That held a nasty ring of truth. Yaroslavsky was glad to have to pay attention to his flying for a little while as he descended toward this new airstrip on what had been Polish soil. "He may hate us, but is he crazy?" he asked, leveling off again. "Does he want a two-front war?"
"Germany almost won the last one," Anastas answered, which was true even if unpalatable. "And it doesn't look like America's going to get into this one."
Sergei's grunt could have been taken as one of effort, because he was cranking down the landing gear. A hydraulic or electrical system would have been easier on the pilot. It also would have been more expensive and harder to build. He-and every other SB-2 pilot-went on working the crank.
Without American soldiers and munitions, France and England likely would have lost the World War-the First World War, it was now. That didn't make Soviet citizens love the USA. American troops in the north and the Far East had done their best to strangle the Russian Revolution in its cradle. They'd gone home, grudgingly, only after their best turned out not to be good enough.
The bomber set down roughly and taxied to a stop. Groundcrew men trotted up as the crew scrambled out of the plane. "How did it go, Comrades?" the chief maintenance sergeant asked.
"We put the bombs on target in Wilno," Sergei said. "Not much antiaircraft fire. The Poles are wearing down."
"About time," the sergeant said. "I don't know why they got so excited over Wilno to begin with-or why we want it, come to that. Damn town is full of Litvaks and Jews." He spat in the dirt.
Before Sergei could answer that or even think about it much, Ivan Kuchkov stiffened like an animal taking a scent. He cocked his head to one side, listening intently. Then he said something worse than his usual mat-laced obscenities: "Messerschmitts! Heading this way!"
Sergei started running before he heard the planes himself. So did everybody else within earshot of the Chimp. Long before the pilot got to the trenches on one side of the runway, he did hear the hateful roar of the fighters' engines. That only made him run harder.
He didn't run hard enough to get to the trenches before the 109s' machine guns and cannon started stitching down the airstrip. Dust spurted up from the hits. Rounds slammed into the metal and doped fabric covering his SB-2. He didn't look back. He did a swan dive-if you could imagine a spastic swan-into the zigzagging trench.
That maintenance sergeant landed in the trench beside him. "Too goddamn close," Sergei said, panting. "I'm lucky I didn't break my ankle jumping down here."
The sergeant didn't answer. He wouldn't, either. A bullet-or, more likely, a 20mm round-had taken off the top of his head. Blood and brains soaked into the black dirt. One second, he'd been running for cover. The next? It was over. Lots of worse ways to go. Pilots found too many of them. If you got shot down, you were liable to have a lot of time to think before you finally smashed.
"Bozhemoi!" Anastas Mouradian said. "Poor bugger cashed in his chips all at once, didn't he?"
"I was thinking the same thing," Sergei answered as the Messerschmitts zoomed away at just above treetop height. Now he could smell the maintenance man's blood, and the nastier smells that said his bowels and bladder had let go when he stopped one.
"Za Stalina," Mouradian added somberly. About every third Red Army tank and Red Air Force bomber had For Stalin! painted on its side. You fought for Stalin. And you died for Stalin, too. He looked after the 109s. They were long gone now. "You see? The Nazis haven't dried up and blown away."
"Well… no." Sergei didn't like to admit that. Oh, he knew Poles could kill him, too. But the Germans, damn them, were much too good at such things. He wondered what they'd done to his plane. It wasn't burning, anyhow. A couple of bullets through the engines sure wouldn't do it any good, though. Two of the tires on the landing gear were flat. That would make getting it out of the way for repairs even more fun than it would have been otherwise.
They'd have to do it, fun or not. They couldn't just leave the SB-2 in the middle of the runway. Not only did it clog Soviet air operations here, it sent the Luftwaffe an engraved invitation to come back.
"Planes… We can fight back against planes," Stas said, and Sergei made himself nod. It was true-to a point. The Bf-109 outdid anything the Red Air Force flew. Both biplane and blunt-nosed monoplane Polikarpov fighters were last year's models-no, year before last's-next to it. New machines that could meet the fearsome Messerschmitts on even terms were supposed to be in the works. But the hot Soviet planes weren't here yet, and the Germans had theirs now. In a low voice, Mouradian went on, "What happens if the Nazis throw their panzers at us?"
Sergei took a deep breath, then immediately wished he hadn't. It wasn't just that he smelled the butcher-shop and outhouse reeks of the groundcrew man's sudden demise. But the damp-earth smell of the trench reminded him of a new-dug grave. He'd smelled that smell when they put his mother in the ground.
"Hitler wouldn't do that," he protested, remembering how stunned he'd been then. "He may be crazy, but he's not stupid. He'd really have a two-front war if he did."
"Well, maybe. I hope you're right," Mouradian said. "But so would we, and we didn't the last time around."
Only one thing was left for Sergei to do then: swear at the Japanese. He did it, with a flair and verve that made even the Chimp eye him in surprised admiration. With any luck at all, it would satisfy NKVD informers, too-assuming Ivan Kuchkov wasn't one. SARAH GOLDMAN STARED at the rectangle of yellow cloth her mother held. It had crudely printed, fist-sized Stars of David on it. Each six-pointed star bore four black, Hebraic-looking letters: Jude. The Jews of Munster, the Jews of Germany, were going to have to put the stars on their clothes and announce to their Aryan neighbors what they were.
But that wasn't the worst part. Oh, no. The worst was that the Goldmans, like every other Jewish family in Germany, had to give up clothing ration points to get the cloth with which to mark themselves. Whoever'd come up with that masterpiece of bureaucratic chutzpah must have won himself a commendation from Himmler, or even from Hitler himself.
"They aren't just nasty," Sarah said. "They're ugly." She tried to imagine wearing a yellow star on the breast of a jacket or blouse. She'd been shabby before-Jews got far fewer clothing points than Aryans. But her mother was good at mending and making do. Come to that, she wasn't bad herself. How were you supposed to make do with a star that shrieked JEW! at the world?
"I might have known it would happen. I should have known," her father said when he came back from his work on the labor gang that night. He was thinner than Sarah ever remembered seeing him; he did more than the food he got could support. Most nights, he fell asleep like a dead man right after supper. But he somehow seemed to limp less than usual, and his eyes were clear and bright.
"What do you mean, you should have known?" Hanna Goldman demanded. "Who do you think you are, Heydrich or somebody?"
"God forbid," Sarah's father answered. Sarah nodded and shivered at the same time. Heydrich might have been the scariest Nazi in business, not least because he looked like such a perfect Aryan. Samuel Goldman went on, "But when the Wehrmacht didn't roll into Paris, Hitler and Goebbels needed something to take people's minds off the war. Jews are perfect for that: the Nazis can jump all over us, and how are we going to hit back?"
No one said anything for some little while. The words held painfully obvious truth. Jews had always been scapegoats in Germany, the same way they had in Russia. When things went wrong somewhere else, you could set people banging on the kikes. Then you'd feel better, and the people would feel better, and if the Jews didn't feel better, well, who cared about them? Banging on Jews was the national equivalent of kicking your cat after a cop gave you a ticket.