"Damn, boy," Bedford said, surprise ringing his words.
"Y'all got some kinda arm there."
"That's right," Scott said.
"I do." Then he turned, and without saying another word resumed his lonely walk around the deadline.
Chapter Three
Shortly after dawn on the third day following the incident at the wire.
Tommy Hart was slowly awakening from another sleep rich in dreams when the high-pitched and shrill sounds of whistles once again catapulted him into alertness. The noise erased a strange dream-vision in which his girlfriend Lydia and the dead captain from West Texas were sitting on the small front porch of his parents' white clapboard house in Manchester in side-by-side rocking chairs, each beckoning to him to join them.
He heard one of the other men in the room mutter: "Christ, what is it this time? Another tunnel?"
A second voice replied as the slapping sound of feet hitting the wooden floors filled the air: "Maybe it's an air raid."
A third voice chimed m: "Can't be. No sirens. Gotta be another tunnel, goddamn it! I didn't know they were digging another tunnel."
Tommy pulled on his pants and blurted out, "We're not supposed to know.
We're never supposed to know. Only the tunnel kings and the escape planners are supposed to know. Is it raining?"
One of the other men pulled back the shutters over the window.
"Drizzling. Shit. Cold and wet."
The man at the window turned back to the rest of the crew in the bunk room and added with a small lilt to his voice, "They can't expect us to fly in this soup!"
This statement was immediately greeted by the usual mixture of laughter, groans, and catcalls.
From the bunk above him. Tommy heard a fighter pilot wonder out loud, "Maybe somebody tried to blitz out through the wire. Maybe that's what's going on."
One of the first voices replied with a sarcastic snort: "That's all you fighter jocks ever think: That somebody's gonna blitz out on their own."
"We're just independent thinkers," the fighter pilot replied, giving the other man a halfhearted, playful wave. Several of the other fliers laughed.
"You still need permission from the escape committee," Tommy said, shrugging.
"And after the last tunnel failure, I doubt they'd give anybody permission to attempt suicide.
Even some crazy Mustang jockey."
There were a few grunts of assent to this comment.
Outside, the whistles continued, and there was the rumbling and thudding noise of booted men running in formation.
The kriegies in Hut 101 started to reach for woolen sweaters and leather flight jackets hanging from makeshift lines stretched between the bunks, while shouts from the guards urged them to hurry. Tommy laced his boots tightly, grabbed his weatherbeaten cap, and quickly made his way into the push of Allied prisoners emerging from their bunks.
As he passed through the barracks door, he turned his face upward to a deadening gray sky, feeling a misty rain on his face and a deep fog like chill penetrate past the barrier of underwear and sweater and jacket. He instantly raised his collar, hunched his shoulders forward, and started for the assembly ground.
But what he saw almost made him stop.
Two dozen German soldiers, in long, winter-issue greatcoats, their steel helmets glistening with moisture, ringed the Abort located between Hut 101 and Hut 102. Hard-eyed and wary, the soldiers faced the Allied airmen, rifles at the ready.
They seemed poised, as if awaiting a command.
There was only one entrance to the Abort, at the near end of the small wooden frame building. Von Reiter, the camp commander, a gray overcoat tinged with a red satin lining more suitable for a night at the opera draped haphazardly across his shoulders, stood outside the single Abort doorway.
As usual, he had his riding crop in his hand, but now he repeatedly smacked it against the polished black leather of his boots. Fritz Number One, at rigid attention, stood a few paces away. Von Reiter ignored the ferret as he watched the kriegies hurry past him. Other than the nervousness with the riding crop, Von Reiter stood like one of the sentinel fir trees that lined the distant forest, oblivious to the hour and the cold.
The commandant's eyes darted over the rows of men forming on the assembly ground, almost as if he were intent on counting them all himself, or as if he recognized each face as it passed by.
The men gathered into blocks and came to attention with their backs to the Abort and the squad of soldiers surrounding it. A few kriegies tried to twist about and see what was happening behind them, but the "eyes front!" command came barked from the center of the formation.
This made them all nervous; no one likes having armed men standing behind them. Tommy listened carefully, but could not make out what was happening in the Abort. He shook his head slightly, and whispered to no one and everyone at the same time: "That's a helluva place to dig a tunnel. Who thought that baby up?"
A man behind him answered, "The usual geniuses, I guess.
Situation normal…"
"All fucked up…" a couple of voices spoke in unison.
Then yet another man in the formation added, "Yeah, but how the hell did the Krauts ever find it? Man, it's the best, worst place to be digging. If you could stand the smell… " "Yeah, if…"
"Some guys would be willing to crawl through the shits to get out of here," Tommy said.
"Not me," he heard in reply. But another voice just as quickly disagreed.
"Man, if I could get outta here, I'd crawl through a lot worse stuff.
Hell, I'd do it just for a twenty-four-hour pass.
Just for a day, Christ, even a half day on the other side of that damn wire."
"You're crazy," the first man said.
"Yeah, maybe. But stayin' in this dump ain't doing much for my overall state of sanity, neither."
A number of voices murmured in agreement.
"There goes the old man," one of the airmen whispered.
"And Clarkie, too. Looks like they got fire in their eyes."
Tommy Hart saw the Senior American Officer and his second in command pace across the front of the formations, then swing past the men, heading toward the Abort. MacNamara marched with the intensity of a West Point parade ground drill instructor. Major Clark, whose legs seemed half the size of the senior officer's, struggled to keep pace.
It might have been slightly comic were it not for the hard look on each man's face.
"Maybe they can figure out what this is all about," the same voice muttered.
"I hope so. Man, my feet are already soaked.
I can hardly feel my toes."