The Last Bridge
- Автор: Гарфилд Брайан
- Год: 1966
- Язык: английский
- Год: David McKay
- Жанр: Военная проза
Электронная книга - «The Last Bridge». Краткое содержание книги:
The soldier’s brief struggle brought his two companions to their feet. One of them shouted. Saville felt his victim go limp; he let go the cord and stepped forward, pushing the inert soldier ahead of him, holding the man up. He said plainly, “Smith.”
No one appeared. A rifle came around toward him, and he lifted the strangled soldier bodily and hurled the man across half the width of the road. The body fell across the machine gun, tangled up with both soldiers. Saville ran into the road with his knife. The two soldiers rolled out from under the dead man; one of them was at Saville’s feet, and he plunged his knife into the man’s chest while the other soldier, having no rifle, shoved the dead man away from the machine gun and reached for the grip to turn the weapon on Saville.
Saville left his knife where it was lodged. He whipped his legs up over the writhing stabbed soldier and kicked the barrel of the machine gun. The gun went over on its side. The soldier let go and rose to meet Saville’s attack, bare-handed. Saville stretched past the man’s short-armed reach and drove four stiff fingers into the man’s throat. The man went down gurgling.
The truck squeaked to a stop just beyond the sawhorse, and Tyreen swung down from the cab. His voice was matter-of-fact. “Where’s the Corporal?”
“Something I’d like to know,” Saville said.
Sergeant Hooker rammed past him and plunged into the jungle. Hooker came out, dragging Corporal Smith by the shirt collar. Smith was swallowing in spasms. Hooker flung the man down into the mud. Saville said, “Where were you?”
Tyreen said, “Never mind, Theodore. I had to make sure.”
“Make sure of what?” Saville was angry. He turned on Tyreen. “You should have let me know. For Christ’s sake, David!”
“If I’d warned you, you’d have looked out for him. You didn’t have time for that.” Tyreen slung his weapon over his shoulder. His face glistened with sweat. “I had you covered, Theodore.”
Corporal Smith lay breathing shallowly in the mud, full of misery. Tyreen said, “Pour him in the truck and let’s go. Sergeant Sun, you’ll drive.”
J. D. Hooker turned hotly. “Colonel, how many of us got to break before you quit trying to kill us all?”
Saville stepped across a dead Vietnamese and struck Hooker an openhanded blow across the face. Hooker spilled into the sawhorse and knocked it down. Saville took a step toward him, and Tyreen said gently, “Theodore.”
Hooker climbed to his feet and rubbed his jaw, not looking at anyone in particular. Saville said, “Drag these bodies off the road.” He picked up the sawhorse and threw it into the trees.
Sergeant Khang, saying nothing, helped Corporal Smith to his feet and led the man toward the truck. Saville squatted, braced a knee down, and yanked his knife out of a dead man’s chest. When he stood up he found Tyreen looking at him, and he said, “I was trying to remember how many years it took to learn where to put the knife to kill the man fast.”
“Easy,” Tyreen murmured.
Saville watched Corporal Smith get into the truck. He said, “David, the chances are if you swing too hard you’ll strike out. You had no right to take that chance with me.”
“I’m the master of this ship, Theodore. I had to know about him, and I didn’t have time to find out any other way.”
“Time,” Saville said. “God damn it, there are some things that just won’t happen as fast as you want, David. You can’t get nine women pregnant and expect a baby in one month.”
He stared at Tyreen, and the space between them became stuffed with a padded silence. Finally Tyreen said, “Let’s go.”
Nhu Van Sun climbed into the driver’s seat and sat staring at his hands on the wheel. It had not stopped raining. Saville took the heavy machine gun with him toward the back of the truck. Tyreen paused with one foot on the running board. “I had you covered, Theodore.”
“You said that before.”
Tyreen met his glance and climbed into the seat.
Saville tossed the machine gun into the truck bed and climbed in after it. He made a cursory effort to wipe some of the mud off his clothes. J. D. Hooker climbed in and looked at Corporal Smith, crumpled in a forward corner. Hooker said, “Captain, I doubt you’ll get a chance to court-martial me.”
“You’d better hope I do.”
“Yes, sir,” said Hooker. “But I think you and me both know the truth about the Colonel.”
The engine started up, and Saville braced himself against the tailgate. Sergeant Khang came away from Smith and said, “I guess he’s kind of shook up.”
“I guess he is,” Saville said.
“You ever get the feeling you’re about to roll boxcars, Captain?”
Saville did not answer him.
Chapter Nineteen
0915 Hours
McKuen paused to extract a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his face dry. He sat astraddle the number two engine nacelle, with the cowling open and his hands grease-black. He felt a deep ache in his long back.
Mister Shannon stood on the metal-mesh runway below him, festooned with small arms. Rainwater dripped off the bill of Shannon’s cap. He said, “How about it, Lieutenant?”
“I’ll not be making any promises. I ain’t a bloody mechanic.”
“Can we get her airborne?”
“And what if we do?” McKuen snorted, and bent forward to bolt the cowling down.
Shannon started to talk again; McKuen paid no attention to the words until suddenly he shot upright and said, “Quiet.” He turned his head slowly to catch the warning sound again on the flats of his eardrums, and finally he found it, a faint buzzing hum in the sky. “Piston engines,” he said. A transport, or a lonely reconnaissance bomber. “Can’t see us through the soup, anyhow. And it’s thankful I am.”
He held on to that hope while the airplane noise advanced, growing louder in the obscure sky, until he knew the plane was close overhead. And thereupon the wingtip lights appeared over the mountain, vague within the clouds, moving smoothly across his range of vision. “Twin-engine Ilyushin,” he said. “Maybe fifteen hundred feet up. He’s looking for something.”
The plane changed course, moving in a slow circle. “Looking for us,” said Mister Shannon on the ground. They waited motionless with their heads thrown back. Rain slanted against their faces; McKuen blinked. The Russian-built search plane circled the mountains, moving in and out of view in the clouds; finally it zigzagged out of sight past the mountains, and McKuen said, “They didn’t spot us.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t,” McKuen said. He slid back along the wing to the trailing edge and dropped to the ground. “I think maybe we ought to sit tight for a while. If we take off now, they’ll pick us up on radar — they’re waiting for us.”