Hanging On

by Dean Koontz

  He struck the water with an horrendous crash and went under. Water flowed in his mouth and nostrils, filling him up. Darkness pressed close. He could not tell for sure which way was up. He flailed, could not find air, tried to snort out the water he had swallowed, and succeeded only in swallowing more.

  Then someone grabbed him and rolled him onto his back, put an arm under his chin in the familiar lifesaving hold. In a moment, he was safe again, on his feet against the pillar.

  "Okay?" Lily whispered. It was she who had rescued him. She had lost her halter in the attempt. Her large, perfect breasts jutted up and out at him, all wet and shiny. The nipples were larger than he had ever seen them.

  He spat out some water. "Okay," he whispered back. He looked up at the bridge, and looked questioningly at her.

  She came closer. Her jugs squashed against his chest as she leaned over and whispered in his ear. "You didn't yell. They heard nothing."

  "I don't love you," he whispered.

  "Same here."

  "Not at all," he said.

  "Not the least little bit," she said.

  They smiled at each other.

  * * *

  8

  Because he was the slimmest, darkest, and quickest man among them, Vito Angelli was given the job of taking the spool of wire and the T-plunger up the sloped ravine wall to the rear of the village store, which was the nearest cover he would find up there.

  Major Kelly sent all the others out into the river, then drew the private close and risked a whisper. "Remember, there are two krauts guarding the eastern bridge approach. When you go over the crest, you'll be passing within ten feet of them."

  Angelli nodded his head vigorously. He was drenched and shivering, and he looked like the classic drowned rat. He was badly frightened.

  "If they see you and challenge you, don't play hero. Drop everything and run. To hell with blowing up the bridge. If you're seen, it won't matter any longer."

  Angelli nodded his head. He understood. Or he had palsy.

  "You see the T-plunger?" Kelly asked, pointing to the device where it stood on the shore.

  "Yeah," Vito said, teeth chattering.

  "Here's the wire." Kelly gave him the spool. "Make sure you hold it like this, so it continues to pay out. If you hold it wrong, it'll be jerked out of your hand, or you'll be tripped up."

  Vito nodded and started for shore. Then he turned and came back, leaned close to the major. "If I buy the farm... tell Nurse Pullit my last thoughts were about her."

  Kelly did not know what to say.

  "Will you tell her, sir?"

  "Vito-"

  "Promise, Major."

  Overhead, one of the SS guards laughed heartily at a Kamerad's Joke, and jackboots thumped on the board floor.

  Looking into Angelli's dark eyes, the major suddenly realized that the private's affair with Nurse Pullit was his method of hanging on. Kelly had his cheap philosophy, and Angelli had Nurse Pullit. One was no worse, no crazier than the other.

  "I'll tell her," Kelly said.

  "Thank you, sir."

  Angelli went ashore. He picked up the T-plunger and started up the slope, sliding sideways in the mud.

  Still shocked by his insight into Angelli's condition, Kelly turned away from the shore and the bridge and waded out into the river where the others waited. The men were so fascinated with Lily's bare, wet jugs that they did not even see him until he thumped each one on the shoulder. He lead them south again, the way they had come.

  They had no time to waste. If Vito made it, then there was no use watching him go. If he failed, they would not be able to help him, and they would become targets themselves.

  Lightning speared the earth and glazed the surface of the river and made them stand out like ink spots on a clean sheet of typewriter paper. Each of them waited for the chatter of guns, the bite of a bullet in the back...

  Major Kelly thought of brass beds.

  * * *

  9

  Six men and three nuns struggled out of the ravine at the same place where they had gone down nearly two hours ago. They were wet and muddy and worn out.

  Major Kelly led them northward along the ravine crest until they came back to the hospital bunker. The others went down the steps and slipped inside when Liverwright opened the door to them. The major continued north toward the rear of the village store.

  Angelli was waiting there. He had made it.

  "Never mind giving my last words to Nurse Pullit," he whispered happily. "I'll tell her myself."

  "Yeah," Kelly said. "Now let's get the job done."

  PART FIVE

  Hanging On

  Dawn - Dusk July 22,1944

  * * *

  1

  Dawn tinted the horizon even as Major Kelly and Vito Angelli were tying up the loose ends of the operation. And on his way back to the rectory, the major was forced to lie low while a Wehrmacht squad marched up and down St. Ignatius changing the sentries at the intersections. By the time he reached the churchyard, Kelly knew it was too light for him to return to his room by way of the rose lattice and the rear window. Even if Rotenhausen and Beckmann were not up yet-and they surely were-the chances of some guard on a nearby street spotting him on his climb to the porch roof were too great to be ignored.

  The bold approach was called for.

  Nearly half an hour after dawn, he entered the back of the church. He hurried through the sacristy, up onto the altar platform, down into the auditorium, and out the front door. He winced as the rain struck him anew. He paused only a second at the top of the church steps, then went down to the street.

  The Wehrmacht sentry on duty at B Street and the bridge road was wearing a green rain slicker and a disgusted look. He hunched his shoulders against the rain and paraded back and forth, putting as little into the duty as he could. He gave Kelly a brief smile but did not stop him, for he had just been posted and did not know that the priest had never passed from the rectory to the church.

  Kelly went up the porch steps, crossed the porch, went through the front door with the rain still stinging his back. In the rectory foyer, rivulets of water streamed from him onto the floorboards.

  General Adolph Rotenhausen was just then coming down the steps from the second floor, tamping tobacco into his pipe. "Father Picard! Where have you been at this hour, in this terrible weather?"

  "At the church, General," Kelly said.

  "Oh, of course," Rotenhausen said. "I suppose you have to get ready for Mass each morning."

  "For what?" Kelly asked.

  "Mass, of course," Rotenhausen said.

  Before Kelly could respond, the general's aides appeared at the top of the steps with the officer's belongings, which they brought down and took outside into the morning rain.

  Rotenhausen came to the open door, looked across the porch at the raindrops bouncing on the street. "Miserable day for travel." He looked at his watch. "But Standarten-führer Beckmann was out there an hour ago... Sometimes, I think those madmen deserve the world." He glanced at Kelly and, for the first time, saw how wet the priest was. "You couldn't be so drenched just from crossing the street, Father!"

  "Uh... I went for a walk," Kelly said.

  "In the rain?"

  "Rain is God's creation," Kelly improvised. "It is refreshing."

  Rotenhausen looked at Kelly's dripping suit, shook his head. He turned and continued to watch the rain slash in sheets across the bridge road.

  Also watching the storm, Kelly thought of Lily's wet breasts. For a moment, he was warm and happy... and then he realized he could not afford to love her. He had almost made a drastic mistake.

  Rotenhausen puffed on his pipe.

  Thunder rolled across the sky. Behind the steady drumming of the rain was the dinosaurian roar of Panzer engines as the convoy prepared to pull out.

  "We don't have to worry about Allied bombers today," Rotenhausen said.

  As he spoke, his aide ran up onto the porch. The man took a folded slic
ker from under his own raincoat, shook it out, and held it up for his chief. The general slipped his arms into the plastic sleeves and buttoned up, turned his collar high. He flipped his pipe upside down and tapped it against the door frame. Ashes fell on the wet porch floor.

  "Good luck at the front, sir," Major Kelly said.

  "Thank you, Father. You have been most gracious."

  "Not at all." Which was true.

  Rotenhausen smiled, nodded, and turned away. He and his aide went down the steps and east along the bridge road to the first tank in the long convoy.

  The rain continued to fall.

  A flash of lightning made shadows jump across the veranda floor.

  The first tank, Rotenhausen's tank, lurched into the middle of the road, tracks churning up mud and gravel, and started toward the bridge two and a half blocks away.

  Still, no alarm had been raised at the west end. Bobo Remlock had not yet arrived. Maybe the Panzers would all get across before Old Blood and Guts made the far side.

  Kelly left the front door. He hurried through the deserted house, passed through the kitchen and out onto the rear lawn.

  The cold rain hit him again, but he hardly noticed. He was too worried about getting his head blown off to be concerned also about catching a cold. His baggy trousers were sopping wet and hung on him like a pair of old-fashioned beach pantaloons for men.

  He passed through the hidden gate in the fence, and ran between two fake houses in which his men huddled fearfully. He crossed B Street, ran the length of the cemetery, and crossed A Street to the rear of the village store.

  Lieutenant Beame was watching for him and threw down a rope from the store roof. Kelly took hold of the rope, tested it, then climbed the fifteen feet of vertical wall to join the lieutenant in his observation post.

  Beame was not alone, though he should have been. Lily was there, too, braless beneath her habit. Pullit and Nathalie were behind Lily. Maurice was there, watching over his daughter, and Angelli was watching over Pullit. Danny Dew was sitting by the T-plunger with a rifle over his knees.

  "We couldn't let you face this alone," Angelli said.

  "Of course not," Kelly said.

  "We had to share the danger with you."

  "What else?" Kelly asked. "Just keep down. Don't stand up, or someone on the street will see you."

  "No sign of Old Blood and Guts," Beame said when Kelly knelt beside him.

  The village store was the best observation post for the coming showdown. It was the only structure in St. Ignatius with a flat roof-not because French country shops had flat roofs, but because they had simply run out of the necessary beams and shingles and had been unable to give the place anything but a flat roof. Furthermore, the store faced the bridge road, where all the action, if there were any, would transpire; and it was close enough to the bridge to allow them to establish the detonator here.

  Beside Beame, next to Danny Dew, the heavy T-plunger stood on the wet wood, waiting for its crossbar to be stroked down and the dynamite touched off beneath the nine-hundred-foot span.

  And now they were prepared to do just that.

  Kelly turned to Maurice. "You shouldn't be up here. You should be on the other side, waiting for Remlock."

  Maurice hesitated, looked at Nathalie, then at Beame. "You will see that they are kept apart?"

  "Yes, yes," Kelly said, impatiently.

  "Very well." Maurice went down the rope ladder and disappeared.

  Kelly wiped a hand over his face and looked east along the bridge road. Rotenhausen's convoy was pouring into the far end of the town. Already, the first Panzer was halfway past the convent, less than a block from then: position and little more than a block from the bridge. Behind the first Panzer was another, and another-then two long-barreled Jagdpanthers, two heavily armored cars with 75 mm cannons, then a motorcycle with sidecar which was darting in and out of the convoy, working its way to the front where it belonged. Rotenhausen was starting slowly, but he would reach the bridge in less than two minutes.

  Kelly saw that they would have to blow the span even if Bobo Remlock did not show up. If they took a chance and let Rotenhausen start across, and if Remlock showed up when some of the German tanks were already on the other side, there would be no way to avoid a battle that would level St. Ignatius-and kill everyone who pretended to live there.

  He stooped low on the roof, trying not to be seen, and he placed both hands on the T-plunger.

  "Already?" Lily asked.

  He nodded.

  "Just a minute, then." She took a rifle from beneath her voluminous habit. "I thought we all ought to be armed, if it comes down to that."

  "You're going to fight tanks with rifles?" Kelly asked.

  "Better than fighting them with rocks," she said.

  "I guess so."

  "I don't love you, Kelly."

  He kissed her, quickly. "I don't love you."

  To the east, the advance motorcycle escort weaved around the two leading tanks and shot out in front of the convoy with a loud growl. As Rotenhausen's Panzer churned by the last of the churchyard toward the A Street intersection, the motorcycle flashed past Kelly and the others, went over the bridge approach, and accelerated toward the west bank.

  Over there, six German soldiers armed with automatic rifles stood guard over the farside approach. The cycle with its two Wehrmacht soldiers sped out of the bridge and blurred past them, roared toward the bend in the road-and braked suddenly when the first of General Bobo Remlock's tanks, a British Cromwell, hove into view, cruising at top speed.

  "Here we go!" Danny Dew said, lying flat on his stomach and bringing his rifle up where he could use it.

  Rotenhausen's Panzer, the first in the German convoy, was through the A-Street intersection and on the approach to the bridge when the general saw the enemy tank. The Panzer bit into the cracked macadam and held on, chugging to a stop at the brink of the bridge, at the corner of the village store. Looking over the edge of the roof, Kelly and the others could see the top of Adolph Rotenhausen's head just four feet below.

  The rest of the German convoy slowed and stopped.

  Even while Rotenhausen's tank was jerking to a standstill, Kelly looked westward again. Only a few seconds had passed since the cycle had taken the lead in the German line and zoomed across the bridge, though Kelly could have sworn it was more like two or three hours. Over there, the motorcycle was still bearing down on the cruising Cromwell and trying to come to a full stop on the wet pavement. Abruptly, the front wheel came up. The cycle rose like a dancing bear, then toppled onto its side. The monstrous, British-made tank slowed a bit, though not much, and ran right over the screaming Wehrmacht cyclists, grinding them into the mud.

  Nathalie cried out.

  "Sadistic bastard," Lily hissed, staring at the Cromwell as if she could vaporize it with a look of pure hatred.

  "One guess who's commanding the Cromwell," Beame said.

  "Old Blood and Guts," Kelly said.

  "Yeah. Big Tex."

  "The Last of the Two-Fisted Cowboys."

  "The Big Ball of Barbed Wire himself."

  "The Latter-Day Sam Houston," Kelly said.

  "Yeah. The Fighting General."

  "Old Shit for Brains," Kelly said. "No doubt about it." He could not understand how he could go on like this with Beame. He had never been so terrified in his life. And he had a great many other terrors to stack this one up against.

  The six German riflemen on the far side turned and ran when the Cromwell crushed the cyclists and kept on coming. They were halfway back across the bridge now, every one of them a religious man no matter what his beliefs had been a few minutes ago.

  Behind the Cromwell, other Allied tanks loomed out of the curtain of gray rain: several Shermans, two British M-10s, another Cromwell, an armored car with twin cannon... Some of these left the road and deployed southward, all turning to face across the ravine, mammoth guns trained on the village and on the part of the German convoy which they
might be able to reach. The lead Cromwell and several other tanks remained on the road and stopped at the farside bridge approach, bottling it up.

  "Massah Kelly," Danny Dew said, "I do wish I was back in Georgia. Even dat sorrowful ol' place do seem better than this."

  It was an almost classic military problem. The Germans held the east bank of the river. The Allies held the west bank. And no one controlled the bridge between.

  The showdown.

  "If we get out of this," Beame whispered to Kelly. "I'm not going to take any of Maurice's guff. I'm going to ask Nathalie to marry me."

  "He'll eat you alive," Kelly said.

  "Once, he would have. Not now."

  "Good luck."

  "I won't need it," Beame said. "I know what I want now. Just so I live to have it."

  The wind gusted across the roof, stirred the nuns' habits, pummeled them with thousands of tiny, watery fists.

  To the south of the bridge on the other side of the gorge, one of the dark-brown M-10s elevated its blackened cannon to full boost. Kelly watched this without fully grasping the implications of the movement. A second later, one shell slammed out across the river. Just one. None of the other tanks opened fire, and the M-10 did not immediately follow through with a second round. The long shot arced high over the river and fell squarely into the building which was next to the store on A Street. The blast was a gigantic gong, then a compact ball of fire, and finally a violent wave of force that flung Kelly, Beame, and the others flat on their faces, even though they had already been kneeling. The armed T-plunger tipped over without setting off the dynamite under the bridge.

  The house which had taken the shell was chewed into toothpicks and spewed in all directions. The burning floor collapsed down into the hospital bunker where Tooley, Liverwright, Hagendorf, and Kowalski did not have a chance. They probably did not even have time to look up and see it tumbling in on them, Kelly thought. Just a great noise, heat, a flash of pain, and endless darkness.