The truck had to stop three times on the way back to the camp to let Carter hang over the back and vomit up the water that Shultz had forced on him. "You need to keep up your strength,' the kindly guard had maintained every time he offered his canteen to the sergeant. And Carter had been coherent enough to accept every time, murmuring his thanks. It was mildly encouraging. At some points during the forced march, he had hardly been able to string two sounds together into a word.
But their other charge, the strange airman, showed no signs of regaining consciousness. Hogan had managed to staunch the bleeding though and hopefully once they got back to camp, the medic would be able to do something more. And if that failed, Hogan would have to see if he could convince Klink to call for a doctor. Carter could use being checked out by a real professional too. It wasn't that O'Keefe, their medic, wasn't good. He did the best with what he had. But a doctor would have more supplies. And, nothing against O'Keefe, better training.
The distance that had seemed impossible to walk took only ten minutes by truck. But Hogan wasn't encouraged when he saw that Klink was pacing irritably back and forth across the compound, waiting for the truck to disgorge its cargo of escaped prisoners. Newkirk and Hogan climbed painfully down from the truck as Klink stalked toward the, riding crop tucked under his arm.
"There has never been a successful escape from Stalag Thirteen," Klink began angrily, "and you know that as well as any prisoner, Colonel Hogan. In fact, as Senior Officer, it is your duty to curtail the escape efforts of your men." Then his eyes swept over their uniforms and he noticed the dark patches of blood.
"You are wounded?" he inquired. The anger had all but disappeared from his voice. They were lucky that Klink was a humane man. His angry speech would wait until after he had ensured that they weren't seriously hurt. "Colonel Hogan, have you been wounded?"
"No, Colonel Klink," Hogan answered tiredly, "I'm not hurt. It's not my blood." Klink's eyes moved to Newkirk, the only other prisoner that he could see. "He's not hurt either," Hogan said, heading off the question. "It's the other two."
"Shultz!" Klink bellowed, almost instantly. The portly sergeant hastily climbed from the cab of the truck and hurried to stand before the balding colonel. "Fetch Flying Officer O'Keefe immediately and tell him to bring his bag."
"Jawohl, herr kommandant," Shultz responded smartly, hustling away. Hogan was grateful. Shultz only moved that fast when there was something seriously wrong with the prisoners. Or when there was the threat of the Russian front. Hogan hated either, but he would have much preferred the second scenario, he could at least exercise some semblance of control in that situation.
With Shultz dispatched for the medic, Klink turned back to Hogan. "As senior prisoner office, you should be the one to curtail these foolhardy and…" Klink blinked a few times in confusion. "Did you say the other two? Shultz!" Then he remembered that he had sent Shultz off for the medic and turned back to Hogan.
Only three prisoners had escaped, he knew that for a fact as the entire camp had been counted twice after the escapes had been discovered. And yet here was Shultz returning with not three but four prisoners. Somewhere the addition was out.
Hogan didn't have the patience or the energy to finagle with Klink and perhaps win the strange airman possible freedom. It was unfortunate, but until they could transfer the man to another camp, he would have to be a guest of the Luftwaffe. "When we were escaping, we got caught in a bombing raid. I don't know what they were trying to bomb, but they obviously weren't hitting it." He slipped into something akin to his usual banter as O'Keefe came running across the compound, Shultz puffing his way across not too far behind.
"A bomb came down almost on top of us," Hogan said, clipping his sentences shorter as he saw O'Keefe's dash. "It knocked some branches free. I guess one came down almost on top of Carter. We decided to head back. He seemed pretty badly hurt and there was nothing we could do for him. We came across one of the airmen from one of the bombers just lying on the ground not too far away. We couldn't leave him."
Then he turned away from Klink, gesturing behind him to the truck. "We're fine. It's the two in the truck," Hogan informed the medic. O'Keefe all but jumped into the truck, not saying a word to Hogan. It wasn't rudeness or insubordination; it was consideration and his devotion to the duty he had been thrust into.
"Hey, Carter. How're ya feelin'?" O'Keefe's cheerful Irish brogue drifted out of the truck. So did Carter's slightly mumbled answer.
Newkirk climbed back up into the trunk to help O'Keefe. Between the two of them they helped the unsteady Carter down to the ground. Newkirk assumed the position that he had taken during the walk back towards the camp, helping to hold Carter up, as O'Keefe climbed back in for the second man. They could hear O'Keefe talking quietly, whether to himself or the unconscious man, Hogan wasn't quite sure.
"Colonel Hogan," Klink said, "have your medic attend to the men. You may remain with them. However, when he has finished, you are to report immediately to me. This attempt will not go unpunished."
Hogan couldn't help but smile a little. They would see what punishments eventually got dished out. He was almost positive that it wouldn't be the punishments that Klink was now concocting in his head.
"Do you need help?" Hogan asked, readying his aching arms to take the weight of the stranger again. But O'Keefe emerged, shaking his head, limp body cradled gently in his arms.
"I'll be fine, sir, so long as we aren't goin' far," he answered, sliding down the tailgate and starting off towards Barracks Two. Hogan, trailed by Newkirk and Carter, followed more slowly.
The others were already waiting just inside the doors to the barracks. They would have been outside, but they had been confined indoors while the search was going on. Kinch was at the front. He looked cautiously both ways for guards and hurried out to meet O'Keefe, relieving him of his burden. Standing beside Kinch, the little Irishman looked half-grown. And the airman in Kinch's arms looked almost as though he weighed nothing by the way Kinch was acting. Hogan rubbed his aching muscles, knowing full well how much the man actually weighed.
By the time the other three were in the barracks, Kinch and O'Keefe had laid the stranger out on Kinch's bunk and were stripping away his blood-soaked flight suit. Beneath it he wore the ordered dress uniform. What the RAF thought they were accomplishing by making their pilots wear dress uniforms beneath their flight suits Hogan was never quite sure. But at least with the flight suit off, they could tell a little more about the man that Carter had rescued.
His blond hair was matted with blood and the side of his face was bruising, probably from the impact with the ground after the explosion. Blood had soaked through his uniform too, but at least it was easier to pinpoint the general location of the bleeding. The lower half of his right pant leg was still wet with it, from the knee down to the hem. His uniform had been cut by something near his left shoulder, probably flak, Hogan reflected. Blood had tricked down from the back of his head, staining the back of his uniform.
O'Keefe was cutting away the uniform with scissors. There was no sense trying to be careful about it because the uniform was damaged and stained beyond all repair anyway. But O'Keefe did take care to bypass any insignia, passing those sections of cloth off to someone else so that it could be clipped off and saved for his replacement uniform, whatever that would be. The damage that was being revealed wasn't as bad as Hogan had feared that it was during the long trip. The leg was fairly badly sliced, but they were clean cuts, probably from when he had bailed out of the plane.
But there was metal embedded in the stranger's shoulder. Hogan could see that before the uniform was even cut away from it. From the way it was sitting, it was difficult to tell the size, or even the shape of the fragments. But they would have to come out. And O'Keefe just wasn't qualified to do it. Hogan sighed; he would have to convince Klink to call for a doctor. He had suspected as much on the trip back.
"We're going to need a doctor, right?" he asked anyway, brain already working to try and figure out how he was going to swing it. O'Keefe nodded.
"I canna pull this out myself," he explained, looking at the man's shoulder. "And Carter should be seen by someone with a knowledge of head injuries."
Hogan sighed again. "Do what you can, O'Keefe. I'll get a doctor for them."
"Good luck with that," Kinch commented. "Klink was in a real flap over this escape attempt. He said something about an investigator from Berlin making a trip out to the camp next week."
"An investigator from Berlin? Not the Red Cross?" Hogan asked, reaching up to rub his chin thoughtfully. He could feel several small scratched from the branches last night.
Kinch shrugged. "All I know is what I heard. We didn't get a chance to do much else."
Hogan nodded. "Tell London that we might have to go silent for a while. And let them know that next time, they should wait for a bomber's moon to send out a mission. They blew up a couple of acres of perfectly good forest, but we were the ones who took out the bridge."
"Will do," Kinch answered, looking over at the figure stretched out on his bunk. "I'll have to use another entrance as soon as we're allowed out. And I let Sullivan know that you'd want to see him as soon as you got the chance. He's just waiting for the signal."
"Good man, Kinch. Now, I'm off to brave the Iron Eagle in his nest. I'll be back soon, hopefully with a doctor not long behind me."