The man hesitated, looked once over at Scott, and then smiled. He turned and whispered to the next man in the corridor, and that man nodded, once he heard the message. It went down the center of the hut, to all the men waiting to escape, and all the men standing by in the support roles, and all the fliers gathered in the doorway of each barracks room, creating a buzz of excitement that seemed to reverberate in the enclosed tight spaces.
Scott stepped away from the tunnel entrance, pushing to the side of the small privy. He understood what the weight of the single phrase was, spread through the men in Hut 107. He knew it would sweep rapidly far beyond the confines of the hut, as soon as the sun rose. It would certainly be all over the camp within hours, and might possibly, if the men escaping were lucky, be the words they carried with them to freedom. It was a weight that Major Clark and Colonel MacNamara and Captain Walker Townsend and all the men trying to put his back against a wall and make him face a firing squad would not be able to lift. The weight of innocence.
He took a deep breath and looked toward the hole in the floor. Now, Lincoln Scott thought quietly, that the truth has come out from underground, it is time for Tommy Hart to emerge.
But instead of the lanky form of the law student from Vermont, another message came ricocheting down the tunnel.
Nicholas Fenelli, eyes brightening, voice husky with sudden excitement, looked over toward Scott and whispered:
'They're through! We're moving out!'
Tommy Hart stood, balancing precariously near the top rung of the ladder, his face lifted toward a six-inch hole in the roof of dirt, drinking in the heady wine of the fresh night air that poured into the tunnel. In his right hand, he held the pickax.
Below him. Murphy and the band leader were feverishly wiping dirt from their faces with a thin piece of cloth, and scrambling into their escape clothing.
The band leader-musician, murderer, tunnel king-could not resist a single hushed question: 'Hart? How does it smell?'
Tommy hesitated, then whispered his reply: 'Sweet.'
He, too, was covered with the sweaty grime of digging. For the past ten minutes he had taken over from the two other men, who had fallen back, exhausted with the effort that digging the last few feet required. Tommy, though, felt a surge of energy. He had nailed away at the dirt with a furious vigor, tearing at the clods of earth with the pickax until one clod came free covered with grass.
He continued to breathe in deeply. The air was so rich he thought it might make him dizzy.
'Hart! Come on down,' the band leader hissed.
Tommy took one long swig of night, and reluctantly lowered himself back into the pit. He faced the two men. Even in the light of a single candle, Tommy could see both their faces flushed with excitement. It was as if, in that moment, the lure of freedom were so powerful that it managed to overcome all the doubts and fears about what the next hours would hold.
'Okay, Hart, here's the drill. I'm going to fix a rope from the top rung and lead it out to a nearby tree. You're gonna be the watchdog by the tree. Hart. Each kriegie's gonna come to the top of that ladder and wait there for a signal-two quick tugs-that will let him know the coast is clear. Try to move a man along every two to three minutes. No faster, but no slower, either. That'll avoid attention and maybe get us back on our timetable. Once they get out, they know what to do.
When everybody's out, you can head back down the tunnel and get back inside the compound.'
'Why can't I wait here?'
'No time. Hart. Those men deserve their chance and you can't get in the way. Literally.'
Tommy nodded. He could see the sense in what the band leader was saying. The musician stuck out his hand.
'Look me up in the French Quarter sometime, Hart.'
Tommy looked down at the man's hand. He imagined it reaching up around Trader Vic's throat. He understood, too, that only a few minutes earlier, that same hand was trying to kill him. Amid the heat, the dirt, and the fear that closed in on all of them waiting inside the tunnel, everything had abruptly changed. He reached out and took the man's hand. The band leader smiled, his wide grin flashing white in the darkness.
'You were right about another thing, too. Hart. I am indeed left-handed.'
'You're a killer,' Tommy said quietly.
'We're all killers,' the man replied.
Tommy shook his head slowly, but the musician laughed.
'Yes, we are, no matter what you say. We may not be again, when all this is said and done and we're home sitting around the fireplace growing old and telling war stories. But right now, right here, we all are. You. Me. Murphy, there, and Scott, too. MacNamara, Clark, hell, everybody. Including Trader Vic. He just might have been the worst of all of us, 'cause he ended up killing even if by mistake for no reason other than to make his own sorry life a little easier' The musician shook his head.
'Not much of a reason for dying, is it?' Then he looked over at Tommy, still holding onto his hand.
'You think, Tommy boy, that the truth about all this is ever gonna see the light of day?' Before Tommy could reply, the musician shook his head.
'I'm not thinking so, Tommy Hart. I'm not thinking that the army is all too fine on the idea of telling the world that some of its finest heroes are also some of its very best killers. No sir. I don't think this is a story they'll be particularly eager to tell.'
Tommy swallowed hard.
'Good luck,' he said.
'New Orleans.
I'll make a point of it, someday.'
'Buy you a drink,' the band leader said.
'Hell, Tommy, we make it home in one piece, I'll buy you a dozen drinks. We can drink to the truth and how it don't never do nobody no good.'
'I don't know that's right,' Tommy replied.
The musician laughed, shrugged, and climbed the ladder.
In his hand, the band leader carried a long coil of thin rope.
Tommy could see him fix the rope to the top rung, and then tear a few more clods of dirt free. They tumbled down onto Tommy, and he blinked, and ducked his head away. The musician paused, and suddenly blew out the last candle. In the split-second that followed, the band leader wiggled through the hole in the earth, suddenly bathed in a wan half-light from the moon, and disappeared.
Murphy grunted. He had no similar pleasantries for Tommy.
He rose up, following. Behind him. Tommy could hear Number Three moving down the tunnel like some excited crab scrambling through the sand. Tommy saw Murphy's legs kick for a moment, trying to gain some purchase in the crumbling dirt of the tunnel exit. Then Tommy lifted himself up the ladder.
At the top, he seized the rope. There were two sharp tugs, and then Tommy, without thinking, thrust himself out of the hole, climbing as quickly as he could. He was barely aware that, suddenly, he had climbed out and was scrambling across the moss and pine-needle floor of the forest. He felt a wave of cold air encapsulate him, washing over him like a shower on a hot day. He threw himself forward, keeping the rope in his hands, until he reached the base of a large pine tree. The rope was tied there, perhaps forty feet away from the hole in the ground. Tommy slumped back against the tree. He could hear scratching noises coming from the underbrush, and he guessed that was the noise of Murphy and the band leader making their way through the tangled forest foliage, heading for the road to town. For a second he thought it was immense, a thunderous noise, destined to draw every light, every guard, and every gun, right in his direction. He shrank back against the tree, and listened, letting the world fill with silence.
Tommy took a deep breath and pivoted about.
