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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"What happened?"

"We did everything we were supposed to, Joe, but we had to stay away from him longer than we wanted to and he hasn't woken up yet!"

"Get him in here—come on, quick—move it!"

Hogan's men lifted the Colonel as gently as they could considering the hurry they were in and brought him into his quarters, where they laid him on the lower bunk. Wilson immediately moved in, pulling a tiny flashlight out of the medical bag he had grabbed as soon as he realized who was in the car he saw pull into camp, and shining it into Hogan's eyes. No reaction. Flicking off the light and tossing it back in the bag, he touched Hogan's skin, felt for a pulse, moved the Colonel's head from side to side, and waited for a response that didn't come. "Has he woken up at all since you gave him the stuff?" he asked the others.

Newkirk shook his head, but it was Kinch who answered. "No," was all he could croak.

Wilson turned back to Hogan and took the Colonel's head in his hand again, shaking him a bit harder than before. "Come on, Colonel, wake up. Wake up; we need you!"

"What can we do for him, Joe?" asked Le Beau.

"Nothing," the medic said, frustrated and not trying to hide how frantic he was. "We've got to get him awake enough to drink something." He shook Hogan again. "Come on, Colonel. Come on!"

Wilson started to pull Hogan into an upright position. Newkirk moved in to help support the dead weight. "Come on, gov'nor. You said you trusted me. Now you've gotta wake up so we can get you better. So you just listen to Joe and do what he says, all right?"

"Water—I need water, quick," Wilson ordered.

"In a bowl?" Carter asked.

"A cup—in a cup. Fill it up. And a spoon, or—something to stir with. Get them now."

Carter burst out of the room and was back in mere seconds. "Here," he said, handing the cup to the medic.

Wilson shoved it into Le Beau's nearby hand and reached into his bag. He poured a black, powdery substance into the cup, then took it back and stirred the contents with the spoon. "Keep him steady," he said to Newkirk. He looked at Kinch. "Help hold his head up."

Kinch moved in immediately. When everything was ready, Wilson carefully opened Hogan's mouth and began pouring the concoction into him. As it reached the back of Hogan's throat, the Colonel choked and started coughing. Some of the mixture came out of his mouth, drawing small black paths as it rolled down his neck. Wilson stopped pouring and watched, and when it appeared that Hogan had actually swallowed some of the liquid, he resumed, while continuing to call Hogan's name.

"Activated charcoal," the medic said in brief explanation. "We need to get something to absorb the morphine."

Hogan's frightened men watched as Wilson continued his ministrations. Finally, he handed the cup off to Carter and practically shouted in Hogan's ear. After what seemed like hours, they were rewarded with a change in their commanding officer's condition. Hogan seemed to take in a deep, choking breath, and, his eyes still squeezed tightly shut, coughed painfully. He tried to curl forward into himself, but Wilson stopped that movement and motioned for Newkirk to help him lay the Colonel down on his side on the bunk. Then the medic determinedly began to massage the Colonel's arms and legs. Hogan moaned, taking difficult, rasping breaths, still coughing, and suddenly sweating profusely.

"What's happening, Joe? He's in pain," Newkirk said worriedly.

Wilson nodded, still concentrating fully on his patient. "He's waking up a bit," he said, putting a hand to Hogan's neck. "He's reacting to the morphine—muscle spasms, nausea. I'm trying to get him some relief. If we can treat the overdose symptoms, he should be all right in a couple of days." The Sergeant nodded as he felt Hogan's pulse. "Pulse rate's picking up." He lifted each of Hogan's eyelids. No response. "It takes time. I'll need to keep a close eye on him."

"But he'll be okay," Kinch said firmly, looking for reassurance.

For the first time, Wilson looked away from his patient and at the men who had brought him back to camp. He nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, Kinch. Yeah, he should be okay."

Hogan's men breathed a collective sigh of relief.

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"Schultz! What is going on? How did you end up coming back to camp with Colonel Hogan and Sergeant Carter when you went out to get car parts?"

Klink paced his office hurriedly, as though he had a destination in mind, and waved only his fist at the guard as he spoke, his gestures clipped and almost mechanical. He had been very disturbed when he'd watched Hogan's men pull the Colonel's limp body out of the car, and more than anything right now he wanted to know how the American was, and whether he would recover. Only a small part of him wanted to know how Hogan had come to be in that condition; the rest of him knew he would not be able to cope with the knowledge, if Oberholzer had done something unconscionable.

Schultz twitched his moustache and shifted uncomfortably. "Well, Herr Kommandant, it happened by accident. I—"

"Never mind, Schultz; never mind." Klink waved the explanation away. What the Sergeant of the Guard said to his superior officer rarely made sense anyway. And it still wouldn't tell him what he really wanted to know. "Where is Major Oberholzer?"

"I do not know, Herr Kommandant. The prisoners did not tell me."

"The prisoners didn't tell you? Schultz, you are supposed to be doing the telling, not a group of prisoners!" Klink protested. But he knew it was useless. In the end, Schultz really often did know nothing. "That may mean he is coming back for Colonel Hogan! Although," he added with a small bit of ill-concealed satisfaction, "he was clearly wrong about Hogan being a spy—after all, that factory outside Hammelburg is still intact!"

"That is true, Herr Kommandant."

Klink's smile dropped. But this just means I'll have to call Gestapo Headquarters myself to find out if we are expecting another visit from that sadist. "How long has Colonel Hogan been unconscious?" he asked curtly, trying hard to sound disinterested. He looked out his window toward Barracks Two, not sure what he expected to be seeing. He was disappointed when the building offered no answers.

"Since the boys came back with the—since I got back in the car to come back to camp, Herr Kommandant," Schultz answered. "The prisoners' medic is looking after him now."

"Very good, Schultz. Keep tabs on what's going on and report to me," Klink ordered, hoping too much of his anxiety didn't show through. "Every hour until Hogan wakes up!"

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"What happened to those ruddy bombers?" Newkirk asked a few hours later as Hogan's men sat at the common room table. "Kinch, didn't they say they were coming today?"

Kinch nodded. "They sure did," he answered. "Maybe they changed their plans and we didn't get told."

"How could they tell us?" Le Beau said. "That radio detection truck Oberholzer had brought here meant no one could tell us anything!"

"That's right. Boy, I'm sure glad Klink's ordered it out," Carter added with a nod. "Hey, did you see his face when he went to those fellas and told them to leave?"

"Yeah," Kinch agreed, smiling weakly at the memory. "He couldn't decide whether to defy the Gestapo or to faint."

"'E probably did both," Newkirk said with a laugh. "Still, I would have felt a lot better going into town for the gov'nor if I'd known those bombers weren't coming."

Le Beau nodded. "Me, too," he said.

"Well, at least we still managed to get the anti-aircraft guns away from there once the truck was gone," Kinch said.

"Yeah," Carter laughed. "Boy, Kinch, you do a great Gestapo boss. That was brilliant!"

Kinch grinned and spoke using the voice he had taken on earlier in the day when ring Gestapo Headquarters. "'So, you think Oberholzer knows more than me! Well, you will know more than both of us soon—about the weather in Stalingrad—if you don't move those batteries to Leipzig—schnell!'"

The others laughed, then abruptly stopped as Wilson emerged from Hogan's room, nodding once in their direction before making his way to the stove. He rubbed his face tiredly before picking up a cup and pouring himself some coffee.

"How is he, Joe?" asked Kinch immediately.

Wilson let out a weary breath and turned back toward Hogan's men. "He's getting there," he said with a nod. "Sick as a dog at the moment, but I'd be more worried if he was just lying there. He's woken up once or twice but the morphine's keeping him pretty out of it."

"When will he get over that?" Carter asked.

Wilson shrugged. "Hard to tell. It's happening, slowly."

Newkirk shook his head, still not over the sight of Hogan lying lifelessly on the floor of that tiny room in the factory. "For awhile there I wondered if it was gonna happen at all."

Wilson moved in as he noticed Carter grow quiet. "What's the matter, Andrew? Are you okay?" He sat down next to the usually bright young man and put his cup on the table.

"Oh, yeah, I'm okay," Carter replied with a shrug. "I was just thinking about what Major Oberholzer said about Colonel Hogan—you know, that he didn't have anything any more, and that he was being stubborn and not telling the Gestapo about the 504th so the bombing could be put off." Carter frowned deeply and anger inside him made a rare second appearance. "He wondered if I was mad at the Colonel for not calling off the raid because we might both get killed! But Colonel Hogan never got a chance to talk to you fellas once the Major had decided to bring me along. And he wasn't well in the car, you could tell—and Oberholzer just kept going at him!"

Wilson patted Carter's arm. "That's what the Gestapo do best, Andrew. Oberholzer wore the Colonel down while he was here, then when he couldn't get far enough with him, he took him to the factory—and brought you with them to see if that'd make the Colonel cave in."

"But it didn't!" Carter said defiantly, fiercely proud.

"No, it didn't."

"But the bombers—why didn't they show up?" Le Beau wondered again.

"Who knows? Maybe they—wait a minute." Kinch cut himself off as noises in the distance distracted him. "What's that?"

The others strained to listen as well, then ran to the barracks door and threw it open in hopes of hearing more clearly. "Those are bombs hitting their targets, mate!" Newkirk practically shouted. "The ruddy planes are finally here!"

The men could see nothing from where they were, but listened, satisfied, as destruction rained upon the area outside Hammelburg. For his part, Wilson moved back into the barracks and went into Hogan's room, where the Colonel was resting rather uncomfortably on his lower bunk. "You hear that, Colonel Hogan?" the medic whispered softly as he adjusted the blanket and once more checked his patient's pulse. "The bombers have made it. It's all okay."

Hogan moaned weakly and struggled to open his eyes. He was tired—so, so tired—and he was hard-pressed to make sense of what was happening around him. "Everyone… safe?" he breathed, his speech slurred.

The energy required to stay awake long enough to hear the answer was beyond him, though, and Hogan drifted back to nothingness. "They sure are, Colonel Hogan," Wilson replied nonetheless. He nodded and watched Hogan's dark eyes close again. "They sure are."

To be continued…