“It's wrapped in airtight plastic,” Kelly said.
“So says the U.S. Army.” Tooley made a face. “You ever know the Army to do something right? You want to bet me there's not one little plastic seam that's split open? If one stick goes, it'll take the rest with it… ”
“What do you suggest?” Kelly asked.
“That we move faster.”
“And drop down a hole in the riverbed.”
“It's a risk we'll have to take,” the pacifist said.
“We're doing all right so far,” Lily said, with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader. Pullit and Nathalie joined in with her: “Yeah, we are! All right so far!”
“Tooley's right,” Angelli said. Next to the weight lifter, he looked like a child and strangely out of place here in the middle of the river on a stormy night. “The longer we stay out here, the more dangerous it is — because of the Germans, the dynamite, because of everything.” He smiled at Pullit and winked reassuringly.
“Okay,” Kelly said. “Let's move, then.”
They fell back into single file, started upstream again, moving more recklessly than before. The rain stung their faces, pasted their hair down, glued their clothes to them, slopped into the boxful of plastic-wrapped explosives. The water frothed around them and excited Lily Kain, and the bridge grew nearer.
Fifty yards, forty, thirty-five…
Major Kelly had wondered earlier if he were losing his mind. Now he was sure of it. He had never played in a football game in his life. He was not sports-oriented. Now, in the dead of night, in a thunderstorm, in the middle of a river, under the guns of German maniacs, pursued by a man with a caseful of unstable dynamite, he was caught up in what amounted to a goddamned game… The bridge piers loomed like goal posts.
Thirty yards, twenty-five…
The sky was branded by another lightning bolt, this one even brighter than the first. Major Kelly saw three SS sentries, two at the eastern end of the bridge and one just about in the middle.
He kept on moving forward.
No one cried out. There was no gunfire.
Twenty yards. Now fifteen. Ten…
They waded under the floor of the bridge without being seen. Major Kelly wanted to cry out in triumph as he crossed that all-important line. The rain on the bridge floor overhead was like the ovation rising from the stadium around them. It was glorious. But then he reminded himself that the job was not yet finished. The ball could fall to the other team any time now. They could still lose. Would lose. Did even a big league player dare hope for success?
7
After having built all those bridges across the gorge, they were perfectly familiar with the topography of the riverbed in this area. There were no holes or drop-offs. The bottom was scarred and uneven from all the construction work and from bombed bridges collapsing on top of it, but it was nowhere deeper than the middle of Tooley's chest or the base of Angelli's neck.
According to plan, Sergeant Coombs took a long-bladed knife and waded ashore to stand guard under the eastern cantilever arm. Danny Dew tested a matching knife against the ball of his thumb, kissed Lily Kain — who kissed back with passion — grinned whitely, and waded off to the west to mount guard over there.
Kelly motioned to the pacifist.
Tooley waded forward, holding the box of explosives against his broad chest, and stood in front of the major. He looked down at the sticks and grimaced at the water caught in the folds of plastic.
Kelly reached into the box and took out four packages of dynamite, six sticks to the bundle. He held two in each hand.
Maurice Jobert, who had taken the T-plunger all the way up the river, said something to Nathalie, scowling fiercely at her immodesty and at the way Beame reveled in her immodesty. Then he waded quietly to the shore and set the device down on the bank not far from where Coombs stood.
Except for the brief, whispered exchange between Maurice and Nathalie, no one dared to speak. The rain drumming on the river and on the floor of the bridge overhead was sufficiently noisy to cover their movements. But a voice was distinctive and might carry up to the SS sentries despite the overlaying susurration of the storm.
Private Tooley turned away from Kelly and carried the rest of the explosives over to the farside bridge pier. Stalking about in the bridge shadows, naked from the waist up, his powerful body tense and glistening, he looked like a mythical creature, a super troll making plans to kidnap travelers who passed above him… Angelli followed the big man, pushing through water that reached almost to his chin, holding the spool of copper wire over his head. Before Kelly could make known his objection, Pullit followed Angelli. The three of them, if the lovebirds could keep their hands off each other, would rig the sticks at the other pier.
Maurice came back into the water when he saw Beame and Nathalie were not going to be separated. His belly bobbled in the foam like a gigantic fishing lure.
Handing the four packages of dynamite to Beame, Kelly grabbed Lily and kissed her. She kissed back, with passion, as the water sloshed between her legs and foamed up her belly to her thinly sheathed jugs.
Revitalized by that kiss, Kelly worked his way over to the nearside pier and looked up the forty-foot-high column of stones and cement. Fortunately, their facilities here at the camp had precluded the construction of smooth, featureless bridge pillars. The stones protruded from the concrete and provided hand- and footholds. Kelly quickly judged the easiest route, hooked his fingers over an inch-wide ledge of fieldstone, and began to pull himself up.
In theory, it should have been a relief to get out of the cold water. His flesh was icy. His bones ached. And he was tired of resisting the river's steady pressure. But the theory was faulty. Clinging to the crude bridge pier, Kelly felt worse than ever. The rain lashed him. The growing wind chilled him to the bone. He had begun to develop a severe headache behind the eyes, and now it stretched around and pounded in his temples as well.
He thought of Lily, standing below him in her skimpy costume, her silk halter pasted to her jugs, her hard nipples standing out nearly an inch…
He kept on climbing. The cement was rough, and it chafed his hands. Each time he found a new grip, the sharp stones creased his fingers; and when he let his weight hang, the stone cut his fingers across the soft pads of flesh. The blood trickled down his hands and was sluiced away by the rain.
Three-quarters of the way up, thirty feet above the surging river, he stopped and pressed against the stone column, breathing quickly and shallowly. He could hear the thump of his heart above the rain and the thunder, and he wondered if the SS men overhead could also hear it. His toes were wedged onto a two-inch cleft in the pier. Above him, his bloodied fingers were curled over a concrete lip only half as wide as the one below. He did not see how he could regain his strength when all his resources were required to maintain his present position.
He looked down at Maurice, Beame, Nathalie, and Lily.
That was a mistake, even though he thought he could see Lily's nipples from clear up here. Dizziness enveloped him. The shimmering water, the white upturned faces, and the three stories of stone pillar falling away under him made him ill.
He thought of the brass bed at the rectory. Lily Kain. Putting it to her on a big brass bed…
He pulled himself up, scrabbled for a new handhold, held on, went on.
Ten minutes later, he reached the top of the pier upon which the steel support beams were set. There was just enough room to pull himself up and in, off the sheer face. He still had to hold onto a girder, but the eight-foot-wide pillar provided a welcome resting place.
When he regained his breath, he fumbled in his coat pocket and found the ball of thin, strong nylon string which he had picked up from the supplies in the convent. He held onto the free end and threw the ball over the edge, let it unwind as it fell away into darkness, dropped down and down and down to the river and to Beame.