“We’re still here,” Joinville answered. He said something incomprehensible to Tiny. The Breton nodded vigorously. Luc scratched his head. Had Pierre picked up some of the big peasant’s language? That was interesting. Most Frenchmen, Luc among them, put Breton only a short step above the barking of dogs and the mooing of cows.
Well, he could wonder about it some other time. For now, he peered out through a gap between sandbags at the German lines a few hundred meters. Not much to see. Sure as hell, the Germans did know their business. They weren’t dumb enough to show themselves when they didn’t have to. He’d been worrying about Boche snipers. The boys in Feldgrau would worry about men peering through scope-sighted rifles from under the brims of Adrian helmets.
“I wouldn’t mind if it stays quiet,” Luc remarked.
Joinville eyed him. “You may turn out all right,” he said. “I was afraid you’d want to shoot at every sparrow you saw. Some new guys are like that, and it just brings shit down on our heads.”
“I may be a new guy on a machine gun, but I’ve been in since before the fighting started,” Luc said. “If I haven’t figured out the price of eggs by now, I’m pretty fucked up, eh?”
“You never can tell.” Joinville’s grin took most of the sting from the words.
And Tiny Villehardouin brightened. He’d heard a French word he understood. “Fuck your mother!” he said cheerfully.
“Yeah, well, same to you, buddy,” Luc replied. He didn’t think Tiny would try to murder him for that. When he turned out to be right, he breathed a small sigh of relief. You didn’t want to fight a guy that size without a lot of friends at your back.
Tiny threw back his head and laughed. Luc glanced over at Pierre Joinville. The Gascon gave back a small, discreet nod, as if to say Villehardouin was like that all the time. Luc shrugged with, he hoped, equal discretion.
Then something else occurred to him. He asked Villehardouin, “You know the commands, right?”
“Ah, oui,” Tiny said. “‘Shoulder tripod!’ ‘Carry gun!’ ‘Advance!’ ‘Lower weapon!’” He looked proud of his linguistic prowess.
Luc glanced at Pierre Joinville again. This time, Joinville looked elaborately innocent. The gun weighed twenty-five kilos. The tripod had to be a couple of kilos heavier yet. Tiny was anything but. Still, to burden one man with both seemed excessive. “That’s how Corporal Bordagaray did it,” Joinville said. “Me, I lugged cartridges.”
Which meant the former gun commander hadn’t carried anything heavy. Rank did have its privileges. Did it have so many? “Well, I don’t think we’re going anywhere any time soon,” Luc said. “We’ll see how we handle things when we do.”
Tiny didn’t follow a word of that. Joinville’s nod said he figured Luc would do things the way Bordagaray always had. Luc wouldn’t have to work hard if he did. We’ll see, Luc thought again.
* * *
Movie theaters in Shanghai were… well, different was the first word that came to Pete McGill’s mind. You could watch a flick in English or French or German or Russian or Chinese or Japanese. Pete had no interest in films in anything except English, but he noticed the other places the way a man happy with his woman (which the Marine sure was at the moment) will notice others: he doesn’t intend to do anything about them, but they’re there, all right.
The ones that catered to Japanese soldiers in and around Shanghai or on leave in town amused him most. He couldn’t read word one of the squiggles the Japs wrote with, but the posters at those joints always seemed more hysterical than any of the others. The colors were brighter, the action more fervid, the actors’ and actresses’ faces more melodramatically contorted.
From across the street, he nodded towards one of them. He wasn’t showy about it: he didn’t want the tough little men in yellowish khaki who were buying tickets to notice him. But his buddies got the message. “I’d almost like to see what that one’s about. It looks exciting.”
“Yeah, well, how come you don’t walk over and put down your ten cents Mex?” Herman Szulc said. “You can sit with all the lousy slant-eyed sonsabitches. Boy, I bet you’d see all kinds of stuff you never saw before.”
Pooch Puccinelli laughed. “Starting with stars. Then you’d see their boots, when they stomped the living shit out of you.”
“Cut me some slack, okay?” Pete said irritably. “I said almost, didn’t I?”
“You couldn’t pay me enough to sit down with a bunch of Japs,” Szulc said. “I had my druthers, only way I’d ever look at ’em was over the sights of a Springfield.”
“You can sing that in church,” Pooch agreed. “Day is coming, too. Soon as those mothers finish off the Reds, they’ll jump on our asses next.”
“One guy might get away with it,” Pete said. “They’d think he was crazy or something, and leave him alone. Or they’d figure their own brass knew he was there, and they’d get in Dutch if they worked out on him.”
“My ass,” Szulc said succinctly. “I wouldn’t go over there for a hundred bucks.”
“Me, neither,” Puccinelli said.
That put things in a different light. Pete had drunk a couple of beers, but he wasn’t remotely bombed. He didn’t think so, anyhow. But what came out of his mouth was, “I would-if you clowns got a hundred apiece. I come out in one piece, you pay up.”
“Yeah? What happens if you don’t?” Szulc said. “What do we tell the officers then?”
“Tell ’em I died for my country.” The words sounded grand. Then Pete realized he might have meant them literally. Killed-for a movie? Nah, he thought. For two hundred bucks.
Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe Szulc and Puccinelli wouldn’t have a hundred apiece, or two hundred between them. They put their heads together. Pooch laughed. It wasn’t what you’d call a pleasant sound. He stuck out his hand. So did Herman Szulc. “You’re on, Charlie,” the big Polack said.
If Pete didn’t cross the street now, he’d never be able to hold up his head again. He shook hands with the other two leathernecks. Vera would think he was nuts, too. If this went wrong, he’d never find out what Vera thought about it or anything else. He’d never feel her nipple stiffen under his lips, or her tongue teasing the bottom of his…
He stepped out into the street to keep from thinking about stuff like that. Brakes screeched. A furious horn blared. A taxi driver shook his fist. A car could mash you even better than the Japs. Well, faster. Pete advanced again. He made it to the other side without getting run over. Was that good news or bad? He’d find out pretty damn quick.
The Japanese soldiers gaped at him as he took a place in their queue. He towered over most of them, though they did have a few guys large even by American standards. One of them said something he didn’t get. It had to mean What the hell are you doing here?, though.
Pete spread his hands and smiled and bowed. They liked it when you bowed. “Take it easy, pal,” he said in English. “I just want to watch the movie.” He pointed to himself, then to one of the lurid posters.
Something astonished burst from the Jap. If that wasn’t Oh, yeah? , Pete had never heard anything that was. He nodded and bowed again, doing his best to show he didn’t want any trouble. If the foreign soldiers decided they wanted to, they’d mop the floor with him, and that would be that. Boy, would it ever!
They batted it back and forth among themselves, the way he and Herman and Pooch had on the far side of the street. The other Americans stood there watching. If the Japs jumped on him right now, they’d both run over here to try and help, and they’d get creamed, too. If any of them lived, they’d really thank him for that.
But then the Japs started to laugh. One of them thumped him on the back. Another grabbed his hand and shook it. They led him up to the ticket-seller. A chunky guy who looked like a sergeant laid a coin on the counter for him-they wouldn’t even let him pay. All he could do was bow his thanks. That got him pounded some more, but in a friendly way.
Once he got inside, somebody bought him a snack-tea with
out sugar and some salty little crackers that weren’t too bad even if they did have a funny aftertaste. They escorted him to the best seat in the movie house. “Good show!” said one who knew a little English. “Good show-you see!”
“Thanks! Hope so!” Pete figured his best chance was to act like a happy moron. They’d think he was squirrely, or at least harmless. He grinned till the top half of his head threatened to fall off.
Down went the lights. The projector whirred. As in American theaters, a newsreel came first. Japanese soldiers escorted Russian prisoners through pine woods. The men around Pete howled cheers. The camera focused on a downed bomber, a big Soviet star on the crumpled tail. More cheers. The narration was just gibberish to Pete, but it had to mean something like We’re knocking the snot out of the Reds.
The scene shifted. Now Japanese soldiers and little tanks moved across an obviously Chinese landscape. An aerial shot showed bombs dropping from a plane onto a Chinese city. More excited narration- We’re kicking the crap out of the Chinks, too. The soldiers in the theater ate it up. One of them lit a cigarette and handed it to him.
After the newsreel, the feature. Everybody wore samurai clothes. The haircuts and the armor looked ridiculous to Pete. He understood no more of the dialogue than he had of the newsreel narration. After about fifteen minutes, he realized it didn’t matter one goddamn bit. Give them ten-gallon hats and six-shooters instead of helmets and swords and it would have been a Western back home at the Bijou.
There was the villain, a fat, middle-aged guy with a mustache who wanted to run things-a four-flushing ham. He had the hots for the heroine. By now, Pete had seen enough Oriental women to know she was plenty cute. If he’d had any doubts, the Japs’ reactions to her would have straightened him out in a hurry. But she had eyes only for the hero, the young sheriff-um, samurai-who rode in to clean up the place. He did, too. The climactic swordfight was more exciting than a gun battle would have been. The villain lost his head at the end, even if you didn’t see it bounce from his shoulders. And boy and girl would would live happily ever after. What more could you want from a movie?
Everybody looked at Pete when the lights came up. “Good show!” he said with a big nod-and damned if he didn’t mean it, too. “Real good show!” The Jap who knew scraps of English translated for his buddies. They all clapped.
The biggest trouble he had was getting away from them. They wanted to take him drinking. But he pointed to Herman and Pooch when they got outside. The other Marines were still waiting, all right. He would have been astonished if they hadn’t been. He made the Japanese soldiers understand he had to get back to his buddies. They reluctantly let him go.
He was more careful crossing the street than he had been when he headed for the theater. For one thing, he’d had a couple of hours to sober up. For another, Szulc and Puccinelli owed him a C-note apiece. Of course you watched yourself better when you knew you had some cash coming in.
* * *
Russian bombers didn’t come over the Japanese positions astride the Trans-Siberian Railroad so often any more. Hideki Fujita didn’t miss them a bit. But the Reds hadn’t quit, even if newsreel cameras made things here look easy. Russian artillery remained a force to reckon with.
Fujita had seen in Mongolia that the Red Army had more guns, bigger guns, and longer-range guns than his own side used. He’d hoped things in Siberia would be different. The difference between what you hoped for and what you got was life… or, if you weren’t so lucky, death.
Japanese bombers kept going after the Red Army artillery. But the only thing the Russians were better at than building big guns was hiding them. The Russians were masters of every kind of camouflage there was. They were hairy like animals, so of course they were good at hiding like animals. That was what Japanese soldiers said. It sure made sense to Fujita.
Every so often, higher-ups who lived safely distant from the front sent raiding parties through the Russian lines to try to do what the bombers couldn’t. The big Russian guns went right on tormenting the Japanese. If any of the raiders made it back to their own lines, Fujita hadn’t heard about it. That might not prove anything. On the other hand, it might.
Russian gunners had come up with a deadly new trick, too. They’d started fusing some of their shells with maximum sensitivity. As soon as a shell brushed a tree branch-even a twig-it went off, and rained deadly fragments on the Japanese soldiers huddled below. Fujita wanted to kill the bastard who’d had that bright idea. Too many Japanese were dead or maimed on account of him.
Like a lot of other soldiers, Fujita had dug a recess into the front wall of his foxhole. He balled himself up to huddle in it. That wasn’t very heroic, but he’d seen enough fighting to know heroism was overrated. What good was a dead hero? As much as any other sixty kilos of rotting meat, and not a gram more. Staying out and exposing yourself to artillery fragments wasn’t heroic, either, not so far as he could see. It was just stupid.
But spending too much time in that recess was stupid, too. The Russians sometimes followed up those tree bursts with infantry attacks of their own. A Red Army man who came upon you when you were all rolled up like a sowbug would probably laugh his ass off while he shot you, but shoot you he would.
Japanese soldiers grumbled about the way things were going. Their bombers couldn’t find the Russian guns, and their own cannon didn’t have the range to respond to them, let alone knock them out. “We have to be careful not to complain too loudly,” Superior Private Hayashi said in the middle of one gripe session.
“What? why?” Corporal Masanori Kawakami was always looking for excuses to put Hayashi down. That was what superiors in the army did with-did to-whenever they could. And Kawakami was also bound to fear Hayashi could fill his place better than he could himself. Not only that, he was liable to be right.
“Please excuse me, Corporal- san,” Hayashi said, sounding lowly as a worm. He knew what was wrong with Kawakami, all right. “But if the officers hear us saying how much trouble the Russian guns are, what will they do? Send us out to silence them, neh?”
Corporal Kawakami grunted. That seemed much too likely. The corporal stabbed out a blunt forefinger. “You afraid to die for your country?”
“No, Corporal- san.” Hayashi shook his head. Fujita believed him-he’d proved he made a good enough soldier. After a moment, he went on, “I’d rather give my life where it means something, though, not throw it away like a scrap of waste paper. What chance have we got of sneaking ten or fifteen kilometers behind the front, knocking out the guns, and coming back in one piece?”
Kawakami grunted again. If he said they had a good chance, all of his underlings would have known he was a liar. So would Sergeant Fujita, who’d already started having nightmares about that kind of raid. Officers might order it. Some of them might even go along. That didn’t mean they-or the enlisted men they led-would see their foxholes again.
The only trouble was, officers could get ideas even without enlisted men giving them away. The officers at the front enjoyed those tree bursts no more than did the soldiers they led. A captain in a battalion a few hundred meters away lost his manhood to a shell fragment. Like anybody else, Fujita knew such disasters could happen. Men spoke of them only in whispers, though. Even thinking about that one made Fujita want to cup his hands in front of his crotch. But how much good would that do if your number was up? Wouldn’t you just lose some fingers along with your cock?
A whole platoon-Fujita only thanked heaven it wasn’t his-went forth to infiltrate the Soviet positions and do something about those damned guns. None of the Japanese soldiers came back. The Russian guns kept flaying the men in the forward positions. Worst of all, nobody seemed much surprised.
After it became obvious that the platoon was sacrificed on the altar of a god who didn’t care, Superior Private Hayashi came up to Fujita and said, “May I please speak with you, Sergeant- san?” By the way he kept his voice down and looked around after he spoke, he wanted no one overhearing him.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Sergeant- san.” Before telling him, Hayashi took a deep breath and licked his lips. Then he charged ahead: “Why do we have donkeys commanding us, Sergeant- san? They must have known a platoon’s worth of infantry couldn’t get near those guns, much less take them out. But they sent them across the line anyhow, so it would look like they were doing something.” Another deep breath. Another charge forward: “It’s murder, Sergeant- san -nothing else but.”
No wonder he shivered when he finished. He’d just put his life in the palm of Sergeant Fujita’s hand. If Fujita wanted to squeeze it out, all he had to do was report this conversation to any officer. That would be the end of the clever young superior private. Corporal Kawakami would have extinguished him in a heartbeat. Kawakami knew where his rice bowl came from.
Fujita only sighed. “Before you go on about how they’re big jackasses, tell me what you’d do if you were in charge.”
“Keep bombing them. At least that has a chance of doing some good,” Hayashi said at once. He must have been brooding about this for a long time. Well, who could blame him? Taking courage because Fujita wasn’t calling him a traitor (or simply beating the devil out of him for saying the wrong thing, as was a sergeant’s privilege), Hayashi hurried on: “And we ought to fortify this line the way the French did with the Maginot Line. We don’t have to go any farther. All we have to do is keep the Russians from opening the railroad to Vladivostok again. Why do we need to waste men the way we’ve been doing?”
He waited. Sergeant Fujita opened his mouth, then closed it again. He sighed again. “Bugger me with a pine cone if I know, Hayashi. You want to ask questions like that, you should ask an officer who can give you a proper answer.”
“Please excuse me, Sergeant- san, but no thank you. I don’t think that would be a good idea.” Hayashi shuddered to show how very much he didn’t think that would be a good idea. “They would give me to the Kempeitai, and that would be that. To them, anyone who thinks they’re stupid has to be bad.”
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