Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [59]
Cray knew it was a gamble. Policemen and soldiers would be watching the car doors, not the couplings, but even so, a guard might step into sight of the coupling. The guards were undoubtedly going to start a car-to-car search, and Cray had to get off the train. He squeezed an arm and shoulder through the rubber so that the flanges gripped his trunk. He struggled against the frame, and forced the ribbed canvas back like an accordion. He pushed himself further through.
Cray was extruded through the gap. With his trailing leg still squeezed between the rubber flanges, he dropped to the gravel and ties below He frantically kicked his leg free, then crawled under the train.
He was below the coupling. Arm over arm, he moved back a few feet until he was hidden by wheels. Black boots walked on the gravel nearby. Two guards laughed at something. Cray grabbed the brake hose with one hand and the top of the iron wheel with the other, then lifted himself up to the undercarriage of the car. He inserted a foot between the hose and the bottom of the car, then an arm, and so could hang onto the undercarriage. He pulled himself up tightly against the slats.
Troopers and policemen and a German shepherd on a leash walked by only boots and paws visible to Cray through the triangular gap between the two wheels and the car bottom. Cray heard guards walk overhead as they searched through documents and looked at faces. And he overheard guards standing along the siding talk about the American they were searching for.
Ten minutes after the train had stopped, it began again, quickly picking up speed. The last of the black boots passed from Cray's view. Then he saw tree trunks and undergrowth as the tracks took the train into a forest. The motion of the train jarred Cray again and again, the slats slapping into his arms and chest and legs, and he knew he could not hang on long. Railroad ties passed beneath him in a blur.
7
SERGEANT GEORG KEPPLER stepped on the starter, but the truck's battery was dead and the engine wouldn't turn over. He had been traveling south on a road paralleling the rail line. When he had stopped the truck at an intersection, it had stalled. And now it wouldn't start.
"Get out and check the generator belt," he ordered. "Maybe it's gone."
Private Werner Enge opened the Krupp's door and slid off the seat to the ground. He struggled with the latch before he could push up the hood.
"Gone," he called. "We've been running off the battery."
Sergeant Keppler slapped the steering wheel. "The lieutenant is going to hang us from a power pole, Werner." He climbed down from the truck.
The private nodded. "I suppose he will."
Private Werner Enge was sixteen years old. His green eyes were still lively with innocence, and his mouth seemed permanently set in a smile of wonder. His Wehrmacht uniform hung loosely on him.
"The lieutenant does not listen to excuses," Sergeant Keppler said darkly. Keppler was a veteran of the eastern front, and wore fresh maps of scars on his legs from a Russian mortar shell that had found him in the Ukraine. Keppler had been transferred to a transport battalion while he recovered. His face was doughy, with loose jowls and a bulbous nose. He wore his field cap back on his head, showing a tossed crop of seal- brown hair. "He might just hang us."
Pasture, too stony for crops, was on both sides of the rail line. A dilapidated barn was to his left. The crossing road was muddy. Bunches of spring grass grew alongside the road. The sun was a flat gray disc seen through a cloud layer.
Keppler turned to the sound of an approaching train. "They must be done with their search. Goddamn it, we should be back at that field by now, picking up our unit."
Keppler and Enge had dropped off their squadron, then traveled to Linthe to look for fuel, and had been returning for their soldiers when