Khang yelled in the engineer’s ear. The engineer answered quickly, resentfully. Khang stepped back and bellowed above the noise: “He says we got to have speed to make it up the grade.”
“All right. Hooker?”
“I’ll get it done,” said Hooker without looking up.
“Shape your charge to direct the force straight down. We want to blow the bridge, not the roof of the engine.”
“By God, don’t you think I know that much?”
Hooker worked on his knees with professional deliberation. When the fireman’s full shovel of coal passed by his face, Hooker hardly blinked; his concentration was complete.
The train made a thirty-five-mile clip. Branches sprang off the cab. Tyreen could see the engine’s weight depressing the ties on their soft bedding. The shoulders of the lower gorge rolled toward them, and the tracks swung away from the river and started their turn into the upgrade. The heavy smell of the jungle developed a sting from the added bite of coal smoke and intense dry heat. There was one length of straight track, curving upward in a bow. When Tyreen searched the length of the train, he found no sign of Saville.
McKuen said, “I don’t see any antiaircraft car.”
“Maybe.”
“Could be the beggars haven’t got enough of them to go around. Anyhow, we can always hope.”
Tyreen’s hope was that a low-hanging limb had not swept Saville off the train. The firebox guttered raw scarlet light across the cab. The train clicked along; the engine, fighting a stiffening grade, began to lose speed. Couplings crackled in brittle strain. Tyreen shifted his weary grip on the gun. “Four or five minutes, Hooker.”
The fireman rammed his shovel into the tender. His tongue licked a thin line across his soot-dark lips. Tyreen turned his attention momentarily to the engineer. That was when the fireman turned with a full shovel of coal and sprang catlike at J. D. Hooker. Hooker somehow felt the threat; he pulled up a shoulder and launched himself forward under the swing of the shovel. Before Tyreen could move, Hooker’s head butted the fireman’s belly and the fireman sailed back. The shovel dropped loosely across Hooker’s back. The fireman dropped out of the cab and kept himself on board only by the precarious grip of one hand against the handrail. Sergeant Khang whipped around; McKuen lifted his gun. Tyreen, who was closest, deliberately stepped in front of McKuen’s gun. For one moment he locked glances with the fireman. The fireman shouted at him. Tyreen slammed the side of his gun barrel savagely against the fireman’s knuckles. It broke the fireman’s hold. He fell away backwards. His cry was brief; he plunged down the embankment, striking on one shoulder. His head rolled loosely. He rolled to the bottom, and his shape receded along the train.
Cascading lumps of coal left a checkerboard of charcoal stains on the back of J. D. Hooker’s field jacket. Hooker scooped up the coal shovel and rammed it into Khang’s hands. “Work, damn you.” Hooker dropped back to his destructive tools as if there had been no interruption.
McKuen spoke weary relief. Tyreen beckoned him close and said, “Can you run this engine?”
McKuen considered it. “Looks easy enough. If I don’t have to turn loop-the-loops.”
Tyreen stepped past Hooker and shook the engineer’s shoulder. He said in Vietnamese, “Jump.”
The engineer jerked back. “Choi oi!”
“Di nhanh,” Tyreen said. “Di di.”
He gripped the engineer’s collar and propelled him to the open platform. The engineer gripped the handrails with both hands and bent his knees like a diver. “Da dao my,” he said with bravado, and leaped away.
Tyreen watched him tumble. McKuen grasped the throttle and looked back. “Is he all right?”
“I think so.”
“What was that last crack?”
“He said, ‘Down with America,’” Tyreen answered drily.
Sergeant Khang tossed coal into the firebox. The train howled up the long curving grade with a clang of steel and a banner of smoke. The slope tilted up, ever more steep, and the ten-wheel engine slugged laboriously along the line. McKuen said, “Maybe we’re supposed to give a whistle signal when we get up near the bridge.”
“When we get that close,” Tyreen yelled in reply, “it’ll be too late to stop us.”
He saw a shadow move, and he wheeled. A great bulk loomed atop the coal tender — Saville. Tyreen’s tired face broke into a grin. Saville dropped down on the swaying platform. His face was black from whipping smoke. Tyreen said, “Did you find a gun?”
“No gun,” Saville said, catching his breath. “There was a caboose full of troops. I cut it loose. It’s rolling back down the grade now. I hope they didn’t have a radio in there. David, from up top you can see the tunnel. Maybe a mile, no more. How near ready are we?”
Tyreen said, “Hooker!”
Hooker grunted and kept working. An instant later he threw both arms up like a cowboy in a steer-tying rodeo contest. “Do I fuse it now, Colonel?”
Rapid calculations ran through Tyreen’s head. “Fuse it and stand by to light up. Theodore, get ready to jump.”
Khang tossed his shovel aside and stood behind Saville on the edge of the platform. Tyreen stood at the front of the cab, peering forward, waiting for the tunnel to appear. Hooker was lighting a cigarette, shielding his flame from the wind. The firebox roared. Tyreen said, “Full throttle, Lieutenant.”
“I’m on it,” said McKuen.
The bridge was about a hundred yards long; Tyreen had to time the fuse within that limit. He studied the pitch of the track rolling underneath; he watched the rails curve past monuments of rock and then, suddenly, the tunnel mouth came around the bend a quarter mile ahead.
Hooker said, “Now?”
“Hold it.”
Saville swung back into the cab. Tyreen socked Khang on the arm; Khang made his jump. He was still in the air when Tyreen shouted to McKuen, and McKuen wheeled around the steel wall and leaped away.
Saville stood fast, rocking with the sway of the engine, and Tyreen bellowed furiously at him, “Get the hell out of the way!”
With a half-sheepish grin the big man put the slabs of his hands on the rails and swung down. He waited a moment longer, and jumped.
The tunnel grew large and black. Machine gun snouts started to turn in sealed bunkers. Tyreen held his hand up. Hooker had his burning cigarette in his hand, six inches from the fuse.
The hot black engine brawled up the rails, and Tyreen saw machine gun muzzles turning slowly, uncertainly, following the engine. One hundred yards, eighty yards, and Tyreen roared, “Now!”
The cigarette stabbed against the cable; fuse sputtered. Hooker held the cigarette against the fuse, calmly insuring that the spark was full. Sixty yards, fifty.
Tyreen bent down to yell. “Never mind. Jump. Go!” He swiveled back onto the platform. Hooker made a racing start, plunged past him through the opening, and was gone. Tyreen had a last glimpse of the sizzling fuse. The fierce glare of the firebox half blinded him. He dropped both feet to the outside steps and launched himself from the engine.
The ground sped forward under him. It tripped him, rolled him down; he sprawled and flipped over and banged his hip and rib cage and right arm. Agony exploded down the whole side of his body. He pedaled his legs and got a toehold on the embankment and sprinted toward the scrub jungle ten yards away from the roadbed. The sound of guns was swallowed in the racket and roar of the train, but a lacing of machine gun bullets kicked dirt against his running legs. The submachine gun slung across his shoulders had cut his collar open, but that was a small hurt in his racked body. He made a fiat dive into the bush and slid along a gravel surface, butting a tree. He crabbed deeper into the brush. Bullets clipped through. He made a sharp turn and crawled swiftly on his belly, dragging his right arm.