The Last Bridge

Chapter Twenty-three 1030 Hours

George McKuen sat sleepy-eyed in the pilot’s seat. His cap was tipped back on his head, and the synthetic fur collar of his leather jacket was upturned against his throat. He glanced at his watch and took a sandwich out of a paper bag. The bread had gone stale. He ate slowly.

Mister Shannon said, “What happened then?”

“It was embarrassing, me boy, most embarrassing. I’m ashamed to be admittin’ it. They cut me bloody head off.”

“What?”

“Aye. I had to carry it around under me arm.” McKuen shook his head with an expression of gloom. “It was the first time that happened to me.”

“The first time?”

“Let it be a warning to you, never lose your head.”

“Lieutenant, you’re the absolute limit.”

When McKuen wadded up the empty paper bag it rattled like flames. Mister Shannon uncorked the Thermos flask. “Have some coffee. You can’t win a war without coffee.”

“Who’s winning the war?” McKuen said sourly. He drank and sank back into his seat with a sigh.

Shannon said, “I was thinking about my girl back home. You know, I–Look, I wouldn’t want to create an undue panic, Lieutenant, but we don’t seem to be alone.”

McKuen swiveled around. “Where?”

“Ten o’clock. Over there — see him?”

McKuen bobbed his head back and forth, trying to see between sliding raindrops on the glass. Someone moved vaguely on the fringe of the forest. McKuen muttered, “You think he’s one of the good guys, or one of the bad guys?”

“He’s wearing a white hat.”

“Okay.” McKuen sat a moment, grinding knuckles into his eye sockets. He trembled slightly with chill. The figure in the light-colored straw hat stirred slightly on the edge of the airstrip. “Jesus. It’s cold as a bloody St. Bernard’s nose. Come on, Mister.”

He went back through the fuselage. On the way he collected a pair of folding-stock carbines and handed one to Shannon. McKuen fitted a banana clip into his weapon and jacked a round into the chamber. He touched the door handle. “Brace yourself, Mister. This could be what they call it.”

“Check,” Shannon said, blank-faced.

McKuen swung the heavy door open. He stood aside, one eyebrow cocked. After a moment he said, “Well,” and dropped to one knee in the opening. A hundred feet away the bantam white-hatted figure did not move. McKuen crouched in the door, staring across the distance between them. A long time went by, and finally McKuen said, “Well, what is it we’re supposed to do now, do you think?”

“Beats the shit out of me.”

“Curses,” said McKuen. “Foiled again.”

“What?”

“For the first time in me bloody life I get myself all bloated up to go out in a blaze of glory. And what happens? Nothing. He just stands there and eyeballs at us. And what do you think of that, Mister?”

McKuen cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted at the silent figure, “I give you good day, sir!”

The man’s hat tipped up; he lifted a weapon in one hand, as if in signal, and wheeled back into the forest.

“That tears it,” McKuen said. He flung his carbine down and jumped after it, and stood with his arms akimbo. He glared at the silent jungle.

Shannon dropped lightly beside him and said, “I don’t know, Lieutenant. If he was friendly he’d have come out, wouldn’t he?”

“Maybe the lad never saw an aeroplane before.”

“Sure. After all the bomb runs the Air Force flew over this area?”

McKuen threw up his hands. “Then you figure it out, Mister.”

“He didn’t understand English.”

“And?”

“Maybe he thought you insulted his sister,” Shannon said with a straight face.

“And maybe if my dear aunt had whiskers she’d be my uncle,” McKuen said. “Maybe maybe maybe. Begorra. Maybe I’ll just belt you one, Mister.”

A retort rose to Shannon’s mouth, but it died there. His hand gripped McKuen’s arm in a grip an ape could not have pried loose. “Lieutenant,” he said. His eyes had gone wide.

McKuen shot around to follow the direction of Mister Shannon’s stare.

“By me grandmother O’Hara,” he breathed.

A thin line of armed figures emerged from the jungle, half the distance down the runway. They were armed, and as McKuen spoke, the leader raised a small weapon. It began to chatter loudly. By reflex, McKuen crouched over his carbine and returned the fire. The Vietminh squad dropped flat, and Shannon yanked at McKuen’s clothes. “Let’s get this plane off the deck, Lieutenant!”

“Pile in.”

McKuen gave Shannon a boost up and turned to look back. The guerrillas were up and running. A spray of bullets whacked into the fuselage above his head. He emptied the automatic carbine toward them, slowing them down; he dropped the carbine and swung himself up into the plane. He hauled the door shut and turned to sprint toward the cockpit. Sight of Shannon brought him up short: Shannon sagged against the far wall straining for breath.

“You got hit,” McKuen said.

“Get us out of here, for Christ’s sake!”

An ellipsis of bullet holes appeared in the cargo door. McKuen clawed up Shannon’s carbine and ran forward into the cockpit; with a single motion he threw the side window open and thrust the carbine snout through. The guerrilla squad was fanned out along the border of trees, firing sporadically and waiting to see how many men hid within the airplane.

McKuen’s carbine spread a burst of fire across the file of Vietnamese. All of them disappeared, tumbling into the trees; he had the feeling he had not hit any of them. He let the carbine stock drop into his lap while he reached for the ignition switches.

Number one cranked with slow, grinding weariness. He kept his head down; his lips were moving. He heard Shannon calling to him: “Okay, Lieutenant.” And he heard the popping of a carbine from back inside the plane — Shannon at a porthole.

Figures seesawed in and out of the trees. There was a lot of shooting. It was obvious the plane would be riddled before he got it moving.

He hardly waited for number one to catch before he triggered number two. A curse escaped his lips. He fired a wild spray of bullets out the window, one-handed. With the engines coughing, he could not hear the Vietminh fire. Bullets punched a line of holes across the windshield; he heard something crack above him. A bold figure darted out of the trees and ran forward, firing a rifle. McKuen rammed his throttles forward and kicked the rudder over. The plane began to wheel slowly around. The propellers blew back a heavy spray of rain. The charging soldier ran under the wing and McKuen was sure he would be sliced to pieces by the spinning propeller. He did not look back; he heeled the plane around without a glance at the instruments and pounded the throttles with the heel of his hand. The cold engines gathered speed slowly.

He heard the chopping of Shannon’s weapon. Shannon moved from one side of the plane to the other as it swung its tail around. Ahead of McKuen the descending lip of the precipice swam into view, faintly visible through the rain. It was a downsloping runway from here. The plane was moving, crawling; over his shoulder he saw the guerrillas break away from the protection of the trees and run forward, shouting and firing. Muscles knotted in his stomach. He leaned forward as if to add his straining energies to the halting acceleration of the aircraft. Number two coughed, and he jerked spasmodically. The old plane gained slow momentum, and sweat burst out in a flood on his face. A bullet glanced off the right-hand window, tracing a long furrow in the glass. He was halfway, now — halfway to the cliff, and the speed indicator hovered at forty miles an hour. His face whitened, and he said over and over again, “Oh Jesus— Oh Jesus— Oh Jesus.”

Little gashes of earth sprayed up in front of the wings — bullets seeking the plane. The tail came up, and a part of his mind wondered with complete abstraction why the wheels had not left the ground. The cold engines were not giving what they could. He changed pitch and flooded the fuel mixture; nothing seemed to work: the gooney bird crawled toward the cliff, bumping solidly along the ground. Sixty and seventy miles and eighty miles an hour. Had bullets chewed into the engines? He pummeled the throttles, bruising his hand. The carbine fell out through the window; he heard it clang when it hit the surface of the wing. Wind sliced at him through the open window and through the punctured windscreen. The wheels scratched along the metal runway. He hauled the wheel back at a sharper angle. “Oh Jesus!”

In a roar of sound the plane pitched over the cliff. He felt the wheels lose contact, felt the plane sag beneath him; he thought calmly, “Okay... okay.” But the high-pitched props cut big holes in the air, and the plane dipped away from the cliff with a heavy graceful swoop. McKuen leveled off twenty feet below the altitude of the rim and made a slow turn to the right to pass between two mountains. He brought the gear up, but he did not hear the right-hand wheels lock under the wing; he continued his turn, banking with the left wing high, and when he looked through the window he saw dim orange flashes at the rim of the cliff, bullets aimed at him from much too far away.

He put the fragile plane into a slow climb and pointed it west by southwest. “Shannon!”

Mister Shannon’s voice replied from right behind his shoulder. “Something leaking out from under number two, Lieutenant. Maybe hydraulic fluid for the landing gear. The wheels didn’t go all the way up.”

McKuen looked around at him. “Are you hit?”

“I think I am.” Shannon slid into his seat. He was still clutching his empty carbine; he put it down with care and fumbled with his jacket. McKuen’s hands spidered over the controls. Airspeed built up to one-forty; altitude seven thousand, then seventy-three hundred — it was all he seemed able to get out of her. He said, “How you makin’ it, Mister?”

When he turned to look, Shannon was slumped in his seat with his eyes shut.