A/N Written for the D-Day Commemoration Challenge.
Story is complete in four parts. Next chapter Wednesday, then Friday and last chapter next Monday.
Special thanks to Abracadebra for beta reading! Thank you very much! All remaining mistakes are my own.
Failure
The usual noise alerted Kinch that the entry to the emergency tunnel was pulled opened. Dropping his pencil, he hurried to the ladder.
It wasn't even nine o'clock. They were back far too early. As he reached the entrance, Hogan, Carter, Newkirk and LeBeau were already down.
Kinch froze as he saw them. He was used to waiting and manning the radio, so he had seen them returning in various states, from gleeful to bleak, but never defeated like now. Newkirk lay beside the ladder while Carter still held his arm where he had helped him to reach the tunnel in time. LeBeau leaned against the wall, his SS uniform torn at his shoulder. He didn't seem to mind the small drops of blood that decorated his collar, or maybe he just hadn't seen them yet. Colonel Hogan had brought up the rear and still held on the ladder with one hand.
"Did you get the papers?" Hogan asked, his eyes intently searching the faces of his men. Holding out hope against hope, he bent down and grabbed Newkirk's shoulders, shaking him slightly.
Silently, Newkirk shook his head. The confirmation hurt.
Hogan jerked back. Slowly, the implications of this dawned upon him and devastation appeared on his face. Kinch knew it was mirrored on his own face.
"We failed," Hogan stated, his voice cracking. His mouth was drawn into a small line, his eyes wide. The look on his face combined with the gray Wehrmacht uniform gave him the appearance of a real German.
Kinch towered over the exhausted men. The smell of sweat and blood lingered in the air, mixed with a piney fragrance.
"At least we're alive," Newkirk muttered as he struggled to his feet. Carter still held his arm. "Didn't look like it for a while back there."
That Newkirk didn't shake off the hand worried Kinch more than the shaky breaths. Everybody was breathing hard in a way only fear mixed with intensive physical exertion could induce. He grimaced as he came to the only sound conclusion: They had run for their lives.
"They still have these papers," Hogan repeated with more heat in his voice. Shaking off the stunned shock, he started to pace. "Do you know what that means?" he asked without addressing anybody.
Newkirk bristled as if he took the question personally while he pressed his hand against his side. He wore all black as the only one out of uniform of any kind, and Kinch couldn't tell if he was bleeding. "No, it's not like we received a full briefing! All we got was an order to get back these papers that London lost before they reach Berlin!" Newkirk shot back, before lowering his gaze, remembering who he was talking to.
A hush settled across the tunnel and not even the humming of the generator powering the radio helped to lighten the oppressive force of this silence.
"We all knew the stakes," Kinch said carefully. In truth only Hogan and Kinch knew the full scope and importance of the mission. "What went wrong?" He reached out to pull Newkirk into the light, trying to see if he was seriously hurt.
"We couldn't retrieve the papers," Colonel Hogan repeated as if he couldn't believe it. Angrily, he opened his coat, pulled it off and threw it into the nearest corner. His chest heaved with every breath. "The one time it really mattered, and we fail."
"We did everything we could," Carter said. "It's not our fault that London lost the papers. If they were so important, then they should have protected them better."
"Oui," LeBeau agreed. "They didn't even tell us what's so important about these papers." His skin color was improving, from white as a sheet to a more natural color. LeBeau stepped away from the ladder. Better light on his face revealed small red dots on his cheek. For a moment Kinch assumed them to be infected cuts from shaving or maybe a rash, but then he realized that these dots had the same source as the blood on his collar. Somebody had been shot near him and his blood had been sprayed allover LeBeau. The black uniform hid the most but Kinch didn't want to risk LeBeau fainting the moment he saw the blood on his face.
Moving slowly, Hogan turned to face Carter. He spoke so softly, Kinch had to lean forward to understand his words. "We failed in the most important mission ever."
Kinch remained silent. Instead, he helped Newkirk out of his dark shirt and used it as a cloth. After he wet it in basin with water, he grabbed LeBeau's chin. "You've got there something," he murmured and wiped away the blood before LeBeau could pull away. The dark cloth ensure that he didn't see the red. Then he inspected Newkirk's side, but it seemed just to be bruised, maybe some cracked rips by the way he held them and was hunched forward. Without any doubt, Kinch knew that sending for Wilson now would be a waste of time. Instead, he asked Colonel Hogan the next important question: "What do I tell London?" They needed to be informed as soon as possible. Besides the colonel, he was probably the only one qualified to make the call.
Taking a deep breath, Hogan straightened. "How much time do we have left?"
Kinch blinked. "A few hours." It was enough time to try again. And yet it wasn't enough time to recover from the failure.
"You want to try again?" LeBeau glared. Then he started to furiously pull off his clothes. "Well, without me. I was almost shot. The bullet missed me by just a few inches. The only thing saving me was that I am a little smaller than the average German. If I ..." He continued his tirade, alternating in French and English.
"Corporal LeBeau!" Kinch almost never raised his voice. His rank and reputation, not to forget his height and strength, ensured that it was rarely necessary. Normally, Kinch would have let LeBeau blow of some steam and waited until he came back but this time everything was different.
LeBeau fumed but stopped. At least something the French Air Force had done right. With narrowed eyes, LeBeau stared at Kinch and waited for him to explain. His hands were shaking. So he tried to hide them behind his back, but Kinch saw them. LeBeau had been aware that there was blood on his cheek, on his neck, on his collar and shirt. He had been aware of it the whole time. Only in the most gruesome circumstance something as bad as LeBeau's fear of blood could be overridden — by a stronger fear, the fear for his life.
Kinch glanced to the colonel. He didn't yet seem to have swallowed the unexpected failure. "These papers are important enough to warrant another try," Kinch explained, hoping that he'd said the right thing.
"They already have the papers!" Newkirk growled. "We can't undo what they already know. I'm sure that somebody has already read them. It doesn't matter if we managed to steal the papers back as long as somebody has read them." He grimaced in pain as he pulled over his blue uniform shirt. "Our untimely demise won't change that fact."
"How detailed is your memory?" Kinch shot back. "In this case the details are the important parts and were written down because you can't memorize them easily."
"But now they'll know that we are trying to get these papers back," Carter pointed out. He seemed already recovered from the run. His breathing was even and normal.
"Who cares?" Newkirk asked irritated. He moved his arms as if he wanted to throw his hands in the air but abandoned the movement as his ribs protested. The heat of his voice was lost as he doubled over in pain. "Oh!" He lowered himself down on the nearest stool. "We are in no fighting condition. It doesn't matter if they are prepared or not."
"Colonel?" Kinch addressed Hogan. It would be his decision as he had to carry the consequences. Hogan raised his head and glanced at the walls around and above him. The torches were only small lights in the surrounding darkness.
"We need to try again. But first we need a plan -"
"We can't try again!" LeBeau argued while Carter shifted behind him in an effort to show his silent support. Everything was wrong about this situation.
"What's so bloody important that we shall die for it?"
Leave it to Newkirk to get to the heart of it, because nothing else another try would be. Suicide mission was also a good description.
Hogan balled his fists. They hadn't been cleared to discuss details with the rest of the team. Everything was strictly need-to-know, and Kinch only knew because he had been the one to take the message as Hogan had been unavailable, forced to attend a dinner by Klink and General Burkhalter.
"We need to inform London, Colonel," Kinch reminded him. The discussion was only delaying the inevitable. He met Hogan's glare face on.
"This is worse than a firing squad," Hogan whispered. Nobody was supposed to hear these words but in the emptiness of the tunnel Kinch still heard them. The colonel looked away for a short moment before he squared his shoulders. "I'll make the call." Stiffly, he moved to the radio room, every step seemed to be slower than the previous one.
"What's going on?" Carter asked. "I thought we need to try again?"
Kinch swallowed hard. "We do need to try again, but first we need to inform London. Hopefully they have a backup plan."
"Backup plan for what?" Newkirk's carefully paced breathing matched his sickly pallor.
It was need-to-know information but for the moment they needed all the motivation they could get. They needed to know the stakes. Kinch made a decision. With a tilt of his head he directed LeBeau, Carter and Newkirk to follow him to the radio room.
Colonel Hogan had already London on the radio.
"That's great news!" London said. It was a new voice and Kinch didn't know the name or rank that went with it.
Hogan's shoulder tensed. The miscommunication forced him to repeat that he had failed. They had failed as a team but for London he was the sole person responsible. Kinch didn't envy him for this position.
"Negative," Hogan said. "We were unable to retrieve the package. Repeat. Package not secure. Objective missed. Repeat. The mission was a failure."
"Oh," the voice on the other side didn't sound any different. Maybe they had understood the colonel after all. "Well, you tried. Let's not fail again, all right Papa Bear? We need you. We can't change plans anymore and will proceed according to the plan. London out."
Hogan slowly lowered the mouthpiece before he ripped off the headphones that hadn't even been plugged in.
"They didn't sound angry at all," LeBeau remarked in the resulting silence.
In the privacy of his thoughts, Kinch agreed, but he couldn't voice it aloud. "They probably had somebody man the radio who also didn't know about the objective."
Hogan nodded. "He certainly didn't seem to grasp the importance." He shook his head. "We can't wait for London. We only have a few hours left before the major is on his way to Berlin. We need to try again now!"
The despair in Hogan's voice had finally penetrated the cloud of LeBeau and Newkirk's ire. "If London doesn't think we need to try again, why should we? They didn't even make it an order!" Newkirk glared at Kinch before he glanced to Hogan. "So why bleed," he asked and glanced to LeBeau, "or die for it?"
"Oui," LeBeau voiced his agreement. "It's not as if we were trying to retrieve the plans for the invasion."
Kinch startled. Glancing to LeBeau who stood next to Newkirk with his arms crossed, he realized that they really didn't know.
Hogan balled his fists and faced them. A smile without hope graced his features. "Actually, these papers were the plan for the invasion."
Stunned and looks full of disbelief greeted Hogan's revelation.
"We just left the Nazis our plans for the invasion that a German spy had managed to steal from London. It's too late to stop the plan for the invasion. Maybe they can do some small adjustments, enough to mix up the details, but either way the Germans will know where to place their guns to make it a massacre." He squared his shoulders.
If Newkirk looked sick before, now he looked even worse. Carter gaped at them as if they had lost their mind, or maybe hoping that he was just dreaming. LeBeau blinked furiously, his hands balled to fists so tightly that there would be imprints of his fingernails on his palms. Kinch knew he didn't look better, but he was used to hiding it better.
"To answer your question, Newkirk," Hogan said in an utterly calm and quiet voice, "it's either our blood or the blood of our guys running into machine gun fire. We get to choose."
TBC
A/N Thank you for reading!
