The War That Came Early: West and East (41 page)

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 Halévy. 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 Französisch 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 schön.” 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 Halévy chose that moment to show up. Vaclav unleashed a torrent of the nastiest Czech he knew. Halévy heard him out. (Later, Vaclav wondered whether he would have shown so much patience for the Jew.) When he finally ran down, Halévy 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,” Halévy 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 Halévy 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 Halévy 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,” Halévy 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,” Halévy 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. Halévy 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.