"Hey, little help, how 'bout it, boy?" Bedford said, gesturing to the softball resting up against the barbed wire.

Lincoln Scott turned and saw the ball.

"C'mon, boy, get the damn ball!" Bedford shouted.

Scott nodded, and took a step toward the deadline.

In that second, Tommy realized what was about to happen.

The black flier was about to step over the deadline to retrieve the baseball without first donning the white smock with the red cross that the Germans provided for exactly that purpose.

Scott seemed unaware that the machine-gun crew in the nearest tower had swiveled their weapon, and that it was trained on him.

"Stop!" Tommy shouted.

"Don't!"

The black flier's foot seemed to hesitate in midair, poised over the thin wire of the deadline. Scott turned toward the frantic noise.

Tommy found himself running forward, waving his arms.

"No! No! Don't!" he cried.

He slowed as he passed Bedford. He heard Trader Vic mutter, "Hart, you damn Yankee fool…" beneath his breath.

Scott remained 'stock-still, waiting for Tommy to approach him.

"What is it?" the black man asked sullenly, but with just a tinge of anxiety in his voice.

"You have to wear the damn jacket to cross the deadline without being shot," Tommy said breathlessly. He pointed back toward the baseball game, and they saw one of the kriegies who'd been playing half-running across the field, carrying the smock, which fluttered in the breeze he made by hurrying.

"If you don't have the red cross on, the Germans can shoot. Without warning. It's the rule. Didn't anyone tell you?"

Scott shook his head, but only slightly.

"No," he said slowly, staring past Tommy at Bedford.

"No one told me about the jacket."

By this time the kriegie carrying the smock had arrived at the deadline.

"Got to wear this, lieutenant," the man said, "unless you're looking to commit suicide."

Lincoln Scott continued to stare past the man, directly at Vincent

Bedford, who stood a few feet away. Bedford pulled off his leather baseball mitt and started massaging it, working the leather slowly and deliberately.

"So," Trader Vic called out again, "you gonna get us the ball, boy, or what? Game's wasting away here."

Tommy squared around toward Bedford.

"What the hell are you trying to pull, Bedford? They would have shot him before he'd gone two feet!"

The southerner shrugged, and didn't reply. He continued to grin widely.

"That would have been murder, Vic," Tommy shouted.

"And you damn well know it!"

Bedford shook his head.

"What'cha saying. Tommy? All I asked was for that boy there to get us the ball, 'cause he was closer. Why, of course I thought he'd wait for the smock. Any damn fool knows that you gotta be wearing those colors if you want to cross the deadline. Ain't that right?"

Lincoln Scott slowly pivoted, and turned his glance up toward the machine-gun crew leaning out over the tower, watching the gathering of kriegies closely. He reached out and took the pullover with the red cross and held it in his hand for a moment. Then he held it up, so the machine gunners could see it.

Then he deliberately dropped it to the dirt.

"Hey," the kriegie said.

"Don't do that!"

In the same instant, Lincoln Scott stepped over the deadline.

He kept his gaze on the machine-gun crew in the tower.

They stepped back, crouching behind their weapon. One of the crew worked the bolt on the side of the gun, which made a sharp, metallic clicking sound that resounded through the suddenly still camp air, while the other grasped the belt of bullets, ready to feed it into the gun's maw.

His eyes still locked on the gunners, Scott strode across the short space to the wire. He reached down and seized the softball, then walked slowly back to the deadline. He stepped over the line stiffly, gave the Germans in the tower a final, contemptuous glance, and then turned from the machine gunners to Vincent Bedford.

Bedford was still grinning, but the smile was fading and seemed false.

He slipped the mitt back onto his left hand and pounded the leather palm two or three times.

"Thanks, boy," he said.

"Now fire that pill right on over here so's we can get back to the game."

Scott looked at Bedford, then glanced down at the ball. He picked up his eyes slowly, and stared past Bedford, toward the center of the baseball diamond, and beyond, to where the catcher, a kriegie umpire, and the next batter were standing.

Scott hefted the softball in his right hand, then, abruptly stepping past Tommy, took a half-jumping stride forward and unleashed the ball in a single, savage throw.

Scott's toss carried on a direct line, like a shot from a fighter's cannon, across the dusty field, toward home plate. It bounced one time in the infield before slapping into the surprised glove of the catcher.

Even Bedford's mouth dropped open slightly at the speed and distance of the throw.

"Damn, boy," Bedford said, surprise ringing his words.

"Y'all got some kinda arm there."

"That's right," Scott said.

"I do." Then he turned, and without saying another word resumed his lonely walk around the deadline.

Shortly after dawn on the third day following the incident at the wire.

Tommy Hart was slowly awakening from another sleep rich in dreams when the high-pitched and shrill sounds of whistles once again catapulted him into alertness. The noise erased a strange dream-vision in which his girlfriend Lydia and the dead captain from West Texas were sitting on the small front porch of his parents' white clapboard house in Manchester in side-by-side rocking chairs, each beckoning to him to join them.

He heard one of the other men in the room mutter: "Christ, what is it this time? Another tunnel?"

A second voice replied as the slapping sound of feet hitting the wooden floors filled the air: "Maybe it's an air raid."

A third voice chimed m: "Can't be. No sirens. Gotta be another tunnel, goddamn it! I didn't know they were digging another tunnel."

Tommy pulled on his pants and blurted out, "We're not supposed to know.

We're never supposed to know. Only the tunnel kings and the escape planners are supposed to know. Is it raining?"

One of the other men pulled back the shutters over the window.

"Drizzling. Shit. Cold and wet."

The man at the window turned back to the rest of the crew in the bunk room and added with a small lilt to his voice, "They can't expect us to fly in this soup!"

This statement was immediately greeted by the usual mixture of laughter, groans, and catcalls.

From the bunk above him. Tommy heard a fighter pilot wonder out loud, "Maybe somebody tried to blitz out through the wire. Maybe that's what's going on."

One of the first voices replied with a sarcastic snort: "That's all you fighter jocks ever think: That somebody's gonna blitz out on their own."

"We're just independent thinkers," the fighter pilot replied, giving the other man a halfhearted, playful wave. Several of the other fliers laughed.

"You still need permission from the escape committee," Tommy said, shrugging.

"And after the last tunnel failure, I doubt they'd give anybody permission to attempt suicide.

Even some crazy Mustang jockey."

There were a few grunts of assent to this comment.

Outside, the whistles continued, and there was the rumbling and thudding noise of booted men running in formation.

The kriegies in Hut 101 started to reach for woolen sweaters and leather flight jackets hanging from makeshift lines stretched between the bunks, while shouts from the guards urged them to hurry. Tommy laced his boots tightly, grabbed his weatherbeaten cap, and quickly made his way into the push of Allied prisoners emerging from their bunks.