There was war news in the Pacific, too. Mouradian couldn’t make much of it, not least because the announcer kept stumbling over unfamiliar place names. He gathered that Japan was advancing and everyone else falling back. Having served for a while in the Far East, Mouradian knew only too well that the Japanese were no bargain. Now the rest of the world was discovering the same thing.
Germany and her friends were no bargain, either. Japan could annoy and gnaw at the Soviet Union, and had done exactly that. But thousands of kilometers separated her from the USSR’s vitals. If Hitler paraded through Moscow in a Mercedes, could Stalin keep up the fight from Sverdlovsk or Kuibishev or some other town on the far side of the Urals? Mouradian had his doubts. He suspected Stalin did, too.
Which meant the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would move heaven and earth to keep the Nazis out of Moscow and as far from the USSR’s capital as he could. It also meant Mouradian moved through the heavens toward Mogilev, which had recently fallen to the invaders. Along with him in the Pe-2 moved a thousand kilos’ worth of bombs. Stalin wouldn’t care that a stubborn Armenian was flying. The explosives, though, the explosives would matter to the director of the Soviet state.
The squadron’s target was the railroad yard. Maybe withdrawing Soviet troops hadn’t torn it up well enough. Maybe enemy railroad men had got it back in operation faster than the Russians figured they could. Keeping trains from going through Mogilev would help defend Smolensk, and Smolensk was Moscow’s most important shield.
Fires and plumes of greasy black smoke from burning tanks marked the front between Mogilev and Smolensk. Not all the burning armor came out of enemy factories. Soviet light tanks were still depressingly easy to kill. And even the KV-1s could go up in flames. Maybe some German Panzer III got lucky, or maybe the foe had a field gun in a good place.
In the Pe-2’s cockpit, Ivan Kulkaanen turned to Mouradian and said, “The stinking Fascists aren’t having it all their own way, anyhow.”
“No, they aren’t,” Stas agreed. Yes, that was true. But he would have felt obliged to agree even if the Nazis were driving the Red Army back headlong. Disagreeing with something like that would have been defeatism. England might tolerate such disagreement in wartime-or, if the morning news held any truth, might not. The Soviet Union never had and never would.
A few antiaircraft shells burst near the formation of Pe-2s. Stas didn’t see any planes catch fire or go down. That was good news. They flew on. Once they got past the front, things quieted down. It often worked out that way. If the Germans didn’t also have plenty of antiaircraft guns in and around Mogilev, though, Stas would be happily surprised.
After a while, he didn’t just hear the engines’ drone. It became a part of him, so that his toenails, his muscles, his spine, and his spleen all vibrated to the same rhythm. The oxygen-enriched air tasted of rubber and leather.
Kulkaanen pointed through the armor-glass windshield. A city lay ahead. Unless the squadron had really buggered up its navigation, that had to be Mogilev. They’d dive to make the attack more accurate. Pe-2s weren’t Stukas; they didn’t stand on their noses to deliver ordnance. (They could also fly rings around the clumsy German bombers.) But they did have dive brakes, and used them on attack runs.
That also brought them down closer to the flak gunners on the ground. Stas tried not to dwell on such things as the slotted flaps lowered and grabbed air. “Be ready,” he called to Fyodor Mechnikov back in the narrow bomb bay.
“What the hell else am I gonna be-sir?” the bombardier answered through the speaking tube. Behind goggles and oxygen mask, Mouradian grinned. Sure as the devil, it was almost like flying with Ivan Kuchkov again.
The Germans did have guns waiting for the Soviet bombers. Stas wished he were more astonished. Yes, they’d protect the railroad yards. And yes, they’d probably got a few minutes’ warning. Unlike Russians, Germans knew what to do with a few minutes’ warning, too.
Had he flown through heavier flak? He supposed he must have, but he couldn’t remember offhand just when. Something tore half the left wing off the Pe-2 diving next to his. The stricken bomber spun out of control. The crew had no chance to bail out.
“Now!” Stas yelled through the speaking tube. As soon as the bombs fell free, he leveled out and scooted away at full throttle and low altitude. Any Messerschmitt pilot who wanted to run him down was welcome to try. He turned back toward Soviet-held territory. The railroad yard, or something in its neighborhood, had taken one mighty thorough pounding.
Of course, the bombs also came down on the heads of the people who still lived in Mogilev. Stas’ superiors thought they’d do more harm to the enemy than to Soviet citizens. He had to hope they were right.
Spring was in the air outside Madrid… spring and the stink of shit and garbage and unburied bodies, and the occasional bullet or shell fragment. But when things started turning green, when the birds came back from the south, Chaim Weinberg was less inclined to be critical.
Mike Carroll gave him a peculiar look when he started going on about birdsong. “Chirp, chirp,” the other Abe Lincoln said. “Hot diggety dog.”
“It’s pretty,” Chaim insisted. “And it doesn’t sound the same here as it does in the States.”
“What? The fuckin’ birdth thpeak Thpanish?” Mike put on a sarcastic Castilian lisp.
“No, but there’s different ones here,” Chaim said. He was going to get pissed off if his buddy couldn’t see what he saw, couldn’t hear what he heard. He could feel it coming like a rash.
“Sparrows. Pigeons. Starlings. Crows. Stop the fucking presses. Call Walter fucking Winchell.” Mike was tall and slim and blond and handsome, none of which adjectives applied to Chaim. At the moment, the other American was also a royal pain in the ass.
“Only reason there’s pigeons and sparrows-these kindsa sparrows-and cocksucking starlings in the USA is that they’re imports,” Chaim said. “And the crows here aren’t the same as crows on the other side of the ocean. They’ve got bigger beaks, and they make different noises.”
“ You’d notice the stupid beaks,” Mike said.
“Your mother,” Chaim said without heat. Had somebody who wasn’t his friend made even an indirect crack about his own very Jewish beak, he would have rearranged the guy’s face for him. From Mike, though, he’d take it.
“How’s your wife?” the other Yank asked with a leer.
Chaim shrugged. “She’s back in the city, doing what she’s doing. And I’m here, doing what I’m doing.” That he’d made it with La Martellita struck him as a marvel. That she’d been willing to tie the knot for the sake of giving their accidental kid a last name was whatever came one step up from a marvel.
Mike tried to pinch off a hangnail with the other hand’s thumb and forefinger. “Doesn’t sound like the recipe for living happily ever after, y’know?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Chaim would rather have talked about birds. He hadn’t even started in on the hoopoe’s aerial ballet.
“What’ll you do when she dumps you after Junior comes out?” Mike found the sixty-four dollar question, all right.
All Chaim could do was shrug again. “Get drunk, I guess. Shoot some Fascists. What else is there to do?” Like Mike, he assumed she’d dump him once the baby was born. He also assumed the war in Spain would still be going on this fall. The way things looked right now, the war in Spain was liable to go on forever.
“Aren’t you tired of going hungry over there?” The enormous voice came from a microphone and speaker in Marshal Sanjurjo’s lines. “Come over to our side. We’ll give you a big bowl of mutton stew!”
Before, the Fascists had tempted Republican soldiers with chicken stew. Maybe they’d hired a new chef. More likely, they’d just put a new liar on the payroll. Chaim had captured Nationalist troops. They were every bit as skinny and miserable as the guys on his own side.
“Baa!” he bleated at the propaganda message. “Baa!”
Mike Carroll joined in. “Baa!” he yelled, even louder than Chaim. “Baa! Baa!”
“Mutton stew! Delicious mutton stew!” blared from the speaker.
“Baa!” This time, half a dozen Abe Lincolns bleated back. Before long, the whole stretch of Republican line northwest of Madrid was going “Baa! Baa! Baa!” in ragged chorus.
“Now look what you went and started,” Mike said. Chaim grinned. He was proud of himself.
Marshal Sanjurjo’s men didn’t think it was funny. Fascists, in Chaim’s experience, had all had their sense of
