"Wherever the hell those are," McGill put in. He'd never heard of either one of them before. That probably meant you could piss across them.
The limey's voice grew stern. "For the second night in a row, air pirates from Spain bombed Hendaye and Biarritz in southwestern France. It is not yet known whether the bombers were flown by native Spanish Fascists of the Sanjurjo junta or by Nazis of the Condor Legion mercenary group. In any case, French aid to the rival Spanish Republican government, including men, munitions, aircraft, and tanks, continues to flood across the Pyrenees."
"Yeah, it floods now, after the frogs and the limeys spent years keeping it out." Max Weinstein was a rare duck: a pink, almost Red, Marine. He wasn't real big, but he was tough. With politics like his, he had to be. He got into more than his share of brawls, and won more than his share, too.
"Prime Minister Chamberlain was in Manchester today, reassuring anxious citizens that, despite the long, difficult road ahead, victory will inevitably-"
Herman Szulc turned back to the World Series. The Cubs had one out in the seventh. They were going down the drain, all right, the same way the Giants had in '36 or '37.
"Wonder whether the Japs are listening to the Series or the BBC," McGill said. It wasn't obvious. Japan was crazy for baseball. On the Fourth of July in '37-three days before the fighting between Japan and China broke out for real-a Marine team had played a doubleheader against a squad from the Japanese garrison. They'd split two games rougher than any John McGraw's Orioles played back in the '90s.
"Wonder whether Japan will go after Russia like she means it if the Russians start going at it hot and heavy with Hitler," Szulc said.
"That would be just like the damn Japs," Max said, and for once nobody wanted to argue with him. Japan and Russia had been banging heads for a couple of years now, up on the border between Manchukuo and Mongolia. Most of the official bulletins talked about Manchukuan and Mongolian soldiers, but anybody who knew anything knew better. The puppets wouldn't dance that way without their masters pulling the strings.
"Hey, I hope the Japs do go north," Pete said. Weinstein gave him a furious look. Before the champion of the Soviet workers and peasants could start screaming, McGill went on, "If they don't, they'll hit the USA, and everybody here is fucking dead meat if they do."
Max opened his mouth. A moment later, he closed it again. Nobody could say Pete was wrong there. Japan occupied northern China these days. She occupied all of Peking except the Legation Quarter. If she went to war with the United States, the few hundred Marines in the garrison wouldn't last long.
Japanese soldiers were little and scrawny. Their equipment was nothing to write home about. But they were rugged sons of bitches, and there were swarms of them. Oh, America would eventually kick the snot out of them. Eventually, though, was way too late to do anybody here any good. SERGEANT HIDEKI FUJITA HATED MANCHUKUO. He hated Mongolia even more. And getting sent to the border between the Japanese puppet state and the one the Russians propped up combined the worst of both worlds.
Japan claimed the border between Manchukuo and Mongolia lay along the Halha River. The Mongolians and Russians insisted it belonged a good many kilometers farther east. Japan and Russia had banged heads along Manchukuo's borders before: here, and along the Amur River, and near Korea, where Russian territory dipped down as far as Vladivostok.
The Mongolians had found a new game to get on their neighbors' nerves. They would light grass fires near the frontier-wherever the hell it was-and let the prevailing westerlies sweep the flames into Manchukuan territory. Naturally, that made the locals come running to the Japanese, screaming that they should do something. When you set up a puppet, you had to hold him upright or else he wasn't worth anything.
Not that Fujita thought the Manchukuans were worth anything. But their country-to give it the benefit of the doubt-had more timber than anybody knew what to do with. It raised lots of rice and wheat and millet, too. And it drew ever more Japanese colonists, people who wanted more land and a better chance than they'd ever get in the overcrowded home islands. Whether the Manchukuans did or not, real Japanese people needed protecting.
Trouble was, even if the border lay on the Halha, the way Japan said it did, the Mongolians and Russians still had the better of it. The land west of the Halha, on the Mongolian side, stood fifty or sixty meters higher than it did over here. High ground counted, same as always.
Only a couple of days earlier, on October 4, the Mongolians had fired from the high ground at two dozen Japanese surveyors riding through what was plainly Japanese territory…if you accepted the Japanese view of the frontier, anyhow. Sergeant Fujita did, of course.
One of the other men in his little detachment, a corporal named Masanori Kawakami, asked, "Excuse me, Sergeant-san, but would the Mongolians harass us if the Russians didn't want them to?"
"Not bloody likely," Fujita said with a snort. He was short and squat and tough-the kind of noncom whose men hated and feared him but couldn't help respecting him, too. "The Mongols can't wipe their raggedy asses unless some Russian commissar says they can."
"Hai." Kawakami nodded. He was younger than Fujita, a conscript rather than a career soldier. "That's what I thought."
"Funny they would do it with the war in Europe heating up," Superior Private Shinjiro Hayashi said.
"What's that got to do with anything?" Fujita rumbled ominously. He wanted to boot Hayashi around, but sometimes even a sergeant in the Imperial Japanese Army had to be careful. Yes, Hayashi was a conscript, with no rights or privileges to speak of. Yes, he was clumsy and four-eyed, and so deserved thumping more than most of the other soldiers.
But he was also a university student. He talked like a damn professor. A guy like that was bound to have connections. If he complained, Sergeant Fujita was too likely never to see anything but the dusty Mongolian frontier for the rest of his days.
Hayashi smiled now. He liked explaining things. "If the Russians really are fighting in Czechoslovakia"-a name that sounded very strange in Japanese-"why would they also want to fight us? A man with two enemies at the same time has trouble."
"Maybe," Fujita said with a grudging nod. "You can see that-but you're almost as smart as you think you are." He wouldn't give any praise without putting a sting in its tail. "Are the dumb foreigners clever enough to see it, too?"
"I think so, Sergeant-san." Hayashi knew better than to piss Fujita off on purpose. "Lots of countries know the rules of diplomacy and war."
Corporal Kawakami pointed west. "I think I just saw something move, Sergeant…There, about one o'clock."
"I'll check it out." Fujita wore binoculars on a leather strap around his neck. Japanese optics were some of the best in the world. He'd looked through captured Russian field glasses, and they were crap. Pure junk. He'd also seen fancy German binoculars-from Zeiss, no less. Those were okay, but not a sen's worth better than his own pair.
He scanned the plain on this side of the Halha. Yellow dirt, yellowish-green grass, the occasional bush-that was about it. The steppe rolled on for countless kilometers. Then he spotted the horseman.
A Mongolian, he thought at once. He had trouble knowing how he was so sure. Manchukuan cavalrymen rode the same kind of shaggy little steppe ponies. They carried carbines slung on their backs, too, and wore the same mix of uniforms and native garb. Then Fujita realized why he knew. The horseman kept glancing back over his shoulder, toward the east. If he expected trouble, it was from this direction, yet he was the only man in sight.
"Let's reel him in," Fujita said. "Hayashi! Fire two shots in the air."
"Two shots. Yes, Sergeant-san." Superior Private Hayashi obeyed without question. Bang! Bang! The reports rolled across the steppe.
Fujita kept the field glasses on the rider. When the fellow heard the gunshots, he jerked in the saddle, looked around wildly in all directions, and started to grab for his weapon. Then he checked himself. "Two more shots, Hayashi," the sergeant said. "And we'll show ourselves. If he comes in, fine. I think he will. But if he doesn't, we just have to deal with him."