Lucky’s Bridge (Vietnam Air War Book 2)

by Tom Wilson

  She ran a fingernail across his chest.

  He continued with the shirt, then paused as the inner voice complained.

  Who'd it harm, Benny? You've got time, and anyway, the voice said, you owe her.

  She was very gentle, riding lightly on top of him with the cantaloupe breasts swinging to and fro, staring at his face to make sure she eased up when she saw the slightest pain there.

  "Oh, yeah!" she squealed finally, as she ground down and tossed her head back in ecstasy. She slowed her writhing motions when he stiffened and groaned, shuddered as she felt his hot fluid, then ground down again and rode him relentlessly until he was fully spent.

  He was surprised to find how much he'd needed it. As she carefully wiped away his plentiful juices with a hand towel, he felt bad, as if he'd taken advantage of her.

  You don't think she enjoyed it? You gotta learn more about women, Benny. She'll keep that smile for a week.

  An hour later, and precisely on schedule, he hurried into the hospital commander's office.

  "Good thing you caught him," said the secretary when she saw the form in his hand.

  "Why's that?" he asked innocently.

  "He's leaving on a ten-day trip. He came in for his briefcase before he leaves for the airport."

  "Is my staff car waiting?" called the hospital commander from the other room.

  "Yes, sir," she called back. "The driver phoned from the lobby."

  The full colonel hurried out of his inner office and glanced at Benny. "Help you, Major?"

  Benny held the waiver form out to him. "I'm going on a trip for the general, but I've got to get this signed first."

  The colonel blinked. "The general?'

  "Yes, sir."

  "What's wrong with you?"

  "I had some pains in my back, sir. They're okay now."

  The colonel bit his lip in thought. "I really should check with your flight surgeon."

  "It's Major Young, sir." Young had the day off.

  "Backaches?"

  "Yes, sir, but they're gone. I could delay the trip, but you know the general."

  The colonel signed in an unrecognizable flourish, told the secretary he'd see her in ten days, and left.

  "You're fortunate you caught him," the secretary repeated.

  Benny grinned. "Sure am."

  The voice inside chuckled.

  On his way out of the hospital, Benny ran into Lady Dracula, who had indeed been transferred to Nellis. She, being a captain, saluted. Then she glared hard, for she'd discovered he was working more than the two hours a day he was now allowed. Moods Diller admitted she'd asked and that he'd screwed up and told her.

  "Where's your back brace?" she demanded, eyes narrowing. It was obvious he wasn't wearing the bulky contraption.

  "I'm going to my room to put it on," he answered. "Feels good to take it off for a few minutes every now and then."

  She looked doubly incensed. "If I see you without it again, I'll speak with Major Young and have you moved back into the hospital. He should never have allowed you out anyway."

  "See you later . . ." He could never think of her name, always thought of her just as Lady Dracula.

  She went inside, still looking angry. Moods said she was a real sweetheart.

  He walked toward the Fighter Weapons Center building, slowly because the back was beginning to act up without the brace. After his club date with the secretary he'd have to ask her to help put it on again.

  Yeah, said the voice. Cantaloupes.

  This time he smiled.

  The trip was on. He'd go to Saigon and give Pearly Gates assistance running the combat test, then drop by Takhli to give Lucky Anderson a hand before they flew it. He was good at air-to-ground tactics, and surely he'd have something to offer.

  And since he'd already be there, he would have Bear Stewart's official status changed from MIA to KIA.

  For Julie, so she could get on with her life.

  The voice inside was pleased.

  When he showed the secretary the waiver and asked her to go ahead and process the request for orders, she looked puzzled. "He signed it?"

  "That's the hospital commander's signature. If anyone doubts it, they can verify it with his office."

  She shook her head in amazement. "When do you want to depart?" she asked, the troubled look slowly leaving her face. She'd done her best.

  He thought about the hospital commander's schedule, about some more healing time for his back, and about the fact that Pearly thought it would be at least two weeks until they got the next go-ahead for CROSSFIRE ZULU.

  "How about ten days from now, on the thirtieth."

  Bach Mai Hospital, Hanoi, DRV

  Colonel Xuan Nha

  The wounds were continuing to heal. Xuan now put on a uniform each morning at 0530 before beginning his work, just as he'd done for so many years before being caught in the bombing attack. He was growing accustomed to using one hand for everything he did. The worst part about dressing, he'd found, was holding his trousers together while he buttoned them. The rest was getting easier.

  Although he never left the hospital, the doctors were concerned that he was overly exerting himself, and that he might open the fragile sheath of scar tissue.

  "I am getting as soft as a woman," Xuan complained to them. "I must have exercise."

  "Not yet," they told him. "Later, perhaps."

  But Xuan Nha exercised his remaining right arm by tensing it often, and each night he walked down the hospital corridor and back to his room, venturing farther each time. He didn't want to remain longer than was necessary in the hospital. Not only did he dislike the place, he was too vulnerable there.

  Thursday, July 20th, 1500 Local

  Xuan Nha sat at his desk in a corner of the room, for somehow the act of sitting made him feel more productive than when he worked from the bed.

  "Reports from the afternoon attacks?" he croaked to Lieutenant Quang Hanh, and his communications officer lifted a field telephone to call the command center.

  Lieutenant Colonel Tran Van Ngo quietly entered the hospital room and handed Xuan Nha a folder. Quang Hanh looked up from his radio console, then quickly averted his eyes, as if he might shield himself from what was transpiring if he didn't look.

  "Well?" asked Xuan in his frog's voice, putting the folder aside. Tran had gone to Li Binh's villa, ostensibly to retrieve the folder from Xuan's papers.

  Tran remained expressionless. "I spoke to your wife's womanservant."

  "And?"

  Tran smiled. "Nguyen Wu moved from your home yesterday evening."

  So what they'd heard was true. Xuan Nha began to feel better about things.

  "Did she say why he moved?"

  "Almost," said Tran. "She said that Madame Li Binh was very angry, but then she would say no more. She became frightened."

  "If Li Binh knew she was telling household secrets, she would have her head."

  "The womanservant wrinkled her nose when she spoke of Colonel Wu."

  Xuan arched an eyebrow.

  "I believe she heard that he likes men as much as she does." Tran gave a slow smile. "I was forced to show her my skill with my elephant's trunk. She was appreciative, but still she would not tell me more."

  Xuan laughed. It emerged as a guttural, rasping sound.

  He remembered his wife's womanservant. She was obeisant and easily frightened, but she was also utterly insatiable. Whenever Li Binh had been away and he'd gotten the urge, he'd fucked her thoroughly. At a snap of his fingers she'd step out of her trousers and bend over a chair or whatever else was handy, and once it started, she never wanted it to stop.

  He'd fucked her, but so had his driver, the menservants, and likely any male, like Tran, who happened by. It made sense that she wouldn't appreciate Nguyen Wu's competition for men's penises, which she craved so for herself.

  He relished the thought of his nephew being evicted from the villa, pleased that one of the rumors had almost worked as he'd planned it. Almos
t, for apparently Nguyen Wu still held his position at Internal Affairs. He'd hoped that Li Binh would ruin him completely, but apparently their blood ties hadn't allowed it.

  Xuan motioned to his communications officer.

  Quang Hanh looked troubled as he rose from his radios and joined them. He had not liked the duties Xuan had given him . . . not at all. But he was dedicated to Xuan Nha and knew that he survived or drowned with his leader.

  "This afternoon's missions were all near Vinh, comrade Colonel," he said. "No targets or damage in the Hong Valley."

  Another day had passed without another try at the bridges. Was it over? Did they dare move some of the guns away? Or at least stop sending most of the newly arriving guns from China to the bridges?

  Twice the Mee had initiated large-scale raids against the Long Bien bridge, and twice they'd failed. The last attempt had been only three days before. Like the first time, they'd damaged but had not destroyed the structure. Twenty-four hours later it had been reopened to critical road traffic, and the following day to rail traffic from China and Haiphong.

  But were the Mee done with it?

  Only, he decided, if the Mee politicians stopped them. The tenacious Mee pilots would keep trying until they were stopped by their leaders.

  So he must continue to bolster the number of guns at the bridges, even if other targets were more vulnerable. In the meantime he'd ask his wife about her continuing diplomatic campaign to have the bombing stopped altogether. It would be easier to speak with her now, with her nephew removed from the picture. Perhaps one day he and Li Binh could work closely together again. He remembered those times fondly.

  He shifted his thoughts to the present. Since the first rumor had worked, he wondered about the second.

  "Have you heard from Phuc Yen?" Xuan asked Tran Van Ngo.

  Tran shrugged. "Only that many whispers have spread among the men there. They do not specifically name Nguyen Wu, but it's said that someone very high in the rocket forces ordered the radio malfunctions."

  "Has Quon been told of the rumor?"

  "I do not know, comrade Colonel. I visit the radar controllers at Phuc Yen twice each week, but I do not dare ask too many questions. I only know that the whispers are loud."

  After a moment of hesitation Xuan shrugged. It did not matter greatly. If Quon didn't wish to listen that was his concern.

  He turned his gaze on his two men. "Can either of the rumors be traced?"

  First Tran, then Quang shook their heads.

  Xuan slapped his single hand down upon the desktop and smiled. "Good. The matter is forgotten."

  Lieutenant Quang Hanh looked relieved, and Lieutenant Colonel Tran Van Ngo became businesslike as he produced maps showing proposed deployment locations of the defenses.

  Tran had come to the same conclusion as Xuan, for he'd recommended that even more guns be placed about the bridges.

  1610 Local—Phuc Yen PAAFB

  Air Regiment Commandant Quon

  Quon had heard the whispers—that Nguyen Wu had ordered communications between the radars and the interceptor bases to be blocked—but he didn't believe them. Rumors, he knew, were frivolously turned into truths in the eyes of military men who were shielded from what was happening about them.

  Since the Lao Dong party allowed only its versions of truth to the men of the VPAAF, their antennae were always out for tidbits of knowledge. The more outrageous the hints and whispers, the more interesting and widespread they became. This one involved treachery and the demise of a hero; therefore, it was a popular story on the air base.

  That rumormongering was a crime, and that passing information harmful to the war effort was punishable by death, couldn't deter the men from their whispers. So Quon shrugged off what he'd heard and even grew angry when he heard it was still being circulated.

  Nguyen Wu did not have the testicles to engineer his son's death. Such trickery could have come from only one source, the enemy, and he now knew that enemy's name.

  Lokee.

  Nguyen Wu had returned from the South to a hero's welcome and taken a civilian government job. Since he was out of the picture and could no longer interfere with his MiGs, Quon was satisfied. Xuan Nha and his surrogate, Lieutenant Colonel Tran Van Ngo, were doing a creditable job of controlling the defenses, and each week Quon grew more pleased with the professionalism of the pilot-controllers at the Phuc Yen P-1 radar.

  He found it easy to push Nguyen Wu from his mind.

  Anyway, the man called Lokee was filling his thoughts more each day, and he was increasingly driven to find and kill him.

  1700 Local—Ministry of Internal Affairs

  Assistant Commissioner Nguyen Wu

  Although he no longer wore a uniform or was listed in the roles of the People's Army, Nguyen Wu demanded that his new associates in Internal Affairs call him by the title of Colonel. It was salve for his wounded spirit, but not nearly enough.

  They were laughing at him. All of them! Every man and woman he passed in the halls of the building he worked in, every peasant and soldier on the street.

  Ridiculing him.

  It had started so abruptly that he was still shaken.

  The previous evening his aunt, his once beloved mentor, had ousted him from her villa as she might a scavenging dog. He'd not suspected, had harbored no idea it was coming, had arrived home to the astonishing spectacle of his belongings being tossed out onto the pebbled driveway by her manservant. Out in the open, vulnerable to the drizzling rain, his clothes becoming soggy and ruined. He'd thought the man had gone mad.

  When he cursed at the cowering manservant, he'd been told that Madame Binh was inside and wished to see him. Puzzled, knowing some great mistake had been made, he'd gone in and the truth had been coolly spat at him.

  She knew. She said it was common knowledge, known to every peasant on the streets, that he acted the woman's part with every common soldier who would have him . . . and . . . that he was his aunt's lover.

  Her arguments had been undeniable. She'd proved the whispers to be true. And then the rumor had been compounded by other truths, and she'd decided what must be done.

  There'd been no heat of anger in her. She was like that when she was most dangerous.

  One, it was widely known that he panted after every coarse soldier on the street.

  Two, he'd bragged about the things he did to his aunt when he could not find a man to pleasure him.

  Three, he spoke disparagingly about his aunt's husband to both his lovers and subordinates, even bragged about how he'd destroyed and replaced him.

  She paused.

  And four, Feodor Dimetriev had quietly spoken to her that very morning, and she had discovered that Wu had used her name to coerce the Russian officer into a despicable act.

  She had recited her facts carefully. Then, while Wu's head was still spinning with it all, she'd forced him to write a list naming every man he had copulated with . . . ever. He'd sat there benumbed and had done it, had written all the names he could remember, because she would have had him killed if he had not.

  She'd told him that.

  Then she had taken the paper and waved it before him, saying he was looking at a list of dead men. Not because of what they'd done, and certainly not to protect Nguyen Wu. They were dead men because she would allow no tales or black marks against her own name.

  He'd tried to explain.

  She'd refused to listen and told him if he persevered, she would add his name to the list before she gave it to the Commissioner.

  It was her calmness that had terrified him and set him to blubbering. He'd cried out about how much he adored and needed her.

  She'd given a curt shake of her head. It was over.

  What about his position in Internal Affairs? he'd cried.

  She said he could remain in his job, but he would be watched, and if he ever mentioned he'd shared a bed with his aunt . . . if he ever used his aunt's name to coerce anyone or further himself . . . if he ever again had sex wit
h a man . . . if he ever again spoke poorly of her, or about anything else about her, including her husband . . . she would order that he be sent south to fight, and she would further order them to tie satchel charges to his body and march him at gunpoint toward the American lines. She'd said to take heed, for she'd had that done to better men than he would ever be.

  She'd nodded brusquely toward the door and he'd left quickly, and when the door had closed behind him, he'd stood in the rain staring dumbly at the sodden mound of clothing.

  A weapons carrier had stopped in the driveway near the mound, and a low-ranking soldier called out from the canvas-covered cab. He'd been told to come here to take away trash in the driveway. Was this mound what they'd referred to?

  There was a mistake, Nguyen Wu had told him. He'd paused then, wanting to sob. Just pick up the clothing and load it aboard the truck, he'd finally told the man as he'd walked sadly around to the other side and climbed in.

  When the driver had finished placing the clothing in the rear and crawled back into the driver's seat, Wu almost made the fatal error of directing him to the quarters of a male friend. But he'd stopped himself and redirected him to a barracks for senior government officials.

  Now, as he finished his work at his desk in the lonely office at the rear of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he again bemoaned the fact that he was ruined.

  He'd formed a team that morning to investigate . . ."certain lies" that had been told about him. He wanted to know where the rumors had originated and how far they'd spread.

  He'd planned to squelch them before they became widely known.

  The men quickly reported back that the most widely held rumors were that he was homosexual and bragged about fornicating with his aunt. Their informants said the word was everywhere, and when they'd searched for sources, they'd been led in circles.

  After a long moment of despair, Wu told them to locate everyone doing the whispering and to threaten them with death if they continued to mouth the lies.

  It was too widespread, they said. He'd caught one smirking and screamed at him.

  If they'd been his subordinates, he would have had them destroyed, but these were secret policemen who worked for the Commissioner. He dully told them to leave, and when they were gone, he brooded.