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what_we_dreamTitle: The Edge of the Night (2/5?)
Series: Hogan's Heroes
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frauleinfrog
Notes: Supernatural AU (not the show)
Summary: The Great War brought the kin out of the shadows when, launched into bloody warfare, they cut through entire regiments like scythes. Two decades later, they are expressely banned from all military organizations. But there's always an advantage to men who make their own luck, and the Allies can't afford to lose this war.
Prologue
Chapter 1
If you are very valiant it is, I think, a god who gave you this gift
Homer, The Iliad
Hogan had only just poured out a cup of wine and re-corked the bottle when Newkirk stormed in, furious.
“You said you’d have the sentence commuted. Sir,” he spat, dark eyes blazing.
Hogan straightened and stared at him coldly, one hand on the bottle’s neck. “It’s not your affair anymore, corporal.”
The Brit had proved a disappointment. Hogan had expected Newkirk to step forward and take the cooler sentence just to spite him. That, he could have made use of. A hothead who did good work and took the consequences was worth a lot. A coward who passed his problems off on others was worse than useless, was potentially dangerous, a snitch in the making.
“LeBeau’s just been thrown in the cooler for a month!”
“And you could have prevented it yourself.” Hogan picked up the wine again, ignoring Newkirk who coloured angrily. “Dismissed, corporal.”
Newkirk’s eyes flashed to the bottle, and the cup on his desk. “Enjoy your wine, sir,” he hissed, and slammed out.
Hogan ten heartbeats, forcing himself to relax his hold on the bottle, and then stepped out of his office.
-------------------------------------------
The guard stationed outside barracks 2 let him pass, and he crossed the compound quickly, saluted by the occasional prisoner in the yard. The guards at the Kommandantur door again let him by, one of them preceding him into the building and knocking on the office door in front of him. There was a shout of assent from inside, and the guard pushed the door open and stepped in, standing back both to be out of the way and to give him a free shot at Hogan’s back.
The Kommandant was sitting behind his desk, the head his cane barely visible over the edge of the desk. He looked up as Hogan walked in and put the bottle of wine down on a clear corner of the cheap surface.
“There’s the wine, sir,” he said contritely. “I apologize for my men; their behaviour was inexcusable.”
Ackman made no answer, face unchanging. Hogan let the contrition fade.
“Still, I feel I must protest the sentence you’ve given LeBeau. You have to admit, the circumstances are a bit extreme. He’s been drinking wine since he was a kid, used to it with every meal. To go a whole year without, while cleaning and dusting the liquor cabinet, must have been a huge temptation. I’m sure if you showed a little leniency –”
“ – Your men would feel they could steal what they liked without fear. No, colonel, there is no negotiation for the crime of theft. The French corporal confessed to it, and he will spend a month in the cooler.”
Hogan didn’t miss the subtle insinuation: Ackman knew as well as he did that LeBeau hadn’t stolen the wine.
The man was far too sharp to stay.
Hogan nodded, face impassive. “Alright, sir,” he allowed. And then, eyes widening in surprise, “Oh, sir, you have a bit of lint on your shoulder, there –” Hogan leant across the desk to brush at the man’s shoulder, even as Ackman repelled and the guard shouted and grabbed his shoulder to snap him backwards. Hogan stumbled, only barely keeping his balance, as the guard hauled him right across the room and shoved his gun into Hogan’s face. Ackman rose, pale and strict.
“That was foolish, Colonel.”
Hogan blinked, the picture of innocence. “Just wanted you to look presentable, sir,” he protested. Ackman waved an irritated hand at the guard, who let go of Hogan’s collar.
“Next time I advise you to allow me to remain as I am. That will be all.” He saluted, and sat. Hogan returned the gesture, then let the guard shove him out of the room. With a strand of the lieutenant colonel’s hair clasped tight in his fist.
Hogan stepped out into the bright morning sunshine, grinning.
-------------------------------------------------
Kinch was waiting in his quarters when he came back, face unreadable. Hogan closed the door behind him and pulled a piece of paper off the thin notepad on his desk, began folding it to make an envelope even as he glanced at his XO.
“What is it?”
Kinch shrugged. “Newkirk’s sulking, sir. The men are ribbing him pretty bad. And, since we’re confined to barracks, we can’t tunnel. No way to get rid of the dirt.”
“It’s pretty irritating, knowing you could just shuip –” Hogan made a parting gesture with his hands, “and we’d have one ready-made…” he shrugged, putting the hair in the envelope.
“Gets to me sometimes too, sir,” replied Kinch wryly. “About the lieutenant colonel...?”
“He refused to let LeBeau out early. Fortunately, that won’t be a problem.” Hogan held up the now-complete envelope, shaking it. Kinch nodded.
“What do you need?”
“About twenty minutes uninterrupted. Night would be best, but we can’t chance anyone hearing me moving around. Besides there’s no way to hide the light, either from the outside or –” Hogan glanced in the direction of the barracks. Hiding his nature from his own side was nothing new, but the absurdity of knowing his men would be just as eager as the Germans to destroy efforts in their own favour burned all the same. An anger long ago reduced to ashes, but still hot.
“Do you want to wait for lunch, sir?”
“No. Sooner we get him out of here, the better. No need to keep LeBeau in the cooler for longer than necessary, in any case,” he added, lightly.
“You don’t think you’re pressing your luck, sir?” asked Kinch, smiling all the same.
Hogan spared him a look of mock-insult. “I didn’t pact with Lady Luck for nothing. Get going; I’ll call you when I need you.”
“Yes, sir.”
----------------------------------------------
Kinch was just sitting down for a hand of poker when the colonel opened the door to shout for him. He stood with an apologetic shrug at the men and a disappointed glance at his cards, and turned to face his commander.
“Sir?”
“There’s more dust in this office than a mausoleum. Get a mop and broom, will ya?” Hogan was leaning out of the doorway, door held mostly closed behind him.
“Yes, sir.”
One of the men pointed him to the narrow janitorial locker standing in a corner; Kinch grabbed the mop, bucket, brush and pan and headed for the officer’s quarters, pausing only to fill the bucket at the sink.
Hogan closed the door behind him, speaking in a deliberate, carrying tone as he did so. “We can move the bunk and start in that corner.”
In fact, they moved the table to stand against the door, blocking any sudden access. The wine, still sitting in the tin cup on the desk’s scarred surface, washed up high against the sides as they manhandled the furniture into place.
“Alright, sergeant, get started,” he ordered in the same voice. Kinch put the bucket down and grabbed the mop handle, shaking it and setting the tin bucket clattering.
Hogan had hung a line of cord inside between two walls and draped both bunk blankets on it as if to be beaten. It just happened to pass closely before the window, blocking all lines of sight from outside. With the windows thus obscured, the only real light came from the single overhead bulb, casting a harsh light down directly on them and burning out shadows. The colonel dropped down beside the bed and grappled under it to come back out holding his hands stiffly in front of him as if he were carrying something. Kinch knew, having carried what looked like nothing but felt like a metal box across the compound yesterday before their confinement, what was in Hogan’s hands.
The colonel put his burden down in a corner with a quiet clunk and ran his hands over it. In the blink of an eye a battered tin box appeared, sitting innocently on the plywood floor as though it had always been there.
There was a simple clasp which Hogan snapped open, flipping up the lid without ceremony. Kinch, curious despite himself about the box the colonel had managed to keep with him through capture, interrogation and assignment to the camp, rattled the mop again and watched closely.
Inside the box was a tray about half as deep as the four-inch sides. The tray had been carefully divided into a dozen compartments, each holding a small corked bottle nestled in its walls. Some, Kinch saw, held dried leaves or twigs, while others contained fine powder or pieces of metal. A few held contents which were entirely indistinguishable to him.
Hogan pulled out three bottles and put them on the floor. Then the tray came out to reveal an undivided bottom section. Kinch recognized a transistor, capacitor and crystal diode, the most difficult radio parts to jerry rig. Beside them were a few sticks of chalk, a roll of string and one of wire, and a short string of ebony beads. Hogan picked up a piece of chalk, turned, and began sketching in the middle of the floor.
Kinch had been assigned to Hogan nearly a year ago when his secret had leaked out to the colonel while the officer had been touring Olmstead. Whatever strings Hogan had pulled to manage the highly unusual assignment – a black sergeant serving under a white colonel had caused plenty of talk – Kinch didn’t know. In a full year of service with the colonel he’d only spoken to him a handful of times about the bond they shared, and only once seen the colonel in action – and even then it had been both a minor and quick action.
As much as Kinch’s image of Hogan was coloured by the colonel’s nature, he rarely actually associated Hogan with active ability or practice – the colonel was in his mind much closer to human than he himself. Now, as he watched his commander sketching a sigil on the floor in quick, concise motions, he felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under him. Hogan was very definitely practiced. And, he could feel as power began to accumulate under the lines and flow up into his CO, very definitely not human.
A circle appeared out of the lines, complex and detailed, here and there augmented with a word or two of Latin or a symbol Kinch only vaguely recognized from old chemistry texts. At five points in the circle spaces had been left blank, as well as in the centre where the elliptical curves and straight lines, apparently arbitrary individually, drew together to create a detailed border around a perfectly circular space.
Kinch, used to the colonel’s crisp, precise writing, could pick out hints of stylistic similarities in the clean perfection here. A clean perfectionist wasn’t, he thought with a smile, the idea most probably associated with Hogan.
Hogan finished the last stroke and, while there was no perceptible event, somehow the sum of the lines was much more than the parts. The roiling energy Kinch had felt below the surface of the circle flattened out and died down, still present but now even and controlled. Hogan didn’t even glance at it, just tossed the chalk back in the box and picked up the three bottles he’d drawn from the top layer.
“Hand me the cups. They’re in the drawer,” he nodded at the desk currently blocking the door.
Kinch dropped the mop, bucked clanging, and grabbed the cups Newkirk and LeBeau had thieved from the kitchen. He handed them to Hogan one at a time. In the first three, Hogan tipped a few grains of powder or a couple of dried leaves and placed them in specific circles.
“Now the wine. Then the vinegar, it’s under the top mattress.”
Kinch handed him down the wine, then reached over and dug the bottle of vinegar from where it was resting nestled between the corner slat and straw mattress of the top bunk and handed it down as well. Hogan poured enough to wet the bottom of the cup, clear and just slightly more viscous than water, and then returned it.
Five cups in place, Hogan stood and looked over the circle with a careful eye. Apparently satisfied, he stepped over to the head of his bunk and dug out the box of salt from under the lower mattress. Opening it, he bent low and poured out a thin trail of white grains, surrounding the outside of the chalk. Kinch gave the bucket a ringing kick.
Salt laid, Hogan grabbed the envelope, pulling the stiff flap open and picking out something minute from inside in a pinch-grip. He put whatever it was down in the centre of the circle and dropped to one knee. From inside his jacket he produced what looked like a paring knife with a black stone blade, dull as dusty flint. Although unusual, a blade only three inches long was not weighty when compared to the weapons any soldier was used to carrying. But Hogan held it like a loaded gun, with the awareness and respect anything dangerous commanded in a trained professional.
“I thought that was your safeguard, sir.” Kinch indicated the box of salt. The purifying powers of salt had little effect on anything that wasn’t undead, but he still shied away from it in large quantities.
Hogan glanced at it and then back at the ring around the salt, smiling humourlessly. “That just buys time. This is for emergencies.” He twisted the knife so that it gleamed duskily in the harsh light.
“You might want to get a bigger one, sir,” suggested Kinch, eyeing the circle. What happened when sorcerers successfully unleashed Curses and summoned evils, everyone who had spoken to the Great War vets knew. Those shadowy, twisted horrors were a large part of the reason kin were killed without question. What happened when they failed to do it correctly no one knew, because no one was ever left to ask.
Hogan shrugged, still grinning with a brittle light-heartedness. “My neck’s not so deep.”
He turned before Kinch found his voice. By the time he had, Hogan had rolled up his sleeve to press the edge of the blade against his naked arm up near the elbow.
Kinch would have guessed from looking at it that the blade was too dull to cut wax. But without applying any apparent pressure or slicing, blood welled up on either side of the black meridian and dripped down towards the sigil.
“Don’t forget the corner, Sergeant,” snapped Hogan abruptly, not turning.
Kinch, wincing with chagrin, grabbed the mop and rattled the bucket as he watched.
As the first drop of blood hit the floor, the edges of the circle began hissing, like fire sinking into wet wood. More drops pattered down, and after the fourth there was a crackling snap. Almost faster than the eye could follow, the white lines of the outer chalk ring flared into ember brightness. Like quick-fuse burning, the smokeless flare split from the large outside circle into each individual line and raced towards the centre, sizzling all the while. As the flash of fire and light passed, it left ash rather than chalk in its trail, the ash crumbling to dust and disappearing without a trace seconds later. As lines converged and reached the tin cups, the contents flared green and disappeared with puffs of emerald smoke.
Finally, with each individual line racing towards the centre, the dozen sparks twined into the middle. Kinch slammed the mop down into the bottom of the bucket as they met in a dark red glow, the empty inner circle glowing like a ruby in sunlight. Lying across the red like a snake sunning itself was a single black thread. As Kinch watched, both of its ends began glowing red, then gold, like steel wool thrown into a fire. Then, with a crackle, it burned suddenly to the middle in a shock of yellow and disappeared nearly faster than the eye could follow.
The red light faded to nothing, leaving only empty cups inside a rough salt circle on a clean floor.
Hogan stood stiffly and crossed to the bunk in one wide step, sitting down heavily. Beneath his dark hair, his face was grey. He waved his hand at the floor without looking at Kinch.
“Better give it a once-over, just for the look of things,” he said gruffly.
Kinch, pursing his lips, pushed the wet mop across the floor in a few long swipes. He stacked up the empty cups and put them back in the desk drawer, likewise returning the salt to the end of the bunk.
“Well,” said Hogan in a nearly steady voice. “That’ll get rid of Ackman soon enough.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Kinch impassively.
“You don’t agree?”
“I agree, sir.”
Hogan glared. “Then don’t start mother-henning. As soon as he’s gone, we’ll be able to start bringing in a better diet. That will solve any problems.”
“And until then, sir?”
“Being confined to barracks isn’t too strenuous.”
“Steering a camp through a change in Kommandants is, sir,” replied Kinch dryly, wringing the mop and wiping up some of the wetter patches and making sure all traces of salt were gone. “With respect, sir, you need –” he cut himself off. They both knew.
“Are you volunteering to run over to the mess and grab me a side of beef, Sergeant?” Hogan’s tone and the blockade of rank showed his mood and opinion clear enough. Kinch, hands tightening on the mop’s handle and eyes on the pallor of his CO’s skin and the sweat along his hair line, ignored it.
“I don’t think I need to go that far, sir.”
“You can stow that talk right now,” snapped Hogan, harshly, kid gloves suddenly gone. “There’ll be absolutely none of that. You agreed to that when you signed on.”
“But –”
“No buts, Sergeant. I’ll manage. Close the box and give it to me on your way out.”
Kinch clenched his jaw shut and did as he was ordered; by the time he had pulled the table back to its place the box was gone while Hogan’s slacks were pressed flat in odd creases. He was staring through the wall when Kinch left, looking tired and old.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Kinch didn’t slam out of Hogan’s office. He didn’t throw the cleaning supplies into the locker, and he didn’t storm back to his bunk. Nevertheless, living in close quarters with 13 other men had long ago attuned the barracks’ occupants to each others’ moods, and Kinch was telegraphing his loud and clear. They left him alone.
Kinch wasn’t a subscriber to the view that officers were put on this Earth to try the patience of enlisted men. Until now, Hogan’s carefree flying in the face of danger and commonsense hadn’t bothered him – he trusted the colonel’s judgement and, more importantly, judged the colonel unusually capable of distinguishing the line between smart risks and pointless sacrifices.
This wasn’t a smart risk.
Mostly though, beneath his simmering anger at his officer’s decision, he was angry with himself for not foreseeing the issue. For not realising the toll of Cursing.
Any Drinker knew how bad the thirst could be; the weakness, the shakes, the cold that set like nails into the bones. The hunger that consumed like a slow fire until teeth ached and the mouth tasted of metal and every living body was nothing but a heart beat, tantalizing, intoxicating, hypnotizing. If it got that far, being caught drinking his XO’s blood out of a cup would be a good outcome for Hogan. Even the most controlled Drinker would be driven by simple physical necessity to quench his thirst eventually, and when long-held control snapped it did so brittle as bone, without warning. The results were bodies on the floor, blood on the walls, and a lynching. Always.
And now… even if the Krauts shuffled a new Kommandant in, the odds of that happening and someone convincing him to lift the restriction on the barracks soon enough to allow them to lift some raw meat from the mess for Hogan in the condition he was in were damn low.
Kinch blinked, slowly. Hogan wouldn’t accept his offer, and with a cooler head Kinch began to appreciate it might be the right decision – it was incredibly dangerous in such an open, supervised environment, which was why entrenched Drinkers never made it long in the Forces.
Bringing in some meat to be cooked for the new colonel’s Sunday meal, though…
Kinch’s head snapped up. The men were mostly sitting around engaged in whatever hobbies they held; some knitting, some carving, some reading or writing or playing cards. Newkirk was sitting on his bunk, thumbing through a book and smoking with an unconscious scowl. The sergeant’s eyes flitted to the window, then to his watch. Late in the afternoon now, the sky was darkening. His watch put the time as 4:45. Lights out at 9, men asleep by 11…
Thinking hard, Kinch picked up a magazine Sloan had lent him, and pretended to read.
-------------------------------------------------------
That afternoon, a doctor’s car arrived in camp.
-------------------------------------------------------
Newkirk had shared his sleeping space for nearly his whole life. Had made the transition from family to air force base to prison barracks nearly seamlessly.
He still hated it. As volatile as emotions could be in the day, they were still predictable. In sleep, men rolled straight from joy to despair, from laughing to weeping. 13 men all doing so at the same time, completely independent of each other, was on an emotional level with being drawn and quartered. Nightly.
Newkirk was still lying awake in his bunk when he heard someone across the room rise. With the stove dark from lack of wood the room was pitch black, but his ears were sharp enough to track quiet feet moving across the floor boards towards him.
LeBeau was popular, but not popular enough for a night beating on his behalf, and in any case every man here recognized private choices when they saw them. He tensed anyway.
“Put on your shoes,” whispered a soft voice beside his bunk. Whoever it was was full of stone-hard commitment and almost-quashed uncertainty.
“Not bloody likely,” hissed Newkirk.
“That’s an order, corporal.”
There was only one sergeant in the barracks. Newkirk set his jaw and sat up, then swung himself down in slow, protesting movements. He found his boots and his coat and put them on. “We’re going to the mess kitchen. If there are locks, bring picks.”
Newkirk stared. And then, as he found his tongue – “What are –”
“Order, corporal,” repeated Kinchloe, harshly. Newkirk, playing for time, shuffled to his foot locker for his picks. The sergeant’s presence, as the only other man awake, was notably different from the others. Easy to grab. Newkirk, reaching out carefully, tweaked at his uncertainty and tugged gently at it. Took a simultaneous firmer hold in that headstrong certainty, and began dragging it down, weakening it –
“Stop that,” hissed the sergeant sharply, grabbing his shoulder and shaking him once, hard. “Get your things and follow me.”
Newkirk, seriously worried now, pried his picks from where they were stashed in the false lid of the footlocker and followed the sergeant’s footsteps to the door.
Kinchloe opened it slightly, letting in a cold breeze and a gentle haze of ambient light. A second later he darted out. Newkirk stumbled and then took off after him, giving the door a push closed as he dashed after the taller man.
Probably, it was that the man was new, not yet used to the kind of frustration and depression that set in after time. That, or his bloody Yank blood had boiled the sense out of his brain. Being out at night came with an automatic month in the cooler, if the guards decided to catch you. They didn’t have to. Sometimes, they saved time by shooting first.
Kinchloe ran straight across to the Kommandantur, slunk around in the shadows and then in another burst crossed over to the mess hall. He stopped under the stoop, moderately protected from the seeking glare of the searchlights, and motioned to the door. “Open it,” he said, shortly.
Newkirk, desperate to be out of the open, didn’t wait to be told twice. The lock didn’t have to be a good one, few of the men had lock picks and fewer had any inclination to be shot. It sprang open in under twenty seconds, Newkirk hurrying in immediately. Kinchloe followed, closing the door behind him.
“The kitchen,” he said quietly.
“What the bloody hell is going on?” returned Newkirk, staring out the un-shuttered window at the spotlight’s roaming line brushing over barracks 2.
“We’re running an errand for the colonel.” Kinchloe strode through the empty room to the doors at the end of it, twisting the knob with a rattling. “Open this door.”
Newkirk paused to wait a searchlight sweep through the windows, then joined the sergeant. “No offense, mate, but your colonel needs to learn to make do with what he gets.” Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe the man had been talking about something else. Maybe he had misheard.
“Probably by tomorrow, the Kommandant will be forced to go on leave for his health. Permanently. You don’t have any cause to be complaining.”
Newkirk’s pick slipped in the lock with an ugly sound. Kinchloe was entirely serious. “Been looking into your crystal ball then, have you?” he asked lightly.
“No.”
The lock clicked, and Newkirk pulled the door open. The sergeant strode into the darkness, Newkirk behind him. “Where is the refrigerator?”
“Left wall, past the sink.”
Newkirk stood in the shadows by the door while the man went to look for the refrigerator, watching him as best he could in the darkness. Trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
There was a click as the refrigerator opened, and the sound of the man rummaging through it. Then another click, and footsteps. He had found what he wanted.
Newkirk, taking a deep breath, stepped in front of the door. “I want to know what’s going on. All this running around in the middle of the bally night nicking kitchen supplies. The Kommandant. What you –” What you said.
“What’s going on, corporal, is that the colonel and myself are here to make this camp useful. With some special skills. Skills that you and LeBeau both know about.”
Newkirk tensed, narrowing his eyes. And then glanced at the sergeant’s dark form. “What’re you holding? What did you come here to take?”
Kinchloe handed him something cold wrapped in thick paper. Newkirk ran his fingers over the paper, then raised it to his nose. And picked up the unmistakable heady scent of raw meat.
Wine and vinegar, two different states of the same thing. Cups to hold them in. Salt, the most common protection readily available. Louis startling like he’d seen a ghost, and then insisting that Newkirk shut up until they could talk.
“He’s bloody kin. You both are,” he whispered, remembering the sergeant’s hand on his shoulder, the low warning in his ear.
“We all three of us are,” replied the sergeant flatly.
“I’m not going to rat you out,” said Newkirk, reading between the lines, offended.
“Good. Let’s all of us keep it that way.”
“You don’t trust me.” He could have read it in the tone alone, if he’d chosen to.
“After LeBeau? Do you really need to ask?”
“That was complicated.”
“Pretty clear from where I was standing.” Kinchloe pushed past him, cold and distant. “Anyone asks, we came to get this for the colonel’s Sunday dinner.”
Newkirk shrugged. “Fine.”
They crossed the hall, pausing once to press themselves against the walls as a spotlight streamed through the windows. At the door, Kinchloe’s hand rattling the doorknob, Newkirk suddenly grabbed the man’s shoulder.
“About LeBeau – get the colonel to have him released.”
The sergeant paused, just another shadow in the night. “Or?”
“Or nothing. Except neither of us’ll be part of whatever this ‘usefulness’ you’re talking ‘bout.”
After a moment, Kinchloe relaxed, pushing Newkirk’s hand off his shoulder. “I don’t need to ‘get him’ to. The colonel keeps his promises. Now move.”
And he was gone.
----------------------------------------------------
Kinch split from Newkirk when they returned to the barracks and slipped to the right towards Hogan’s quarters. There was no lock on the door and the hinges were silent as he pushed it open. Still, as soon as he shut it behind him the colonel’s voice rang out low and harsh, “If you’re looking for a glass of water, you’re in the wrong place soldier.”
“It’s just me, sir,” replied Kinch. He heard Hogan sigh in the dark. “I brought you something. Thought you could use it.” He tossed the package over to the bunk, reluctant to move around in the dark more than necessary.
There was a rustling of paper, and then a long silence. And then Hogan’s voice, sharp as a shard of glass. “You shouldn’t have done this, sergeant. Never mind the penalties: the suspicions alone could sink us.”
“Officers have wanted meat for their dinners before this, sir,” said Kinch staunchly.
“And men have been burned for less suspicious actions before this, Sergeant. We can’t take any chances. Not on little things.”
“Little things don’t always stay little, sir. I think it was worth it.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think, Sergeant. This isn’t to happen again. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Kinch turned, hand on the cool doorknob.
“But..." Hogan sighed heavily. "Thanks, Kinch.”
Kinch, smiling, slipped out into the barracks.
----------------------------------------------------------
When they woke for bed check the next morning, Kommandant Ackman was already gone.
Series: Hogan's Heroes
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Beta:
frauleinfrogNotes: Supernatural AU (not the show)
Summary: The Great War brought the kin out of the shadows when, launched into bloody warfare, they cut through entire regiments like scythes. Two decades later, they are expressely banned from all military organizations. But there's always an advantage to men who make their own luck, and the Allies can't afford to lose this war.
Prologue
Chapter 1
If you are very valiant it is, I think, a god who gave you this gift
Homer, The Iliad
Hogan had only just poured out a cup of wine and re-corked the bottle when Newkirk stormed in, furious.
“You said you’d have the sentence commuted. Sir,” he spat, dark eyes blazing.
Hogan straightened and stared at him coldly, one hand on the bottle’s neck. “It’s not your affair anymore, corporal.”
The Brit had proved a disappointment. Hogan had expected Newkirk to step forward and take the cooler sentence just to spite him. That, he could have made use of. A hothead who did good work and took the consequences was worth a lot. A coward who passed his problems off on others was worse than useless, was potentially dangerous, a snitch in the making.
“LeBeau’s just been thrown in the cooler for a month!”
“And you could have prevented it yourself.” Hogan picked up the wine again, ignoring Newkirk who coloured angrily. “Dismissed, corporal.”
Newkirk’s eyes flashed to the bottle, and the cup on his desk. “Enjoy your wine, sir,” he hissed, and slammed out.
Hogan ten heartbeats, forcing himself to relax his hold on the bottle, and then stepped out of his office.
-------------------------------------------
The guard stationed outside barracks 2 let him pass, and he crossed the compound quickly, saluted by the occasional prisoner in the yard. The guards at the Kommandantur door again let him by, one of them preceding him into the building and knocking on the office door in front of him. There was a shout of assent from inside, and the guard pushed the door open and stepped in, standing back both to be out of the way and to give him a free shot at Hogan’s back.
The Kommandant was sitting behind his desk, the head his cane barely visible over the edge of the desk. He looked up as Hogan walked in and put the bottle of wine down on a clear corner of the cheap surface.
“There’s the wine, sir,” he said contritely. “I apologize for my men; their behaviour was inexcusable.”
Ackman made no answer, face unchanging. Hogan let the contrition fade.
“Still, I feel I must protest the sentence you’ve given LeBeau. You have to admit, the circumstances are a bit extreme. He’s been drinking wine since he was a kid, used to it with every meal. To go a whole year without, while cleaning and dusting the liquor cabinet, must have been a huge temptation. I’m sure if you showed a little leniency –”
“ – Your men would feel they could steal what they liked without fear. No, colonel, there is no negotiation for the crime of theft. The French corporal confessed to it, and he will spend a month in the cooler.”
Hogan didn’t miss the subtle insinuation: Ackman knew as well as he did that LeBeau hadn’t stolen the wine.
The man was far too sharp to stay.
Hogan nodded, face impassive. “Alright, sir,” he allowed. And then, eyes widening in surprise, “Oh, sir, you have a bit of lint on your shoulder, there –” Hogan leant across the desk to brush at the man’s shoulder, even as Ackman repelled and the guard shouted and grabbed his shoulder to snap him backwards. Hogan stumbled, only barely keeping his balance, as the guard hauled him right across the room and shoved his gun into Hogan’s face. Ackman rose, pale and strict.
“That was foolish, Colonel.”
Hogan blinked, the picture of innocence. “Just wanted you to look presentable, sir,” he protested. Ackman waved an irritated hand at the guard, who let go of Hogan’s collar.
“Next time I advise you to allow me to remain as I am. That will be all.” He saluted, and sat. Hogan returned the gesture, then let the guard shove him out of the room. With a strand of the lieutenant colonel’s hair clasped tight in his fist.
Hogan stepped out into the bright morning sunshine, grinning.
-------------------------------------------------
Kinch was waiting in his quarters when he came back, face unreadable. Hogan closed the door behind him and pulled a piece of paper off the thin notepad on his desk, began folding it to make an envelope even as he glanced at his XO.
“What is it?”
Kinch shrugged. “Newkirk’s sulking, sir. The men are ribbing him pretty bad. And, since we’re confined to barracks, we can’t tunnel. No way to get rid of the dirt.”
“It’s pretty irritating, knowing you could just shuip –” Hogan made a parting gesture with his hands, “and we’d have one ready-made…” he shrugged, putting the hair in the envelope.
“Gets to me sometimes too, sir,” replied Kinch wryly. “About the lieutenant colonel...?”
“He refused to let LeBeau out early. Fortunately, that won’t be a problem.” Hogan held up the now-complete envelope, shaking it. Kinch nodded.
“What do you need?”
“About twenty minutes uninterrupted. Night would be best, but we can’t chance anyone hearing me moving around. Besides there’s no way to hide the light, either from the outside or –” Hogan glanced in the direction of the barracks. Hiding his nature from his own side was nothing new, but the absurdity of knowing his men would be just as eager as the Germans to destroy efforts in their own favour burned all the same. An anger long ago reduced to ashes, but still hot.
“Do you want to wait for lunch, sir?”
“No. Sooner we get him out of here, the better. No need to keep LeBeau in the cooler for longer than necessary, in any case,” he added, lightly.
“You don’t think you’re pressing your luck, sir?” asked Kinch, smiling all the same.
Hogan spared him a look of mock-insult. “I didn’t pact with Lady Luck for nothing. Get going; I’ll call you when I need you.”
“Yes, sir.”
----------------------------------------------
Kinch was just sitting down for a hand of poker when the colonel opened the door to shout for him. He stood with an apologetic shrug at the men and a disappointed glance at his cards, and turned to face his commander.
“Sir?”
“There’s more dust in this office than a mausoleum. Get a mop and broom, will ya?” Hogan was leaning out of the doorway, door held mostly closed behind him.
“Yes, sir.”
One of the men pointed him to the narrow janitorial locker standing in a corner; Kinch grabbed the mop, bucket, brush and pan and headed for the officer’s quarters, pausing only to fill the bucket at the sink.
Hogan closed the door behind him, speaking in a deliberate, carrying tone as he did so. “We can move the bunk and start in that corner.”
In fact, they moved the table to stand against the door, blocking any sudden access. The wine, still sitting in the tin cup on the desk’s scarred surface, washed up high against the sides as they manhandled the furniture into place.
“Alright, sergeant, get started,” he ordered in the same voice. Kinch put the bucket down and grabbed the mop handle, shaking it and setting the tin bucket clattering.
Hogan had hung a line of cord inside between two walls and draped both bunk blankets on it as if to be beaten. It just happened to pass closely before the window, blocking all lines of sight from outside. With the windows thus obscured, the only real light came from the single overhead bulb, casting a harsh light down directly on them and burning out shadows. The colonel dropped down beside the bed and grappled under it to come back out holding his hands stiffly in front of him as if he were carrying something. Kinch knew, having carried what looked like nothing but felt like a metal box across the compound yesterday before their confinement, what was in Hogan’s hands.
The colonel put his burden down in a corner with a quiet clunk and ran his hands over it. In the blink of an eye a battered tin box appeared, sitting innocently on the plywood floor as though it had always been there.
There was a simple clasp which Hogan snapped open, flipping up the lid without ceremony. Kinch, curious despite himself about the box the colonel had managed to keep with him through capture, interrogation and assignment to the camp, rattled the mop again and watched closely.
Inside the box was a tray about half as deep as the four-inch sides. The tray had been carefully divided into a dozen compartments, each holding a small corked bottle nestled in its walls. Some, Kinch saw, held dried leaves or twigs, while others contained fine powder or pieces of metal. A few held contents which were entirely indistinguishable to him.
Hogan pulled out three bottles and put them on the floor. Then the tray came out to reveal an undivided bottom section. Kinch recognized a transistor, capacitor and crystal diode, the most difficult radio parts to jerry rig. Beside them were a few sticks of chalk, a roll of string and one of wire, and a short string of ebony beads. Hogan picked up a piece of chalk, turned, and began sketching in the middle of the floor.
Kinch had been assigned to Hogan nearly a year ago when his secret had leaked out to the colonel while the officer had been touring Olmstead. Whatever strings Hogan had pulled to manage the highly unusual assignment – a black sergeant serving under a white colonel had caused plenty of talk – Kinch didn’t know. In a full year of service with the colonel he’d only spoken to him a handful of times about the bond they shared, and only once seen the colonel in action – and even then it had been both a minor and quick action.
As much as Kinch’s image of Hogan was coloured by the colonel’s nature, he rarely actually associated Hogan with active ability or practice – the colonel was in his mind much closer to human than he himself. Now, as he watched his commander sketching a sigil on the floor in quick, concise motions, he felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under him. Hogan was very definitely practiced. And, he could feel as power began to accumulate under the lines and flow up into his CO, very definitely not human.
A circle appeared out of the lines, complex and detailed, here and there augmented with a word or two of Latin or a symbol Kinch only vaguely recognized from old chemistry texts. At five points in the circle spaces had been left blank, as well as in the centre where the elliptical curves and straight lines, apparently arbitrary individually, drew together to create a detailed border around a perfectly circular space.
Kinch, used to the colonel’s crisp, precise writing, could pick out hints of stylistic similarities in the clean perfection here. A clean perfectionist wasn’t, he thought with a smile, the idea most probably associated with Hogan.
Hogan finished the last stroke and, while there was no perceptible event, somehow the sum of the lines was much more than the parts. The roiling energy Kinch had felt below the surface of the circle flattened out and died down, still present but now even and controlled. Hogan didn’t even glance at it, just tossed the chalk back in the box and picked up the three bottles he’d drawn from the top layer.
“Hand me the cups. They’re in the drawer,” he nodded at the desk currently blocking the door.
Kinch dropped the mop, bucked clanging, and grabbed the cups Newkirk and LeBeau had thieved from the kitchen. He handed them to Hogan one at a time. In the first three, Hogan tipped a few grains of powder or a couple of dried leaves and placed them in specific circles.
“Now the wine. Then the vinegar, it’s under the top mattress.”
Kinch handed him down the wine, then reached over and dug the bottle of vinegar from where it was resting nestled between the corner slat and straw mattress of the top bunk and handed it down as well. Hogan poured enough to wet the bottom of the cup, clear and just slightly more viscous than water, and then returned it.
Five cups in place, Hogan stood and looked over the circle with a careful eye. Apparently satisfied, he stepped over to the head of his bunk and dug out the box of salt from under the lower mattress. Opening it, he bent low and poured out a thin trail of white grains, surrounding the outside of the chalk. Kinch gave the bucket a ringing kick.
Salt laid, Hogan grabbed the envelope, pulling the stiff flap open and picking out something minute from inside in a pinch-grip. He put whatever it was down in the centre of the circle and dropped to one knee. From inside his jacket he produced what looked like a paring knife with a black stone blade, dull as dusty flint. Although unusual, a blade only three inches long was not weighty when compared to the weapons any soldier was used to carrying. But Hogan held it like a loaded gun, with the awareness and respect anything dangerous commanded in a trained professional.
“I thought that was your safeguard, sir.” Kinch indicated the box of salt. The purifying powers of salt had little effect on anything that wasn’t undead, but he still shied away from it in large quantities.
Hogan glanced at it and then back at the ring around the salt, smiling humourlessly. “That just buys time. This is for emergencies.” He twisted the knife so that it gleamed duskily in the harsh light.
“You might want to get a bigger one, sir,” suggested Kinch, eyeing the circle. What happened when sorcerers successfully unleashed Curses and summoned evils, everyone who had spoken to the Great War vets knew. Those shadowy, twisted horrors were a large part of the reason kin were killed without question. What happened when they failed to do it correctly no one knew, because no one was ever left to ask.
Hogan shrugged, still grinning with a brittle light-heartedness. “My neck’s not so deep.”
He turned before Kinch found his voice. By the time he had, Hogan had rolled up his sleeve to press the edge of the blade against his naked arm up near the elbow.
Kinch would have guessed from looking at it that the blade was too dull to cut wax. But without applying any apparent pressure or slicing, blood welled up on either side of the black meridian and dripped down towards the sigil.
“Don’t forget the corner, Sergeant,” snapped Hogan abruptly, not turning.
Kinch, wincing with chagrin, grabbed the mop and rattled the bucket as he watched.
As the first drop of blood hit the floor, the edges of the circle began hissing, like fire sinking into wet wood. More drops pattered down, and after the fourth there was a crackling snap. Almost faster than the eye could follow, the white lines of the outer chalk ring flared into ember brightness. Like quick-fuse burning, the smokeless flare split from the large outside circle into each individual line and raced towards the centre, sizzling all the while. As the flash of fire and light passed, it left ash rather than chalk in its trail, the ash crumbling to dust and disappearing without a trace seconds later. As lines converged and reached the tin cups, the contents flared green and disappeared with puffs of emerald smoke.
Finally, with each individual line racing towards the centre, the dozen sparks twined into the middle. Kinch slammed the mop down into the bottom of the bucket as they met in a dark red glow, the empty inner circle glowing like a ruby in sunlight. Lying across the red like a snake sunning itself was a single black thread. As Kinch watched, both of its ends began glowing red, then gold, like steel wool thrown into a fire. Then, with a crackle, it burned suddenly to the middle in a shock of yellow and disappeared nearly faster than the eye could follow.
The red light faded to nothing, leaving only empty cups inside a rough salt circle on a clean floor.
Hogan stood stiffly and crossed to the bunk in one wide step, sitting down heavily. Beneath his dark hair, his face was grey. He waved his hand at the floor without looking at Kinch.
“Better give it a once-over, just for the look of things,” he said gruffly.
Kinch, pursing his lips, pushed the wet mop across the floor in a few long swipes. He stacked up the empty cups and put them back in the desk drawer, likewise returning the salt to the end of the bunk.
“Well,” said Hogan in a nearly steady voice. “That’ll get rid of Ackman soon enough.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Kinch impassively.
“You don’t agree?”
“I agree, sir.”
Hogan glared. “Then don’t start mother-henning. As soon as he’s gone, we’ll be able to start bringing in a better diet. That will solve any problems.”
“And until then, sir?”
“Being confined to barracks isn’t too strenuous.”
“Steering a camp through a change in Kommandants is, sir,” replied Kinch dryly, wringing the mop and wiping up some of the wetter patches and making sure all traces of salt were gone. “With respect, sir, you need –” he cut himself off. They both knew.
“Are you volunteering to run over to the mess and grab me a side of beef, Sergeant?” Hogan’s tone and the blockade of rank showed his mood and opinion clear enough. Kinch, hands tightening on the mop’s handle and eyes on the pallor of his CO’s skin and the sweat along his hair line, ignored it.
“I don’t think I need to go that far, sir.”
“You can stow that talk right now,” snapped Hogan, harshly, kid gloves suddenly gone. “There’ll be absolutely none of that. You agreed to that when you signed on.”
“But –”
“No buts, Sergeant. I’ll manage. Close the box and give it to me on your way out.”
Kinch clenched his jaw shut and did as he was ordered; by the time he had pulled the table back to its place the box was gone while Hogan’s slacks were pressed flat in odd creases. He was staring through the wall when Kinch left, looking tired and old.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Kinch didn’t slam out of Hogan’s office. He didn’t throw the cleaning supplies into the locker, and he didn’t storm back to his bunk. Nevertheless, living in close quarters with 13 other men had long ago attuned the barracks’ occupants to each others’ moods, and Kinch was telegraphing his loud and clear. They left him alone.
Kinch wasn’t a subscriber to the view that officers were put on this Earth to try the patience of enlisted men. Until now, Hogan’s carefree flying in the face of danger and commonsense hadn’t bothered him – he trusted the colonel’s judgement and, more importantly, judged the colonel unusually capable of distinguishing the line between smart risks and pointless sacrifices.
This wasn’t a smart risk.
Mostly though, beneath his simmering anger at his officer’s decision, he was angry with himself for not foreseeing the issue. For not realising the toll of Cursing.
Any Drinker knew how bad the thirst could be; the weakness, the shakes, the cold that set like nails into the bones. The hunger that consumed like a slow fire until teeth ached and the mouth tasted of metal and every living body was nothing but a heart beat, tantalizing, intoxicating, hypnotizing. If it got that far, being caught drinking his XO’s blood out of a cup would be a good outcome for Hogan. Even the most controlled Drinker would be driven by simple physical necessity to quench his thirst eventually, and when long-held control snapped it did so brittle as bone, without warning. The results were bodies on the floor, blood on the walls, and a lynching. Always.
And now… even if the Krauts shuffled a new Kommandant in, the odds of that happening and someone convincing him to lift the restriction on the barracks soon enough to allow them to lift some raw meat from the mess for Hogan in the condition he was in were damn low.
Kinch blinked, slowly. Hogan wouldn’t accept his offer, and with a cooler head Kinch began to appreciate it might be the right decision – it was incredibly dangerous in such an open, supervised environment, which was why entrenched Drinkers never made it long in the Forces.
Bringing in some meat to be cooked for the new colonel’s Sunday meal, though…
Kinch’s head snapped up. The men were mostly sitting around engaged in whatever hobbies they held; some knitting, some carving, some reading or writing or playing cards. Newkirk was sitting on his bunk, thumbing through a book and smoking with an unconscious scowl. The sergeant’s eyes flitted to the window, then to his watch. Late in the afternoon now, the sky was darkening. His watch put the time as 4:45. Lights out at 9, men asleep by 11…
Thinking hard, Kinch picked up a magazine Sloan had lent him, and pretended to read.
-------------------------------------------------------
That afternoon, a doctor’s car arrived in camp.
-------------------------------------------------------
Newkirk had shared his sleeping space for nearly his whole life. Had made the transition from family to air force base to prison barracks nearly seamlessly.
He still hated it. As volatile as emotions could be in the day, they were still predictable. In sleep, men rolled straight from joy to despair, from laughing to weeping. 13 men all doing so at the same time, completely independent of each other, was on an emotional level with being drawn and quartered. Nightly.
Newkirk was still lying awake in his bunk when he heard someone across the room rise. With the stove dark from lack of wood the room was pitch black, but his ears were sharp enough to track quiet feet moving across the floor boards towards him.
LeBeau was popular, but not popular enough for a night beating on his behalf, and in any case every man here recognized private choices when they saw them. He tensed anyway.
“Put on your shoes,” whispered a soft voice beside his bunk. Whoever it was was full of stone-hard commitment and almost-quashed uncertainty.
“Not bloody likely,” hissed Newkirk.
“That’s an order, corporal.”
There was only one sergeant in the barracks. Newkirk set his jaw and sat up, then swung himself down in slow, protesting movements. He found his boots and his coat and put them on. “We’re going to the mess kitchen. If there are locks, bring picks.”
Newkirk stared. And then, as he found his tongue – “What are –”
“Order, corporal,” repeated Kinchloe, harshly. Newkirk, playing for time, shuffled to his foot locker for his picks. The sergeant’s presence, as the only other man awake, was notably different from the others. Easy to grab. Newkirk, reaching out carefully, tweaked at his uncertainty and tugged gently at it. Took a simultaneous firmer hold in that headstrong certainty, and began dragging it down, weakening it –
“Stop that,” hissed the sergeant sharply, grabbing his shoulder and shaking him once, hard. “Get your things and follow me.”
Newkirk, seriously worried now, pried his picks from where they were stashed in the false lid of the footlocker and followed the sergeant’s footsteps to the door.
Kinchloe opened it slightly, letting in a cold breeze and a gentle haze of ambient light. A second later he darted out. Newkirk stumbled and then took off after him, giving the door a push closed as he dashed after the taller man.
Probably, it was that the man was new, not yet used to the kind of frustration and depression that set in after time. That, or his bloody Yank blood had boiled the sense out of his brain. Being out at night came with an automatic month in the cooler, if the guards decided to catch you. They didn’t have to. Sometimes, they saved time by shooting first.
Kinchloe ran straight across to the Kommandantur, slunk around in the shadows and then in another burst crossed over to the mess hall. He stopped under the stoop, moderately protected from the seeking glare of the searchlights, and motioned to the door. “Open it,” he said, shortly.
Newkirk, desperate to be out of the open, didn’t wait to be told twice. The lock didn’t have to be a good one, few of the men had lock picks and fewer had any inclination to be shot. It sprang open in under twenty seconds, Newkirk hurrying in immediately. Kinchloe followed, closing the door behind him.
“The kitchen,” he said quietly.
“What the bloody hell is going on?” returned Newkirk, staring out the un-shuttered window at the spotlight’s roaming line brushing over barracks 2.
“We’re running an errand for the colonel.” Kinchloe strode through the empty room to the doors at the end of it, twisting the knob with a rattling. “Open this door.”
Newkirk paused to wait a searchlight sweep through the windows, then joined the sergeant. “No offense, mate, but your colonel needs to learn to make do with what he gets.” Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe the man had been talking about something else. Maybe he had misheard.
“Probably by tomorrow, the Kommandant will be forced to go on leave for his health. Permanently. You don’t have any cause to be complaining.”
Newkirk’s pick slipped in the lock with an ugly sound. Kinchloe was entirely serious. “Been looking into your crystal ball then, have you?” he asked lightly.
“No.”
The lock clicked, and Newkirk pulled the door open. The sergeant strode into the darkness, Newkirk behind him. “Where is the refrigerator?”
“Left wall, past the sink.”
Newkirk stood in the shadows by the door while the man went to look for the refrigerator, watching him as best he could in the darkness. Trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
There was a click as the refrigerator opened, and the sound of the man rummaging through it. Then another click, and footsteps. He had found what he wanted.
Newkirk, taking a deep breath, stepped in front of the door. “I want to know what’s going on. All this running around in the middle of the bally night nicking kitchen supplies. The Kommandant. What you –” What you said.
“What’s going on, corporal, is that the colonel and myself are here to make this camp useful. With some special skills. Skills that you and LeBeau both know about.”
Newkirk tensed, narrowing his eyes. And then glanced at the sergeant’s dark form. “What’re you holding? What did you come here to take?”
Kinchloe handed him something cold wrapped in thick paper. Newkirk ran his fingers over the paper, then raised it to his nose. And picked up the unmistakable heady scent of raw meat.
Wine and vinegar, two different states of the same thing. Cups to hold them in. Salt, the most common protection readily available. Louis startling like he’d seen a ghost, and then insisting that Newkirk shut up until they could talk.
“He’s bloody kin. You both are,” he whispered, remembering the sergeant’s hand on his shoulder, the low warning in his ear.
“We all three of us are,” replied the sergeant flatly.
“I’m not going to rat you out,” said Newkirk, reading between the lines, offended.
“Good. Let’s all of us keep it that way.”
“You don’t trust me.” He could have read it in the tone alone, if he’d chosen to.
“After LeBeau? Do you really need to ask?”
“That was complicated.”
“Pretty clear from where I was standing.” Kinchloe pushed past him, cold and distant. “Anyone asks, we came to get this for the colonel’s Sunday dinner.”
Newkirk shrugged. “Fine.”
They crossed the hall, pausing once to press themselves against the walls as a spotlight streamed through the windows. At the door, Kinchloe’s hand rattling the doorknob, Newkirk suddenly grabbed the man’s shoulder.
“About LeBeau – get the colonel to have him released.”
The sergeant paused, just another shadow in the night. “Or?”
“Or nothing. Except neither of us’ll be part of whatever this ‘usefulness’ you’re talking ‘bout.”
After a moment, Kinchloe relaxed, pushing Newkirk’s hand off his shoulder. “I don’t need to ‘get him’ to. The colonel keeps his promises. Now move.”
And he was gone.
----------------------------------------------------
Kinch split from Newkirk when they returned to the barracks and slipped to the right towards Hogan’s quarters. There was no lock on the door and the hinges were silent as he pushed it open. Still, as soon as he shut it behind him the colonel’s voice rang out low and harsh, “If you’re looking for a glass of water, you’re in the wrong place soldier.”
“It’s just me, sir,” replied Kinch. He heard Hogan sigh in the dark. “I brought you something. Thought you could use it.” He tossed the package over to the bunk, reluctant to move around in the dark more than necessary.
There was a rustling of paper, and then a long silence. And then Hogan’s voice, sharp as a shard of glass. “You shouldn’t have done this, sergeant. Never mind the penalties: the suspicions alone could sink us.”
“Officers have wanted meat for their dinners before this, sir,” said Kinch staunchly.
“And men have been burned for less suspicious actions before this, Sergeant. We can’t take any chances. Not on little things.”
“Little things don’t always stay little, sir. I think it was worth it.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think, Sergeant. This isn’t to happen again. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Kinch turned, hand on the cool doorknob.
“But..." Hogan sighed heavily. "Thanks, Kinch.”
Kinch, smiling, slipped out into the barracks.
----------------------------------------------------------
When they woke for bed check the next morning, Kommandant Ackman was already gone.
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Date: 2011-03-19 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-20 05:16 am (UTC)