The Last Bridge

Chapter Thirty-six 1300 Hours

David Tyreen slid the garage door shut. “Headlights.” He heard someone climb into the truck; there was a squeak of springs. Switches clicked. No light came on. He stood in the dark and heard Sergeant Khang speak:

“Snafu, Colonel. I guess the damned battery’s gone dead on us.”

“Bitching,” said J. D. Hooker.

Tyreen struck a match and moved around the garage, cupping the small flame. “No lamp bulb in the light socket.” The match burned his fingers, and he struck a new one. He found an oil lamp and picked it up. It held no oil.

Theodore Saville said, “We’ll have to give the truck a push to get it started.”

“Sure,” said Nguyen Khang. “Right down the middle of Main Street, hey, Captain?”

Saville was kneeling by Captain Kreizler on the floor. Tyreen’s match went out. He heard Saville talk softly: “How you making it, Eddie?” Kreizler did not reply.

Tyreen said, “I’ve got to talk to him, Theodore.”

“Do you want me to slap his face, or what?”

“Let me know as soon as he starts to come around.”

A gray faint line of light showed under the door. Tyreen’s eye began to adjust to it. J. D. Hooker was complaining: “What you figure to do now, Colonel? Sit here and wait for the gooks to surround the place?”

“Relax, Sergeant. Nobody knows we’re here.”

“Nobody but that gook dame. Who says she won’t spill the beans to the comrades?”

“She won’t,” said Nguyen Khang.

“Anybody ask you, peckerhead?”

“Hooker, by God, I’ve had just about—”

Saville said, “Shut up, God damn it.”

Tyreen went around lighting matches. The place was a repair garage; perhaps there were batteries about, or a battery-charging machine. But he found nothing. The place had been stripped — by vandals, or by the government. A few tools lay haphazardly on the floor, rusty beyond use. Pools of grease puddled the uneven surface. Tyreen blew out the match. There was just enough light to move around. He said, “We’ve got to get Eddie out of here and get back to that bridge. We can’t do it on foot.”

Saville said, “Maybe we ought to get back to that staff car we left back there.”

“That car’s hot, Captain,” Sergeant Khang said. “Real hot. Like a nympho’s pants. We need something clean, like an oxcart or something. A tank, maybe, hey?”

Khang chuckled and added, “Don’t anybody move too fast — I bruise easy.”

Saville came across the room and spoke softly to Tyreen. “Maybe we ought to curl up and get some sleep. You need it, God knows. So do the rest of us, for that matter.”

“Think we can run that radio from in here?”

“I don’t know. We’ll need someplace to run up the antenna.”

“There’s a potbellied stove over in the corner.”

J. D. Hooker hissed across the floor: “Company.”

After a while Tyreen heard the rattle of a vehicle, the chug of an engine with a faulty muffler, and the crunch of slow-moving tires. A moth flipped by his face, brushing him, making him recoil. The rumble of wheels grew louder and stopped, quite close by; the engine ran a moment longer and was switched off; soft voices ran through the air. Boots tramped the wet pavement outside. Tyreen heard the thud of a heavy object being dropped. He moved carefully to the door and began to pull very slowly at the clumsy hasp. He made a slit wide enough for his eye to peer through. Saville was at his shoulder. Tyreen’s fingers tightened against the door. He saw the heavy outline of a jeep, and just beyond it a machine gun on its low tripod. Two men threw wooden horses across the narrow street; a third man crouched by the gun; a fourth waited beside the jeep with a steel helmet on his head and an automatic carbine across the bend of his elbow, leaning back, lighting a cigarette, laughing quietly at something said by one of the others.

Tyreen pushed the door shut silently and latched the hasp. He went back and spoke in a monotone. “Roadblock. I suppose they’re setting them up all over the city, trying to snare us. It’s about thirty feet down from the door.”

Khang said, “And no back door to this joint.”

Saville said, “We could wait them out.”

J. D. Hooker said, “We could blow them up with a couple grenades.”

“Sure,” Khang jeered, “and bring a whole Goddamn platoon down on us before we got two blocks away.”

Saville said, “What about it, David? Eddie’s in no condition to move, anyway. I’ll stand guard. The rest of you sack out a few hours. Maybe they’ll move the roadblock after that. They won’t wait forever, if we don’t show up.”

Tyreen said, “It’s too risky. They’ll be starting a house-to-house search pretty soon, if they haven’t already. If we can steal that jeep and those fresh uniforms, it might give us a break. But we’ve got to do it without noise:”

Khang said, “Hooker can blow on them and knock them down with his Goddamned breath.”

Hooker’s feet scraped the ground. “You slimy little bastard.”

Saville said, “Cut it out, damn it.”

“Then keep this puking peckerhead off my back, Captain.”

Khang said bitterly, “We get all the breaks, don’t we?”

Saville said, “We’re still alive. Which is more than I’d have bet on this morning.”

“Maybe you got something there, Captain.”

Saville said, “You hear that laugh? That’s the laugh of a man holding a Goddamn gun. Sure of himself — but take that damned gun away, and he won’t laugh so loud.”

Khang said, “They’re telling dirty jokes.”

“Sure.”

Outside, the soldiers’ voices rose and fell. Tyreen said, “What’s that?”

Khang moved toward the door. He listened a moment. “They’ve stopped somebody on the street — they’re questioning him... Now they’re letting him pass.”

The scent of motor grease was thick. Tyreen said, “We’re missing something. Theodore?”

“Beats me.”

Someone started to mutter. Tyreen cruised across the room and knelt by Eddie Kreizler. Saville settled by him. Kreizler’s talk was unintelligible. “Out of his head,” Saville said.

“Quiet him down.”

“I’ll give him a Seconal injection.”

Tyreen moved aside. There was a way. There was something obvious that he had missed. He looked around, peering into deep shadows. One of the soldiers whooped outside. Tyreen made inventory of everything in the room. The greasing pit, the truck, the rusty tools, the old potbellied wood stove, the radio, the demolition equipment, the grenades, the submachine guns.

He stopped in his tracks. “Back up,” he muttered. “The stove.”

He went over to it and struck a match and threw his head back. The stove had a metal stovepipe going up to the roof, an old black metal flue with several loose seams.

“Theodore.”

Saville came around behind the truck. Tyreen’s glance traveled up the stovepipe to the ceiling. “Hole in the roof,” he said.

A wooden square covered the hole; the chimney went up through a circular cut. “We can lift that wood off.”

“It’ll be a tight fit, especially for me.”

“You’ll make it, Theodore.”

“Sure I will.”

“We’ll have to get the stovepipe down without making a racket.”

“That’ll be ticklish, David. I can imagine what that thing would sound like, falling down.”

“A dogfight in an alley full of garbage cans.”

Saville chuckled. Tyreen shook the match out. “Everybody over here, now.”

“Push,” Tyreen said. J. D. Hooker grunted. Saville shouldered against the truck’s fender. The truck slowly rolled backward. “Hold it!” Khang hit the brake and the truck stopped, backed against the stove.

Khang came down. “All right,” Tyreen said. “Up you go.”

Saville got on the tailgate and made a stirrup of his hands. Nguyen Khang scrambled up onto the rear hoop of the tarp frame. Saville’s great hands gripped Khang’s calves, bracing the man’s weight. Khang reached out. He had to lean precariously outward to reach the stovepipe. The match burned down and burned Tyreen’s fingers. J. D. Hooker said, “Here. Use my lighter, Colonel. Not much fluid left in the puking thing.”

The stovepipe projected up through a square of boards. Khang said, “I guess it’s covered with tarpaper and nailed down.”

Hooker held the lower end of the pipe steady. The small yellow flame flickered, turning bluish. Khang worked with a rusty screwdriver, trying to pry the stovepipe out. Saville braced his weight. Presently Khang uttered a sigh and dropped his hands. “Arms get damn tired up there.” After a moment he lifted them again. Tyreen glanced down, and at that moment the lighter went out. “Just as well. It was getting too damned hot to hold.” He had only a few matches left. “Hurry up.”

“Take it easy, Colonel.” There was a metallic crackle, the flue bending back. Everyone froze. Tyreen held his breath and listened.

Nothing stirred. After a long interval, one of the sentries laughed in the street. “All right,” Tyreen said, and lighted a fresh match. “I’ve only got three of these left.”

“I’ve got some,” Saville said. “Be careful, Sergeant.”

“What in hell you think I’m doing?”

Tyreen measured time by the matches he burned. He reached into Saville’s pocket for a matchbook. The floor was littered with burnt matches. Khang said, “God, my arms are tired. I think it’s about ready to bust loose. Somebody catch the thing if I drop it, for God’s sake.”

Saville stood like a heavy machine, supporting Khang’s legs. Hooker waited below the stove, his head far back and his mouth hanging open. Inscrutably patient, Saville stood unmoving, holding up Khang’s weight at a difficult angle.

“I think my arms are falling off,” Khang said.

“Relax a minute, then,” Saville said.

“No — it’s about to come loose. I can feel it.”

Another match. Sulphur was a stink in the air. Tyreen’s lips pulled away from his teeth as though tugged by strings. He sweated and felt dizzy. Saville bulked above him — enormous, silent, unmovable, the great fists untiring. Tyreen heard the soft klink of metal on metal, metal on wood, the creak of nails working loose. There was faint laughter, an echo from the street. “You’d think they’d know each other’s jokes by now,” Saville said. Tyreen’s chest moved shallowly, the cautious breathing of fear.

Khang’s voice came quick and low: “Here it comes.” Tyreen’s cheeks sucked in.

One stretched squeak, and all motion stopped. The soldiers outside still laughed. Khang straightened his back, pulling the chimney and boards toward him in a piece. The stovepipe bent slowly. It began to come apart in the middle. Khang said, “It’s jointed there. Let it come loose. Hooker, hold that stove steady. You want the puking thing to fall over?”

“Shut up.” Hooker braced his arms against the stove. His pendulous mouth hung away from his teeth. In the matchlight, a tide of color turned his cheeks ruddy. The thick muscles of his arms bunched against the sleeves. With a scrape, the top half of the pipe lifted away and Khang stood like a diver ready to plunge down, holding a two-foot square of wood pierced by a black tube of metal.

“Coming down.”

Tyreen lifted a match overhead. The chimney passed down from Khang’s hands to Saville’s to Tyreen’s. The match went out. He laid the stovepipe down. “Don’t step on this thing. Theodore, can you fit through up there?”

“Not without making a racket.”

“Then wait here with Eddie. Cover us from the door.”

Sergeant Khang said, “I’m up here already. I may as well go on up. Somebody hand me my gun.”

“No guns,” said Tyreen. “Go on up.”

“No guns, Colonel?”

Saville climbed down. “You heard him. Quit wasting time.”

Khang grabbed the edges of the hole with his hands. “I hope this old roof holds our weight.” He kicked himself away from the truck. For a moment his legs dangled. Then they pulled up out of sight, and in a moment his face appeared. “Looks safe enough. I can’t see anybody. There’s a parapet, kind of, around the edge. Come on up.”

Tyreen climbed onto the truck. He felt Saville’s arms lifting him up. The square hole splashed sky light in his face. He crawled onto the roof, out of breath, and rolled away from the hole. The roof creaked. Hooker came up through the hole, dragging his gun and a harness full of grenades. Tyreen made motions violently. With a sour face Hooker took the weaponry off and laid it aside. Tyreen moved forward toward the edge of the roof, crawling on his belly. A mountain lifted behind them, but there was no sign of life on it. The gasoline storage tanks still burned on the farther hillside. A thick black roll of smoke hung over the fires. Tyreen could smell it. He reached the edge and snagged himself forward to look down.

The jeep stood idle; the machine gun lay on its squat tripod. One man sat with his legs spread on either side of the gun, his arms cradled across the handle, chin dropped on his arms. Another sat with his back to the side of the jeep, cupping his hands around a fresh cigarette, lighting it. The match flipped from his fingers and sizzled in a puddle. The one who liked to laugh leaned hipshot on one of the wooden sawhorses thrown across the street. The man at the gun lifted his head and spoke a few words. His companion laughed coarsely, almost falsely.

Khang came up and lay belly-flat by him. Tyreen glanced up. The gray surface of the clouds was pearled. Here and there the sun shone through. It seemed a little warmer than it had been. Hooker crawled up, his face bloodless, his brooding gaze dropping to fix itself on the machine gun and the soldiers. Hooker glanced at Khang, and his expression was static. A car rattled along a street nearby. Tyreen whispered, “One thing wrong. There were four men when they set up the roadblock. Where’s that fourth man?”

“Walking a beat,” said Hooker. “Hear him?”

“No.”

“He’s down the far end of the block. Coming back this way.”

“All right,” said Tyreen. “Wait for him to turn the corner up at that end. Jump him when he’s out of sight of the others. And Hooker — no noise. Understand?”

Hooker’s eyes were devoid of everything but consciousness. He lifted the knife from his boot. Tyreen said, “Live soldiers are more use to me than dead heroes, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hooker turned away and crawled toward the side of the building. Tyreen watched him go over the edge onto the roof of the neighboring building. When Hooker was out of view, Tyreen heard the soft thud of boots coming back up the street, under the wall. The sentry walked on slowly toward the far corner where Hooker waited. Tyreen caught Khang’s sullen glance and said, “Wait here.” He went off, trailing Hooker across the rooftops, moving with silent speed. Looking back, he saw Khang’s round head turning steadily to watch him. Khang was showing his teeth. Tyreen went over the edge onto the lower roof and saw Hooker at the end of it; Hooker’s hard, bright eye flickered, and then he swung around, swinging one leg over the wall. He looked back again, and Tyreen nodded.

Fine short wrinkles converged around Tyreen’s tired eyes. Hooker was bent over, a dozen feet ahead of him, looking down into the alley. Cold air clung to the rooftops. Looking at Hooker’s wide flat back, Tyreen could feel the strain in Hooker, temper crowding self-control. Hooker tensed, crouching poised. The knife lifted and glinted dull reflection against Tyreen’s eyes. Hooker’s fist clenched at the rim of the roof and he bent, curved his knife-arm, and dropped soundlessly from sight.

Tyreen dug his feet in, lifting his knife. He moved rapidly to the edge and looked down.

Ten feet below, Hooker stood with feet spread, body bent in an attitude of strained anticipation. Before him a stirring shadow on the ground was the soldier, knocked flat by the force of Hooker’s jump. Hooker held his knife up. The blade was still clean. “Damned fool,” Tyreen murmured. He saw the soldier’s arm move. He lifted his own knife by the point and flung it down with enough force to sink it hilt-deep in the soldier’s back.

The soldier’s back arched in powerful spasm. There was one quiet cough; that was all. Tyreen slid over the edge, let himself hang by his hands, and dropped to the alley. He wheeled to face Hooker and saw Hooker’s angry flashing eyes and spoke under his breath with flat calm:

“Next time sink your knife when you drop on the man. You waited for him to make a fight out of it. What if he’d yelled? One more play like that, and I’ll kill you myself. You hear me?”

Hooker’s glance clashed with his. Hooker’s eager, cruel hatred grew bright. He started forward with his knife, stopped, held Tyreen’s eyes a moment longer, and dropped his face, putting the knife away. He looked up again and checked something he had clearly meant to say.

Tyreen put his foot against the soldier’s shoulder and withdrew his knife; he wiped the blade on the dead man’s tunic and put it away.

Hooker opened his mouth and then closed it. He moved closer and said, “Somebody’s coming up the street.”

Tyreen put his shoulder to the corner and looked around into the street. Beyond the roadblock he saw a single small figure coming toward the wooden sawhorses. It was the girl, Lin Thao: he recognized her unmistakably. Hooker crowded around beside him. “What the shit?”

The girl was looking up, past the roadblock and above it. Toward the roof of the garage. Tyreen said, “Khang must be showing himself so she can see him.”

“So she can give us all away, Colonel? Like that bastard Sun?”

The girl walked straight toward the roadblock. One of the soldiers grinned. The man by the machine gun stood up. All of them faced the girl. Tyreen murmured, “Come on. No noise.”

He stepped out and walked toward the backs of the soldiers. He had gone five or six paces when the girl brought her hand to her mouth and uttered a weak scream. Her eyes rolled up and she fell limp to the ground, as if she had fainted. The soldiers spoke in quick excitement, and all three ran around the sawhorses toward the crumpled girl.

Tyreen crossed the street and moved quickly along the wall. He lifted his head and made a signal to Nguyen Khang; Khang moved along the rooftop, keeping parallel to the soldiers. Tyreen’s boots moved without sound. He felt weak and unsure of himself, but his knife came up and by the time the first soldier knelt over the girl, Tyreen was within jumping distance of the man. Khang dropped off the roof; Hooker grabbed a man from behind by the throat, and Khang broke a man’s back with his boots, jumping on him from the roof. Tyreen put one hand around the third soldier’s mouth and rammed his knife up between the man’s back ribs. The man’s mouth sprang open and he tried to scream; the sound was blocked by Tyreen’s palm.

The girl rolled over and looked up. She said gravely, “We must go.”

“In the jeep,” Tyreen said, and turned toward the garage. Theodore Saville was sliding the big door open.