The Last Bridge

by Brian Garfield

  Cascading lumps of coal left a checkerboard of charcoal stains on the back of J. D. Hooker’s field jacket. Hooker scooped up the coal shovel and rammed it into Khang’s hands. “Work, damn you.” Hooker dropped back to his destructive tools as if there had been no interruption.

  McKuen spoke weary relief. Tyreen beckoned him close and said, “Can you run this engine?”

  McKuen considered it. “Looks easy enough. If I don’t have to turn loop-the-loops.”

  Tyreen stepped past Hooker and shook the engineer’s shoulder. He said in Vietnamese, “Jump.”

  The engineer jerked back. “Choi oi!”

  “Di nhanh,” Tyreen said. “Di di.”

  He gripped the engineer’s collar and propelled him to the open platform. The engineer gripped the handrails with both hands and bent his knees like a diver. “Da dao my,” he said with bravado, and leaped away.

  Tyreen watched him tumble. McKuen grasped the throttle and looked back. “Is he all right?”

  “I think so.”

  “What was that last crack?”

  “He said, ‘Down with America,’” Tyreen answered drily.

  Sergeant Khang tossed coal into the firebox. The train howled up the long curving grade with a clang of steel and a banner of smoke. The slope tilted up, ever more steep, and the ten-wheel engine slugged laboriously along the line. McKuen said, “Maybe we’re supposed to give a whistle signal when we get up near the bridge.”

  “When we get that close,” Tyreen yelled in reply, “it’ll be too late to stop us.”

  He saw a shadow move, and he wheeled. A great bulk loomed atop the coal tender—Saville. Tyreen’s tired face broke into a grin. Saville dropped down on the swaying platform. His face was black from whipping smoke. Tyreen said, “Did you find a gun?”

  “No gun,” Saville said, catching his breath. “There was a caboose full of troops. I cut it loose. It’s rolling back down the grade now. I hope they didn’t have a radio in there. David, from up top you can see the tunnel. Maybe a mile, no more. How near ready are we?”

  Tyreen said, “Hooker!”

  Hooker grunted and kept working. An instant later he threw both arms up like a cowboy in a steer-tying rodeo contest. “Do I fuse it now, Colonel?”

  Rapid calculations ran through Tyreen’s head. “Fuse it and stand by to light up. Theodore, get ready to jump.”

  Khang tossed his shovel aside and stood behind Saville on the edge of the platform. Tyreen stood at the front of the cab, peering forward, waiting for the tunnel to appear. Hooker was lighting a cigarette, shielding his flame from the wind. The firebox roared. Tyreen said, “Full throttle, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m on it,” said McKuen.

  The bridge was about a hundred yards long; Tyreen had to time the fuse within that limit. He studied the pitch of the track rolling underneath; he watched the rails curve past monuments of rock and then, suddenly, the tunnel mouth came around the bend a quarter mile ahead.

  Hooker said, “Now?”

  “Hold it.”

  Saville swung back into the cab. Tyreen socked Khang on the arm; Khang made his jump. He was still in the air when Tyreen shouted to McKuen, and McKuen wheeled around the steel wall and leaped away.

  Saville stood fast, rocking with the sway of the engine, and Tyreen bellowed furiously at him, “Get the hell out of the way!”

  With a half-sheepish grin the big man put the slabs of his hands on the rails and swung down. He waited a moment longer, and jumped.

  The tunnel grew large and black. Machine gun snouts started to turn in sealed bunkers. Tyreen held his hand up. Hooker had his burning cigarette in his hand, six inches from the fuse.

  The hot black engine brawled up the rails, and Tyreen saw machine gun muzzles turning slowly, uncertainly, following the engine. One hundred yards, eighty yards, and Tyreen roared, “Now!”

  The cigarette stabbed against the cable; fuse sputtered. Hooker held the cigarette against the fuse, calmly insuring that the spark was full. Sixty yards, fifty.

  Tyreen bent down to yell. “Never mind. Jump. Go!” He swiveled back onto the platform. Hooker made a racing start, plunged past him through the opening, and was gone. Tyreen had a last glimpse of the sizzling fuse. The fierce glare of the firebox half blinded him. He dropped both feet to the outside steps and launched himself from the engine.

  The ground sped forward under him. It tripped him, rolled him down; he sprawled and flipped over and banged his hip and rib cage and right arm. Agony exploded down the whole side of his body. He pedaled his legs and got a toehold on the embankment and sprinted toward the scrub jungle ten yards away from the roadbed. The sound of guns was swallowed in the racket and roar of the train, but a lacing of machine gun bullets kicked dirt against his running legs. The submachine gun slung across his shoulders had cut his collar open, but that was a small hurt in his racked body. He made a fiat dive into the bush and slid along a gravel surface, butting a tree. He crabbed deeper into the brush. Bullets clipped through. He made a sharp turn and crawled swiftly on his belly, dragging his right arm.

  Thicker jungle swallowed him, and he stopped with breath hot as a furnace lashing in and out of him. His face lay in the damp red earth; spittle began to pool by his mouth. Blood flowed down his neck. Through the roots he could see one little patch of track with car-trucks rolling over it. The last car came grinding past and then the sound changed, the hollow echoes of the train banging through the tunnel. He closed his eyes.

  The steam engine emerged from the tunnel mouth at twenty-five miles an hour. A telephone warning from the far end of the tunnel had brought a squad of soldiers out of the guard tower, and a sergeant was struggling with a rusty siding switch when the engine appeared. On the far side of the bridge, a tank rumbled forward in the slow attempt to block the engine. The tiny figures of men ran about on the battlements of the south slope. For some unclear purpose the barrel of a mountain howitzer began to swivel. The sergeant failed to throw the switch in time to divert the engine. In a hiss of steam it passed the switch. The switch, thrown over, derailed the fifth boxcar, broke a coupling and sent the after-length of the train—twenty-eight freight cars and nine tankers—plunging free into the gorge. The coal tender jumped the tracks just short of the bridge and piled into the concrete bridge pier with a crash that shook the mountain. Its three-car train whiplashed against the base of the guard tower, tearing out a six-ton concrete wall. Two antiaircraft gun emplacements tumbled into the undercut hole. Thirty-seven railroad cars full of cargo caromed off the gorge walls like a handful of dropped marbles. The engine, with its rear trucks off the rails, lurched down the track into the exact center of the bridge span, where its tight-packed charge of ultra-high-explosive ignited. The sound of the TNT cap was lost in greater noise. The engine, unbalanced on the rails, began to tip over on its left side, and then the demolition charge went off.

  It ripped through the length of the engine, blasting downward. Shrieking half-ton chunks of steel rocketed through the wrought-iron bridge as if it were papier-maché. The roar was deafening. There was a flash of white light. The blast ripped a forty-five foot section from the midsection of the span. A three-thousand-pound lance of steel flew across the chasm with the speed of a racing car and imbedded itself in the granite wall. A cloud of debris and smoke foamed high above the gorge. The explosion of the engine boiler sent metal plates four hundred feet in the air. The brass engine bell fell all the way to the Sang Chu river, gonging the full while.

  Without arc support, the severed halves of the bridge bent away from their piers. Like a divided trapdoor, the bridge hinged at either end, collapsing with roaring snaps of breaking iron and concrete. The northern half broke loose quickly and fell eighty feet to a ledge of granite, where it broke apart and fell to the river in pieces. The remaining section sagged slowly on its pylons. Cracks developed in the concrete pier as if an earthquake had shaken the mountain. Like a rubber band stretched beyond its limit, the bridge broke away, carrying the enti
re concrete pier with it.

  The bodies of soldiers fell through the gorge. The sergeant at the switch was flattened, dead, against the ground. Three men lay pinned under the smashed coal tender. A body lay in the mouth of the tunnel, and two wounded men crawled blindly back into the darkness. The twisted ends of rails jutted into space.

  For a reason unknown to the wounded garrison commander, the mountain howitzer fired a single round into the sky.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  1115 Hours

  TYREEN’S ears rang angrily long after the last explosive racket died on the far side of the mountain. He had seen ragged bits of iron and steel careering through the sky above the peak. He spoke with bleak tonelessness:

  “It’s done.”

  His neck bled slowly. He was bruised from head to foot. He made his way downhill through the altitude-stunted jungle, moving roughly parallel to the railroad tracks.

  J. D. Hooker stepped into sight with his gun muzzle dipped. He was filthy; he moved with the slow stiffness of a badly punished body. His hostile eyes reflected the smoky daylight. Tyreen walked forward painfully, tramping his flickering shadow into the ground.

  A feeling of cold struck definitely through him. He saw Hooker walking forward, frowning. When Hooker came closer, his lips moved and he spoke with suppressed urgency, but Tyreen did not make out the words. Hooker broke into a run across the intervening five yards; Hooker’s voice jumped at him:

  “Down!” And Hooker’s solid body smashed into him, carrying him down flat.

  His vision was filled with the pale clenching of Hooker’s jaws, the lift of Hooker’s ugly gun. Tyreen swiveled his head. Sergeant Khang was plowing forward, coming the same way Hooker had come, and back the other way a flat-helmeted figure weaved through the trees. Hooker’s gun opened up just above Tyreen’s face, blasting his eardrums intolerably. Khang shouted something and went past on the run.

  Tyreen rolled over. “Wait, you fool!” He climbed to his feet and went after Khang.

  Khang swung through the trees, and a single rifle shot boomed. Khang wheeled and started shooting. His face leered furiously. Hooker commenced fire, and a body crashed down among the trees somewhere nearby. The soldier in Tyreen’s view weaved in and out of sight, never giving him a clear shot. Tyreen heard the man fire. He saw Khang’s running body spill and crash into a tree.

  Tyreen ducked aside and let go a coolly aimed hurst at the soldier. The soldier ducked back into thicker trees. Hooker was shouting steadily. Khang got up, hurt, and began to retreat. Tyreen gave him covering fire. Khang limped along and dropped flat beside Tyreen.

  “What the hell was that for, Sergeant?”

  Figures ran through the shadows. Khang said, “I want to get my licks in, too, Colonel. It’s my Goddamn country.”

  “Where’s that bullet?”

  “Hipbone, I guess. It don’t hurt.”

  Sunlight flashed on a gun barrel, and Tyreen fired at it. The gun blew powdersmoke back in his face. He latched the gun open to feed in a new magazine; he cut his palm on the sharp bolt-handle. His hand started to bleed. Hooker was no longer in sight; he had backed away. Someone spoke a warning, and Theodore Saville ran into the district, firing three brief bursts. Saville’s right cheek was bruised an angry red. “The place is crawling with them.”

  “Come on.” Tyreen got to his knees and looked down at Khang.

  Khang’s expression, loose and faded and blind, was plain enough evidence that he was dead.

  Unable to believe it, Tyreen turned him over. Two wounds bled in Khang’s side: the hip and the left ribs, high up. “He didn’t even feel that one.” The bleeding stopped as he watched.

  “Let’s go, David,” Saville said gently.

  The closeness of death laid a frost on Tyreen’s nerves. He stooped to swing Khang’s arm over his shoulder and started to lift Khang when gunfire erupted in the woods and he heard wood splintering and the audible whip of slugs going by.

  “Leave him,” Saville snapped.

  Tyreen got up and searched the woods. Rage engulfed him. He found a hostile gunner and put a burst in that direction, pinning the man down.

  Fifty yards away, J. D. Hooker stood, his squat frame blocking an opening between trees. His braced gun talked in harsh signals. Echoes slammed back and forth against the slopes. Tyreen started to make his run, with Saville on his heels. Hooker kept shooting, covering their run; hostile bullets buzzed through the forest. Everything was sharp and clear; the unfriendly glare of the half-clouded sky beat against his eyes. Hooker stood with his shoulders jammed between trees, his face lifted violently and his chopper chugging out ammunition. His feet were spread the width of the opening; his hands were like vises on the gun.

  Something struck Tyreen a sharp blow in the shoulder blade. He felt his legs give way; he was halfway to the ground when a giant arm swept him up. His face turned an arc through the air; he felt himself being overturned. Saville’s big shoulder butted into the pit of his stomach and Saville ran on, carrying him that way over one shoulder.

  They came past Hooker, and Hooker said crankily, “You people coming? Or do we wait and have tea?”

  “You’re punchy,” Saville told him.

  “What about the peckerhead?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I didn’t figure you’d leave him, otherwise,” Hooker said grudgingly. He snapped his gun up past Saville’s thigh, but held his fire: “Lieutenant McKuen. That damn fool—what’s he think he’s doing?”

  “Go after him.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll catch up. Go on.”

  Tyreen heard the talk through a veil of red agony. The big shoulder rocked under him while they pushed downslope through the jungle; Tyreen could hear Hooker plunging ahead and Saville, carrying Tyreen’s weight, was keeping up. A blast of fire echoed behind them, and Saville made a ponderous turn to answer it. The gun ran empty, and Saville threw it aside. “Hang on, David,” he said, and broke into a run.

  A gun hammered ahead of them, offering cover. Tyreen could see nothing but the ground lurching past underneath. Dizzy waves washed through him; red curtains opened and closed across his eyes. There was a distant rattle of automatic rifle fire, an answering volley from somewhere ahead, and then another gun opened up closer by, off to the left. Tyreen felt Saville jerk under him. The big man halted for a moment, and Tyreen heard the sawing sigh of his breath. Then Saville picked up the pace again. Tyreen tried to speak; finally he husked out the words: “Are you hurt?”

  Saville made no answer. He ran at sprint-pace, dodging trees. McKuen was up there, shouting something. Saville started to slow down; his pace became uneven. Tyreen said, “For Christ’s sake, put me down.” Saville kept lumbering on. Tyreen heard Hooker calling to McKuen:

  “The Captain’s hit.”

  Boots pounded the earth, and there was a surge of gunfire. Saville moved on, staggering, and finally the splendid body faltered. Saville went to his knees and coughed. Tyreen broke the man’s hold on him and fell away. When he rolled upright, he saw Saville pitching slowly forward like a falling redwood. He had a stitching of wounds across his belly and chest. Tyreen spoke and reached out, but Saville was dead before he fell.

  Hooker plunged forward. Tyreen heard him dimly: “Jesus—Jesus. He was dead a quarter-mile back. And he got this far!”

  There was a ragged after-volley of fire. McKuen spoke somewhere in the thickening fog: “They’ve lost us. Running around with their bloody noses to the ground.”

  Tyreen pried his eyes wide open and burned a path through dizzy mists. He stared at the mound of Theodore Saville’s body. Another life guttered out. By a terrible effort of will, he got on his feet and lifted his hand in a slow salute. He held the salute until McKuen grabbed him by the arm. He shook McKuen off savagely; he turned and tried to explain:

  “He was a friend of mine.”

  “Sure,” McKuen said. “Let’s find some cover and bandage you up before you irrigate the whol
e bloody mountainside.”

  Tyreen opened his mouth to speak. A red blanket climbed up over the surfaces of his eyes. It turned black, and he lost his balance. He did not feel himself fall.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  1800 Hours

  AFTER dark they found a lonely fisherman poling a sampan down the river toward the sea. J. D. Hooker threw the fisherman overboard, and McKuen placed Colonel Tyreen gently in the bow and watched the angry fisherman swim to shore. He climbed over the gunwales and watched Hooker take the pole. McKuen was tired and hungry and scratched-up, bruised and banged-around. Hooker’s face was sour, and he had nothing to say until McKuen said, “Seems a bleedin’ shame to bust down such a pretty bridge, now I think of it.”

  “Christ,” Hooker replied.

  Tyreen heard their talk vaguely. He twisted his head. Water lapped the bow. His ears rang, and he felt afloat on a feather cushion. He said drowsily, “McKuen.”

  “Sir.”

  “Map in my pocket pouch. Rendezvous with the submarine at coordinates HL385748. Midnight.”

  “Holy Mother of God. How d’you remember that after all we’ve suffered?”

  “It’s my job, Lieutenant.”

  “Colonel,” said McKuen, “you are a bastard and a son of a bitch and a fine figure of a man.”