Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  Sergeant Torrey had finished with the wedges. Campbell passed the rope around the beam in a double strand, and Damon picked up the rack stick and tightened the rope until it vibrated and the chocks ground softly against the copper jackets. Compression. Compression was what made for blasting efficiency.

  Torrey was cutting the end of the time fuse now. Damon took a detonating cap out of the box and shook it gently, blowing on it to clear any dust out of the open end. Torrey rolled the tip of the fuse between thumb and forefinger to make it neat and round, and Damon slipped the cap carefully over the end of the fuse, picked up the crimper and crimped the tetryl cap close to the open end. Campbell was watching them with an agonized absorption, his hazel eyes crinkled up, sweat streaking his face. Catching the Corporal’s eye Damon winked once and grinned; Campbell swallowed and smiled palely. He is seeing it going off, Damon thought; the vivid yellow flash in our faces, the blinding, the burns. It was a mistake putting him on this detail; nobody with an unbridled imagination should do demolition work, no matter how capable he is manually. Some kind of psychological fitness exam ought to be given first. Was that possible? Sergeant Torrey on the other hand was fine for the job; the ex-miner from Denver was perfectly calm and unruffled, seeing nothing but what was before their eyes—an excellent initiator of detonation for other less sensitive explosives: 13.5 grains of tetryl and 7 grains of a mixture of 90 percent fulminate of mercury and 10 percent potassium chlorate, contained in a neat, shiny little cylinder. Nothing more.

  “Let’s hook her up,” Damon said.

  Torrey removed the cork from the center of one of the TNT blocks and inserted the cap into the hole. Campbell tied a piece of string around the fuse just above the cap, leaving enough play between the knot and the cap to protect it from any pull, and made it fast around the block.

  “All right, boys,” Damon murmured.

  Campbell, with a look of wild gratitude, was already yanking himself up, his shoulders hunched like a monkey, to the shaky catwalk of the mock-up. Sergeant Torrey left more deliberately; slinging the field chest over his shoulders he swung himself up hand over hand, and set off at an easy, sure-footed walk. Damon waved to Wallace, a sweeping motion of his arm back to the near bank, and Wallace’s men started back at ten-second intervals, their feet ringing on the slender iron, and began to drop into the ditch beside the second squad. Damon swiftly checked the tension in the rope, the set of the wedges and the priming of the center block, and looked around again—made a brief, peremptory gesture to Howland. The BAR man started back, running and then turning, simulating a covering fire of five rounds, then running again.

  All right. Charge properly sited and primed, all men under cover, covering fire from friendly bank. Now the part he didn’t like. Why in hell did they have to do it this way instead of with a blasting machine and electric caps? Because presumably there could one day be a rear-guard action, a bridge to be blown where there would be no plunger or caps. Ideally, the competent soldier seeks to prepare himself for every possible contingency … He smiled, thinking of his father-in-law, the alert, twinkling eyes. But Colonel Caldwell was half a world away now, at Tientsin with the élite 15th Regiment, keeping watch on the marauding columns of Feng Yu-hsiang …

  He picked up the fuse. He had cut it at two feet, and Torrey had snipped off about two inches in case of dampness and for a clean insertion. At a burning rate of 32 to 40 seconds to the foot that left a maximum of 76 seconds, a minimum of 59. You could get anywhere in one minute’s time—you could make it halfway to Tientsin if you had enough TNT at your tail. With his penknife he split and opened the end of the fuse, took a kitchen match from his pocket and twisting away from the wind struck it and held it to the fuse. There was a dull glow, then a quick stuttering hiss as the flame started off along the wrapped cord. He glanced at his watch, straightened, swung himself up through the girders and ran back along the trembling catwalk, trying not to limp, trotted up the hard, rocky earth of the road, leaped into the culvert and crouched there. Some of the men in Wallace’s squad were staring at him as if he’d just descended from heaven. He grinned at them, shook his head in the time-honored gesture and studied his watch, tensed mildly for the explosion. Forty seconds, fifty, sixty. The spindly little black hand swung on. Seventy, seventy-five …

  He looked up. Sergeant Torrey was watching him questioningly. Minute and a half, now.

  “What’s the matter?” Campbell was saying. “Why didn’t she go?”

  “Misfire,” he answered shortly. He raised his head and peered at the silly black-iron skeleton across the gulch, wondering what the trouble was. The fuse had been cut square, he’d inserted it well, they’d done—

  “What seems to be the trouble, Lieutenant?” Captain Townsend appeared at the edge of the culvert. His right hand was held cupped in front of his belt; the glasses swung from their strap around his neck.

  Damon bit his lip. He had that hilarious, defiant surge of reaction a man always feels on occasions of great preparation that come to nothing at all: the Christmas tree that fails to light up, the champagne cork that refuses to pop, the festive moment of departure, with the hosts lining the verandah, when the car won’t start … What the hell did you expect, buddy—a flag salute? or a brass band? he wanted to shout. That deadpan old Claude Guétary would have had a field day with a moment like this.

  “Apparently a misfire, Captain,” he answered aloud.

  “Apparently …” Captain Townsend was still staring down at him. He had a flat, broad face and his eyes were placed very close together, which gave him an irate, imperious expression. “Don’t you know?”

  Damon shook his head slowly. The Captain grunted; he still held his watch in his hand, a flat gold timepiece with Roman numerals for the hours. “Right—on—schedule,” he pronounced. “And no blast. Very nice. Very edifying.” He swung his arm up and down the ditch. “Enemy cavalry have by now cut every last one of you to pieces, of course.” He had returned from the war with a British accent—why, no one knew, for he had been assigned to the railroad station at Bourges for the duration—and it became more pronounced now as he studied the bare black steel girders, chewing at his lower lip. “What did you use to light the fuse, Damon?” he asked idly.

  Damon stared up at him. He knows perfectly well what I used, he thought irritably, he could see my back teeth with those glasses. “I used a match, Captain.”

  “Did you? And why did you use a match instead of a fuse lighter?”

  “Because a match is surer.”

  Captain Townsend smiled. “Yes. I can see that.” The smile faded. “You realize of course that the fuse lighter is an article of issue.”

  “Yes, sir. But it is one—”

  “That’s all, Damon. When I want further information from you I’ll ask for it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The fuse lighter was a paper tube whose open end was crimped to the time fuse. It had a ring fastened to a wire that extended down into some friction powder inside the tube. You were supposed to give the ring a quick tug, which would ignite the friction powder and so ignite the fuse. The only trouble with this complicated arrangement was that it didn’t work very well or very often. On all time-fuse problems everyone used kitchen matches, which were a good deal more reliable, and everyone knew it.

  This charge had failed to go off, however.

  “Who cut the fuse?” the Captain asked.

  “Sergeant Torrey, sir.”

  “Did you examine it?”

  “Yes, I did. It was cut properly.”

  “I see. And who inserted it in the block?”

  “Sergeant Torrey, Captain.”

  “And did you examine it?”

  “Yes, sir. It was inserted correctly.”

  “And who crimped the fuse?”

  “I did, Captain.”

  “Did you. And Sergeant Torrey examined your work, I suppose.” Damon, growing angry, made no reply to this. The two squads were sprawled along the edg
e of the ditch, watching in silence. “You feel—” Captain Townsend said slowly, the pause in itself an insult, “—that you crimped the fuse properly, Damon?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sir,” Sergeant Torrey said, “would the Captain permit me to make a statement?”

  Townsend shifted the close-set, irate gaze. “What is it, Sergeant?”

  “Sir, Schoentag over in Number Three said those blocks hadn’t been turned in a hell of a long while …”

  “And of course you believed him.”

  “Well, sir, I …” Torrey trailed off, eyeing Damon furtively. A combat engineer in France with the Rainbow Division, he felt the Captain’s displeasure—and something beyond that too, some heightened antipathy he did not understand.

  “That remains to be seen.” Townsend was standing a little apart from the men in the ditch. He had pocketed the gold watch and taken his swagger stick from under his left arm and was slapping it against his breeches, a rapid drumming: one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. “Well, that’s that,” he observed. “Remove the charge,” he ordered, and turned away.

  Damon felt his jaw drop; he watched the Captain’s broad back, the swagger stick drumming against the whipcord. It sounded like someone beating a rug a long distance away. Sergeant Torrey’s face held the same cold amazement he imagined his own must be showing. No one in the culvert had moved.

  Captain Townsend stopped and turned around. “Did you hear what I said, Lieutenant?” he demanded.

  “Yes, sir,” Damon answered.

  “Very well: what are you waiting for?” The two men stared hard at each other for a moment; then, “Remove the primer, Sergeant,” Townsend said crisply to Torrey. “Lieutenant Damon seems incapable of action for the moment.”

  Damon clamped his mouth shut. This was impossible. Clearly and thoroughly impossible—and yet here it was: happening. Sergeant Torrey’s eyes rolled around to Damon’s—a smoldering disgust touched with that wary uncertainty. Then with enormous reluctance he climbed out of the ditch and started down toward the bridge. His heels struck little bursts of dust in the road.

  Damon jumped to the top of the culvert. It was incredible how far away Torrey had got in those few seconds. “Sergeant!” he called.

  Torrey turned with alacrity. “Lieutenant?”

  “Disregard that order. Come back here …” Townsend had stopped again and was watching him. “On the double!” Damon shouted.

  “Yes sir!” Torrey came back up the little rise at a dogtrot. Damon motioned him back into the ditch with a nod of his head and turned to face Townsend, whose approach seemed as dilatory as the Sergeant’s movement toward the bridge had been brief. There was a kind of reluctance in the man’s walk, as though he wanted to prolong this moment as much as possible, not out of fear but its opposite—some furtive, extraordinary pleasure it gave him. Damon closed his hand and opened it again; his heart was beating solidly, rather thickly, and it irritated him. Watching the Captain draw nearer, his bootheels scraping on the stones, it seemed to him he’d been granted some strange prevision of this moment: he and Townsend facing each other in silence under a vast white sky. From the first morning he had reported for duty he’d had the sense that a line had been drawn. Townsend had studied him from the chair behind his desk: the thin, rather dreamy smile and those closely spaced blue eyes that fastened on him almost eagerly, alight with some unfathomable pleasure. There had been some small talk and then Townsend had said, “Did you enjoy yourself on the Riviera, Damon?”

  Just the question in that odd British accent; and the faint smile that disconcerting gaze belied. Damon had glanced at him, and then grinned—perhaps the man was awkward socially, perhaps it was a nervous affliction, perhaps he himself was imagining things—and said: “Yes, sir—hugely. As a matter of fact I met my wife there.”

  “Did you? I rather thought it had been earlier.”

  “No, sir—Tommy wouldn’t have looked at me earlier!” But Townsend did not smile at all, much less chuckle, and his heart sank. The man had no sense of humor: it was going to be a long tour.

  “I guess it must have been quite a lark,” Townsend was saying; it was the first time Damon had seen that irate, incredulous glare. He thought with a rude little shock: Why, the man doesn’t like me! He doesn’t like me at all …

  He said quietly: “I was sent to Cannes on convalescent leave, Captain.”

  But Townsend had got to his feet and was glaring at a section drawing on the wall of a steel truss bridge wired for demolition. “I’m afraid you won’t find it much like the Riviera here, Damon.” His voice was level, but there was a curious little current of tension running along its under edge. “No tales of glory around the glowing fireside, no singing of grand old refrains, no ceremonies and awards on Thursday afternoons …” Ah, that’s it, Sam thought. He said nothing. “We are concerned with the practical things, the bread-and-butter side of warfare. The things that, ultimately, turn out to be the most important ones.” He turned and faced Damon again, and now there wasn’t even the trace of a smile on the flat, heavy-jawed face; the British intonation, too, had faded. “Explosives and demolitions are an exact science, to be computed exactly and rapidly. There is a great deal to learn, and it must be mastered in its entirety. I shall expect attention to the most minute detail, and immediate responses. Not quick, not prompt—immediate. Do I make myself clear?”

  Now the Captain had reached him. His eyes were wide and baleful; they looked almost white in the flat, dusty light. In a thin, hoarse voice he said: “Lieutenant, I gave that man an order.”

  “I am in charge of this detail, Captain.”

  Townsend’s body gave a curious little tremor. He raised the swagger stick as though to salute with it, then began drumming on his breeches leg with it again. The rest of the detail were staring at them like men in a trance. Damon thought, If through some immense mistake on the part of fate I ever become Chief of Staff I personally am going to break every God damned swagger stick in the American Army over the head of every God damned officer carrying one.

  “Damon,” Townsend said tensely, “—I order you to remove that charge!”

  “Sir, I refuse to carry out that order.”

  Townsend took out his watch and studied its face. A muscle in his fleshy cheek flickered once above the wing of the mustache. “I will give you that order once more, and you will have one hundred and twenty seconds to carry it out. Exactly—”

  Lowering his voice, Damon said as rapidly as he could: “Captain, you know very well in the event of a misfire a blasting detail should wait a minimum of thirty minutes before even—”

  “That’s enough!” Townsend shouted. His head shook and he jerked at the brim of his hat. “Now let me get this straight, Damon. For the record. I have given you a direct order in connection with a blasting problem and you have refused to execute that order—repeatedly refused. Is that correct?”

  “Captain, a misfire such—”

  “Is that correct!” Townsend screamed.

  Damon gripped his belt with both hands. It was fantastic. Stupid and murderous and fantastic. What sense was there in staying up till all hours with a wet towel wrapped around one’s head studying the Vertical Radius of Rupture and overcharged craters and the combustible properties of trinitrotoluene, committing to memory N=R3KC + 10 for breaching charges and N=D220 for shattering charges for timber—what good was all that arduous and unpleasant effort if some Anglophiliac idiot with a swagger stick and an untraceable thirst for vengeance couldn’t even remember the primary precaution for a time-fuse misfire?

  But Townsend knew: of course he knew. His lips were working under the flaring cavalryman’s mustache, and his features were marked with an almost desperate eagerness. The rest of the detail were watching in awed fascination, all except Sergeant Torrey, who had turned his back to this pleasant little scene.

  But to read a man off in front of troops—!

  “Yes, sir,” he said evenly. “That is correct.”<
br />
  “Good.” Townsend’s lips closed neatly; yet he seemed at the same time curiously disappointed. “Good. We understand each other. You admit, then, to direct disobedience of orders in the execution of an important training exercise.”

  “Captain, it’s not—”

  “Do you? Answer me!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A figure jumped up and scrambled out of the ditch: Conte, a young soldier on his first hitch, with silky black hair and a gypsy face. “I’ll go unhook the thing, Lieutenant.” He waved a hand. “What the hell—I don’t mind.” He started off down the road.

  “Conte, stay where you are,” Damon called.

  “It’s all right. Won’t take a minute. I ain’t scared to tackle it—”

  “I said come back here!” Damon roared; the boy stopped in the middle of the road, his rifle hanging across his thighs, uncertain. Damon cursed; he realized the boy had offered out of some half-formed idea of absolving him, removing the obstacle to this ugly impasse. Glancing at Townsend he saw the Captain had already realized the boy’s motive and decided to misinterpret it for his own purposes. Townsend’s eyes were glittering now with malignant delight.

  “You see?—even that boy’s willing to do it, Damon.”

  “It’s not a question of whether he’s willing or not.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No. It’s a matter of common sense.”

  Townsend smiled the slow, almost dreamy smile. “I do believe you’re a bit windy, Damon,” he said in his crispest British intonation. “Can it be that you’re a bit windy?”

  “Sure, I’m afraid. Any man with any brains would be.”

  Townsend nodded several times slowly, as if this confirmed everything he had known. “And they said you were such a tough hombre. A killer.”

  “I refuse to risk anybody’s ass for no reason at all, I’ll tell you that …”

  “Interesting.” The swagger stick went rat-a-pa-kan, rat-a-pa-kan against the flare of his breeches. “Do you know what I think, Damon?” the Captain asked, in a husky whisper. “I think you’re a four-flusher. A great, big, enormous fraud.”