Hogan sat in his office at his desk, telling himself he needed to go back down below, talk with Bobby more. No, not Bobby—Ted, he reminded himself again. He tried to put aside how much the name change bothered him. Kids do that, he warned himself. A nineteen-year-old kid wants to be his own man, not take his old man's name. But that line of reasoning was somewhat undermined by the kid choosing his grandfather's name, he thought morosely. The grandfather who'd raised him, who'd stood in as his father. . . . Hogan shook his head. You made your choice ages ago, he told himself sternly. You don't have the right to complain about the consequences at this late date.
He tried to turn his attention back to scanning through Kinch's personnel files, looking for an accordion player. Normally, he'd have Kinch do the search, but Kinch was busy down below with the radio, listening for a reply from London and trying to fix the misbehaving headset. Hogan didn't dare delay too long on finding a suitable musician, knowing that Klink would be after him for it soon.
He heard a knock at his door. "Come," he called, swiveling around on the stool.
Kinch entered, a slip of paper in hand. On seeing the colonel irritably sorting through the battered recipe box in which he kept the small slips of papers that served as personnel files, he asked cautiously, "Something you're looking for in particular, Colonel, that I can help you with?"
"Klink wants an accordion player so he can help out a lady he wants to impress," Hogan grumbled. "It might come in handy for us down the line. Do you happen to know offhand of any man in camp who plays accordion?"
"McIntosh in Barracks 13, I think. Or maybe it's concertina?" Kinch's brow wrinkled in concentration.
"All right, I'll check into that. Thanks, it'll save me rooting through here." He gestured toward the box, then glanced at the paper in Kinch's hand. "Did you get the headset working? And did we get an answer from London?"
"The headset is shot; I had to listen to this message over the speakers." Hogan looked askance at that, so Kinch added, "I had the volume down low, and the Lucky Strike crew were talking with each other over in the sleeping alcove. And it's not like it was a voice message, it was just a regular Morse communication." Hogan shrugged acquiescence this time, to Kinch's relief, so he moved on.
"And yes, Colonel, we have an answer from London." He handed Hogan the small slip he'd brought up with him. "Sounds like they agree with you on the seriousness of the situation. They're sending the plane tonight, since the moon is a day after full and the moonrise will be getting too late tomorrow for it to make it here and back again. They said it's a Lysander Mk III. So it can handle three if it has to, but it'll be a mighty tight and uncomfortable trip. Two might be a better choice."
Hogan stared down at the paper. He'd gotten what he wanted. But he hadn't expected it this soon; had thought that London wouldn't be able to organize a plane till at least tomorrow night, had thought that there'd be more time . . . but he'd forgotten about the moon cycles. He shook his head slightly, then said, "There's no point in overloading it. We'll send Sergeant Watts with Lieutenant Hogan. Spread the word that Toft will need to be outfitted to go overland. Then get a shopping list together. If London's going to the trouble of sending a plane here, they can send a big load of supplies in it; no point in wasting the trip over here. Check with Carter, Newkirk, and LeBeau, and the heads of all the support teams, see what we're short on. Put whatever you need for the radio at the top of the list. We'll meet the plane, put the two men on it, and pack the supplies back here."
"Yes, sir, Colonel." Kinch hesitated for a moment, as if planning to say more, but then settled for just leaving the room quietly as Hogan crumpled the paper in his hand.
ooOoo
Returning to the main room, Kinch looked around. The barracks felt close to deserted with only four men in it. Neither Newkirk nor Carter was there, but that was only to be expected; they were supposed to be checking with the forgery team to get the documents for the travelers. He needed to find them soon, so that they wouldn't go ahead with the false papers for Watts. No point in wasting scarce resources. But he needed to get his own shopping list together, too. LeBeau had apparently already delivered Newkirk's measurements to the tailors, since he was kneeling by his footlocker, head poked down as he sorted scanty food supplies. Kinch strolled over to him and leaned his shoulder casually against the bunk.
"Hey, London confirmed the plane for two, so Watts won't need papers or a suit but Toft will. Also, the Colonel wants a shopping list from each team, so the plane can bring supplies for us. Can you go tell Newkirk and Carter, plus the other teams, to check and see what they need? Tell 'em to prioritize requests as essential or useful."
LeBeau looked up, eyes gleaming. "Oui, and I will list what food we need."
Kinch nodded; at least this supply drop would make it easier to handle the next several sets of escapees or refugees. "Put real coffee at the top of your list," he advised, thinking of all the late night work they had to manage and how the absence of real coffee had become increasingly burdensome. "But remember, we've got to pack it all back from the plane. Keep it down to what we can carry, huh?"
"You cannot expect me to keep Schultz supplied with strudel made out of air," LeBeau sniffed.
"I thought you said that was what made your pastries so light," Kinch grinned. "So we hardly need—"
"Flour, sugar, spices, lard, dried eggs—pah! What I must make do with these days . . ." LeBeau grumbled under his breath.
"There's a war on," Kinch repeated the oft-quoted line with only a small edge of sarcasm, then added more sympathetically, "Come up with your list as you go find the others. It'll save time." He reached a helpful hand down; LeBeau grabbed it and pulled himself up. Kinch gave him a gentle push towards the door.
"I am going, I am going!" Giving Kinch his usual impish grin, LeBeau put his beret on, wrapped his scarf around his neck, then pulled the door open and slipped through it.
Kinch turned back to his bunk, planning to think through what radio and paper supplies they needed. He had barely sat down when suddenly the trap door to the tunnels sprang open. Puzzled and alarmed, he stood up. The only people in the tunnels at the moment were the Lucky Strike crew, and they shouldn't be—
The thought was interrupted as Lieutenant Hogan climbed out, a look on his face that was disconcertingly reminiscent of his father when the Colonel was truly furious. He halted at the foot of the table, scanning the room.
Saunders, Addison, and Foster, the other three men in the barracks at that moment, all traded startled looks. On the Colonel's orders they hadn't been told about the lieutenant, but it was all too clear to Kinch that they were rapidly adding the obvious one and one together to make two.
As Kinch stepped forward hurriedly, Lieutenant Hogan snapped at him, "Where's my—" Kinch made an abrupt chopping motion, and the lieutenant cut himself off, swallowed, then rephrased what he'd been going to say. "Where is Colonel Hogan?"
"Saunders, watch the door!" Kinch barked, before turning to address the younger Hogan. "You need to go back down in the tunnel, Lieutenant," he replied coldly. "Right now."
"I asked you a question, Sergeant! I expect an answer!"
"We're both under Colonel Hogan's orders, sir. And his standing orders are for you to stay down in the tunnel." Feeling his own hackles rising, Kinch raised his voice slightly, stepping further forward to physically block the young officer from getting past the table.
The lieutenant advanced another step as well, confrontation in his eye, but then was distracted by the banging of the office door at the far end of the room. Drawn by the commotion, Colonel Hogan steamed out, the look of wrath on his face identical to that on his son's.
Addison's and Foster's eyes went absolutely round.
"You can't send me back separately—" the lieutenant started, his voice infused with outrage, but he never finished the sentence. Colonel Hogan overrode him.
"Lieutenant, get back down in the tunnel. Now."
The colonel did not shout the order, but Kinch could hear the full weight of his rank and authority in the leashed fury of that tone and he caught his breath, drawing himself up nearly to attention. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Addison and Foster doing the same, hardly daring to breathe even though the colonel was paying them no attention at all. How does he do that, he wondered, stepping back out of the way as Hogan stalked past him toward the tunnel entrance and his son.
Lieutenant Hogan stood his ground only momentarily, then deflated and climbed back onto the ladder. He glanced upward at his father briefly as he was descending, his cheeks scarlet from humiliation now added to the earlier anger.
Hogan's own face was stony, and no sooner had the lieutenant gotten far enough down than the colonel got on the ladder himself to follow him down below. "Keep an eye on things up here, Kinch," he commanded tersely, with a sharp look over his shoulder.
"Yes, sir," Kinch answered, feeling Addison, Foster, and Saunders staring at him as the bunk slid back down into place, curiosity burning in their eyes. How much to tell them—that was the question.
ooOoo
Hogan landed on the floor of the tunnel and turned to glare at his son, discovering that Ted was flanked in front by Captain Luck on the left, Lieutenant Smoot on the right, and the shorter Sergeant Watts just behind, with Burgin and Toft right by him, all regarding him with equal antagonism. Obviously they'd heard the exchange—it had occurred right over their heads, after all. In the back of his mind, Hogan noted their stance was protective, but at the moment he had other overriding considerations to deal with.
"Captain, I told you to keep our conversation to yourself. Was there some part of that order you couldn't understand?" Hogan took two steps forward as he spoke, his eyes boring into the captain.
Luck didn't back down, setting his hands on his hips. "I did, sir. But we have a radio man too, and he can decode Morse signals as well as your man can when the speaker is on. Sound echoes in an enclosed space like this and he was bored, just passing the time. Watts didn't know about your order. Since the cat was out of the bag, I explained how this would benefit our crew, as ordered. Sir."
"Don't blame him," Ted started, but Hogan cut him off ruthlessly.
"I didn't give you permission to speak, Lieutenant!"
Ted shut up, though his look remained mutinous.
"Lieutenant Hogan, Sergeant Watts: you will be ready to leave here tonight at twenty-three hundred to meet a courier plane. My men and I will guide you to it, you'll help unload the supplies on it, and the pilot will take you back to England. The rest of you—Luck, Smoot, Burgin, and Toft—will prepare yourselves to leave via our usual escape route in two more days. This plan will get you all back to England in the greatest possible safety. Is that clear?"
Luck nodded tightly. The others said nothing.
"I'm waiting for an answer," Hogan growled.
He got a clipped "yes, sir" from Luck, followed by a subdued but resentful chorus from the others.
After a sharp look all around that finished with Lieutenant Hogan, the colonel said, "Lieutenant, you're with me. The rest of you get some sack time; you'll be up a lot of the night. And that's an order."
Hogan chose the tunnel branch that headed toward the cooler. He walked down it a long ways, far past the point that they were out of ordinary earshot from the others, hearing Ted's footsteps dogging his but refusing to turn to check on him. When he got to the point where the tunnel divided, one branch toward the cooler and the other toward the rec hall, he stopped and faced his son.
"I left orders for you to stay in the tunnel, Lieutenant. You endangered all of my men—my whole operation here—by disobeying me." He kept his voice cold and hard.
"Oh come on, we all know it's normal procedure for you to let airmen go upstairs," Ted started, but Hogan interrupted him, stepping closer and summoning every ounce of intimidating authority he could muster, his eyes blazing. Ted straightened himself up to attention.
"These are not normal circumstances, and that's immaterial anyway. I left a set of orders, Lieutenant, and you disobeyed them. Maybe Captain Luck lets you get away with such behavior, but lax discipline here will get a lot of men killed. The guards can walk into our barracks at any time. The Kommandant of the camp can walk in there! You think they wouldn't recognize that you're not a prisoner who's been processed through normal channels? That they wouldn't immediately notice the resemblance between us? Find the dog tags with your name when they searched you? Do you realize that your presence up there would blow our entire operation apart? Get all my men shot?" He was breathing heavily, more incensed with anger than he could remember being in years. "Our mission is hazardous enough as it is, and you don't understand the nature of the risks we run and how much you endanger us, particularly up above. So for the safety of my men and my operation you'll obey my orders and not question my authority—is that clear, Lieutenant?!" He fixed his eyes on the younger man, whose Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed and looked back past him.
"Yes, sir." The lieutenant's voice was firm, though Hogan could see him vibrating slightly from tension.
Hogan held the glare a few more moments then finally broke it, turning from him to look back down the tunnel they'd come from. He took a deep breath and let it go, trying to release with it the anger and some of the anxiety that fueled it, then wrapped his arms around his torso.
"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Ted's voice was stiff.
Hogan swung back around. "All right. Let's hear what you've got to say for yourself."
"Okay, I see that I shouldn't have come up above. I apologize—sir. I . . . I was too mad to see straight."
"That's no excuse for not obeying a superior officer's orders," Hogan pointed out grimly.
"No. But officers shouldn't give preferential treatment to their sons, either!" the younger man objected hotly.
"I think I've just shown you in the last couple of minutes that I'm not, Lieutenant. I'm keeping the personal and the professional separate, because I have to."
"Oh yeah—pulling me away from my crew all the way down here for a private conversation isn't a sign of that."
Hogan stepped forward again. "I wouldn't bawl out any of my men for an infraction in front of the others, either, Lieutenant."
"You didn't have that consideration for Captain Luck!"
"You're out of line again, Lieutenant!"
"I cannot believe the way you're pulling rank! Colonel Hogan when it suits you, after pretending to be my dad, and all while faking that you're not favoring me."
"You've got no high ground to preach from on pulling rank, from what I overheard a few minutes ago," Hogan responded angrily, putting his hands on his hips. "And I'm not favoring you."
"You've gotta be kidding. You're protecting me. You're overprotecting me! For God's sake, you've ordered a plane to get me back to England instead of sending me the usual way!"
"The 'usual way' is too dangerous—"
"See, you're even admitting it!"
"It's too dangerous for us, damnit! I'm not thinking of you or even me, for that matter! It's for my crew, my network of helpers here in Germany!"
Ted crossed his arms tightly in front of his chest. "And just how is rescuing me with that special plane not preferential treatment? Yeah, I know you're helping out one of my other crewmates since there's conveniently enough space for him in the plane too. But just tell me, how is leaving two-thirds of my crew behind to make their way through Nazi Germany while getting me clear not favoring me?!"
Hogan dropped his arms to his side, fists clenched. "Since apparently Captain Luck didn't make it clear, that plane isn't, in fact, necessarily a safer way back for you and your buddy. It's probably more dangerous. Just think about the number of anti-aircraft guns between here and the closest British airfield. We've lost courier and supply planes before—a higher percentage than we've had men get caught on the escape route, in fact. If you think for one minute that putting you on that plane is making me feel better, think again."
Brought up short, Ted dropped his arms stared at him. "Then why are you sending me that way?"
"Because it's more secure." Hogan closed his eyes for a moment, then forced himself to continue. "As the commander of this unit, I can afford for you to get killed. What I can't afford is for you to get captured."
Ted looked away from him, his face white.
"The plane that's coming is a Lysander," Hogan continued. "Do you know that plane? It's small, light, unarmed . . . has a drop tank so it'll have enough fuel to get here and back again to northern England. It's great for landing in fields, like we need it to tonight, but it doesn't have a great track record for surviving flak hits. So," he paused, then pushed himself on, "you probably won't get out of it alive if it gets hit. You'd get killed, but not captured—whereas the odds of getting captured are a lot higher if you spend a week traveling overland. As it is, I'm going to have to take your dog tags before you get on the plane, so that if the worst happens, if it gets shot down . . . your body can't be identified. It'd start a trail that could lead right back here."
Hogan couldn't go on. Ted seemed struck wordless as well. So they both just stood there for some moments, as the silence built awkwardly. Ted finally broke it.
"I don't get why I'm so much more risky if captured than anyone else. You think I'm . . . what, more likely to talk than others are? Why? And why is my . . . my dead body in that plane so dangerous?" The challenge was gone from his voice; he sounded simply lost.
Hogan heaved a sigh, and looked up at the tunnel ceiling. "Because the SS review prisoner files," he answered quietly. "You bear my name—first name as well as last. And B- Ted, we do look alike. A lot alike. My men have commented on the similarity. There'd be no way to deny the relationship. And there's a local Gestapo agent who is very suspicious of me. So if you were captured alive on the escape route, or even found dead in that plane, they'd know you had help getting out of Germany. Our not-so-friendly neighborhood Gestapo man would connect the dots, and would think quite rightly that I was the one who'd helped. Alive or dead, you'd lead them back here—without ever saying a word. And if you were alive, he'd use you against me, in ways neither of us even wants to think about."
Ted seemed unable to muster an answer to that. He put his hands in his trouser pockets, gazing at the floor of the tunnel, his head nodding almost imperceptibly as he digested what his father had just told him. Hogan watched him, his own jaw clamped tight, arms wrapped around himself. Finally, Ted spoke again.
"Okay, I see how it's dangerous for you and your team if I got captured or—um, identified now. Why you need to get me back this way. And at least all my crewmates will get back to England this way, we'll get back together there, get another plane. Maybe call it the Lucky Strike II." He smiled a little.
Hogan put his right hand to the bridge of his nose and rubbed it for just a moment. He didn't want to do this. He really didn't. He wished Ted had made the connection for himself . . . but he hadn't.
"You won't be flying with them over Europe again, Ted." He said it as gently as he could, but the effect on the young man was immediate.
"Wait—what?! You're grounding me?! You can't do that! They're my crew! Do you know how long it took me, how hard I worked, to get them to really accept me, young as I am? They thought I couldn't do anything. But I showed them. I'm good at this! And the Allies need pilots, you know that! You can't just take that away!" Ted's voice was shuddering with emotion, and Hogan could see the sense of betrayal in his eyes.
"I'm sorry, Ted. I truly am. But I have to. And if London's willing to send a plane over here for you this time, they're going to agree with me. The risk would be much the same any time you got captured. You'd be identified as my son. Same scenario."
He stepped forward, arm raised to put on Ted's shoulder sympathetically, but Ted backed away from him several steps, blocking him with his arms and shaking his head, his chest heaving, too upset to speak.
"Look, you can still—" Hogan broke off, hearing running footsteps pounding toward them down the tunnel. He dropped his arm as Carter burst in, his arms pinwheeling as he skidded to a stop.
"Kommandant Klink is looking for you, Colonel," he panted. "He's out in the compound. Something about an accordion player? We told Schultz you were in the Rec Hall. Figured it would be closest for you. You gotta get back up above right away!"
"Take the lieutenant back to the main area," Hogan directed. He looked back at Ted. "We'll talk more later."
Ted just shook his head. "I have nothing more to say to you. Ever! Sir," he added viciously.
Carter drew in his breath with a small hiss at that. But Colonel Hogan just turned away, grim faced, and headed determinedly down the tunnel for the Recreation Hall ladder.
ooOoo
Author's Notes:
1) Very special thanks to 80sarcades for his help in figuring out the proper problems for the radio to have in this chapter. He plugged a big plot hole I realized I'd fallen into!
2) In the television series we see at least one plane explode from being hit by anti-aircraft flak after dropping a courier to Stalag 13, in "Operation Briefcase."