in night's quiet and read the heavens above. He reminded himself that he was the navigator, and with a long, last glance at the blinking dots of light above, he darted forward, heading toward the Abort.
The two men zigzagged from shadow to shadow, moving swiftly toward the distinct joined odors of lime and waste emanating from the Abort. The familiar, musty smell that to the men in their prior lives might have been overwhelming and disgusting was, to the kriegies, as routine as bacon frying on a Sunday morning back home.
Their feet made padding sounds against the damp earth.
They did not talk until they reached the entrance to the Abort, where
Tommy hesitated, kneeling down in a spot of greater darkness, letting his eyes penetrate the night around them, searching for the next move.
'Where to, counselor?' Scott said under his breath.
'What are you looking for?'
Tommy narrowed his eyes, thinking hard. After a moment, he turned and whispered to Scott.
'You're the strong man. All right. Imagine you've got to carry Vincent Bedford. Fireman's carry, over your left shoulder. He weighs what? One fifty-five? One sixty?'
'One sixty, maybe one seventy, max. He was a skinny little bastard.
But he ate better than the rest of us. A middleweight.'
'Okay. One seventy. But deadweight. How far can you carry that body,
Scott? Left shoulder.'
'I wouldn't use my left shoulder…'
'I know that.'
In the darkness, he could see the fighter pilot's head nod in comprehension.
'Not too far. Probably farther than you might think, because the killer's adrenaline would be pumping something furious. But still, not too far. It's not like carrying some buddy whose life you want to save. So, maybe a hundred yards. A little more or maybe a little less, depending on how nervous you are.'
Tommy measured to himself. He started to calculate an equation, using distance, factoring in the sweep of the searchlights and proximity to the huts. There was a spot, he thought, close enough so that it would be this Abort that the killer chose, and not one of the others. And a route to the Abort that provided some safety.
He nodded his head, but thought the why of the murder still eluded him.
'He needs to avoid the searchlight and the goons by the wire and not make a sound that might wake up some kriegie, and this is where he ends up. So where do we go, lieutenant?'
Tommy said.
'Give me your best guess.'
Scott hesitated for a second, his head pivoting, surveying the darkness ahead of them, then he whispered, 'Follow me.'
Without waiting for an acknowledgment from Tommy, the black airman darted across the alleyway between the two huts, past the entrance to the Abort. Working his way slowly, staying close to the wall of Hut
102, he maneuvered to the end of the building. Tommy jogged to keep pace.
From where they were standing in the shadows, both men could see the wire, thirty yards ahead, sweeping away from them, angled out to enclose the exercise and assembly areas.
A guard tower rose up in the pitch black, another fifty yards distant.
In the moonlight they could see the profiles of a pair of goons, on the platform. Tommy knew the tower contained both a searchlight, now shut off, and a thirty-caliber machine gun. He shuddered. He was about to speak when Lincoln Scott filled in his very words, spoken in a whisper.
'Not this way. Not with those Krauts up there. Too risky.'
From somewhere in the darkness, a Hundfuhrer's dog barked once, only to be shushed by his handler. The two Americans shrank back against the wall.
'The other way, then,' Tommy said.
'Longer, but…'
'… safer,' Scott finished.
He immediately began working his way back to where they had started.
Moving quietly, it took the two men almost a minute to reach the front of Hut 102. To their left, across the open space of the yard, were the stairs to Hut 101, which they'd exited earlier.
Lincoln Scott took a single step out toward the stairs to Hut 102, then immediately shrank back. His movement caused Tommy Hart to hug the wall, and within seconds, he saw why: The searchlight that had dogged them at the start of their excursion was playing about, erratically lighting up the corner of another hut a short distance away.
The same damn problem as at the other end. Tommy thought abruptly. He could feel his breathing coming in short, wheezy gasps. The searchlight was death. Maybe not certain death, but possible death, and he hated it with a sudden and total anger.
He knelt down, watching it sweep across the distance, cutting through the darkness like a sabre.
Scott lowered himself beside Tommy.
'I doubt he came this way, either,' he said.
'Not weighed down and carrying a body.'
Tommy half-turned, staring down the black corridor toward the Abort.
'I don't think he was killed anywhere here. Too much noise. Too close to all the windows. If Vic shouted, even just once, someone would hear him. They could hear a fight, too. But the problem is, I don't see how you could carry a body around either end of the building. So, how the hell does it get here?'
'Maybe he didn't carry it around,' Scott said quietly. 'You know, the same problem exists for any of the escape committee men or the tunnelers-anyone in Hut 101 who needs to be out and somewhere else at night, right?'
'Right,' Tommy said, starting to think.
'Well, that means there's another route. One that only a few folks know about,' Scott said.
'Only the men who need it.'
Scott craned his head past Tommy. He lifted his hand and pointed back down the length of Hut 102. 'There's a crawl space,' he said, still keeping his voice soft.
'There's got to be. A way to pass completely under this hut, come out on the other side…'
Scott didn't continue. Instead he started to creep back the length of the hut, peering under the edge of the building. At the fourth window, shuttered above their heads, he suddenly ducked down and whispered sharply, 'Follow me. Hart.'
With those words, the black airman abruptly wiggled beneath the lip of the hut, his legs and feet disappearing as if they'd been swallowed up by the earth.
Tommy dropped to the hard ground, bending over, staring underneath Hut 102. For an instant he could detect just the slightest sensation of movement in the utter darkness beneath the barracks and he realized that it was Scott worming his way beneath the floorboards. The narrow blackness of the space under Hut 102 was enveloping. He inhaled sharply, reeling back a step, almost as if the emptiness of the space had reached out and grabbed at him. His heart started to race and he felt a sudden heat on his forehead. He gasped again, almost as if it were hard to breathe, and he told himself: You can't go in there.
He would not give a word to the terror that swept over him.
It was deep, rooted hard within his heart and reaching down into the pit of his stomach, where it twisted and clenched at his guts. He shook his head. Not a chance, he said. Not under there.
He forced himself to look again into the crawl space and saw that Scott had traversed the breadth of the barracks and emerged on the far side.
