by Dean Koontz
The Texan shrugged. "You might take a flak fragment in the neck." He smiled at Lily, as if he were anticipating that development with pleasure.
"If it happens," Lilly said, "then we'll talk."
She went back through the plane, down the narrow corridor in the center of the fuselage, toward the hatchway where she had come in. She stopped only once, to slip back into her velvet costume and pull up the zipper.
Outside, on her way back to the hospital bunker, she began to think about the only two words that mattered: death and sex. Deep down in every man or woman's mind, those were the two words that really counted for anything, two animal urges or conditions of the species which drove you relentlessly through life. You tried to avoid death for as long as possible, while grabbing all the sex you could get. Ordinarily, built as she was and uninhibited as she was, she would be able to function well in a world governed by those drives. But the war had turned everything around. She had sex to offer, and that was how she could avoid death. But the only way the pilot could avoid death was to refuse sex. The irresistible force and the immovable object. Two deer, they were, with antlers locked and no way to escape.
"Nice night, isn't it?" an enlisted man asked when she passed him on her way to the bunker.
"Fuck off!" she said.
He stopped as if he'd walked into a wall. "Jesus!"
Sulking, she went down the hospital bunker steps, calling for Nurse Pullit. She needed a shoulder to cry on.
* * *
9
Three days after the bridge was bombed out, it was nearing completion once again, straight and true, spanning the gorge and the river in the middle of the gorge and the unsalvageable ruins of the previous bridges that the Stukas had destroyed. This speed was not particularly amazing, since Major Kelly was commanding a trained crew of construction workers and some of the best Army engineers in the war. In fact, their progress with the bridge was amazingly slow. After all, with the guiding help of the Army engineers, only twelve thousand American and Canadian workers had built the monumental Alcan Highway from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, Alaska: 1,671 miles of roadway completed in only eight months, when it was clear that the Japanese were operating in the Aleutians and that such a highway was desperately necessary for North America's defense. In the Pacific theater, the Army engineers had cleaned out the demolished ruins of old bridges and had spanned jungle rivers with portable Bailey bridges in mere hours. Later in the war, when the Ludendorff Bridge would be damaged under Nazi attack and eventually fall apart carrying Allied traffic, Army engineers would replace the span in less than half a day, though it was 1,068 feet long. Therefore, Major Kelly's unit was actually ponderously slow in replacing the ruined bridge by their camp. There was a reason for this. So long as the bridge was unable to bear traffic, no Stuka flight would be dispatched to bomb it, and they would be able to count on some peace and quiet. Once the bridge was up again, however, they'd have to sit around on tenterhooks, waiting for the dive bombers. The longer they took to rebuild the bridge, then, the better.
In fact, Major Kelly would have liked to take about a month or six weeks to rebuild the bridge. The only thing that kept him from taking that long was the realization that General Blade would order Lieutenant Slade to kill him and assume command.
As the bridge neared completion, Major Kelly and Lieutenant Beame inspected the bearings on the new bridge cap after the nearside canitlever arm had been fastened down on shore and to the pier. All that remained, when their inspection was completed, was the anchoring of the suspended span between the two cantilevers. While they were still beneath the bridge, clinging to the concrete supports by means of belts and mortared chain handholds, soaking up the cool shadows while they worked, Sergeant Coombs came to the edge of the river and yelled down at them.
"The Frog's here!" he yelled.
That was Sergeant Coomb's way of saying that Maurice, the mayor of the only French village nearby, had come to see the major. Sergeant Coombs had few friends among the peoples of other races and religions. The sergeant didn't particularly care. As he often said to Slade when they spent an evening together reading over the Army field manual, "There was a rich kid in my hometown who had a black governess, a big ugly woman. Parents thought it was classy to have a nigger tending their kid. Worse than that, she wasn't a citizen of the States. She was French. A frog nigger. Or a nigger frog, whichever way you see it. Top that off with the fact she was a Catholic. A mick frog nigger. Or a nigger mick frog. Or a frog nigger mick. Whichever." When Lieutenant Slade would ask what had happened, as he always did, the sergeant would cluck his tongue and finish the story. "The mick nigger frog was with them twenty years. The kid grew up, got drunk, raped a girl, and slit her throat. Got electrocuted. The kid's old man started taking up with whores, gave his wife the clap, and had nearly everything taken from him in the divorce settlement. The wife started betting the horses and running with young jockies and lost most of what she took off the husband. If they hadn't hired that nigger, where might they be today?"
"The Frog's here!" the sergeant shouted again.
"I heard, I heard!" Major Kelly said, scrambling up the ravine, dust rising in clouds behind him, stones kicking out from under his feet and falling down on top of Beame who tried to keep up with him.
"I am not a frog," Maurice said, stepping into sight a dozen paces from Coombs. "People are not animals-except, perhaps, to the Nazis. One should never refer to human beings with the names of animals. It is degrading. I refrain, after all, from calling Sergeant Coombs a pig."
Sergeant Coombs colored a pink, hamlike shade, and turned and stomped back to the corrugated shed where he tended the construction machines that he loved. He didn't salute Major Kelly or request his commanding officer's leave. He did, however, say, "Bullshit."
Major Kelly shook Maurice's hand, marveling as always at the inordinate greasiness of Maurice's complexion. The man's round chin was like a large, oiled bearing. His cheeks were slick. His nose was beaded with oil in the creases and shined overall. His hair was combed straight back, pasted to his round head by a heavy coat of clear lubrication. Fortunately, Major Kelly thought, Sergeant Coombs had not yet called Maurice a greasy frog.
"What brings you here today, Maurice?" Kelly asked. But he knew what brought Maurice there: the possibility of a profit. The possibility of a profit motivated Maurice like food or sex or liquor or success motivated other men.
Quite to the point, Maurice said, "I would like to have your backhoe. The Cat, you know which I mean?" He wiped his greasy hands on his baggy trousers and looked past the major at the heavy, camouflage-painted piece of equipment.
Major Kelly shook his head sadly. "You know we can't permit Army property to be used for a civilian project."
"You misunderstand, Major!" Maurice said. "I do not wish to borrow the backhoe. Au contraire! I wish to own it."
"You want to buy the backhoe?"
"No, no, no."
"You want me to give it to you? Just give you The Cat?"
"That's right, Major."
Major Kelly wished that Maurice didn't speak English so well, that the channels of communication between them were severely limited. It was dangerous to be able to communicate with the old son of a bitch. Just past the turn of the century, when he was seventeen, Maurice had immigrated to America where he'd remained until just after the First World War. He had returned to France because, as he told the major, there was a greater chance of his making a fortune there. He had not done badly in the States, and he hoped to use his capital to invest, cheaply, in the shattered motherland and then grow along with her as she was restored. He'd done well, though not so well as he had thought he would. In France again, he found that his countrymen were not enamored of Americans, not in the least, and that they distrusted any Frenchman who had once gone to live with the Yanks. Still, he had made and lost and remade and relost fortunes. Right now, he was trying to make a fortune by screwing Major Kelly to the wall. He tried this
about once a week. He hadn't failed yet to get what he wanted.
"I suppose," Major Kelly said, "that there's a good reason why I should just give you the machine."
"An excellent reason," Maurice agreed, wiping a hand over his white, greasy hair. His fingers were greasy too.
"Information to sell?"
Maurice nodded. "Information that will save your lives," he said, grandly. Maurice could be grand, when he wanted. Even with his hair all slicked back and his face greasy, he could be grand.
"You exaggerate, surely."
"Never."
"What's the nature of this information?"
Maurice looked meaningfully at the backhoe and arched one bushy eyebrow.
"You can't expect me to give you the machine without knowing what I'm getting in return," Major Kelly said. "That's not nice, not nice at all. I am always nice to my men and nice to you-so why is everyone nasty with me?"
Maurice nodded sadly, sympathizing with the major, but he would still not say what the information was that he had to sell.
Major Kelly turned and pointed at the camouflaged backhoe which sat on the edge of the riverbank, by the bridge entrance, digging-claw up and bent, mud crusted on its teeth. "Do you know what that piece of equipment costs? Do you realize how important it is to my mission here?"
"Quelque chose."
"It is not a trifle," Kelly said.
Maurice pulled at his greasy nose and sighed, "Coűte que coűte-it will not save your lives."
Major Kelly watched the little frog carefully, and he finally decided he had to trust him. He couldn't risk ignoring the bastard, in case he really did have something vital to say. Maurice was just the sort to let them die in order to teach them a lesson.
"So?" Maurice asked.
"All right. You can have the damn thing. But not until you've told me what you came to tell me."
"I must have the backhoe first," Maurice insisted.
The Frenchman jammed both hands into his baggy trouser pockets and looked at the earth, suddenly so still that he appeared to have turned into a column of stone. The illusion was so convincing that Major Kelly felt a solid hammer blow to Maurice's head would crack him into thousands of shards. Kelly had to fight off an urge to go looking for a construction mallet. He knew Maurice would stand this way until he got what he wanted or was refused it outright. And, in the meantime, death was bearing down on them in some form the major couldn't guess.
Kelly sighed. "Okay."
"Excuse me?"
"You can have The Cat."
Maurice smiled. "You won't regret this."
"I better not," Kelly said, trying to sound fierce.
Maurice turned toward a copse of pines that stood two hundred yards along the riverbank, waved both hands in some prearranged signal. Two young men stepped out of the shadows under the trees and started walking toward Kelly and the frog. "A couple of village boys," Maurice explained. "They will take the backhoe away."
"They know how to drive it?"
"Yes."
The boys, both between sixteen and twenty, went directly to The Cat and began exploring it, until they felt secure. They both climbed aboard and turned to look at Maurice.
He ordered them to start it.
They did, let it idle.
"I suppose you'll want gasoline, too," Kelly said.
"Cela va sans dire," Maurice said, grinning.
"Beame," Kelly said, "bring five ten-gallon cans of gasoline from the camp stores and lash them to The Cat."
"Yes, sir," Beame said. He was unhappy with the order.
"He's a good boy," Maurice said, watching Beame hurry off toward the machinery shed.
Kelly didn't answer that. "Maurice," he said, "you are not an ordinary man. You are something else, you are-"
"Dégagé?" Maurice asked.
Struggling with his college French, Major Kelly looked for an epithet he wanted. "Chevalier d'industrie."
Maurice actually bristled. He stood stiffly, face twisted, his greasy hair trying to stand straight up on his neck, his eyes blazing. "You call me a swindler?"
Realizing he had gone too far, reminding himself that he had never been very good at maintaining discipline, the major said, "That was not how I meant it. I meant-'One who lives by his wits.' "
Maurice unbristled. "Thank you, Major," he said. "I am honored to be so considered by a man I respect as much as I respect you."
As Beame delivered the cans of gasoline to the two young men on the backhoe, Kelly said, "Now, what information has cost me so dearly?"
Maurice was suddenly nervous. "A Panzer unit is moving towards the front, complete with an armored supply convoy and approximately a thousand infantrymen."
Major Kelly wiped at his nose. Looking at Maurice, he had begun to feel that his own nose was bedecked with bright pearls of grease. His nose was dry. That was a relief. "I don't really see that this is worth a backhoe, Maurice."
"The Panzers are coming on this road," Maurice said.
"This road?" Kelly looked southward, across the river, unwilling to accept the possibility that he would have to blow up his own bridge to keep the German tanks from crossing over to the camp.
"You did not hear me right," Maurice said, as if reading the other man's thoughts. "The Panzers are coming to the front. They will be coming up behind you, from the northeast, from this side."
Kelly turned away from the river and looked across the clearing to the trees, the single break in them where the dusty road came through. No military traffic had yet used this road, not since they had been here. They were in the backlands, in an unimportant part of France. Now, all of that had changed. "Oh, God. We're all dead."
"Not necessarily," Maurice said.
Kelly thought of the huge, lumbering Panzer tanks, the supply trucks, the thousand German infantrymen, all moving through this camp, across this bridge, and he couldn't see any way they weren't going to be made dead. "We haven't any mortar or artillery. We aren't a fighting unit. The only thing we have to protect ourselves are our rifles and grenades. How many Panzers did you say?"
"Twelve."
"We're dead."
"Not necessarily," Maurice repeated. "There are things I could rent you, bits and pieces, certain machines that have come into my possession..."
"Artillery?"
"No," Maurice said.
"What, then?"
"German jeeps, uniforms, a German truck."
Kelly thought about it. "You have these things, really?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Grâce ŕ Dieu."
Major Kelly was certain God hadn't delivered the German equipment to Maurice, but he didn't feel like arguing about that just now. "I don't see what these things will do to help us," he said.
"With little trouble," Maurice said, "you could make the Germans think that this is a camp of theirs."
"Masquerade as Germans?"
"Exactly."
"But none of us is fluent in German!" Kelly said. "The moment we have to speak to one of them-"
"You will have to talk to no one," Maurice said. "The Germans will not stop. Their orders are to rush, and they are wasting no time in reaching the front. They will pass through here with little more than a nod to you."
"The Stuka pilots know we're not German, and they must have reported us to someone," Kelly said. "They bomb us all the time. If the Stuka pilots know, the Panzer commanders are going to know, too."
"Possibly not," Maurice said. "In Germany, the air force tells the army nothing, for all the services are fiefdoms and jealously guard their own secrets."
"It won't work."
"What else can you do?" Maurice asked.
Kelly thought about it some more. "Nothing."
"Then let us hurry. The Panzers will be here tonight."
* * *
10
Lieutenant Slade tugged at his Nazi uniform where the tightly buttoned jacket fit much too snugly over his hips. He would have liked to ask Nurse P
ullit to help him let out the seams of the jacket so that he would not look so hippy and fat, but there'd been no time. "I don't like this plan one bit," he said. Thinking of his career, he said, "And I want my opinion to go down in the record right now, this minute." He looked at Major Kelly who wore a black SS uniform complete with silver skulls and a sheathed dagger at the waist. Lieutenant David Beame wore an excellently fitting oberleutnant's uniform and looked dashing. The major and Beame were so resplendent, in fact, one might have thought they were on their way to a dance. It was a good thing there wasn't any dance, though, because Slade would have been embarrassed for any woman-aside from Lily Kain whom he considered nothing more than a cheap hussie-to see him in his tight uniform. "I think what we're doing is all wrong," The Snot said. "It's degrading and unpatriotic- and it definitely smacks of cowardice." He could not understand why both their uniforms should fit so well, while his was tight across the hips. Had they planned this? Had the rest of them got together and made certain that his uniform would fit too snugly across the hips and therefore make him seem ludicrous and silly? Maurice would not be above that. It was quite within Maurice's abilities to purposefully supply Slade with an ill-fitting uniform, making him the brunt of private and public jokes. "What we should do," Lieutenant Slade said, "is make a stand. I'm not saying we would win. But we could deal them a hard blow, and perhaps a decisive blow. We would have the advantage of surprise. And even if that wasn't enough, if we lost, we'd still all make our mark in the history of this war." Another thing that bothered Slade was the fact that his uniform was that of a private in the German army. If he had to wear a German uniform, it seemed only proper that he should have one of a rank at least equal to his own. Major Kelly, after all, was wearing a lieutenant-general's uniform, and Beame was dressed as an officer. It was degrading to be sitting here in the backseat of the jeep, wearing a tight uniform several ranks below his own. He wanted to cry. He just wanted to cry.
Kelly and Beame didn't want to cry. They wanted to scream and run. Instead, they watched the convoy of German vehicles move slowly down from the highlands toward the clearing, the camp, and the bridge.