“Frisk them!” The officer pointed to two of his men.
As they slung their rifles over their shoulders and trotted forward, Hunter looked at the officer in surprise. “Who are you? What is wrong?”
“I am Leutnant Mohr.” He walked up in front of Hunter, studying him carefully as artillery pounded even faster, shaking the ground. “What is your business with German intelligence?”
“We are on the trail of an enemy agent. We believe he may have infiltrated German lines here.”
“What does he look like?”
Hunter described MC 4. He was startled to see Leutnant Mohr’s face tighten suspiciously. One of the soldiers frisked Hunter and then stepped back.
“They are not armed,” he said.
“Take them into the back,” said Leutnant Mohr. He turned and walked back to the cab of the armored car.
The other soldiers kept the team covered and herded them into the back. In a few minutes, the armored car was bouncing in a tight circle to return to the lines. No one spoke.
Puzzled, Hunter kept careful watch on all the soldiers. A couple of them held their rifles on their prisoners, but the rest had turned their attention to the booming artillery ahead. Since the shells were not landing nearby, Hunter did not feel that his team members were in immediate danger, but he had to be ready to move if any of the soldiers became more belligerent-and if the shells landed closer.
Hunter had certainly not expected their welcome to be so hostile. At the very least, he had expected his story to be plausible enough to receive some consideration. When Hunter had first heard the tension in Leutnant Mohr’s voice, he had guessed that the artillery barrage and the coming battle were the reason. Then he had seen Leutnant Mohr’s sudden reaction to MC 4’s description. It obviously meant something to him, but Hunter did not know what. All he could do now was wait and look for an opportunity to find out.
Hunter’s sensitized hearing brought him more complex sounds of battle every minute. The steady rumble of thousands of tanks now mixed with the heavy pounding of artillery. Over the German radio band, men were shouting orders all along the lines.
Hunter did not take his eyes off the soldiers around him and his team, even when the armored car pulled up to a large barbed wire pen. The soldiers opened the back and jumped out, gesturing for the team to follow. Then the soldiers hustled them through the gate and left them inside the pen. A few men inside glanced at them, but most gazed to the east, where billows of gray smoke rose over the battlefield.
22
Steve stumbled into the pen, repeatedly shoved from behind by one of the soldiers. As soon as they had locked the gate behind him, however, he saw that the team was together and unhurt. Right now that was good enough.
“Hey, Hunter,” said Steve. “Look at the crowd in here. Maybe MC 4 is in here someplace. What if they grabbed him when he showed up and just threw him in?”
“Just as they did with us,” said Judy. “That’s a good possibility. We should look.”
“I am looking,” said Hunter. “However, the crowd is dense. Everyone is standing together. I cannot see most people well enough to recognize them.” He turned to his team members. “We can move into the crowd in a moment. First I want to say this. I fear we may have to return again to our own time. If the artillery shelling comes near this area, I shall have no choice. So we must remain close together.”
“Maybe we really messed up,” said Judy. “A big battle in the industrial age is no time to look for MC 4. I thought we’d be talking to some officers, not just locked up and abandoned.”
“Me, too,” said Jane. “Hunter, do you want to go right back and pick another time? In all this confusion, I doubt anybody would notice if we just vanished again.”
“I agree with you about that,” said Hunter. “That gives us slightly greater flexibility. We can afford to wait a little longer before giving up.”
“You mean you want to stay longer?” Steve was startled. “Why?”
“The continuing danger is that Wayne Nystrom will beat us to MC 4, even in the midst of the battle. However, my greatest fear is that MC 4 will be hit by gunfire or something worse, damaging him to the point of being unrecognizable. That will make locating him very difficult-perhaps impossible. Coming back after the battle could be useless, and we would never be able to reassemble Mojave Center Governor.”
“I don’t see what we can do here,” said Judy. “And if MC 4 gets blown into junk, then he won’t change history.”
“You forgot about that nuclear explosion,” said Steve. “Even if he’s in two thousand pieces that just lie around under the soil undisturbed until our time, we know his remains explode when the time comes.”
“Oh-yeah.” Judy nodded tightly.
Hunter turned to her. “What happens here today?”
“Let me think. The Germans are on the defensive. They’re about to experience their first defeat on the Russian front. During the next six weeks, they’ll be driven back until they can stabilize the line in mid-January.” She shook her head.
“What’s wrong?” Hunter asked.
“Today in particular, I just don’t remember much detail. The Germans obviously get the worst of it.” She hesitated. “Half a million prisoners in their control, like these right here, will die in the first three months of winter from exposure.”
Steve could hear the sounds of artillery and tanks drawing closer. The weapons of this time required that the battle would be fought at a fairly close distance. The ground shook with the thundering of artillery.
“Let’s walk up and join the group,” said Hunter. “If we’re lucky, MC 4 is right here.”
The other prisoners had little interest in them, as they continued to watch the smoke rising in the distance. The team slowly merged into the crowd. Hunter, because of his height, could see much more clearly than his team members. When Steve saw motion off to one side of the pen, outside the barbed wire, he turned to look.
A troop of German infantry was marching a long line of other prisoners past the pen, away from the front lines. As the filthy, ragged prisoners streamed past, a German officer stopped at the gate to their pen. The guards nodded and opened the gate.
“Hunter,” Steve said quickly, tapping him on the arm. “Look.”
Hunter turned. At the same time, one of the guards blew a whistle and began waving for everyone to come out. Another guard began barking orders.
“Judy, what are they doing?” Hunter asked. “Where are they taking all these people?”
“All the POWs are being marched to the rear right away, so they can’t be a threat of any kind in the day’s operations. These guys were probably held in other pens similar to this one.”
Steve watched everyone. The crowd of prisoners around them was already moving toward the gate. Since the marching prisoners were being taken west, away from the growing battle, none of the prisoners in the pen hesitated.