Брайан Гарфилд - The Last Bridge

“Snafu, Colonel. I guess the damned battery’s gone dead on us.”

“Bitching,” said J. D. Hooker.

Tyreen struck a match and moved around the garage, cupping the small flame. “No lamp bulb in the light socket.” The match burned his fingers, and he struck a new one. He found an oil lamp and picked it up. It held no oil.

Theodore Saville said, “We’ll have to give the truck a push to get it started.”

“Sure,” said Nguyen Khang. “Right down the middle of Main Street, hey, Captain?”

Saville was kneeling by Captain Kreizler on the floor. Tyreen’s match went out. He heard Saville talk softly: “How you making it, Eddie?” Kreizler did not reply.

Tyreen said, “I’ve got to talk to him, Theodore.”

“Do you want me to slap his face, or what?”

“Let me know as soon as he starts to come around.”

A gray faint line of light showed under the door. Tyreen’s eye began to adjust to it. J. D. Hooker was complaining: “What you figure to do now, Colonel? Sit here and wait for the gooks to surround the place?”

“Relax, Sergeant. Nobody knows we’re here.”

“Nobody but that gook dame. Who says she won’t spill the beans to the comrades?”

“She won’t,” said Nguyen Khang.

“Anybody ask you, peckerhead?”

“Hooker, by God, I’ve had just about—”

Saville said, “Shut up, God damn it.”

Tyreen went around lighting matches. The place was a repair garage; perhaps there were batteries about, or a battery-charging machine. But he found nothing. The place had been stripped — by vandals, or by the government. A few tools lay haphazardly on the floor, rusty beyond use. Pools of grease puddled the uneven surface. Tyreen blew out the match. There was just enough light to move around. He said, “We’ve got to get Eddie out of here and get back to that bridge. We can’t do it on foot.”

Saville said, “Maybe we ought to get back to that staff car we left back there.”

“That car’s hot, Captain,” Sergeant Khang said. “Real hot. Like a nympho’s pants. We need something clean, like an oxcart or something. A tank, maybe, hey?”

Khang chuckled and added, “Don’t anybody move too fast — I bruise easy.”

Saville came across the room and spoke softly to Tyreen. “Maybe we ought to curl up and get some sleep. You need it, God knows. So do the rest of us, for that matter.”

“Think we can run that radio from in here?”

“I don’t know. We’ll need someplace to run up the antenna.”

“There’s a potbellied stove over in the corner.”

J. D. Hooker hissed across the floor: “Company.”

After a while Tyreen heard the rattle of a vehicle, the chug of an engine with a faulty muffler, and the crunch of slow-moving tires. A moth flipped by his face, brushing him, making him recoil. The rumble of wheels grew louder and stopped, quite close by; the engine ran a moment longer and was switched off; soft voices ran through the air. Boots tramped the wet pavement outside. Tyreen heard the thud of a heavy object being dropped. He moved carefully to the door and began to pull very slowly at the clumsy hasp. He made a slit wide enough for his eye to peer through. Saville was at his shoulder. Tyreen’s fingers tightened against the door. He saw the heavy outline of a jeep, and just beyond it a machine gun on its low tripod. Two men threw wooden horses across the narrow street; a third man crouched by the gun; a fourth waited beside the jeep with a steel helmet on his head and an automatic carbine across the bend of his elbow, leaning back, lighting a cigarette, laughing quietly at something said by one of the others.

Tyreen pushed the door shut silently and latched the hasp. He went back and spoke in a monotone. “Roadblock. I suppose they’re setting them up all over the city, trying to snare us. It’s about thirty feet down from the door.”

Khang said, “And no back door to this joint.”

Saville said, “We could wait them out.”

J. D. Hooker said, “We could blow them up with a couple grenades.”

“Sure,” Khang jeered, “and bring a whole Goddamn platoon down on us before we got two blocks away.”

Saville said, “What about it, David? Eddie’s in no condition to move, anyway. I’ll stand guard. The rest of you sack out a few hours. Maybe they’ll move the roadblock after that. They won’t wait forever, if we don’t show up.”

Tyreen said, “It’s too risky. They’ll be starting a house-to-house search pretty soon, if they haven’t already. If we can steal that jeep and those fresh uniforms, it might give us a break. But we’ve got to do it without noise:”

Khang said, “Hooker can blow on them and knock them down with his Goddamned breath.”

Hooker’s feet scraped the ground. “You slimy little bastard.”

Saville said, “Cut it out, damn it.”

“Then keep this puking peckerhead off my back, Captain.”

Khang said bitterly, “We get all the breaks, don’t we?”

Saville said, “We’re still alive. Which is more than I’d have bet on this morning.”

“Maybe you got something there, Captain.”

Saville said, “You hear that laugh? That’s the laugh of a man holding a Goddamn gun. Sure of himself — but take that damned gun away, and he won’t laugh so loud.”

Khang said, “They’re telling dirty jokes.”

“Sure.”

Outside, the soldiers’ voices rose and fell. Tyreen said, “What’s that?”

Khang moved toward the door. He listened a moment. “They’ve stopped somebody on the street — they’re questioning him... Now they’re letting him pass.”

The scent of motor grease was thick. Tyreen said, “We’re missing something. Theodore?”

“Beats me.”

Someone started to mutter. Tyreen cruised across the room and knelt by Eddie Kreizler. Saville settled by him. Kreizler’s talk was unintelligible. “Out of his head,” Saville said.

“Quiet him down.”

“I’ll give him a Seconal injection.”

Tyreen moved aside. There was a way. There was something obvious that he had missed. He looked around, peering into deep shadows. One of the soldiers whooped outside. Tyreen made inventory of everything in the room. The greasing pit, the truck, the rusty tools, the old potbellied wood stove, the radio, the demolition equipment, the grenades, the submachine guns.

He stopped in his tracks. “Back up,” he muttered. “The stove.”

He went over to it and struck a match and threw his head back. The stove had a metal stovepipe going up to the roof, an old black metal flue with several loose seams.

“Theodore.”

Saville came around behind the truck. Tyreen’s glance traveled up the stovepipe to the ceiling. “Hole in the roof,” he said.

A wooden square covered the hole; the chimney went up through a circular cut. “We can lift that wood off.”

“It’ll be a tight fit, especially for me.”

“You’ll make it, Theodore.”

“Sure I will.”

“We’ll have to get the stovepipe down without making a racket.”

“That’ll be ticklish, David. I can imagine what that thing would sound like, falling down.”

“A dogfight in an alley full of garbage cans.”

Saville chuckled. Tyreen shook the match out. “Everybody over here, now.”

“Push,” Tyreen said. J. D. Hooker grunted. Saville shouldered against the truck’s fender. The truck slowly rolled backward. “Hold it!” Khang hit the brake and the truck stopped, backed against the stove.

Khang came down. “All right,” Tyreen said. “Up you go.”

Saville got on the tailgate and made a stirrup of his hands. Nguyen Khang scrambled up onto the rear hoop of the tarp frame. Saville’s great hands gripped Khang’s calves, bracing the man’s weight. Khang reached out. He had to lean precariously outward to reach the stovepipe. The match burned down and burned Tyreen’s fingers. J. D. Hooker said, “Here. Use my lighter, Colonel. Not much fluid left in the puking thing.”