The Last Bridge

Chapter Twenty-five 1055 Hours

J. D. Hooker dropped off the truck clutching his blunt-snouted gun. He stood at the tailgate until Tyreen’s face appeared. “Sergeant Sun spotted something. Have a look.”

“You trust that bastard, Colonel?”

Saville jumped down past Tyreen. “We’ll do this without noise, understand?” Saville’s face was calm and round, but here and there a tight line crossed it. “Leave that thing here.” He put his hand on the muzzle of Hooker’s submachine gun. Hooker’s grip tightened. Saville’s brute strength depressed the barrel, and Hooker let go; Saville passed it to Tyreen and then walked forward beside the truck.

Sergeant Sun said, “I see two men by corner there.”

The whole conversation took place in muted whispers. Saville’s arm lifted and made motions. J. D. Hooker thereupon put his back to the truck and moved away, keeping the truck interposed between himself and the corner where Sun said he had seen men. Hooker walked steadily to the shelter of a sagging stone house and went around it briskly. The North Vietnamese field jacket, taken off a dead man an hour ago, flapped as he ran. He broke into a dogtrot, and his lips lashed back from his teeth; he jerked the pistol from his holster and reversed it in his fist like a short club. His feet rose and fell against the uneven ground. He curled around the second corner of the house, picked a path through creepers and brush, found the far end of the building, and turned slowly past the corner. Probing the mists with eyes and ears and nose, he found nothing. He moved with alert care toward the street. Rain compressed around him. He arrived at the street, having come all the way around the house, and saw nothing except the mass of Captain Saville’s figure by the corner.

Hooker stood a moment regaining his breath. “He never saw nothing. The puking little gook lied in his teeth.”

Saville spoke very quietly. “Put that thing away.” Hooker slipped the automatic into its scabbard. They walked back to the truck, Saville shaking his head and making horizontal motions with his hands. Hooker climbed up. “Wild-goose chase. He never saw nothing.”

“Maybe,” said Tyreen.

Hooker moved forward under the tarp with willful anger clouding his face. He heard Saville settle down and felt the truck begin to move.

Tyreen wore a hat taken from the dead PANVN captain — like an Australian bush hat, it had a wide, soft brim, which he turned down to conceal part of his face. He crouched by the front corner of the tarp, ready to flip it back. The truck coasted downhill; now and then a vehicle went past, and Tyreen found himself sweating with more fear than fever. They swayed around a sharp corner, and Saville murmured, “Not many blocks from here to the compound.”

“Thank God for this fog. What time is it?”

“Time for the lights to go out,” Saville said. “Time and then some. It’s almost five after eleven. I wonder what happened to those Yards.”

“Never trust a Goddamn gook,” J. D. Hooker said. It was a tired refrain; no one responded.

Saville said, “Kind of strange to think Eddie Kreizler’s just a few hundred yards from here.”

And Tyreen said, “I’m trying not to think about what he looks like by now.”

They went around a building and down a street, crawling past a buffalo-drawn cart. Pedestrians were scattered along the street; Tyreen could see them past the open back of the truck. He kept his hat pulled down and his head tucked in. It was dark under the tarp, and no one looked at them closely. Tyreen was thinking, it was a damned good thing the Chutrang population was not expecting trouble close to home. The war was a long distance away from these mountains.

Someone on the street called out. Tyreen heard Sergeant Khang shout a reply, but he could not make out the words. An inch of water sloshed around in the bed of the truck; his feet were soaked, had been soaked ever since his parachute drop into the Gulf five hours ago. His hands were softened and wrinkled by the hours of wetness; everything they touched was soaking wet.

He was looking out at the street when he saw the lamps go out. It started a hubbub of talk along the street. People gathered in clusters, gesturing. Their faces were afraid. He saw dripping hatbrims bob up and down. J. D. Hooker said, “I hear something popping. Maybe grenades up the hill. Where’s that power station?”

“I guess they did it,” Saville said.

They drove several blocks; the street widened and leveled off. Glancing upward under the tarp, Tyreen observed the clouds moving eastward; there seemed to be a faint break in the weather coming from the west. He scanned the street ahead through a fold in the tarp; a motorcycle roared toward them and went by, leaving a spray of water in the air. It whined up the street splashing pedestrians. The driver carried an automatic rifle over his shoulder. “Headed for the power station,” Saville said. “There’ll be a lot more of those in a few minutes. When the hell do we get off this boulevard?”

Corporal Smith crouched silently under the tarp’s deepest shadows; he had kept unbroken peace ever since they had left the Montagnard camp. His left hand, forgotten, held tightly the machine gun, to keep it still. He sat in water and seemed unaware of it.

They wore a tattered assortment of captured Vietminh hats and jackets; Tyreen tried to picture the sight as it might strike a casual observer behind the truck. How convincing were they? The hat and coat were far too small for Saville — the hat perched ludicrously atop Saville’s big head, and his back had split the fatigue jacket in two; the sleeves hardly enclosed his elbows.

A rumble of noise came up the street toward them. Tyreen put his face close to the small rear window and looked ahead through the windshield. “Steady,” he said. Coming toward them was a convoy of hastily assembled vehicles — two armored troop carriers and half a dozen six-by-six trucks crowded with soldiers. Pedestrians in loose clothes and wide anthill hats crowded close to the buildings. Sergeant Khang leaned out his window to yell at them; he steered the truck in close to the wall to give the convoy passing room. “Steady, now,” Tyreen said again. Theodore Saville moved past Corporal Smith; Saville draped a bullet-torn blouse casually over the machine gun and turned the camouflaged weapon toward the street, ready to fire if he had to. Smith squirmed back toward the rim of the truck bed and clutched his submachine gun defensively. J. D. Hooker’s face was out of sight under his hat; Hooker said, “Just keep moving right on by, gents.” Tyreen thought, at least faintheartedness was not among Hooker’s vices.

The convoy came roaring up the street at high speed, headed for the ambushed power station on the mountain. Tyreen identified 50-millimeter guns mounted on both armored vehicles. He let the tarp corner fall into place and returned to his vantage point at the small window. Khang’s hands on the steering wheel were knotted with ridged veins. He steered close enough to the wall to scrape a fender. The convoy barreled up the middle of the road, intent on speed and contemptuous of civilian pedestrians. Men dived into doorways and alleys; one fat man in a business suit and flapping raincoat flattened his back against a building across the street, and then Tyreen lost sight of him as the lead truck came through, its engine buzzing at high speed. The gun observer sat high on the first armored troop carrier, his helmet firmed down by its chinstrap; the observer stared intently into the cab and turned his head slowly to keep his gaze on Sergeant Khang as the troop carrier loomed alongside and roared past. The noise was intense. There was a good deal of calling back and forth. Tyreen’s finger reached the trigger of his submachine gun, but the trucks kept rolling by, and no one stopped. Sweat stood out on Theodore Saville’s face.

The last truck passed, leaving a wake of heavy spray. Tyreen had a glimpse of the fat pedestrian against the far wall, soaked to the skin. Saville’s voice reached him: “Close enough.”

The truck turned quickly into a rutted alley, wheels crunching on stones. “This will be the place,” Tyreen said, and moved toward the back of the truck. It slowed and made a careful turn into the open barn door of a stone-walled garage built against the side of a steep hill. The light dimmed as they stopped within the garage.

“End of the line,” said Tyreen. “Let’s go.”