Last Orders: The War That Came Early (16 page)

The movie was … a movie. Bogie had done better. No doubt he’d also done worse. It was a way to kill a couple of hours without paying as much attention as you needed to reading a book. It was also a way to keep company with someone else for a couple of hours.

After the movie ended, they went to a cocktail lounge down the street and had a drink. Then he drove her home. Peggy kissed him good-bye at the door. They hadn’t gone any further than that. If they kept seeing each other, she expected they would, but they hadn’t yet.

“Thanks,” he said as he turned to go. “I had a good time. Always have a good time with you, seems like. I better head on back—got to be at the plant at eight o’clock sharp.”

“I had a good time, too, Dave.” Peggy let herself in and closed the door behind her. She smiled to herself. She really meant it. Who would have imagined that?

When Ivan Kuchkov peeked out of his foxhole, he saw something you didn’t see very often: a German waving a white flag. In this part of the front, the Nazis and the Red Army were pretty mixed up. They’d been going back and forth at each other for a couple of weeks now. The Germans had given up more ground than they’d taken, but some villages had gone back and forth two or three times. There wasn’t much left of those places.

The Hitlerite with the white flag shouted something in his own language. It was just noise to Kuchkov. “Hey, Sasha,” he called, “what the fuck is the dumb cunt going on about?”

Sasha Davidov knew Yiddish, not German, but they were closer to each other than Russian and the Ukrainian grunting they used down here. The Jew could follow what the
Feldgrau
bastard was saying, anyhow. “He wants a truce to pick up the wounded,” Davidov reported.

Firing on both sides eased off as men saw the white flag and waited to find out what would come of it. Ivan waited to discover whether any Soviet officers were in earshot. They’d speak German, odds were. And they could decide about the truce, too, so he wouldn’t have to take out his dick and lay it on the block.

Only there didn’t seem to be any around. He wondered what had happened to Lieutenant Obolensky. Maybe the company commander’d caught one in this latest firefight. Wounded men moaned. A couple of wounded men wailed. Russian and German agony sounded pretty much the same. Some of those sorry buggers might live if they got picked up. Of course, the NKVD pricks had their eye on him because of the mess with the
politruk
, and they were liable to say he was plotting with the enemy if he accepted the ceasefire.

Fuck them, too, in the neck
, he thought. To Davidov, he said, “Tell him he can have an hour.”

When the point man yelled to the Fritz, it didn’t sound as if they were speaking quite the same language. The German shouted back. “He agrees,” the skinny little point man said. “He says thank you, too.”

“Tell him to screw himself,” Kuchkov said. When the Jew hesitated, Ivan snapped, “Tell him, dammit!”

Davidov yelled again. The German shouted back, in accented but understandable Russian:
“Yob tvoyu mat’!”

Ivan laughed. He came out of his hole and stood up. Most Germans didn’t seem like human beings to him at all. But if you cussed one and he cussed you back, you couldn’t very well
not
see a man there.

Cautiously, Red Army men and Hitlerites emerged from cover. Nobody put down his rifle or machine pistol, but nobody fired, either. A couple of Germans swigged vodka from Russian canteens. A couple of Russians drank German schnapps. The Fritzes swapped some of
their tubed meats for Russian tobacco. Ivan thought his side won that deal, but everybody knew Germans were dopes when they weren’t killing things.

Stretcher-bearers from both sides lugged away the wounded men they could find. Kuchkov noticed a Russian dragging a dead German off by his boots. They were good boots; he suspected the Red Army man would wear them if they fit and sell them if they didn’t. He also suspected the Germans would try to stop the Russian if they noticed him stealing their
Kamerad
’s corpse. But they didn’t, so he didn’t need to worry about that.

“Fünf Minuten!”
shouted the Fritz who’d asked for the truce. He held up his hand with the fingers spread.

“Five minutes,” Sasha Davidov translated.

“Thanks a fuck of a lot, bitch,” Ivan said sarcastically. Sasha looked wounded. “Yeah, yeah,” Kuchkov soothed him. “Some of our guys are stupid pricks. I know.” He needed to keep Davidov happy, or as happy as Davidov could get. The Jew started at his own shadow, but he didn’t run from a fight. And when they were moving forward, he made the best point man Ivan had ever seen. Because he was so skinny and nervous, he never led the rest of the guys into a trap.

That German waved to Ivan, then turned and walked toward the hole from which he’d come. Ivan’s right index finger twitched—he wanted to fire a burst from his PPD into the Hitlerite’s back. The son of a bitch would never know what hit him. But Kuchkov couldn’t see enough advantage in it to make it worth his while.

A German ceremoniously fired a Mauser into the air to signal that the ceasefire was over. Kuchkov squeezed off a three-round burst with his machine pistol, also aiming at nothing and nobody. A minute later, one of Hitler’s saws opened up. Both sides got back to the serious business of trying to slaughter each other.

“Hey, Sasha!” Ivan called.

“What do you need, Comrade Sergeant?” the Jew asked. He was only a senior private, but he had more sense than anybody else in the section. Kuchkov thought his judgment worth having.

So he asked, “You think we can get around behind that little swell
of ground off to the right? I saw the Nazi dickheads didn’t hardly post anybody over there.”

“Can the guys who don’t move lay down enough fire so they don’t know we’re sliding around till we take ’em from the flank?” Davidov asked in return.

Ivan considered. After a few seconds, he said, “Fuckin’ right, they can. Take half a dozen men and do it. We won’t let the Hitlerite cocksuckers have a clue they’re gonna get it up the ass.”

Davidov and the soldiers he’d chosen crawled away through the weeds and bushes, their bellies as flat against the ground as if they were so many slugs. The rest of the Red Army men sprayed bullets around so the Germans wouldn’t suspect the flanking move. About half of them carried PPDs or captured Schmeissers, so they had no trouble making a big racket.

As soon as the firing from the right started, Kuchkov yelled, “Come on, you sorry fuckers! Let’s get ’em!” He scrambled out of his hole and scurried toward the German positions. Other khaki-clad men came with him. If they’d sat there playing with their dicks, they could have got rid of him for good.

One of the Fritzes fired at him from no more than ten meters away. The rattled German missed. Ivan cut him down with a long PPD burst while the Nazi was still working the bolt on his rifle. He smashed in another Hitlerite’s face with his German-made entrenching tool when the man popped up in front of him like a rabbit coming up out of its burrow. The German screamed like a rabbit, too, and fell over on his back.

Then all the Nazis were running away. They liked flank attacks no better than Russians or anybody else.

Somewhere back there, the Germans had a couple of more MG-42s. Their pitiless snarl warned the Red Army men with Kuchkov not to get too bold in the pursuit. Instead, the Russians fell to plundering the corpses of the Fritzes they’d killed. Food, leather goods, grenades, trench knives, folding entrenching tools, water bottles—none of that stuff would go to waste.

Ivan kicked a dead German’s helmet as if it were a football. It spun
through the bushes. He wished he could paint it khaki and stick it on his own head. It was of better steel and protected more of a man’s dome than its Soviet equivalent. But that wouldn’t work. The instantly recognizable shape would get him shot by his own side.

Here came Sasha Davidov with German black bread and tubes of meat paste or butter. “Good job, motherfucker!” Ivan said, and slapped him on the back hard enough to stagger him.

“Thanks, Comrade Sergeant.” The Jew squeezed something pale and yellow onto a chunk of bread and offered it to Kuchkov. “Here. I know which side it’s buttered on.” They both laughed and laughed. Why not? They’d both stayed alive to do it.

The men in Hans-Ulrich Rudel’s squadron sprawled on the grass by their airstrip. Rudel had his visored officer’s cap pulled down low on his forehead, and he wasn’t the only one. It had started drizzling a little while earlier. The sky was the color of pewter. Summer might not be over, but it wouldn’t last much longer.

Colonel Steinbrenner stood in front of the assembled flyers and groundcrew men. “Boys, I know you’ll be glad to listen to a talk from the National Socialist Loyalty Officer, Major Keller. So pay attention to what he’s got to say to you, right?
Heil
Hitler!”

“
Heil
Hitler!” the men echoed. Beside Hans-Ulrich, Sergeant Dieselhorst spoke up as loudly as anyone else. You couldn’t just be loyal these days. You had to be seen and heard to be loyal. Hans-Ulrich didn’t care for that, but he didn’t know what he could do about it, either.

As the squadron commander stepped back, Major Keller stepped forward. He wore the ribbon for an Iron Cross Second Class thrust through the third buttonhole on his tunic. The Iron Cross Second Class wasn’t quite like a vaccination scar; not
everybody
had one. But even Sergeant Dieselhorst sported an Iron Cross First Class. The rest of the loyalty officer’s decorations were Party awards, not ones earned in the field.

“We must be ruthless in our devotion to duty! Ruthless!” Keller declared. “The Jews and Bolsheviks who hate the
Reich
and plot to destroy the German
Volk
, we must root out and eradicate without
mercy. They would give us none, and so they deserve none themselves. We must prosecute the war as if there were no tomorrow. If our enemies triumph, there will be none for us!”

Beside Hans-Ulrich, Dieselhorst reached into a tunic pocket. He pulled out a pack of Gauloises. Rudel wondered where he’d got them. From a Belgian farmer who’d got them from a Frenchman, seemed the best bet. The rear gunner and radioman stuck one in his mouth and lit it. He made a horrible face, but kept puffing away. Even Hans-Ulrich, who didn’t use tobacco, could smell how harsh the smoke was.

“We must fight. We must keep on fighting till Germany has the final victory and the
Lebensraum
our
Volk
require,” the loyalty officer went on. “We must back the
Führer
of the
Grossdeutsches Reich
, Adolf Hitler, and the National Socialist German Workers Party with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might.
Heil
Hitler!”

“
Heil
Hitler!” the
Luftwaffe
men chorused again.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might
. How often had Hans-Ulrich heard that verse from his minister father? Did Major Keller even know he was quoting Scripture—and the Old Testament, at that? Or was he just pulling a phrase that sounded good out of thin air? Even Hans-Ulrich could see that asking him wasn’t the smartest thing he could do.

“The
Führer
is always right!” Keller thundered. “That is why we must back him with blind courage and blind obedience. He and he alone knows what is best for us and best for Germany.
Sieg heil!
”

“Sieg heil!”
his audience responded. Albert Dieselhorst sent smoke signals up into the damp, drippy sky from his stinking French cigarette. No Red Indian stood on a hilltop to read what those smoke signals meant. Hans-Ulrich thought that might be just as well.

He joined in the polite applause as the National Socialist Loyalty Officer clicked his heels and took two steps back. Colonel Steinbrenner strode forward again. “Thank you, Major,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

Then Keller stepped up to stand beside him again. “One more thing, sir, if I may, which I unfortunately forgot to mention,” he said. The squadron commander waved for him to continue, so he did: “You must ignore—ignore absolutely—any reports of unrest coming from
the homeland. Either they are lies spread by the enemy to weaken your spirit or the unrest was fomented by Jews and other traitors to the
Reich
.” He clicked his heels and withdrew once more.

“Thanks for making that plain,” Colonel Steinbrenner said. “
Aber natürlich
, reports of unrest at home can only be lies or treason.”

Keller nodded vigorously. Sergeant Dieselhorst coughed. It might have been the Gauloise’s fault—if that wasn’t poison gas he was breathing, what was it? Or the sergeant’s irony detector might have gone off. Hans-Ulrich’s had, and he was sure it was less sensitive than Dieselhorst’s.

By all appearances, the Party hadn’t issued Major Keller a working irony detector. After all, he still plainly believed everything he said himself. Well, Hans-Ulrich believed most of it, too, though he wasn’t so sure all the unrest in Germany was lies and provocations. Albert Dieselhorst, being more ironical, believed rather less.

“Now that you men have listened to Major Keller, listened to him carefully and with the great attention a National Socialist Loyalty Officer deserves, you may return to your regular duties,” Steinbrenner said. The loyalty officer looked pleased with himself. He was sure he deserved to be heard with great attention, all right.

Hans-Ulrich wasn’t so very sure Colonel Steinbrenner was so very sure of that. He didn’t think the squadron commander was a defeatist, or anything of the kind. Steinbrenner had replaced an officer who wasn’t loyal enough to satisfy the security forces. But the colonel didn’t care to have anyone tell him how to think.

Neither did Sergeant Dieselhorst. He stuck another Gauloise in his mouth. “Those things are filthy,” Hans-Ulrich said.

“So’s your granny … sir,” Dieselhorst replied. He scraped a match against the sole of his boot. After he lit the cigarette, he coughed some more. He took it out of his mouth and eyed it with mingled caution and respect. “Does kind of feel like I’m smoking sandpaper,” he allowed. That didn’t stop him from taking another drag—or from coughing afterwards.