There had been no distress call, no word from London over the radio, no anything. No warning. No chance to brace themselves.
But then, there never was. Not when Marya was involved.
Five men sat silently in one of the larger cooler cells, studiously not looking at one another. Most of the hair on the left side of Newkirk's head—including, heartbreakingly, his sideburn—had been singed off. Carter had two black eyes, and was periodically running his tongue around his teeth to make sure that they were all still there. Kinch was sullenly waiting for his ears to stop ringing, although his hearing seemed to be slowly returning to normal, a fact for which he was devoutly grateful. LeBeau, mildly concussed after coming in second in a race with a flying teapot, seemed to have misplaced all his English, and possibly his memories of the last several years. None of them were entirely sure who 'Etienne' was, but judging from the tongue-lashing, in heated French, that he had given Newkirk under the impression that he was, in fact, the man in question, they were not the best of friends. And Hogan was standing up, because he was nursing a nonfatal but decidedly unpleasant battle wound in a place only his doctor and his as-yet-only-theoretical wife would ever see.
His doctor, his wife, and, sadly, Marya, his entire command, Colonel Klink, General Burkhalter, Frau Linkmeyer, three very attractive barmaids, and Sergeant Schultz. There might have been others. He was trying not to remember for certain. He didn't want to know.
"Well, one thing's for sure," said Carter, after a while. "An awful lot can happen in two hours."
Two hours ago:
This latest example of the Russian's penchant for throwing them headfirst into the septic tank and standing by with a stopwatch to criticize their swimming techniques had been more or less classic Marya. Which is to say that it was ridiculously overcomplex, exuberantly sexualized, missing most if not all of the necessary details, and made absolutely no logistical sense. That it was all risk and no appreciable reward. That it was full of double-, triple-, and quadruple-crosses. That LeBeau was immediately and wholeheartedly for it, Hogan was growling and snapping at her in between passionate kisses, Kinch was sighing a bit and acceding to the inevitable, Carter had that oh-boy-I-get-to-blow-something-up gleam in his eye, and Newkirk was grumpily trying to ignore the sensation of a rope tightening around their collective necks.
Marya, of course, appeared to be having the time of her life. She always did. Perhaps she actually was. There wasn't much doubt that she enjoyed the game, and no doubt at all that she was damned good at it. She could, and did, think four and five moves ahead of them, and as improbable—as downright insane—as her plans always were, she always had all the contingencies covered.
…At least, she always had before. One could only hope she still did.
"…and that's all we know," Hogan finished. He took a small photograph from his pocket. "She says that the laboratory is in an underground bunker, beneath a school. So we'll need to evacuate the kids— without alerting the scientists— before we can blow it to kingdom come. That's going to be a problem in and of itself."
"How close are they to figuring out this artificial fuel source?" asked Kinch, studying the picture of the school. It was straight out of a movie set; all Ionic columns and rolling green fields for playing football. He didn't trust it.
"I don't know. She says they're really close, and if they make it work, it could cost us the war. That's assuming we can trust a word she says; for all I know, this is actually a secret codebreaking facility, or Hitler's favorite Turkish bath or something even more bizarre. It always is with her."
"She is an angel," LeBeau said hotly. "If she says this is a chemical laboratory, then that is what it is; I'm sure of it. She is on our side!"
"She's on her side," Hogan said. "Sometimes that matches up with ours, but there's always the chance that this time it doesn't. It's a risk."
"It's a risk we have to take, though, isn't it, sir?" asked Kinch. "The way I heard it, she's not leaving us much of a choice. We do things her way, or she turns us in. As usual."
"She would never—!"
"Shut up, LeBeau," said Hogan. "Kinch is right. We don't have much of a choice. About any of it. Even if she isn't really planning to rat us out, there's the bigger picture. If this fuel is as important as she's making it out to be, then we have to destroy it. Come what may."
"Gosh, Colonel Hogan, you know that I'd be happy to blow it up for you," said Carter. "Fuel depositories always make the best explosions. But do you really think it is fuel down there? If it's not, I'll need to bring my own accelerants to make it work right. Can we trust her about that part, at least?"
"No. But we're going to have to," said Hogan. "Unless anyone else has some brilliant idea they're waiting to share with the rest of us?"
"I say we make sure our weapons are loaded and our wills are updated, then go for it," said Kinch with a shrug. "Even if it's not a fuel plant, it'll be something important, something we really do need to destroy. Marya wouldn't be here if it wasn't."
Hogan nodded. Another county heard from. That only left Newkirk.
Whether or not he liked the idea, whether or not he thought it had any chance of success, Hogan knew before even asking that he would go along with it. Hogan could order him to do so, and they both knew it. He was a good enough soldier to obey, even against his better judgment. And Hogan would never in this world have to go that far, and they both knew that, too. If there was work to be done, if the others were going, he would be there to back them up to the bitter end. All five of them knew that.
Even so, Hogan wanted to hear the words. "Well, Newkirk? What do you think?"
"About the lovely Marya? Well, let's see," Newkirk said, with a jaundiced look at the photo. "She's untrustworthy. She's unpredictable. She's got ice water in her veins. She's more than half mad. She's a lot smarter than she lets on, and she's got absolutely no scruples whatsoever. Frankly, sir, all things considered… I think you should marry her."
"What?" Hogan's voice scaled up a bit more than was entirely officer-like.
Newkirk shrugged. "With all due respect, Colonel, she's you in a dress."
Hogan bit off a few comments that had no real place in a strategy session. "Leaving that aside—although rest assured that we'll be thoroughly discussing your little foray into personality analysis later—what do you think of the plan? Are you in or out?"
"In. If it's down to another one of Marya's little suicide runs or another day at the bloody cockroach races, well, I never did much care for playing the ponies, and they're not much more interesting when they've got six legs rather than four."
"You're still just angry that Sea-Bug's-Kit was scratched at the last minute," said Kinch, with a smile.
"You bet your arse I am. That idiot Mills cost me a packet when he went and stepped on the favorite, and at least if we get ourselves shot I won't have to settle all those bets. Let's go fulfill every kid's fantasy and blow up a school."
One and a half hours ago:
"Colonel, I've changed my mind," said Newkirk, edging a bit deeper into the sparse shadow. The school-slash-lab-slash-future-crater was not overblessed with places for saboteurs to conceal themselves.
"About what?"
"The cockroach races. Bug-O-War was coming along nicely, and with a bit more seasoning, we might have a champion on our hands. We could win back some of what we lost. If it's all the same to you, sir, instead of staying here and committing suicide, we could just go back to camp and see to it…?"
"Nice try, Sunny Jim," said Hogan, with a crooked little smile. Tension nicely averted; thank you, Newkirk. "Now put on your moustache and let's get moving. We've got a school to evacuate."
"Jawohl, Herr Oberst," said Newkirk, with a wry salute and his inimitable combination of cocky confidence and when-this-goes-to-hell-I'm-not-going-to-say-I-told-you-so-but-we'll-both-know-that-I-did resignation. "One fictitious gas leak, no waiting."
One hour ago:
"Ah, this will be glorious. Kiss me once more for luck."
"Do you really think this is the right time for that?"
"Hogan darling," Marya purred, draping herself over him. "It is always the right time for that."
"Can't argue with that, I guess," he said, succumbing to the inevitable. Her hair smelled of jasmine, and her kiss tasted of danger, and there was only time for the single, vague thought maybe Newkirk wasn't so far wrong before he felt the earth move.
Cliché… but it happened, and it shouldn't have. He shoved her away, looked about wildly. Now the air smelled of smoke. "The bombs weren't supposed to go off until later! What the hell happened?"
"I can't imagine," she said with that expression of studied innocence that always made his fingers itch to either strangle her or undress her.
"I have to find my men! Stay here!"
"Of course, Hogan darling," she said, and glanced at the file cabinet. "I will stay here and wait for you. Perhaps I can find something to read in the meantime."
This time the itch in his fingers was unmistakably tending towards the strangulation side of the question, but there was no time for that. He spun on his heel and ran for it.
The pop of a small-caliber pistol was very loud on the quiet street.
Forty minutes ago:
"Just a bleeding minute. How are you making out that this is my fault?"
"My bombs don't go off before I want them to," said Carter with a scowl. "I told Marya exactly how to fix it. You must have gotten something wrong!"
"Like hell! She said, attach the right wire first. I attached the bloody right-hand wire!"
"Da," she said with a shrug and a pout. "I said attach the right wire. You must have picked the wrong one."
"What's the point in telling me to do the right wire if you're not going to tell me which bloody wire that is?" Newkirk, not handicapped by either LeBeau's inexplicable devotion to the mad Russian or Hogan's apparent fascination and/or sheer physical needs, was reminding himself very firmly that one did not belt dames, even— especially— when they richly deserved it. "If the right wire is the one on the left, or if the one wire left is the one on the right, or whatever else it is, did it never occur to you that the poor dumb sod standing over the explosive might possibly benefit from being told that?"
"I'm so sorry," she said smoothly. "My English… is not so good, you understand? Is a difficult language, no?"
"Lady, I spend half my life being told that my bloody English isn't so good! I still manage to—"
Kinch, who had been a bit too close to the blast, couldn't hear a thing, but he could tell that he wasn't missing a conversation of any particular value or interest. He shook his head, trying to clear it. "Never mind that now, Newkirk," he said, his voice just a bit too loud, a bit too overenunciated. "We have to get out of here, and I don't think that the Colonel or LeBeau are getting back under their own steam."
Twenty-five minutes ago:
It probably wasn't fair to blame Marya for the fact that General Burkhalter, in one of his periodic attempts to make his strong-willed, sharp-tonged, and, (probably,) newly-single sister into somebody else's problem, had commandeered a staff car, a bottle of mediocre wine, and Colonel Klink for a romantic drive into town at that precise moment.
But by that point, none of them cared if it was fair or not.
Five minutes ago:
"So it wasn't a fuel lab." Hogan crossed his arms, scowled at her. "I'm not even surprised, you know that?"
"Who cares about a silly chemical lab? They never know what they're doing, these Germans, so they will blow themselves up soon enough. They do not need our help for that."
"That's true," Carter said helpfully. "I've noticed myself that they tend to store their chemicals in an unsafe manner. See, in my lab, I always—"
"Carter?" Newkirk, still figuratively smoldering from the earlier accusations of negligence, and literally smoldering from too close proximity to an explosion, was in no mood. "Shut up."
"It was a glorious success!" Marya flickered her eyelashes, and utterly ignored the byplay.
"Yeah, for you. After all, you got what you wanted, didn't you? You finagled it so the bomb would go off early, you got your battle plans, and you got rid of two generals while you were at it. Whereas I got a bullet in my seat and thirty days in the slam. Thanks a bunch."
"Da, Hogan darling. You were magnificent, as always. Moscow will be very grateful… and so am I. Shall I show you just how grateful?" She traced a delicate finger along his jawline. "Shall you show me again how magnificent you are…?"
Thirty days in the cooler to look forward to. Thirty days in a very small stone room, either alone, or packed, sardine-like, with four cranky men who were going to smell like frustration and body odor rather than jasmine and danger. Kinch, for all his sterling qualities, had a tendency to snore. Carter whistled, off-key, when he was bored, which was going to irritate LeBeau past all tolerance, once he recovered enough to complain in English. Hogan himself would be eating his meals standing up for the foreseeable future, and he knew himself well enough to know that his mood would be such that no tribunal would blame his men if they contemplated or committed a mutiny before they were a week in. And Newkirk, dear merciful God help them all, would be going off tobacco. Cold turkey.
All things considered—keeping firmly in mind that this was, after all, Marya they were talking about, they'd gotten off relatively easy, but still, he suppressed a shudder. It was going to be a very, very long thirty days. Something pleasant to remember might make them marginally more bearable.
He glanced at his watch. They had, he calculated, maybe two hours before she had to be on her way out of the camp, the country, and possibly the continent.
"An awful lot can happen in two hours," he murmured, and reached for her.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*
Author's note: Man o' War and Seabiscuit were famous pre-war racehorses; 'Sunny Jim' Fitzsimmons was a famous trainer. I think those were the only obscure references this time out. The title, of course, is a play on the phrase 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,' by Alexander Pope, and I make no apologies for the bad pun. Between Hogan and Marya, which of them is the angel and which the fool is up to the reader.