Брайан Гарфилд - The Last Bridge

His voice diminished and trailed off. His tongue was a little thicker: “Trung knew. I wanted to die — he knew that. He laughed at me. I did my Goddamn best to die, David, but he wouldn’t let me. And maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I was still alive, and maybe that’s what told Trung I’d crack. If you haven’t got the guts to die, then you haven’t got the guts to live, either.”

Saville said, “You’re all right now, Eddie. You’re all right. You’ll make it.”

Kreizler laughed off key. His eyes were dull as slate. Tyreen looked across the cave. J. D. Hooker lay on his side with his legs scissored like a man running. He had rolled over and quit snoring. Khang, on the other side of the cave, sprawled as if boneless. Tyreen’s jaw muscles stood out like cables. “Can you remember what you told him?”

Saville said angrily, “If he was drowning you’d throw him both ends of a rope, wouldn’t you, David?”

Kreizler said, “Leave him alone, Theodore. He’s paid his dues.”

Saville wasn’t listening. “What’s happened to you, for God’s sake, David?”

Tyreen said viciously, “ Fermez la bouche , Theodore. Understand? Keep your Goddamn mouth shut. That’s an order, Captain.”

Saville shook his head. “I thought I knew you. I don’t know you at all.”

Kreizler said, “He does pack a pretty tight suitcase. Leave us a while, Theodore. I’ll be all right.”

Saville got up and went out of the cave. Kreizler said, “If it was anybody else but Theodore, you’d bust him back to the ranks for insubordination. You let him get away with it. I wonder if he appreciates that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tyreen said.

“I’ll bet he wouldn’t have talked.”

“Any man alive would have talked, Eddie. It’s only a question of when.”

“You think I could have held out longer? Is that what you think?”

“I don’t think about it at all,” Tyreen droned. “I’ve got to know how much you told them. Colonel Trung is dead. How much information did he relay out of there before we killed him?”

“He had the whole enchilada on a tape recorder.”

Tyreen nodded. “Tell me whatever you can remember.”

“A lot of it won’t matter. Details of the demolition plans for the bridge. Names of men on my team. They’re all dead, anyway, all but one.”

“Corporal Smith. He’s dead, too.”

“A full house, then,” Kreizler murmured.

“What else did you give them?”

“A lot of personal history. Me, Marie, the kids. The home town. They seem to want a lot of that stuff. Then he went to work on bigger stuff. He wanted the number of guerrilla teams we’ve got operating in this sector. Plans, commanding officers, locations. I gave him the whole smear.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Every one of those units is being shifted — or has been, by tonight. It was on the planning boards two weeks ago. A complete shake-up. Whatever information you gave Trung is obsolete by now.”

“I didn’t know.”

Tyreen said, “The way it worked out, that’s a good thing.”

“When did the orders go out?”

“To the field? By radio — this morning.”

“And one other thing,” Kreizler said. “Who planned this?”

“General Jaynshill.”

“Sure,” said Kreizler.

“Anything else?”

“We got a radio flash from the General a few days ago. Orders to be ready to meet a paratroop battalion. Urquhart’s outfit. They’re dropping in behind the border next Tuesday. Spearpoint for an invasion.”

“Crap,” Tyreen said.

“What?”

“There’s no invasion, Eddie. You got your message garbled, or maybe it was a phony from some infiltrator in the Saigon radio room. Nobody’s dropping paratroopers into North Vietnam. Not this Tuesday or any other Tuesday. Urquhart’s battalion went into action last night within earshot of Saigon.”

“I see,” Kreizler said bitterly.

“Is that all you told them?”

“All I can remember.”

Tyreen said, “Then I guess it won’t do us much harm.”

“It wasn’t intended to.”

“What?”

“I want to think,” Kreizler said. “I feel kind of dopey. The morphine, I guess.”

“All right. Get some sleep.”

Kreizler pulled his blankets up with his broken hands. “You ever hear of a Judas goat, David?”

“No.”

“Blow out that candle, will you?”

Tyreen cupped his hands around the flame and blew it out.

He stepped out of the cave into a jungle clearing washed by moonlight. A dappling of mackerel cloud made patchwork of the sky. He swallowed a quinine capsule and drank deeply from a canteen and set it down. Saville crouched with his back to a boulder. There was not much to see; jungle guarded three sides of the clearing, and the mountainside stood behind them. The girl Lin Thao walked up the slope with a carbine across her arm. Saville said, “You ought to get some more sleep, David.”

“I’ll spell you. Turn in.”

“Hooker can stand guard. You need—”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d quit questioning every order that comes out of my mouth, Theodore.”

Saville got up without a word and stooped to enter the cave.

Tuesday , Tyreen thought. He had four days to limbo. The General would ship him home on the first jet. If I get back.

He sat down and dragged the submachine gun across his lap. The girl was walking back and forth, stopping here and there to turn her head slowly, trying to catch the night’s small sounds on the flats of her eardrums. Her hair was tied back with string. She seemed fierce and proud.

It was a country where the people made child-slaves of orphans; where no one had ever been free; where in four thousand years there had never been a government obeyed by all the people; where the Montagnards hunted gibbons with crossbows and bribed the army with packets of opium. He watched Lin Thao’s lithe movements. She came toward him and knelt down. “You would like a cigarette?”

“Thank you.”

“Be careful, please.”

He hid the match against his chest and blew it out, and cupped the glowing end of the cigarette in his hand. He coughed. “Where did you get this?”

“From a dead soldier.”

“They must make these things out of Ho Chi Minh’s socks.”

She did not laugh. “You are a brave man. Like my brother.”

“You’re thinking he died for his bravery.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“You’re as brave as he was.”

“I must finish his work,” she said.

“Only because you’re brave.”

“It is not the same. I did not wish this. I do not like it. I would like a house and a husband who is a farmer. And no guns.”

“That’s what you’re fighting for, isn’t it?”

“It does not seem right,” she said, “that the strong should fight for the weak. If the strong die in the fight, it is so much more that we lose than if the weak die. My brother was strong, like you — but it only meant that he was so much more likely to die.”

“Everybody dies.”

“That is not what I meant.”

He said, “I don’t know the answer to your question, Lin Thao. Maybe things can be better than they are. We fight because we don’t want our children to have to fight.”

“For some men that is the reason,” she said. “But not for you, Colonel.”

He murmured, “Your eyes see a lot, don’t they?”

“I see your pride, Colonel. It is the same with my brother, and with my cousin who was a Vietcong. He was killed in the south. The cause means nothing. It is pride.”

“Maybe a little more than that. A little better than that.”