Hanging on

muscles rippled. He put his strength into the swing and broke the glass in the front of the radio. The blow echoed in the large, one-room convent building, whispered for a long time in the rafters overhead.
        "But you have to talk to Blade," a handsome young soldier said, stepping up between Lily and Private Angelli. "He's your commanding officer."
        Kelly could not remember ever having seen this young man, which was odd, since he prided himself in knowing all his men by their first names. "He isn't my commanding officer any longer," Kelly said.
        Lily stamped one foot, a gesture that made her breasts jiggle in the velvet cups of her dancer's costume. "Kelly, I won't let you-"
        "Danny, hit it again!"
        Dew struck the radio another vicious blow. It crashed off the stand onto the floor.
        "You simply can't fire your commanding officer," Vito Angelli said. He was standing beside one of the French girls who had been dressed like a nun. His arm was around her waist, one hand circling up to cup her full right breast. He no longer seemed to be such a one-woman man. Or, more accurately, a one-pervert man. Nurse Pullit was nowhere in sight. "You can't choose your commanding officers," Angelli insisted.
        "Well, from now on that's exactly what I'm going to do," Kelly said. "I don't want another one like Blade. I don't think he ever did care about us the way a general is supposed to care for his men. He's been using us."
        Lily frowned at him. "Using us?"
        Kelly nodded. "I've been putting bits and pieces together… You know we've thought there was a traitor in the camp. The Stukas always knew when the bridge was rebuilt, always returned to bomb it the day after it was completed. Someone had to tell them it was ready. I think that someone was General Blade."
        "Bullshit!" Coombs said. He, too, was standing with a French girl. She was rather ugly.
        Lily looked at Kelly as if he had gone mad. "That's ridiculous! Blade-"
        "It makes sense to me," Kelly said. Perspiration trickled down his forehead and ran to the end of his nose, but he ignored it. "Keep in mind that Blade had his entire career staked on us. No one else thought this bridge was of any strategic importance. Blade said so himself. Yet he disagreed with the other generals. He secretly sent a whole unit of Army engineers behind German lines in order to keep the bridge open. What do you think would have happened to Blade if the bridge were never bombed, if we just sat here without anything to do?"
        Lily thought about it. They all thought about it. She said, "He wouldn't be up for any promotions when his superiors found out about it."
        "Exactly," Kelly said. "Once he sent us here, he had to establish proof that the Germans considered the bridge strategically important. And what better way than to get them to bomb it repeatedly?"
        "Now, wait a minute, sir," the handsome young soldier said. "General Blade can't order Stukas to do his own dirty work!"
        "That's right," Beame said. "He can't control the German army!"
        Kelly frowned. "There are bits and pieces that maybe fit… For example, Beame told me that General Blade probably dabbles in the black market. When we were in Britain, I heard the same thing about Bobo Remlock. That sounds terribly coincidental, doesn't it-that both our nemeses should be in the black market?"
        "Hell," Angelli said, "probably every one of our generals is in it."
        "Another thing," Kelly said, ignoring Angelli. "I've also heard that some of our officers are not against profiting from deals made with officers on the other side."
        "With Germans?" Lily asked.
        "I've heard that, too," Angelli said. "Hell, Eisenhower's investigative staff brought charges against two high-ranking officers while we were in Britain. But what does this sort of thing have to do with us?" He fondled the French girl's breast, and she giggled.
        "Plenty," Kelly said. "If American and German officers fly to neutral territory to swap black market goods… Well, suppose Blade gave a German air force officer a planeload of whiskey at one of these neutral ports-and didn't take any material goods in return. Suppose, instead, he asked his German opposite to see to the bombing of this bridge and help him establish his reputation among the Allied brass? Blade could inform this German officer each time the bridge was