West and East

Chapter 17

"Moscow speaking," the radio said importantly.

Sergei Yaroslavsky yawned as he listened. He was drinking a glass of strong, sweet tea and smoking a cigarette, but it was still six in the morning. Had he had any choice, he would have stayed rolled in his blanket.

A thick slab of roast pork, glistening with fat at the edges, sat on the tin plate in front of him. Had he had any choice, he wouldn't have picked something like that for breakfast. It would fill him up better than black bread; he couldn't deny that. But it would also make him want to go back to sleep… wouldn't it?

He sawed away with knife and fork. Methodically, he chewed and swallowed. As soon as he got up in the air, he wouldn't be sleepy any more. He was sure of that. Sleep and terror blended like vodka and castor oil.

Several flyers were fortifying their tea with healthy shots of vodka: the ration was a hundred grams a day. Others were swigging the vodka and ignoring the tea. Sergei preferred not to do that. You might be bolder in the cockpit once you'd got outside with some antifreeze, but you'd surely be slower. Against German fighter planes, against skilled, sober German pilots, slower wasn't a good idea.

"The liberation of Poland from the clutches of the semifascist Smigly-Ridz clique and their Nazi henchmen continues to gather momentum," the newscaster declared. "Advances on a broad front accelerate. Polish soldiers surrender in growing numbers, recognizing the hopelessness of their cause and the justice behind the Red Army's struggle against the lawless hyenas who have led them to destruction."

"He doesn't say anything about the fucking Germans surrendering," remarked a pilot who was knocking back vodka as if afraid it would be outlawed tomorrow-not likely, not in the hard-drinking Soviet Union.

"Hush," three people said at the same time. The only good thing about fighting Germans was that there weren't many of them in Poland. As Sergei had seen in Czechoslovakia, the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were dauntingly good at what they did.

The brief byplay made him miss the newsman's latest recital of towns taken and towns bombed from the air. The voice on the radio might have been broadcasting a football match. If he was, he was definitely the home team's announcer. If you listened to him, you had to believe the Red Army and Air Force could do no wrong.

Then he switched to a match in a different league: "The Fascist occupation of Denmark appears to be all but unchallenged. The Danes have chosen not even to fight. If they hope for mercy from the Nazi jackals, they are doomed to disappointment. Combat does continue in Norway. England and France claim to be flooding men into the country to help the Norwegians resist the Hitlerite jackals. Oslo and the south, however, seem already to be in German hands. Whether counterattacks can be effective remains to be seen. The Fascists claim to have inflicted heavy losses on the Royal Navy."

He talked about the fighting in France. There wasn't much. Then, at last, with the air of a prim matron discussing the facts of life, he talked about the war in the Far East. He kept going on about how heavy the fighting there was.

Across the table from Sergei, Anastas Mouradian raised an eyebrow. Yaroslavsky nodded back. They didn't mean to speak; speaking would have endangered them. But heavy fighting was never good news.

Sure enough, the broadcaster went on, "High-ranking officers in the combat zone are no longer completely certain that Vladivostok's resistance against the Japanese brigands can continue indefinitely."

Vladivostok would fall. That was what he meant. He didn't want to come right out and say so-and who could blame him? With the Trans-Siberian Railway cut, the Japanese were nipping off the USSR's main window on the Pacific. The only word for that was disaster.

Not everybody would be able to understand exactly what the newsreader meant. Most people, very likely, would think Vladivostok could still hold out for a long time, even if not forever. But why mention that it might fall if you weren't getting ready to admit that it would fall, or even that it had fallen?

He wanted to sigh with relief when the announcer shifted to the over-fulfillment of the steel quota and then gave forth with the gory details of a train collision down in the Ukraine. "One of the engineers is suspected of being drunk on the job," the newsreader said portentously. "The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR finds this most unfortunate."

The fellow said no more about that, nor did he need to. If Stalin didn't like it… Well, anything could happen after that. Sergei had thought a program of prohibition impossible in his homeland. The Tsars had tried one during the last war, and it failed miserably-Russians drank like swine. But if Stalin wanted to do the same thing, who would stop him? Nobody.

The pilots who'd already started drinking drank faster than ever. Maybe the stuff really would be outlawed tomorrow. Maybe… but Sergei still wouldn't believe it till he saw it.

"Molodetschna," Colonel Borisov said. "We hit Molodetschna again. We have to keep the Nazis from getting through and getting away."

Anastas Mouradian raised a hand. Frowning, the squadron commander nodded his way. "Comrade Colonel, is it not likely that as many Germans as could get through the miserable place have already done it?" the Armenian asked.

It was more than likely: it was as near certain as made no difference. They'd been pounding Molodetschna since the war widened. Too many SB-2s had gone down in flames to Bf-109s and the heavy concentration of antiaircraft guns around the place. They'd watched panzers and infantry units entrain and head elsewhere. Colonel Borisov had flown over Molodetschna. He knew what was and wasn't going on there, too-or he should have.

But he also knew something else. "I have my orders, Mouradian," he said heavily. "We have our orders. We will carry them out. Is that clear?"

"I serve the Soviet Union!" Mouradian said. That was always the right answer.

Ivan Kuchkov also knew about the new orders. Maybe he'd had a separate briefing from someone less exalted than the squadron leader. Or maybe, being a sergeant, he'd found out about them before Borisov or any of the other officers. He wasn't worried about coming out with what he thought of things, either: "Only way the cunts don't fucking murder us is if they don't care about the place any more."

Sergei set a hand on his shoulder. "It's nice, the way you try to cheer us up," he said. The squat, muscular bombardier eyed him suspiciously. The Chimp was a stranger to irony, and a hostile stranger at that.

The SB-2 lumbered into the air. Sergei remembered how proud of his "fighting bomber" he'd been while serving as a "volunteer" in Czechoslovakia. Against the biplane fighters they'd seen in Spain, SB-2s were fine. Against the deadly German Messerschmitts… well, they lumbered.

Through the engines' din, Mouradian said, "What if the Red Army's already taken Molodetschna? Are we supposed to bomb our own men?"

There was an interesting question. It all but defined Damned if you do and damned if you don't. You could get shot for dropping bombs on your own side. But you could also get shot-you could very easily get shot-for not following orders. "Let's see what it looks like," Sergei said, and left it there. If he didn't have to make up his mind right now, he wouldn't.

When he saw black puffs of smoke ahead, he nodded to himself. The Germans still held the town. Soviet flak wouldn't have been anywhere near so intense. Yaroslavsky was a good patriot, but he knew what his own people could and couldn't do.

Now-where was the train station? He had a devil of a time spotting it. Either Red Army artillery had set Molodetschna ablaze or the Nazis had fired the town on purpose to give themselves a smoke screen. If he thought of it, they could, too, and they were more than ruthless enough to do it once they thought of it.

There! He pointed through the gray-black billows. "See it, Stas?"

"Da," Mouradian said. "Straight and slow, if you please." He shouted into the speaking tube to the bomb bay: "Ready, Ivan?"

"Ready!" The answer came back at once.

A burst too close for comfort jolted the plane. Sergei flew straight and slow all the same. "Now!" Mouradian yelled.

Bombs whistled down. Sergei wrestled the SB-2 around and started flying back to the Motherland at full throttle. He hadn't seen any German fighters this time. He didn't miss them, either. And it wasn't as if he wouldn't see them again-all too likely, much sooner than he wanted to. A FRENCH CAPTAIN CAME UP to Vaclav Jezek and started shouting and waving his arms. Whatever he had to say, he was excited about it. The Czech with the antitank rifle understood not a word. Why the fellow started bothering him when he was trying to spoon up some mutton stew… He looked around for Sergeant Halevy. No sign of the Jew, though. "Sorry, but I don't speak your language," Vaclav said in what he hoped was French.

The captain went right on yelling and carrying on. Vaclav didn't know why he was all excited. He also didn't care. He just wanted the Frenchman to leave him alone.

With a sudden evil grin, he decided he knew exactly how to get what he wanted. Spreading his hands in apology, he said, "Entschuldigen Sie mich, Herr Hauptmann, abe ich spreche Franzosisch nicht. Sprechen Sie Deutsch, vielleicht?"

He'd had to speak German to get a Pole to understand him after the Nazis overran his country. He figured a Frenchman would sooner cough up a lung than admit to knowing the enemy's language.

Which only went to show you never could tell. The captain answered, "Ach! Sie sprechen Deutsch! Wunderbar! Ich kann es auch sprechen, aber nicht so gut."

Vaclav didn't care whether the Frenchman couldn't speak German very well. Now that they had a language in common, he had to pay attention to the son of a bitch. Resignedly, he said, "What do you want with me, sir?" To show just how interested he was, he shoveled in another big spoonful of stew and made a point of chewing with his mouth open.

He didn't faze the captain. The fellow's patched, faded uniform said he'd seen some real action; he wasn't a staff officer coming up to the front to make trouble. He said, "You have been shooting German soldiers. Sharpshooting. Sniping." On the third try, he found the word he wanted.

"Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann." Vaclav made his voice as sarcastic as he could. "The last I looked, there was a war on."

"Yes, yes," the French captain said impatiently. "But the damned Nazis have imported a sniper of their own."

"I know that. I potted the stinking pigdog, by God!" Now Jezek sounded proud of himself. And well he might have. The German could have killed him, too. The bastard had been too goddamn good at what he did.

"Another one," the Frenchman said. Vaclav hadn't thought of that. When you'd gone and killed the dragon, you could live happily ever after, couldn't you? At least for a little while? Maybe not. Evidently not-the captain went on, "Another one, without a doubt. He put one through Colonel Laplace's head more than half a kilometer behind the line."

"Did he?" Vaclav said tonelessly. That was a good shot, all right. A very good shot, if he was using a Mauser. It was a good rifle-a very good infantry rifle, as far as accuracy went. But it was only an infantry rifle, not an elephant gun like the one Vaclav lugged around.

"He did," the captain said, in the how dare you question me? tone French officers were so good at using. "And he bagged a captain and two lieutenants as well, these past three days. He likes officers, you see." He raised an eyebrow at Vaclav. "I daresay he would like you, too. I believe he is here because you have annoyed the Boches to such a degree." Boches stuck out in the middle of his slow, pause-filled German, but Vaclav couldn't very well pretend he didn't get it. The captain's eyebrow lifted again. "Since you have caused the problem, so to speak, it is up to you to solve it."

"Danke sehr, Herr Hauptmann." Thanks a bunch.

"Bitte schon." You're very welcome. God scorch him black as a potato forgotten in the oven, the captain could be sarcastic, too. "I expect you to deal with the problem… one way or another." What that meant was unmistakable, too. If Vaclav punctured the new Nazi sniper, that would be all right. And if the German put one through his head at better than half a kilometer, the shitheel would likely be satisfied and go torment some different stretch of the front for a while. That would also content the captain and the people who were telling him what to do. If it was hard luck for one Vaclav Jezek… well, who cared about a lousy Czech corporal who insisted on hanging on to an obsolete rifle?

With a last nod, the captain loped away. Benjamin Halevy chose that moment to show up. Vaclav unleashed a torrent of the nastiest Czech he knew. Halevy heard him out. (Later, Vaclav wondered whether he would have shown so much patience for the Jew.) When he finally ran down, Halevy said, "Be careful. If they did send a second man after you, he'll be better than the first one was."

"Yes, I worked that out for myself, thanks," Vaclav said bitterly. "I could do without the honor, you know."

"I didn't do it," Halevy said. "I didn't even ask the Frenchman if he spoke German."

"Oh, fuck off," Vaclav snarled. "How was I supposed to know the cocksucker really would?"

"Chance you take," the Jewish noncom said. "Maybe he was going to be a scientist or a historian before the army got him." The trade Vaclav proposed for the captain would not have required any knowledge of German. Benjamin Halevy only laughed.

Vaclav started hunting again. He didn't poke his head up at any place he'd used lately. He didn't know just when this new German hotshot had got here. If the German had any brains, he would have scouted the area before he started sniping. And, while Germans had all kinds of noxious deficiencies, you'd regret it in a hurry if you figured them for stupid.

He carried an ordinary piece when he did his scouting, not the antitank rifle. He also wore a French Adrian helmet instead of his Czech model. The Czech helmet was of better, thicker steel, but neither mark would keep out a bullet. And not looking like a Czech sniper counted, in case the Nazi with the scope-sighted Mauser happened to notice him.

The Nazi was doing his job. The French captain came back, complaining in uvular German about two more officers struck down. "Why have you not shot him?" the captain demanded.

"Because I haven't seen him yet." Vaclav made as if to thrust the antitank rifle at the Frenchman. "If you are so hot to kill him, Herr Hauptmann, here is the weapon to do it with."

"You are the specialist. It is for you to take care of." The captain walked away. He might have been an apartment dweller complaining that a plumber hadn't made his sink quit backing up. Vaclav said something in Czech the captain assuredly wouldn't understand. He was a military plumber, dammit. Unless the Germans swarmed forward again with tanks, which didn't look likely, he had to find some other use for his big, ugly gun.

"Can I do something to help?" Benjamin Halevy asked.

"Sure. Put on a French major's uniform and walk around where the asshole can see you," Vaclav answered. "Only trouble is, you won't be able to keep at it very long. He knows what he's doing, damn him."

"He's a German," Halevy said morosely. "Well, if you get any bright ideas, let me know, all right?"

"Brightest idea I've got is to shack up with a French broad with big jugs and about ten liters of cognac," Vaclav said. The Jew snorted. After a moment, so did Vaclav. "Well, you asked," he pointed out.

"Tell you what," Halevy said. "Nail that German, and I'll see that the Frenchmen give you a free one at an officers' brothel and all you can drink. How's that?"

"Better than anything else I'm likely to get," Jezek answered. Halevy snorted again and clapped him on the back.

The next morning, still wearing the Adrian helmet, Vaclav put his Czech pot on the end of a stick and held it up above the edge of the trench he was traveling. A shot rang out from the German lines. The helmet rang and spun. Two neat 7.92mm holes pierced it, six or eight centimeters from the top. "Holy Jesus!" Vaclav said. He'd wear the crested French helmet from now on.

Now-exactly where had that shot come from? And was the German sniper enough of a creature of habit to visit that place again? The last fellow had been, and it cost him. This guy? Time would tell. Vaclav resolved not to check from right here, though.

One other question crossed his mind. If he'd get himself a throw with a fancy whore and all he could drink for punching the enemy sniper's ticket, what did the Nazi bastard stand to win by eliminating him? HEINZ NAUMANN GRUNTED in what might as easily have been satisfaction or annoyance. His bare arms were greasy to the elbow; Theo Hossbach would have rolled up the sleeves on his coveralls to mess around inside the engine compartment, too. The panzer commander held up a wrench in triumph. "There," he said. "Goddamn carb won't give us any more trouble."

"Till the next time," Adi Stoss put in.

Naumann glared. Oh, Lord, they're going to bite pieces off each other again, Theo thought. Sure as hell, Naumann said, "Yeah, well, I didn't see you fix it, Herr Doktor Professor Mechanical Genius."

"It's a piece of crap," Stoss answered. "Nobody's going to fix it so it stays fixed. We just have to keep the valves clean, and to clean 'em out when they clog up in spite of us."

He was right, which made Naumann no happier. Theo wished he could get between them and stop them from rubbing on each other so roughly. But that wasn't his way. When people locked horns, he didn't try to separate them. He backed away and watched them in something not far from horror.

"Well, anyway, the old beast will keep running a while longer," Heinz said. To Theo's relief, Adi seemed willing to leave that alone.

Other panzer crews also tinkered with their machines. If you didn't tinker with your panzer whenever you could, it would break down when you needed it most. More often than not, you wouldn't get the chance to tinker with it after that. Somebody would plant you where you'd fallen, with a fence picket to mark the grave. You wouldn't even get a helmet on top of the picket, the way a dead infantryman would.

A hooded crow, black and gray, hopped up to Theo, looking for a handout. The birds were beggars, but they weren't so thieving as their smaller jackdaw cousins. Theo tore off a bit of black bread and tossed it to the crow. The bird seized the prize in its strong bill and flew off toward the closest tree to eat it.

"Now you'll have twenty of them scrounging from you," Heinz said. "Lousy things are as bad as the packs of Jew beggars we get around here. They even dress like 'em." He laughed at his own wit. He wasn't so far wrong, either. The Jews who filled a lot of villages in these parts did mostly wear black, with lighter shirts and blouses for relief. Laughing again, Naumann added, "Bills are about the same, too."

Theo also laughed, nervously. The way things were these days, you took a chance if you didn't laugh when somebody made fun of Jews. He got paid to take chances against the Reich's enemies. Nobody gave him a pfennig to take chances against his own side.

Adi Stoss chuckled, too. "Where I come from, the crows are black all over," he said. "They don't have the gray hoods they grow here."

"So they're niggers instead of kikes, huh?" Heinz said. "Only matters to the lady crows, I guess."

"One of these days, Sergeant, you'll open your mouth so wide, you'll fall right in," Stoss said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Naumann tossed the wrench in the air and caught it in his callused hand. "You want to make something of it?"

That went too far for even Theo to take-the more so since he was sure Adi wouldn't back down. "Enough, both of you," the radioman said. Naumann and Stoss both looked at him in surprise, as they did whenever he spoke up. He went on, "Haven't we got enough to worry about with the Ivans?"

Neither crewmate answered that. What could you say? Off in the distance, a Russian machine gun stammered out death. Another gun replied a moment later. Theo cocked his head, listening. That one sounded French, which meant it had to belong to the Poles. They made some of their own stuff, but scrounged the rest from whoever was selling on any given Tuesday.

"Our allies," Heinz said scornfully, so he'd also figured out to whom the second machine gun belonged.

"Would you rather fight them along with the Russians?" Stoss asked.

"What I'd rather, Private, is that you keep your big mouth shut," Naumann snapped. "So try it, hey?"

Stoss didn't say another word, but if that wasn't murder in his eyes, Theo had never seen it. A panzer crew was supposed to work together. Theory was wonderful. This particular crew had as many clogs and hitches as the much-maligned carburetor.

The company commander was a bright young first lieutenant named Schmidt. The captain who had been in charge went up in flames with his Panzer II. There wasn't enough of him left to bury, with or without a helmet over his grave. Schmidt was trying his best to do a good job. He came around every evening, as the captain had before him. "Alles gut?" he asked.

"Jawohl, Herr Oberleutnant," Heinz answered. "Carb is working the way it's supposed to again." He said nothing about whether the crew was working the way it was supposed to. Maybe he didn't even worry about it. From his perspective, from a commander's perspective, Adi might have been no more than a bit of grit in the works. He might have been, but Theo didn't believe it for a minute.

"Well, all right," Schmidt said. "The push southwest goes on tomorrow. If everything works the way it's supposed to, we'll link up with more Wehrmacht units in the afternoon. They aren't far away."

"That's good, sir," Heinz said. Theo found himself nodding. He saw Adalbert Stoss doing the same thing. They'd wedged their way through the swarming Russians this long. Maybe they wouldn't have to do it any more. Maybe there'd be a real front again soon. The Red Army wasn't as good at blitzkrieg as the Wehrmacht. All the same, being on the wrong end of it wasn't much fun.

"All right," Lieutenant Schmidt repeated. "We move at dawn-the sooner we give the Reds one in the teeth, the better for us." He ambled off to talk to the next panzer's crew.

Dawn came later than it would have a month before. Summer was going, autumn on the way. What would winter be like around here? Worse than the last one in the Low Countries and France-Theo was sure of that.

He ducked down into the back of the panzer with relief. On the move, the crew would talk about business, and that would be that. The radio net was full of traffic. Some of it was in unintelligible Polish and Russian, but most came from the Germans moving south to cut off the Russians who'd moved west to cut off the Germans moving north to cut off the earlier wave of Russians moving west. War could get complicated.

Down in what was now "independent" Slovakia, more German divisions were on the move, these heading north into Poland. Had they been attacking the Poles, the country would have fallen in a couple of weeks. But the Poles were Germany's friends… for the moment.

The first hint Theo had that things weren't going perfectly was the machine-gun bullets slamming into the Panzer II's armored side. "Panzer halt!" Heinz shouted. Adi hit the brakes. Heinz traversed the turret and fired a long burst from the machine gun and several rounds from the 20mm cannon. "That'll shift the Red arselicks," he said. "Go on now." The panzer clanked forward again.

Despite the earphones, Theo heard more gunfire outside. A rifle round smacked the panzer. Theo tensed. Anything bigger than a rifle round would punch right through. He'd bailed out of one burning machine. That was why he had nine and a half fingers now. He didn't want to find out what he'd be missing if he had to do it again.

Naumann stuck his head and shoulders out of the turret. Without a decent cupola, you needed to do that every so often if you wanted to know what was going on. French turrets had proper cupolas. So did Panzer IIIs. For that matter, so did the very latest Panzer IIs. But not this one…

Naumann let out a sound halfway between grunt and groan. He slumped back into the turret. Theo needed no more than a heartbeat to realize he was dead. The twin stinks of blood and shit told the story even before the radioman saw the red-gray ruin that had been the side of the panzer commander's head.

He ripped off the earphones and tried to get Naumann's corpse out of the way so he could serve the cannon and machine gun himself. Like it or not, he had to command the panzer now. "Heinz caught one," he shouted into the speaking tube up to the driver's compartment.

"Scheisse," Adalbert Stoss said. "Bad?"

"Dead," Theo answered succinctly.

"Well, you're it, then," Adi said. "Tell me what to do."

"Just keep going for now," Theo said. Before long, he'd have to stick his head out of the blood-dripping hatch. That was part of what a panzer commander did. Heinz was still bleeding onto the floor of the fighting compartment. That had nothing to do with anything, either.

Absently, he wondered what the new commander would be like. He also wondered whether they'd ever be able to wash out the inside of the Panzer II. Then he wondered if he'd live long enough to find out about either of the other two. Doing his job was the best way to make the answer to that yes. The best way, sure-but no guarantee. HANS-ULRICH RUDEL SOON DISCOVERED wearing the Ritterkreuz at his throat changed his life very little. Oh, some jackass reporters from the Propaganda Ministry talked with him about panzer-busting with a Stuka. A photographer snapped his picture with the Knight's Cross. But that was about it. The reporters and photographer couldn't very well fly with him. And when he was airborne he had only two concerns: finishing the mission and getting home in one piece.

"We could take 'em along under the wings," Sergeant Dieselhorst suggested. "We drop 'em on the frogs or the Tommies, they'll make bigger booms than a thousand-kilo bomb."

In spite of himself, Rudel laughed. "They would, wouldn't they? They're nothing but a bunch of blowhards, so of course they'll be blowup-hards."

"Damn straight," Dieselhorst said. "What I wonder is, how come they aren't in real uniforms instead of their fancy ones? They've got to have connections. Otherwise, they'd need to work for a living like honest people. They'll go back to Berlin and drink like fish and screw like there's no tomorrow-you wait."

"And you'll stay here and drink like a fish and screw like there's no tomorrow," Hans-Ulrich said-with, he hoped, not too much reproof in his voice. He didn't take his fun that way, but he didn't want to come down on his rear gunner. Dieselhorst was much more inclined to worry about this world than his hope of the next one.

The sergeant grinned. "More fun than anything else I can think of. You ought to try it yourself once, so you know what you're missing the rest of the time."

"No, thanks," Hans-Ulrich said. "I'll leave you alone if you do the same for me."

"Yes, sir," Dieselhorst said, but then he clucked in mock reproof. "If countries behaved like that, we wouldn't have any wars any more, and then where would the likes of us wind up?"

"Flying for a carnival, I suppose, or else Lufthansa," Rudel answered. "Once I got up into the air, I knew nobody'd be able to keep me on the ground any more. How about you?"

"I worked in a radio studio. That's what I told them when I joined up, which is why I look backwards all the time now." Dieselhorst chuckled as he lit a cigarette. "I didn't tell 'em I just swept up. They probably would have dropped me on the Frenchies if I had."

"I won't squeal," Hans-Ulrich promised solemnly.

The sergeant blew out a cloud of smoke. "Doesn't matter any more. I actually know what I'm doing by this time."

They went up again the next morning. Hans-Ulrich wrenched back hard on the stick to yank the Stuka into the air. Lugging those twin 37mm guns under the wings, it really was a lumbering beast. Well, it wasn't supposed to dogfight Spitfires (and a good thing, too!). It was supposed to smash up enemy panzers. It could do that… if nobody shot it down on the way.

Rudel peered from the cockpit, looking for concentrations of French or British armor. When he was diving, he had a fine view. In level flight, trying to peer around the long Junkers Jumo engine was a pain in the posterior. Sergeant Dieselhorst could see a lot more than he could.

But Dieselhorst had other things besides enemy panzers to worry about. A yell of alarm came out of the speaking tube: "Fucking fighter on our tail!" The rear-facing machine gun chattered.

Fiery tracers spat past the Stuka. Hans-Ulrich mashed the throttle. He might be flying a spavined old cart horse, but he'd give it all he had anyway. The fighter zoomed past him all the same, and pulled up for another run. It wasn't a particularly modern plane: a French D-500. It was a monoplane, yes, but it had fixed landing gear (like the Stuka) and an open cockpit (which the Stuka didn't). It carried two machine guns and a 20mm cannon firing through the hollow propeller hub.

Without his own heavy armament slowing him down, he could have outrun the Dewoitine. Had he had a choice, he would have. With the panzer-busting guns, he not only didn't have a choice, he didn't have a prayer. He'd have to fight it out up here unless he could scare that Frenchman off. And the fellow wouldn't have become a fighter pilot if he scared easily.

Sure as the devil, here he came, straight down the Stuka's throat. His machine guns winked. A couple of bullets clanged into the Ju-87. The beast could take a beating. It kept flying… as well as ever, anyhow. The cannon fired. Its big round missed. Hans-Ulrich thanked heaven-nobody could take many hits from anything heavier than a rifle-caliber gun.

That thought was part of what made him fire both 37mm cannon at the D-500. Scaring the enemy off was the other part. If you saw those big blasts of fire from the underwing guns when you weren't expecting them, if a couple of great honking shells roared past you, you wouldn't need to be very cowardly to have sudden second thoughts.

And if one of those great honking shells tore off half your right wing, you'd go into a flat spin and spiral down toward the ground without a prayer of getting out of your plane even if you didn't have to wrestle with a cockpit canopy. Hans-Ulrich didn't see a parachute canopy open. He did see a column of black smoke jet up from where the D-500 went in.

He yelled so loud, Sergeant Dieselhorst asked, "You all right?" If a certain anxiety rode his voice, who could blame him? He had no controls back there, and he couldn't have seen where he was going even if he did. If one of those French bullets had nailed his pilot, his only hope was to hit the silk right now.

"I'm fine," Rudel answered. "Do you know what I just did?"

Dieselhorst was quick on the uptake, but still sounded disbelieving as he said, "Don't tell me you shot that motherfucker down?"

"I did!" Hans-Ulrich sounded surprised, even to himself. Well, why not? He was surprised. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was astonished. "Now, where are those panzers?"

"What'll you do if we run into more fighters?" Dieselhorst asked.

"Get away if I can," Hans-Ulrich said, which seemed to satisfy the sergeant, for he asked no more questions.

A column of French machines crawling up the road toward the front sent him stooping on them like a hawk on a column of mice. He blasted the lead panzer first, then climbed again to dive on the others. They went off the road to try to get away, but he still killed two more before the rest got under some trees.

"Now we go back," he told Dieselhorst.

"Sounds good to me, sir," the rear gunner said. "I radioed what you did to the French fighter. By the way the clowns carried on, you might've got yourself a Knight's Cross for that if you didn't already have one."

"Shooting down a fighter's not worth a Ritterkreuz!" Hans-Ulrich exclaimed.

"It is if you do it in a Stuka," Dieselhorst replied. "These things are made to get shot down, not to do the shooting."

"They're made to hit things on the ground. They're made to get hit and keep flying." Hans-Ulrich knocked the side of his head in lieu of wood. The engine sounded fine. None of the dials showed him losing fuel or oil or water. The ugly bird could take it, all right. He flew back toward the airstrip.