There were always some prisoners willing to risk everything on a whim.
Escape was a powerful narcotic. The men addicted might use any advantage available even when they understood that no one had as yet been successful at escaping from Stalag Luft Thirteen. The Germans knew this, and locked the doors as the sirens sounded. So the airmen waited out the approaching deep whomp-whomp-whomp of bombs in silence and near-panic inside their huts, knowing that any one bomb in the arsenals that they themselves had once carried through the sky could level any of the flimsy wooden huts with ease, killing everyone inside almost as an afterthought.
Tommy did not know why the Germans didn't lock them into the huts every night. But they didn't. Probably because they would have had to lock down every window as well, which would have taken hours to accomplish.
And then the kriegies would have constructed false doors and escape hatches to give themselves access to the night. So during a raid the doors were locked and the windows left open, which made no real sense.
Tommy always supposed that had bombs actually started to fall on the camp, there was no way of telling what the kriegies would do, so he believed the exercise of locking the doors was actually useless. Still, the Germans did this, without explanation. Tommy presumed there was some stiff and inviolable Luftwaffe regulation they were following, even if it made utterly no sense.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the night surrounding him.
Shapes and distances that were so familiar in the daytime sluggishly took on form and substance. Black silence enveloped him and he became aware of Scott's steady breathing at his side.
"Let's move," the Tuskegee airman urged softly, but insistently.
Tommy nodded, but took one long look up into the sky above them. The moon was nearly full, shedding helpful sheets of wan light over their course, but what he looked for were the stars. He counted the constellations, recognizing forms in the familiar arrangements above, warmed to the great swath of filmy white that was the Milky Way. It was, he thought, like seeing an old friend approaching in the distance, and he half-raised a hand as if he were about to wave a greeting. He realized that it had been months since he'd stood outside in night's quiet and read the heavens above. He reminded himself that he was the navigator, and with a long, last glance at the blinking dots of light above, he darted forward, heading toward the Abort.
The two men zigzagged from shadow to shadow, moving swiftly toward the distinct joined odors of lime and waste emanating from the Abort. The familiar, musty smell that to the men in their prior lives might have been overwhelming and disgusting was, to the kriegies, as routine as bacon frying on a Sunday morning back home.
Their feet made padding sounds against the damp earth.
They did not talk until they reached the entrance to the Abort, where
Tommy hesitated, kneeling down in a spot of greater darkness, letting his eyes penetrate the night around them, searching for the next move.
"Where to, counselor?" Scott said under his breath.
"What are you looking for?"
Tommy narrowed his eyes, thinking hard. After a moment, he turned and whispered to Scott.
"You're the strong man. All right. Imagine you've got to carry Vincent Bedford. Fireman's carry, over your left shoulder. He weighs what? One fifty-five? One sixty?"
"One sixty, maybe one seventy, max. He was a skinny little bastard.
But he ate better than the rest of us. A middleweight."
"Okay. One seventy. But deadweight. How far can you carry that body,
Scott? Left shoulder."
"I wouldn't use my left shoulder…"
"I know that."
In the darkness, he could see the fighter pilot's head nod in comprehension.
"Not too far. Probably farther than you might think, because the killer's adrenaline would be pumping something furious. But still, not too far. It's not like carrying some buddy whose life you want to save. So, maybe a hundred yards. A little more or maybe a little less, depending on how nervous you are."
Tommy measured to himself. He started to calculate an equation, using distance, factoring in the sweep of the searchlights and proximity to the huts. There was a spot, he thought, close enough so that it would be this Abort that the killer chose, and not one of the others. And a route to the Abort that provided some safety.
He nodded his head, but thought the why of the murder still eluded him.
"He needs to avoid the searchlight and the goons by the wire and not make a sound that might wake up some kriegie, and this is where he ends up. So where do we go, lieutenant?"
Tommy said.
"Give me your best guess."
Scott hesitated for a second, his head pivoting, surveying the darkness ahead of them, then he whispered, "Follow me."
Without waiting for an acknowledgment from Tommy, the black airman darted across the alleyway between the two huts, past the entrance to the Abort. Working his way slowly, staying close to the wall of Hut
102, he maneuvered to the end of the building. Tommy jogged to keep pace.
From where they were standing in the shadows, both men could see the wire, thirty yards ahead, sweeping away from them, angled out to enclose the exercise and assembly areas.
A guard tower rose up in the pitch black, another fifty yards distant.
In the moonlight they could see the profiles of a pair of goons, on the platform. Tommy knew the tower contained both a searchlight, now shut off, and a thirty-caliber machine gun. He shuddered. He was about to speak when Lincoln Scott filled in his very words, spoken in a whisper.
"Not this way. Not with those Krauts up there. Too risky."
From somewhere in the darkness, a Hundfuhrer's dog barked once, only to be shushed by his handler. The two Americans shrank back against the wall.
"The other way, then," Tommy said.
"Longer, but…"
"… safer," Scott finished.
He immediately began working his way back to where they had started.
Moving quietly, it took the two men almost a minute to reach the front of Hut 102. To their left, across the open space of the yard, were the stairs to Hut 101, which they'd exited earlier.
Lincoln Scott took a single step out toward the stairs to Hut 102, then immediately shrank back. His movement caused Tommy Hart to hug the wall, and within seconds, he saw why: The searchlight that had dogged them at the start of their excursion was playing about, erratically lighting up the corner of another hut a short distance away.
The same damn problem as at the other end. Tommy thought abruptly. He could feel his breathing coming in short, wheezy gasps. The searchlight was death. Maybe not certain death, but possible death, and he hated it with a sudden and total anger.