The Last Bridge

Chapter Five 2245 Hours

David Tyreen felt a sour taste in his mouth. The jeep bucked to a halt outside the airfield’s operations building, and Tyreen made a dash for the Quonset-covered doorway, his head bowed against the steady rain. Braving the weather, aircraft landed and took off with steady frequency, guided by runway lights and the hard shine of flares. Crash crews, soaked to the skin, waited by their emergency vehicles. From here he could clearly see flashes of artillery and mortar explosions to the west where Colonel Farber’s battalion fought a pitched engagement against the Vietcong.

Tyreen reached for the doorknob and stopped there, rain runneling off the awning above him. He watched a crippled F-102 careen down out of the low cloud-cover toward the far runway. The Delta Dagger was limping badly, one wing fluttering toward the ground as it fought to level out. Fire trucks chased the ambulance, wheeling away from their stations with a drumming of skidding tires and the shriek of sirens and clang of bells. The wounded jet fighter struck the ground on one wheel and a wingtip. Sparks scaled along the ground from the tearing wing. The ship nosed over on its back and skidded, spinning, with an explosive sound of ripping that deafened Tyreen. The plane settled, upside-down and propped up on its tail like a man on one crutch. Tyreen’s breath hung up in his chest, but there was no explosion. Crash trucks rocked into position around the plane; a crew of men ran out a pair of hoses and doused the plane with a flood of foaming chemicals while medics in protective suits ran in under the barrage of liquid to pry the canopy open and extract the pilot like men jimmying a locked-in ice cube out of a hard-frozen tray.

The rescue crew emerged from the foam and Tyreen saw them set a man on his feet; the man stumbled once or twice, threw his head back in laughter, and walked over to the ambulance between two medics.

Tyreen palmed the knob and stepped inside. A sentry stopped him in the corridor and he had to show his pass. He hung his cap and raincoat on a peg and climbed to the tower, stopping twice to show his papers.

In the traffic control tower half the men were hard against the window, watching the activity out by the crashed jet. One man at a desk talked calmly into a microphone, pinching his temples and grimacing as if he had a bad headache. A technical sergeant sat by a radio, listening intently to voices on the headset. He jotted something on a card and passed the card to the man at the microphone.

Raindrops ran down the outside of the big in-tilted observation windows. A young shirt-sleeved Air Force captain came swinging away from the crowd of people, talking irritably:

“All right — all right. Let’s everybody get on the stick. We’ve got work to do.” He picked up a telephone and yelled into it: “Lieutenant, I want a cleanup crew out on that runway, on the double. Get that wreckage off the tarmac. We’ve got five planes coming in from Qui Lai, and they’re all low on fuel.”

The Captain slammed down the phone and turned. He walked toward Tyreen with a careless salute. “You’ll be Colonel Tyreen,” he said; he did not have to add, You’re all I need right now.

“That’s right. Captain Grove, isn’t it?”

With a dry glance Tyreen handed over a requisition form with General Jaynshill’s bold signature.

The Captain flapped the paper up and down and glanced at Tyreen with no show of friendliness. “Okay,” he said.

“Have you started to shave yet, Captain?”

“What?”

“They promote you people pretty fast in the Air Force, don’t they?”

The young Captain let it slide off. “You may be in for some trouble, Colonel. I’d figured to give you Peters as pilot. He’s been in the air seven hours today, on nine flight missions, but that’s less than any other pilot around here right now. But that was Peters you saw crack up out there. He may not be badly hurt, but he’s damn sure too shook up to do any more flying today.”

An airman yelled the Captain’s name, and Grove wheeled away with a snap of his trim shoulders. Tyreen pushed out his arm to look at his watch. Just past eleven. Time to call Harris. Captain Grove was listening to the telephone, trying to light a cigarette one-handed; his hand trembled with the matchbook. Circles of fatigue underscored his eyes. Tyreen took the matchbook and lighted the Captain’s cigarette — a calculated gesture: sometimes little courtesies were enough to blunt the edge of a tired man’s enmity. The young Captain nodded a perfunctory thanks and barked into the telephone:

“Patch it with mud if you have to, for the time being. Let’s get those planes down. We can worry about a pretty paving job when we’ve got time for it.”

He listened to the phone for a moment. Tyreen felt the touch of malarial weakness. The Captain said sarcastically, “You do have shovels down there, don’t you, Lieutenant? Then God damn it, quit jaw-assing over this telephone and get your balls in gear.”

He dropped the receiver into place and swung his head around, balefully searching for an ashtray.

The phone rang again. Grove let his ashes drop by his toes and grabbed the instrument. “What is it?” His eyes widened, and he handed the phone to Tyreen.

It was Harris. “Captain Saville just reported in. He’s over at Tan Son Nhut in a hangar. Left his phone number for you to call.”

“All right,” Tyreen said. “Give me the number.”

Captain Grove was across the room, shading his eyes with his face close to the observation window. Tyreen hung up and went to him. “Sorry to trouble you, Captain.”

“Never mind,” Grove said.

“I’ll need the use of a scrambler phone.”

“In the ops office,” the Captain said. He waved toward a door in the back of the room; he was already on his way to the radio operator, his voice preceding him: “Have you got those three 102s on beam yet?”

Tyreen walked past a row of radar screens, each with an airman intent on its nebulous patterns of light. Voices called across the tower, and Tyreen walked through into the cramped ops office.

A man lay asleep on a folding cot in one corner — the traffic control officer, asleep in his uniform, looking deep in coma. Tyreen closed the door and went to the desk.

He spoke a number into the phone and said, “Scramble this, please.” An operator’s voice answered, and in a few moments he heard the line ring. He glanced at his watch: 2312. When the phone clicked he said immediately, “Theodore?”

“Right, sir. Are we scrambled?”

“I hope so,” Tyreen said. “Go ahead.”

“Corporal Smith reported in by radio. Eddie Kreizler’s being held for interrogation in the Chutrang barracks.”

“Yeah,” Tyreen said, expecting it.

“His exec’s a peckerhead lieutenant by the name of Chinh. They captured him too. I figure the Reds won’t work them both over at once. They’ll interrogate Chinh first because they’ll figure it’s easier to break him down.”

“It won’t take too long for them to find out the Vietnamese doesn’t know half as much as Eddie knows about our operations up there. If Chinh starts to talk, that’s the first thing he’ll tell them. It’ll be the quickest way he can get them off his back.”

“That’s assuming he’ll break.”

Tyreen said, “Everybody’s got a limit. He’ll break, if they get the idea that it’s worth the effort to break him down. And since they picked him up with Eddie, it won’t take them long to reach that conclusion. Still, it may give us a few hours’ break. Maybe we can get to Eddie before they crack him open.”

“Maybe,” Saville said, without warmth. “I told Corporal Smith to get down to the coast below Lak Chau and wait for a HALO-SCUBA drop offshore. I gave him the coordinates. He’ll just have time to make it if we figure to parachute in before dawn. I’ve got a couple of pilots and three enlisted men down here with me. We’re just about ready to take off. What about Major Parnell?”

“He’s at Nha Trang.”

“Oh, Christ. Does he know about this?”

“Not yet,” Tyreen said. “I’m flying up there by jet. You pile your boys in the gooney bird and fly up there. You can top up the tanks at Nha Trang while I’m talking to Parnell. With any luck I can get him out to you in time to fly north and make the drop before daylight.”

“My pilot’s worried about that typhoon, David. It’s scheduled to hit the coast about eight-thirty or nine.”

“He should be back before that. He can land at Da Nang before the storm comes in.”

“Maybe. You know McKuen — cocky as hell, but underneath he worries a lot.”

“Keep a lid on him, Theodore. Any other chatter from Corporal Smith up there?”

“No. He had to keep his broadcast down to two minutes on account of the time span of the Hanoi broadcast they were using for cover. The Reds have got pretty good radio detection gear up there.”

“I know,” Tyreen said. “All right. Take off, Theodore. I’ll see you at Nha Trang in an hour or two.”

He held down the phone sprocket for a moment, looking into space. Then he got the General on the wire.

“Some news on Eddie Kreizler,” he said.

“Spill it,” said the General.

“The Reds have got him in jail in Chutrang. They picked up his Number One with him. The exec’s a Vietnamese. Maybe they’ll concentrate on him long enough for us to get up there and have a crack at getting Eddie out.”

“I hope so,” General Jaynshill said. “If you can’t, David, remember my orders. Spell it out to Major Parnell. I can’t afford any misfires on this.”

“Keep your receiver channels open on the half-hour,” Tyreen said. “If Parnell gets Eddie out of jail, he’ll want to know how you figure to pick him up. I’ll tell Parnell to broadcast on the blue frequency.”

“Right. Good hunting, David.”

Tyreen put down the phone and glanced at the unconscious Air Force officer on the cot. A rash of sweat covered Tyreen’s face. He tugged a matted handkerchief from his pocket and wiped himself. Feeling weak, he left the office.

Captain Grove sat hipshot on a desk corner sipping coffee; his eyes were shuttered and dark. He stood up when Tyreen entered the big room, and nodded curtly. “You’ve got your pilot, Colonel. Never mind where I found him.”

Tyreen nodded. A sudden grin flashed across Grove’s boyish face. “Just remember one thing, Colonel — the Air Force is on your side.”

Tyreen looked at him. “I guess we all tend to forget that now and then.”

“Your plane’s warming up now. The corporal on the door will take you down there.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

Grove waved a hand and turned away, charging determinedly toward the bank of radar screens; his voice lifted and smashed across the room: “Where in hell is that flight of peckerhead Sabres?”

Tyreen gathered his hat and coat on the way out. It was still raining.