W is for Wiseacre
"A person who says or does things that are funny but also annoying"
A loud explosion sounded right on schedule, and the men of Barracks Two all breathed a sigh of relief that Crittendon had actually followed the plan. Marya seemed to perk up at the sound, but she had no idea what caused it, and Hogan had absolutely no plans of enlightening her. Unfortunately for him, she soon had plenty of entertainment at his expense.
About twenty minutes after the ammo dump blew up, the missing truck drove into camp with Schultz at the wheel and Newkirk sitting tiredly beside him. There was no sign of Robert, so Hogan quickly whispered to Foster and Baker to check inside the back of the truck. Marya, however, saw him glance at the truck bed just as Gruber stepped outside the Kommandantur.
"Sergeant Schultz!" Gruber exclaimed, looking relieved to see the other man. "You came back early. And you brought the Englander with you." Suddenly Gruber did a double take, realizing that it was indeed the missing Englishman who was with Schultz in the truck.
"Newkirk!" Hogan exclaimed, darting past the Germans to reach him first. "We were so worried after you disappeared. It was just like Langenscheidt told us. There was a bright flash and then you were gone."
Newkirk looked startled, but he caught on, just like always. "Yes Sir, but I don't remember much after that. I woke up and there was Schultz, ready to capture me and bring me back."
"It is like he said," Schultz said proudly. "I caught them and brought them back. Nobody can escape Stalag XIII when I am here."
"But you were in Dusseldorf, not here," Gruber said.
"It is like I said. No one can escape Stalag XIII, even when I am not here."
"So where are the others? Are they in the back of the truck?"
Hogan, who knew that Kinch, Carter, and LeBeau were all in the tunnel and who saw Newkirk's momentary look of panic realized that "them" must refer to Newkirk and Robert, and there was no way he wanted Gruber to know about Robert. Unfortunately, he did not have a choice.
"Hogan, Darling," Marya said. "Your men are very helpful." She motioned to the back of the truck, and Schultz and Gruber looked around just in time to see Foster and Baker pulling the bound, gagged, and crying Robert the Romantic out of the back of the truck.
"What is this?" Gruber asked, shocked at the sight of a second Hogan. He turned to the original. "I did not know you have a brother. Someone take that gag out of his mouth." One of the guards complied, and Gruber stared at the crying man, now held between two guards instead of two of Hogan's men. "Who are you? What is your name?" he asked finally, clearly thinking that he needed to begin the paperwork for a new prisoner.
"I am Robert, and there is no meaning in life anymore."
Gruber looked slightly disturbed. "Colonel Hogan, why would your parents give you and your brother the same first name?"
"It made it easy to call us to dinner," Hogan quipped, not seeing how he would get out of this one. Gruber clearly thought he was serious, and he looked warily at the two Robert Hogans as though he was trying to figure out what he was missing here. Finally he decided to settle on Klink's old standby.
"Well, Robert Hogan, you have a good outlook on life from now on, because for you the war is over. Schultz, take him to get cleaned up and then bring him to the Kommandant's office."
The small group watched as Gruber walked away. "Oh boy," Schultz muttered. "He is in charge, just like you said," he looked at Newkirk.
"I should be insulted that you didn't believe me."
"He is not as much fun as Klink," Marya agreed. "You should take this one to the cooler, she remarked offhandedly. Hogan instantly tried to derail the conversation, hoping that no one would find out about Edward.
"No, we need to clean him up, like Gruber said. After all, we don't want him to give Klink a bad report when he gets back."
"No, if he is clean, he will look just like you, Hogan darling. We should put him in the cooler where no one will confuse you two." And with that, Marya motioned to the two guards holding Robert to let him go, and then she led him on a rapid march to the cooler. Even if Hogan had time to get word to the others, there was no way they could get Edward out before she arrived, so Hogan went after her, followed closely by Newkirk and Schultz, who had not seemed at all surprised to see two Hogans.
"I protest this treatment," he could hear Robert muttering halfheartedly. "There may be no more meaning in life now that my true love rejected me, but there is still an ideal for us to emulate. Romance cannot truly be gone while we have that."
"Who cares about romance?" came Edward's voice. He had apparently moved past listless discouragement and into anger. "The world is a dark, gritty place filled with betrayal and desertion. Only a fool would look to an unachievable ideal when all other hopes have already failed him!"
Marya stopped dead in shock, but then a smile spread over her face as she realized that both the duplicates were here. "Hogan, darling, I was just trying to lock this one up where I could find him again, but now I see that the other one is here too. You should have told me sooner."
Colonel Hogan grimaced. "I was hoping we could just get back to fixing your star ship now that we have both of them contained."
"Where's the fun in that?" Marya asked. "Robert, what would you like best in the world?"
He sniffled a bit. "I want to be with my lady love and to shower her with affection."
"Edward, what would you like best in the world?"
"I want to engage in all the dramatic events of life. I want to put on shows and be at the center of great events."
"That is good," Marya told them both. "Sergeant, I need the keys for the cells." She motioned to Robert as she said this, but Hogan had the horrible feeling that he was missing something important. Robert, Edward, and Marya exchanged a secretive glance as though they were all suddenly on the same page, and Hogan was completely left out. Schultz handed Marya the key so she could lock Robert inside, but instead she whipped around and opened Edwards cell, and the three took off like a shot, bowling past Hogan, Newkirk, and Schultz before they could do anything to stop them.
The three were surprisingly fast, and Marya was already starting her car by the time the others gathered themselves and raced out of the cooler. Robert and Edward were with her.
"Hogan, you are a fun person, but these two seem to have a better idea of fun than you do. And they are not prisoners," she called out to them before stepping on the gas.
"THERE!" Edward shouted to her, pointing to a part of the fence that Hogan and his men had altered for their use and was weaker than the gates. Marya drove her car straight towards it, crashing into it and knocking it down. The last thing anyone at Stalag XIII heard from them as they disappeared from sight was Edward's joyful shout, "My first getaway!"
Hogan could only watch in horror. Just when they had those contained and Marya under surveillance, the three ran off with no one to stop them.
Burkhalter knew he had to take shelter from the women somewhere, but he did not want to stop running to check for open doors if it meant that they would catch up with him. But then a man walked out of one, and Burkhalter raced up to him, breathing heavily, and pushed himself inside. The other man let out a squawk of offense, but otherwise did not do anything to stop him.
Burkhalter took a few minutes to pant heavily before anything else, but when he at last thought he could move again, he realized that there were excited voices echoing down the hallway. Deciding that he should let as much time as possible pass before going outside again, he made his way down the hallway instead.
He seemed to be in a laboratory of some sort, and the voices were coming out of one of the labs, which honestly looked more like a shed to him than a state-of-the-art science lab. But he stepped inside anyway, pulling on a lab coat as he did since that was what you were supposed to do in labs.
"I'm telling you, there are two more mice in the cage than there were last night!" said one man.
"So?" replied another. "That just means someone is pranking you."
"Nein, they are identical with one of the other mice in every way, except that they act crazy."
"Well, how do you explain it then?"
"See that window? I think some special ray from outside came in last night and hit one of them and duplicated it."
"You are crazy," Burkhalter responded, despairing to see German scientists come up with such a ridiculous explanation.
"Who are you?" asked the third man, who had actually been paying enough attention to notice when Burkhalter walked in and so was no too shocked by his presence to respond.
"I am—" Burkhalter began, but suddenly there was the crash of the front door opening and determined footsteps running through the halls. Burkhalter thought the women had found him, but to his surprise it was three Gestapo men, who all appeared in the doorway and pointed their guns at him.
"Halt," one shouted. "You are under arrest."
"Under arrest? What for?"
"You are not one of the scientists who works here, so that means you have returned to the scene of the crime."
"What crime?"
"There was a break in last night, and the person responsible—you—blew up Major Hochstetter. We have been watching this place ever since."
Butkhalter still had no idea what was going on, but if what these men said was true, then Major Hochstetter, the only Gestapo man who could recognize him on sight, was unable to get him out of this situation.
Author's Note: Surely no one thought that just because we're getting to the end of the alphabet that things would start calming down or get easy for the characters…