The tree-surrounded open space they’d picked to set up the mortar had no couples using it, for which Jager was heartily glad: he had found a discarded French letter in it one morning. “We won’t need the compass or the North Star,” he said with relief. A few days before, Skorzeny had splashed whitewash on a branch of one of the elms in the grove. Set the base plate of the mortar on the gray stone Jager had placed in the grass, aim the barrel over the white splash, and the Lizards-and the humans who worked for them-would learn collaboration had its price.
Skorzeny assembled the mortar, swearing softly when he barked his knuckles in the darkness. He’d practiced so often in the flat that the lethal little device quickly grew from a collection of innocent-looking hardware to an artillery piece. He lined it up roughly on the marked branch, then turned the traversing screw to bring it to exactly the bearing he wanted. At last he grunted in satisfaction and began adjusting the elevation screw so the mortar would fling its bombs just the right distance.
Jager, meanwhile, had been taking the bombs out of the packs and standing them on their tailfins by the mortar. Even without knowing the particularly lethal freight they carried, anyone would have recognized them as intended for no good purpose: nothing painted flat black and full of sharp curves and angles was apt to be a kiddie toy.
“Flick on your lighter,” Skorzeny said. “I want to make sure I have the elevation right. Wouldn’t do to shoot over or under.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” Jager dug the lighter out of his pocket and flicked the wheel with his thumb. His breath came short and quick, as if he’d spied a Lizard panzer’s turret traversing to bring its main armament to bear on him. A cry ofQu’est-ce que c’est? and feet pounding toward the copse would be just as disastrous now.
After what seemed like an eternity but couldn’t have been more than half a minute, Skorzeny said, “Everything’s fine. Douse it.” Jager flicked the cover over the flame. Even that little noise made his heart pound. Well, the Parc Rochegude would know bigger noises any minute now.
Skorzeny softly slapped him on the back. He took that as his signal to begin. Snatching up a bomb, he dropped it down the barrel of the mortar.
Wham!The noise hit harder than that of a panzer’s cannon; he didn’t have several centimeters of steel shielding him from most of it now. He grabbed another bomb, sent it after the first one.Wham!
Between shots, he tried to use his stunned ears to listen for any outcry, and for whistle blasts from the French gendarmerie. He didn’t hear anything, and prayed that meant there wasn’t anything to hear. He’d brought a dozen bombs in all. He’d hoped to be able to fire most of them before the uproar started. In just over a minute, he sent every one of them on its way.
Skorzeny slapped him on the back again, this time hard enough to stagger him. “You can be on my mortar team any day!” the burly SS man bawled, his mouth as close to Jager’s ear as if he’d been a lover.
“That’s wonderful,” Jager said dryly. “Now let’s get back to the flat before somebody spots us out here and puts two and two together.”
“Just a minute.” Skorzeny grabbed the mortar by the tripod, heaved it up off the ground. Jager started in alarm; the plan had called for leaving it behind. But Skorzeny didn’t carry it far. Close by the copse was a little pond. He heaved the mortar in with a splash. “They won’t find it till sunup this way, and maybe not for a while afterwards. By then,Gott mit uns, we’ll be on our way.”
“Gott mit uns,”Jager echoed. “Now come on, damn it.”
They’d just shut the front door to their building when several men came round the corner and dashed toward the park. Jager and Skorzeny hurried upstairs. The biggest worry in the plan had been that people would come out of their block of flats when the mortar started banging. That would make them notice the two men in Number 14 had been outside-and wonder why. They probably wouldn’t have wondered long.
But the hallway was empty when Jager closed the door behind him. He let out a long sigh of relief. Off in the distance, sirens wailed and bells clanged: ambulances and fire engines. Solemnly, he stuck out his hand. As solemnly, Skorzeny shook it.
The SS man pulled the cork from a bottle of wine, took a swig, and passed it to Jager. Jager wiped it on his sleeve and then drank, too. “Success,” he said. Skorzeny’s big head bobbed up and down. After a moment, Jager thought about what his toast had meant: some unknown number of Frenchmen-Frenchwomen, too, very likely-asphyxiating, not because they’d harmed him in particular but because, to support themselves and their families, they were turning out goods the Lizards could use.
The wine turned to vinegar in his mouth. “This is a filthy business we’re in,” he said.
“You just figured that out?” Skorzeny said. “Come on, Jager, you’re not a virgin, except maybe in your left ear. If we don’t hurt the Lizards, we lose. If hurting the Lizards means hurting civilians, too, well, too bad. These things happen. We did what we were supposed to do, what our superiors ordered us to do.”
“Ja,”Jager said in a hollow voice. What Skorzeny didn’t get and wouldn’t get if he lived to be a hundred-not likely, considering how the SS man lived-was thatwhat we were supposed to do andwhat our superiors ordered us to do weren’t necessarily one and the same thing.
Soldiers didn’t commonly have to draw that distinction. Jager hadn’t worried about it, not until he found out how the Germans dealt with Jews in the east. Since then, he hadn’t been able to look away. He knew what sort of disaster awaited the world if the Lizards won the war. Like Skorzeny, he was willing to do just about anything to keep that from happening. Unlike the SS man, he wasn’t willing to believe everything he did was fine and virtuous.
That made for another subtle distinction, but he clung to it.
Panting, Jens Larssen stopped at the top of Berthoud Pass. His breath smoked in the thin, cold air. Snow dappled the ground and turned the pines and firs into a picture right off a Christmas card. Snow and ice also turned US 40 into a slippery slalom course that had to be treated with the utmost respect.
“Downhill from here,” Jens said. That was literally true; he’d lose more than a mile of altitude before he made it back to Denver, a bit more than fifty miles away. It also normally implied everything would be easy the rest of the way. Heading back to Denver wasn’t going to be easy. If your bike hit an icy patch and skidded while you were slogging uphill to the Continental Divide, you’d fall and scrape your shin. If you lost it while you were speeding down some of these steep grades, you’d break a leg-or your neck.
“Slow and easy,” he said out loud, reminding himself. “Slow and easy.” He’d spent some of his time getting up to the pass walking the bicycle; he’d spend even more coming down. All the same, with luck he’d be in Denver in a couple of days, and then, before long, the Metallurgical Laboratory could pack up and head for Hanford and the Columbia.
Up in Tabernash, a ways to the north, he’d bought a knitted wool sailor’s cap. God only knew what it was doing there; Tabernash was about as far from the sea as you could get in North America. He kept it pulled down over his ears, even though that made them itch. He also hadn’t bothered shaving since the leaves started turning colors. His beard had come in thick and strawberry blond; it did a surprisingly good job of keeping his cheeks and chin warm.
“I wonder if Mary Cooley would know me,” he muttered; Idaho Springs lay only twenty miles or so to the east. His hand went over his shoulder and briefly caressed the barrel of the Springfield he wore slung on his back.
But, now that he found himself close to Idaho Springs, he also found he wasn’t killing angry at the waitress who’d given him the clap, not any more. The sulfa tablets Dr. Henry had given him in Hanford had done the job. The disease wasn’t bothering him at all now. He didn’t even have the morning drop of pus he had to piss away with the day’s first whizz, so he supposed he was cured.I’ll let the bitch live, he thought, and felt magnanimous.