The Last Bridge

Chapter Forty-one 0400 Hours

“Take ten,” Tyreen said. He put his back to a rock and slid down to sit on the damp earth. Forty yards below him the jungle began again, unrolling across the valley. He could see the mountains a dozen miles away, the upper end of the high gorge breaking starkly out of the forest.

Saville and Hooker laid down the stretcher and Eddie Kreizler rolled his head toward Tyreen. “Magiccarpet treatment,” Kreizler said. His tone bespoke his belligerent fight against the effects of pain.

Nguyen Khang climbed higher on the mountain to search the valley. Tyreen sat back and let his chugging lungs settle down. He swallowed a capsule and felt the small number of them left in the tin in his pocket; he allowed himself a dreary moment’s anticipation of the hours ahead. Kreizler said, “I’m hungry as hell,” and Saville found a ration for him. J. D. Hooker’s cropped head tipped forward against his chest; his flat face was dull. Across the valley the rough hat and spear contours of the heights stood against a mottled, half-broken sky, graying up in false dawn. Flows of mist filled pockets on the hills, and when Sergeant Khang came sliding down from his reconnaissance he said, “Going to warm up today, I think. Can’t see much down there.”

Faint abrasive sounds came out of the jungle. A few birds whistled. Khang went down to the edge of the trees and disappeared in darkness. Tyreen leaned his head back and closed his eyes momentarily. The sky threw a steady growth of illumination across the landscape. Tyreen’s eyes slid open, and he found J. D. Hooker studying him. Hooker possessed an unbreakable solemnity; Tyreen could never remember seeing him laugh. Hooker’s face was the cold color of marble. He said in a half-cranky tone, “It’s getting late to be hanging around here. Sir.”

When Tyreen said nothing, Hooker’s chin thrust forward. Always ready to pick a fight, Tyreen thought. Theodore Saville said, “You ought to pick your enemies with more care, Hooker.”

“What?”

“Can’t hate everybody, can you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Forget it,” said Saville. Hooker looked away incuriously. Darkness gave ground quickly, and on the eastern horizon a pale yellow band appeared and spread out, quite rapidly, along the hilltops.

Tyreen saw Hooker’s gun muzzle move. His eyes caught a movement that disappeared in the trees and presently came in sight again. Tyreen moved his body to one side to have better control of his submachine gun. After a moment he relaxed. “All right. It’s Khang.”

Sergeant Khang paused at that moment, on the edge of the trees, and studied the shadowed rocks with care. Tyreen’s voice crawled softly down to him: “Come on up.”

Khang slid into the rock’s overhanging shadow with the smell of his exerted sweat pumping out. When his breathing had softened, he said, “Nobody around. There’s a trail, but I think it may be mined.”

Violet shadows crept backward across jungle depressions, in fast-moving retreat. Tyreen shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand. The red rim of the ascending sun came over the horizon and flared against his face. He put his head back against the hard, grainy rock; his legs flopped out straight, and he lay as though collapsed. A loose tangle of memories crowded paths through his tired mind, of times and places that had nothing in common with this time and this place. He heard Kreizler murmuring to Saville about his wife back home, and he heard Saville’s grunts of reply. He thought of the few women he had known, and wondered why he had been unable to stay with any of them, or they with him. Odd thoughts, stray images — he had for one instant a clear vision of Saville on a swaying boat deck off the Korean coast, firing a semiautomatic rifle with deadly, methodical precision into the trees above a thin band of beach.

He opened his eyes, and the red disk of the sun was balanced on the horizon. The slanted rays turned the far mountain of the Sang Chu gorge crimson and violet. They splashed the faces of his companions with a ruddy flush, all except Kreizler’s, which lay in shadow and remained pale and strained.

Saville moved his weight up to the rock. “David, you been giving any thought to what we do when we get there?”

“We blow up the bridge.”

“While two hundred People’s Soldiers twiddle their thumbs and cheer us on?”

Tyreen drew a picture on the ground. “This is the gorge. The bridge crosses it here. On the south side there’s a big shelf, maybe a hundred yards deep and a quarter mile long. That’s where the troop barracks are. Fortifications and the rest. On the north side there’s a small guard tower. It’s all they’ve got room for. The tracks make a small turn and go into a tunnel maybe fifteen yards from the bridge. The tunnel comes out on the north side of the mountain. It’s about a third of a mile long.”

“I know all that,” Saville said.

“Sometimes it helps to draw a picture.”

“Okay. What do you figure to do? Make our approach through the tunnel?”

“Exactly.”

“It’ll be guarded. Probably machine gun emplacements at both ends — maybe more than that.”

“Guarded against what?” Tyreen said.

“People like us.”

“But it’s not guarded against trains.”

Saville’s head skewed back. “Trains?”

Tyreen pointed at his drawing. “Tracks go up a steep grade to get to the tunnel. A train going southbound would be slowed to a crawl by the time it got near the top.”

“And you want to play Jesse James and steal a Goddamn train.”

“And rig our demolitions on the engine,” Tyreen said, “and set the whole thing to blow sky-high when it rolls onto the bridge.”

Saville said, “It’s a good plan — a great plan, except for maybe three or four dozen holes in it. David, you must be out—”

Tyreen cut him off: “If it was your tunnel and your bridge, would you expect anybody to try a stunt like this?”

“I guess not.”

“Then they won’t expect it either.”

Saville growled, “What the hell difference does that make? There’s only four of us. And Eddie. How in hell do we steal a train? How do we get on board without anybody knowing we’re there?”

Tyreen pointed across the valley. “The trains stop at the bottom of the grade to take on water. They still use steam engines up here. We jump them at the water tank.”

Saville shook his head. “When the troops up there hear us shooting it out with the train crew, they won’t just scratch their heads and shrug. The minute we fire one shot, they’ll have half the North Vietnamese army up our ass.”

“Then we’ll have to make it our business not to fire one shot,” Tyreen said. He shouldered into his pack and got to his feet. “Time to move out.”