A Midnight Clear Page #3

I don't know, Bud.

How about the Germans?

What do you want, Will?

You wanna lose one guy, two guys?

I'm just really glad we talked about

this. I'm glad we could work this out.

Sh*t.

It's up to you, Bud.

Bid or pass?

I pass.

Able 1 to Able 4. Over.

I tell Ware about our nighttime

encounter with the Germans.

Bad idea.

Griffin's desperate

for information...

so Ware orders us out

to find their command post.

We decided to head south

down the pass.

It's as good a guess as any, and that's

where their voices seem to come from.

Of course that could be seen as a good

argument for heading the other way.

I'm having my usual trouble...

noticing how beautiful the world is

just when I might be leaving it.

Just this side of the road.

Don't worry.

I'm just enjoying having

a f***ing Nazi in my sights.

I think I'm getting a hard-on.

Pow!

I know we could've killed

those three guys and gotten away.

I'm also sure they could've done

the same thing to us last night.

What I don't know in both cases

is why it didn't happen.

Sh*t!

F***! Here we f***ing go!

You're gonna get us killed here.

You got to relax.

I said you got to relax.

You gotta shut up. You gotta shut up.

- Shut up, Stan!

- You're gonna get us all killed.

You're gonna get us all killed.

You gotta shut up!

Stan! You gotta...

Come on!

What happened?

- You find any Germans?

- Yeah, we found them all right.

And they found us.

Krauts nearly blew our heads off.

Oh, sh*t.

I lost the scope and the map.

Great. Injury to insult.

- What happened, Bud?

- What happened?

Germans found us,

had a dead in their sights.

They could've killed all of us

and they just let us go.

- That's what happened.

- They had you and then they let you go?

What are you complaining about?

You should be happy.

We should be happy?

Oh, okay, Mundy, we're happy.

We're happy! Yippee!

Hooray!

You feel better now?

All right, Stan, come on.

- What the hell is that?

- That's just Mother.

Clumping around in the attic again.

It's fine.

- Did you find the stuff?

- They must've come back after we left.

There's all kind of tracks.

They took the scope and the map.

What did you do? Crawl around

on your hands and knees looking for it?

No. I could see right off

the stuff wasn't there.

I got wet working out a little

surprise for our Teutonic friends.

What, a trap?

I built a snowman.

Right where

we dropped our stuff.

I used pine needles

for a mustache.

And then a branch,

like an arm giving the Nazi salute.

I even put a few

pine branches over one eye.

- It's not a bad resemblance.

- Jesus, Stan.

They could've come up from behind, made

a few well placed critical comments...

and one more

ventilated whiz kid.

Even stamped out a message

in front of my snowman.

What?

F-U-C-K...

H-l-T-L-E-R.

Made exclamation points

with pine branches.

- Where's Mother?

- He's upstairs in his attic.

- What's he doing there?

- I have no idea, Will.

Actually, he's been kind

of quiet lately.

Maybe he hung himself,

huh, Father?

Are you all right, Mother?

Look at the paintings, Will.

Look.

See?

Somebody cared.

Somebody made something...

probably not even for money.

For love.

Sometimes I didn't believe

there was any love left.

Try to remember

who the real enemy is, Will.

Christ, I thought we lost

both of you up there.

What did you do,

start a family?

Father, you're on next.

Unless anyone objects, Bud...

I think we should go back to at least

two on the lower post for now.

All right?

It's too weird out there

for one guy alone.

Sh*t!

What the hell's going on?

The explosion was me throwing a grenade.

They haven't fired back yet.

Can you hear that?

Can you hear that?

We can hear without the phone.

What are they yelling about now?

I think they're yelling "F*** Hitler"

the way your grandmother would say it.

There's this crazy guy in the cemetery,

pretending grenades don't hurt.

Maybe you should send out

some straitjackets.

Grenade!

Sh*t.

- We're having a snowball fight.

- What?

You don't think maybe the war's over

and they're not telling us, do you?

- I mean, they wouldn't do that.

- You sure you're okay down there?

Goddamn it, Shutzer! You're the one

that started this "F*** Hitler" sh*t.

Schlaf gut, Kraut.

You got that map?

Yeah.

I'll be a son of a b*tch.

What?

I've been trying to figure out all

this crazy sh*t that's been going on...

for the past couple of days,

and only one answer makes sense.

Remember the frozen American

and the Kraut dancing together?

See, it's like a message.

They wanna get together.

- It's crude, but remember who they are.

- So?

So then they come around with that

schlaf gut bit the first night.

It's like they're saying

they know that we're here...

but they're not

so mad about it.

- Yeah.

- Well, listen.

Okay. Just try to think of one reason

they didn't mow us down...

or at least take us prisoner.

I think they're telling us

that they wanna talk...

maybe even surrender.

- What?

- If I'm right...

they want us to meet them

in this clearing at 1200 hours.

What if it's a trap?

If they wanted to kill us,

they could've done it a couple of times.

We could've shot them. We didn't.

That doesn't mean we wanna surrender.

They could be stalling

for reinforcements.

With a snowball fight?

A snowball fight

doesn't mean surrender.

Yeah, but look at this.

- I'll mention it to Ware.

- Come on, Won't.

We don't wanna get officers involved

in this, screwing everything up.

You know,

I think we got a chance...

to make something good

come out of this for everybody...

if we just use our heads.

What do you say we just go out there

and see what's going on?

Just the two of us.

I'll take all the risks.

- I still say I should call Ware first.

- What do you think Ware is gonna do?

- He'll tell Griffin.

- And you know damn well...

that Griffin is gonna come charging

out here and arrange everything...

so he looks like General Patton

winning the war single-handed.

That's the way it is, Stan. There's

nothing we're gonna do about that.

Suppose that one of us captures all

the Germans single-handed, all alone...

then we build this guy

into a second Sergeant York?

It's got to be worth

at least a Silver Star.

Maybe even a trip home

as a returning war hero.

- How does that sound?

- Sounds like a court-martial.

How are they ever

gonna catch on?

You know, for Mother's sake,

I think we should at least try.

For Mother?

Sure. Who else?

Oh, boy, that would be perfect.

We testify that the Germans

had us pinned down...

and Wilkins comes in the nick

of time and saves the whole show.

And we'd have a genuine mob

of enemy soldiers to back up our story.

Yeah, okay. For right now

we don't tell anybody, okay?

It's just the two of us.

Look, if it doesn't work,

at least we tried.

Sneaking out is easy.

Mother's back upstairs

by himself...

and Father and Miller

are asleep.

We decide we'll have to tell Avakian,

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