against.
The six German riflemen on the far side turned and ran when the Cromwell crushed the cyclists and kept on coming. They were halfway back across the bridge now, every one of them a religious man no matter what his beliefs had been a few minutes ago.
Behind the Cromwell, other Allied tanks loomed out of the curtain of gray rain: several Shermans, two British M-10s, another Cromwell, an armored car with twin cannon… Some of these left the road and deployed southward, all turning to face across the ravine, mammoth guns trained on the village and on the part of the German convoy which they might be able to reach. The lead Cromwell and several other tanks remained on the road and stopped at the farside bridge approach, bottling it up.
“Massah Kelly,” Danny Dew said, “I do wish I was back in Georgia. Even dat sorrowful ol' place do seem better than this.”
It was an almost classic military problem. The Germans held the east bank of the river. The Allies held the west bank. And no one controlled the bridge between.
The showdown.
“If we get out of this,” Beame whispered to Kelly. “I'm not going to take any of Maurice's guff. I'm going to ask Nathalie to marry me.”
“He'll eat you alive,” Kelly said.
“Once, he would have. Not now.”
“Good luck.”
“I won't need it,” Beame said. “I know what I want now. Just so I live to have it.”
The wind gusted across the roof, stirred the nuns' habits, pummeled them with thousands of tiny, watery fists.
To the south of the bridge on the other side of the gorge, one of the dark-brown M-10s elevated its blackened cannon to full boost. Kelly watched this without fully grasping the implications of the movement. A second later, one shell slammed out across the river. Just one. None of the other tanks opened fire, and the M-10 did not immediately follow through with a second round. The long shot arced high over the river and fell squarely into the building which was next to the store on A Street. The blast was a gigantic gong, then a compact ball of fire, and finally a violent wave of force that flung Kelly, Beame, and the others flat on their faces, even though they had already been kneeling. The armed T-plunger tipped over without setting off the dynamite under the bridge.
The house which had taken the shell was chewed into toothpicks and spewed in all directions. The burning floor collapsed down into the hospital bunker where Tooley, Liverwright, Hagendorf, and Kowalski did not have a chance. They probably did not even have time to look up and see it tumbling in on them, Kelly thought. Just a great noise, heat, a flash of pain, and endless darkness.
“No,” Beame said. “No, no, no!” He stared in horror at the flames which licked up from the bottom of the hospital bunker. A jug of alcohol burst; blue flames spurted briefly skyward, dropped away.
Nathalie was crying, crossing herself, praying.
Lily was cursing the M-10 and giving it the same look of loathing she had directed against the Cromwell.
Major Kelly's first thoughts were insane. First, he decided that Hagendorf had at least been released from a world of chaos by the ultimate chaotic event. And Tooley would not have to witness any more violence. And Liverwright did not have to die slowly now; he was finished in an instant. And most insanely of all — Kowalski had been released from the compulsion to predict a future which he was powerless to change. It was even a bit funny… Kowalski had forecast every violent event which had plagued them — except his own demise. What good was it to see the future if you could not see and avoid the source of your own death? And if a genuine fortune-teller could not avoid his own grave, what chance did an ordinary, balding, middle-aged slob have of living to celebrate his next birthday?
Kelly began to cry.
He did not know if he were crying for the dead men or for himself. It did not matter very much.
Angelli and Pullit were also crying, comforting each other, hugging. Kelly did not bother to go over and separate them.
Without warning, the second shell from the M-10 plowed into the side of the gorge just short of the village store. The earth leaped up like a bronco under the buildings. Inside the store, canned goods and other merchandise fell from the shelves in a series of tinny explosions.
“Hey!” Beame said. “Hey, they're after us — not the Germans! They must think that we're up here spotting for the kraut artillery!”
“Nuns, spotting for the kraut artillery?” Kelly asked.
But he saw the M-10's cannon elevate a couple of degrees more and line up a new trajectory. The third shot would get them as surely as the first had accidentally slaughtered Tooley, Liverwright, Hagendorf, and Kowalski.
“Jesus Fucking Christ!” Kelly screamed, surely loud enough to be heard over the Panzer engines in the street below. He shoved clumsily to his feet and. turned toward the T-plunger, took a single step, and was knocked to his knees by a tiny snapping sound off to his right. He looked down at his arm and saw blood running over his clerical suit. He had been shot.
But by whom?
Then he saw Lieutenant Slade coming onto the roof.
2
All night long, Lieutenant Slade had prowled the fake town looking for Major Kelly. When he had first lost the bastard after following him and Tooley from the convent to the west side of A Street, Slade had been sure he would pick up the trail in no time. But minutes and then hours passed, and Kelly was nowhere to be found. And the longer
Slade took to find him, the less chance there was that the coup could be pulled off and the Germans defeated by clever commando tactics.
Where was Kelly hiding?
Slade raced from one end of St. Ignatius to the other, looked in all the buildings, did everything but pry under the rocks. He never thought to look down in the gorge, out in the middle of the river, or up under the bridge, because he could not have conceived of Major Kelly doing anything as dangerous and brave as wiring the bridge with explosives.
Then, just minutes ago, he had been standing in the sacristy doorway at the back of the small church, staring out at the graveyard and trying to think if he had forgotten to look anywhere. To his great surprise, Kelly had come bounding down one of the aisles between the tombstones, wearing a muddy clerical suit. He had crossed A Street and gone up to the roof of the village store, leaving a convenient rope ladder dangling behind him.
Slade knew there was no longer any chance of killing Kelly
After Maurice Jobert came down from the store roof and disappeared into the ravine, Slade hurried across the churchyard and over to the west side of A Street. He reached the back of the village store just as a shell slammed into the hospital bunker on his left. He was thrown to the ground, knocked to the verge of unconciousness.
When he finally got to his feet, he stared across the gorge and saw the Allied tanks for the first time. He did not understand how they could have arrived at this most propitious moment, but he did not stop to wonder about them. If the Allies were going to recapture this part of France today, it was more important than ever that he kill Major Kelly. When the liberation was completed, Slade wanted to be able to prove to the conquering troops and to all the American people and not least of all to his mother that he had done everything within his power to wreck Major Kelly's cowardly plans.
