The Last Bridge

Chapter Seventeen 0745 Hours

Tyreen got up into the high seat beside Corporal Smith. “That yellow hair of yours may get us in trouble. Put this cap on, and pull it low.”

Tyreen watched the others walk around to the back of the truck. Khang and Nhu Van Sun were wearing Vietminh uniforms stripped off the dead men: a line of red-rimmed holes ran across the back of the captain’s jacket drapped over Sergeant Khang’s shoulders. The truck rocked gently with the weight of men climbing into the back. Saville was a monstrous shape coming forward through the rain from the elephant grass. He stopped by the truck door. “I’ve got that busted firing pin in my pocket. If the Reds find that gun, they won’t get much use out of it.”

“Get in,” Tyreen said.

The truck settled when Saville put his weight on the back. Beyond the truck’s shadow, the road lay in a wash of pale light, glimmering and soaked. Tyreen looked at Corporal Smith’s shadowed face. “Let’s go.”

The truck chugged into life. Beads of water shimmered on the trembling hood. Corporal Smith thrust the knobbed floor stick into gear and slowly jockeyed the truck back and forth to turn it around in the narrow road. He grunted with effort and said, “Be quicker to take this road all the way up, Colonel. But we stand a better chance going up the mountain behind Giay Nghèo. Less patrols up that way.”

“How’s the road?”

“We can make it, I guess.”

“All right.”

Tyreen swallowed a capsule and used his pocketknife in an attempt to scrape half-congealed blood off a crumpled North Vietnamese fatigue jacket. He had to stop twice to close his eyes and fight a chilling ague. The road ran between rows of paddies, an uneven ribbon of puddles and sand, dangerously bordered by deep rain ditches. It became a lane running between a sugar plantation and a rice paddy; it circled a swamp, threaded an immense stand of bamboo, and curled inland toward the mountains, starting to pitch sharply upward. Tyreen said, “How much gas have we got?”

“It says half a tank.”

“That ought to be enough.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tyreen said, “You don’t give away much, do you?”

The Corporal risked a quick glance at him. “No, sir,” he said. “Here’s where we turn off.”

A sudden fork took them lurching to the left up a steep hill, and abruptly they were enclosed within the rain forest. The truck was clumsy, too big for the road; the track was narrow and rough, two flowing ruts separated by a high hump. Ahead it curled quickly out of sight into thick, obscure timber. Vines crept tightly down the tree trunks; parasites and creepers hung low along the road. A small, furry animal scuttled across the road not far ahead of them. The day was cold and dark and wet; it pressed against Tyreen, and he fought back resentfully. Corporal Smith shifted into one of many gears; the truck lurched. He double-clutched and kept firm grip on the heavy wheel to fight the pull of the uneven road. The truck rocked sluggishly back and forth. Branches scraped the roof, clawed at the tarpaulin, and slapped the windshield, making them flinch. Tyreen’s eyes could not penetrate the thick undergrowth ahead. The tires rolled slowly, grinding down the matted ruts; the engine roared in low gears, and in that manner, slowly and awkwardly, the truck bucked its way into the mountains. The cold, thin air of this high country came through the glassless windows to cut like a blade. The air was soaked, and Tyreen could see his own breath-mist steaming away from his face. Corporal Smith hunched over the wheel, watching the road for sharp bends and wheel-smashing bumps. They reached a fork, and without hesitation the Corporal swung the truck off, swaying crazily, onto the tilting side of the mountain. Trees fell away momentarily. They ran across the flat floor of a long jungle clearing. Below, Tyreen saw the lances and spires of treetops. They broke into the close rain forest again and climbed stiffly in a straining low gear at a speed a walking man could match.

Corporal Smith said, “I used to be company driver for Colonel Urquhart when he was company commander.”

“You were in Transportation Corps?”

“That was before I got busted and volunteered for Special Forces,” the Corporal said. It was impossible to make out any shading of his tone.

Rain fell steadily on the mountains. They climbed a narrow, rocky trail with a precipice dropping away to the right and no bottom in sight. The road seemed narrower than the truck. Corporal Smith said, “The old time Yards say they never had a cold spell like this. Saying the spirits brought the freeze because they got mad at Uncle Ho. It sure raised hell with all them opium poppies.”

Tyreen could not make out the cause of Smith’s sudden burst of talk. Smith said, “I hear they’re rigging Colonel Urquhart’s battalion for an air drop into this zone. Big secret invasion. I used to serve under Colonel Urquhart. He—”

“Where’d you hear that, Corporal?”

“Hear what?”

“About an air drop.”

“I handled the radio for Captain Kreizler. It came in a few days ago, sir.”

“From where?”

“How’s that?”

Tyreen said, “Who sent that message?”

“Hell, Colonel, I don’t remember. Maybe General Jaynshill’s headquarters.”

Tyreen said, “I doubt that.”

“Well, then, maybe it wasn’t.”

“Colonel Urquhart’s outfit just transferred down to Saigon,” Tyreen said. “They’re in a fight down there. You picked up a false piece of information somewhere.”

“Yes, sir,” Smith said.

The truck shot out into the air. Tyreen’s stomach knotted; from the perspective of his seat he could see nothing but the fall beyond. Smith screwed the wheel around. The truck skittered on a tight horseshoe bend, and Tyreen gripped the edge of the windshield. The Corporal shifted down and straightened the wheels and drove into a bush before the truck righted itself. He put it back on the road by smashing down a scrub tree. It broke with a crack and an echo.

From the north face of the mountain Tyreen saw the vast upheaval of peaks beyond. Dark rain forest grew on the slopes like a beard under a pale chin of rock crags and a brown-gray nose of boulders. Above it was a cleft dome of rock and scrub — a high granite monument hewn in half by a slash of sky.

“Sang Chu gorge,” Corporal Smith said. “Up that way.”

Across the heaving land between, there was no sign of life. A spindle tracery of plant stalks grew on bald mountains. Below, out of the wind, the jungle lay in a dense mat. Cold chewed into Tyreen, gripping his joints; it whipped a lash against his exposed nose and ears. All he could hear was the rasp of the truck’s high-torque engine.

Watching Corporal Smith, he had no clue to the Corporal’s character, but he admired a man who could maneuver a two-and-a-half-ton truck up a road meant for oxcarts. Smith’s temper seemed to alternate like a pendulum, but his square hands worked the wheel boldly.

The broken surface of the high ground swelled and dipped away in all directions. It was all cross-canyons and earth standing on its end and spires thrusting up as though poked through ragged holes in the undulating quilt of the heavy rain forest. He saw no room for a town or a railroad. If the Sang Chu flowed down out of the high gorge, then it had to be hidden under the forest canopy, arched over by treetops and never touched by the sun.

The road went down into the forest. Corporal Smith’s eyes strained into the troughs ahead. Roots of jungle trees writhed above the ground, thicker than a man. Fungus and slime crawled onto the road. Gibbons moved through the branches, vague flickering shadows against a violet ceiling. Tyreen had parachuted into Burma in 1945, and it reminded him of that. He lighted a cigarette and sat with it uptilted between his teeth. His eyes slid shut, and he had a fractured moment of unconsciousness; then the truck jolted him, and he almost bit through the cigarette. Its inch of ash spilled on his pants. He chewed the end off and spat it out.

Corporal Smith said, “I used to race jalopies when I was a kid.”

“How old are you, Corporal?”

“Twenty-four, sir. Going on a twenty-fourth of my life I been in this stinking jungle.”

“Where do you hail from?”

“Albuquerque.” A rock in the road made the truck jump. Tyreen threw out the butt of his cigarette. Smith said, “I used to think driving was fun. Used to race jalopies around like the sun was going down and never going to come up again. But no fun in this. No speed, you know?”

“Speed enough.” Tyreen coughed and said, “The speed of death,” and then laughed at himself.

Smith said, “What, sir?”

“Nothing.”

The road ran up a sudden pitch and flopped over a bald crest and for that instant, hanging suspended with a drop before them so steep that Tyreen could not see the road for the hood, he had a fleeting picture of glittering tracks in a valley, rails worn smooth by hard use. The image came to him through a notch in the mountains; it disappeared as soon as the road left the summit. They dropped into a narrow passage walled by rock. Uneven turns volleyed the truck back and forth; it jounced on its stiff springs. They curled once more into the jungle on a flat basin floor with the big engine sawing like a giant grinder. Rocks popped, crushing audibly under the tires. The wind here was not quite so cold or so cutting. The rising sun made a faint luminescence in the clouds, visible now and then through holes in the treetops.

“Colonel,” said Corporal Smith.

“What?”

“You got one of those poison things in your tooth?”

Tyreen said, “Why?”

“I don’t know. Captain Kreizler had one. I don’t see how a man could do that. Swallowing poison on purpose, I mean. You get to thinking a lot about dying and things like that. I figured for a while maybe I had some kind of charm — some lucky piece like maybe a rabbit’s foot or something. Been up here a year and never even got scratched yet. Last night, the whole outfit got wiped out. But not me. I figure I’m due for rotation any time now, and every day I get scared a little more. I want to get back to my wife. She’s in Albuquerque, my wife. Went back there when they sent me to Fort Bragg. Year and a half ago, that was. She’s a sweet kid, my wife.”

Tyreen thought there was something strange about the way Smith’s talky spells switched on and off as if they were connected to a time clock.

For a while neither man spoke. They drove into a mossy obscurity of rot and tangles. It startled Tyreen when Corporal Smith blurted:

“Colonel, I got something to say.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“I wasn’t just lucky last night.” Smith licked a corner of his mouth. “I took a dive. I stayed in the brush until the shooting quit. I didn’t move. I was just laying there, crying. I was crying, sir. I heard them shooting the boys up. I kept my eyes closed tight. I had my hands on my head. Kept crying like that. It was like somebody pushed me down flat and I just couldn’t move. I looked up a couple times and saw what was happening, but I didn’t lift a Goddamn finger.”

He glanced swiftly at Tyreen. “I keep telling myself it wouldn’t of done nobody much good if I’d shot back at them.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have.”

“But I don’t get paid to lie on my belly and cry.”

Tyreen stirred up the energy to say, “You did the right thing, telling me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I doubt it will go against you. A man freezes up in combat — it happens, Corporal.”

Smith flicked him a glance that might have been sardonic. Tyreen said, “Nothing you could have done would have made much difference.”

“I might have got greased.”

“We’re all lucky you didn’t.”

“Yes, sir,” Corporal Smith said. He was watching the dark corridor of the road. His mind had receded, and he did not speak again.

You fought, Tyreen thought. You fought; you ran; you killed. Now and then you laughed. Finally, if you were not killed, you endured.