Брайан Гарфилд - The Last Bridge

“You’re a bastard, Martin.”

“What else do you like about me?”

Tyreen closed his eyes momentarily. He heard the scrape of the General’s shoes. When he opened his eyes, the General was coming away from the window. Tyreen said, “Captain Kreizler is down, up north. Remember Unit Seventeen?”

The General’s big head lifted slowly. “Eddie Kreizler? Was he assigned one of those kamikaze units of yours?”

“If that’s what you want to call them.”

“Christ, I wish I’d known. I’d have reassigned him to something with a reasonable life expectancy.”

“He’s the best officer I’ve got up there,” Tyreen said. “If you’d tried to pull him out of there, I’d have fought you.”

“Eddie Kreizler,” the General said. “He was my exec in Korea. A hell of a good fullback at the Academy.” He turned. “What’s happened to him, David?”

Tyreen’s dark eyes flickered. “His unit reported tonight. Not too much to it. We’ll get another report at eleven. Captain Saville tells me Kreizler’s outfit walked into a Vietminh trap. One corporal got away. Kreizler may not be dead.”

Jaynshill gave him a lacquered look. “He might be best off, dead.”

“If they’ve got him alive, you can imagine what kind of information they’ll be getting out of him.”

“Maybe they haven’t got him. Maybe he’s lying out there in the boondocks bleeding.”

“Uh-huh,” Tyreen said.

“Find out.” The General’s teeth clicked. “Find out. If he’s alive in their hands, it kills the value of every piece of expensive, dangerous work he had anything to do with.”

“And he had plenty of that. His ‘A’ Team was coordinating headquarters for all our units in the area.”

“What was his mission, specifically?”

“The bridge,” Tyreen said.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“You told me to put my best team on it,” Tyreen said quietly.

“You son of a bitch,” Jaynshill said. “Eddie Kreizler, wasted on a suicide job. Christ, David.” His eyelids dropped, covering his thoughts. He had a way of working around a subject when it was distasteful. He said, “I’m getting old, I guess.”

“It’s not pleasant.”

“I stopped expecting life to be pleasant when I was ten years old. But this — you don’t let things hit you like this. At least I never did. But you get old, I guess. But at least I can still press a barbell. If I looked half as old as you do, I’d quit without anybody urging me. How old are you — forty-three?”

“I don’t feel a day over ninety.”

“Forty-three. Still a colonel. If you hadn’t argued with too many generals, David, you’d be a brigadier by now.” Jaynshill rubbed his eyes. “All right. About Kreizler. You’ll have to send a team up there. The best you can find. If you find the VC have him prisoner and he’s still alive, it can only mean they plan to make further use of him. You’ll have to get him out fast. If your team can’t get him out immediately, they’ll have to kill him.”

“Kill Eddie Kreizler?”

“Those are your orders.”

Tyreen said slowly, “Do you really think that fruit salad on your hat gives you the right to do that? You set yourself up as an august body of one to—”

The General cut him off: “The things that keep troubling you, David, are standards that are totally irrelevant in war.”

“Simple to state,” Tyreen said viciously. “Martin, you—”

“You think I’m cold-blooded, don’t you?”

“I’d have used a shorter word.” Hot anger sawed through Tyreen. “General, the basic principle is—”

“Don’t try to shout me down, David. You can’t do it. The basic principle — and you ought to know this — the basic principle is that there are no basic principles.”

“You’re playing your part fine, General, but I’m a pretty poor audience. First you get all broken up when you find out I put Kreizler on the line, and now you want me to send an assassin up there to finish the job. It doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t make sense to me that you didn’t know Eddie was the man I sent up there to blow the Sang Chu bridge. You had to know. All my rosters go across your desk. And Eddie being almost as good a friend of yours as he is of mine, he wouldn’t have left Saigon without dropping by here first. You didn’t know about Eddie like you didn’t know about my orders to raid into Cambodia. Maybe you’d better let me in on the secret.”

“No. I’m sorry, David. I’m sorry for you, but I’m a hell of a lot more sorry for Eddie Kreizler. He laid himself on the line.”

“Well, then, that’s okay,” Tyreen said. “Everything’s fine, just so long as you’re sorry.”

“Can it, David.”

“All right. I’ll never tell a soul. Let it be our little secret, just you and me and the firing squad that gets rid of what’s left of Eddie after they’re through milking him for information.”

The General said brusquely, “At ease, Colonel.”

“Yes, sir,” Tyreen said acidly.

The General pinched the bridge of his nose and said in a suddenly quiet voice, “It’s going to be a thorny job.”

“Captain Saville’s getting up a team. I’ll want Major Parnell to command it. Wayne Parnell.”

“That’s bad arithmetic, a major for a captain.”

“Under the circumstances Eddie Kreizler’s a pretty important captain.”

The General took a new tack: “Who’s this Parnell?”

“He was transferred to us a month ago. He’s been working with a tribe of Montagnards in Laos.”

“Under the Agency,” General Jaynshill said with distaste. “But he’s not under my command. I’ve never heard of him.”

“He’s one of that bunch on temporary assignment at Nha Trang for medical treatment.”

The General stared at him. “And you want to send a sick man into North Vietnam?”

Tyreen said, “He’s due to be released to duty in a few days.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“The same thing wrong with half our people. Skin rot, infected feet, dysentery. And a Pathet Lao arrow wound in his ribs.”

“An arrow wound?”

“Crossbow. The Montagnards use them.”

“He sounds as if he’d be a very sick man, if he were alive.”

“He’s healthy enough to complain. And as long as a man’s got something to bitch about, he’s all right. Correct me if I’m wrong, General?”

Jaynshill poked a thick index finger toward him. “That’s my line, David. You’re quoting my own speech. You ought to know better than to throw a man’s own words back at him.”

Tyreen said blandly, “Can I have him?”

The General threw his head back to study Tyreen’s face from under lowered brows. He said, “It’s your baby, David. I’m giving you a mountain, and you’ve got precious few hours to make a molehill out of it. Is this man Parnell the best you can get?”

“I think so.”

“Is he as good as you were?”

“ Are , General. Not were. ”

“All right,” Jaynshill said. “Can that kind of talk, David. I’ve told you to slow down, and that’s an order. You’ll be headed home in a few days.”

“Yes, sir,” Tyreen murmured. “I guess I will. Can I have Parnell?”

“You can have him, but only on one basis. It’s on a volunteer basis only, David, and I mean volunteer. You do not have my permission to twist the man’s arm. If he doesn’t want to go, send Captain Saville to command the team.”

“Theodore wouldn’t take the job. He doesn’t want to command — he hasn’t got the brains for it, and he knows it.”

The General spread his hands and smiled without humor. “David, I don’t give a damn what the man wants. If Kreizler talks to the Reds, he can wipe out six months’ work. And he will, if they’re given enough time to work on him. He’s got to be freed. Freed or silenced.”