Hanging on

“Camp with us, sir?”

“If they come that route,” Blade said.

“But, sir—”

“Don't worry about them,” Blade said. “They'll probably never be dispatched, and even if they are they'll come west on some other highway.”

Kelly nodded, then realized the general couldn't hear a nod. “Yes, sir. I won't worry, sir.” He cleared his throat and said, “Sir, how is the front moving these days?”

“Better. Better. You're only a hundred and ninety miles behind lines now.”

“But that's only ten miles less than—”

“I know how happy this makes you,” General Blade interrupted. “Now, I have to be going, Kelly. I'm glad you squeaked past the first unit of Panzers, damn glad. I wanted you to know about the possibility of that big division being sent your way in a week or so; I wanted you to have time to plan for it, if it comes.”

“Plan? Plan? How can I plan for—”

“It's probably never going to come near you,” Blade said. “But you can't be too careful these days, the way things are. Good luck, Major. I will be in touch, and I'll expect you to keep that bridge open, sir!”

Major Kelly stared at the hissing microphone and returned it to Slade as if tranced by it. “Eighty tanks? Antiaircraft guns mounted on trucks? Infantry? Supplies? Staying overnight? Slade, we can't fool the Germans for an entire night!”

“Like the general said,” Slade observed, “they'll probably never be sent, or if they are they won't come this route.” Secretly, he wished they would come this route, so that there would be one great big fucking battle with lots of heroism and derring-do. To Kelly, because he knew it was what Kelly wanted to hear, he said, “We're in for a change of luck. I feel it.”

Kelly frowned. For all the time he spent reading the Army field manual, Slade was as naive as everyone else. Didn't he know nothing ever improved, not a whit?

15

Things had to improve, Lieutenant Slade thought. The camp was in a very bad way: hiding, choosing to deceive the Germans rather than fight them openly. Major Kelly was a coward. Lieutenant Beame was a coward. All the men were cowards. Something had to change. Someone had to show the men that all was not lost; they could still accomplish something in this war. Someone had to take the reins and be tough with these sons of bitches, make them shape up, put a little guts in their bellies. So far as Slade could see, he was the only one to do it.

He would have to kill Major Kelly.

Once Kelly was dead, Lieutenant Beame would gladly abdicate his role as the new commander of the unit, and General Blade would put Slade in charge. Then, things would improve.

An hour after the general's call, Lieutenant Slade stood in his tiny blanket-partitioned quarters in the main HQ building, fashioning the mask he would wear when he killed Major Kelly. He couldn't very well kill him openly even if Kelly was a coward. Therefore, he had cut two holes for his eyes in the burlap potato sack which he had filched from the food stores down at the main bunker. He looked at the mask and wondered if he should cut a slit for his mouth. If he wanted to talk with the mask on, he would need a slit where his mouth was. Otherwise, his voice would be muffled. On the other hand, he didn't have anything to say to Major Kelly. He just wanted to kill him. He wasn't going to lecture him first. Okay. No other holes.

He pulled the sack open and slipped it over his head, tugged it around until the holes were directly in front of his eyes. He could breathe well enough, though the bag made the air smell like dirt and potatoes. Bending stiffly, he looked at himself in a small, cracked mirror which he had laid on his cot. Not bad. Not bad at all. Sinister. Frightening. He would give Kelly a real scare before he put a few bullets in the bastard's gut, a real scare indeed.

He took the sack off his head, folded it and tucked it in his trousers, inside his undershorts. He didn't want anyone accidentally uncovering the bag and remembering it later, after Kelly had been killed by a mysterious man in a mask.

The only thing he had to worry about now was when to do it. Tonight? No. Not yet. Give Kelly more time to show his cowardliness. It might even be a good idea to put it off as much as a week. Then, when he did kill the son of a bitch, General Blade would be even more disposed to treating the matter lightly. General Blade would see what a coward Kelly was, and he would be pleased to have Richard Slade in charge of the camp.

Smiling, Slade put the cracked mirror under his cot. He lay down and picked up the Army manual from the pasteboard trunk at the head of the bed, and he started to read by the shimmering yellow light of the single, tiny electric bulb.

16

The next morning, after Maurice reclaimed the equipment he had rented to them, The Snot said, “This conclusively proves that Maurice is in league with the krauts.” He looked at Major Kelly, then at Beame, and he did not seem to understand that they wanted to beat his face to a pulp. Even the pacifist, Tooley, had confessed that, at times, even he wanted to beat The Snot's face to a pulp. Slade continued, “If we accept that we have a traitor in the unit, our morale will decline. But if we look outside our ranks for the culprit, our morale can be maintained and our field of suspects narrowed. And Maurice stands head-and-shoulders above all other suspects. He has access to German equipment… and you certainly don't believe those stories he told you about partisan work, about stealing the German equipment, laying ambushes for German patrols on other highways! How'd he really get those things? Hmmm?” Slade took their silences to mean they were speechless, utterly unable to imagine how Maurice had really gotten hold of those things. He said, “Suppose he was consorting with the Germans, selling them information in return for trucks, uniforms, and artillery? And then he was renting these same things to us in return for the backhoe and — and whatever else he could get, maybe the dozer the next time. Suppose that's what he's doing. You see, of course, what he has in mind, what his eventual goal is.” Again, he interpreted their silence as sheer stupidity. He smirked, actually smirked, and said, “Maurice is establishing a small army of his own: trucks, artillery, construction equipment, guns, and uniforms. You mark my words. When he feels he has enough strength, he's going to declare Eisenhower a separate, free French nation!”

Major Kelly and Lieutenant Beame walked away from The Snot. They went to the bridge and stood looking it over, each afraid that he could not control his urge to pulp Slade's face.

Slade mistook their retreat for a concession to his point and their lack of response for a weakness of will that made it impossible for them to act. He called after them: “When the time is ripe, that village will secede from the rest of France! And when the war is over, they'll discover that backhoe and whatever else Maurice has of ours, and they'll say the United States of America urged the village to secede, that we meddled in the internal affairs of our great ally, France. It will be a black day for America's foreign image!”

Even down by the river, where the water sloshed over the rocks and pieces of bomb-blasted bridgework, Kelly and Beame could hear the lieutenant shouting. The major wished a few Stukas would make a bombing pass. On Slade. If he just knew who the traitor was, who was reporting to the Nazis every time the bridge was rebuilt, he would try to arrange just that, a bombing run on Slade. He'd station Slade at some lonely point, far away from the camp and the bridge, and then he would get the krauts to run a bombing mission on him: three Stukas. He would use four blue runway flares to mark Slade's position. If that worked well, then he'd try it with Coombs. And, most definitely, three Stukas with full loads. This would have to be a very final sort of operation, because he didn't want to risk a badly botched bombing and end up with another Kowalski on his hands.