Hogan's Heroes: Hands Across the Sea (2/?)

[what_we_dream]

Title: Hands Across the Sea (2/?)
Series: Hogan's Heroes
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Notes: This is UNFINISHED, and likely to remain so

Summary: Newkirk and Carter: one of the strongest, and most volatile, friendships of the series. A series of vignettes.

 

Take him out for a test run, the colonel said. See how he does under pressure.

Newkirk, trooping through the woods with Carter stumbling along behind him, has a bloody good idea how the man will perform without needing to risk his life to find out. So far the American sergeant has tripped twice, dropped his pistol once and fallen clear over a bush while startling away from a low-swooping owl.

If he’d known, when Carter told him he was liable to mess things up, just how liable he was, he’d have given the man a bloody different answer. Newkirk sighs, and wishes he had more time to wallow in regret. He comforts himself with the thought that that was the last time he’ll ever defend anyone’s usefulness before getting to know them.

The mission Colonel Hogan sent them on is simple reconnaissance of a local munitions factory, which is just as well because anything more complicated would probably have involved Sgt. Andrew Carter getting the pair of them killed somehow. He means well, but outside of camp the man’s more of a threat than the Germans; that became clear enough in the man’s first month of stumbles, absentmindedness, and plain lack of logic. Newkirk told Hogan as much when he assigned the mission.

“We don’t have an infinite pool to draw on, Newkirk. It’s not like we can write to London for more capable men. We’ve got to make do with what we’ve got,” was the colonel’s answer.

His reply of: “Carter’ll do us right into the grave,” hadn’t cut him any leeway.

So the pair of them are out in the woods 15 miles north of Hammelburg ducking around like rabbits, looking for the munitions factory they have intelligence suggesting is somewhere in the area. It’s too early in the year for snow, but the ground is hard with frost under their boots, and leaves lie in a crisp blanket over it. Moving in silence is impossible, although Newkirk suspects that Carter’s presence alone would ensure that in any situation.

It’s past midnight, and in the darkness the glow of the half-full moon is hardly any guide. Both have flashlights, but neither dares to use them for fear of being sighted by the factory that could be beyond any group of trees. Overhead in the black tangle of leafless canopy the night birds are shuffling and hooting, branches crackling and whickering in the weak wind. Newkirk’s a city man, and although he’s slowly adjusting to the sounds of a forest at night, he’s not all the way there yet. The one reassuring thing about Carter is his simple presence, and the fact that bumbling as the man, is the woods don’t seem to phase him at all – except when they trip him up.

They locate the factory eventually by the simple expedient of nearly falling over it; they suddenly come out of the woods and find themselves standing on the top of a small ridge, with the factory lying nestled in the shallow valley beyond. It is hardly more than a collection of dark squares of monochrome surrounded by what in the moonlight looks like a silver wire. There are no lights at all, every scrap of window covered up to preserve the factory from the bombers roving in the skies above.

“About bloody time,” whispers Newkirk, pulling out the binoculars. Now that they’re out of the woods the clear sky provides enough light for him to get an idea of the dimensions of the factory, gaps in the silver wire marking gates into the complex. He makes a quick count of the entrances and likely guard posts while Carter crouches at his side, quiet for once. “Right, looks good. Let’s do a quick tour ‘round to make sure we’re not missing anything, then get back to camp.”

“Alrightee,” says Carter, and falls in behind him again.

They skirt the factory along the edge of the woods, careful to keep far enough from the gates to avoid any overly-alert guard, moving more slowly now in a genuine effort at silence.

They’re making good time, and have already found an extra entrance which wasn’t visible from the north side of the factory, when Newkirk puts his foot down and feels something shift unnaturally underneath it. In the quiet of the rural night, he hears the light click; it sounds amazingly like a pistol being cocked. In his chest Newkirk’s heart skips a beat so forcefully it hurts, while his insides suddenly twist as though a frigid hand had taken hold of then and squeezed. He nearly falls in his haste to stop, sweat breaking out so instantly it’s like being drenched by summer rain.

Behind him, Carter stumbles to a stop, kicking up leaves on the frosty ground but otherwise quiet.

“Newkirk?”

Newkirk looks down, long and slow as dusk falling. In the darkness, he can’t see what’s under his foot. He knows anyway. Knows that the indeterminate length of his life has suddenly been cut into a string exactly as long as his ability to keep his balance. He takes a shuddering breath, fluttering heart making him feel sick and dizzy, and tries to speak in a normal tone.

“I just stepped on a ruddy landmine, Carter.” The words tumble out like smoothed pebbles, some faster than others, voice less even than he wanted.

Carter says nothing, doesn’t move from where he’s standing somewhere in the darkness behind Newkirk. Newkirk can’t spare any thought for the man, can’t spare any thought for anything except for the spring-loaded death waiting under his right foot. His mind is running in desperate circles trying to find a way out of this, like a caged fox trying to bite and scratch its way out of the mesh entrapping it. He has no way to dismantle it, neither the knowledge or the tools. There’s no point in waiting for the guards to find him, either. They’ll simply gun him down to get him off of it, and bring about exactly the same ending to this problem.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by Carter’s sudden appearance next to his leg, crouched low to the ground and brushing away leaves with his gloved hands. He runs his fingers along the edges of Newkirk’s boot, carefully sweeping outwards from there.

“What the bleedin’ ‘ell’re you doing?” snaps Newkirk, heart in his throat beating so hard his teeth ache.

Carter doesn’t answer, but he does stop sweeping and leans back on his haunches, from the angle of his head probably staring at the dark patch of ground below Newkirk’s foot. After a minute he reaches out a more delicate hand – in the moonlight it is nothing but a shadowy movement – to trace over the thin layer of dirt hiding the metal beneath.

“Yup,” he says finally, in a conclusive tone, “that’s a landmine.”

“So glad you agree!” Newkirk takes a deep breath, and forces his thoughts from the dark hole they’re spinning around. “Look, there’s no point in your hangin’ ‘round here. Get back to camp and tell the colonel… tell him …” the words stick in his throat; he can’t say them, can’t admit it, can’t face what’s waiting for him as soon as he shifts his weight – and already his resolve is cracking, splintering, sickly bitter phrases flitting through his mind; better to end it quick – just take the step – close your eyes and move. “Tell him sorry for ruining the record,” Newkirk forces out, voice cracking.

Carter doesn’t answer. When Newkirk looks down, the man is gone. The goddamn Yank’s run off already, tail between his legs, without even bothering to say goodbye. Newkirk curses in a strangled, thin tone. He’d pegged Carter as incompetent, but a coward?

Well, now he knows. And he’ll never have the chance to report back on it.

Newkirk sways, a simple unintentional shift in his balance. The echo of his own voice in his ears shouting incoherently snaps him into action and allows him to correct the move. His heart is hammering so fast now that he can’t count the beats, only knows the racing stream seems to be driving adrenaline through his body faster than an electrical circuit.

He’s going to die out here, alone, in the middle of a country he was never supposed to be in. Probably soon. His leg is starting to shiver, back cramping at the unnatural weight distribution he’s holding tight as a lifeline – is his lifeline.

Behind him, something cracks, and then there’s a shuffling through the underbrush. Newkirk freezes, arms held out to his side to keep his balance, neck suddenly painfully stiff although he has no idea why.

“Who is it?” The question’s an instinct rather than a decision, which accounts for its idiocy. What could it possibly matter?

“Just me,” replies Carter, sounding surprised. Also a bit strained.

“Carter? What the – thought you’d left?”

“Huh? Oh, no, I just went to find this. What, you think I’d leave you out here stuck on a mine? That’s a nice thing to say about a guy.” Carter shuffles around into view, shoulders low and hunched forwards, carrying something large and dark and, from his posture, heavy. He squats down at Newkirk’s side again, and places whatever it is between his legs, panting slightly.

Newkirk’s still trying to catch up with the sudden change in direction. “Well it’s at least a bit understandable,” he manages at last, thrown completely off by the American’s sudden unexpected reappearance. Carter doesn’t answer; he seems to be busy doing something with the dirt. He’s using both hands now, and in gentle movements is gathering it up like a child forming a sand castle. “What’re you doing? You’re going to blow yourself up too.”

“Oh, no, that’s pretty unlikely. You see, these mines are made pretty poorly. The springs have a lot of give in them – they don’t have to be precision instruments, they’ve just got to know the difference between zero and 160, give or take. A little here or there’s not gonna set them off.” He sounds surprisingly confident. What’s more, he seems cool and collected, as if he did this kind of thing every day.

Newkirk, despite himself, is struck by a sudden wave of kindness. “Look, Carter, I appreciate this, but there’s no point in the two of us cashing it in. You’d better get back to camp.”

Carter doesn’t even look up. Just keeps doing… whatever it is he’s doing down there in the dirt.

Newkirk’s starting to feel hope, and that’s bad because there is no hope. He’s out here in the middle of very hostile territory on top of a landmine with only Andrew Carter to save him. He is quite simply going to die. Better to accept it, and make some kind of peace.

“Carter…”

“All ready,” cuts in the American, looking up. In the poor light Newkirk can’t make out his expression very clearly, just the general planes of Carter’s face and the glint of his eyes. From what he can see, there’s no concern there. Just a kind of attentive waiting.

“Ready for what?”

“Well, see, we’ll push this boulder here onto the mine, at the same time as you slide your foot off. The rock will replace your weight.”

Newkirk’s heart constricts painfully as disappointment washes through his system. This was exactly why he shouldn’t have started to believe Carter could actually get him out of this. “Carter, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I weight a lot more than a bleedin’ rock.”

“It won’t matter. I told you, these things have really poor springs – it makes them quicker and cheaper to produce. This one’s probably rusty, anyway. And besides, it’s not your whole weight on it, no more than half.” Carter doesn’t even sound like he’s arguing, just refuting patently wrong facts with patently right ones. Like he’s laying out the only sensible course of option.

“There’s still a fair difference between 80 pounds and – what, 30? 40?”

Carter shrugs. “It should work.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed, Andrew,” hisses Newkirk, awash in a sea of desperation at this stupidity. He doesn’t know why – he doesn’t want to die. God, he doesn’t want to. He’d do anything, try anything to get out of this – anything except ask another man to die beside him.

“Newkirk,” says Carter, quietly. “Trust me.” It’s not a request. If anything, it’s an order. The first time he’s heard the American, who outranks nearly every man in camp, give one. It puzzles Newkirk into silence. “Right. Now, when you feel the rock press against your foot, slide it away without taking off any of the pressure. Don’t lift, slide. Let it push your foot all the way off the plate, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” says Newkirk faintly. Cowardice, he can deal with. Incompetence too. But here he can feel his attempts at dissuasion washing up like waves against the breakwater of Carter’s demented determination, his words completely and utterly ineffectual.

“Right.” Carter shuffles backwards a foot to give himself a better angle to push from. And starts, almost imperceptibly, to press his arms forwards.

It’s still nearly a minute before Newkirk feels the slight pressure against the side of his foot, pressing nearly clean in the middle of his boot. It’s another ten seconds before the pressure is enough to begin to push his foot off the plate. He’s careful to do as Carter said and keep the same amount of downwards pressure, locking his knee and hip-joints and balancing mostly on his left leg to do so. Carter keeps pressing, slow and even, and his foot begins to slide across the plate. Across, and off the side. Further. Further. Further.

Newkirk’s foot slides off and onto the frosty dirt which, while hard, is still softer than the metal of the landmine. He lets out a huge sigh and sways, heart-rate dropping below 90 for the first time in nearly twenty minutes, afraid to move.

“It worked,” he chokes out, amazed.

Carter gently takes his hands off the rocks and steps away. “I told you it would,” he says, as if there had never been any doubt.

Newkirk turns to look at him, or the dark silhouette of him, still floating in shock. “I guess you did.” He takes a cautious step away from the mine, then another. Spell broken he scampers backwards right into the forest, knowing if he doesn’t do it now in the rush of insane relief he won’t be able to move for fear of stepping on another. Carter follows him back in a slower, mostly unconcerned walk; Newkirk realises he’s already been over the ground several times before. Wonders if it even occurred to him what he was risking with each step he took. It’s a question that, right now at least, he has no capacity to deal with.

“Let’s get back to camp,” he says, and the relief bubbles up again, stronger this time now that he knows he’s safe. He feels safer out in the middle of the woods of hostile Germany than he ever has in his life; he feels like he could fly. “No one’s coming back ‘ere if I ‘ave any say in it. Bloody London can bomb it if they’re so keen on blowing it up.”

“I’m all for that,” agrees Carter, catching up, a streak of moonlight glinting off his teeth as he grins.

“Great.” Newkirk slows, suddenly awkward, dextrous fingers twisting in the tight-knit wool of his jumper as he turns to face the American. “And, Andrew?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. I – truth is, I don’t know too many men who’d’ve done that for a friend, never mind a stranger.”

Carter shrugs again, movement harder to detect in the darkness of the forest. “No problem,” he says. In anyone else Newkirk would suspect self-effacement. In Carter, it’s just the simple truth. The sergeant starts walking again, apparently expecting nothing else from the conversation. Newkirk shakes his head and follows, catching the man’s elbow when he stumbles over a bush.

When they get back to camp, Newkirk will tell Hogan Carter passed, with flying colours. Provided he tries to work on his coordination.