Boar gave Ollie a kick to the shin. “I should have shot you back in the field.”

Ollie elbowed the lieutenant in the ribs. “I’m all you got.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Ollie had expected the lieutenant to pull out his pistol, or at the very least throw another punch. After all, the anesthetic had worn off. Other than the lieutenant’s eyes, Boar was in better physical shape. Ollie, on the other hand, was a wreck. In the tight confinement of the crawl space, the lieutenant could have beaten the hell out of him if he had wanted to. The only thing stopping Boar, Ollie believed, was that he couldn’t see. And that maybe the lieutenant temporarily needed him. Unfortunately, considering Ollie’s lack of military training or knowledge of escape routes, he needed the lieutenant, too. As the sting in his shin faded, it suddenly occurred to him that Boar might not be the fearless RAF pilot he thought he was. After all, the man was more afraid of bugs than he was—a thought that made Ollie chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” Boar asked.

“You.” Ollie gave another chuckle.

“You’re a bloody lunatic, Yank.”

Ollie’s laugh faded, and he suddenly realized that if it were not for his choices—or, more accurately, countless errors in judgment—he could have been waking up in a neutral country. Instead, he was hunkered in a hole in German-occupied France with an ill-tempered lieutenant. “You may be right,” he said.

Ollie heard the scraping of wood above him as the table inched over the floor. A moment later, Madeleine removed the boards. Sunlight flooded the hole. He squinted and shielded his eyes.

“Too loud,” Madeleine said. “Do you want the Wehrmacht to find you?”

As Ollie’s eyes adjusted, he saw Louis’s pink snout. The hog’s nostrils twitched as he sniffed over the hole. Ollie reached up and scratched the hog’s chin.

Louis grunted.

“What time is it?” Ollie asked.

“It’s morning,” Madeleine said. She struck a match and lit a cigarette.

Ollie crawled out of the hole, then carefully adjusted the sling holding his arm. He rubbed his fingers, which had turned cold from lack of circulation.

Boar stood, then took a seat on the floor, his legs dangling into the crawl space. He rubbed the bandages over his eyes and sniffed. “Do you have another cigarette?”

Madeleine blew smoke through her nostrils, then gave her cigarette to Boar.

Ollie sat patiently as Madeleine and Boar smoked, passing the cigarette back and forth until a thin haze filled the cottage. He spent the time by scratching Louis behind the ears.

Madeleine tapped out the cigarette in a clay ashtray, filled with cindered remnants of hand-rolled paper. She stepped to the kitchen and prepared breakfast—grayish bread and yellowish coffee.