Free Hanging on by Dean Koontz Page A

lurched, hesitated, then came on, engines grinding like thousands of badly cast gears: grrrrr-rrr-rrrrr. And then they were in the C-shaped clearing where the camp lay. From now on, anything could happen. In seconds, the Panzers' headlights high on the knobbed turrets would sweep across the bridge: up the slight incline of the approach, over the framing beams, onto the deck… And they would reveal the lack of a sentry. When that happened, the jerries would have to know that something was wrong. They would slow down. They would stop.
        When they stopped, everyone would die.
        If a couple of shells were fired at the jeep, Major Kelly thought, he and Beame and Slade would be so much jelly decorated with steel slivers and sparkling bits of glass. Pretty but not functional. The only way to hang on was to stay functional.
        Kelly looked anxiously at the point along the ravine where Coombs had disappeared with the corpse. What was taking them so long down there?
        "Maybe I could take up guard by the bridge," Beame suggested.
        Kelly shook his head. "You're dressed as an oberleutnant, and they'd wonder what you were doing at a private's post."
        "We can't just sit here-"
        "We have to just sit here," Kelly said.
        Beame said, "Slade's dressed as a private. He could take up the sentry's post without making the krauts suspicious."
        Major Kelly wiped a film of perspiration from his face and thought about that: was there any chance of Slade getting killed? If there were, he'd send The Snot out right now. At least something good would come of this crisis. Thinking about it, though, he realized Slade would fumble his role and expose them. He'd have to keep the lieutenant in the jeep, out of trouble.
        Where were the men under the bridge? This was their job. They'd had time to strip the German soldier, time for one of them-
        "There!" Beame exclaimed, pointing.
        Danny Dew, the dozer operator, climbed over the edge of the riverbank, dressed in the dead man's uniform. It was a perfect fit, and the rent made by Sergeant Coombs's knife was not visible. Indeed, Danny Dew looked as if he had been born in that uniform, as if he had goose-stepped out of his mother's womb, had saluted the doctor with a stiff arm, and had run the nurse through with his bayonet. He was a marvelous German soldier, muscular and stiff, his head held straight and proud, eyes cold and malevolent as he took up his position by the bridge. The only problem, so far as Major Kelly could see, was that Danny Dew was a Negro, a colored person, so dark that he hinted of blue.
        Ordinarily, a Negro wouldn't be assigned to a white unit in the American Army, because there were separate colored regiments. The Army practiced rigid but quiet segregation. The only reason that Danny Dew was in Major Kelly's unit was because he was a damn fine D-7 operator -and the only one available for immediate and quiet transfer to beef up their unit for this crazy mission behind German lines.
        "Maybe he was the only one of Coombs's men who'd fit into that uniform," Beame said.
        As the first tank lights splashed across them, Major Kelly looked at Danny Dew's shining black face, his wide white grin. He groaned aloud. He bashed his head against the steering wheel, over and over. That felt so good he didn't want to stop. It made him pleasantly dizzy and caused a sweet, melodic buzzing in his ears which drowned out the roar of the tanks.
        "Danny Dew certainly doesn't look Aryan," Lieutenant Slade said, telling everyone what was already known.
        At the bridge, Danny Dew stood stiffly beside the eastern bridge frame, the rifle held across his chest.
        "Here comes the first of them," Slade said.
        Everyone had already seen the first vehicle. Even Major Kelly had stopped bashing his head on the steering wheel long enough to look at the first vehicle.
        An armored car