No ownership of the Hogan's Heroes characters is implied or inferred. Copyright belongs to others and no infringement is intended.
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"Colonel Hogan, I am tired of hearing about the Geneva Convention!" Klink said, waving his arm in a gesture of dismissal, and turning back to the sea of paperwork on his desk.
"I'm sorry, Kommandant, but it's one of the things we prisoners depend on to get us through this miserable war. It's not my fault there's a document in the camp library for everyone to read—we don't have anything else to do, so we glance at it every now and then."
"Glance at it?" Klink snorted. "You quote me exact entries—Paragraph Five, Section Three A; Clause Two, Section Four.... Hogan, I have enough to do today."
"Well, then, all you have to do is agree to my request and I'll be out of your hair."
"Hogan, I am not going to allow the prisoners to use the Recreation Hall as a home for wayward animals!"
"Oh, but sir—just last week, the fellas watched a poor lost lamb wander outside past the barbed wire. We could have taken that creature in with no trouble at all!" Hogan crossed his arms, seemingly lost in thought. "Though, I admit, it probably wouldn't have made it past Le Beau's kitchen. If he could pry it away from Carter."
"Hogan, I don't have time for this. What else did you come here for?"
Done with the regular business of keeping Klink off balance, Hogan got down to his duties as senior POW officer. "There's a hole in the roof of Barracks Three. Last rain that came through washed out two of the bunks, and the mattresses haven't been replaced yet."
"Take Sergeant Schultz to go get them now, then, Hogan."
"What about the roof?"
"I'll get someone to work on that soon."
"We're going to have another storm soon; you can see it in the skies. And if one of my men catches pneumonia, I'm gonna make sure he comes in here and coughs all over you."
"I wouldn't be so smug if I were you, Colonel Hogan," Klink said, standing. "General Burkhalter called this morning…and he says Berlin still has a very active interest in you. You could be coughing out of the other side of your mouth before long."
For the second time since walking into this building, Hogan felt like he'd been punched in the gut. His transfer to Stalag Luft 13 had been preceded by a lengthy and more than slightly unpleasant stay at the Durschgangslager der Luftwaffe and the hospital at Hohemark, followed by internment at the Wetzlar transition camp. And when he was finally sent to his new wartime home, he was not forgotten, interrogated daily by Klink, and revisited by the Gestapo, all searching for information that he may have had as a much-wanted target of the Third Reich. In the last few weeks, Hogan had finally started to relax. The Gestapo had left him alone after a final dawn visit that included some roughing up in the cooler, and even Klink had stopped asking him questions; he seemed to sense that he wasn't going to get any information out of Hogan that wasn't now several months old. Now, Klink was telling him the peace that had allowed Hogan to physically and mentally begin to recover was only an interlude.
Now, it was about to start all over again.
"You mean another 'unannounced' visit from the Gestapo?" Hogan managed, breathless.
"Now, Hogan, I told you I did not know they were going to show up that morning; I had nothing to do with it."
"And you did nothing to stop it." Hogan straightened, still reeling at the unexpected blow. "I'll, uh, get Schultz to get those mattresses."
"Colonel Hogan—" called Klink, as the American offered a weak salute and turned to go. Hogan stopped. "I trust you won't try to escape this time; you know how useless that turned out to be the last time."
Hogan thought back Yeah. We managed to get the final piece of the radio transmitter from the Underground. A few more useless escape attempts like that and we could win the war. "I wouldn't dream of it, Kommandant."
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"Here is the stationery you wanted, Colonel," Le Beau offered. He spread out several sheets of paper on Hogan's desk. "I took a little of everything—and managed to get some travel orders for some of the guards as well."
Hogan nodded approval as he studied the papers. "Good work. We'll need to make sure those get put back in case someone comes looking for them. We'll get these to Newkirk, and he can start forging me some candy-maker's travel documents right away."
"I still don't understand the candy-maker business, Colonel," Le Beau admitted.
"Easy; I need a cover when I'm out there, just in case," Hogan explained. "And it had to be outlandish enough that only the real contact would know what to say. Less chance of being caught in a trap."
Le Beau shrugged. "I suppose."
"Where's Kinch?"
"He is on the radio with the Underground. They are organising getting the rest of what we need for the dynamite. And telling us how to recognize your contact on Tuesday night."
"Good. Let's get down there."
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"That's good, that's good," Carter was saying when Hogan and Le Beau made their way down the ladder. The two of them approached the small table where the Sergeant was obviously trying to instruct Newkirk in some delicate procedure involving the materials he had in front of him. Newkirk didn't look at all at ease.
"What's going on?" Hogan asked.
"Carter's trying to make a demolition man out of me," Newkirk declared, clearly not happy with the idea.
"Carter?" queried Hogan.
"Well, gee, sir, I thought we might as well put this stuff to good use," Carter said. "We can make some lovely bombs out of this." He pointed to the ice-cream maker that was still holding the nitroglycerin. Someone had replenished the rock salt around the outside of it.
"That's supposed to be for dynamite," Hogan reminded him.
"Oh, it will be, Colonel. There's just so much of it, I thought it would be worth making some other types of explosives. I mean, London wants us to do a lot of work; sometimes dynamite isn't the best stuff to use."
Hogan shrugged. "I'll leave that to your expertise, Carter. Just make sure I have the same number of saboteurs I started with by the time your lessons are completed."
Newkirk shot Hogan a pleading look. Hogan only offered a resigned smile.
"Here's the low-down from London, Colonel," Kinch said, appearing from behind his radio. Hogan turned to him as Le Beau decided to study the progress of Carter and Newkirk. "The Underground can have a contact ready with silica and blasting caps tomorrow night, waiting at area B14 at twenty-one hundred thirty hours. They've given us a recognition code and details to follow. And your contact will be at a place in Hammelburg called the Hauserhoff at twenty-two hundred hours tomorrow, wearing a pink carnation. London says the contact will know the code you've been taught."
"In German uniform?" Hogan asked.
"They didn't say, Colonel; they just said you'd know when you saw the contact."
Hogan nodded. "All right. Sounds like they want the lot of us out of here at once. That'll be interesting. Kinch, you're going to need to be the eyes and ears tomorrow night—if there's trouble here you're going to need to be able to contact me at the Hauserhoff. Make sure know how to contact me there so you can call me if something hits here. Carter and Le Beau will head out to get the silica and the caps, and Newkirk's going to run diversion if we need it. I'm not looking forward to this," he sighed.
"It's quite a step, Colonel. We've never gone out into the open before," Kinch acknowledged.
"No, and I'd like to think they won't ask us to do it again." Hogan rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. "I think they're trying to keep me to my part of the bargain now: do whatever it takes to injure the enemy, even though that means being scared out of your wits."
Kinch smiled understandingly and hopped back upstairs. Hogan was about to follow when his attention was caught by a ruckus nearby.
"Well, what do I do with it now?" Newkirk was asking impatiently, obviously exasperated, and, Hogan thought, a little bit panicked.
"What's going on?" Hogan asked, approaching the trio.
"Carter is teaching Newkirk how to assemble a bomb," Le Beau explained. "But he is having some trouble explaining it."
"What am I supposed to do now?" Newkirk sputtered. "I can't let it go!"
"Well, I told you not to let the wires touch!" Carter defended himself.
"What you actually said, Carter my mate, was 'Now push all that together—excellent work, Newkirk—oh, but first I should have told you to make sure those two wires aren't touching!'" Newkirk declared.
"All right, all right," Hogan said, trying to make peace. "Carter, what can he do now? What happens when the wires touch?"
"Gee, Colonel, it primes the bomb," Carter answered.
"So it's live? Now?" Hogan asked, quickly growing alarmed.
"Well, sure," Carter answered. "If Newkirk puts it down, it'll go off in ten seconds."
"Swell!" Hogan said. "Carter, I don't happen to have any target in mind at the moment. Do you expect Newkirk to stand here holding this for the next two days while we get our information from the Underground?"
"Oh, no, sir, Colonel," Carter answered. "All I have to do is this—" Carter very gently reached over to Newkirk's quivering hands and pulled the wires apart. "There."
Everyone suddenly breathed out. Still cautious, Hogan said, "And that's it?"
"Colonel?"
"That diffuses the bomb? It's safe for Newkirk to put down now?"
Carter relaxed and grinned. "Oh that—yeah, sure it is. It's okay now. All I had to do was separate the wires. I like to keep my creations simple."
Newkirk breathed a heavy sigh of relief and promptly dumped the contraption back in Carter's hands. "Why didn't you tell me that before?" he demanded.
"Well, no one asked," Carter answered. "I was just saying it was primed; I didn't say it couldn't be diffused again."
Hogan raised his eyes and, shaking his head, turned to go back up into the barracks. Lucky for him he's a genius at this stuff… otherwise, I'd have to kill him.