Hanging on

other. And we'll be right in the middle."
        Beame looked as if he were going to be sick on his own shoes.
        "Don't be sick on your own shoes," Kelly said. "I couldn't stand that right now."
        "Look," Beame said, "we don't have to wait around for this battle. We can slip away into the woods until it's over."
        "Two hundred of us?" Kelly and Maurice exchanged a grim smile. "Even with darkness on our side, we've had trouble moving around town. That was just two of us. With two hundred-no chance."
        Despite the changes which had taken place in him recently, Beame was much the same as he had always been: naive, full of hope. "Well… what if we sent someone west to meet these Allied tanks before they got here? If we told them that the Panzers were here, maybe we could persuade them to let the Germans cross and hold the battle elsewhere."
        "This they will not do," Maurice said. "For one thing, the Allied tank commander would know that the Germans will blow up the bridge after themselves. They almost always do these days. And the Allies wouldn't want to lose the bridge."
        "We can build them another bridge in a day!" Beame said.
        Tooley nodded eagerly. "That's true."
        "You forget that only Blade knows we're here," Kelly said. "The commander of those Allied tanks doesn't suspect there's a unit of engineers and laborers stranded behind the lines. Although, I suppose we could tell them…"
        Maurice shook his head sadly. "No good, mon ami. If it were any other Allied commander at the head of this force, he would help you. But this general will not even pause to listen to what you have to say. He's too caught up in the success of his one-unit campaign." The greasy, sweaty old man looked at each of them and delivered the final blow. "The Allied tanks coming this way are commanded by General Bobo Remlock."
        "We're all dead," Kelly said.
        "Well," Beame said, "I guess we are."
        General Bobo Remlock was a Texan who called himself The Fighting General. He also called himself Latter-Day Sam Houston, Big Ball of Barbed Wire, Old Blood and Guts, and Last of the Two-Fisted Cowboys. They had all heard about Bobo Remlock when they were stationed in Britain prior to D-Day. The British and Americans who had served under Remlock could never get done complaining about him. Remlock encouraged his men to call him Big Tex and Old Blood-and-Guts, though not to his face. What he did not know was that everyone called him That Maniac and Blood Beast and Old Shit for Brains behind his back. If Bobo Remlock were leading the approaching force, he would not stop for anything. He would roll up to the other side of the gorge and utterly destroy St. Ignatius in the process of liberating it.
        "We do have one chance," Maurice said.
        "We do?" Beame asked, brightening.
        "No, we don't," Major Kelly said.
        Maurice smiled. He put his two pudgy hands together, pressed them flat and tight, then threw them open as he whispered: "Boom!"
        Kelly decided that Maurice had lost his mind, just like all the men in the unit had done.
        "With the machines hidden in the convent," The Frog said, "you also have many sticks of dynamite. Many yards of wire. A plunger and battery. If we waste no more time, we might be able to plant the explosives under the bridge. In the morning, if the expected showdown between Generals Remlock and Rotenhausen comes, we will quite simply demolish the bridge. Neither commander will be able to take his tanks down a gorge as steep as this one. And because there will be nothing left to fight for once the bridge is gone, both the Allies and the Germans will have to seek elsewhere for a river crossing."
        "Blow up our own bridge?" Kelly asked.
        "That is right," Maurice said.
        "Blow up the bridge that we've busted ass to keep in shape?"
        "Yes."
        "It's not a bad idea," Kelly admitted. "But even if it works, even if Bobo Remlock goes away to look for another crossing, we're still not out of the frying pan. The krauts will come down hard on us. They'll think partisans set off the explosions, and they'll search St. Ignatius."
        Kelly had wisely decided not to assign any men to the fake house over the hospital bunker. He was doubly glad of that decision now. He had not wanted to put men in the house and then have them terrified out of their minds when Kowalski began to moan