Hanging on

in the bag recoiled from the sound of the major's voice and plunged deeper into the woods. Flailing at the bushes on all sides, he tripped on a tangle of vines and fell into a cluster of milkweed plants.
        "You there!" Kelly shouted.
        Stumbling to his feet, slapping at his own face as if he were angry with himself, the man started to run again. He got five feet before he took a low hanging pine branch across the neck and very nearly killed himself.
        "I don't understand," Kelly said.
        Coughing horribly, the man in the bag pushed past the offending tree. In a few steps, he hit a thrusting outcropping of waterworn limestone and went head over heels down a small hill, out of sight.
        Major Kelly stood there for several minutes, listening to the man smash and batter his way with brutal and self-destructive force farther into the barely yielding forest. Eventually, the noises grew faint, fainter still, and faded away altogether.
        Confused, Kelly returned to his tent and stretched out on his sleeping bag. But he could not sleep now.
        The Germans were drawing nearer by the minute, and already there were too many of his men with severe neuroses that required him to waste precious time away from the construction of the fake village. There was Angelli mooning after Nurse Pullit, and Beame daydreaming about a girl he could not have, and Hagendorf drunk and unpredictable… and now there was this striking new direction which Lieutenant Slade's madness had taken, this running around in the middle of the night wearing an old potato sack over his head… He had known, watching the man in the bag nearly kill himself in the woods, that it was Slade. But knowing did not help. He still could not explain this new streak in the lieutenant's psychosis. All it could mean was more trouble.
        And they already had more trouble than they could handle.

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    9
        
        Major Kelly spent all morning running from one end of the clearing to the other, checking up on the work crews and solving construction problems with a rapidity and cleverness he had never known he possessed. Nothing could stump him. It was exhilarating-and it was killing him.
        Half the engineering problems should have gone to Beame, but the lieutenant was not functioning at his best level. He probably would not be all right again until he found a way to bypass Maurice and get to Nathalie. The girl really was a gorgeous little piece, Kelly thought. But how could Beame let her good looks get between him and the job at hand? Didn't he realize that death was staring them in the face and preparing to bite their heads off?
        Most everyone else realized this. With the midnight deadline swiftly approaching, the other men worked harder and faster than they had ever worked in their lives. The camp, the slowly fleshing skeleton of the fake village, hummed with fear and dread. The brutal sun cut through the clouds and made the earth sizzle, but not even that could burn away the cold sweat on the backs of their necks. Beame was about the only goldbricker today.
        Besides Angelli, of course. Vito was supposed to be working on the crisis that had arisen with the village school. The two-story building, which was framed completely and walled on three sides, had begun to sway slightly in the wind and threatened to collapse now that it was nearly done. Angelli should have been exploring the beams in the school roof-which only he could do quickly and surely-and should have been directing his workers toward the trouble spots he found. Instead, Angelli was up at the hospital bunker romancing Nurse Pullit. As a result, his French work crew stood idle. And the men waiting to finish the siding job on the school were also put behind schedule.
        Kelly ran the whole way to the hospital, cursing Angelli's neuroses and his romantic Italian blood. When he came through the bunker door, he saw the lovebirds pressed into the corner on his right. They were giggling. Vito was trying to unhook Nurse Pullit's bra through the thin, silky fabric of her uniform.
        "Vito!"
        Angelli jumped back and dropped his hands from Pullit, looked as shamefaced as a small boy caught at the cookie jar. Nurse Pullit blushed and made a show of straightening the rumpled white dress.
        "You come with me," Kelly said, turning and stalking out of the bunker. When he had Angelli outside, marching him back to the school,