Free Cold Comfort by Charles Todd Page B

Lloyd said he could deal with it. He and Jones. They’ve done it before.”
    Rutledge straightened, turned and walked toward the tunnel shaft. “There’s no time to discuss it. The fuse has to be checked.”
    Any delay meant that the German tunnel would blow first. And no one was precisely sure where under the line of British trenches it ended.
    Captain Marsh peered around in the darkness. “Lloyd? Where are you?”
    “He’s gone to the latrines,” someone answered. Rutledge thought it was Private Jones, but he couldn’t be certain where the voice had come from
    “Williams, then,” Marsh pointed to him. “Go with Rutledge, man.”
    Rutledge took the bulky stethoscope from MacLeod, who was protesting, saying he should be the one to go, but Rutledge shook his head and was already letting himself down the shaft, not waiting for Marsh or Williams.
    The two men, officer and private soldier, bent their heads and ran down the tunnel, not worrying about noise until they were within twenty feet of the chalk barricade. Slowing, the two men crept forward, Rutledge’s torch searching for the fuse.
    “It’s gone under the bags of chalk,” Williams said in a whisper. “Look.”
    They stopped short. The fuse had burned to this point. Was it still lit? Or had it gone out, accidentally snuffed by the lack of air or the weight of the barrier?
    Rutledge could feel the cold sweat breaking out as he stepped cautiously over the fuse and knelt by the sacking just above it. Hearing only his own heart beat as he put the stethoscope in his ears, he pressed the bell against the lumpy chalk surface and listened.
    The fuse was still burning.
    And there was no telling now how much time was left.
    “Run!” He was already on his way, Williams ahead of him, both men silently counting off the distance to safety. They had barely reached the shaft, out of breath and already grabbing at the ropes, when the air seemed to be sucked out of the space around them, and the charges blew.
    The ground shook beneath their feet, and across No Man’s Land, a vast plume of earth rose high in the air then rained down like black sleet. Rutledge could hear it even as he threw himself to one side, but Williams was caught in the ropes, dangling like a puppet.
    And then Captain Marsh was there, pulling Williams up, shouting to Rutledge. In that same instant, the German charges blew, shattering the night with their thunder as a second plume of earth went straight up, blotting out the stars, this time tearing apart half a sector of the British line and finishing off the British tunnel.
    There would be no charge tonight across No Man’s Land to follow up at the weakest point of the line, where the tunnel had torn apart its defenses. The damage on both sides was too great.
    The Welsh miners and their officers, Rutledge among them, lay where they’d fallen, dazed, half deaf, covered in the stinking earth, and then they were scrambling to their feet, racing for the trenches to pull out the British wounded and dead. Men had been tossed every which way, some of them still unaware they’d been hurt, others deafened or stunned by the shock waves, staring up at their rescuers with blank eyes.
    It was five hours later, the wounded dealt with, the dead carried out, repair work already underway in the damaged line of trenches, when Rutledge collected Corporal MacLeod, Captain Marsh, and Private Williams, then sent for Privates Jones and Lloyd. They went to stand at the head of what had once been the shaft to the blown tunnel.
    He was very angry as he faced them. Captain Marsh had already refused to lay the blame at anyone’s door, insisting that fuses and explosives were undependable down in the tunnels, that delays had occurred before.
    But Rutledge wasn’t satisfied. Too many men had died to sweep the delay under the proverbial rug. And he was determined to get to the bottom of what had happened on his watch.
    “That fuse was too long,” he said. “As a result, it