Chapter Text
"BAH!" Hochstetter's angry exclamation carried clearly into Barracks 2, the occupants not even needing the aid of the coffee pot and the mic in Klink's office.
"Looks like our friendly neighborhood Gestapo man has popped in for a Christmas visit," Hogan announced, striding out of his office with a grin. "Let's see what he wants this time."
Like his grinning men, Hogan had a pretty good idea. Most of the highly strung Major's visits tended to coincide with the sabotage missions he and his men carried out. Of course, there were always those fortuitous occasions where the Major had some information as well as demands for the Kommandant to account for the whereabouts of his prisoners.
As the Colonel slipped out of the barracks door, his men slipped into his office, ready to take over surveillance when either Hochstetter or Klink inevitably ordered Hogan from the office.
The Senior POW officer winked at Hilda as he passed, throwing open the door to the Kommandant's office with a cheery "Good morning, Colonel!"
Hochstetter spun on his heel, eyes widening with fury as he saw Hogan leaning carelessly in the doorway. "What is this man doing here?!"
"Well, that's a fine way to talk to someone who came to wish you a merry Christmas," Hogan drawled, enjoying the way Hochstetter's face darkened several more shades. He shot a smile at the Kommandant, silently offering commiseration over the Scrooge in their midst.
Klink's eyes widened, the immediate look of castigation pleading with the American colonel not to drag him further into trouble.
Hochstetter, however, ignored the wordless discussion. His beady eyes fixed on Hogan almost hungrily. "In that case, you won't mind telling me where you were at eleven o'clock last night?"
"I have told you before, Major," Klink announced, drawing himself up tall. "There has-"
"Never been a successful escape from Stalag 13," Hochstetter finished, stopping just short of rolling his eyes. "Yes, the entire Third Reich knows." Hochstetter turned back to Hogan. "If that is so, then Hogan should have no trouble telling us where he was."
"Here in Stalag 13, as always," Hogan replied easily, eyeing the cigar humidor with appraisal.
Triumph shone in dark eyes; no proof of innocence was as good to the Gestapo as proof of guilt. "And there is no German officer who can prove that?"
Hogan almost hated to burst his bubble, but if anyone was going to have a bad day, he would rather Hochstetter than him. "Actually, Colonel Klink can."
The gleam of triumph in Hochstetter's eyes turned to frustration. "What?!"
Hogan shrugged insouciantly. "I was in the Kommandant's quarters."
"He was in my quarters," Klink agreed hollowly.
The little vein on Hochstetter's forehead throbbed. "What were you doing in the Kommandant's quarters at eleven at night?!"
Klink heaved a tired sigh, sending a glare at Hogan. "Trying to get two of his men released early from the cooler." At the Major's questioning glare, Klink was forced to admit that "There are no men in the cooler."
Hogan smirked with satisfaction. "I can be very persuasive." And sometimes he left persuasion at the door and applied incessant badgering instead. Both approaches worked wonders.
"Sergeant Schultz and Corporal Langenscheidt can corroborate this," Klink added, shooting a quelling glare at Hogan over the short Major's head.
"Which is fortunate for the both of you, is it not?"
Hogan adopted his most serene expression of innocence, sending a questioning sort of frown at Klink. "Are we supposed to have done something, Kommandant?"
"A munitions factory was destroyed last night," Hochstetter announced, talking over Klink giving the same explanation. "And a car matching the Kommandant's staff vehicle was seen leaving the factory shortly before it exploded."
"That's awful," Hogan uttered, allowing only a hint of a smirk to twitch a corner of his lips. "The Fuhrer must really be loving all these vacant lots you're giving him."
"Hogan," Klink warned, the Colonel just offering him a cheeky smile.
Hochstetter, again, ignored the pair of them, stepping towards Hogan in what passed for his intimidating manner. "You expect me to believe that you know nothing of this?" he demanded, eyes blazing. "It was you, Hogan, I know it was!"
"Major-"
Hochstetter rounded on the Kommandant. "Quiet, Klink!"
Unsurprisingly, Klink shut up.
"There is no one else it could have been but you," Hochstetter raved, stabbing a finger in Hogan's direction.
Hogan just watched him, allowing a cocky smirk to hover about his lips. For once, Hochstetter was barking up the wrong tree. Hogan may have masterminded the plan, but the execution was all his men. And right now? He couldn't be prouder of them.
Klink appeared to summon some of his old ego at the implication of his camp's lack of security. "Major Hochstetter, as Colonel Hogan and myself have already told you, there is no way that he could have sabotaged any factory. I was with him at the time."
"No, no," Hogan waved a hand in the air, eyes briefly darting to the cleverly hidden microphone in the photograph of the tiny private with the mustache. "I'm curious now. Why does the saboteur have to be me?"
Hogan might not be an egomaniac like their not so beloved Kommandant, but that didn't mean he was averse to having it stroked a little.
"An eyewitness says he saw three men," Hochstetter cried, holding three fingers up almost inches from Hogan's face, "Leaving the factory before it exploded." One finger fell. "Two of them fled the scene in the car, and the other," - another finger curled towards Hochstetter's palm - "escaped on an artillery tractor!"
Something that might indelicately have resembled a snort lodged in the back of Hogan's throat, a cough wracking his shoulders in a poor cloak for laughter. "A tractor, you say," Hogan found it within himself to say, quite calmly he thought. "And that makes you that I-"
"Only Papa Bear could be so audacious!" Hochstetter screamed, eyes wild. "It was you, Hogan, admit it!"
Hogan met Klink's almost exasperated stare, rolling his eyes as if to say "can you believe this guy?" Looking back at Hochstetter, who actually seemed to be waiting for Hogan to admit the unacknowledged truth, Hogan shook his head despairingly. "Oh, yeah, sure," he drawled, sarcasm falling like the Niagra Falls. "I'm a saboteur. I sneak out all the time. I'm so good I can even be in two places at once. With witnesses."
Klink almost seemed to smile, just for a second, before meeting Hochstetter's incensed gaze. "Let us settle this," the Kommandant bade, taking a deep breath into his lungs. "SCHUUULLLLTZ!"
Barely five seconds later, the door inched open and their loveable Sergeant pokec his head around the corner. "Yes, Herr Kommandant?"
"Tell Major Hochstetter where Colonel Hogan and I were at eleven o'clock last night?"
"On their way to the cooler, to release the prisoners as a show of Christmas good faith," Schultz replied promptly. "I know because-"
"Thank you!" Hochstetter snapped, his fury seeming to make him grow three sizes larger. "This is not the end of this!"
And yet, the Gestapo Major stormed out of the Kommandantur. He didn't even reply to the cheerful "Merry Christmas!" Hogan called as he went.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Klink looked at Hogan with tired eyes. "That will be all, Hogan. Thank you."
"Carter?" Hogan called, striding through the barracks door.
"Yes, Colonel?" his senior sergeant asked, appearing from the entrance to Hogan's office.
A stern expression formed on Hogan's face, kept up through sheer force of will. "You escaped in a tractor?"
"Technically, it was a half track artillery-" At Hogan's sharp sigh, Carter looked down at the floor. "Yes, Colonel."
A laugh burst from Hogan's lips, the Colonel shaking his fondly. As the explosives expert glanced up, shocked, Hogan clapped him once on the shoulder. "I have rarely been prouder to call myself your friend." Laughter took him over once more, Hogan finding the wherewithall to manage; "You should have seen Hochstetter's face! I thought he was going to pop!"
"I bet it was a picture, Colonel," Newkirk smirked, LeBeau uttering wholehearted agreement in slightly too fast French.
"Like yours was any better when I pulled up beside you last night," Carter tossed back cheerfully, Newkirk bumping shoulders with him in affectionate annoyance.
"If I could give you three medals right now, I would," the chuckling Colonel said, grinning proudly at them all. "But for now, all I can say is well done. You did good work, all of you."
"Thank you, sir," Newkirk grinned, nudging a surprised Carter.
"Oh boy," Carter managed, blinking several times as if communicating in Morse code. "Thank you, Colonel."
Hogan inclined his head, shoulders twitching every now and then. He might be the one with the crazy plans, but his men were the best kind of crazy too. He would be lost without them.