“Some of that’s probably just bullshit to make us turn green.” Vaclav wished he’d phrased it differently. The way he made it sound, some of what the Internationals said probably wasn’t bullshit. Well, they’d been here longer than he had. Chances were they knew what they were talking about, dammit.
Shouldering his antitank rifle convinced him the monster had got heavier while he was on leave. He couldn’t blame that on the warm Spanish spring. Pretty soon, though, he got used to listing to the right whenever he slung the rifle on his shoulder.
He started looking for targets well behind the Nationalists’ lines. He blew the head off some bigwig just getting out of a Mercedes. Remembering what Halevy had said a while earlier, he hoped it was Marshal Sanjurjo, but evidently not. The Republic didn’t claim Sanjurjo’s scalp, and the Nationalists didn’t go into mourning-or hysterics-because they’d lost him.
They did try to pay back the Czechs and the Internationals. Artillery and mortar fire rained down on their positions. The bastards might have been saying You want to play that way, we’ll make you sorry. In fact, that had to be exactly what they were saying.
A lot of the artillery rounds were duds, which saved some lives. Vaclav had noticed that a lot of the rounds the Republicans fired were duds, too. Which meant… what? That Spanish munitions factories weren’t everything they might have been? Evidently.
Vaclav was a careful, thorough sniper. He didn’t let himself fall into routines. He didn’t keep coming back to the same hideouts day after day. Snipers who made stupid mistakes like that didn’t last long. When deciding to go right or left along the line, he’d toss a coin and do what it told him. If he didn’t know what he’d do till he did it, the shitheads trying to slaughter him couldn’t outguess him.
He potted another Nationalist officer a few days later. It was a hell of a long shot, going on two kilometers. He was proud as hell when he watched the fellow grab at himself and slowly crumple. The Nationalist seemed much closer through the telescopic sight, but not that close.
Everybody on his own side congratulated him when he reported the kill. Only later, when he drank some Spanish peach brandy with Benjamin Halevy, did he think about what he’d actually done. “Mother of God!” he said. “Everyone thinks I’m the best thing since sausage because I can murder people farther away than the other guys can.”
The Jew looked at him. His eyes were bottle-green. “You just figured this out?”
“Nooo.” Vaclav let the word stretch. “But it kind of hit me more than it usually does.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, maybe that was the son of a bitch who ordered the artillery barrage after you nailed the last big shot,” Halevy said. “Even if he wasn’t, he was no friend of ours. You think he’d worry if he’d just shot you?”
“Who knows? Who knows anything these days?” Vaclav said. Maybe the brandy was hitting him harder than he’d thought it would. Or maybe he was looking at what he really did in the war, something few front-line soldiers could ever be comfortable trying. “This is a fuck of a way to decide who gets to do what.”
“What would you rather do? Roll the dice?” Halevy said. “Suppose the other guy doesn’t go along with losing? Then what? You bash the asshole over the head with a rock, that’s what.”
That was what, all right. Force had a brute simplicity nothing else could match. If the other guy was dead, he couldn’t stop you. If he feared you’d kill him, he wouldn’t have the nerve to try to stop you. “How does that make us any better than wildcats and wolverines?” Vaclav asked.
Halevy reached out and tapped the antitank rifle’s long barrel with the first two fingers of his right hand. “Wildcats and wolverines have to get close to do their dirty work,” he said. “We’re civilized. We can kill from a long way off.”
“Lucky us.” Vaclav’s voice sounded hollow, even to himself. He picked up the brandy bottle and tilted it back. Sometimes not thinking was better. Nice, civilized brandy took care of that, all right.
Chapter 13
Once upon a time, Hans-Ulrich Rudel counted every mission he flew. That didn’t last long. As soon as the German wheel behind Paris failed-as it had in 1914-it became obvious the war would be long. In a long war, you’d keep going till you got killed or till your side finally won, whichever came first. Why keep track of how often you went up, then?
He and Sergeant Dieselhorst were up again now, hunting Red panzers somewhere west of Smolensk. Down below, shellbursts and fires marked the front and the region west of it, the region through which the Wehrmacht had just advanced. The Russians were brave and determined; that much had been obvious from the start of the campaign against them. What had also been obvious was that neither Soviet soldiers nor-especially-their officers were skilled fighting men.
The trouble with that was, the Ivans could learn. The longer they stayed in the ring, the more likely they would. And Russia was a big place. Hans-Ulrich had known as much going in-known in his head, anyhow. One glance at a map told you how enormous Russia was. But you had to fly over it, you had to come hundreds of kilometers through it and realize how many more hundreds you still needed to go, you had to see the swarms of foot soldiers and panzers and, well, everything the commissars could throw at you, before you began to feel the enormousness of the place.
You also had to wonder whether Germany was taking on more than she could handle. The Kaiser’s armies had smashed the Ivans again and again. They’d knocked the Reds out of the war. But they hadn’t conquered Russia, beaten her and occupied her and held her down. Could the Fuhrer ’s forces manage that now?
If we can’t, what are we doing here? What am I doing here? Rudel wondered. But he knew what he was doing: looking for panzers, KV-1s by choice. The Landsers had a devil of a time knocking out those monsters. A strike from the air could do it.
Hans-Ulrich saw Russian panzers down below. A heartbeat later, he saw a biplane fighter pop out of a cloud and buzz straight at him. If it was a biplane, it just about had to be Russian. Had he entertained any lingering doubts, the muzzle flashes from its twin machine guns would have given him a hint.
“We’re under attack!” he shouted to Sergeant Dieselhorst, who of course faced the other way. “It’s a Chato!” The name came from the war in Spain, and meant flat-nosed. Chatos were officially obsolescent, which didn’t make this one any less dangerous to him. It was faster than his Stuka, tough, and far more maneuverable. Which meant… It meant he was in trouble, dammit.
“What are you going to do?” Dieselhorst asked.
Instead of answering, Hans-Ulrich did it: his right index finger came down hard on the firing button that worked the 37mm guns under the Ju-87’s wings. He’d shot down a French fighter with them, and a Russian job more modern than this one. The Chato was almost on top of him by then. Maybe he’d get lucky one more time.
And damned if he didn’t. As recoil staggered the Stuka in the sky, one of the armor-piercing rounds smashed into the enemy fighter’s flat nose-the front of the engine cowling. It probably plowed all the way through the engine, and maybe through the pilot, too. Instantly a mass of flame, the Chato tumbled toward the ground.
“I got him!” If Hans-Ulrich sounded surprised, it was only because he was. As he had in France and earlier here, he’d mostly been trying to scare off the enemy with the 37mms’ ferocious muzzle flashes. Hitting him was an unexpected bonus.
“Way to go! You’re more than halfway to making ace,” Sergeant Dieselhorst said. They both laughed. And well they might have. A Stuka, especially a Stuka burdened with the heavy panzer-busting guns, was a most unlikely candidate for an ace’s mount.
That Russian was stupid, Rudel thought. If he’d attacked from behind, especially from below, the Stuka would have been as near defenseless as made no difference. But he’d decided to rush straight in, and he’d walked into a haymaker. War seldom forgave mistakes. The Ivan would never make another one. That was for sure. Hans-Ulrich hoped the AP round had killed him. Going down trapped in a flaming crate was a fate he didn’t wish even on his enemies.
His own heart still hammered in his chest. Combat grabbed you by the throat in an instant. It was much slower letting go.
