The Last Bridge

Chapter Eight 0145 Hours

It was near two o’clock in the morning. The hangar was big and empty: a few workbenches, a broken-down lathe, a wall hung with repair tools, a stack of assorted hoses, drums of metal parts and oil, grease on the floor. George McKuen sat on the corner of a sawdusty bench, one leg hanging free and swinging slowly, the other foot touching the floor, a cigarette held idly between two fingers. Warrant Officer Shannon sat on the floor with his back against the wall, one knee drawn up and his hands clasped around it. Sergeant Nguyen Khang crouched on his haunches. Sergeant J. D. Hooker stood stiffly near the hangar door. Sergeant Nhu Van Sun was behind McKuen, curiously toying with a sophisticated electric wrench. Sergeant Sun was large for a Vietnamese, perhaps five foot eight, a few inches taller than Khang, and two dozen pounds heavier.

All of them looked at the newcomer.

Tyreen said, “I’m Colonel Tyreen. I’ll be running this show. Captain Saville explained to you what we’re after. You’ve had the opportunity to back off, and you’re still here, so I’m assuming you’ve all volunteered. It’s too late to quit now.”

McKuen gave him a restless grin.

Shannon showed no expression whatever; his lean young face was lowered, and he was considering the progress of an ant crossing the floor in front of his feet.

J. D. Hooker stared at Tyreen with instinctive dislike across the gulf separating every officer from every career enlisted man_:

Sergeant Sun looked troubled. He fiddled with the tool in his fists.

Sergeant Khang smiled faintly; he seemed to find something secretly amusing.

Theodore Saville entered the hangar dripping. He nodded his big round face and took a post near Hooker at the door. Hooker had turned his head to stare at the two Vietnamese sergeants. He looked back at Tyreen as if he were about to speak, but his lips never moved, and presently he looked away.

McKuen, redheaded and rawboned, showed Tyreen a friendly grin and snapped a wooden match alight with his thumbnail to light his enormous cigar.

Tyreen said, “You’ll have to remember one thing. The United States will repudiate us if we’re caught up there. You understand that, all of you? If we get caught, we’re all civilians. They’ll execute us for spying, anyway, but don’t even give them your rank and serial number.”

No one spoke until Lieutenant McKuen got to his feet with one eye squinted against the smoke of his black cigar. “One thing before we start, Colonel.”

“Right.”

“About that airplane. Could you be givin’ us a few hours to patch it up? It’s in bad shape. Terrible bad.”

“No time. You’ll be flying south into Da Nang with that typhoon right on your tail, Lieutenant. Anyhow, I doubt you’d find any usable parts around here.”

McKuen said morosely, “I wonder if she’s insured. I looked at the bloody number plate — I’d like you all to know this crate was manufactured in nineteen thirty-seven. It’s two years older than I am. Colonel, this bloody aeroplane’s an antique.”

“That’s all right, Lieutenant,” Tyreen said mildly. “So am I.” He swept the others with a glance. “About oh-five-thirty hours we’ll be making a HALO-SCUBA jump into the Gulf of Tonkin just below Lak Chau. Corporal Luther Smith will be there to guide us inland. If he doesn’t show up, it’s your job, Sergeant Khang. We’ve got two jobs. First priority is an American captain being held for interrogation in Chutrang. After we get him and his exec out, we’ll have a try at the railroad bridge on the Sang Chu.”

McKuen arched an eyebrow and said, “Assignment for you, Mister Shannon. Capture Hanoi for us to keep them busy, while we search the rest of North Vietnam for the missing captain.”

“Okay,” said Shannon, “but you’ll have to wait till after I take a crap.”

McKuen said to Tyreen, “What’s the jump altitude going to be, Colonel?”

“Twelve hundred feet.”

McKuen pursed his lips. “If we overshoot the reefs they’ll be able to pick you up with a blotter.”

“We’ll just have to hope there’s enough weather turbulence to confuse their coastal radar.”

“Maybe they won’t pick up the chutes on radar,” McKuen said, “but they’ll sure as hell pick out the plane clear as day.”

“That’s why it’s unmarked,” Tyreen told him.

McKuen said, “There’s somebody I want to see in Honolulu right away.”

“Who?” asked Mister Shannon.

“Me,” McKuen replied.

Tyreen said, “Captain Saville has your chart coordinates for the drop zone. Get your engines warmed up, Lieutenant.” He nodded at McKuen. “I’m sorry we can’t do better for a ship. The old bird will have to do — and we’ll just have to hope the engines don’t fall off. Any other questions?”

Sergeant Hooker drew his heels together. “What about the Red security system up there, sir?”

“Tight. Plenty of patrols. There’s a ten o’clock curfew, and they’re likely to shoot anything that moves after curfew.”

“I’m due back in the States in two weeks,” said Hooker. “I’m real short, Colonel. What’s our chances — on the level?”

“Maybe one in ten,” Tyreen said, and held Hooker’s angry eyes.

McKuen was on his way out of the hangar. Tyreen said, “I haven’t got time to fool with toughs and heroes on this job. Given a choice we’ll run, not fight. Avoid a firefight whenever possible.”

It was all he had to say. He surveyed them bleakly. At the door, George McKuen grinned. “Anybody got a stick of gum? I may find a place for it.” He went out. Tyreen looked around slowly. Big Saville, cleaning his inky fingernails with a stubby pocketknife. Shannon frowning and J. D. Hooker frowning, each in his way — Shannon young, puzzled, trying to be as cocky as McKuen; Hooker tough, tougher than a man should have to be, with a streak of viciousness across his broad, rubbery face. Young Sergeant Sun rubbed the knuckles of his fist into his palm. He was a heavy-shouldered shadow under the hangar wall, his face half-invisible but for the shine of his little button eyes. Sergeant Khang watched Tyreen with almost a leer, somehow furtively amused.

Sour lines pulled at Tyreen’s mouth. He turned and spoke privately to Theodore Saville:

“McKuen will take a few minutes to go through his checklist. Let’s go over this.”

“How much have you got mapped out?”

“Depends on how far we get before we run into snags,” Tyreen said. “How about our gear?”

“Enough to weigh down a platoon. Weapons, food, radio stuff — the usual warehouse full of crap. I hope these kids have got strong backs. Parachutes and underwater breathing gear. I blackmailed half a dozen miniature high-pressure oxygen tanks out of a Navy supply officer. That cuts down on weight, but not a hell of a lot. But the tanks are only good for about fifteen minutes.”

“It’ll have to be enough,” Tyreen said. “After takeoff, check the men out with the scuba gear.”

Saville grunted affirmatively. “And one other item.”

“Demolitions.”

“At least you don’t act senile yet,” Saville said amiably. He began to look pleased, like a child when he has mastered a problem in arithmetic. “What can you get that’s small enough for one man to carry, but powerful enough to blow up a big steel bridge?”

“Riddle me no riddles, Theodore.”

“Got it from the Air Force,” Saville said in a satisfied voice. “Same as they put in the warhead of the Redeye missile. I forget what you call it, but a cupful will make charcoal out of a medium bomber.”

“Can Hooker handle it?”

“Hooker can handle anything that goes bang.”

Tyreen looked across the hangar. Hooker was watching patiently, but Hooker’s eyes were never in accord with the expressions of his lips.

Saville said, “You’d better fill in the lurid details, David.”

Tyreen prowled to the door and back again. “I guess we’ve got time.”

“Every silver lining has its cloud.”

A faint palsy touched Tyreen. He covered it with a lazy smile. “All right, let’s rough it out. They’ll be trying to grind up Eddie Kreizler, and we want to get to him as fast as we can.”

“Okay,” Saville said. “But you be the candle, David. You light the way.”

“We’re practically playing without any cards,” Tyreen said. “But it looks like this. We jump into the bay before dawn. Corporal Smith meets us on the beach and we head inland. If we’re lucky, we can steal a jeep or a truck. Otherwise we walk across the mountains, six or seven hours if we’re not held up. I wish we could parachute in closer, but the country’s too rugged for a night drop. There’s a—”

“David, you’re not exactly fit for a hike like that. Maybe—”

Tyreen went right on: “There’s a Montagnard camp above Chutrang — friendlies; Kreizler was working with them. They’ll have to help us get into the city without making waves. There’s a fuel storage depot above town, and I think we’ll send Hooker up there to blow up the big tanks. The racket ought to make people dizzy. Anyhow, we’ll need some sort of diversion like that, to get them off balance.”

“How do we get into the compound where they’ve got Eddie?”

“There are no easy ways.”

“What else is new?”

“If we can steal a couple of North Vietnamese uniforms to fit Sun and Khang, they can act like a pair of Vietminh who captured us. They’re bringing us in — that gets us into the army post. When we get that far, we’ll have to improvise — it will depend on where Eddie’s locked up and what the guard arrangements are.”

“An awful lot of playing by ear,” Saville said. “But suppose it works. Don’t leave me in a minor key, David — I don’t want to get stuck with this operation without a road map if you get picked off.” He spoke in a practical voice. “If I euchre us into the wrong spot, they’ll start playing marbles with our eyeballs. Point me in the right direction.”

“You don’t need a weather vane,” Tyreen said. “Give yourself a little more credit, Theodore.”

Saville stood backed against the wall, hands in the front pockets of his fatigue trousers. “I guess I know my limitations as well as you do.”

Tyreen shrugged. “Certain things you just can’t plan. If we get out of Chutrang with Eddie, we plant a false trail of some kind to throw them off, and we get up the Sang Chu to the bridge as fast as we can. I haven’t seen the place, and there aren’t any worthwhile photographs of it. It’s heavily guarded, but it’s got to have some vulnerable point. We make it up as we go along. It’s the only thing we can do.”

“Is that a royal ‘we’ or an editorial ‘we’?”

Tyreen passed a hand over his face. “Theodore, if you can’t ride the horse you’re on, you get off and walk. What more can I tell you? If they could blueprint this kind of operation, they wouldn’t need people like us.” His chiseled face was dismal.

The luminous dial of George McKuen’s watch read 0240 hours. In a thick, false brogue he said, “At me back I hear time’s winged chariot hurryin’ near, darlin’.” He considered the silent instruments. The night sky, low overcast, was the color of a spent lead bullet. Beside him Mister Shannon sat strapped in, beginning the control check with skilled efficiency. McKuen said, “Okay, pipe the admiral aboard.”

“Already on board,” said Colonel Tyreen, entering the passage behind McKuen’s right shoulder. “All set, Lieutenant.”

“Ah, funerals,” said McKuen. “But you fine people haven’t a thing to worry about. Parachutists have no problems. The bloody ground will always break your fall.”

Tyreen said, “Check your de-icers, Lieutenant.”

“What?”

“Squall season. You don’t know what kind of weather you may hit over the mountains.”

McKuen said, “Are you nuts? Oh, hell, why do I bother to ask.”

Tyreen smiled vaguely and turned back toward the passenger cabin, holding his body tautly rigid.

McKuen began to untangle wires, putting on his headset, moving the seat-adjustment levers, switching on the panel lights, going through the checklist with Shannon. Afterward Shannon said, “We’re sitting still with the engines off and the artificial horizon jumps.”

“Sure, and what’d you expect?”

“What if it jumps out altogether?”

“Boxcars,” replied McKuen. He was inspecting the deicing equipment. “The rubber boots expand all right. No way to tell about the hot-air blowers. They’re probably shot — I can’t figure any Vietnamese mechanic staying up nights to repair the bloody things. I wish we had anti-ice chemicals to paint the wings with. Ah, well, I’m thinking we don’t have to fly around hunting for ice, just to see if it’ll work.”

There was no door on the pilot’s compartment. He leaned into the corridor and shouted back through the plane, “Everybody snug?”

No one answered. He shrugged, glanced at Shannon, saw Shannon’s firm hands against the controls, and said, “All right. Let’s be starting up number one and see if it goes around in a proper circle.”

The engines sputtered into life, running raggedly. Shannon said, “I hope we know what we’re doing.”

“That makes two of us. You ready, darlin’?”

“Yes.”

“That makes one of us,” McKuen said, and switched on the radio. “Hello, Tower — this is Yankee Six Four.”

“Go ahead, Irish.”

“Time to go,” said McKuen.

After a moment the headset crackled. “All right, Yankee Six Four, you’re cleared for takeoff on Runway Four.”

“With another bloody crosswind. I’m so obliged to you.”

“So long, Irish.”

He flipped the radio switch. Wipers flapped back and forth across the windshield. He pressed the throttles forward and taxied away from the hanger. “Flaps, Shannon.”

“Aye,” said Mister Shannon. “Aye.”