Hanging on Read Free Page B

Stukas bomb the bridge but not our positions? The machines, all our supplies, stand unharmed so we can rebuild the bridge again. Could it be the Krauts are playing some sort of game with us?"
        "What would their purpose be?" Kelly asked.
        Slade frowned. "I haven't worked that out yet, but I will." He looked at his watch, snapped his head up so suddenly he'd have lost his toupee, if he were wearing one, and turned back toward HQ. "General Blade will be coming through in less than four minutes." He trotted away.
        Beame, who wasn't given to swearing that much, said, "That fucking little creep gives me the fucking horrors."
        "Let's go talk to the general," Major Kelly said.

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    4
        
        The big wireless transmitter was a malevolent, hulking monster that always intimidated Major Kelly. It hummed like a swarm of bees, singing some monotonous and evil melody that echoed ghostily behind every voice that came and went over its open channel. Perhaps, if he spoke to someone other than General Blade on the set, it would not seem so monstrous. If he could talk to Betty Grable or Veronica Lake or to his mom, it might seem, instead, like a big old shaggy dog of a radio. But there was only General Blade.
        Once they had exchanged call signs, General Blade said, "Blade calling Slade for Kelly." Then he laughed. Finished laughing, he said, "Slade? Blade. This is the Blade and Slade Show, and our first performer today is Major Walter Kelly."
        "I can't take it again," Lieutenant Beame said, bolting for the door. It slammed noisily behind him.
        "General Blade calling, sir," Lieutenant Slade said. He looked quite serious. He never seemed to see anything odd in the General's insane patter.
        Maybe Slade had syph too. Maybe he was already rotten in the center of his brain, crumbling and almost dead.
        Kelly sat down in the single metal chair that decorated the radio room, looked around at the rough board walls, the dust, the spider webs, the board floor. The chair was cold against his bare behind, but it wasn't the sole cause of the shivers that coursed through him. He lifted the table mike and said, "They bombed the bridge again, General."
        "They bombed what?" General Blade asked.
        In a number of ways, Kelly thought, Blade and Slade were similar. The lieutenant was always telling you what you already knew, while Blade was always asking you to repeat what he had already heard. Perhaps Lieutenant Slade was the bastard son of General Blade; perhaps both of them had contracted VD from the same woman: Blade's mistress and Slade's mother.
        "They bombed the bridge, sir," Kelly repeated.
        "How?" Blade asked.
        "With three airplanes and several bombs," Major Kelly said.
        "Three airplanes, Kelly?"
        Kelly said, "They appeared to be airplanes, sir, yes. They had wings and flew. I'm pretty certain they were airplanes, sir."
        "Was that sarcasm, Kelly?" the general croaked through the hulking monster on the table before Kelly.
        "No, sir. They were all Stukas, sir."
        After a long silence, when Kelly was about to ask if he had died in the middle of the Blade and Slade Show, the general said, "If there were three planes, but none of them attacked your buildings, and all of them dropped on the bridge, doesn't that tell you something interesting?"
        "Maybe they like us and don't want to hurt us, sir."
        The general was silent even longer this time. When he spoke, he spoke gently, as if to a child. "One of their own people is there with you-an informer."
        Kelly looked at Slade who smiled and vigorously nodded his thin, pointed head. Keep it up, Kelly thought. Keep shaking your head, and maybe it'll fall off. Maybe the syph will have rotted through your neck, and your head will fall off, so grin and shake your head.
        To the microphone, Kelly said, "Informer?"
        "How else do