After evening roll call… and also after Schultz had made a not-so-surprise barracks inspection an hour after that and found everything in apple-pie order, much to his own amazement and satisfaction… everyone converged in the tunnel to prepare for the evening's festivities. It promised to be a real blast, if everything went according to the plan.
LeBeau stood on a chair while Newkirk, dressed as a Gestapo captain, made a few last-minute alterations to his civilian disguise and Carter, also in SS uniform, carefully glued a small, neat moustache to the Frenchman's upper lip. "Hey, that looks good on you, Louis," Carter nodded in approval. "Maybe you oughta grow one of your own."
Lebeau consulted his reflection in the small hand mirror without much enthusiasm. "I look like my grandfather."
"Who's your grandfather, Charlie Chaplin?" Bluebird asked. She and Kinch, neither of them ever terribly convincing as German foot-soldiers through no fault of their own, both wore the basic black favored by well-dressed Allied saboteurs at the height of the 1942 European-theater fashion season.
"I think he looks like Clark Gable." Carter turned to Kinch, who was checking his pistol. "Kinch, doesn't LeBeau look like Clark Gable?"
Kinch tipped a glance in LeBeau's direction. "Maybe if he stays on the chair… but don't we need him on the mission?"
"Ah oui, very funny," LeBeau bristled. Unfortunately, he had to admit it was more or less true… up on that chair, he was eye-to-eye with the tall sergeant for the first time he could remember.
"Will you stop your fidgetin'?" Newkirk gave the heavily-patched wool jacket a firm tug to even it out, pulling LeBeau's shoulders back. "I dunno, Louis, you don't look much like a local if you ask me. There's somethin' missin'."
"Maybe he'd look more authentic to you if he was holding a shotgun loaded with rock salt," Kinch suggested.
Newkirk sent him a withering glare. "Oh, you're just loaded with charm tonight, Kinch. Have you ever considered vaudeville?" He went back to his disagreement with the still-uneven hem of LeBeau's coat. "It's always the quiet ones, ain't it Louis? Right when you least expect it, they turn on you."
Hogan entered, also dressed in head-to-toe black, with Tiger at his side. His face, like the faces of everyone not dressed in German uniform, was smudged with black. Unlike anyone else's, Hogan's was also smudged with a flash of bright-red lipstick near the corner of his mouth. His subordinates duly noted it but chose not to bring it to his attention. "Let's get this job over with before we think about taking on any part-time work, okay?" He gave his team a visual once-over. So far so good. "Everybody know their part? LeBeau, I want you to put up a real fight when Carter and Newkirk grab you… attract a lot of attention, yell, struggle, be loud, be difficult, be…"
"Newkirk! I think you want Newkirk for this, Colonel." He hopped down off the chair. "I'll go get changed."
"Hold it."
"But…"
"Look, all you have to do is get captured… how hard is that?"
"That's not the hard part; the part that comes after that is what can be a problem. Like if those sentries at the bridge get nervous and decide to turn me over to the real Gestapo?"
"I'm betting they won't."
"Do I have a choice whether or not to take that bet?"
"No. Carter?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Got the dynamite ready?"
Andrew nodded eagerly, indicating the box on the tunnel floor at the bottom of the ladder. "Oh, I sure do, sir. All set, ready to blow… er, go."
"And this is the real stuff… you didn't get it mixed up with all those fakes you've been cranking out?"
Carter's eyes glanced upwards, and he appeared ever so slightly unsure… and that wasn't a comforting thought when high-explosives were concerned. There had been a lot of fake dynamite lying around lately. Andrew knew he had a system for keeping track of which was which. A really good one. But… was it perfect? "Um…"
"What'd you have to go and do that for, sir?" Newkirk asked. "Now I'm lookin' for a way out of this one."
"I'm sure it's the real stuff," Carter nodded, sounding like he was trying to convince himself of that as much as anyone else.
"Completely sure?" Hogan pressed.
Carter reached for a stick. "Well, I could light one and…"
"Carter!"
"I was just gonna say that on the fakes the fuse would spark more blue than yellow 'cause of the black-powder ratio I used… don't worry, there'd still be time to pull it out if I was wrong." It looked like six people were perfectly willing to break his arm if he tried to strike a match, though… so instead, Carter cautiously sniffed the red-rolled cylinder in his hand. The familiar aroma of old bananas confirmed what it was made of beyond a shadow of doubt. "Oh yeah…" he nodded with complete certainty this time. "This is the good stuff, all right."
"Carter, one of these days…" But there was no time to go into that now. "Everybody all set?" Hogan asked. Five heads nodded, and Tiger pressed his hand to indicate that she was also ready. "Let's go." Hogan holstered his pistol, started up the ladder, reached the tree-trunk trap door that led to the outside, gave it a push…
… and nothing happened.
"What's wrong, sir?" Newkirk called up.
Hogan gave another hard shove with his shoulder. The trap door refused to budge.
oo 0 oo
Colonel Crittendon waited patiently in the darkness for Hogan and his crew to join him. It was rather a lovely evening, he noted, even considering the fact that it was Germany, after all. Slight breeze, not too cold. The night sky was a perfect royal-blue, softly lit with a crescent moon and sprinkled with stars. A light coating of snow frosted the landscape and clung to the pine trees. He checked his watch again.
"You're a bit late, old boy," he chuckled to himself. "Bad habit, that… the trains should always run on time, what? Still and all, no one's perfect. Excellent unit, right down to a man. Can't imagine what's keeping them." He leaned forward and rested his elbow on his knee. He hoped Hogan and his men would hurry.
Sitting on a tree stump was deucedly uncomfortable.
oo 0 oo
"I'm gonna kill him," Hogan fumed as he and LeBeau crouched in the shadow of the barracks behind a rain barrel.
"He's on our side," LeBeau reminded his commander. "I think."
"No he's not. I think the Krauts hired him. I think he's on their payroll, drawing marks and pfennigs from a paymaster with swastikas on his cufflinks, and sending them all to a nice Swiss bank account every month. I think all this 'pip-pip and cheerio' stuff is the most brilliant disguise of the war. I think if they win, Crittendon's gonna get the Iron Cross and a big kiss on both cheeks from Hitler himself. That's what I think!"
Hogan rarely lost his temper, and LeBeau was glad of that because he found that it unnerved him considerably on the rare occasions when it did happen. It probably wasn't a good career move to shush one's commanding officer, but their moment had nearly arrived and he felt it was necessary. "Light!" he whispered urgently.
The two of them remained motionless in the deep shadows as the searchlight from Tower Two made its expected silent sweep across the fence, the door and shuttered windows of Barracks Four, and moved on.
They sprinted the short distance to the wire, took the time for only the briefest of glances into the nearby woods to see if there were any patrols visible, then Hogan slid the garage-door-style panel of the fence upwards, allowing them both to duck underneath and then roll the wire wall shut behind them. Seconds later, the forest had swallowed them up. By the time the searchlight made another pass over the area, there was nothing to see.
oo 0 oo
Crittendon leapt to his feet and made a clumsy grope for his sidearm when he heard rustling in the nearby woods. Before he even had the pistol out of its holster, Hogan and LeBeau stood in front of him. "Hogan, old bean, what kept you?" he smiled smoothly.
As soon as his weight was off the hinged panel concealed in the stump, it lifted up exactly as designed and Kinch clambered out, shaking his head in silent frustration. "That's what kept us," Hogan snapped. "Colonel, you were sitting on our exit!"
"Was I?" He turned to look. "Terribly sorry. Won't happen again."
No, it wouldn't… because next time, Hogan promised himself, he would order Carter to light a stick of dynamite. A real one.
One by one, his team made their way out of the tunnel and stayed low to the ground, ever mindful of the sweeping pattern of the searchlights. Newkirk dropped to a crouch beside Bluebird, so angry he could hardly see straight. "Of all the knuckle-headed, half-witted, lame-brained plonkers…" He stopped there, already finding himself out of clean-ish words to describe Crittendon.
"Did that guy break out of Stalag 6, or did he flunk out?" she asked him.
"And for 'im, this is a good night. You oughta see him when he really comes a cropper."
"Get the stuff and let's go," Hogan ordered. "We're on the clock."
"If I might make a suggestion…" Crittendon began. He stopped short when he got a good look at Hogan's face in the moonlight. He didn't look at all receptive. "On the other hand… never mind… perhaps later…"