He took the detonator and began to hook wires to it.
“Pelosi, I don’t like to see an officer, any officer, but especially one I like and in whom I see a good deal of potential, embarrassed in front of his men.”
“Sir?”
“The charges you laid, Lieutenant,” McGuire said sternly, “are wholly inadequate. When you twist that handle, all you’re going to get is a large bang and a puff of smoke. Now, what I’m going to do is call this off and lay them properly.”
Pelosi met his eyes.
“Sir, with respect, when I blow this, the chimney will come down. If it doesn’t, I’ll withdraw my application for transfer.”
Better to have him here, even humiliated, than to humiliate him by relaying his charges and then see him go.
“You have a deal, Lieutenant,” McGuire said.
“With your permission, Sir?”
McGuire nodded.
“Fire in the Hole!” Pelosi shouted, in a surprisingly loud voice, repeated the shout twice, and then twisted the handle of the detonator.
McGuire looked at the chimney. As he expected, there was a dull explosion, a faint suggestion of fire, and a small cloud of smoke.
He looked at Pelosi. His face bore a look neither of surprise nor embarrassment, but of satisfaction.
McGuire turned back toward the chimney. As he watched, as if in slow motion, the 150-foot-tall brick chimney shuddered, then seemed to fall in on itself, settling toward the ground erect, in an almost gentle motion.
There were shouts from the men on the rise, and then applause.
McGuire saw now a large cloud of dust at the base of the chimney as it seemed to disintegrate in front of his eyes.
Pelosi had meanwhile connected a second set of wires to the generator. McGuire watched as he twisted th
e handle. There was now a rumbling roar from the crashing bricks, over which nothing could be heard, and the dust cloud at the base was thick, and nothing could be seen through it.
McGuire wondered if the second set of charges had gone off. But after a moment, he judged that they had, for the cloud at the base of the chimney had grown. Pelosi was already connecting a third set of wires to the detonator.
He waited the forty-five seconds or so necessary for most of the dust cloud on the ground to disperse enough to show everybody that the walls of the buildings were down, shattered into six-foot segments, and lying on their sides. Then he twisted the handle again.
This time there was a series of small explosions. After each, one of the World War I tanks flew into the air, one of them at least fifty feet.
McGuire met Pelosi’s eyes as another burst of cheers and applause came from the company on the rise.
“The First Sergeant can collect this gear and get the company back to the Post. You can ride with me, and collect your gear, at the BOQ,” Captain McGuire said. “I’ll see about getting you a ride into Fayetteville. With a little bit of luck, you might be able to get a berth on the 7:05 to Washington.”
II
[ONE]
Schloss Wachtstein
Pomerania
8 October 1942
“You are talking treason, you realize,” Generalmajor Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein said softly, without emotion. The short, slight, nearly bald fifty-four-year-old very carefully placed his crystal cognac snifter on the heavy table in his library, then leaned back in his chair, raised his eyes to Generalmajor Dieter von Haas, and waited for his old friend to reply.
“I am talking about saving Germany, Karl,” von Haas said.