The Last Bridge

Chapter Eleven 0600 Hours

Tyreen’s tongue played with one of his back teeth. It was a false tooth, hollowed out. The Army had inserted a cyanide pill inside it. It was no hard task to work the tooth loose with the tongue and swallow the poison. It could be done without once opening the mouth. A man had been known to kill himself with the cyanide pill in his sleep.

He had sheet metal in the soles of his jump boots and a load of equipment on his back that would stagger a mule: he had his submachine gun, his tools, his rations, his ammunition, and the tank of an underwater breathing apparatus. His parachute hung down below the seat of his pants. Canteen and pistol and bayonet rattled against his thighs, hung on his ammunition belt. He glanced at Saville, who carried all the same equipment, plus a sackful of radio gear, and at J. D. Hooker, who carried a wickedly heavy sack of explosives and demolition equipment, and at Sergeant Sun, who carried a Czech light machine gun with a bipod mount, and at Nguyen Khang, who carried the boxed ammunition belts for the machine gun.

Theodore Saville picked up a knapsack full of Communist-made grenades and hooked it to the front of his harness above his chest chute. He drained the last of the coffee into his mouth and tossed the jug aside. He took a last pull on his cigarette and ground it out underfoot. Carrying two hundred pounds of metal and fabric, he moved effortlessly.

Tyreen said, “Hook up.” He made his way forward to the cockpit.

McKuen was struggling with the controls. He glanced around briefly. “We’re flying on a wing and a swear, Colonel. Number two engine’s making plenty of trouble. How far is it to that emergency strip in the mountains?”

“About forty miles from the drop zone.”

“I wish I had me four-leaf clover,” said McKuen. “You’ve got about three minutes. Do I keep her on twelve hundred feet?”

“Dead level,” Tyreen said.

“That might be easier if I didn’t have to talk to the altimeter through interpreters. I’ll be givin’ you a red warning light now. The light will flash green when it’s time for you gentlemen to do the Geronimo act. That is, presuming the green light bulb ain’t burned out. I tested it back at Nha Trang, and it worked then. But this aeroplane didn’t come with a written guarantee, you’ll be understandin’.”

“Sing out when you flash the light, just to be sure.”

“Sure and I will. And, Colonel...?”

“What?”

“Good hunting.”

“Thanks, McKuen. I’ll see you back in Saigon.”

“Sure you will.”

“Good luck, Mister Shannon,” Tyreen said.

“And the same to you, Colonel.” Shannon’s face was tight.

McKuen said, “Buck up, me lad. It’ll be something to be tellin’ your grandchildren about.”

“If I live to have any.”

“So long,” Tyreen said, and went back into the plane. He heard McKuen’s voice following him:

“Ciao.”

Tyreen pushed past the others to the jump door in the tail section. The ceiling was low here, and he had to stoop. The red warning light glared at him unblinkingly. “Watch the light,” he said. “And be ready to pull your emergency chutes. We’re pretty close to the water.”

“And pretty close to the reef,” Saville said. “If any of us overshoot by as much as three seconds, he’ll wind up with a hunk of coral up his ass.”

J. D. Hooker said, “Then you better move fast, Captain. You’re comin’ out last.”

“Thanks for the concern, Sergeant.”

“Turn on your oxygen tanks, and watch that light,” Tyreen said.

He stood in the open door with the cold night whipping past. At twelve hundred feet there was a light drizzle of rain. Pellets of water stung his exposed face. It was a long three minutes — was the light working? He braced his hands in the doorway. His trouser legs flapped violently against his calves. One of the sergeants was crowded up close behind him. He broke out in a dizzy wave of chills. The wind stung his eyes, and he could not keep them open long enough to see what was below. A burst of wind almost tore him out the door. He heard a small sound — McKuen bellowing at the top of his lungs from the forward cockpit. The light flickered green. He felt the brief pressure of Saville’s hand on his shoulder. He shouted, “Go!” And thrust himself out into the night.

There was nothing to see. Dark gray false dawn flooded his vision. He fell through space, turning slowly. Abruptly the shroud lines fluttered stiff; the chute opened with a snap that grabbed his shoulders and all but tore him in two. He felt flashes of bright pain from the harness buckles and knew he would suffer the bruises for days.

He had the feeling he was turning cartwheels; he threw his head back and gulped for air. He thought he could make out several billowing canopies above him. The dim red flames of the C-47’s exhausts wheeled away as it circled across the sky in a steep climb; he could hear the strained buzz of its engines.

His heavy load of equipment dragged him swiftly downward against the pull of the shroud lines. He felt sick in a moment of vertigo. There was a jagged reef down there; he had an instant of stark fear. His eyes found and locked on the vague flashes of surf crests. He dropped plumb.

The sea would be cold. He filled his lungs with air. He thought he heard someone cry out. His body jerked in a spasm of tremors, and then his boots cut the surface and the frigid black water swallowed him.

The bitter cold paralyzed him, constricting his chest; he felt immediately suffocated. The shroud lines wound around him like spaghetti. He pedaled with his legs in a moment of panic and tore a line from around his throat; instinct born of hard training moved his hands to the harness buckles, and his fingers fumbled with them. Water got in his nose and eyes and mouth. The buckles would not give way to his attacks, and he let them go; he clawed at the scuba mouthpiece, found it, and put it in his mouth. Flashes of color darted in his vision. He blew through the mouthpiece with his last reservoir of spent air and wheezed a rattling breath inward; he choked on the spray of water it forced down his lungs.

His body swept back and forth like a pendulum, snarled in the shroud lines, tugged about by currents in the cold surf. The canopy had collapsed on top of him and the weight of his equipment slowly pulled him down. He breathed in short, rapid bursts; the pure oxygen made him lightheaded. He made himself hang idle until his pulsebeat came under control, whereupon he made a second assault on the harness fasteners.

A fish, or a strand of seaweed, brushed his open eye, and he jerked his head back. When he broke loose from the parachute, the dead weight of his equipment carried him right down until his ears popped and his head was ready to cave in with pressure. His heavy boots tripped over a rough bottom and he went to his knees, moving like a dream figure in a slow-motion film. The water was murky; there was no light from above; he could not see a thing.

He turned until he felt the undercurrents press against his face, and moved that way, into the undertow, feeling ahead of him with a hand he could not see. It was hard to judge the slope of the bottom. Spires of coral got in his way; sea moss made footing slippery, and once he recoiled when his hand fell upon a slimy surface that contracted and moved under his grip.

It took him eighteen minutes to paddle across the reef and cross the calmer lagoon to the beach.

The narrow strip of sand lay along a spit of land, barren and strewn with small boulders. He stood erect in three feet of water and saw two men walking down the hard beach toward him. He dragged himself out of the lagoon and stood with his legs splayed apart; he could feel the needle of each separate point of pain.

Saville came forward, his hair plastered down over his bald spot. The knapsack full of grenades dangled from his right hand; one of its harness straps had broken. A stocky man in gray fatigues trailed him.

Tyreen spat the aqualung mouthpiece out and licked his teeth. He stood swaying. Saville stopped, and the other man halted obediently; he was a large-eyed young man with blond hair cut so short he seemed bald.

Theodore Saville said, “Glad you made it, David.”

“So am I.”

“Corporal Smith.”

“Yes, sir.” The Corporal’s expression resembled that of a corpse with its eyes open.

Saville said, “Here comes one of the others.” Tyreen looked out toward the reef. Saville shook his head violently to clear water from his ears. He said, “Getting light. Let’s get everybody together and bury these frogman lungs and get the hell off this beach before we get zapped.”

Tyreen said, “How far do we have to go, Corporal?”

“A long way, sir. A good long way.”