"Goldilocks, this is Free Bird, do you copy?"
Static filled the cold air. Sunlight shot through drifting mites of dust and wheat powder and a dozen shadows played through its beam. Barn swallows danced overhead, curious. Four pairs of eyes were settled on his back as Hogan shifted the dial and repeated, "Goldilocks, this is Freebird. Do you copy?"
"What if Hochstetter decided to set up shop outside the stalag once he figured out we were missing?" Carter offered, trying to ignore the burning in his right arm. The friction brake on the generator worked like a charm but after an hour of cranking, Andrew's arm was going numb.
Hogan sighed. "That lieutenant should've contacted Hochstetter with the news that I was here two days ago. Hell itself wouldn't keep him from showing up to collect me. Where ever he is, I think we can assume that Hochstetter is out of phone and radio contact. Goldilocks, this is Freebird. Please respond."
"If they could have they'd've dug out the radio by now. Kinch would'a done everything he could to repair it." Newkirk said, his voice subdued.
Hogan shifted the dial. "See if you can't get any more height on that antennae, Newkirk." He said without inflection, then spoke into the mic again. "Goldilocks, this is Free Bird. Goldilocks, this is Free Bird. Please respond."
Carter gritted his teeth and a second later LeBeau tapped his aching shoulder, put a gloved hand over Carter's on the handle and took over smoothly, keeping the motion of the power generating crank going without pause.
Carter stepped up and away from the generator and desperately massaged the ache out of his muscles, then retreated to the canteen of tea that was the only warm thing in the atrium of the windmill.
"Goldilocks, this is Free Bird. Goldilocks. This is Free Bird. Do you copy?"
As LeBeau settled onto the stool, the position and the strain on his back familiar, he wondered if they weren't flogging a dead horse.
Two days ago they had transmitted for only three hours before it became too dark in the unlit structure for them to be able to see the dials to know which frequency they'd hit, if they did.
The frequency finder wasn't much more than a blank knob stolen from a broken radiator. Hogan had marked it with a tic on one side, and marked the half-circle around it anytime the tic stopped on a frequency that raised anything other than static.
They'd accidentally contacted three other personal operators. They'd spoken briefly in code, learning only the code names of the other operators and keeping the conversation brief. Hogan couldn't risk giving away the location of the vineyard, and the other operators undoubtedly couldn't risk their own precious connections to the outside world.
If they weren't Gestapo, that is.
There was, however a theme. Small time operators, all probably within a fifty mile radius, and none of them were Stalag 13.
Once more, Hogan said, "Goldilocks, this is Free Bird. Goldilocks this Free Bird, do you co-"
"Free Bird, I'm havin' trouble believing my ears, but this is Goldilocks and we sure as heck copy."
The voice came through loud and clear, the operator spoke English and Hogan and the other men were silent for two seconds before a jubilant shout rose. The lights on the radio dimmed, the static waved in and out and Hogan realized moments later that he was about to lose Goldilocks.
"LeBeau, Newkirk!" He urged, his voice breaking up any time he raised it, but he was desperate that the first keep cranking and the second keep still. The voice of his staff sergeant came back through after a moment of whining and static and Hogan beamed so hard his cheeks burned.
"We've got ya back, Goldilocks. Had some celebrating to do over here. How are the eggs, Goldilocks, over?"
"We're doing some shouting over here too, Free Bird." Kinch confirmed, and Hogan could hear the smile in his voice. "All our eggs are safe, in the basket. What about yours, over?"
Hogan smirked at the grinning faces around him and nodded at the radio. "Confirm. We're a little cracked, but I've got all our eggs, plus one extra. How about the basket? Over."
The static disappeared all together and Hogan could hear Kinch make a noise of hesitation before he said, "Basket is in poor shape, Free Bird. Handle is in pieces, and the base is incomplete. Working as best we can on both." There was another pause, Kinch working on an unrehearsed coding process before he said, "The Eagle is panicked. If you have all your eggs then you know the latest. Over."
"Confirm. Heard about your firework mishap. How long do you have till the basket is ready? Over."
The silence hummed between them, but again there was no static. The men in the windmill heard a heavy sigh over the line then Kinch's voice, "Basket may never be ready, over."
"Understood." Hogan pressed his lips together, resisting the urge to swear. He'd been afraid of getting that answer and was certain he wouldn't like the next one either. "New name for old friend," he enunciated then said, "…any contact with Royal Blood? Over." Hogan winced, hoping that Kinch caught on. It was the most oblique yet obvious name that he and Newkirk could come up with for what used to be Mama Bear. Using any of the old codenames over the wire was risky given the compromise of their communications that had gotten them into this mess in the first place.
It took a while for Kinch to respond, but when he did the reply was simple. "No contact. All other hens are scattered but safe. Over."
"Any sign of the wolf, over?"
"Wolf visits frequently. Gone for now. Over."
Hochstetter? Burkhalter? New Krauts that he hadn't met yet? There was no way to know for sure.
"Confirm. Next contact, one hour? Over."
"Will do, Free Bird." There was a pause then Kinch said, "Good to hear your voice. Over and out."
Hogan carefully marked the spot where the tic had come to rest before he sat back from the radio and nodded to LeBeau. The Frenchman straightened from his hunched position over the ice cream maker and winced, rubbing his sore arm.
Carter and Newkirk had been securing the antennae behind him and were finishing the task as Hogan turned to face them. All the energy that he'd managed to build up over the past two days left him in one great rush, and he could see the same exhaustion on the faces of his men.
Emotionally and physically, for a hundred reasons they'd been pushed and yanked to their limits. For at least one of their number, that limit was stretched beyond the breaking point. But, Hogan thought, Newkirk had promised to stick with it till the job was done.
Burying his head in his hands Hogan said, "We haven't made contact with London in about two and a half weeks. The handbook for covert operations says that if radio contact has not been made after one week, Mama Bear is supposed to attempt to make face to face contact if at all possible."
"And Kinchloe has not heard from London, so.." LeBeau trailed off, his eyes dancing around the small circle of spies.
"So London's given up on us." Newkirk said, keeping his eyes trained on the floor.
Hogan carefully said, "Yeah…and if Burkhalter keeps his word the German army is going to give up on Stalag 13 in about two weeks."
LeBeau crossed his arms while Carter stared down the zipper of his jacket. Caine had been quiet, feeling like an outsider even though Hogan had insisted he join them in the radio room.
Newkirk kept his eyes trained in the safest place possible, wishing he hadn't smoked his last cigarette the night before.
Hogan got to his feet and took a deep breath, relishing briefly in the delight in being able to do it.
"So…we're going to do things like we've got nothin' to lose." The colonel said, forcing a little more false hope into his voice. He waited until each of his men had met his eyes before he said. "We're going to need uniforms. Lots of uniforms. Guns, but only a little ammunition."
That got them going. Nothing like suggesting the impossible to wake a few fellas up in the morning.
"Where are we supposed to find all that?" Carter began, even as Newkirk started to protest about the 'bloody impossibility' of even getting down the road with the second dump of snow from two days before.
LeBeau was quick to add his, "Which army are we planning to outfit?"
Hogan smirked and pointed a finger at the Frenchman. "Bingo. On the mark, LeBeau. We're starting our own private army."
More shouts of protest followed the comment, but Newkirk's voice rose above the rest.
"Alright, Colonel, I suppose I can see stealing a bunch of uniforms from a supply depot perhaps. But unless you plan to brainwash a crowd of Germans into doing our bidding, I don't see where you're going to get the men."
"Come on, fellas. All of us spent a little time with them not that long ago. Newkirk, you had about a week with 'em. I spent three months there."
"Gusen?" Newkirk asked, his mouth pausing on the "goo" part so long, Hogan wasn't sure the word would make it out of his mouth. "We're going to break all of those men out of that prison camp and turn them into an army."
"They're already an army," Hogan cut in, his voice taking on an edge. "We're just providing them with new uniforms and guns."
"Suppose we get this army.." Carter started, having to stop and shunt aside the voices in his head that said that 'insanity of an officer' was as good a reason as any to desert, "What are we planning to do with it…exactly?"
Hogan smiled, wrapping one arm over the other across his chest, then leaned back against the radio table and said, "Boys, we're going to liberate Stalag 13."
An hour later Hogan had his crew at the vineyard convinced that the plan had at least a glimmer of a chance of working, and all but Newkirk were off running errands.
The Brit had offered to take a turn at the crank and started it a few minutes before the hour was up. Hogan quickly had the dial set to the right frequency and sent out the call sign twice before Kinch answered.
Newkirk concentrated on the motor while Hogan worked through a coded version of his plan, repeating and clarifying until the moment Kinch got it and replied with, "You're gonna do what!?" A few seconds later he added a chaste, "Over.", before the colonel was slapped with a length of static.
Hogan smirked, then toggled the mic. "Come on, Goldilocks this is a win or lose situation. I need all the hens and all the eggs gathered in one place for this to work. And we'll need some supplies if possible."
"I knew I should'a opened a Stuckey's on this corner." Kinch muttered, earning a brief laugh from the colonel. "Alright, Freebird. If we got 'em, we'll try sendin' 'em your way. What do you need? Over."
Hogan ran through the list of things that he knew to have been in the tunnels under Stalag 13 when he left, then arranged a meeting time and place for delivery if possible. "If anything changes, we'll contact again in twenty-four hours. Anything after that we'll have to play by ear. Understood? Over."
"Will do, Freebird." Came the reply. "Over and out."
With a groan Newkirk sat back from the crank, letting his sore right arm hang limp by his side.
Hogan turned, more aware than he liked of the elephant in the room. He was too tired to be angry anymore. "Looks like you're getting your wish, Newkirk. Once this caper is over, we're done." His voice was neither supportive, nor unkind; a blank unnatural tone that most people reserved for greeting strangers.
Newkirk nodded, one part of him demanding to know why the other part was so upset about it. "No, dishonorable discharge then, sir?" He tried to joke, and the effort got a brief snort from the colonel before the officer stood and walked to the hatch.
The corporal kept his back turned, waiting for Hogan to capture the last word like he always did. He heard the man's footsteps linger by the hatch, then the staccato tap tap of his descent down the ladder.
The Englander pushed a heavy sigh out of his lungs and eyed the cane that leaned against the opposite wall. Pain, pain everywhere, and not a ruddy thing he could do to avoid it. "Cor blimey, I need a fag."