“You’re in no condition to listen. Go on.”
“All right. Thanks.” Khang spoke with a weary twang. He crossed the room, reached through the door to find a pushbutton light switch, and went in. The kitchen, cramped and disorderly, lay ahead of him, and to his right was a narrow door into a bathroom.
He had his shower and found a comb for his hair. A long crack ran diagonally down the mirror, distorting his face. He slid into the Captain’s overflowing terry-cloth house robe and padded out to the kitchen. Sizzling cracks retorted from the stove, where Saville stood pushing bacon and potatoes around in a frying pan with a fork. Beaded sweat glittered on Saville’s brown forehead. He pointed to a wooden chair.
Khang sat, alerted by the strong, greasy scent of food in the close air. Saville turned off the burner and scraped the food into a plate, which he handed to Khang. The Sergeant ate from his lap. “You live here, Captain?”
“No. We just use the place now and then. It’s less public than the base.” Saville put his shoulder against the doorjamb and folded his huge arms. His eyes were half closed. “You’re still bushed.”
“I guess I am,” Sergeant Khang said. “We were marching three days and nights. I just got back day before yesterday. Been sleeping most of the time since.”
“I know,” Saville said. A little smile moved across his fleshy face. “This the first food you’ve had today?”
“Yes.”
Saville’s huge body moved. He opened a cabinet and brought out a ragged half-loaf of hard, crusty bread. He handed it to Nguyen Khang without comment, picked up his beer, and resumed his post, leaning against the door. “We’re waiting for another fellow. Sergeant Sun. Know him?”
“What’s his first name?”
“Nhu Van Sun.”
“I don’t think so. What does he do?”
“A little of everything. Like all of us. Sniper, bush tracker, judo and karate. Good with booby traps.”
“Then what do you need me for?”
“You know the country up there,” Saville said.
Khang’s lips, upturned in a courteous smile, went flat and lifeless. “Up where, Captain?”
“North of the seventeenth parallel.”
The Sergeant set his plate down and stood up. “Wait a minute, Captain. You can’t ask me to go back up there. That’s like cutting my throat with a dull knife. They want me up there — they want me real bad.”
“I know,” Saville said. “I thought you had backbone, though.”
“Funny thing about backbone, Captain — one end’s got your neck on it, sticking way out.”
“And the other end?” Saville murmured drily. “Look, Sergeant, we’re not just playing king-of-the-hill. You don’t call the game on account of rain. We need you.”
“I’m no use to you dead,” Khang said. “You know what they’ll do to me if they get their hands on me, Captain?”
“The same thing they’ll do to the rest of us, I imagine,” Saville said imperturbably.
Khang had no immediate answer. His eyes flicked casually across Saville’s face and then shot back to it; he said abruptly, “If I don’t volunteer, it proves all Vietnamese are cowards. That’s what you’re thinking.”
“Wrong. You’re not a coward.” Saville was a big-nosed brute, but his eyes were kind. He added gently, “But you can’t expect to fight just when you feel like it.”
The smell of the fried bacon continued to whirl in streaky currents around Khang. Saville said, “You don’t have to volunteer.”
“I am just a dumb slant-eye, Captain, but they taught me that much at Fort Bragg. Another thing they taught me was never to volunteer.”
Saville’s talk rubbed the air with deceptive deep-pitched mildness: “High command is in a hell of a flap, Sergeant. You’re not indispensable. Nobody is. We can do the job without you. But we can do it better and easier with you. You know the country — and that could save our skins. I won’t say that all our lives will depend on you. But it could come to that.”
Khang was still on his feet. He put his thumbs in the pockets of the robe. “What’s the mission, Captain?”
“The rail bridge on the Sang Chu River.”
A long sigh escaped Khang’s chest. “You’re not just fooling around, are you?”
“One team has already tried for it. They were cut to pieces about three hours ago.” Saville’s eyes were the color of rusty iron. “That’s right in the middle of the country where you used to live, Sergeant.”
“Sure. I know every track through there. You can’t get that bridge from the air, I guess — the cliffs get in the way. So you have to do it from the ground. When I left five years ago they had a squad guarding the bridge — that railroad line is part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I imagine they’ve got a whole company of crack troops around there by now.”
“A company of guards with a heavy weapons platoon, and another company of guerrilla squads broken down into constant area patrols. The whole area’s mined and boobytrapped. They’re not stupid — they know how vital the bridge is for them, and how much we want it destroyed. It would take them a good long time to rebuild it.”
Khang picked up the remains of the breadloaf and gnawed on it. His face displayed no curiosity whatever. The big Captain’s unblinking eyes lay against him heavily. Saville said, “A man who’s lost the pride to mind getting wet in the rain is a man who needs something to do.”
“Or a man who’s worn out, Captain. Shot to shingles.” Khang’s jaws worked regularly on the bread.
“You’re young and you’re tough.”
“Well,” Khang said. The last mouthful of bread disappeared. Yellow lamplight glimmered faintly on his eyes. They moved in a slow arc to the window; he watched large round drops of water sliding down. His own breathing became a loud sound in the room. He said, “My brother and I used to play on that bridge. When I was seven, I saw a kid fall off the thing. It’s a long drop, three or four hundred feet. You bounce off the outcrops a few times on your way down. My brother wasn’t that lucky — he had to wait and grow up before he got killed. They decided he was a traitor to the People’s National Liberation Front. I forget exactly why.”
“They shot him.”
“Sure.”
“And that’s when you defected to the south.”
Khang shrugged. “All right, Captain. Let’s blow up your bridge.” He was very tired; he sat down and tilted his head back against the wall.
Saville changed into his dress greens and shouldered into his raincoat. “Get your clothes on and be ready to move out. I’m going out to round up a few other people. Sergeant Sun will show up sometime soon — I want you to keep him here until I get back. Help yourself if you get hungry.”
“And the condemned man ate a hearty meal,” said Sergeant Nguyen Khang. “Okay, Captain.”
Saville went out, closed the door, and stood peering at it in thought. He was not quite satisfied with Sergeant Khang. He went down the stairs, and habit made him tread the insides of the steps where they did not creek.
He slipped the transparent plastic rain-cover over his service cap, pulled it low over his eyes, and stepped into the soggy downpour. His jeep was parked behind the building; he drove through the city paying scant attention to the crowds of refugees lining the shelters along the wide streets of the old section. Red Cross workers and South Vietnamese soldiers passed among them distributing goods. Bars of onceused soap kindly donated by Hilton Hotels. Bowls, clothes, rice, cooking pots. A child almost ran in front of his jeep; a woman snatched the child back. Saville drove without hurry. He turned into the gaming quarter and parked the jeep by a South Vietnamese M.P. post and spoke in Vietnamese to the guard corporaclass="underline"