Hanging on

The water gushed between Lily's long legs, foaming around the crotch of her panties. Which was, in fact, also her own crotch. The foam tickled, but it also — well, aroused her. She shivered and moaned softly as she followed the others upriver.

Eighty-five yards, eighty…

Overhead, the sky split open and let out a bolt of white lightning which danced a crooked jig across the night. Major Kelly felt exposed as a paramecium on a biology student's lab slide. In that brief glare, he clearly saw two of the guards on the bridge, and he was certain one of them had been looking his way.

For the first time, he realized that if they were seen and if the krauts opened fire, a single bullet could strike the case of explosives and blow them all the way south to Spain.

The lightning did not frighten Danny Dew. It pleased him. The white light shimmering on Lily Kain's sleek body was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen in his life. It was so beautiful, in fact, that he did not care if the next bolt struck and killed him. He had already seen perfection. What was left?

Thunder followed the lightning. It slapped across the gorge like an explosion, reverberated between the sloped walls, reluctantly died away.

The sudden noise almost caused Angelli to fall. He had been leaning to the left, trying to look around the others and catch a glimpse of Nurse Pullit. The thunder startled him and put him off stride.

Cold, gray rain sliced across the river. Slanting in from the northwest, it made the water around them froth even more. It soaked the half of Kelly which he had thus far been able to keep out of the river.

Wonderful, he thought. Just great. A rainstorm. What next, Aesop?

He shuddered. If he had not already been an aethist, this latest trick of fate would have made him into one. Or would have convinced him that God was a nasty little boy.

Seventy yards to the bridge. Sixty-five… sixty…

Nathalie said, “Major!”

Kelly stopped, froze, looked at the looming bridge-works, trying to see what she had seen. Was one of the guards even now leveling a submachine gun at them? A bazooka? A howitzer? A cannon?

“Major,” she said, “Tooley wants to talk to you.”

Relieved that they had not been spotted, Kelly turned around and crowded in with the others. They formed a circle which resembled a football huddle, leaning towards each other, the rain beating at their backs and the river sloshing at their hips and waists.

Tooley sheltered the case of dynamite against his chest, bending over it as if he were trying to protect it from the other team. The krauts? “Major, the sticks are going to get wet. If they start sweating, this stuff will go off even if you just breathe on it wrong.”

“It's wrapped in airtight plastic,” Kelly said.

“So says the U.S. Army.” Tooley made a face. “You ever know the Army to do something right? You want to bet me there's not one little plastic seam that's split open? If one stick goes, it'll take the rest with it… ”

“What do you suggest?” Kelly asked.

“That we move faster.”

“And drop down a hole in the riverbed.”

“It's a risk we'll have to take,” the pacifist said.

“We're doing all right so far,” Lily said, with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader. Pullit and Nathalie joined in with her: “Yeah, we are! All right so far!”

“Tooley's right,” Angelli said. Next to the weight lifter, he looked like a child and strangely out of place here in the middle of the river on a stormy night. “The longer we stay out here, the more dangerous it is — because of the Germans, the dynamite, because of everything.” He smiled at Pullit and winked reassuringly.

“Okay,” Kelly said. “Let's move, then.”

They fell back into single file, started upstream again, moving more recklessly than before. The rain stung their faces, pasted their hair down, glued their clothes to them, slopped into the boxful of plastic-wrapped explosives. The water frothed around them and excited Lily Kain, and the bridge grew nearer.

Fifty yards, forty, thirty-five…

Major Kelly had wondered earlier if he were losing his mind. Now he was sure of it. He had never played in a football game in his life. He was not sports-oriented. Now, in the dead of night, in a thunderstorm, in the middle of a river, under the guns of German maniacs, pursued by a man with a caseful of unstable dynamite, he was caught up in what amounted to a goddamned game… The bridge piers loomed like goal posts.

Thirty yards, twenty-five…

The sky was branded by another lightning bolt, this one even brighter than the first. Major Kelly saw three SS sentries, two at the eastern end of the bridge and one just about in the middle.

He kept on moving forward.

No one cried out. There was no gunfire.

Twenty yards. Now fifteen. Ten…

They waded under the floor of the bridge without being seen. Major Kelly wanted to cry out in triumph as he crossed that all-important line. The rain on the bridge floor overhead was like the ovation rising from the stadium around them. It was glorious. But then he reminded himself that the job was not yet finished. The ball could fall to the other team any time now. They could still lose. Would lose. Did even a big league player dare hope for success?

7

After having built all those bridges across the gorge, they were perfectly familiar with the topography of the riverbed in this area. There were no holes or drop-offs. The bottom was scarred and uneven from all the construction work and from bombed bridges collapsing on top of it, but it was nowhere deeper than the middle of Tooley's chest or the base of Angelli's neck.

According to plan, Sergeant Coombs took a long-bladed knife and waded ashore to stand guard under the eastern cantilever arm. Danny Dew tested a matching knife against the ball of his thumb, kissed Lily Kain — who kissed back with passion — grinned whitely, and waded off to the west to mount guard over there.

Kelly motioned to the pacifist.

Tooley waded forward, holding the box of explosives against his broad chest, and stood in front of the major. He looked down at the sticks and grimaced at the water caught in the folds of plastic.

Kelly reached into the box and took out four packages of dynamite, six sticks to the bundle. He held two in each hand.

Maurice Jobert, who had taken the T-plunger all the way up the river, said something to Nathalie, scowling fiercely at her immodesty and at the way Beame reveled in her immodesty. Then he waded quietly to the shore and set the device down on the bank not far from where Coombs stood.

Except for the brief, whispered exchange between Maurice and Nathalie, no one dared to speak. The rain drumming on the river and on the floor of the bridge overhead was sufficiently noisy to cover their movements. But a voice was distinctive and might carry up to the SS sentries despite the overlaying susurration of the storm.

Private Tooley turned away from Kelly and carried the rest of the explosives over to the farside bridge pier. Stalking about in the bridge shadows, naked from the waist up, his powerful body tense and glistening, he looked like a mythical creature, a super troll making plans to kidnap travelers who passed above him… Angelli followed the big man, pushing through water that reached almost to his chin, holding the spool of copper wire over his head. Before Kelly could make known his objection, Pullit followed Angelli. The three of them, if the lovebirds could keep their hands off each other, would rig the sticks at the other pier.

Maurice came back into the water when he saw Beame and Nathalie were not going to be separated. His belly bobbled in the foam like a gigantic fishing lure.

Handing the four packages of dynamite to Beame, Kelly grabbed Lily and kissed her. She kissed back, with passion, as the water sloshed between her legs and foamed up her belly to her thinly sheathed jugs.

Revitalized by that kiss, Kelly worked his way over to the nearside pier and looked up the forty-foot-high