Lily sighed. “Don't worry about anything, Kelly. As long as neither one of us loves the other even a teensy little bit, we'll be okay.”
“You're right,” he said.
He picked up the plunger and wire and left her. He crossed the convent yard, cracked the secret gate, and cautiously checked on the sentries at the nearby intersections. When both the Germans were facing away from him, he went out into St. Ignatius. Tooley followed him, carrying the box of dynamite.
Lieutenant Slade had just taken shelter at the base of an elm tree when he saw a gate open in the back of the convent fence. A second later, Major Kelly and that chicken-shit pacifist, Tooley, came out and pushed the gate shut and ran silently across Y Street, taking shelter by the side of the house just as the sentries turned to face that block. Both men had their arms full. But full of what?
Major Kelly led the pacifist westward, dodging from shadow to shadow, and Slade followed them. At the intersection of Y Street and A Street, they knelt beside the nunnery and waited for the sentry to face away from them.
Slade crept as close to them as he could, but was unable to tell what they were carrying.
What was this? What was Kelly doing out of the rectory? What cowardly, yellow-bellied plot were they involved in now?
The sentry turned his back.
Kelly and Tooley went across the road, lugging the mysterious objects. They took just enough time so that Slade was unable to follow them until the sentry had made one more circuit. When he got over there, they were gone.
Which was too bad. After all, now was the time. Slade had finished his reconnaissance. All that was left was to murder Major Kelly, preferably in silence. Knife him in the back… And then take a commando team into the rectory to slit the throats of the German officers. Soon, they would all be real heroes.
Smiling at the darkness, the lieutenant crept southward, trying to find where Major Kelly had gone.
5
Maurice opened the bunker door and ushered them into the eerily lightless room, closed the door, and switched on a flashlight. He shone the beam on the plunger and the wire, then on the dynamite which Tooley set gently on the floor. “It looks like enough,” he said.
“More than enough,” Kelly said. “The bridge will drop like a rock down a well.”
Shining the flashlight deeper into the bunker, Maurice said, “Everyone is here, all the men you requested.”
Danny Dew, Vito Angelli, Sergeant Coombs, and Lieutenant Beame sat on the hospital cots, eyes gleaming with reflected light.
“You've heard the whole story?” he asked the three newcomers whom Beame had fetched during his absence.
“We heard,” Danny said. “What a bitch of a night.”
“I think we should use the dynamite on the krauts,” Sergeants Coombs said. “Not on our own bridge.”
Major Kelly had only one weapon he could use on Coombs. He used it. “I'm a major, and you're a sergeant. We'll do things my way.”
Coombs scowled, grudgingly nodded agreement. In a pinch, he was a book man, a rule man, a regulations man, who would obey even a poor disciplinarian like Major Kelly.
“And what is your way?” Danny Dew asked, getting up from his cot and pacing in and out of the soft light
“There will be seven of us,” Kelly said. “Danny, Vito, Beame, Sergeant Coombs, Tooley, Maurice, and me.” As quickly as possible, he told them how they would do the job. “Any questions?”
Danny Dew smacked his lips. “Yas, massah. Dumb ol' Danny have a question, suh. You really think we's gonna be able to do all this without makin' a noise them guards up on the bridge would hear?”
Kelly shrugged. “We can try to be perfectly quiet That's all I can say. We can try.”
“We can do it,” Beame said, optimistic despite the way their situation had deteriorated.
“That reminds me,” Kelly said. “One other thing. The SS is guarding the bridge. There won't be Wehrmacht privates above us, but about four or five of those black-uniformed crackpots. So you better be twice as quiet.”
“Next,” Danny Dew said, “he's going to tell us we have to pull off this operation blindfolded.”
Maurice switched off the flashlight
The darkness was so deep it seemed to pull at their eyes.
Kelly opened the door the whole way. For a while, they stood there, letting the lesser darkness of the night creep in. When their eyes adjusted, Danny Dew picked up the plunger and the wire. Tooley hefted the case of dynamite and held it close against his massive chest. Major Kelly led the way out of the hospital bunker, and they followed. Liverwright, who was dying, closed the door behind them.
6
The clouds formed a thick roof from horizon to horizon. No stars shone. Only a hint of moonlight penetrated the black thunderheads.
Kelly and the others went south along the edge of the ravine, far enough back from A Street to be hidden from the German sentry at the intersection of A and Z. Well past the last of the fake houses, they made their way cautiously down the sloped ravine wall until they reached the riverbank.
A frog croaked in front of Kelly, startling him.
Recovering what little nerve he had left, the major looked upstream at the black framework of the bridge which was silhouetted against the blue-black sky. From this distance, it appeared deserted. The SS guards, in their black uniforms, blended perfectly with the night and the steel beams.
“Here's where we get wet,” Kelly said. He looked at Tooley. “You sure you don't want someone to help you with those sticks?”
“No, sir,” Tooley said. “I'm strong. I can handle them. We can't afford to lose any of them — or drop them and let them get wet. If we can't keep this stuff stable, we're all dead.”
“We're all dead anyway,” Kelly said.
“Major, we have — company,” Lieutenant Beame whispered, behind them.
Kelly whirled, expecting to see hordes of Germans rushing down the ravine slope. Instead, he saw three nuns, their white-winged hoods glowing ghostily in the darkness. Lily. Nathalie. And Sister Pullit. “What in the hell—”
“We had to come,” Lily said. “We'd have gone crazy wondering if you were dead or alive. Remember, each of us has a man out here.”
Kelly looked at Pullit.
“She's right,” the nurse said.
Kelly looked away from Pullit. The nurse resembled a nun too closely, so far as Kelly was concerned. Pullit was — sweet, dimpled, innocent, with a freshly scrubbed look.
“We want to go along with you,” Lily said.
“Are you crazy? You'll get us all killed!”
“We can help,” Lily said. “Haven't you heard? Women have more endurance and strength than men.”
The major was not yet able to cope with the situation. He kept looking from the nuns to his men and back to the nuns again. He could not understand how his life had come to this, how so many years of experience could have funneled down to this absurdity.
“They'll drown in those bulky costumes,” Tooley said.
“That's right!” Kelly said, seizing the argument. “You'll drown in those bulky costumes.”
Before anyone could object, Lily tore open her habit and shrugged out of it. She peeled away her hood and cowl and dropped that on the robe. All she wore, now, was a flimsy two-piece dancer's costume out of which everything might pop at any moment.
Every man there drew a long, deep breath.
“Lily—"Kelly began.
Horrified by something he had seen out of the corner of his eye, Kelly turned and confronted Pullit. The nurse had stripped, too, and now stood there in bra and panties. Lily's bra, stuffed with paper. Kelly had no idea who had given Pullit the panties: large, white cotton things with a blue-bow rim.