Dreamtime

It was a college campus I'd been on before, probably an alma mater, although I couldn't remember. I was very familiar with the campus, but it had been a great while since I'd been there. There'd been lots of construction, more buildings jammed into the small and limited urban campus.

Lots of massive trees, desiduous, soaring.

So where the hell was the Union? I went to the hillside where I remembered it was located, a clear memory of a graceful building hugging a wooded slope, but instead there was a massive new thing, local pink granite, soaring up five stories. I entered, and found the most amazing thing, the outside new building being an exceedingly clever shell around the old Union. Students everywhere, on walkways, catwalks, transparent suspended stairways, all moving, lots of commotion. Everyone knew where they were headed but me. I knew where I wanted to go in the Union, but couldn't seeme to get to the floor or the right portion of the Union building, inside the space of the massive new shell they'd built around it. I had the feelign that everyone was paying attention to my lack of navigation skills inside the new building. I felt very conspicuous, needing to move to keep folks from wondering about me.

But suddenly it wasn't the Union or its new shell, it was a strange and fascinating descent on a tight, coiled stairway made of closely spaced rebar. A completely see through stair, with the red-brown bars about 2 inches apart. Inside some kind of structure, apparently.

I was unsure if we were using the complex and visually confusing lattice of interconnected rebar as a stair, as a serendipitous corridor inside whatever we were in, or it it had been intentional. The rebar was crossing everywhere, the thick steel bars straight, but giving just a little bit as we moved on them. I could feel a slight harmoic thrumming in them as we moved inside the tight space. Everything was more or less see-through, and it was easy to become disoriented if you weren't paying attention to depth and placement. I had to remind myself to step carefully, or I'd go down. Or maybe I'd go up.

I emerged onto what seemed to be an amphitheater stage. I'd just descended inside a stage scenery piece, from some kind of hidden entrance well up and behind the proscenium. Dark foliage behind, going somewhere, where I guess I'd just been. How did it hook into the Union, if I'd ever gotten inside it. I guessed I'd come down the slope the building had been built on, but I couldn't see it above us. Just simple gree forest all around, wonderful shades of original forest green, peaceful, quiet, and slightly cool.

But the mission was new, and different, and pressing. Immediate. All of the charges had been set, and all was ready to go. The team, all four of us, were just about ready to pull out. The mission was suicide from the very beginning, and we were winging it now, all of the original plans dashed, completely washed out by the reality on the ground. The Germans were far more numerous than anyone had anticipated, and it was amazing we'd been able to place our explosives without detection. Guards everywhere, always moving, always checking, always changing their schedules and routes. We'd been inside for quite some time, moving among them quietly and unnoticed--it was unbelievable they hadn't stumbled upon us. I chalked it up to their arrogance. They were good, I would give them that, but apparently we were better, and more dedicated.

It was hot work, and I was down to only a t-shirt. I noticed and took off my t-shirt and put my uniform blouse on instead. Made the team do the same--had to have out markings and rank on if we were captured or they'd shoot us as spies. We were down to only our individual weapons, rifles with just a few magazines each, and a sidearm. We were done for if there were a real fight. We could take a few, but couldn't do a thing in an extended fight.

It was time to get moving, to see if we could make it out. We hunched down along the castle wall, tight to the close grass and the smooth white stone. All along the outside, the twill of our uniforms making the slightest hishing sound as we moved tight against it, and down the steep slope. Then it was the strangely lighted field of newly plowed earth, the ground redolent of decay and primary essence, that unmistakable, basic smell of turned soil. Soft and yielding underfoot, leaving huge footprints behind us, sinking slow, almost comfortably, in the slightly moist soil as we stepped as quickly as we could through it. No time to cover the prints, had to keep moving and get on out, accept that risk.

Another slope, downward toward the guardhouse, right on the brwon, still canal. Had to open the old access door in the outside wall of the guardhouse, crawl in, and just shimmy under the floor with the guards clomping above, across the canal and out the portal on the other side. After that we'd be out and ready to move quickly, out of the area and country and back to freedom.

As I reached for the first locking mechanism to pull the access open, the charges started going, huge crumping sounds that even at our distance were more felt than heard. Huge rolling orange billows into the night sky, throwing moving shadows everywhere, making everything roil and appear in motion. Already the boys had pressed themselves to the deck, and I reached for the access mechanism to get us inside as quickly as possible. I wondered how long the below-floor access had been unused, and worried about insects. I decided to let the lads go first . . . leadership, after all.

Just as I reached the mechanism, the personnel access door opened, and a Teutonic head and shoulders popped out. I had my knife in my hand and was about to swing it up into his throat when I noticed he was looking away from us, up toward the explosions. Two more heads appeared, all focused up the hill, toward the commotion. Absolutely transfixed, no sense of danger, no sense of urgency in their duties as guards, no need to look around in the slightest, to discover us sitting literally right underneath their noses.

Their little wooden door slid shut, and we finished our entry. It was warm and dry inside the crawlspace, and it was surreal to be so close to the enemy soldiers, inches below their shuffling boots, hear their voices as if in the room with them. Our only challenge was to keep our gear quiet as we scuttled below them, and then it was out, to the vehicles, and the quick ride into the dark mountains for our rendezvous.