by Dean Koontz
In the morning as dawn lined the horizons, after the frogs had gone to bed and the crickets had been silenced by the growing dew, in the first orange rays of the elevating sun, Major Kelly was awakened by the shrieking approach of a bomber. A big one. Coming in low.
Kelly leaped out of bed, wearing only his damp shorts and an expression of admirably controlled terror in the face of a familiar intolerable persecution. He grabbed his service revolver from the top of the pasteboard trunk and plunged through the khaki-colored Army blanket and out the door of the HQ building.
The day was far too bright, even at dawn. The sunlight put a flat glare across the mist that lay over the camp and made the French countryside seem like a stage setting under the brutal beams of a score of huge kliegs. He raised an arm to shield his eyes, and he saw the plane. It was a B-17, highlighted by the new sun. It swooped over the camp, straight for the bridge.
"One of ours!" Slade shouted. He had stumbled out of the HQ building in the major's wake and now stood at his left side. He was, as usual, a vocal repeater of visual events.
"Why didn't I listen to Kowalski?" Kelly asked.
Slade gave him a curious look.
The B-17 let go at the bridge with two bombs that slid straight for the span's deck like Indian arrows for cavalry targets. All of this was out of place, unfitted to the peaceful morning, the slightly chilled air, and the sun like an open oven door in a country kitchen. Still, as the big plane turned up on the other side of the gorge, the bridge leaped up in a spray of steel, wood, cable, and concrete. A flash of light made the day seem less bright by comparison, and the roar of the explosion brought the sky falling down. The twisted beams, miraculous in flight, glittered prettily and fell back in a chiming heap. The flash of the explosion gave way to smoke which rolled out of the gorge and devoured the edge of the camp.
"Our own plane," Kelly said. He was numb.
The B-17 came back, loosed six bombs. Two fell over the northeast edge of the woods, two over the open space between the main bunker and the HQ, and two over the bridge approach.
When Kelly saw the second two released, he shouted, "Christ! He's after everything!" He put his head down and ran for the hospital bunker, though he knew it was useless.
The two bombs released over the woods angled down and slammed into the earth directly between the main bunker and the HQ. The blast made Kelly scream. He glanced sideways as he ran, saw a wall of earth rising skyward and pouring across the space between the buildings like a brown wave of lava.
The second pair of bombs, which had been dropped over this now devastated area, exploded in twin balls of searing, white flame at the southwest corner of the HQ building, not far from where Kelly and Slade had been standing. Flames spewed out in all directions. The earth convulsed, showering heavy clumps of ground in all directions. Aflame, the west wall of HQ buckled inwards, then popped out again and tore loose of the other three partitions. It fell to the earth with a sound like a slammed door. The three standing walls shuddered violently.
The two bombs let loose over the bridge approach sailed toward the center of the span. They passed either side of it and exploded below, in the ravine. More flames. The ground near the gorge heaved and rolled and settled reluctantly.
Dazed men streamed out of the rec room which now had only three walls. They had been awakened by the attack, startled to see their room open around them like a packing crate, and they had yet to figure out exactly what was going on.
Major Kelly reached the head of the hospital steps and looked up at the B-17 which was circling around for another run at the camp. Far above it, in the morning sky, a trio of Allied fighter planes which acted as its escort went around in lazy little circles, waiting for big brother to finish and come back to them.
Slade hurried up, panting. His face was flushed, but he looked more excited than frightened. "What can we do?"
Kelly ran down the steps and tried the bunker door. Locked. He really hadn't expected anything else.
The B-17 came back. It roared in lower than before and let go at the HQ building again.
The missiles overshot and blew a huge chunk out of the riverbank. Shrapnel and dirt cascaded over six or seven men who had run the wrong way after coming out of the rec room.
Major Kelly thought he heard someone screaming in pain, but he could not be sure.
"We have to do something!" Slade insisted.
Major Kelly watched the bomber circle again. The damn pilot wasn't done with them. Any pilot with a grain of sense would have cut out by now; this asshole had to be some patriotic, gung-ho promotion seeker with no real sense of his own mortality.
Slade grabbed the major's arm. "Listen to me! We have to stop them, for Christ's sake!"
Kelly pushed the lieutenant away and shouted at the men who were still too dazed to get away from the HQ building. "Over here! Run, you idiots! Move! Run! Get away from there!"
Slade grabbed him again, using both hands this time and digging in hard with his fingers, molding a grip in Kelly's bare arm as if the major were made of clay. "What are you going to do? You cowardly son of a bitch, what are you going to do?"
Kelly drew back his free arm and struck Slade across the face, harder than he had ever hit a man before. When the lieutenant fell back, stunned, Kelly grabbed him with a fierceness far worse than Slade's bad been a moment ago. Kelly's eyes were so wide open they appeared on the verge of falling out; his mouth was a twisted, thin-lipped hole in his face; his nostrils flared like those of an animal. "What can I do, you fucking little creep? Did Blade give me artillery? Did Blade give me antiaircraft weapons? What am I supposed to do with nothing? Can I fight a fucking B-17 with a bulldozer and pegging mallets? Use your fucking brain, Slade!" Then he let go of him, because they were both knocked off their feet by two more explosions.
Kelly rolled to the bottom of the hospital bunker steps and smacked his head against the bunker door. Cursing, he crawled back to the top to see what had been hit.
The bridge. It made a tortured, metallic squeal the same pitch as the squeal inside Kelly's head and collapsed into the gorge with an almost practiced grace.
Slade was standing on top of the hospital bunker, holding his service revolver in both hands and shooting at the bomber. Kelly had lost his own gun somewhere, but he didn't feel like hunting it just now. He watched Slade fire all his chambers at the plane, to no effect.
While the lieutenant was reloading, the B-17 climbed skyward to join its escort, and the four United States Air Force planes streaked westward, out of sight, back toward the safety of Allied territory.
Up near the HQ building where the bombs had torn away a large piece of the riverbank, someone was screaming. It was a monotonous scream, rising and falling and rising and falling again in a predictable pattern. Kelly walked that way, though he didn't want to. He passed a smoking crater that smelled like rotten eggs, passed the charred wall of the rec room which was still smoldering a little, and he came to three men who were lying on the ground midst pieces of bomb casings, fragments of limestone, and clods of earth.
He knelt beside the first. Private Hoskins. "You okay?"
Hoskins's eyes fluttered, opened. He looked at Kelly, got it sorted out remarkably fast, reached out for support and sat up. He was twenty-eight years old, a small-town boy from upper New York State-but right now Hoskins looked a hundred, and as if he had seen everything bad there was to see. His nose was bleeding across his lips, wet ribbons of some gay disguise. Most of his clothes had been torn off by the blast. Otherwise, he seemed to be in good shape.
"Can you walk?" Kelly asked.
"I think so."
Kelly helped him to his feet. "Go see Pullit and Kain."
Hoskins, the gambler, nodded. He walked off toward the hospital bunker, weaving a bit, as if a pair of roulette wheels were strapped to his shoulders.
The second man lying on the ground was Private Osgood from Nashville, Tennessee. Kelly did not know him well. He would never know him well. Osg
ood was dead, pierced by twenty or more pieces of shrapnel, bleeding from the face and neck and chest, from the stomach and the legs, a voodoo doll that had gotten into the hands of a witch with a real grudge to settle.
Kelly walked closer to the ravine where the third man lay on his side, holding his stomach with both hands. It was Private Peter Danielson, Petey for short. He was the unit's foremost drinker and hell raiser. Kelly had reprimanded him on three separate occasions when Danielson had pissed in Sergeant Coombs's office window, all over Coombs's desk and papers.
"Petey?" Kelly asked, kneeling beside the man.
Danielson's scream died into a low sobbing, and he focused his watery eyes on the major.
"Where are you hurt?" Kelly asked.
Danielson tried to speak. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth and dribbled down his chin, thick as syrup.
"Your stomach, Petey?"
Danielson blinked and slowly nodded his head. He jerked as his bladder gave out and his trousers darkened with urine. Tears came to his eyes, fat and clear; they ran down his round cheeks and mixed with the blood on his chin.
"Can I look?" Kelly asked.
Danielson shuddered and managed to speak. "Nothing to see. Okay." His teeth and tongue were bright with blood.
"If I could look, maybe I could keep it from hurting," Kelly said.
Danielson started to scream again, that same monotonous ululation. His mouth was wide open, all red inside, and bloody foam bubbled at both nostrils.
Slade had come up beside Kelly while the major was talking to Petey Danielson. "What's wrong with him?"
Kelly didn't answer him. He took hold of the screaming man's hands, which were cold. He was prepared to pry Danielson's hands away from his stomach, but the wounded man surrendered with surprising weakness. Then, with nothing to hold in its place, his stomach fell away from him. It just bulged out through his shredded shirt in a shapeless, awful mass. Undigested food, blood, intestines, feces, and the walls of his stomach flopped onto the ground in a slithering, glistening mass.
Danielson screamed and screamed.
"Christ," Slade said.
Major Kelly looked at Danielson's insides, trying to pretend them out of the way, trying to pretend Danielson back to health. He couldn't do it. He stood up, trying not to be sick. He turned to Slade in the jerky way of an automaton in a big department-store Christmas display, and he took the loaded revolver out of Slade's hand.
Danielson was curled up on himself now, trying to stuff his ruined intestines back through the neat slit the shrapnel had made in him. He was screaming and crying and apologizing to someone.
Major Kelly aimed the revolver at Danielson's chest but found that he was shaking too badly to make a good shot. He planted his feet farther apart and gripped the gun with both hands as he had seen Slade doing when the B-17 was over them. He shot Danielson four times in the chest, until the man was dead.
He gave the gun back to Slade.
He walked away, holding his hands over his ears, trying to block, out Petey Danielson's scream which he imagined he could still hear like a siren cutting across the smoking campsite.
In his quarters, Kelly put on new shorts and a dirty pair of khaki slacks. He took his bottle of Jack Daniels out of the pasteboard trunk and took several long pulls straight from the neck. Although he wouldn't have believed he could be functional so soon, though he wouldn't have thought he could push Danielson out of his mind so quickly, Kelly was ready to listen to Lieutenant Beame half an hour later when Beame came in to report on the condition of the bridge.
"Both piers are undamaged," Beame said. "But we'll have to repair the entire floor and superstructure. All in all, not so bad."
"We'll have to get on it right away," Kelly said. "The Panzers must be on the way."
Beame didn't understand.
Kelly said, "We were hit by one of our own bombers. That means the Panzer division is on its way west and the brass wants to deny it the use of this bridge."
Beame didn't like that. "No. It can't be."
"There's no other reason for them to risk a B-17 and its escort on such a limited target. We're all doomed."
* * *
7
The HQ building had not been damaged, except for the fallen wall. In a few hours, even that was in place and all was as it had been in that corner of the camp. The radio room was undisturbed, and the wireless hummed menacingly.
Major Kelly wanted to call the general to order supplies and ask about the big Panzer division, but he could not do that. The wireless communications link between the camp and Blade was decidedly one-way; only the general could initiate a conversation. So far, this had been fine with Kelly. Now, however, once the men had been set to cleaning up the debris and there was nothing to do, the major's mind dwelt on too many unpleasant possibilities which a single call to the general could have confirmed or negated. Probably confirmed. The worst would happen. The B-17 had bombed the bridge because the Panzers were on their way. Still, until he got word for sure on tonight's Blade and Slade Show, Kelly would have to occupy his time in some manner that would take his mind off these other things. He decided he might as well return to the problem of the camp informer. Operation Traitor Hunt would keep him busy and, perhaps, gain him some respect from Slade and Coombs.
He sat behind a plank table-desk just inside the door of the mess hall, toying with a dagger. For the first time since they'd been dropped behind enemy lines, he was wearing his uniform. He felt it was only proper, while carrying on an interrogation, to wear his uniform and to toy with the dagger, thereby instilling a combination of respect and fear in the men he questioned, insuring their cooperation. Also, he wore his uniform because it gave him an excuse to wear a hat which covered the worst of his widening bald spots and prevented the interrogation subjects from laughing at him and making cruel jokes. The only trouble was that he perspired heavily, leaving the uniform wrinkled and streaked with sweat. And he had twice cut himself while toying with the dagger.
"Next!" Kelly called.
Lieutenant Slade opened the door and escorted the next man inside: Danny Dew, who had just taken a break from his D-7 work in the gorge. Danny sat on the hot seat, leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head and smiled. "What's the hubbub?" he asked, flashing white-white teeth.
"Wipe that smile off your face, soldier," Major Kelly said.
But he was no good at discipline, and he knew Danny Dew too well to throw the least bit of fear into him. Danny Dew looked sideways at Slade and grinned, as if they all shared some private joke.
"That's better," Major Kelly said, refusing to acknowledge that the smile was still there. He leaned forward on the table, pointing the dagger at Danny Dew. "Corporal Dew, have you any idea why we're questioning every man in this unit?"
Danny grinned at him. "No, Massah Kelly."
"Because," Major Kelly said, "there is a traitor among us, and we are going to find out who he is before he has another opportunity to report us to the German Air Force or to-any other German force."
"Wonderful, wonderful!" Danny Dew said.
Kelly nodded. "I will tell you what I've told every man so far, Dew: I want to trust you, but I can't. For all our sakes, I've got to assume that you could be the kraut agent. There's no way I can actually find out for sure, short of torturing you, and that is impractical. Therefore, I want to say this, Dew: if you are a kraut agent, and if you don't tell me now and let me find out on my own, later, I will have you executed without trial."
Dew smiled. "Ain't nothin' in my ole head, Massah Kelly."
"Christ," Kelly said. "If you insist on doing that bit, can't you at least get it right? Not 'head'-'haid'!"
"Ain't nothin' in my ole haid, Massah Kelly!"
Kelly toyed with his dagger awhile. "Execution without trial," he said again. "But that isn't all, Dew. Before I have you killed, I'll assign you to the radio room where you will be tied to a chair and forced to listen to every one of General Blade's calls."
>
Danny Dew stopped smiling.
"Furthermore," Major Kelly said, warming to the routine again, "I will order the shortwave channels kept open at periodic intervals so that you will have to listen to other transmissions of other officers like General Blade, wherever and whenever we can locate them."
Danny Dew looked distinctly ill. He had taken his hands from behind his head and clasped them between his knees. He was hunched forward as if he were going to be sick on the floor.
"And when you're screamingly insane, then we'll kill you." Kelly waved the dagger to emphasize the point. "Now, are you the damned traitor, the kraut informer?"
"No, sir!" Dew said.
Kelly smiled. He softened his tone of voice and tried to look sincere. "Actually, I wouldn't turn you in, even if I learned you were a traitor. You understand that? I wouldn't interfere with your work. It's just that I want to know, you see. I'd promise not to get in the way of your traitoring, so long as you stopped trying to fool me. Do you get my meaning?"
"Yes, sir. But I'm not the traitor."
Kelly sighed. "Dismissed."
Shaken, wondering if he were still under suspicion, Danny Dew got up and left the interrogation room.
Lieutenant Slade brought in the next man, who wasn't a man at all. It was Lily Kain. She was wearing a skimpy, sequined dancer's costume out of which her jugs might pop at any moment. She sashayed across the interrogation room and sat down in the chair in front of Major Kelly, crossed her gorgeous legs, and folded her hands in her lap. She grinned at Kelly and licked her lips and winked.
"First," Kelly said, "you've got to understand that this is serious business, Miss Kain!" To forcefully underline this statement, the major raised the dagger and, as he finished the sentence, drove the wicked point of it into the top of his plank table-desk. He also drove the point of it through the edge of his left hand. "That's okay," he said. He smiled at Lily and Slade to let them see how okay it was. "This is all a fairy tale anyway, a figment of some Aesop's imagination. None of it is real." However, the blood was real enough.