Hanging on

God they didn't park the whole convoy in the clearing-or search the buildings. They aren't going to search, are they?"
        "No," Kelly said. "Look, what about the men? They okay?"
        "They're all in their assigned houses-except for Lieutenant Slade."
        Kelly's stomach turned over and crawled around inside of him, hunting for a way out. "Slade?"
        "He was supposed to be in one of the platform houses with Akers, Dew, and Richfield. None of them have seen him since early this evening."
        "You mean he's on the loose?" Kelly asked.
        Beame nodded.
        "What's the sniveling little bastard up to?" Kelly wondered. "What does that rotten little son of a bitch have up his sleeve?"
        For a while, they were both silent, trying to imagine the inside of Slade's sleeve. At last, Beame could not tolerate any more of that. "What will we do?"
        "We have to find him," Kelly said. "Whatever he's got up his sleeve, it's rotten as month-old salami."
        "Maybe he ran away," Beame said.
        "Not Slade. He wants to fight, not run. He's somewhere in the village-somewhere he shouldn't be." And we're all dead because of him, Kelly thought.
        And then he thought: No, we're all dead because death is the theme of this fairy tale. Slade's a particularly ugly plot problem, that's all. What we have to do is go after him and play our roles and make ourselves small, please the crazy Aesop behind this so maybe he'll let us live. And then he also thought: Am I losing my mind?
        "Won't be easy finding him," Beame said. "Every intersection has a sentry."
        Kelly wiped one cold hand across his face, pulled at his clerical collar. "It doesn't matter how difficult it is. We have to find him." He stood and moved away from the outhouse. "Let's get away from this place. It smells like shit."

----

    2
        
        Lieutenant Slade wished that his mother could see him now. For the first time since he had been assigned to Kelly's unit, he was getting a chance to act like a real soldier. Tonight, he had the opportunity to prove that he was as heroic as all the other men in his family had been.
        He lay flat on the ground beside a fake stone well, watching the sentry who patrolled the Y-B intersection. The kraut walked twenty paces east, then twenty west, turning smartly on his heel at the end of each circuit. He did not seem to be interested in anything around him. Probably daydreaming. Just like half the other guards Slade had thus far observed. Fine. Good. They were not expecting danger from nuns, priests, and deaf-mutes. When it came, they would be overwhelmed.
        Slade waited for the sentry to turn toward the west. The moment the man's back was to him, he pushed up and ran silently across Y Street into the darkness between two of the single-story platform houses. From there, he slithered westward on his stomach, over to the Y-A intersection where he made notes on yet another sentry.
        Now was almost time. He had very little reconnaissance left to do. He had noted each sentry, had discovered the weak points in the German positions. He was almost ready to lead a silent attack. In half an hour, he could go find Major Kelly and kill him. And then make heroes out of this whole pack of cowards.

----

    3
        
        Hiding in shadows, crawling on their bellies, running tiptoe from one tree to the next and from one building to the next, Major Kelly and Lieutenant Beame went all over the village looking for Lieutenant Slade. They stopped in at every house, school, and nunnery, hoping that someone would have seen Slade during the night and could shed light on The Snot's intentions.
        But no one had seen him since early in the evening. Not that anyone had been looking for him.
        "You try not to notice The Snot," Lyle Fark told them as they stood with him and seven other men in one of the hollow two-story houses. "I mean, you don't want to know what he's doing, most of the time. But when he isn't there, you notice it right away. Everything's so tranquil. You get such a sense of well-being when he goes away."
        "And when did you get this sense of well-being?" Kelly asked.
        "Early this evening," Fark said. "Yeah, he must have disappeared around eight o'clock, because things seemed to pick up about then."
        It was the same answer they got from everyone. Slade had not been seen for several hours; but although they could