Hogan shifted position, wincing as the tape on his bandages pulled at his skin. "Are you okay, colonel?" Kinch asked, glancing over from his vigil beside Carter's bed. Hogan nodded back irritably, trying not to wince again as he lifted his coffee cup up to his face. He had been right about the muscles in his arms and back seizing up. Lifting his arm from the table to his face was about the extent of the movement that he could manage at one time. If gravity didn't help him on the way down, he didn't know if the cup would ever have made it back down to the table.

"You know, mon colonel," LeBeau piped up from beside the new man, MacIntyre, "you could go to your office and rest. There is nothing further we can do until the men awake, even the doctor said so."

"I'll wait here," Hogan said firmly, suppressing a grimace. The hard bench wasn't perhaps the best choice of seating arrangements and it gave no support to his back. "What size uniform do you think we'll have to requisition for him?" Hogan asked, trying to divert his men's attention.

It didn't work. "I don't think that Klink's kindness is going to extend to giving us extra time with the lights on tonight," Kinch started, "so unless you're planning on sitting at the table all night, or breaking open your shins again trying to fumble around in the dark, you might want to find a bunk."

Hogan sighed. Even though Kinch was right, Hogan didn't like to show any weakness, not even in front of his closest companions here in the camp. He could never allow himself to entirely forget that he was their commanding officer. "You two should do the same," he answered, looking at LeBeau and Kinch. Newkirk had already been ordered to bed; he had been so tired he had fallen asleep playing cards earlier.

"We had a chance to steal a nap earlier," Kinch explained. "And the doctor said that someone has to keep an eye on them."

Hogan sighed again. The prognosis the doctor had given hadn't been overly optimistic. 'Keep a close watch on them,' he had ordered briskly. 'The next day or so is the most critical. They'll likely either show signs of starting to awake. Or, equally as likely, considering the circumstances,' he had continued, wrinkling his nose in disdain, 'descend into shock. Your medic should be notified if there is any change in their conditions.' Apparently, Hogan had commented after the Germans had all left, bedside manner wasn't taught in German medical schools.

"And, mon colonel, we were not out all last night. Remember, if Colonel Klink sends you to the cooler, this might be your last night in a comfortable bunk for a while," LeBeau added, brushing the back of the stranger's hair up and away from the freshly stitched wound at the base of his skull.

"It's sad when lumpy woodchips have become a comfortable bunk," Hogan commented, giving in and sliding down the bench to the nearest empty bunk. "Whose is this, anyway?" he asked, not wanting to deprive one of his men their bed.

"It's mine," someone answered from the far corner of the room where a quiet poker game was going on. "But we've all re-arranged sleeping arrangements for the night, to make things easier."

Hogan never ceased to be amazed how willing his men were to give up their few creature comforts to help a friend or, in this case, a complete stranger. It was almost more surprising than the willingness with which they risked their lives for the operation. After all, they all were in the camp because they had volunteered to risk their lives flying over Germany. Or, most of them had volunteered. He knew that some of the Americans had been drafted and more than likely some of the Englishmen. He really wasn't quite sure about the rest.

"Hey, LeBeau," he called, finding himself wanting to know more about this incredible group of men that he had worked with for the past eighteen months, "were you drafted?"

"Non, mon colonel," he answered quietly, not wanting to disturb MacIntyre or the sleeping Newkirk. "I volunteered before they could draft me. I never wanted people to say that I was a coward or that I had to be forced to fight for my country," he stated proudly. Then he remembered that Kinch and some of his other compatriots had been drafted. "But it was different in France. It was our homes that were being turned to ruins and I could not stand idly by." Beneath his dark hair, LeBeau's face had turned red. He knew that his explanation still hadn't managed to pull his foot from his mouth. "I mean…"

"It's okay, LeBeau," Kinch reassured him. "It's different after your country gets attacked. I'm not necessarily saying that I would have volunteered after Pearl, but I had already been drafted so it didn't matter much."

"First round pick?" Hogan asked, easing himself back so that he could rest his back against the wall. Kinch nodded ruefully.

"Lights out!" the guard barked from outside, banging his fist on the window frame. "Lights out!"

LeBeau mumbled something uncharitable beneath his breath as the men scurried to find bunks and the barracks was plunged into darkness. Kinch had been right; Klink was still sore over the escape attempt and wasn't giving them extra lights to make watching over the unconscious men easier. He had agreed to delay giving out punishments until after Carter had awoken, he had agreed to requisition new uniforms to replace the ones that had been ruined by blood, he had called for a doctor and arranged for him to return should the need arise, he had given permission for the doors of the barracks to remain unlocked should O'Keefe need to be quickly summoned, but he would not leave the lights on for one minute past the decreed hour. Hogan would have shaken his head at the irony of it all had the movement not caused too much pain.

But, despite the fact that he had two men unconscious, Hogan knew that they could have come out of the night far worse. They could have been captured by the guards on the bridge. The bombs could have gone wide the other way and caught them in the explosion. Carter and MacIntyre could have been too close to the explosion and killed. Any number of things could have happened and Hogan knew that some mission their luck might run out and all of those things might happen. He dreaded that day. It was bad enough when little things intervened, even if those little things didn't cause disasters themselves. This was closer to a disaster than Hogan ever wanted to get. One man with a severe concussion, another with severe blood loss in addition to other wounds, a third that would be sore and bruised for a few days, and himself. That was close enough to disaster.

Hogan had been as surprised as O'Keefe to find that not all of the blood on his uniform belonged to the stranger that he had lugged through the forest. Hogan had been concentrating so much on putting one foot in front of the other that he had neglected to notice that in the process he had given his knees and shins a beating. They had been rubbed almost raw and it was surprising that his pants hadn't been ripped to shred. Hogan supposed it was likely as a result of trying to forge a path through dense undergrowth without the use of his arms that had done it to him. It wasn't anything serious, hadn't even needed to be checked out by the German doctor. But it was enough to cause discomfort and a possibility for infection.

And infection was the last thing that they needed in the camp. They had no steady supply of antibiotics. The Germans would supply a precious little whenever things started looking like they would take on epidemic proportions. And London would drop a little more if it was urgent. But they couldn't count on either source unless things were desperate, in which case it was usually almost too late. The only protection they had against infection was constant vigilance. If they watched their wounds and kept them clean, usually everything would turn out fine. But almost every man in the camp was nursing some sort of cut, whether from a slip on a work detail, a tumble during a football or soccer game, a mistake with a razor, a misstep during a mission. They all had to be watched because infections spread far too easily in the close confines of the camp.

Hogan's thoughts were wandering and he knew that. He knew that he couldn't afford the short break, but he knew that without them he would be able to continue, none of his men would. Their little operation had come so far. From starting with only an escape tunnel and a plan to break half the camp out at once, they were now the first call for London if something in the area needed to be stolen, spied on, passed on to London, destroyed, or copied. It was quite a transition and it was amazing that they had managed to pull it off. In a camp this size, it was difficult to maintain absolute secrecy, and sometimes even harder to keep people from escaping. No one wanted to spend any length of time in a POW camp.

And that was where Sullivan and the rest of the camp organization came. If the camp had been a normal military installation… Well, that was a bad comparison because there was no normal military installation that could come close to the command structure within the camp. Corporals overseeing sergeants, privates commanding lieutenants, a sergeant as executive officer: no, nothing close to that would have been possible in a normal military installation. And that was probably why the operation worked so well. The men who were the most trained or the best leaders rose to the top and took command, regardless of their rank.

But his mind was wandering again and Hogan forced it back toward Sullivan. The steadfast RAF officer was the man who kept the camp above the ground functioning and made it possible for Hogan to keep the stuff below the ground running smoothly. Hogan knew that for all intents and purposes Sullivan was the real senior officer for the prisoner; Hogan was just a figurehead. Sullivan was the one who vetted the new arrivals and assigned them barracks and work details. He was the one who assessed their skills and their usefulness to the operation. He was the one who maintained the files on every prisoner, whether they were used in the operation or not.

Thank goodness for Sullivan, Hogan thought, in spite of the constant tensions between the two of them. Without Sullivan, Hogan would have been tied up in the endless bureaucracy that he hated. He would be a paper pusher, one of those men who he had directed so much scorn towards when he was still commanding a bomber squadron. One of those men like Sullivan. But more than that, he wouldn't be doing anything for the war effort. He would be stuck behind the wires, bound by his duty to help the men, and conflicted by his duty as an officer to escape.

Hogan knew that he was worried more than he was even admitting to himself. He only started analyzing the status of the camp and the roles of its inhabitants when something was really worrying him. It was a way to distract himself from what was really going on and to give his subconscious an opportunity to synthesize whatever information was causing the trouble. In this case though, Hogan knew what was worrying him. It was the two men laying on bunks across the barracks unconscious. It was one of his best men who had been hurt risking his life for a stranger and it was a stranger who but for a different moon who might now be back in England.

In the darkness Hogan didn't know how much time had passed since the lights had gone out. They had lanterns in the tunnel, but there was no easy way that they could get at them. MacIntyre was in Kinch's bunk. And Kinch's bunk was the tunnel entrance. But aside from that, they had already pushed their luck far enough with Klink for one day and he was likely to come down hard on them should they try and push it any further. So everyone was sitting in the darkness. And those men who could sleep were sleeping, a few snoring softly.

It was different being out here, with his men. At night he was usually alone, in his room or in the tunnels. The wooden walls that framed his office weren't thick, but they at least provided some isolation from the sounds of other men asleep. It afforded him a measure of privacy that he was realizing his men never got. No wonder they were so possessive about those few places that they could claim as their own, or those few things that they would refuse to let others do. Carter had his lab, Kinch his radio room, LeBeau his cooking, and Newkirk his safecracking. That was the closest that they could come to having time of their own, away from their ever-present companions.

Someone shifted and bed boards creaked loudly. Another man snorted a bit in answer, then his snoring regained its previous rhythm. The next man twitched his blankets, and the reactions rippled gently around the room. No one woke, but the one action caused a chain to break out. Hogan sighed and leaned his head back against the wall, suddenly glad for the privileges of rank. After a few moments the equilibrium of noise that passed as silence again settled over the barracks. That only lasted a few moments before there was another creak and soft footsteps across the floor.

Hogan opened his eyes, squinting to see better in the dark. He was surprised to find that he had dozed off at some point in time. Kinch's dark form was looming over him. "Colonel," Kinch whispered, "I'm going to go out after O'Keefe."

"Carter?" Hogan asked, immediately thinking the worst. There was no way that they could get the doctor in until the morning. But he would march across the compound and bang on Klink's door until Klink had at least tried to raise the doctor. He knew that for a fact.

"Yes, sir," Kinch answered quickly. "There's a clear path to his bunk if you want to sit with him while I go. It might be better if he doesn't wake up alone."

Hogan was on his feet as quickly as he could manage, stretching out his muscles a little, glad to find that his range of motion was increasing already. Kinch hurried away, quietly pulling open the barracks door and revealing the dimly lit compound that he would have to cross to reach O'Keefe's barracks. Hogan shuffled across to Carter's bunk. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness in the time that he had been asleep and he could make out the shadowy form of the stool that Kinch had been sitting on.

Hogan lowered himself to the stool gingerly and reached out a hand to the restless form of Carter on the bunk before him. A soft moan escaped the sergeant's lips as he tossed and turned. Hogan reached out a hand to smooth the hair back from his face, glad to find that the man wasn't feverish. "It's okay, Carter," Hogan whispered, not quite sure what he should be doing to make the transition from unconsciousness to wakefulness any easier. "It's okay."

"Colonel?"

Hogan had to lean closer to make sure that he hadn't been imagining the weak whisper that had escaped from Carter's lips. But when it came again, Hogan knew that he had actually heard it. "Yeah, Carter," he answered, "it's me."

"I can't see anything," Carter said, his voice starting to sound a little panicked despite its weakness and note of disorientation. "Everything's dark."

"It's okay," Hogan reassured him, "I can't see anything either. We're back at the camp and it's after lights out. Kinch just went to get O'Keefe."

The barracks door swung open again and O'Keefe, lighted lantern carried in front of him, hurried in. Kinch wasn't far behind. The two men hurried over to Carter, eliciting groans from the men nearest to them and calls from the men who had been woken by the groans. When they realized that it was O'Keefe, they quieted down, either going back to sleep or sitting up to see what the prognosis for their comrade would be.

"How're ya feelin'?" O'Keefe asked softly, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Carter moaned a little in lieu of actual words. "It's okay, m'boy, you're not expected to be feelin' well right now," O'Keefe continued, taking the seat that Hogan had quickly vacated once he saw who was in the doorway. "You've taken a good knock to the head. What's the last thing that you remember?"

"We were at the railroad track. Bombers came over but they didn't hit anything," Carter said slowly. "But there was flak. One of the bombers went down and there was another man…" His voice trailed off a little for a second. Then he asked anxiously, "What happened to the other man? I went after him, but then everything went black."

"And that's the last thing that you remember?" O'Keefe prodded.

Carter got a stricken look on his face and looked past O'Keefe to Hogan, struggling to sit up in bed. "Don't tell me that the other guy…"

Hogan stepped up to place a restraining hand on Carter's shoulder, pushing him back down to the mattress. "He's in LeBeau's bunk right now," Hogan said, not sure how much to tell Carter about the man's condition. "And once I'm done court-martialling you for acting against orders, I'm going to put you in for a Silver Star."

Carter smiled. He knew full well that Hogan couldn't very well do either and keep the secrecy of their operation intact. But he knew that the man was alive at least. His eyes were getting heavy again. O'Keefe saw and turned to Hogan and Kinch. "He should go back to sleep," O'Keefe said, "but we must wake him every hour for the rest o' the night."

"Guv'nor," Newkirk called softly from his bunk, "I'll do it."

"Okay," Hogan answered, "switch off with Kinch."

"I'm still wide awake, sir," Kinch replied. "I don't know if I could sleep even if I tried. Why don't you let LeBeau take Newkirk's bunk and I'll sit with MacIntyre for a while?"

LeBeau didn't offer any arguments as Newkirk climbed down from the bunk and as Kinch moved to take his stool by the still unconscious MacIntyre. "Merci, mon ami," he did say thickly though as he started to clamber up to the top bunk.

O'Keefe left, returning to his own barracks but leaving the lantern. The two keeping watch settled as best as they could into their uncomfortable wooden seats. LeBeau quickly joined the chorus of snores. And Hogan settled back into his own borrowed bunk, comforted that at least one of the two men that they were keeping watch over would awake in the morning. Hopefully the other would too. A smile spread across Hogan's face for the first time since the explosion that had caused this problem. Even if he spent the next week in the cooler, at least Carter would be okay.