“Why that hut?” he asked. “Personally, I’d choose that one still half filled with bombs. I could make a beautiful noise, and have things knocked about no end, if I could be left alone in that hut for a bit.”
“I’ll still take my hut,” Dave grunted. “It happens to be their radio shack. Give me three minutes and I’d have a couple of hundred bombers and ground fighters on their way out here. Just three minutes at the mike, or the key. Maybe two would be all I’d need.”
“In that case,” Freddy murmured, and stared across at the hut indicated, “we’ll have to see if we can’t arrange something along that line.”
“Yes, sure,” Dave sighed. “We might ask von Stutgardt, even. Here he comes over to start that crowing you were talking about. Boy! Wouldn’t I love to push him right in that ugly face of his. The majority of Nazis certainly were behind the door when the good looks were passed out, weren’t they?”
“Down in the cellar, no doubt,” Freddy grunted, “plotting fresh carnage and chaos. Well, here he comes, anyway.”
Von Stutgardt strode up to their hut with a smirking smile on his face that stretched from ear to ear. He came to a halt a little distance away so that he was not in line with either of the guards’ guns, and stood there staring at them for a moment.
“You are perfectly comfortable?” he suddenly spoke in his mocking voice. “Sorry I can’t let you move about at will. But that might prove a little dangerous. Of course, now that you have had the chance to observe things, you realize what is about to take place, eh?”
“Sure!” Dave shot at him. “We’ve guessed what you think is about to take place. But that’s a different kind of cheese, von Stutgardt. Plenty different!”
The German looked at him, and laughed.
“Stop trying to bolster up your courage, Captain Dawson,” he jeered. “There is nothing that can stop us, keep us from our great triumph, now. Yes, I will admit that a few days ago, when you two were receiving your orders from Colonel Welsh, I was a little worried about just how much you knew. And the other day when another one of your stupid agents came poking his nose about here, I wondered if my well laid plans were really in danger. I tricked him down, the same way I tricked you. He was a fool, and put up a fight. Naturally, I was forced to kill him, and have him buried.”