The Last Bridge

Chapter Seven 0015 Hours

Major Parnell’s dream was filled with pit-traps in the jungle, bottomed with upthrust poisoned pungi stakes of bamboo. He rolled over on the sweat-damp sheets, half-awake, reliving moments of fear. The sizzle of bullets cutting through undergrowth, the smell of rotting infected feet, the dull completeness of pain. He was vaguely aware of a steady traffic of jet-powered rescue helicopters chugging back and forth over the hospital. He turned onto his side and drowsily picked at a blood scab on his throat, possibly an infected insect bite.

Between flights of HUEYs he heard the slap-slap of the surf beyond the fine screens, the patter of rain on the wooden roof, the splash of water rushing through gutters and downspouts into puddles in the sand. The warm air was close and sticky. He moved again, uncomfortable on the limp sheets. Somewhere in the building a patient cried out; the cry offended Parnell’s solitude, and he tried to put it out of his mind. He fixed in memory the image of a woman, his wife, dancing with him, balancing her highball glass on his shoulder and smiling into his eyes. He recalled the way she had of tossing her head.

The reverie passed. Parnell slipped deeper into sleep. He suffered dreams of scorpions and cobras, strangling jungle vines and spiraling hordes of insects.

“Major?”

He opened his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Just after midnight.” The nurse switched on the lamp. She was overweight and horse-faced; she looked, he thought, like an elephant’s caboose. She bent over him to put a thermometer in his mouth. Parnell reached for the lamp chain, but the nurse intercepted his hand. “Leave it on, Major. You’ve got a visitor.”

He mumbled around the glass stick, “Visitors? It’s the middle of the night.”

“He’ll be here directly. He’s down with the hospital commandant now. If he could get the commandant out of bed, he can get you out of bed.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. Some colonel.” She straightened the sheets at the foot of the bed: he had kicked them loose.

“Am I getting out of here?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to?”

“Depends,” said Major Parnell. He took the thermometer from his mouth and turned it around in an attempt to bring the red line into view. The nurse came around the bed and made a grab for it. Parnell held it away from her and said, “I’ve got a right to know if I’m dead yet.”

“Ninety-nine point four,” she said without hesitation. He handed her the thermometer. She said, “It seems to be your normal temperature. You’ve carried it for the past six days.” She grinned; her teeth were uneven. “You’re a hot-blooded one, Major.”

Parnell rubbed his eyes. The nurse said, “I warn you, Major, I’m a very jealous woman.” She gave him an arch look and said, “Always leave ’em laughing,” and went.

Parnell slid his legs off the bed, clawed his swollen feet into his slippers, and reached for his underwear. He was a small, wiry man, dark-skinned and crag-faced, pitted by the jungle. His hands were as gnarled as an old peon’s.

A HUEY fluttered overhead. When he looked out through the rain, he could see its exhaust flame reflected fragmentarily on crests of surf.

The weak lamp made his hands appear jaundiced. He did not feel particularly ill. He climbed into his drawers, found his uniform, put it on, and zipped up his trousers. He winced when he hiked his foot up to tie his shoe. A piston plane droned overhead. Parnell rammed his shirttail down into his trousers. Inside the orthopedic shoes his crippled feet felt crushed. His side was stiff with a healing wound.

No one seemed to be around. He lay back on the bed and smoked a cigarette down to a stub. He studied the shine on his shoes and listened to the copters overhead and scratched the scab on his throat. It was just like the Army to wake a man up in the middle of the night and then leave him nothing to do but lie waiting. He made a vague inventory of his ills. The Army had given him precious little besides a poisoned-arrow wound and several diseases.

A gaunt officer in a raincoat came by, obviously looking for the right room. He was almost past Parnell’s open doorway when he saw Parnell, stopped, and turned in. “Here you are.”

“Hello, Colonel,” Parnell said. If he was surprised to see Tyreen he did not show it.

Tyreen’s face creased into a long-jawed frown. His raincoat was dripping on the floor. He slipped it off and hung it over the back of a chair. His uniform was rumpled, as if he had sat in a cramped space for some time. He said, “How do you feel?”

“I’m still eating and sleeping.”

“The medical report says you’re just about ready to go.”

“Does it,” Parnell said without much interest.

Tyreen sat down on the chair like a cowboy, straddling it and folding his arms across the top of the chairback. He tipped his hat back. “I need you for a job, Major.”

Parnell had a sardonic expression that lay on his face like a permanent crease. “Last time I let you talk me into something, Colonel, I got foot rot and a Montagnard arrow in my middle.”

“This one’s important.”

“They’re all important,” Parnell said. “Let me tell you something. You get out there in the boondocks with plenty of bugs and enemies and rain, and pretty soon you start changing your ideas about what’s important. You stay alive. That’s all you think about — staying alive.” He spat. “For what?”

Tyreen’s face was tight. Wound up, Parnell sat bolt upright on the bed and said, “Tell me just what the hell we’re doing here, Colonel. What happens when northern agitators come to the south and disturb the peaceful status quo? Well, we’ve got one answer for Vietnam and another answer for Mississippi. You tell me which one’s important, okay?”

Tyreen said, “Eddie Kreizler’s in a Red prison in North Vietnam, Major. Somebody’s got to get his ass up there and get Kreizler out. Tonight. I haven’t got time to argue politics with you.”

Parnell said very distinctly, “Eddie Kreizler took the same chances I took. I was lucky enough to get back alive. I’m not going out again, Colonel. And you can’t force it on me.”

Tyreen stood up, pitching the chair away from him in anger. His raincoat fell to the floor. “Just who in hell do you think you are, Major?”

“I think I’m a man who’s had enough. I’m sick of this grubby little war. Okay — so you’re not bleeding for me. I didn’t ask for sympathy. I just want to be left alone. To hell with you, Colonel, and to hell with Eddie Kreizler. I’ll drop in on his wife when I get back home and pay my respects. But I’ve had enough of this war. More than enough.”

“There’s a bridge up there. A railroad bridge. Your specialty, Major.”

“I’ll drink to it,” Parnell said.

“You’re refusing to volunteer?”

“Yes. I am refusing to volunteer. You can put that in my record. By God, Colonel, you can put that down!”

Tyreen stooped to pick up his coat. He smoothed it out. “I’ll tell the General you’re too sick to do the job.”

“I don’t need any favors.”

“It’s not a favor,” said Tyreen. “You are sick, Major.” He went to the door. Parnell’s voice halted him:

“Jesus, Colonel. You like this Goddamn war, don’t you?”

“It’s the only war I’ve got,” said David Tyreen, and he went out. Parnell lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. After a moment he began to untie his shoes. His feet hurt.

Harney, the war correspondent, accosted Tyreen on his way out of the hospital. Harney had his pint bottle in hand. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said.

“How’d you get up here so fast?”

“Hitched a copter ride. I’m going up with the Cavalry tomorrow. Trying to beat that typhoon inland. Say, Colonel — General Jaynshill’s people are all in a flap down there. What’s the story?”

“No story, Harney.”

“It seems a crew of Jaynshill’s picked scalp-hunters took off from Tan Son Nhut in a beat-up old C-47. Got to be news in that, Colonel. And you being Old Ironbutt’s righthand hatchet man, maybe you could—”

“No comment,” Tyreen said. “And I wouldn’t put too much stock in rumors, Harney.”

“Naturally,” Harney said crisply. “Good hunting, Colonel.” He leered.

“Keep your behind down,” Tyreen said, and went outside to his jeep.

The wind had driven mud and sand across the road. The jeep lurched precariously on its way to the airfield. Tyreen sat loose beside the driver. He swallowed a quinine capsule and closed his eyes against a fit of chills that raised goose bumps all over his body. The jeep’s windshield wiper clacked back and forth; the driver gripped the wheel grimly, straining forward. Tyreen’s mouth alternately pursed and turned down at the corners. Helicopters moved above, ghostly and unnatural, suspended from the undersides of the low clouds.

When the jeep dropped him outside the hangar, Theodore Saville came out to meet him. Saville towered half a head above Tyreen. “He wouldn’t do it, huh?”

“He’s had the guts kicked out of him.”

“Well, nobody bats a thousand. Want to call the old man and ask for a replacement for Parnell?”

“No time to round one up,” Tyreen said. Rain dripped off the bill of his hat. His eyes were fevered.

Saville said slowly, “I’d take it myself if I figured I could do a good job of it. But you don’t ask a plow horse to cut a herd.”

“I know,” said Tyreen.

“Somebody’s got to run the ball game.”

“I’m taking over,” Tyreen said.

Saville looked down at him. He said very mildly, “You ain’t in very good shape, David.”

“I’ve felt worse. Theodore, find a pilot who’s going down to Saigon tonight. Give him a hand-carry message and tell him to deliver it to General Jaynshill in the morning. Just tell the General I’m taking command.”

“We could radio down.”

“Send it by hand,” Tyreen said.

“I see,” Saville said. “If the old man knew about this in time, he’d scrub you, David.”

“That’s right,” Tyreen murmured. “Get going — find somebody to deliver the message. I’ll go in and size up the crew.”

Saville slowly drew himself up straight. He executed a slow salute. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly, without expression.