The Last Bridge

Chapter Forty-three 0830 Hours

Hooker and Khang, stumbling at times, carried the litter. Tyreen walked ahead, stooping to search spots where twigs poked up from the path, where vines across the track might be trigger-threads, where an interwoven mat of fallen twigs and branches might conceal a pit bottomed with barbed pungi stakes. Saville guarded the rear: Saville walked along burdened with his own pack and the heavy sackful of explosives and the radio equipment — and after the second hour’s march, without comment, Saville had taken Tyreen’s pack as well, and Tyreen had been unable to raise the will to object.

It was slow traveling along the trail searching for traps, suspicious of every leaf and vine; it would have been slower yet to break trail through the rain forest.

There was no deadline to speak of Tyreen knew the last freight of the day would reach the water tank late in the afternoon. The night train was a passenger train to Haiphong, and it would not do to hijack a passenger train.

But the hours were enemies, and Tyreen hurried.

He hurried as much as he could — foot-weary, raw-eyed, and weak with malarial fevers. He snapped at the two sergeants to keep up. He snapped at himself when his foot, too heavy to clear a root, snagged and almost toppled him. He snapped at the deceptive twigs and vines and mats of branches on the path. He snapped, under his breath, at Eddie Kreizler, whose head rolled from side to side and whose mouth was pinched grimly shut. He was about to snap at Theodore Saville, but when he looked at the incredible heap of equipment piled on top of Saville he held his tongue.

Squinting and blinking painfully, Tyreen plodded on a slightly down-tilted jungle track and listened to the rasp of his own breathing. He gave himself a reluctant thought. The General will say, “You ought to be shot.” He will be right.

Maybe I will be shot, he thought. He did not overestimate his chances of survival.

He suspected there was a blister on the back of his left heel. He clenched his toes to keep the boot from rubbing. The trail was never visible more than ten feet ahead at most. Moss, vines, trees, ferns, mud, roots, ants and snakes and centipedes and leeches, tangled thorns, thickets of bamboo stalks eight inches thick, the soaked red-black earth — all of it was covered with a thin excremental slime, slightly green, like dirty motor oil.

The temperature was moderate, but in the steamy motionless air he would have sweated violently even without fever. He swallowed salt tablets and canteen water, and his cuffs were sodden from wiping his eyebrows to keep sweat out of his vision.

Here and there, the morning sun streamed through apertures in the treetops. The trail curled back and forth until it stretched out, straight and level, over a distance of twenty-five or thirty feet. The surface was rocky just here. Tyreen swung out of line and waited for the others to pass. “Set him down and take a break.”

Saville came up, big as a Clydesdale. He lowered his load to the ground. He was not even breathing hard. He said, “You may break, but you won’t let yourself quit.”

Tyreen said, “Put pressure on a man, and you begin to find out what he’s worth. It works on the rest of you — it works on myself, too.”

“Most of all,” Saville said. He sat down beside Tyreen. “I wish I knew what in hell you’re trying to prove, David.”

Kreizler was listening. Kreizler’s voice croaked at them: “A pillar of strength, David?”

Tyreen looked at him. Kreizler said, “The Colonel wants to stand like an oasis of honor and courage and strength. You’d be all right, David, if you didn’t have such a big conscience breathing down your neck.”

Tyreen looked at Sergeant Khang. “Let’s have a little security.”

Khang walked forward along the trail. Hooker, without expression, got up and walked back the way they had come, and sat down facing away from the rest of them.

Kreizler said, “Old Ironbutt didn’t know you were going to head this thing up yourself, did he?”

“No,” Tyreen said.

“Even the old man’s not that crazy.” Kreizler’s head was tilted speculatively. “You still don’t know what this is all about, do you, David? Your honest little brain hasn’t got it figured out yet.”

“Got what figured out?”

“The whole thing. It’s a puppet show, you and me and the rest of us. General Jaynshill’s been pulling the strings on the whole damned show. This was set up. It had to be. I was in a position where it was more than likely I’d fall into enemy hands. Knowing that, the General still saw fit to convey important strategic information to me by radio. Information that turned out to be false — information the enemy would be bound to get out of me if they captured me. Does it start to become clear yet, David?”

Tyreen said, “You’re wrong, Eddie.”

“Then quit frowning.”

Tyreen hunched his knees up and took off his boots. His feet smelled as acrid as strong vinegar. His heel was raw; a blister was starting to come up.

Kreizler said, “And you’re busting your ass trying to do a good job for Old Ironbutt. He’s shafted you, David. Screwed the whole lot of us.”

Tyreen said, “What would you do, Eddie?”

“Quit humoring me.”

“All right. Just tell me. What would you do?”

Kreizler said in a level tone, “I’d make it count. I’d take those damned explosives in that sack and I’d smuggle myself into Hanoi and blow up the Goddamn premier’s palace. To hell with a crummy railroad bridge. Who gives a shit? They’ll rebuild the thing in a little while. Just give me one crack at old Uncle Ho — and then watch the fur fly.”

Kreizler smiled weakly. “But you won’t do that. You won’t even think about that. You’ve got your orders and your Goddamn conscience. It comes with a colonel’s eagles.”

Tyreen said nothing. Kreizler said, “What about you, Theodore? What do you think?”

Tyreen slipped his boot on. “It doesn’t matter what Theodore thinks. I’ll give the orders a while longer yet. Eddie, when the manager says sacrifice, you bunt — you don’t make wild swings hoping for a home run.”

There was a trick he had learned from a truck driver. He let his cigarette burn down to a stub and sear his fingers. The pain, a new pain, would wake him up. He felt jittery, the result of too many quinines and Benzedrines and too much sickness. And, perhaps, fear.

Kreizler said, “We’ve been used, David. All of us.”

“No,” Tyreen said. “If you were a gift to the enemy, Eddie, the General wouldn’t have been so anxious to break you out and get you home. They don’t do this kind of thing for every P.O.W.”

Kreizler said, “Exactly, David. They don’t. That’s just my point. There’s only one reason you were sent up here to bust me out. It was to tell the enemy how important I am. How valuable I am. How much my information means. When you busted me loose, it was the final straw, for them. It convinced them my information was worth acting on. The information they had to torture out of me because I didn’t know it was a Goddamn puking lie.”

He added more quietly, “If this wasn’t premeditated, David, then why did the General make plans two weeks ago to shift the positions of all our teams up here?”

Tyreen’s eyes lay fixed on the implacable dark jungle. Kreizler murmured, “Maybe it comes as a shock to you, though God knows why it should. We are no better than they are. We are no different from them, David. We—”

“Shut up, Eddie.”

“Never interrupt a dying man, David.”

“You’re not dying.”

“I’m in limbo, right now. David, if you weren’t so pathetic, I’d laugh at you. We’ve taken a patient with a wooden leg, two blind eyes, arthritis, cancer, heart disease, and athlete’s foot. We’ve cured the athlete’s foot. Hell, we haven’t accomplished a thing. And how many got killed? How many got hurt?”

Tyreen said, “You’ll feel better, Eddie.”

Kreizler said huskily, “I’m dying, David. Because that’s the way I want it. Dying only means one thing to me right now. Not being tired anymore. Not feeling like a bastard. I remember when I was a kid, we used to go to church, and we had a real Fundamentalist preacher in those days. According to him the Devil’s ultimate goal was to take a man’s soul and give him nothing at all in exchange. The Devil has got to all of us. Do you remember I asked you if you’d ever heard of a Judas goat? A Judas goat’s what they use to lead sheep into the slaughterhouse, because sheep are dumb enough to follow any animal with gumption enough to lead the way. And a goat is just dumb enough to lead the way. That’s me, David. That by God is me. And I’ll be grateful to you if you keep your damned hands off me and let me die.”

Kreizler’s voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper. Saville made a gesture; he was about to get up. Tyreen stopped him. “You can’t mess with a man’s fear, Theodore. You’ve got to let him do that for himself.”

Saville said, in his considered way, “I don’t think he’s afraid, David. I don’t think that’s it.”

Kreizler looked at Tyreen with a crooked grin. “David, you’re a one-of-a-kind original. You go around like a character trying to kill fleas with a shovel. You’ll never have a thing to show for your Goddamn honor and guts except some threads on your shoulders where your insignia used to hang. You and your puking paralyzed upper lip.” His head turned away, and he said absently, “I wish I had some G.I. soap right now. I’d like to wash off some of this dirt before I have to start paying real-estate taxes on it.”

Saville regarded him dismally. Tyreen said, “He’ll think a different way when he gets well. He’s pretty sick right now.”

Kreizler turned around angrily. “I hope I’m sick, David. I hope to God I’m sick. Because I’d hate like hell to feel this way if I was well. But that doesn’t change anything. You come banging up here with your Goddamn worthless dignity and your principles like Genghis Khan. You let yourself get euchred into this stunt because you thought you were doing a good thing. If you’d known what it was really all about, you’d have told the General to go diddle himself. Which is exactly why he lied to you. Am I right, Colonel? You bet I am right. Dead right. You’d do anything at all if it was orders, but this was a volunteer job, wasn’t it? You can’t even use a war criminal’s excuse. You didn’t even have to come. David, you’ve got loose brains. You’ve got your left foot and your right foot, and you don’t need any other enemies.”

Kreizler seemed to sag. He touched a bandaged fist to his chest. “I’ve got a sour lump right here,” he said. “It won’t go up, and it won’t go down.”

“So,” he said after a little while, unable to think of anything to add.

Tyreen sat brooding across the path. He said, “Maybe we all deserve better than what we get.”

Kreizler said, “Sentiment is an amateur’s weakness, David.” He lay frowning, earnestly scratching one buttock with stubborn determination. He said, “I never trusted Old Ironbutt. Even when I was his exec, back in Korea. He’s got too many teeth in that alligator smile of his. I should’ve figured him for something like this. Just as sure as there’s a hole in your ass. He likes these jobs. He gets his kicks that way — vicarious. I guess he’s like most of us. Everybody likes to be a killer, but it’s unfashionable to admit it.” He cackled harshly, like a hen. “Okay. You throw the dice, they come up crap-out. But if you get back, David, do one thing for me. Remember Old Ironbutt. He’s the heavy.”

Kreizler moved his arms and lay with his hands behind his head, looking at the treetops as though printing poems on the sky. His voice clacked abruptly: “You can’t take me along on this train caper. I can’t chase after a train or jump off a train. You’ll have to ditch me somewhere. Might as well be right here.”

“We’ll see,” Tyreen said. “We may leave you at the water tank. But we’ll be back for you. I promise you that.”

“Sure,” Kreizler said. “And if you’re not back in twelve hours, I’m to call the man from U.N.C.L.E. I don’t believe you’ll make it, if you want my honest opinion. I don’t think you really know the odds against you.”

“I don’t play the odds,” Tyreen said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake take off your blindfold. You could blow up a thousand bridges, and it wouldn’t change a thing.”

Tyreen said slowly, “I’m in command, Eddie.”

“In command of what? Everything but yourself.”

There were times when a man had to make a quick decision and then stick to it for the rest of his life. Tyreen sat silent, measuring the flow of time and fixing a limit after which he would step away and lead them into the jungle.

Kreizler said, “I guess it’s too late for you to start thinking.”

You had to fight, and you had to believe there was a point to it. If that was blind dedication, then Kreizler was right, it was too late to worry.

Kreizler said, “I like to hope, too.”

Theodore Saville said, “We’re not paid to think about things, Eddie.”

Kreizler’s eyes flicked around. “Live long enough, Theodore, and you’ll decide to let some other fool do the dirty jobs.”

Tyreen said, “I always thought it ought to be the other way around.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Kreizler said disgustedly. “David, today means more than yesterday. Why don’t you get Theodore and those other two out of here while you can?”

Tyreen said, after a moment, “There are worse things than dying, Eddie.”

“For me. Not for you.” Kreizler moved himself around on one hip. “Last night I was going to lift Theodore’s gun. To get it over with, get myself out of your way. But I just couldn’t do it. I guess they’ve made oatmeal out of me.”

“They?”

“Colonel Trung and Old Ironbutt. Not much choice between those two. But that doesn’t matter, not to you. You’re thinking about that Goddamn railroad bridge, and as far as you’re concerned it’s just one more river to cross. One last bridge to blow. David, you ought to have your Goddamn head kicked in. You’re a gentleman, and that’s a puking tragic thing. There’s no place left for gentlemen. Who do you think you are, David — General Robert E. Lee?”

The pupils of Kreizler’s eyes were pinpoints; the irises around them seemed enlarged, and a bright glint pushed out of them. His face was flushed, and earnest taut anger was ground into the pain-tracked lines around his mouth. He reached out and took a powerful grip on Tyreen’s wrist. “Get them home — before you have them on your conscience, too.”

Tyreen gave him a bloodshot look. Kreizler removed his hand, and Tyreen’s face hardened. Kreizler said, “You’ll never square it with that conscience of yours.”

Tyreen got up. He made a low whistle, and J. D. Hooker’s head swiveled around inquiringly. Hooker nodded and picked himself up and walked forward. Tyreen reached for his pack. His submachine gun lay on the ground. Saville said, “I’ll carry the pack.”

“I’ll lug it awhile.”

He picked up the pack and got one arm into the harness, and then Kreizler was rolling over, grabbing up the submachine gun. He lurched to his feet and hobbled across the trail with his legs apart; Tyreen dropped the pack and swung toward him. Kreizler’s gun swayed toward J. D. Hooker, and Kreizler started to talk very fast, not making any sense. His finger whitened on the trigger, and he sprayed bullets into the ground. Their geyser-tracks marched toward Hooker’s feet and Hooker, roaring with rage, whipped his chopper up. There was a tearing blast of submachine gun fire. It lifted Kreizler off his feet and slammed him back against the trees. He fell down with his mouth open.

“Jesus,” J. D. Hooker said in fascination.

Saville ran across the path and took Kreizler’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. Tyreen knelt beside him. Saville said, “Dead. He went right out of his head.”

“No,” said Tyreen. “He did it deliberately. He had it in his head the minute we set him down.”

Hooker came over, slinging his gun. He crouched by Kreizler in disbelief. “What the puke did he do that for, Colonel?”

Tyreen told him, “Captain Kreizler figured he’d slow us down and make our job tougher. He knew we wouldn’t kill him or leave him behind.”

Hooker said, “And he took this way out? Jesus. What an ugly Goddamn way to die.”

“Tell me a pretty way,” Theodore Saville said, and turned his face away.

Hooker got up and moved down the trail like a sleepwalker. Saville said in a low tone, “That’s not why he killed himself, and you know it.”

“Maybe,” Tyreen said. “We’ll never be sure. But the story I gave Hooker is the story we stick by.”

Saville said, “I thought I had you filed. But I guess you never know about a man.”

“We’ll bury him and get out of here. That noise will bring a patrol this way.”

Saville’s face was heavy. Tyreen took out a crumpled cigarette pack and shook it out. “Smoke, Theodore?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

Tyreen said, “Smoking’s a bad thing. It can make a man sick to his stomach.”

After a while Saville said, “I guess I will have that cigarette.”