It wasn’t as if he and Dieselhorst were out of danger for this mission, either. Those panzers down below hadn’t gone away. If he didn’t do for them, they’d do for some of his countrymen. He swung the Stuka’s wing over and tipped the plane into a dive.
He thought a small sigh came through the speaking tube. Did Dieselhorst think they’d done their duty for the day by shooting down the fighter? Hans-Ulrich didn’t ask him. He was the pilot; responsibility for what they did lay with him. Besides, he might have been wrong.
Those were KV-1s, all right. Even from a good height, they were noticeably bigger than the other Russian panzers-and noticeably bigger than even the biggest German machines. Embarrassing that the Slavic Untermenschen could come up with such formidable monsters.
As he had when the Chato filled his windscreen, he hit the firing button. A split second later, he pulled back hard on the stick, yanking the Stuka out of its dive.
“You got him!” Sergeant Dieselhorst yelled jubilantly. “He’s burning like a crazy son of a bitch!”
How many men inside the panzer? Five, if it was crewed like the larger German models. They were probably burning inside the chassis. Hans-Ulrich felt less sympathy for them than he had for the Chato ’s luckless pilot. The flyer had been a member of his guild, even if he was on the wrong side. These guys? Maybe somebody down on the ground would waste time feeling sorry for them. Rudel didn’t. He climbed again to attack another KV-1.
As he dove this time, big muzzle flashes greeted him from the ground. Black puffs of smoke appeared around the Stuka. “Jesus fucking Christ!” Dieselhorst said. “They brought their flak up toward the front with them.”
The blasphemy made Hans-Ulrich frown, but all he said was, “I noticed, thanks.” Some Soviet officer had had a rush of brains to the head. If the Germans were going to attack your armor from the air, why not try your best to shoot them down while they were doing it?
Blam! Blam! The 37mm guns thundered again. He mashed the throttle down, clawing for altitude as hard as he could. Sergeant Dieselhorst’s whoops told him he’d hit another panzer. That didn’t make him as happy as it might have. He felt as if the Stuka were just hanging in the air, waiting for the Ivans to bite chunks off it.
And they did. Fragments tore into the back of the fuselage. “You all right, Albert?” he called.
“Ja,” Dieselhorst answered. “We’ve lost some of the tail assembly, though. Does she still answer?”
Rudel cautiously tried the controls. The plane responded-more slowly than he would have wanted, but it did. The airflow felt rougher than it should have, too. He made up his mind-he wasn’t going to take on any more Russian panzers today. He wasn’t going to take on any more Russian flak guns, either, not if he could help it. He turned southwest: the shortest way back to his own side’s lines.
“Good thing this beast can take it,” Dieselhorst said fondly.
“It sure is,” Hans-Ulrich agreed, but then he added, “Don’t jinx it, Albert. We aren’t back yet.” If another Chato dove on them, he didn’t know what he’d do. No, as a matter of fact, he did know. He’d crash, that was what.
He drew small-arms fire crossing the line, nothing worse. Some of the small-arms fire came from the Landsers down there. He took the Lord’s name in vain himself, something he did only when badly provoked.
The controls got mushier. Dieselhorst said, “I’m looking back at it, and it won’t hold together much longer.” He didn’t sound so fond any more.
“Right.” Hans-Ulrich had been afraid of that. Time to set her down, then. No airstrips in the neighborhood, but there was a reasonably straight dirt road, one luckily without a column of German panzers or trucks rumbling along it. The landing was rough, but it was a landing, not a crash. He brought the Stuka to a halt and shoved back his section of the canopy. They always said any landing you could walk away from was a good one. By God, they were right!
“Well, well,” Willi Dernen said. “What have we here?” But he knew what they had there: a scope-sighted sniping Mauser with a bolt that bent down so a man could work it without interfering with the sight.
“If you want it, it’s yours,” the quartermaster sergeant said. “I remember you used one in France for a while.”
“Uh-huh.” Willi nodded. Unfortunately, that hadn’t lasted long. The Oberfeldwebel who was teaching him how to pot enemies at long range got his own head blown off by a sniper from the other side. Awful Arno was only too eager to reel Willi back to ordinary duty.
“So I figured, since I got my hands on it, I’d give it to somebody who knew what to do with it.” The quartermaster sergeant didn’t say how he’d got his hands on it. Maybe he’d won it at skat. Maybe it had fallen off a truck-or maybe he’d swiped it from one that stopped at his depot. Any which way, he held it out to Willi now.
And Willi took it. “Thanks.” He raised it to his shoulder and peered through the sight. Yes, his hand still remembered where to go to find the bent bolt. Might be embarrassing-could be fatally embarrassing-if he reached out and missed. He asked, “Have you got any of the fancy ammo that’s supposed to go with a piece like this?”
“A couple of boxes.” The middle-aged supply sergeant handed those over, too. “God knows if I’ll be able to get hold of more, though. Save this shit for when you really need it. Use the regular rounds most of the time.”
“Gotcha. Will do,” Willi said. Snipers’ rifles weren’t just ordinary Mausers with a funny bolt and a sight slapped on. They were generally better made, better finished, and more accurate. Firing rounds of equally special manufacture, they gave a marksman a decent chance to kill a man at a kilometer and a half. At ordinary ranges in ordinary fighting, though, ordinary ammunition would do.
The sergeant eyed Willi. “You and the guy who runs your squad don’t exactly get along, do you? Will he let you use that rifle the way you’re supposed to?”
He did have a good memory, all right. Willi shrugged. “Who knows what Awful Arno will do next? Half the time, I don’t think he does.”
“Yeah, he isn’t long on brains, is he?” the quartermaster sergeant said. That made Willi laugh out loud, the way unexpectedly finding someone else who thinks like you often will.
Predictably, Corporal Baatz gave him the fishy stare when he ambled back up to the front. “Where’d you get that?” he demanded, as if he suspected Willi had stolen the rifle. He probably did.
But Willi answered with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: “Quartermaster sergeant issued it to me.”
“Sure he did. Now tell me another one,” Awful Arno said.
“So help me.” Willi raised his right hand in the German oath-taking gesture. “You think I’m a liar, go ask him yourself.”
Baatz paused, his little piggy eyes narrowing further. “You think you can bluff me into believing your bullshit,” he said at last. “Well, I’m here to tell you I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday. I will ask him, and then I’ll pin your ears back for bullshitting me. You can kiss that chickenshit pip on your sleeve good-bye! The likes of you a Gefreiter? Ha!” He stomped away.
Adam Pfaff looked up from cleaning his own gray-painted Mauser. “Where did you get the fancy piece?” he inquired.
Willi grinned at him. “You’ll find out.”
Fifteen minutes later, Awful Arno came back, his face a thundercloud. It wasn’t the first time he’d made somebody under his command out to be a liar and wound up with egg on his face. Knowing him, it wouldn’t be the last, either.
He said not another word about the scope-sighted rifle. Instead, he reamed out a new replacement who hadn’t done a single thing that Willi could see. That was Arno Baatz, through and through. He wouldn’t blame himself for picking the wrong time to call a bluff. Oh, no. He’d take it out on somebody else, somebody who couldn’t hit back. Schoolyards were full of bullies just like him. Unfortunately, so was the army.
“Be damned,” Pfaff said as he stowed his cleaning kit. “The supply sergeant really did issue it to you?”
“He really did. And if Awful Arno doesn’t like it, too bad.” Willi kept his voice down. Baatz had rabbit ears, damn him. Even as things were, his head whipped around. Yes, he knew when his name was taken in vain. That was perhaps his lone resemblance to God. But he couldn’t pick out the soldier who’d used the nickname he hated. It wasn’t as if Willi were the only candidate.
After 105s pounded the Russian positions in front of them, the Germans moved forward again. The artillery fire hadn’t squashed the Ivans. It never did. They dug like animals, and popped out of their holes as soon as the shelling stopped. Rifles and machine pistols, machine guns and mortars, greeted the Wehrmacht.
Willi soon got the chance to try out the new Mauser. He knocked over a Russian at about 800 meters. It
