"May take him a minute. The lights were close. And there's something in the way… " "I almost tripped, too."
"Hope he saw that."
The two men waited. They could just make out the shaft of light moving relentlessly over the territory they'd passed through, hunting the darkness. They knew that Hugh was hunched over, hugging the wall, waiting for his chance. It seemed far longer than it probably was, but finally the light snapped off.
"Now, Hugh!" Tommy whispered.
He could hear the pounding of Hugh's boots, as the hulking Canadian leapt forward into the darkness. And then, almost instantly, a deep thud, a muffled curse, and silence, as the same indentation that had tripped each of them did the same to Renaday.
But the Canadian did not immediately leap up.
Instead, Tommy heard a low, harsh moan.
"Hugh?" he whispered as sharply as possible.
There was a moment of quiet, and then both men heard the Canadian's distinctive accent.
"It's my bleeding knee," he groaned.
Tommy crept to the edge of the hut. He could see Hugh still sprawled in the dirt perhaps fifteen feet away, clutching his left knee in agony.
"Wait there," Tommy hissed.
"We'll come get you!"
Scott was at Tommy's side, ready to leap into the darkness, when a sudden shaft of light smashed the air above their heads, forcing them to throw themselves down to the ground.
The searchlight slammed into the roof of Hut 105, and then crawled lizardlike down the wall toward them.
"Don't move," Hugh whispered.
The light seemed to step away from Tommy and Scott and then hover just beyond where Hugh lay, still grabbing his knee, but motionless, his face buried down in the cold dirt. It seemed as if the edge of the light were only inches away from his boot and discovery. The Canadian seemed to reach out for the darkness, as if it were some sort of protective blanket he could pull over him.
For an instant, the light poised, blurrily licking at the prone form of Tommy's friend. Then, languidly, almost as if it were teasing them, it swung a few feet away, back toward Hut 103.
Hugh remained frozen. Slowly, he twisted his face out of the dirt and toward the darkness a few feet away, where Tommy and Lincoln Scott remained frozen in position.
"Leave me!" he said quietly, firmly.
"I can't bloody well move anyway. You go on!"
"No," Tommy replied, keeping his voice as soft as possible, but stricken with urgency.
"We'll get you when the light goes off."
The searchlight stopped again, illuminating the ground perhaps twenty feet away from Hugh.
"Leave me, goddamn it. Tommy! I'm finished for tonight!
Kaput!" Scott reached out and touched Tommy on the arm.
"He's right," Scott said.
"We've got to go on."
Tommy spun toward the black flier.
"If that light catches him they'll shoot him! I'm not leaving him out there!"
"If that light catches him, this place'll be crawling with Krauts in thirty seconds! And all hell will break loose."
"I won't leave him! I left someone behind once before, and I won't do it again!"
"You go out there," Scott hissed, "and you'll end up killing him and yourself and God knows who else tonight."
Tommy turned, in agony, toward Hugh.
"He's my friend!"
Tommy whispered painfully.
"Then act like one!" Scott replied.
"Do what he says!"
Tommy turned, searching the shadows for Hugh. The searchlight continued to bounce around, firing light a few feet away from the Canadian. But what Tommy saw astonished him, and must have done the same for Scott, because Tommy could feel the black flier's grip tighten on his arm.
Hugh had rolled over onto his stomach, and moving with a deliberate and utterly agonizing slowness, was crawling forward, away from the front of the hut, heading steadily, painstakingly, and inexorably toward the assembly yard, pointing himself away from his friends who might have tried to help him, and directly away from the men making their way to Hut 107. He was moving away, as well, from the searchlight's beam, which was only a momentary relief because he was steadily proceeding into the vast central open area of Stalag Luft Thirteen. It was the neutral area, a black expanse without any place to conceal himself, but Tommy knew that Hugh had realized that if he were spotted there, it would not immediately alert the Germans to anything happening in the darkened row of huts. The problem was, there was no way to immediately return to safety from the center of the exercise area. Over the course of the night's remaining hours, he might be able to loop around, crawling all the way, back to Hut 101. But far more likely Hugh would have to wait out in the yard until morning or discovery, and either one might mean his death.
Tommy could just make out the Canadian's faint shape working against the cold earth, as Hugh snaked his way into the yard. Then Tommy turned to Scott and pointed to the entrance to Hut 107. "All right," he said.
"Now it's just us."
"Yeah," Scott replied.
"Us and whoever's inside waiting."
Silently, the two men made their way over to the deep shadow at the side of the stairs leading into Hut 107. They paused there for just an instant, both Tommy Hart and Lincoln Scott filled with renegade thoughts. Tommy tossed one glance back in the direction where Hugh had crawled off, but he could no longer make out the shape of his friend, who'd been, for better or worse, swallowed up by the darkness.
Tommy reached up, knocked twice, and whispered: "Forty-one and forty-two…"
There was a momentary hesitation, then the door creaked slightly as someone inside the hut cracked it open.
They jumped forward, grabbing at the opening, and pushing into the hut.
Tommy heard a voice, alarmed, but still whispering, say, "Hey! You're not…" and then fade away. He and Lincoln Scott stood, inside the door, staring down the corridor.
There was an overwhelming eeriness to the scene that greeted them. A half-dozen candles nickered weakly, spaced out perhaps every ten feet or so. Kriegies lined the corridor, all seated on the floor, their legs pulled up beneath them so as to use less space. Perhaps two dozen of the men were dressed in what they hoped would pass for civilian clothing, their uniforms retailored by the camp's sewing services, dyed by ingenious combinations of ink and paints, so that they no longer were colored in the familiar khaki and olive drab of the U.S.
Army. Many men, like the man Tommy had spotted leaving Hut 101, carried makeshift suitcases or portfolios. Some wore workmen's hats and carried mock toolboxes. Anything extra that might make them appear to be other than what they truly were.
The man who'd opened the door was still in uniform. Not heading out that night, Tommy realized. He could see, as well, that every few feet there were support staff, still in their uniforms. In all, there had to be close to sixty men silently stretched down the length of the hut's center corridor. Of these, probably only two dozen were on the escape plan and patiently waiting their turn.