Hanging on

Major Kelly was standing beside Dew, his arm in a sling. The bullet wound was not serious, merely a crease; but it pained him too much to allow him to wield the hammer himself. “Again!” he shouted.

“Yes, Massah,” Dew said. He swung the hammer a second time. One of the casing seams popped open.

“I don't understand why you have to destroy it,” Lily said, looking mournfully at the shortwave set.

“Neither do I,” Beame said. He was standing next to Nathalie and Maurice, though The Frog was glaring fiercely at him.

“I don't ever want to talk to Blade again,” Kelly said. “Even if I gave the radio to Maurice, Blade would have a way of reaching me.”

“Mon ami—” Maurice began.

“Again, Danny!” Kelly said.

Dew raised the sledgehammer. His hard black muscles rippled. He put his strength into the swing and broke the glass in the front of the radio. The blow echoed in the large, one-room convent building, whispered for a long time in the rafters overhead.

“But you have to talk to Blade,” a handsome young soldier said, stepping up between Lily and Private Angelli. “He's your commanding officer.”

Kelly could not remember ever having seen this young man, which was odd, since he prided himself in knowing all his men by their first names. “He isn't my commanding officer any longer,” Kelly said.

Lily stamped one foot, a gesture that made her breasts jiggle in the velvet cups of her dancer's costume. “Kelly, I won't let you—”

“Danny, hit it again!”

Dew struck the radio another vicious blow. It crashed off the stand onto the floor.

“You simply can't fire your commanding officer,” Vito Angelli said. He was standing beside one of the French girls who had been dressed like a nun. His arm was around her waist, one hand circling up to cup her full right breast. He no longer seemed to be such a one-woman man. Or, more accurately, a one-pervert man. Nurse Pullit was nowhere in sight. “You can't choose your commanding officers,” Angelli insisted.

“Well, from now on that's exactly what I'm going to do,” Kelly said. “I don't want another one like Blade. I don't think he ever did care about us the way a general is supposed to care for his men. He's been using us.”

Lily frowned at him. “Using us?”

Kelly nodded. “I've been putting bits and pieces together… You know we've thought there was a traitor in the camp. The Stukas always knew when the bridge was rebuilt, always returned to bomb it the day after it was completed. Someone had to tell them it was ready. I think that someone was General Blade.”

“Bullshit!” Coombs said. He, too, was standing with a French girl. She was rather ugly.

Lily looked at Kelly as if he had gone mad. “That's ridiculous! Blade—”

“It makes sense to me,” Kelly said. Perspiration trickled down his forehead and ran to the end of his nose, but he ignored it. “Keep in mind that Blade had his entire career staked on us. No one else thought this bridge was of any strategic importance. Blade said so himself. Yet he disagreed with the other generals. He secretly sent a whole unit of Army engineers behind German lines in order to keep the bridge open. What do you think would have happened to Blade if the bridge were never bombed, if we just sat here without anything to do?”

Lily thought about it. They all thought about it. She said, “He wouldn't be up for any promotions when his superiors found out about it.”

“Exactly,” Kelly said. “Once he sent us here, he had to establish proof that the Germans considered the bridge strategically important. And what better way than to get them to bomb it repeatedly?”

“Now, wait a minute, sir,” the handsome young soldier said. “General Blade can't order Stukas to do his own dirty work!”

“That's right,” Beame said. “He can't control the German army!”

Kelly frowned. “There are bits and pieces that maybe fit… For example, Beame told me that General Blade probably dabbles in the black market. When we were in Britain, I heard the same thing about Bobo Remlock. That sounds terribly coincidental, doesn't it — that both our nemeses should be in the black market?”

“Hell,” Angelli said, “probably every one of our generals is in it.”

“Another thing,” Kelly said, ignoring Angelli. “I've also heard that some of our officers are not against profiting from deals made with officers on the other side.”

“With Germans?” Lily asked.

“I've heard that, too,” Angelli said. “Hell, Eisenhower's investigative staff brought charges against two high- ranking officers while we were in Britain. But what does this sort of thing have to do with us?” He fondled the French girl's breast, and she giggled.

“Plenty,” Kelly said. “If American and German officers fly to neutral territory to swap black market goods… Well, suppose Blade gave a German air force officer a planeload of whiskey at one of these neutral ports — and didn't take any material goods in return. Suppose, instead, he asked his German opposite to see to the bombing of this bridge and help him establish his reputation among the Allied brass? Blade could inform this German officer each time the bridge was rebuilt—”

“You think Blade would engineer and go through with a wild scheme like this just to get a promotion?” Lily asked, incredulous.

“Either that, or he's syphilitic.”

“Bullshit,” Coombs said.

“This is paranoid,” Lily said. “The world isn't as Machiavellian as you're making it out to be.”

“Look,” Beame said, “Blade's an idiot, but he can't be the kind of manipulator you're trying to say he is.”

“I wonder…” Kelly said.

“Look,” Lily said, “maybe the radio will still work.”

“Hit it again, Dew!” Dew obliged. “If we don't destroy it, Blade will call us again tonight. He'll send in the DC-3 loaded with supplies, and he'll order us to rebuild the bridge. And as soon as the bridge is up, he'll call his German friend, get it bombed into rubble. You know… it's also possible that Blade somehow arranged for Rotenhausen's convoy to take this route, to come this roundabout back way just so the bridge would appear to have strategic importance and—”

“You can't know any of this!” Lily shouted. “This isn't some fantasy we're involved in. This is real. This is life!”

“Wrong,” Kelly said. “It's all a fairy tale, grand in color—”

“Bullshit,” Coombs said. His ugly French girl friend giggled and said, “Boolsheet.”

“Kelly,” Lily said, “if you destroy the radio, no one will know we're here. Blade will think we're dead. We won't get out of this place until the war is finished.”

“I don't care,” Kelly said. “Just so we get out alive.”

“Well, I care!” Lily said. “I have a career to think of!” She turned and walked toward the front of the convent, her firm ass swinging in a blue velvet dancer's costume, her long legs scissoring gorgeously.

Major Kelly was tempted to run after her, grab her, peel her out of that skimpy suit, and desecrate this holy convent with unspeakable acts of carnal lust. But it was more important to oversee the destruction of the radio…

“If you completely demolish this set,” Maurice said, “you're going to have to find something else with which to pay me.”

“I will,” Kelly said. “Dew, hit it again.”

Forty blows later, Dew dropped the hammer. Everyone had wandered away except the handsome young soldier whose name Kelly could not recall. The three of them stood in silence for a moment, as if mourning the departed shortwave set.

“Major,” the handsome soldier said, “I just came from a duty shift at the jail, watching over Lieutenant Slade. Lyle Fark took my place and… ”

“And?” Kelly asked.

The young soldier cleared his throat. “Well, Slade's demanding a trial, sir. He won't let up about it. Keeps