ahead,” said Tyreen.

“Suppose I drop you people and then head out to sea. Once I’m away from your position, I can break radio silence and get in touch with the Seventh Fleet. They can tell me where to find them.”

Tyreen said, “If that’s what you want to do, go ahead.”

McKuen frowned. “What’s the catch?”

“The minute you open up on that radio, Lieutenant, the Reds will know this isn’t one of their planes. They’ll let you have it with everything they’ve got. The Chinese have got a whole wing of MIGs stationed at Sama. They’d shoot you down before you got within miles of a Navy ship.”

“Well, and thanks again to you,” McKuen said, and went forward again.

Saville said, “In a way, this may be a break for us. That storm could play hell with Ho Chi Minh’s radar.”

The plane bucked with turbulence. Tyreen sat braced against the fuselage and let his attention rove among the four soldiers. Each of them had been selected, screened, culled, and filed. He had used Hooker before, and he knew Saville. He did not know either one of the two Vietnamese sergeants, but their records were impressive. Nhu Van Sun was an ex-farmer, brawny and evidently childlike, but the record said he liked gadgets and knew how to rig booby traps and handle any kind of communications equipment ever made. He was expert in the many forms of deadly hand-to-hand combat; and while he had never been to America, he spoke passable English, which was sometimes important in a team where the American members might speak uncertain Vietnamese at best. Tyreen spoke good Vietnamese; Saville, who was a diligent, deliberate student, spoke not only Vietnamese, but French and one dialect of Chinese as well. Sergeant Hooker spoke a few common words of Vietnamese, and bad English. Sergeant Khang had been in the States long enough to be comfortable with barracks slang. The record stated that Khang was a good guerrilla soldier, and that was a valuable quality; it took a special kind of mind to make a man a good guerrilla fighter, and Khang had that talent. But his greatest usefulness of the moment was his intimate knowledge of the terrain around Chutrang and the Sang Chu gorge; he had been born and raised there.

And then there was J. D. Hooker — a brutal man, small of eyes and small of brain. But Hooker’s eyes could see twice as far as any other man’s, and Hooker’s ears could pick up the tiniest of sounds, and if a man wanted a bridge blown up properly, he sent for J. D. Hooker.

Theodore Saville drank his third cup of coffee and did not smile when he discovered Tyreen’s eyes on him. Saville was an inveterate beer drinker; he had the constitution of a truck horse. In his twenty-four years of service he had lugged himself up to a captaincy from the ranks, mainly by sheer brawn and doggedness. If there was a more reliable man in the Army, Tyreen had not yet met him. Still holding Saville’s eyes, Tyreen smiled and nodded briefly. Saville held out the coffee jug, and Tyreen accepted it. He had been awake twenty-four hours now, and it would be at least another day before he would have a chance to sleep.

Tyreen knew better than to slow down long enough to give himself a chance to think. It would do no good to consider his position. He was sick, and he had no business being here; he was a tired man, jaded and worn out. But he would keep up with the rest of them — more than that, he would stay ahead of them. He did not allow himself to wonder how.

He was dangerously close to a self-inspection. He had the need to act. He stood up and said, “We’ve got about fifteen minutes. Better start getting the gear together.”