There was a baseball being tossed about, other men were walking the perimeter track. He could see men lying back up against the buildings, some reading, some talking. A few men were sunbathing, their shirts off in the warming air. There was nothing that indicated that a funeral had taken place less than an hour earlier. Nothing that suggested anger, or rage.
Stalag Luft Thirteen looked as it had every day for years.
And this troubled Tommy. He took a deep, slow breath.
'No,' he said.
'We'll be fine by ourselves.'
Visser sighed deeply, an almost mocking sound.
'As you wish,' he said. He half-snorted, looking over at Tommy.
'This is ironic, no? Me offering you protection from your own comrades. Most unusual, do you not think. Lieutenant Hart?' Visser didn't really seem to expect a reply to his questions, and Tommy wasn't willing to give him one, anyway. Visser then spoke a few words in German and the armed guards stepped aside. Fritz Number One also moved out of their path. He was frowning, and seemed nervous.
'Until later, then,' Visser said. He hummed a few short bars of some unrecognizable tune, his now-familiar small, cruel smile sliding around his face. The officer then stopped, turned to the soldiers manning the gate, and with a wide swing of his only arm, gestured for the gate to open.
'All right, lieutenant, let's go. Steady march,' Tommy said.
Shoulder to shoulder, the two men stepped forward.
The gate had only begun to swing shut behind them when Tommy heard the first whistle. It was joined by another, and then a third and fourth, the high-pitched sounds blending together, traveling the length and breadth of the camp within seconds. The men throwing the softball back and forth stopped, and turned toward them. Before they had traveled twenty yards, the false normalcy of the camp was replaced by the noises of hurrying feet, and the rattling and thudding of wooden doors swinging open and slamming shut.
'Keep your eyes front,' Tommy whispered, but this was unnecessary, as Lincoln Scott had straightened up even more, and was stepping across the compound with the renewed determination of a distance runner who finally spies the finish line.
In front of them, crowds of men streamed from the huts, moving as quickly as if the ferrets' whistles were calling them to an Appell or as if the air-raid sirens had sounded an alarm.
Within seconds, hundreds of men had gathered in a huge, seething block, not a formation as much as a barricade. The crowd Tommy wasn't yet sure whether it was closer to a mob gathered directly in their path.
Neither Lincoln Scott nor Tommy Hart slowed their stride as they approached the congregation.
'Don't stop,' he whispered to Lincoln Scott.
'But don't fight, either.'
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a barely perceptible nod from the Tuskegee airman's head, and he heard a slight grunt of acknowledgment.
'Killer!' He could not tell precisely where the word came from, but somewhere within the bubbling tide of men.
'Murderer!' Another voice chimed in.
A deep, rumbling noise started to come from the men who blocked their path. Words of anger and hatred mingled freely with epithets and catcalls. Whistles and booing supported the noises of rage, growing in frequency and intensity as the two fliers continued forward.
Tommy kept his eyes straight ahead, hoping that he would spot one of the senior officers, but did not. He noticed that Scott, jaw set with determination, had increased the pace slightly. For a moment, Tommy thought the two of them not unlike a ship racing headlong toward a rocky shoreline, oblivious to the wreck that awaited them.
'Goddamn murdering nigger!'
They were perhaps ten yards from the mass of men. He did not know whether the wall would open or not. At that second, he spotted several of the men who shared his own bunk room.
They were men he thought of as friends; not close ones, but friends nonetheless. They were men with whom he'd shared foodstuffs and books and the occasional reverie about life at home, shared moments of longing and desires and dreams and nightmares. He did not, in that instant, think they would harm him. He wasn't certain of this, of course, because he no longer was sure how they looked upon him. But he thought they might have some hesitation in their emotions, and so, with just the smallest bump shoulder to shoulder, against Scott, he shifted direction to head directly toward them.
He could hear Lincoln Scott's breathing. It was quick and short, small gasps of air snatched from the effort their pace demanded.
Other voices and insults reverberated around him, the words crossing the space between the fliers faster than his feet could carry him.
He heard: 'We should settle this now!'
And worse, a chorus of assent.
He ignored the threats. In that second he suddenly recalled the wonderfully calm voice of his dead captain from Texas, steering the Lovely Lydia into yet another hailstorm of flak and death, and without raising his voice, speaking steadily over the bomber's intercom, saying, 'Hell, boys, we ain't gonna let a little bit of trouble bother us none, are we?' And he thought that this was a storm that he was going to have to fly directly into the center of, keeping his eyes straight ahead, just as his old captain had done, even though the last storm had cost him his life and the lives of all the others in that plane, save one.
And so, without breaking stride. Tommy launched himself at the gathering of fliers. Linked invisibly but just as strongly as if they were roped together, he and Lincoln Scott tossed themselves at the men blocking their path.
The crowd seemed to waver. Tommy saw his roommates step back and to the side, creating a small F-like opening.
Into that breach, he and Scott sailed. They were enveloped immediately, the crowd sliding in behind them. But the men to their front made way, even if only slightly, just enough for them to continue forward.
The closeness of the men seemed to buffet them like winds. The voices around them quieted, the catcalls and epithets suddenly fading away, so that they struggled forward through the mass of men in an abrupt, eerie silence, one that was perhaps worse than the noise of the insults had been a few moments earlier. It seemed to Tommy that no one touched them, yet it was still difficult to step forward, like wading through fast- running water, where the current and power of the river pushed and tugged hard at his legs and chest.
And then, suddenly, they were through.
The last few men cleared from their path, and Tommy saw the route to the huts open wide, empty of men. It was like bursting in their plane from a dark and angry thunderhead into clear skies and safety.
Still in lockstep, marching in tandem. Tommy and Scott headed fast for Hut 101. Behind them, the crowd remained silent.
Scott sounded like a man who'd just boxed fifteen rounds.
Tommy realized his own short and wheezy breathing duplicated that of the black flier.
He did not know why he turned his head slightly, at that moment, but he did. Just a slight shift of the neck, and a gaze off to his right. And in that small glance, he caught a brief glimpse of Colonel MacNamara and Major Clark, standing just behind one of the grime-streaked windows of an adjacent hut, partially concealed and watching their progress across the compound grounds. Tommy was riveted with a sudden, almost uncontrollable outrage, directed at the two senior officers, for allowing their own express order to be contradicted.
'No threats… treat with courtesy…' that was what MacNamara had demanded in no uncertain terms. And then he'd witnessed the violation of that order. Tommy almost, in that second, turned and headed toward the two commanders, filled with instant indignation and a desire for confrontation.
