The Mission from Oz 4/4
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Chapter 3
Unsurprisingly, Toto was sound asleep by the time Hogan coasted to a stop on the road outside of Stalag 13. “Hate to wake ’im,” MacGyver murmured before proceeding to do just that.
Toto roused only just enough for MacGyver to help him out of the car and, with MacGyver’s guidance, to stumble after Hogan to the stump that marked the entrance to the emergency tunnel. There they had to wait for a patrol to pass and duck a searchlight sweep before Hogan could open the trap door in the stump while MacGyver tried to rouse Toto further. Then, by unspoken mutual consent, MacGyver started down the ladder first so as to guide Toto from behind, while Hogan brought up the rear. When he reached the ground himself, he found Carter and MacGyver half-carrying Toto to a nearby cot, while LeBeau approached with coffee and Kinch looked expectantly at him from the radio.
Hogan took a drink of coffee with a grateful nod to LeBeau, then announced, “Good news. Maj. Künzel’s one of our boys-OSS, codename Scarecrow.”
Kinch’s eyebrows shot up. “That is good news, sir. Explains a lot.”
“Bad news is, he hasn’t been able to get any information out of Toeppich as to who his contacts are in England. Worse news is, Toto’s blindness appears to be permanent, so we’ll have to take extra precautions when we take him to the plane.”
“Well, we’ve been talking to London, and their good news is, Col. Forbes is close to nailing the spy ring connected to the saboteur on their end. So if Scarecrow can take care of Toeppich after we spring Dalton, that’ll make it a clean sweep.”
“Good. Suggest that to Conlon, will you? Oh, and make sure to tell him that Toto is safe.”
Kinch nodded. “Right, sir.” And he turned his attention to the telegraph key.
“Charges for tomorrow are all ready, sir,” Carter reported as he and MacGyver joined Hogan at the radio desk. “The hard part’s gonna be placing the explosives on the straps holding the plane on the truck.”
Hogan hummed thoughtfully.
MacGyver swallowed a drink of coffee and asked, “Plastic explosives?”
Carter blinked. “Er, yes, sir.”
“Put ’em on the clasps rather than on the straps themselves.”
“Hey, that’s a great idea! That way they’ll stick better, and we won’t have to worry about whether the strap’ll burn all the way through!”
Hogan nodded his approval. “All on one timer?”
“Yes, sir. That’ll make it easier to be sure they’ll all go off at once. And I’ll stagger the times so the ones on the staff car go off first, then the ones on the truck.”
“We’ll need to make sure the wires aren’t jarred out once the vehicles are on the road,” MacGyver noted.
“Oh, don’t worry about that, sir.”
“Carter’s the best demolition man I’ve ever worked with,” Hogan noted. “We’ve never had a problem with his wiring holding.”
Carter practically glowed at the praise.
MacGyver grimaced. “Yeah, well, with my luck, something’s bound to go wrong tomorrow.”
“Speaking of which.” Hogan drained his coffee cup. “We’ve still got one more conversation to have before we can sleep tonight.”
MacGyver sighed, nodded, drained his own cup, and followed Hogan to the ladder that led to Dalton’s cell. At its foot, however, he caught Hogan’s arm. “I just had the weirdest... this guy Dalton. His first name wouldn’t be Jack, would it?”
Hogan blinked. “Yes, actually.”
Looking like he’d swallowed a lemon whole, MacGyver stormed up the ladder and burst into Dalton’s cell, somehow managing not to make too much of a clatter in his haste. Hogan followed to find MacGyver picking up one end of the sleeping Dalton’s cot, then tilting it with enough force to dump Dalton on the floor. Only Hogan’s hand clamping quickly over Dalton’s mouth kept him from yelling loudly enough to summon a guard.
“Keep your voices down,” Hogan warned them both and took his hand off Dalton’s mouth.
“Hey, what’s the big-” Dalton began until MacGyver crouched in front of him. “Mac!!”
“Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t dead?!” MacGyver demanded.
“What do you mean, why didn’t I-dead when?!”
“Pearl Harbor!”
Dalton looked baffled. “I wasn’t at Pearl Harbor!”
“Like hell you weren’t!”
“No, no, wait, Mac, listen. I did a little air freight work on the side, off the books, right?”
“You mean smuggling.”
Dalton put a hand to his chest. “That’s an ugly word, and in front of an officer, too.”
“This conversation doesn’t leave this room,” Hogan noted.
“Thank you, sir. Anyway, I had a delivery to make to Tahiti, and as you know, that’s a pretty long flight, even for a sea plane-can’t make the round trip in one day. I left Pearl on December 6, stayed the night, and was just getting set to fly back when I heard about the attack. Next thing I know, I’m on a sub headed for Burma, tryin’ to talk somebody into lettin’ me join the Flying Tigers.”
“Flying Tigers?” MacGyver echoed incredulously.
“Yeah, flew with them for about six months before I got shipped back to the States to join the 56th as a test pilot.”
MacGyver stared at him for a moment. “The bad thing is, as beat up as you are, I can’t even tell if you’re lying!”
Hogan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“His left eye. It always twitches when he lies.”
Hogan looked from agent to pilot and back. “You’ve known each other how long?”
“Since high school,” they chorused, and MacGyver got up just long enough to sit down on the cot with a huff.
Dalton, for his part, sat up with a grunt and a chuckle. “Y’know the really good stories Toeppich doesn’t want to hear? This guy’s in most of ’em. Yeah, we went all over the world together after college, just me and Mac and a girl called Mike Forrester, like the Three Musketeers.”
“Don’t remind me,” MacGyver snapped. “You still shoulda told someone you were all right.”
“I’ve been a little busy, Mac!”
“You coulda sent me a postcard!”
Their voices were on the point of becoming audible outside the cell, and Hogan decided it was time to intervene. “That’s enough,” he stated firmly.
MacGyver slumped back against the wall with another huff, and Dalton crossed his arms like a sulky teenager.
“Whatever personal problems you two have, you need to shelve them right now, at least for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Because you can’t handle two separate escapes at the same time,” MacGyver parroted from their conversation with Stetson. “I know.”
Dalton perked up. “Escape? Aw, Mac, you came all this way just to get me?”
“No,” MacGyver replied, and Dalton wilted a little. “I came to get somebody else. I didn’t even know you were here until five minutes ago. Besides, Hogan coulda handled your escape on his own.”
Dalton actually pouted.
And MacGyver, after a moment’s hesitation, thawed. “Actually, Jack... we need you to fly us outta here.”
Dalton straightened with the air of a dog perking its ears and wagging its tail in anticipation of a walk. “Us? Who’s us?”
“You, me, and the agent I came for.”
“You betcha!” Dalton saluted. “Fly-By-Night Airlines, at your service! Where’s the plane?”
“Not so fast,” Hogan interrupted. “We’re gonna have to use your plane, which is currently in Düsseldorf, and you can’t escape until you’re on the road to Berlin.”
“Oh. But... how do I escape out the back of a moving truck?”
Hogan outlined the planned sabotage of the staff car and the plane truck, the ambush for cover, and the calculated risk of using the road as a runway. Dalton nodded his understanding all the way through.
“Gotta admit,” he stated when Hogan had finished, “that’s a better plan than I had.”
Hogan couldn’t really see MacGyver’s eyes, but from the way his head moved, Hogan suspected he’d greeted that with an eyeroll. “Jack, your plans always end up with you landing in jail somewhere. That’s kinda the opposite of an escape.”
“W-ell....”
“Look, just... tell me straight up you can run better now than you could in high school.”
“You kiddin’? When there’s people shootin’ at me, I’m a regular Glenn Hardin!”
Hogan looked at him, confused. “Don’t you mean Glenn Cunningham?”
Dalton shook his head. “Cunningham was distance. For this, you want hurdles.”*
Hogan conceded the point with a tilt of his head. “My main question is fuel. We’re pretty far into Germany, and I don’t know if our man in Düsseldorf had your plane refueled as well as repaired.”
Dalton shrugged. “For a one-way trip, straight shot to Dover, we should be able to make it, even with the extra weight of three people. Already dropped my payload, and two men won’t weigh any more than one bomb. Plus, I’d barely used a quarter of a tank when I went down, and this model’s got expanded fuel capacity. Might bring ’er in on fumes, but I’ll bring ’er in. Hard part’s gonna be stayin’ below radar the whole way, or at least far enough west to pick up an escort.”
“We’ll alert the RAF to watch for you.”
“Oh, I say!” Dalton exclaimed in a tolerable British accent. “Good show, old bean!-Er, thank you, sir,” he corrected in his normal voice.
Hogan could practically hear MacGyver roll his eyes this time. For his own part, he sighed. “All right, let’s all get some sleep. Roll call’s just a few hours away, even with the Martian vapors.”
MacGyver and Dalton bade each other a quiet good night as MacGyver followed Hogan down the ladder and closed up the tunnel entrance behind them. Then the younger agent braced himself against the ladder and blew the air out of his cheeks, as if collecting himself.
“You all right?” Hogan asked.
“Pete was in Manila in December of ’41,” MacGyver replied quietly. “Got captured when the Japanese took the islands. Took me forever to find a way to get to ’im, get ’im out. At the same time, I was searchin’ all over Pearl tryin’ to find some sign of Jack. Nobody’d seen ’im, knew where he was. His hangar’d been bombed. I... I really thought....” His voice broke, and he stopped.
Hogan put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, we checked him out with London. He really was in the Flying Tigers for a short time.”
MacGyver nodded. “Thanks.” He took a deep breath and blew it out again. “I’ll forgive ’im. Sometime. Probably about the time we touch down in Dover tomorrow,” he added with a wry smile.
Hogan chuckled. “C’mon. Get some sleep.”
“Yes, sir,” MacGyver replied and let Hogan steer him into a cot next to Toto’s.
Reveille did indeed come far too soon, though mercifully not at daybreak, which was insanely early this far north at this time of year. Hogan did manage to catch a few hours beforehand, though, and Klink ordered roll call to be held in the barracks that morning, which meant Hogan technically got to sleep in for another couple of hours before hearing through the coffee pot, which housed a speaker connected to a bug in Klink’s office, that Toeppich was leaving Düsseldorf. That gave the prisoners time enough to rouse their guests, get them into American uniforms, gather the necessary supplies, and be ready to move when the convoy arrived at Stalag 13. As the trucks drove in, MacGyver and Toto bade their hosts a fond farewell... and then it was time to move.
Hogan, for his part, watched through the barracks windows as the prisoners who weren’t supposed to have the Martian vapors milled around the compound, seemingly carrying out their normal routine while Toeppich went into Klink’s office to demand that Dalton be handed back to him. Predictably, Klink tried to stall Toeppich’s request by stating that Dalton wasn’t well enough to move. Then, at a signal from Kinch, a scuffle broke out that drew the guards away from the convoy, and the other prisoners went to work. Newkirk slapped a bomb and timer on the engine of the staff car; on the flatbed, LeBeau put the plastic explosives on the strap clasps and stole the chock blocks, while Carter put another on the back axle and ran the wiring in record time. And at the same time, a third cluster of prisoners hustled MacGyver and Toto over to the plane and got them situated and hidden inside before Schultz came along to chase them away and break up the fight.
“All set?” Hogan asked when his men came back in.
“No problems, sir,” Newkirk reported.
Also as predicted, that was the point at which Toeppich came storming out of Klink’s office and over to the cooler. Moments later, he came back, dragging Dalton by his collar. Dalton put up the best performance he could of still being sick, but Toeppich was having none of it and shoved Dalton into the waiting grasp of the guards around the smaller truck. Within thirty seconds, Dalton, Toeppich, and the guards were all in their respective vehicles, and the convoy turned around and left again.
Hogan pulled the shutters closed. “Let’s go. We’ve gotta be back by noon roll call.”
Kinch opened the tunnel entrance under the bunk he shared with LeBeau, and the prisoners participating in the ambush rushed down to change into civilian clothes and gather their weapons and walkie-talkies. From there, it was child’s play to get out through the emergency tunnel and into the woods, although they had to dodge several patrols on the way to the ambush site. Hogan stationed lookouts further up the road to watch for the convoy while Carter and Newkirk did some final rigging... and then there was nothing to do but wait. Carter kept an anxious eye on his watch, but Hogan kept his eye on the road.
Just as Carter was really beginning to fret that his bombs might have gone off early, the first lookout reported the convoy’s approach. That was both a relief-nothing had gone wrong yet-and a further source of tension in the air as showtime grew nearer. The staff car passed the second checkpoint, then the third, and Hogan could hear the truck engines approaching as the staff car came into view through the trees.
“Hold your fire until they get Dalton out of the truck,” he reminded his men softly. “If the second bomb fails, shoot the straps off and let Dalton worry about the takeoff.”
The convoy came closer... the staff car drove past Hogan and slowed down so as not to get separated... the tail of the plane became visible....
BLAM!
The staff car swerved and ran smoking into the ditch on the far side of the road. The trucks, which had already been slowing down, came to a halt as Toeppich and his driver got out of the car, swearing loudly in German.
BLAM!
The flatbed sank backward as the axle sheared away, and the plane rolled down it until its front wheels touched tarmac. One strap still held.
“The Underground!” Toeppich yelled toward the smaller truck. “Get going!”
There was a chonk as the second driver put the smaller truck into gear, and Newkirk and LeBeau promptly shot out a tire each. The truck listed dangerously as the tires deflated.
Toeppich swore again. “Out! Out!”
The guards swarmed out of the smaller truck but stopped Dalton from following.
“Now!” Hogan ordered.
The prisoners opened fire with a combination of real rifles and firecrackers. Olson shot off the remaining strap; Hogan plugged Toeppich in the shoulder. In the confusion, Dalton managed to clock the guard nearest the truck with his own rifle and get several feet from the truck before any of the other guards spotted him. The prisoners increased their covering fire, but a couple of the guards fired after Dalton as he sprinted to the plane. The plane itself started up seemingly on its own-but more likely due to MacGyver-while Dalton scrambled up the side of the flatbed and over the wing to the front of the cockpit. Then Hogan heard a yelp that was probably a sign that Dalton had been hit. Yet a moment later, Dalton hauled himself into the cockpit, shut the canopy, flashed a thumbs-up, and started taxiing quickly down the road.
“Stop him! STOP HIM!!” Toeppich shrieked.
The guards tried to give chase, but the prisoners redoubled their fire and managed to at least wing all of the pursuers. And seconds later, the plane took off with a triumphant roar. Grinning, Carter used a detonator box to set off his last round of fireworks on the far side of the road, and the prisoners disappeared back toward camp while Toeppich and his men fired wildly in the wrong direction. Once they were well out of earshot and rifle range, Hogan radioed Kinch to alert the RAF.
That afternoon, once health and harmony were restored to Stalag 13, Hogan sat in his office enjoying a cup of coffee and listening to Klink’s end of a telephone argument with Toeppich. “I don’t care if you do report this to Maj. Künzel!” Klink was thundering in German. “My record stands, and the reputation of Stalag 13 speaks for itself. If anyone is to blame, it is you and your men for not maintaining constant vigilance while Dalton and his plane were in your custody.”
Toeppich yelled loudly enough for his voice, though not his words, to be audible even on the bug.
“You dare to threaten a senior officer, Toeppich?! I will have you broken for this! Yes! The Russian Front-if you’re lucky.” And Klink slammed down the receiver.
“Let’s ’ear it for our favorite Kraut,” Newkirk quipped from the office door.
Hogan chuckled. “What’s up, Newkirk?”
“Kinch asked to see you, sir. Message from London.”
“All right.” Hogan took another drink of coffee and followed Newkirk down to the radio room.
“Here he comes,” Kinch was saying into the microphone. “Stand by.” He took off his headset and handed both it and the microphone to Hogan. “It’s Tin Man, sir.”
Hogan nodded and lifted the headset to his ear and the microphone to his mouth. “Go ahead, Tin Man.”
“Just wanted to check in, Papa Bear,” MacGyver’s voice replied. “Toto’s at the hospital gettin’ checked out, and it looks like the Jack of Spades has used up another of his nine lives.”
“You crashed?”
“No, actually, the flight was the easy part. Made it with fuel to spare. No, he took some lead before we got in the air-nothin’ serious, just a couple o’ grazes, but deep enough that he’s gonna need stitches. Gives him some new material for lyin’ to girls.”
Hogan laughed.
“Hey, listen. Thanks for all you and your men did.”
“Didn’t feel like much,” Hogan admitted.
“It was enough. I couldn’ta made it without you.”
Hogan smiled. “Tell Toto to get well soon.”
“He will now.”
“And if you’re ever in the neighborhood again, look us up.”
“Let’s make it after the war,” Tin Man answered with an audible grin and signed off.
“Everything all right, sir?” Newkirk asked as Hogan handed the microphone and headset back to Kinch.
“Yep,” Hogan confirmed. “But something tells me Tin Man’s already planning to take Toto back to Washington and make sure he stays there.”
“That glaucoma’s a bloody awful disease.”
“I know. But there’s one thing that makes it better.”
“Wot’s that, sir?”
Hogan put one hand on Newkirk’s shoulder and the other on Kinch’s. “Friends.”
The three men shared a smile and then went back to work.
* Both Cunningham, long renowned as the greatest American mile runner, and Hardin, a world-champion hurdler, medaled in the 1936 Berlin Olympics; Cunningham took silver in the 1500-meter race, while Hardin won gold in the 400-meter hurdles.
Chapter 3
Unsurprisingly, Toto was sound asleep by the time Hogan coasted to a stop on the road outside of Stalag 13. “Hate to wake ’im,” MacGyver murmured before proceeding to do just that.
Toto roused only just enough for MacGyver to help him out of the car and, with MacGyver’s guidance, to stumble after Hogan to the stump that marked the entrance to the emergency tunnel. There they had to wait for a patrol to pass and duck a searchlight sweep before Hogan could open the trap door in the stump while MacGyver tried to rouse Toto further. Then, by unspoken mutual consent, MacGyver started down the ladder first so as to guide Toto from behind, while Hogan brought up the rear. When he reached the ground himself, he found Carter and MacGyver half-carrying Toto to a nearby cot, while LeBeau approached with coffee and Kinch looked expectantly at him from the radio.
Hogan took a drink of coffee with a grateful nod to LeBeau, then announced, “Good news. Maj. Künzel’s one of our boys-OSS, codename Scarecrow.”
Kinch’s eyebrows shot up. “That is good news, sir. Explains a lot.”
“Bad news is, he hasn’t been able to get any information out of Toeppich as to who his contacts are in England. Worse news is, Toto’s blindness appears to be permanent, so we’ll have to take extra precautions when we take him to the plane.”
“Well, we’ve been talking to London, and their good news is, Col. Forbes is close to nailing the spy ring connected to the saboteur on their end. So if Scarecrow can take care of Toeppich after we spring Dalton, that’ll make it a clean sweep.”
“Good. Suggest that to Conlon, will you? Oh, and make sure to tell him that Toto is safe.”
Kinch nodded. “Right, sir.” And he turned his attention to the telegraph key.
“Charges for tomorrow are all ready, sir,” Carter reported as he and MacGyver joined Hogan at the radio desk. “The hard part’s gonna be placing the explosives on the straps holding the plane on the truck.”
Hogan hummed thoughtfully.
MacGyver swallowed a drink of coffee and asked, “Plastic explosives?”
Carter blinked. “Er, yes, sir.”
“Put ’em on the clasps rather than on the straps themselves.”
“Hey, that’s a great idea! That way they’ll stick better, and we won’t have to worry about whether the strap’ll burn all the way through!”
Hogan nodded his approval. “All on one timer?”
“Yes, sir. That’ll make it easier to be sure they’ll all go off at once. And I’ll stagger the times so the ones on the staff car go off first, then the ones on the truck.”
“We’ll need to make sure the wires aren’t jarred out once the vehicles are on the road,” MacGyver noted.
“Oh, don’t worry about that, sir.”
“Carter’s the best demolition man I’ve ever worked with,” Hogan noted. “We’ve never had a problem with his wiring holding.”
Carter practically glowed at the praise.
MacGyver grimaced. “Yeah, well, with my luck, something’s bound to go wrong tomorrow.”
“Speaking of which.” Hogan drained his coffee cup. “We’ve still got one more conversation to have before we can sleep tonight.”
MacGyver sighed, nodded, drained his own cup, and followed Hogan to the ladder that led to Dalton’s cell. At its foot, however, he caught Hogan’s arm. “I just had the weirdest... this guy Dalton. His first name wouldn’t be Jack, would it?”
Hogan blinked. “Yes, actually.”
Looking like he’d swallowed a lemon whole, MacGyver stormed up the ladder and burst into Dalton’s cell, somehow managing not to make too much of a clatter in his haste. Hogan followed to find MacGyver picking up one end of the sleeping Dalton’s cot, then tilting it with enough force to dump Dalton on the floor. Only Hogan’s hand clamping quickly over Dalton’s mouth kept him from yelling loudly enough to summon a guard.
“Keep your voices down,” Hogan warned them both and took his hand off Dalton’s mouth.
“Hey, what’s the big-” Dalton began until MacGyver crouched in front of him. “Mac!!”
“Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t dead?!” MacGyver demanded.
“What do you mean, why didn’t I-dead when?!”
“Pearl Harbor!”
Dalton looked baffled. “I wasn’t at Pearl Harbor!”
“Like hell you weren’t!”
“No, no, wait, Mac, listen. I did a little air freight work on the side, off the books, right?”
“You mean smuggling.”
Dalton put a hand to his chest. “That’s an ugly word, and in front of an officer, too.”
“This conversation doesn’t leave this room,” Hogan noted.
“Thank you, sir. Anyway, I had a delivery to make to Tahiti, and as you know, that’s a pretty long flight, even for a sea plane-can’t make the round trip in one day. I left Pearl on December 6, stayed the night, and was just getting set to fly back when I heard about the attack. Next thing I know, I’m on a sub headed for Burma, tryin’ to talk somebody into lettin’ me join the Flying Tigers.”
“Flying Tigers?” MacGyver echoed incredulously.
“Yeah, flew with them for about six months before I got shipped back to the States to join the 56th as a test pilot.”
MacGyver stared at him for a moment. “The bad thing is, as beat up as you are, I can’t even tell if you’re lying!”
Hogan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“His left eye. It always twitches when he lies.”
Hogan looked from agent to pilot and back. “You’ve known each other how long?”
“Since high school,” they chorused, and MacGyver got up just long enough to sit down on the cot with a huff.
Dalton, for his part, sat up with a grunt and a chuckle. “Y’know the really good stories Toeppich doesn’t want to hear? This guy’s in most of ’em. Yeah, we went all over the world together after college, just me and Mac and a girl called Mike Forrester, like the Three Musketeers.”
“Don’t remind me,” MacGyver snapped. “You still shoulda told someone you were all right.”
“I’ve been a little busy, Mac!”
“You coulda sent me a postcard!”
Their voices were on the point of becoming audible outside the cell, and Hogan decided it was time to intervene. “That’s enough,” he stated firmly.
MacGyver slumped back against the wall with another huff, and Dalton crossed his arms like a sulky teenager.
“Whatever personal problems you two have, you need to shelve them right now, at least for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Because you can’t handle two separate escapes at the same time,” MacGyver parroted from their conversation with Stetson. “I know.”
Dalton perked up. “Escape? Aw, Mac, you came all this way just to get me?”
“No,” MacGyver replied, and Dalton wilted a little. “I came to get somebody else. I didn’t even know you were here until five minutes ago. Besides, Hogan coulda handled your escape on his own.”
Dalton actually pouted.
And MacGyver, after a moment’s hesitation, thawed. “Actually, Jack... we need you to fly us outta here.”
Dalton straightened with the air of a dog perking its ears and wagging its tail in anticipation of a walk. “Us? Who’s us?”
“You, me, and the agent I came for.”
“You betcha!” Dalton saluted. “Fly-By-Night Airlines, at your service! Where’s the plane?”
“Not so fast,” Hogan interrupted. “We’re gonna have to use your plane, which is currently in Düsseldorf, and you can’t escape until you’re on the road to Berlin.”
“Oh. But... how do I escape out the back of a moving truck?”
Hogan outlined the planned sabotage of the staff car and the plane truck, the ambush for cover, and the calculated risk of using the road as a runway. Dalton nodded his understanding all the way through.
“Gotta admit,” he stated when Hogan had finished, “that’s a better plan than I had.”
Hogan couldn’t really see MacGyver’s eyes, but from the way his head moved, Hogan suspected he’d greeted that with an eyeroll. “Jack, your plans always end up with you landing in jail somewhere. That’s kinda the opposite of an escape.”
“W-ell....”
“Look, just... tell me straight up you can run better now than you could in high school.”
“You kiddin’? When there’s people shootin’ at me, I’m a regular Glenn Hardin!”
Hogan looked at him, confused. “Don’t you mean Glenn Cunningham?”
Dalton shook his head. “Cunningham was distance. For this, you want hurdles.”*
Hogan conceded the point with a tilt of his head. “My main question is fuel. We’re pretty far into Germany, and I don’t know if our man in Düsseldorf had your plane refueled as well as repaired.”
Dalton shrugged. “For a one-way trip, straight shot to Dover, we should be able to make it, even with the extra weight of three people. Already dropped my payload, and two men won’t weigh any more than one bomb. Plus, I’d barely used a quarter of a tank when I went down, and this model’s got expanded fuel capacity. Might bring ’er in on fumes, but I’ll bring ’er in. Hard part’s gonna be stayin’ below radar the whole way, or at least far enough west to pick up an escort.”
“We’ll alert the RAF to watch for you.”
“Oh, I say!” Dalton exclaimed in a tolerable British accent. “Good show, old bean!-Er, thank you, sir,” he corrected in his normal voice.
Hogan could practically hear MacGyver roll his eyes this time. For his own part, he sighed. “All right, let’s all get some sleep. Roll call’s just a few hours away, even with the Martian vapors.”
MacGyver and Dalton bade each other a quiet good night as MacGyver followed Hogan down the ladder and closed up the tunnel entrance behind them. Then the younger agent braced himself against the ladder and blew the air out of his cheeks, as if collecting himself.
“You all right?” Hogan asked.
“Pete was in Manila in December of ’41,” MacGyver replied quietly. “Got captured when the Japanese took the islands. Took me forever to find a way to get to ’im, get ’im out. At the same time, I was searchin’ all over Pearl tryin’ to find some sign of Jack. Nobody’d seen ’im, knew where he was. His hangar’d been bombed. I... I really thought....” His voice broke, and he stopped.
Hogan put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, we checked him out with London. He really was in the Flying Tigers for a short time.”
MacGyver nodded. “Thanks.” He took a deep breath and blew it out again. “I’ll forgive ’im. Sometime. Probably about the time we touch down in Dover tomorrow,” he added with a wry smile.
Hogan chuckled. “C’mon. Get some sleep.”
“Yes, sir,” MacGyver replied and let Hogan steer him into a cot next to Toto’s.
Reveille did indeed come far too soon, though mercifully not at daybreak, which was insanely early this far north at this time of year. Hogan did manage to catch a few hours beforehand, though, and Klink ordered roll call to be held in the barracks that morning, which meant Hogan technically got to sleep in for another couple of hours before hearing through the coffee pot, which housed a speaker connected to a bug in Klink’s office, that Toeppich was leaving Düsseldorf. That gave the prisoners time enough to rouse their guests, get them into American uniforms, gather the necessary supplies, and be ready to move when the convoy arrived at Stalag 13. As the trucks drove in, MacGyver and Toto bade their hosts a fond farewell... and then it was time to move.
Hogan, for his part, watched through the barracks windows as the prisoners who weren’t supposed to have the Martian vapors milled around the compound, seemingly carrying out their normal routine while Toeppich went into Klink’s office to demand that Dalton be handed back to him. Predictably, Klink tried to stall Toeppich’s request by stating that Dalton wasn’t well enough to move. Then, at a signal from Kinch, a scuffle broke out that drew the guards away from the convoy, and the other prisoners went to work. Newkirk slapped a bomb and timer on the engine of the staff car; on the flatbed, LeBeau put the plastic explosives on the strap clasps and stole the chock blocks, while Carter put another on the back axle and ran the wiring in record time. And at the same time, a third cluster of prisoners hustled MacGyver and Toto over to the plane and got them situated and hidden inside before Schultz came along to chase them away and break up the fight.
“All set?” Hogan asked when his men came back in.
“No problems, sir,” Newkirk reported.
Also as predicted, that was the point at which Toeppich came storming out of Klink’s office and over to the cooler. Moments later, he came back, dragging Dalton by his collar. Dalton put up the best performance he could of still being sick, but Toeppich was having none of it and shoved Dalton into the waiting grasp of the guards around the smaller truck. Within thirty seconds, Dalton, Toeppich, and the guards were all in their respective vehicles, and the convoy turned around and left again.
Hogan pulled the shutters closed. “Let’s go. We’ve gotta be back by noon roll call.”
Kinch opened the tunnel entrance under the bunk he shared with LeBeau, and the prisoners participating in the ambush rushed down to change into civilian clothes and gather their weapons and walkie-talkies. From there, it was child’s play to get out through the emergency tunnel and into the woods, although they had to dodge several patrols on the way to the ambush site. Hogan stationed lookouts further up the road to watch for the convoy while Carter and Newkirk did some final rigging... and then there was nothing to do but wait. Carter kept an anxious eye on his watch, but Hogan kept his eye on the road.
Just as Carter was really beginning to fret that his bombs might have gone off early, the first lookout reported the convoy’s approach. That was both a relief-nothing had gone wrong yet-and a further source of tension in the air as showtime grew nearer. The staff car passed the second checkpoint, then the third, and Hogan could hear the truck engines approaching as the staff car came into view through the trees.
“Hold your fire until they get Dalton out of the truck,” he reminded his men softly. “If the second bomb fails, shoot the straps off and let Dalton worry about the takeoff.”
The convoy came closer... the staff car drove past Hogan and slowed down so as not to get separated... the tail of the plane became visible....
BLAM!
The staff car swerved and ran smoking into the ditch on the far side of the road. The trucks, which had already been slowing down, came to a halt as Toeppich and his driver got out of the car, swearing loudly in German.
BLAM!
The flatbed sank backward as the axle sheared away, and the plane rolled down it until its front wheels touched tarmac. One strap still held.
“The Underground!” Toeppich yelled toward the smaller truck. “Get going!”
There was a chonk as the second driver put the smaller truck into gear, and Newkirk and LeBeau promptly shot out a tire each. The truck listed dangerously as the tires deflated.
Toeppich swore again. “Out! Out!”
The guards swarmed out of the smaller truck but stopped Dalton from following.
“Now!” Hogan ordered.
The prisoners opened fire with a combination of real rifles and firecrackers. Olson shot off the remaining strap; Hogan plugged Toeppich in the shoulder. In the confusion, Dalton managed to clock the guard nearest the truck with his own rifle and get several feet from the truck before any of the other guards spotted him. The prisoners increased their covering fire, but a couple of the guards fired after Dalton as he sprinted to the plane. The plane itself started up seemingly on its own-but more likely due to MacGyver-while Dalton scrambled up the side of the flatbed and over the wing to the front of the cockpit. Then Hogan heard a yelp that was probably a sign that Dalton had been hit. Yet a moment later, Dalton hauled himself into the cockpit, shut the canopy, flashed a thumbs-up, and started taxiing quickly down the road.
“Stop him! STOP HIM!!” Toeppich shrieked.
The guards tried to give chase, but the prisoners redoubled their fire and managed to at least wing all of the pursuers. And seconds later, the plane took off with a triumphant roar. Grinning, Carter used a detonator box to set off his last round of fireworks on the far side of the road, and the prisoners disappeared back toward camp while Toeppich and his men fired wildly in the wrong direction. Once they were well out of earshot and rifle range, Hogan radioed Kinch to alert the RAF.
That afternoon, once health and harmony were restored to Stalag 13, Hogan sat in his office enjoying a cup of coffee and listening to Klink’s end of a telephone argument with Toeppich. “I don’t care if you do report this to Maj. Künzel!” Klink was thundering in German. “My record stands, and the reputation of Stalag 13 speaks for itself. If anyone is to blame, it is you and your men for not maintaining constant vigilance while Dalton and his plane were in your custody.”
Toeppich yelled loudly enough for his voice, though not his words, to be audible even on the bug.
“You dare to threaten a senior officer, Toeppich?! I will have you broken for this! Yes! The Russian Front-if you’re lucky.” And Klink slammed down the receiver.
“Let’s ’ear it for our favorite Kraut,” Newkirk quipped from the office door.
Hogan chuckled. “What’s up, Newkirk?”
“Kinch asked to see you, sir. Message from London.”
“All right.” Hogan took another drink of coffee and followed Newkirk down to the radio room.
“Here he comes,” Kinch was saying into the microphone. “Stand by.” He took off his headset and handed both it and the microphone to Hogan. “It’s Tin Man, sir.”
Hogan nodded and lifted the headset to his ear and the microphone to his mouth. “Go ahead, Tin Man.”
“Just wanted to check in, Papa Bear,” MacGyver’s voice replied. “Toto’s at the hospital gettin’ checked out, and it looks like the Jack of Spades has used up another of his nine lives.”
“You crashed?”
“No, actually, the flight was the easy part. Made it with fuel to spare. No, he took some lead before we got in the air-nothin’ serious, just a couple o’ grazes, but deep enough that he’s gonna need stitches. Gives him some new material for lyin’ to girls.”
Hogan laughed.
“Hey, listen. Thanks for all you and your men did.”
“Didn’t feel like much,” Hogan admitted.
“It was enough. I couldn’ta made it without you.”
Hogan smiled. “Tell Toto to get well soon.”
“He will now.”
“And if you’re ever in the neighborhood again, look us up.”
“Let’s make it after the war,” Tin Man answered with an audible grin and signed off.
“Everything all right, sir?” Newkirk asked as Hogan handed the microphone and headset back to Kinch.
“Yep,” Hogan confirmed. “But something tells me Tin Man’s already planning to take Toto back to Washington and make sure he stays there.”
“That glaucoma’s a bloody awful disease.”
“I know. But there’s one thing that makes it better.”
“Wot’s that, sir?”
Hogan put one hand on Newkirk’s shoulder and the other on Kinch’s. “Friends.”
The three men shared a smile and then went back to work.
* Both Cunningham, long renowned as the greatest American mile runner, and Hardin, a world-champion hurdler, medaled in the 1936 Berlin Olympics; Cunningham took silver in the 1500-meter race, while Hardin won gold in the 400-meter hurdles.