The bulky, teenage boy standing in the doorway was armed with a shotgun. He wore a uniform, that might have been meant to represent the SS but it was nothing more than an elaborate Halloween costume. The stitching was rough, the dye job fading, the insignia looked like a child had drawn it on. In the dark he might have looked like a soldier but in the warm light of the kitchen he looked like a Gestapo rag-doll.
The boy shouted for him to come out with his hands up and Hogan obliged, glancing down at the boy's dirt stained riding boots. Beyond him the room was crowded with three other boys, some looked younger, some older. None of them had the confidence or size of the first boy. All of them had their own handmade SS uniforms on, and were armed with hunting rifles or clubs.
Boys playing soldier. Yet Hogan was certain that the guns were loaded.
He wasn't surprised to see Helen lurking in the doorway, refusing to meet his gaze.
The lead boy shouted for Hogan to stand still and pressed the barrels of the shot gun between his shoulder blades in emphasis. A moment later the American felt the boy's hands exploring the pockets of his jacket. The junior 'SS'-man was confused by the tin cans, and tossed them onto the table before patting at the colonel's pants.
"I told you he was unarmed." Helen said quietly from the doorway, still refusing to look at Hogan.
"Sit down, in the chair." The boy ordered in his native tongue. Hogan ignored him, pretending he didn't understand. Frustrated the boy tried again, stepping back so that he could point the long barrel of the gun. Hogan stared at him and waited, wondering just how far this charade was going to go.
When the frustrated teenager began to raise his rifle, butt first, Helen spoke up again. "He does not speak German."
Hogan hid his surprise. Helen had to have brought the group to the house, yet she was protecting him. "He wants you to sit down. In that chair." Helen translated.
If he'd been standing on two solid and healthy legs Hogan might have refused, fought the boy for the gun and made a run for it. But the past thirty minutes had heralded a slow return of the throbbing in his ankle. The pain killers were wearing off. And he had a sneaking suspicion that these boys were trigger happy.
He quietly sat in one of the straight back chairs, and tried not to stiffen when the leader ordered two of his underlings to tie the prisoner to the chair. The two that responded to the command were called Kiln and Franks, and they did their duty with an air of militaristic self-importance.
Hogan withstood the crude binding, flexing the muscles on his arms to give himself a little room. His arms were tied separately to the back of the chair, his legs to the front legs of the chair. He'd pulled his pant leg down over the splint and had done his best not to react every time Kiln jerked the rope tight.
It was as if the final props had been set for a spaghetti-western interrogation scene, the lead boy circling the chair and sneering in intimidation. Hogan rolled his eyes and waited for the questioning to begin.
"I would like to know why you were in Hammelburg for so long?" Klink demanded.
Newkirk, refusing to come to attention despite the order that the guard had given, kept his arms crossed over his chest and heatedly said, "Maybe you should ask Corporal Mutty about that. Or better still drag the bleedin' sawbones in here. It was his idea."
"Corporal LeBeau, is this true?"
Surprised to even be included, Louie sent another warning glare toward the irritated Brit then said, "Oui, Herr Kommandant. Corporal Wilmutt was told by the doctor that we should stay in the room to help with Schultz's recovery. The doctor didn't really tell us why he needed us there. When Madame Schultz arrived at the hospital she became upset at our presence and the guard brought us back to camp."
Klink circled both men, analyzing the explanation for the usual tomfoolery. He stretched the men's words for signs of falsehood, of Hogan's touch present in the lies, and to his surprise found that there were none.
Further, when he tried to marry the explanation to his preconceived idea that Schultz's illness had somehow been part of an escape plot, his face fell in anticlimactic defeat. He didn't like being wrong, and he especially didn't like that he was wrong and the Englander was still standing in disrespectful defiance before him. With a sneer Klink, said, "I don't believe you. Corporal, put them in the cooler, and give them time to think about their lies."
The first English word this kid had to have learned was "lying". He liked that word. He'd used it first when Helen translated that Joseph, the leader, wanted to know the American's code name. When Hogan said nothing, the boy slammed his rifle butt down hard against Hogan's thigh, creating a stinging bruise but not doing any permanent damage.
What followed was a whirlwind of identities, none of which Joseph seemed content with. Each answer was followed by "You are lying!" in English, and another bruise on his thighs.
When the effort of beating his prisoner left the youth breathless, Hogan tried to warn the kid about the danger of slamming the butt of a rifle like that but Joseph wasn't interested. He paced and paraded in front of his buddies, playing up the part. It was a bad World War I spy movie with a pretty boy, soap opera actor in the role of head interrogator. The boy was power crazy and doing his best to impress his audience.
At the same time, Hogan was realizing that one of them had a few ounces of intelligence. The way he was tied to the chair hadn't been that uncomfortable at the start, but as the bruises developed on his thighs he began to wish desperately that he could stretch his legs out and relieve the pressure of the blood collecting under the skin. The ropes binding his ankles prevented that. Every blow caused him to flinch and that tugged the rope ever tighter around his swollen ankle, making it throb all the more.
Joseph approached him again, this time with another tactic. He pointed at the gold inscribed letters on Hogan's jacket and said in German, "We already know who you are. We've spoken to our own contacts and we know about you and your family. We can get to them. We have many contacts. You should tell us what we want to know or your wife and children will suffer."
Hogan was beginning to recognize the lines. He was certain that he'd seen this movie before. A smile was edging the corner of his mouth and he shook his head as Helen translated, trying to come up with the movie title. "You like watching movies don't you?" Hogan asked, then looked to Helen.
Joseph gave a confused look to the girl, listened, then whirled on Hogan and slammed the gun butt into the American's stomach.
Hogan tried to curl around the area of impact, but couldn't. His breath was gone and the hit had produced a little bile in the back of throat, which he did his best to swallow. The single strike was followed by a flurry of blows to his thighs and stomach that were short lived but brutal.
The attack ended abruptly when the gun went off, the barrels pointed at Kiln when they exploded.
There is only so much abuse that a shot gun shell can take in the chamber before it reacts to an impact against the percussion cap, and both shells had apparently reached their limit. What had been Kiln's head and shoulders turned into a spray of red.
Some of the pellets slammed into the boy standing beside Kiln, but the rest drove bits of Kiln's flesh and bone into the wall. Helen screamed in horror, the sound lost in the continued echo of the gun shot.
Joseph dropped the gun and stood in stunned silence, watching as Kiln's body went limp and dropped to the floor. As the focus shifted to the gruesome sight Hogan felt for the shard of glass that he'd secreted in his coat sleeve and started to saw desperately at the ropes binding his wrists.
The boys had started to argue, pointing blame and struggling to comprehend what had just happened. The confusion soon turned to a discussion about what they were going to do about the body. How were they going to explain Kiln's death?
By the time Joseph remembered that there was an American spy tied to a chair, the American spy was no longer in the room. Neither, for that matter, was Helen.
Klink didn't believe them. He was looking for lies but he was looking in the wrong place.
"What's not to believe?" Newkirk demanded, jerking his arm out of the guard's grasp. "Schultzy had himself a heart attack. Your guards stood around starin' at the man, so we sent him off to the hospital. Then Mutty decided to hold us hostage while he winked at the pretty nurses and stuffed himself full of hospital food."
LeBeau stared at the man, wishing he could slap some sense into the irritated Englishman. They had been through a hundred situations more hair raising and terrifying, more stressful than this. Why was Newkirk picking now of all times to push back? They needed to calm Klink down, get him to relax, get him to go to bed so that they could figure out what was keeping the colonel. Instead Newkirk seemed determined to rile him up.
Then Louie caught the furtive movements of Newkirk's fingers in his empty pocket and realized at least part of the problem. The Brit had run out of cigarettes in the hospital. It hadn't occurred to Louie because he didn't smoke, but the lack of food and no cigarettes, no real sleep for the past few days and now Klink pouring salt in the wound with his self-important interrogation.
Of course Newkirk was about ready to blow.
"It's true, Herr Kommandant. Schultz would have died. We were just afraid that the other guards would blame us. Maybe shoot us all and blame it on this fake escape attempt they have been dreaming up."
"Fake attempt! At this very moment Colonel Hogan is still missing." Klink argued, gesturing toward the large radio set that occupied two feet of space on his desk. "And don't give me that story about his...wandering insensate through the woods. Laughable."
Of course it was laughable. Hogan had, after all, made use of the good sense that God gave him and stolen the first car he saw. A beat up delivery truck that the boys must have arrived in. The adrenaline was the only thing that made it possible for Hogan to get out of his chair, across the room and through the door, dragging Helen with him. His legs felt like party balloons about to explode, the muscles in his torso were spasming madly making breathing a new hell. The truck started after a few tries and Hogan forced throbbing legs into action working the gas pedal, brake and clutch with his teeth bared.
Helen was crying beside him but he needed her to give him directions and snapped, "Right or left up ahead?"
The sobs didn't stop, and the hyperventilating got worse as they lurched to a stop at a crossroads, the area dark but for the light of the moon. It'd been a while since he'd been forced to navigate by the stars, but Hogan made a guess and turned left, forcing the truck quickly through the gears. They ground angrilly against one another everytime his broken ankle gave out and his foot slipped off the clutch, but there was nothing he could do about it.
The hysterical crying was getting to him. His own reaction to the past five minutes was deeply buried under the calculated thought processing that he hoped would lead the both of them to safety, but he was losing his concentration fast to the pounding of the pain and heartbreaking wails of the teen girl beside him.
"Stop, Helen." He tried to keep his voice steady and calm, but had to concentrate on a young doe darting into the road. His hands and feet moved quickly, operating the truck, his voice raising as he said, "Shut up, Helen! Stop crying."
The doe flashed him with startled eyes then scampered out of the way of the truck and Hogan picked up speed once more. The wails turned into hiccups, peppered by murmurs in German. Snot and tears streaked down the girl's face but her voice was growing hoarse and she couldn't scream anymore. "He's dead, he's dead. Kiln is dead."
"Was that your boyfriend? Kiln?" His legs were throbbing, his ankle was pounding. It hadn't hurt this bad sitting in that chair.
Helen gave him a look of betrayal that he ignored, pushing the engine just a little harder.
The next crossroads didn't look anymore familiar and Hogan scanned his choices before he asked, "Which way to Hammelburg?"
The girl had grown silent and now sat in the passenger seat staring straight ahead, with her arms crossed. But for the occasional sniffle or sob she said and did nothing.
"Fine." Hogan snapped the truck into first and took another left, navigating by the vague memory he had of the map in his quarters. They'd marked the rendezvous point, but hadn't had any idea about the location of the safe house. Hogan remembered approaching the house with the bright sun setting behind it. If the house had been three miles due west from the rendezvous point, he should be heading east then south to get back to the road that would lead to camp.
"Kiln was not my boyfriend." Helen said, suddenly filling the silence. "Joseph was my boyfriend."
"Well...your boyfriend's a killer." he snapped. Hogan was angry. The shot gun blast and what it had done to the young boy was playing on an endless loop in his memory, and the teenage girl's irrational mood swings were grating.
Helen opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out at first. When she did speak she was fighting another bout of hysterical tears. "I know. He killed my brother."