A drop of icy water dripped from Colonel Hogan's wet hair and somehow made it past his jacket collar to trickle down his back like the icy touch of a corpse's finger. He hunched his shoulders a little more against the chill of the all-too-aptly-named cooler, the solitary confinement cells of Stalag 13, and wondered what else the Fates had planned for him. Or would it be the Norns here? Heartless goddesses all, whichever of them had been tying knots in his life thread lately.
His current predicament was a perfect case in point. Things had been going wrong all week for the espionage and sabotage operation he headed.
First, Kommandant Klink had come down with some kind of particularly vicious stomach bug which confined him to bed for three days. The temporary reign of his second in command, the overbearing Captain Grueber, ended only when the latter demonstrated to everyone at morning roll call that he had caught Klink's disease. Any humor which could have been derived from the sight of the spit-and-polish martinet heaving his guts in front of the whole camp was quickly stifled when he looked up long enough to order punitive work details for everyone who laughed – which happened to include most of the population of Barracks 2. Klink, in a mood as vile as the state of his stomach, was now dragging himself out to supervise the roll calls, with his face a pale shade of feldgrau and Sergeant Schultz trying to be inconspicuous as he stood by with a small bucket. A fair number of the guards had fallen ill as well, and Klink had been forced to ask for temporary replacements – which were supplied by a Waffen-SS unit stationed temporarily in the area.
Even that much, they could have dealt with; they had before. But the Fates, or the Norns, or whatever malevolent force had it in for them, wasn't done yet. The newly rebuilt ammunition plant west of Hammelburg had "borrowed" some of Oskar Schnitzer's dogs, the best of them, forcing him to bring half-trained dogs for the weekly rotation – dogs that would actually bite. That blocked off their access to the doghouse tunnel entrance, and hence Schnitzer's ability to smuggle people or goods in and out of the camp. Kommandant Klink, fighting his mutinous innards in solitary misery, wasn't going into town any time soon; the German dress uniform standards had no provision for formal buckets. For the past two days it had been raining hard, and constantly. So of course the emergency tunnel, getting into the spirit of things, had a partial roof failure. Not to be outdone by the other disasters, the tunnel roof scheduled its failure for when Hogan, Carter, and LeBeau were outside the wire to meet a contact who had never showed up. Probably drowned, Hogan thought. He shivered some more. The Krauts could at least have let me have some dry clothes.
It got worse, because the tunnel blockage was not the last of their problems. We couldn't be so lucky. No, the icing on that particular cake came shortly after they found out they were effectively locked out of camp. Thanks to the two solid days of torrential rain, the little stream that paralleled the road leading to Hammelburg, a stream that could normally be crossed with a half-hearted jump, was now a junior river and bucking for promotion. Blocked by the stream, they had to cut across the road. What were the chances that there would be a car on that particular road, at two in the morning, in a deluge? What were the chances they would be in exactly the one place they couldn't see it coming, nor hear it over the roar of the rushing water? And what were the chances that out of all the people in Germany who might be out for a drive on a lonely road to a POW camp at two in the morning, they would have to be almost run down by none other than General Albert Burkhalter?
Burkhalter's bellow of "Kliiiiiink!", delivered even before his staff car had stopped rolling, woke half the camp. Unfortunately for Colonel Klink, he was part of the other half. Finally nearing recovery, he had been enjoying his first uninterrupted night's sleep in over a week when its uninterrupted nature was shattered by an enraged Burkhalter barging into his quarters with his driver herding the three soggy prisoners along in his wake. Hogan and his men stood there dripping on Klink's carpet while Burkhalter delivered one of the most impressive chewings-out Hogan had ever heard. He didn't repeat himself even once. Burkhalter finally ran down after a solid fifteen minutes of berating Klink for his failings as an officer, a stalag kommandant, and a human being. Only then did Klink pay any attention to the three of them; being marched to the cooler by the borrowed Waffen-SS guards was actually a relief after enduring not only Burkhalter's tirade, but also the driver prodding Hogan in the back with his pistol to emphasize Burkhalter's main points. Now Hogan and his team sat in separate cells, randomly checked by guards who were not in the least bit 'tame'. Waiting.
Hogan looked at his watch. Almost 0600. The sun would be up soon. He wondered if Burkhalter had finished verbally tearing bloody strips off of Klink yet. This was not going to end well. Not when Klink's usual appeal to his record was met with "You would HAVE no perfect record if I, a GENERAL, had not done your guards' jobs FOR THEM." He fancied he could hear Burkhalter still bawling out Klink. It was impossible, of course; even if the sound could have penetrated the cooler, it had been hours and the human vocal cords are not built to endure that abuse. He shivered some more, and waited.
The sound of booted feet marching up to his cell door revived Hogan from his half-sleep. It was two of the Waffen-SS guards, followed by Schultz. The portly sergeant looked a bit pale, as though he had been the target of some of Burkhalter's anger along with his commander. He didn't even have the good grace to look apologetic as the borrowed guards shoved Hogan against the wall, searched him thoroughly, and then wrenched his arms behind his back and snapped on handcuffs.
"Hey!" Hogan said, but his further comments were interrupted by a hard shove.
"Ruhe!" snarled the guard, and even if Hogan hadn't understood German, the meaning was clear: Silence. There was no arguing with this kind of goon anyway. He shut up and submitted to being frog-marched to Kommandant Klink's office. At least the rain had stopped.
As they approached the Kommandantur, Hogan saw that all the lights in Klink's office were on. That was not a good sign. Burkhalter's staff car was missing, however, and hopefully Burkhalter had gone with it.
Klink was standing next to his desk, Hogan saw as soon as the guards marched him into the inner office. The room was a mess. File cabinets had been emptied, and stacks of papers were piled everywhere. Great circles of red ink were apparent on some of them, often encircling blanks in printed forms. Burkhalter had clearly been raking Klink over the coals about his attention (or lack thereof) to his paperwork, and Klink did not look in the least bit happy. Hogan came to attention as best he could with the two goons holding his arms.
"Colonel Hogan, you have put me in a bad situation with General Burkhalter," Klink began. "A very bad situation. All of this –" he waved his hand at the piles of file folders and loose papers "– is paperwork your men have caused me. For every escape attempt, there is a report to fill out. For every prisoner recaptured, there is a report to fill out. For every disturbance, for every bit of your ... your monkey business ... there is a report. For tonight, there will be eight separate reports. All of which have to be in Berlin immediately."
"But Kommandant, think of it as job secur..." Hogan was cut off by Klink talking, almost shouting, over him.
"It is your fault, Hogan. All of it. I have tried to keep order here. Mein Gott, how I have tried. I have tried to maintain discipline. I have sentenced you and your men to the cooler. I have restricted privileges. I have done everything I can think of. And you still do this. You still try to escape. You don't care about my perfect record, or about this. No punishment seems to matter to you" Klink looked Hogan straight in the eye. "But not anymore. This time, I have a punishment that will fit the crime, as they say in your cinema. This time, you are going to regret what you have done." He looked past Hogan to the guards. "Gentlemen, if you would?"
The guards marched Hogan behind the desk and shoved him into Klink's chair. Hard. One unlocked the handcuff from his right wrist and fastened it to the left arm of the chair instead. Klink slapped a stack of forms on the desk in front of him; Hogan mentally translated the title: "Prisoner Escape Report Form - page 1 of 3." A notepad covered with Klink's fine, almost crabbed, handwriting followed them. Then Klink slid out the desk's typewriter shelf. Hogan looked up at him, bewilderment slowly turning to comprehension.
"That's right, Colonel Hogan. The punishment will fit the crime." Klink was definitely smirking. "You will be doing all of this paperwork." He waved his arm in a sweeping gesture at the rest of the office. "And retyping the other escape reports that General Burkhalter found so insufficient. When you are done with this, there is more. I hope you are good at typing one-handed. I, meanwhile, shall be relaxing."
As he watched Klink opening his violin case, Hogan wondered if he could beg for a lesser punishment. Something like a firing squad.