Hanging on

A howitzer? A cannon?
        "Major," she said, "Tooley wants to talk to you."
        Relieved that they had not been spotted, Kelly turned around and crowded in with the others. They formed a circle which resembled a football huddle, leaning towards each other, the rain beating at their backs and the river sloshing at their hips and waists.
        Tooley sheltered the case of dynamite against his chest, bending over it as if he were trying to protect it from the other team. The krauts? "Major, the sticks are going to get wet. If they start sweating, this stuff will go off even if you just breathe on it wrong."
        "It's wrapped in airtight plastic," Kelly said.
        "So says the U.S. Army." Tooley made a face. "You ever know the Army to do something right? You want to bet me there's not one little plastic seam that's split open? If one stick goes, it'll take the rest with it…"
        "What do you suggest?" Kelly asked.
        "That we move faster."
        "And drop down a hole in the riverbed."
        "It's a risk we'll have to take," the pacifist said.
        "We're doing all right so far," Lily said, with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader. Pullit and Nathalie joined in with her: "Yeah, we are! All right so far!"
        "Tooley's right," Angelli said. Next to the weight lifter, he looked like a child and strangely out of place here in the middle of the river on a stormy night. "The longer we stay out here, the more dangerous it is-because of the Germans, the dynamite, because of everything." He smiled at Pullit and winked reassuringly.
        "Okay," Kelly said. "Let's move, then."
        They fell back into single file, started upstream again, moving more recklessly than before. The rain stung their faces, pasted their hair down, glued their clothes to them, slopped into the boxful of plastic-wrapped explosives. The water frothed around them and excited Lily Kain, and the bridge grew nearer.
        Fifty yards, forty, thirty-five…
        Major Kelly had wondered earlier if he were losing his mind. Now he was sure of it. He had never played in a football game in his life. He was not sports-oriented. Now, in the dead of night, in a thunderstorm, in the middle of a river, under the guns of German maniacs, pursued by a man with a caseful of unstable dynamite, he was caught up in what amounted to a goddamned game… The bridge piers loomed like goal posts.
        Thirty yards, twenty-five…
        The sky was branded by another lightning bolt, this one even brighter than the first. Major Kelly saw three SS sentries, two at the eastern end of the bridge and one just about in the middle.
        He kept on moving forward.
        No one cried out. There was no gunfire.
        Twenty yards. Now fifteen. Ten…
        They waded under the floor of the bridge without being seen. Major Kelly wanted to cry out in triumph as he crossed that all-important line. The rain on the bridge floor overhead was like the ovation rising from the stadium around them. It was glorious. But then he reminded himself that the job was not yet finished. The ball could fall to the other team any time now. They could still lose. Would lose. Did even a big league player dare hope for success?

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    7
        
        After having built all those bridges across the gorge, they were perfectly familiar with the topography of the riverbed in this area. There were no holes or drop-offs. The bottom was scarred and uneven from all the construction work and from bombed bridges collapsing on top of it, but it was nowhere deeper than the middle of Tooley's chest or the base of Angelli's neck.
        According to plan, Sergeant Coombs took a long-bladed knife and waded ashore to stand guard under the eastern cantilever arm. Danny Dew tested a matching knife against the ball of his thumb, kissed Lily Kain-who kissed back with passion-grinned whitely, and waded off to the west to mount guard over there.
        Kelly motioned to the pacifist.
        Tooley waded forward, holding the box of explosives against his broad chest, and stood in front of the major. He looked down at the sticks and grimaced at the water caught in the folds of plastic.
        Kelly reached into the box and took out four packages of dynamite, six sticks to the bundle. He held two in each hand.
        Maurice Jobert, who had taken the T-plunger all the way up the river, said something to Nathalie, scowling fiercely at her immodesty and