“That is all. And I wish you luck.”
“Thank you, Major. And thanks for the mission.” He gave McGee and Larkin the pitying look of one who has just drawn the grand prize in an open competition, 163and without another word turned quickly and passed through the door.
Cowan’s face had a baffled look. “Well,” he finally said, “he acts like a gamecock, anyhow.”
“Do you realize the danger of the mission?” McGee asked.
“It’s not for me to consider that angle,” the Major replied. “G2 wants information, and I am under orders to help supply it. Danger? Yes. That’s war. If we lose–well, I’d rather not discuss it.”
At that moment the door opened. There, framed against the night, stood Nathan Rodd! In salute he brought a gauze-wrapped hand to his head, a head so thickly swathed in bandages that only his face was showing and his service cap sat perched at a ridiculous angle.
“Lieutenant Rodd reports for duty, sir,” he said.
Cowan, McGee and Larkin had stood transfixed, as men might who thought they were seeing a ghost. But Rodd’s words, concise and strikingly characteristic of the taciturn Vermonter, snapped them into action. This was no ghost!
“Rodd!” Major Cowan exclaimed, and rushed across the room to grip Rodd’s unbandaged left hand. “You here?”
Rodd considered it unnecessary to waste words on so stupid a question. He merely offered his hand, when the Major released it, to McGee and Larkin, 164who were pounding him on the back in great glee.