Read Online Hanging on by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online

You are something else, you are-"
        "Dégagé?" Maurice asked.
        Struggling with his college French, Major Kelly looked for an epithet he wanted. "Chevalier d'industrie."
        Maurice actually bristled. He stood stiffly, face twisted, his greasy hair trying to stand straight up on his neck, his eyes blazing. "You call me a swindler?"
        Realizing he had gone too far, reminding himself that he had never been very good at maintaining discipline, the major said, "That was not how I meant it. I meant-'One who lives by his wits.' "
        Maurice unbristled. "Thank you, Major," he said. "I am honored to be so considered by a man I respect as much as I respect you."
        As Beame delivered the cans of gasoline to the two young men on the backhoe, Kelly said, "Now, what information has cost me so dearly?"
        Maurice was suddenly nervous. "A Panzer unit is moving towards the front, complete with an armored supply convoy and approximately a thousand infantrymen."
        Major Kelly wiped at his nose. Looking at Maurice, he had begun to feel that his own nose was bedecked with bright pearls of grease. His nose was dry. That was a relief. "I don't really see that this is worth a backhoe, Maurice."
        "The Panzers are coming on this road," Maurice said.
        "This road?" Kelly looked southward, across the river, unwilling to accept the possibility that he would have to blow up his own bridge to keep the German tanks from crossing over to the camp.
        "You did not hear me right," Maurice said, as if reading the other man's thoughts. "The Panzers are coming to the front. They will be coming up behind you, from the northeast, from this side."
        Kelly turned away from the river and looked across the clearing to the trees, the single break in them where the dusty road came through. No military traffic had yet used this road, not since they had been here. They were in the backlands, in an unimportant part of France. Now, all of that had changed. "Oh, God. We're all dead."
        "Not necessarily," Maurice said.
        Kelly thought of the huge, lumbering Panzer tanks, the supply trucks, the thousand German infantrymen, all moving through this camp, across this bridge, and he couldn't see any way they weren't going to be made dead. "We haven't any mortar or artillery. We aren't a fighting unit. The only thing we have to protect ourselves are our rifles and grenades. How many Panzers did you say?"
        "Twelve."
        "We're dead."
        "Not necessarily," Maurice repeated. "There are things I could rent you, bits and pieces, certain machines that have come into my possession…"
        "Artillery?"
        "No," Maurice said.
        "What, then?"
        "German jeeps, uniforms, a German truck."
        Kelly thought about it. "You have these things, really?"
        "Yes."
        "How?"
        "Grâce ŕ Dieu."
        Major Kelly was certain God hadn't delivered the German equipment to Maurice, but he didn't feel like arguing about that just now. "I don't see what these things will do to help us," he said.
        "With little trouble," Maurice said, "you could make the Germans think that this is a camp of theirs."
        "Masquerade as Germans?"
        "Exactly."
        "But none of us is fluent in German!" Kelly said. "The moment we have to speak to one of them-"
        "You will have to talk to no one," Maurice said. "The Germans will not stop. Their orders are to rush, and they are wasting no time in reaching the front. They will pass through here with little more than a nod to you."
        "The Stuka pilots know we're not German, and they must have reported us to someone," Kelly said. "They bomb us all the time. If the Stuka pilots know, the Panzer commanders are going to know, too."
        "Possibly not," Maurice said. "In Germany, the air force tells the army nothing, for all the services are fiefdoms and jealously guard their own