"Yeah, yeah," Max said again. "Don't remind me."
"Somebody better." Talking out of the side of his mouth, Pete felt like a movie gangster. But if a sergeant or an officer came out to check on the sentries, he wouldn't be seen moving his lips. "Why'd you join the Corps if you're a fuckin' Red?"
"On account of I like banging heads, an' they'd jug me if I did it back in the States," Max answered. "I thought about going to Spain instead. Sometimes it still looks like I shoulda done that. Wonder how many Fascists I woulda shot by now."
"They shoot back," Pete said dryly. "Besides, you're liable to get your chance against the Japs."
"Ain't like they don't deserve it, too. But I'd rather shoot Nazis any day," Max said.
"Gee, how come?" Pete asked.
Weinstein gave him a sidelong dirty look. "Two guesses, asshole, and the first one don't count."
"That's Corporal Asshole to you." Pete had given Max grief first. If the other Marine came back with something snappy, he couldn't very well resent it. Oh, he could, but then he'd really be an asshole.
"Funny guy. Funny like a truss," Max said.
Before McGill could answer, something blew up a couple of blocks away. Pete was on the ground before he knew how he'd got there: not knocked over by the blast but automatically hitting the deck. He'd brought his Springfield to his shoulder and had a round in the chamber and his finger on the trigger, ready for… well, for anything. Marine training and drill were wondrous things.
Weinstein sprawled a few feet away, as ready as Pete was. "The fuck?" he said.
"Yeah, I-" Pete got interrupted again. Another blast went off, and then another and another. "Son of a bitch!" he said. "I think they're trying to blow Shanghai up."
"Who's 'they'?" Max asked through several more booms, some almost as close as the first, others much farther off.
It was a good question. As far as Pete could see, it had only one possible answer: "Gotta be the Chinks. If this doesn't drive the Japs squirrely, what's going to?" More bombs went off as he spoke. No airplanes buzzed overhead; guerrillas inside the city must have planted the explosives. They'd get better results from bombs aimed right at the occupiers than they would have if the ordnance fell thousands of feet from a speeding plane.
They got the results they wanted, all right. Pete and Max had hardly climbed to their feet before Shanghai started bubbling like a pot with the lid on too tight. Chinese and Westerners came running out to see what the hell was going on. The American consul, a pink, double-chinned Rotarian named Bradley Worthington III, a worthy whom Pete had seen only two or three times before, came out for a look around. "Wow! That was something, wasn't it?" he said in Midwestern accents.
"Yes, sir," Pete said. He noticed Max's trousers were out at the knee from his dive to the pavement. If the consul said anything about it, Pete would have to gig the other sentry. Then Max would find ways to make him sorry, even if the Red Jew was only a private.
But Worthington wasn't going to get excited about pants with holes. He had bigger things to worry about. "The Japanese will turn this place inside out and upside down to catch the terrorists who just did that," he predicted.
"Yes, sir," McGill repeated, in a different tone of voice. He'd always assumed anyone plump, prosperous, and Midwestern was unlikely to have two brain cells to rub together. But Bradley Worthington III had just come up with the same conclusion he had himself. If that didn't make the consul a clever fellow, what would?
Shooting broke out a couple of minutes later. Max cocked his head to one side, listening. He was supposed to hold his stiff brace, but the times were irregular. "Arisakas-most of 'em, anyway," he said.
"Yeah. They are," Pete agreed.
"Not wasting any time, are they?" the consul said.
"No, sir," Pete answered. Suddenly, painfully, he hoped Vera was okay. The Chinese shouldn't have had much reason to target the joint where she danced and slept, but he knew he was going to worry any which way till he heard from her. How long till his relief came? He figured he'd go check on her as soon as he could.
Then a fire engine tore past, red lights blinking and bells clanging. More noise said ambulances were hauling casualties to hospitals. Please, God, went through Pete's mind. Don't let anything bad happen to her. Please.
A platoon of Japanese soldiers went by at a quick march. The lieutenant in charge of them shot the American consulate a look full of vitriol. Because it hadn't been bombed? That was how it seemed to Pete. One of the ordinary Japs started to aim his rifle at Worthington. A noncom yelled at him, and he didn't follow through. The platoon rounded the corner and disappeared.
Pete decided going to check on Vera might not be such a hot idea after all. If the Japs could think about firing at the consul on the steps of his own building, what would they do to a Marine they caught running around by his lonesome? Nothing good-Pete was sure of that.
Rifle fire crackled, almost close enough to make him dive for cover. Bradley Worthington III started to do the same thing, and checked himself at about the same time. That was interesting. Had the consul gone Over There in 1918? Pete wouldn't have been surprised.
"This could get very bad," Worthington said. As if to underscore the words, a machine gun went off in the distance: a long, somber stutter of death. McGill wondered whom the Japs were shooting at. He wondered if they knew-or if they cared.
"Bad? This could be another Nanking," Max said.
"Christ! I hope not!" Pete said, and the U.S. consul nodded. When the Japs took Nanking, they went blue-goose loony. Most of the stories that came back from there were too outrageous to seem possible. Which proved exactly nothing, because some of the worst stories had photos to back them up. You wouldn't think people could do such things to other people, let alone have fun while they were doing it, but that was what the photos seemed to show.
Another machine gun started up, this one closer. The gunner was an old pro, squeezing out one murderous burp after another. Pete could hear screams, too. Again, who were the targets? Some of the Chinese who'd planted bombs, or poor luckless devils who happened to have wound up in front of the gun?
A pause. Another short burst, and then one more. Pete didn't know who the gunner's targets were, but he knew too well what he guessed. THEY GAVE JOAQUIN DELGADILLO his very own set of denim coveralls. His old uniform was so torn and tattered, it was almost falling off of him. Several Nationalist prisoners were already wearing the unofficial uniform of the Republic. He was glad of that; he wouldn't have wanted to be the first one.
He got razzed even so. "Gone over to the other side, have you?" said a middle-aged POW still in the Nationalists' yellowish khaki.
"I'm the same as I was yesterday," Joaquin answered. "Only the clothes are different."
"The same as you were yesterday?" the older man returned. "Well, how were you then, by God?"
"Why, the same as I am today, claro," Delgadillo said. The other POW laughed and let him alone.
He was glad of that. He didn't know himself how he'd been yesterday, not in the way the older man meant. Everything spun round and round inside his head, making him wonder which way was up-or if any way was. He had all the things he'd believed since he was a kid. And he had Chaim Weinberg; the Jew threw grenades at those old certainties every time he opened his mouth.
If what Weinberg said was true, the Republic had been right all along. If what he said was true, the future lay in its hands. Things would be richer, freer, better than anything Marshal Sanjurjo could deliver.
If. But it was a big if. Joaquin had been fighting the Republic for a long time before he got captured. He'd been in the Republican trenches. He'd taken prisoners before he became one. The bastards on the other side-on this side-were at least as skinny, at least as sorry, as the fellows he'd fought alongside. They could claim to be the wave of the future, but their present looked pretty sorry.