Lucky’s Bridge (Vietnam Air War Book 2)

by Tom Wilson

  A water buffalo moaned loudly from downstream. An interesting sound. Sort of a cross between a cow's bellow and a donkey's squeal.

  He tried on both soldiers' caps, but they were ridiculously small, and he ended up tossing them into the river. He handled the rifles, for it was too dark to really see them, and found them large and heavy. He fleetingly wished they'd been carrying AK-47's, then realized if they'd been carrying AK's, things would likely have turned out differently. One at a time he chucked them into the water. He examined the flashlight, decided it was also deadweight, and tossed it too.

  He heard a chatter of voices. A sharp laugh.

  His watch read 0535, two hours since he'd entered the river on the other side.

  Not long until dawn. Time to move out.

  He pulled out a piece of dried fish and gnawed on it as he walked along the dark, muddy street in the downpour, heading directly away from the riverbank.

  Twice he held up at street corners when he thought he heard voices, and each time he realized he was just being spooky. No one else was silly enough to be out in the downpour.

  After five weeks he'd finally crossed the Red River. The thought was a nice one, but he didn't feel the joy he'd anticipated. It was not the fact that he'd just killed two men that sobered him. He'd been fortunate and they had not. He'd felt no different shooting them than when he'd pressed the pickle button in his cockpit to drop bombs. Dying was precisely what he wanted his enemies to do.

  But Lucky Anderson had been swept far south of his planned route, and now had to cross six more miles of densely populated farmland and rolling hills before he could reach the western mountains.

  Tuesday, September 19th, 2130 Local—St. Joseph's Hospital, San Francisco, California

  Major Benny Lewis

  The taxicab dropped him at the emergency entrance to the aging, dark-brick hospital. Benny hurried inside, asked his question, and was directed down the hall and up to the third floor.

  The elevator ride took forever. At the second floor a janitor got in and gave him a strange look, as if he'd come from another planet. His crumpled uniform?

  He'd returned to his BOQ room from dinner at the club to find a note on his door, a message from the BOQ office, reading: MRS. STEWART CALLED AT FIVE-THIRTY SAYING THE HANGAR DOOR'S ABOUT TO OPEN.

  Jesus, what a sense of humor.

  The voice inside him had squealed for him to hurry, which had been unnecessary because the note had roused him to a state of near panic.

  He'd thrown clothing into a gym bag and driven like a maniac to base ops, where he'd remembered to call his boss and tell him he'd be gone for a few days on personal business. Then he'd rushed to the operations desk and found the duty NCO.

  No military flights going anywhere in the direction of San Francisco, the base-ops sergeant had told him.

  Oh shit, the panicky voice inside had said.

  He'd called a buddy named White in the Wild Weasel training squadron. They had a T-39 Sabreliner, a small jet transport they used to test new electronic equipment.

  White said he couldn't just take off in the bird like that without authorization from his squadron commander.

  "Get it!" Benny had yelled.

  "You okay?" White had asked quietly, trying to calm him.

  "I'm having a baby, for Christ's sakes!"

  After a pause White had told him to get the flight planning done and file the clearance, and that he'd get authorization and be right down. "But be ready to explain the upcoming miracle of nature," he'd joked.

  They'd landed at San Francisco International. A cab was waiting because Benny had called for it when they'd come within radio distance of the airport tower.

  You'd imagine, Benny thought in the slow elevator, a guy'd get used to women having babies. His ex-wife had delivered two, and both times he'd come unglued. This time was no different.

  The third floor . . . finally. Pink elephants in tutus danced on the wall. Maternity-ward art, he remembered, was odd.

  At the nurses' station he asked for Mrs. Stewart. The floor nurse glowered protectively and asked if he was family. Her brother, he lied. She mentioned and said she was in 312.

  "She's doing fine," she said to calm him.

  He hurried down the hall, almost barged past the room, then stopped and eased the door open. There were two beds, both occupied. A short, stocky middle-aged lady blinked at him, standing guard beside the nearest one. A bottle dripped liquid into the veins of the patient there.

  Julie had trouble focusing. When she saw the uniform, a happy smile spread across her face, and Benny Lewis felt a giddy feeling course through him.

  "Nothing to it," she croaked, the drugs affecting her voice.

  Her beach ball was gone. The sheet over her belly was almost flat.

  "Dammit," he whispered. He was late. "How'd it go?" he asked stupidly.

  "Easy as skinning a grape," she said.

  Skinning a grape?

  "Mom said it'd be easy. We Wright women are built for having babies," she said proudly. Wright was her maiden name.

  He awkwardly stepped closer, and she reached out for his hand and squeezed it. "I told Mom you'd be here."

  He glanced at her mother, who observed him with a too-neutral look.

  "Hi."

  "Hello," said Mom.

  "Mom, this is Benny Lewis."

  "He's your husband's friend?" her mother asked quietly.

  Benny stared at her, noting the present tense, as if the Bear were alive. He nodded finally. "We flew together."

  "I've heard of you."

  "I've heard a lot about you too, ma'am. I knew your husband at Spangdahlem. We pilots there were a bit in awe of him."

  Chief Wright had been the maintenance line-chief at the base in Germany.

  She remained cool, so he tried again. "It's good to finally meet you, ma'am."

  She nodded, too curtly, and he saw her glance at Julie's grasp on his hand.

  "The baby?" he asked Julie. "Is it okay?"

  Julie frowned. "Mal Bear was right, dammit."

  He grinned. "A girl?"

  She nodded wistfully. "I've already held her, and all the right parts aren't there for a boy."

  "She's a lovely child," said the mother, looking squarely at Benny. "His father will love her."

  Julie regrasped Benny's hand, holding tighter. She shuddered suddenly.

  "Are you okay?" he asked.

  "Tell her Benny," she cried out. "Tell her so she'll stop it!"

  Her mother took a slight step back.

  "Tell her!"

  "It's not a good time," he tried.

  Tell her, said the voice.

  He turned to the mother. "Captain Stewart was killed, Mrs. Wright. He was killed by the North Vietnamese . . . while saving my life."

  The mother turned on a stony expression.

  "See, Mom," said Julie. "See!" She shouted the last word, and the woman in the next bed rose up to see what was wrong.

  Her mother looked contrite. "I didn't mean to upset you, honey."

  "But you do, Mom. You do every time you talk about it." Julie was crying and gripping hard on Benny's hand.

  A nurse entered, the one he'd met at the desk. After observing the scene, Julie crying and clutching his hand, she nodded curtly to both visitors.

  "You'll have to leave."

  Julie looked at him. "Don't go," she pleaded.

  "I won't," he said, and ignored the nurse's angry look.

  Several minutes later she slept. He waited until her grasp eased, then stepped past the tight-jawed nurse and left the room.

  Her mother was in the waiting room, staring wistfully out at the cribs beyond the viewing window.

  "I'm sorry," he said, not knowing what else to say.

  She continued to stare.

  "Which one is she?" he asked.

  She pointed. The baby was ruddy and wrinkled, with wisps of dark hair.

  "She's tiny," he whispered.

  The infant opened he
r mouth and made an O with it. He laughed. "She yawned," he said, as if it were a wonderful thing to yawn.

  "Her ears are small," said Julie's mother, looking on with a critical expression.

  "The Bear wanted a daughter," he said.

  "That's what Julie said. She wanted a boy who looked like he does." Present tense again, as if she were determined to use it. "It's all very confusing, Major Lewis. She gets angry when I tell her to have faith that her husband will return. That's what a good Air Force wife must do until she's told differently."

  He wanted to stop her, and the only way he knew was to present the brutal truth.

  "Mrs. Wright, the last time they saw the Bear, he was being hacked to pieces. The pilot of the rescue plane said it looked like they were using swords or machetes, and . . . he's very dead, Mrs. Wright."

  She was shaken by the description but kept her stern look. "The Air Force hasn't reported him killed."

  He tried to explain. "We made a mistake at Takhli early this year. No one saw a chute from an airplane that was shot down, so the flight reported the pilot went in with his airplane. Three days later a newspaper ran photos of him being paraded through Hanoi. That was when the wing staff decided to stop jumping to conclusions and call them all MIA for a while."

  "See," she said. "You can't be positive."

  "This time it's different." He knew he wasn't getting through but was unwilling to give up. "There's no doubt about Captain Stewart."

  "I won't be convinced until they change his official status," she said stubbornly.

  "I respect that, Mrs. Wright. But please stop confusing Julie. She'll have her own doubts, even after he's declared dead. You're just making it worse."

  She looked away.

  The old bat, said the inner voice, but he ignored it. She was just trying to provide her daughter with proper, "good military wife" guidance.

  He stared at the baby for a long while before turning to leave.

  "Will you be back?" asked Mrs. Wright.

  "Yes, ma'am. Visiting time in the morning, I'll be here. You see, I promised."

  "You promised Julie?"

  "I promised Julie and the Bear. His last words to me on his survival radio before he was killed were to look after his wife and child. I plan to do that as best I can."

  She did not respond.

  "Good evening, ma'am."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Day 44, 1845 Local—NVA Barracks/Field Training Area, North Vietnam

  Major Lucky Anderson

  He'd been held up in the scrub-brush foothills for seven days, trying to get past the sprawling barracks complex and the adjacent field-training areas, all of which were teeming with enemy soldiers. They were young and exuberant recruits, obviously being prepared for combat in South Vietnam. Daily they fanned out like ants and swept about in mock battles, and that was what had been holding him up.

  He'd holed up right before their noses, in a cranny dug into the only standing corner of a bombed-out building half a mile from the barracks. From there he watched and planned and waited. He'd called two different groups of Thuds passing overhead, but stopped the practice when his radio had grown noticeably weaker. He had to conserve the remaining battery power until he'd pushed well into the mountains and was in a proper location for rescue.

  That week he'd fired the last two quiet rounds through the silenced barrel, killing another monster rat and a small, nosy dog for food. He had eaten both raw, and even in his ravenous condition had gagged on the meat. The next shots would make more noise, each louder than the previous one. He had eleven bullets left, but was hesitant to use them this close to the soldiers.

  Unlike the militia soldiers he'd killed in Phuong Xa, these carried AK-47's and seemed nervous. That, in Lucky Anderson's eyes, made them doubly dangerous, so he chose his route of travel carefully.

  He couldn't go south, for that was a heavily populated area and would take him too far from the flight routes of the Thuds on their way to pack six. He couldn't venture far to the north, for that way was blocked by heavily traveled farm-to-market roads. For three nights running he'd cautiously ventured out to pick a route through the area. Finally he'd picked the most audacious one. Straight as an arrow, directly across their training fields.

  Tonight was the right time. There'd be a quarter moon. Enough illumination to see well enough to travel, but not so light they'd easily be able to see him from any distance. He'd spent the day mentally girding himself for the trek, staring for long periods at the map. He'd calculated that he must pass through four miles of training area before reaching the mountains. He'd computed his time of passage several times, and finally allowed himself thirty to forty-five minutes of steady running to reach the mountains.

  At dusk he crossed the main road and plunged ahead, weaving past two new encampments. At first he walked briskly, head held low and eyes alert, avoiding the encampments at the perimeter of the training area. Then he began to trot, head constantly swiveling, circumventing occasional camp fires and grass huts.

  Voices hailed him from a thicket a hundred yards away, and he saw two, then three figures emerge and gesture at him in the gloom. Another shout, then another. But at the distance, and in the growing darkness, he doubted they could tell anything about him. He continued the jogging pace, bent over and leaning into a sort of shuffle, as he'd seen some of them doing. Another thicket shielded him from their view, and after a long minute, when there had been no shooting or sign of pursuit, he slowed his pace. He was already tiring.

  Twice he almost ran into company-sized bivouacs, but he was able to keep moving along, using the small, shuffling steps of the soldiers he'd observed. He periodically noted the time by lifting the luminous dial of his Glycine Airman watch to his face. When half an hour had passed, there were no more soldiers and the hillocks were getting steeper. He slowed to a brisk walk, huffing, turning north toward the star Polaris, trying to intercept the road the map showed would take him through the mountains. He had trouble finding it. When he'd walked for half an hour, he grew concerned. Can't afford to miss it, he whispered to himself. The rugged mountains would be impenetrable if he could not find the roadway to lead him through their passes. He'd crossed a small path fifteen minutes before. Had that been it? He almost turned back, but decided against it and continued northward.

  He'd been searching for an hour and a half when he gave up and turned westward to climb over the high foothills, through large, rocky fields and occasional pockets of low trees, then through vines and undergrowth. Another hour passed, but he knew he hadn't come far because of the increasingly thick jungle. When he began to scale a steep precipice, he knew it was not just another of the foothills, for the shadow of the thing rose high into the night sky.

  He'd broken through to the western mountains, but had no way through them. After climbing for a while longer, he stopped at an outcropping of rocks and rested, wheezing and blowing, aching in places he hadn't known he had muscles. He looked hard out at the dark world below, but could see little. He decided to wait where he was, and look for the mountain path in the light of morning. As he searched for a hiding place, he came upon a drooping limb from a young teak tree. He cut the thing away with his bayonet knife, then carved off the small branches and bumps until it was smooth.

  A walking staff.

  He carefully carved forty-four nocks in the wood and separated those days into the proper weeks and months by creating lines between them. It was Saturday, September 23rd, his forty-fourth day of evasion. With the staff he would no longer have to wake up each evening and try to figure that out, and say little riddles to himself as he walked all night so he wouldn't lose count. For some reason it was important to Lucky Anderson to keep track of such things.

  Saturday, September 23rd, 1920 Local—Officers' Club Dining Room, Takhli RTAFB, Thailand

  Captain Manny DeVera

  Billy Bowes waved his hands over the tabletop. He held one hand before the other, then inverted the first one.


  All of C-Flight was seated at a single large table, as was Jackie Bell. She'd visited often since Manny had been restricted to the base. She sat beside him, watching Billy's hands as they flew over North Vietnam.

  "Then," Billy said, "the MiG splits for the deck, going about Mach twelve and Joe's back there shooting like hell and trying to figure out where the bullets are going."

  Joe Walker grimaced. "I tell it a little differently."

  "Am I wrong?" asked Billy Bowes. "You think you hit it?"

  "I wasn't even close, but you oughta give me credit for scaring the hell out of the MiG pilot."

  "All you get is to buy us a drink when we go to the bar," said Henry Horn.

  Everyone but Joe laughed.

  "Maybe I was trying to run him into the ground. Anyone can shoot a MiG, but how many can get him to commit suicide?"

  Manny stopped laughing and asked what had happened. "Have your switches set up for strafe and forget to reset them?"

  "Yeah. Cost me a MiG kill, too," said Joe with a petulant look.

  "Say, Jackie?" asked Henry. "What do your long-hair Peace Corps people think about us military swine?"

  Jackie, fast becoming a regular part of the group, paused before answering. "They're split," she finally said. "Some think you're okay. Some think it's a dumb war, and we shouldn't be in it. Others think all military people are heartless baby killers."

  "Aww," said Joe, happy to pass the attention to someone else. "They're thinking of Smitty when they say things like that."

  Smitty, who was cherubic and innocent looking, grinned at Jackie. "I'm just your regular run-of-the-mill, combat-trained killer," he said. "But Joe's not. He just scares 'em."

  Joe glared.

  "Joe's a member of the SPCG," said Henry. "The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gomers."

  "Aww, c'mon, guys. Let me off the hook for missing the MiG, okay?"

  "Teach you to call me names," said Henry indignantly.

  Since he'd learned Henry was sensitive about his receding hairline, Joe had been using a cockney accent to call him " 'enry 'orn, the 'airless 'onkie."