What would be a good way to generate 16 bit random numbers in Visual C++?

I'm using Visual Studio Community 2015, and trying to create a long (= 2^31) list of 32 and 16 bit random numbers. For 32 bits, I'm using lfsr113_Bits() from implementation of rand() , but I'm not sure what would be the best way to get a quality sequence of 16 bit numbers.

Unfortunately, the included in rand() is a bit short since as per documentation: "The rand function returns a pseudorandom integer in the range 0 to RAND_MAX (32767).

I'm thinking about using the lfsr113_Bits() and a union to get 16 bit numbers by utilizing:

union {
    uint16  i16[2];
    uint32  i32;
} u; 

u.i32 = lfsr113_Bits(); 

And then use the number from either u.i16[0] or u.i16[1], or perhaps from both, one after another, but I have that gut feeling that the sequences obtained this way could be significantly worse than one obtained by using a native 16 bit generator.

Any idea on what would be the best approach to generate 16 bit random numbers?

TIA