“Do that, then,” Witt said. “You don’t usually get the vapors-and if you have ’em this time, well, shit, you’re entitled once in a while.”
“Thanks, Sergeant. You’re all right, you know that?” Adi put the panzer into reverse. Theo wondered what would have happened were Heinz Naumann still in charge here. No, he didn’t wonder; he knew. Naumann would have ordered Adi to go straight ahead, just to show him who the boss was. And then they would have seen… whatever they would have seen.
As Adi was making his loop, another Panzer III did head straight across the stretch of ground he hadn’t liked. It did fine for about thirty meters. Then it hit a mine that blew off its left track. Curses from the other panzer’s radioman dinned in Theo’s earphones. Now those guys would have to wait for a recovery vehicle, or else come out of their steel shell and try to repair things well enough to limp away. If the Reds aimed an antipanzer cannon at them while they were stuck… That would be hard luck. For them.
Hermann Witt’s voice came through the speaking tube again: “Good job, Adi.”
“Thanks, boss,” the driver answered. Theo wondered what Naumann would have said after they charged into the minefield at his orders. Since the other commander had stopped one with his head, nobody would ever know now. And maybe that was just as well for everyone-except Naumann, of course.
Vaclav Jezek sprawled under a battered chunk of rusting corrugated iron between the Republican lines northwest of Madrid and the Nationalist positions. Rain drummed down on the iron. The ground around the Czech’s hidey-hole was getting muddy. No, by now it had already got muddy. Every so often, a little chilly rill dribbled in with Vaclav. Summer was over. Spanish autumn warned that Spanish winter was coming.
Some yellowing bushes concealed where the muzzle end of Vaclav’s antitank rifle stuck out from under the sheet iron. The bushes also made it harder for him to peer through the telescopic sight, but he didn’t mind. A sniper’s first commandment was Don’t let them spot you. If you didn’t honor that commandment and keep it wholly, you wouldn’t live long enough to learn the second one.
And, naturally, the rain also cut down on visibility. That blade also had two edges. Yes, Vaclav had more trouble finding likely targets. But Marshal Sanjurjo’s men would also have more trouble noticing him if he made a mistake.
He gnawed on a chunk of spicy Spanish sausage. His tongue thought Spaniards put peppers and garlic in everything this side of ice cream. They were even worse than Magyars for hotting up their food. The sausage, actually, wasn’t too bad now that he’d got used to it.
He wished for a cigarette. He had a pack in his pocket, but lighting one now would be a king-sized mistake. Even through the rain, an alert Nationalist might spot smoke leaking out from under the iron sheet.
Some of the American Internationals chewed tobacco when they got into a spot where they couldn’t light up. Vaclav thought about it, but not for long. The idea seemed too disgusting to stand. He could deal with the no-smoke jitters till night fell. Then he could either have a careful cigarette here-making sure the struck match and the coal didn’t show-or go back to the trenches and smoke his head off.
In the meantime… Waiting was a big part of the sniper’s game. If you weren’t patient, you wouldn’t last. One of these days-one of these years-Vaclav wanted to go home to a free Czechoslovakia. Letting some Spanish Fascist asshole pot him before he could wasn’t in his plans.
He moved the antitank rifle a few millimeters. Through the scope, he eyed a new stretch of the Nationalists’ rear entrenchments. It seemed no more interesting than the old stretch had. The Spaniards there were more careless than they were at the front, where an ordinary rifleman could pot anybody who unwarily stuck his head up over the parapet. They thought they were far enough away to be safe.
The hell of it was, they were right. He could have blown some of their brains out, sure. Seeing them in helmets so much like the ones the Nazis wore made him want to do it, too. But he wasn’t about to waste his precious ammo on ordinary Joses and Jorges. If you were going to snipe at long range, you wanted to get rid of the officers, the high-powered guys whose loss hurt the enemy out of proportion to their numbers.
Like this bastard, for instance. He wore an officer’s cap with a high crown and a brim, not a helmet or a service cap. The brim helped keep the rain out of his eyes, but it also told the world what he was. There were stars above the brim. How many? Small or large? That would say how big a fish Vaclav had in his sights. At this range and in this weather, he couldn’t be sure.
Whoever the jerk was, he pointed a finger at one of the ordinary soldiers and told him off in no uncertain terms. That decided the sniper watching him from afar. Anybody who thought he was such a big shot deserved whatever happened to him. Vaclav took careful aim, inhaled, exhaled, and pressed the trigger.
The elephant of a gun slammed against his shoulder. The stock was padded, but that helped only so much. And the report, always fearsome, seemed four times as loud under the sheet of corrugated iron. But the Nationalist officer fell over, which was the point of the exercise.
Vaclav quickly chambered another round. Had the Nationalists seen the muzzle flash when he shot their officer? If they had, would they come after him and try to pay him back?
No one came. He wouldn’t have wanted to hunt snipers in the rain, either. You never could tell, though. Sometimes people got upset when you murdered their officers. Sometimes, no doubt, the regular guys in the trenches hoisted one in your direction when you blew the head off some jackass they couldn’t stand. That was the kind of thing you were unlikely to hear about, which had always struck Vaclav as too damn bad.
He kept watching through the sight. He didn’t intend to fire two in a row from the same spot, not unless he got a terrific target. He’d think twice even then; shooting two in a row without moving felt almost like signing your own death warrant.
After a while, he took a small swig from his canteen. Cheap Spanish white wine tasted different from cheap French white wine, but no better. With regret, he kept it to the one small swig. The less you drank, the less you needed to get rid of. He didn’t have much room to piss under here unless he wanted to lie in it.
Some more sausage, some chewy barley bread… This wasn’t the Ritz or the Adlon, no two ways about it. Where was the barmaid with the big tits to bring him another bottle of bubbly?
Wherever she was, she wasn’t anywhere around here. He didn’t find any more overbearing officers to shoot at. You could peer through a sight for only so long. Once he decided he wouldn’t spot anything more, he pillowed his head on his arms and fell asleep.
It was dark when he woke up. Under the iron sheet, it was black as Hitler’s heart. He needed a second or two to realize he hadn’t died or been buried alive. He had a way out, a way back to his friends.
“Fuck!” he muttered. He had to give his own heart stern orders not to try to pound its way out of his chest. His hands shook. Of course, that was partly because he hadn’t had a cigarette in much too long.
He carefully backed out of the little artificial cave where he’d sheltered. It was still raining. No one in the line challenged him till he was clambering over the parapet.
“Good going, guys,” he said as he dropped down into the forward trench and fumbled for his cigarettes. “I could have been a Nationalist with a machine pistol. You never would have known the difference till I opened up.” He cupped his hands so he could strike a match in spite of the waterworks from on high.
“Nah. You would’ve made more noise getting through stuff if you were,” one of the other Czechs answered.
“You hope I would,” Vaclav said. “Some of those guys know what they’re doing, though.” It started coming down harder. He kept a hand over the cigarette so the raindrops wouldn’t put it out. After so long without, he needed more than just a drag or two to feel right.