“I thought that’s what you’d say,” Scotti smiled. “I want you to take twenty men and head for the dam. That’s the most dangerous of the three missions. As you can see, the telegraph line is not in an exposed position, and it’s not so important as the other points. If the Germans get any force around there in time, it won’t amount to much and our men can get back here fast without being cut off. The bridge is harder, and the Germans will want to save that. But their force can really come at it from only one direction and our men can just back up the hill here, fighting them off as they do it.”
“Yes, I can see that,” the sergeant said.
“But the dam’s a different matter,” Scotti went on. “In the first place, they’ve probably got a squad or two on guard there, with radio. So you’ll have to make a feint at a real attack to make our bluff work. But most important, the Germans can come on you from both sides and encircle you without any trouble.”
“Sure—you can see that from the map,” Dick said. “That’s what they’d do right away. But if we had a walkie-talkie with us, you could let us know in time, and we could sneak back out of the trap and get back here.”
“But we can’t do that,” the lieutenant said. “You’ll have a walkie-talkie all right, and we’ll keep in touch with you. But you and your men have got to keep the German detail pinned down there as long as possible. You’ve got to get yourself surrounded and hold them there, while we’re holding the main force on this ledge. You’ve got to hold them long enough so they can’t be rushed back to help stem the Ranger attack. We’ll give the signal for the Rangers to pour over that other hill when we know we’ve got the greatest number of German soldiers tied up battling us.”
“I see,” Dick replied grimly. “We get ourselves surrounded. We hold the attacking force there. Our chance of getting out is either to hold out until relief comes to us, after the main battle of the Pass is over, or to break through the encirclement ourselves and make our way back here.”
“That’s the idea, Dick,” Scotti said. He didn’t like the idea of giving this toughest assignment to one of his best friends, but he had to put a good man in command of the dam detail, and Dick Donnelly was the best.
“Let me study that map a minute,” Dick said.
Scotti handed him the paper and watched the sergeant note carefully every detail around the dam. Suddenly he put his finger on a double line leading away from one side of the reservoir and asked, “What’s this?”
“That’s an ancient Roman aqueduct,” the lieutenant replied. “You see, back in the days when Rome ran this part of the world, they had a dam here, supplying water to the cities to the east. That aqueduct led from the reservoir across the little valley there and then followed the line of the hills eastward.”