Read Online Stars & Stripes Triumphant by Harry Harrison - Free Book Online

nothing else. The two Irishmen were waiting when the wagon came down between the row of tents, stopping where the small crowd of women waited for the food. McGrath had chosen this spot because the tents blocked any view of the soldiers at the gates. There was only this single wagon in sight, with one of the prisoners in the back passing down the potatoes. McGrath knew the man from the pub, but couldn't remember his name.
    "Let me give you a hand with that," he said, clambering up into the wagon.
    The guard, with the musket between his legs, sat facing backward next to the driver. Out of the corner of his eye McGrath saw Paddy standing by the horse.
    "You, get down from there," the guard called out, waving him off with his gun.
    "He's been ill, your honor, he's that weak. I'll just give him a hand."
    McGrath seized up a sack of potatoes, saw Paddy stepping forward. He swung the bag and knocked the soldier's rifle from his grasp. The man was gape-jawed, but before he could respond, McGrath bent him over with a punch to the belly. He gasped and fell forward; McGrath's other fist felled him with a mighty blow to the jaw.
    At the same moment as McGrath swung the bag, Paddy had reached up and pulled the surprised driver from his seat down to the ground, kicking him in the side of the head as he fell into the mud.
    It had taken but an instant. The man who had been unloading the potatoes stood with a bag in his hands, shocked. The women did not move but looked on silently; a child started to cry but went silent, his mother's hand over his mouth.
    "Dump most of these potatoes," McGrath told the other man. "See that they get spread around the camp. And you know nothing."
    On the ground Paddy had stripped the unconscious soldier of his clothes and was pulling them on. He wiped some of the mud from the uniform with the man's neckcloth. "Get some rope," he said to the watching women. "I want him bound and gagged. The same for the other."
    McGrath was struggling into the guard's uniform jacket; not an easy fit and impossible to button. He picked up the man's gun and took his place on the seat, stuffing his and Paddy's wadded-up clothes under the seat beside him. The entire action had taken less than two minutes. The women had carried the bound and unconscious soldiers into an empty tent and tied the open flap shut. The Irishman who had been unloading potatoes was gone. Paddy made a clicking sound and shook the reins. The horse plodded forward. Behind them the women and children dispersed. McDermott let out a pleased sigh.
    "That was well done, me old son," he said.
    "Jayzus, I thought you had taken his head off, the punch you hit him."
    "It did the job. The gate now—and keep your gob shut if they want to talk to you."
    "Aye."
    The horse, head low, plodded slowly toward the gate. There were four green jackets on guard there, one of them a sergeant with an ample belly. He signaled and two of the soldiers started to open the gate. Paddy pulled up the horse while he waited for it to swing wide.
    "You're finished damned fast," the sergeant said, glancing suspiciously into the cart.
    "Pushed the bleedin' fings out, that's what," Paddy said in an acceptable Cockney accent, for he had worked for many years in London. "Them last ones is rotten."
    "Do up that tunic or you'll be charged," the sergeant snapped. McGrath fumbled with the buttons. The sergeant grunted and jerked his thumb for them to proceed, then turned away, no longer interested.
    Paddy drove slowly until a bend in the road and a grove of trees shielded them from sight of the camp; snapped the reins and urged the horse into a trot.
    "I thought I would die when that sergeant spoke to you like that."
    "Stupid pigs!" McGrath was suddenly angry. Angry at life, the concentration camp, at the people who had seized him and brought him and his family to this desperate place. "There, that stand of trees. Pull in there and we'll get out of these uniforms. See if there is any money in the