Those big mobile guns wouldn’t destroy just tanks, either. They were also lovely for knocking even concrete machine-gun nests to smithereens. One of these SU-100s did exactly that. When the nasty machine gun shut up, Istvan let out a whoop like a Red Indian in a Karl May Western.
Andras Orban laughed. “You tell ’em, Jewboy!” the Magyar said.
“Suck my dick, Andras,” Istvan answered. Why didn’t the Yankees knock you over before the self-propelled gun got ’em? he wondered. Most Magyars didn’t jump up and down about Jews. Szolovits had no trouble coping with that. But Andras was one of the minority who, had he been born a German, would have wanted to shove Jews into the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
You couldn’t say out loud that you hoped he’d get killed. He and you were allegedly on the same side. But not even the MGB had yet figured out a way to read what you were thinking.
Only a few strands of barbed wire protected the American lines. The men hadn’t been here long. They hadn’t had time to run up the thick belts that stymied every kind of attack except one spearheaded by heavy tracked vehicles. Some of the wires were already cut. Istvan twanged through others with the cutter he wore on his belt. A bullet cracked by above his head. He was already down on his back, reaching up to work on the wire. He exposed himself as little as he could.
Then he was past the obstacle and rolling down into a trench. A Yank lay there, half his face blown off. Istvan had seen horrors before, but he was still new enough not to be hardened to them. His stomach did a slow lurch, like a fighter pilot’s in a power dive.
That didn’t stop him from rifling the dead man’s pockets and belt pouches for cigarettes, food, and the morphine syrette from his aid kit. Americans were as rich as people said they were, sure as the devil. He’d never seen soldiers with gear as fine as the U.S. Army gave its men. Not even the Germans had come close. Of course, the end-of-the-war Germans he remembered were the ones who’d taken a beating for the past few years. But he didn’t think even the victorious Germans of Blitzkrieg fame made war as extravagantly as the Americans did.
Sergeant Gergely blew his stupid goddamn whistle again. “Keep moving!” he shouted. “We’ve got to drive them while we can!”
One of the Red Army SU-100s obliterated another machine-gun nest. An American with a bazooka obliterated the other self-propelled gun. It burned and burned, sending up its own stinking smoke screen. How long had the men in there lived after the rocket slammed into their machine? Long enough to know how screwed they were? Long enough to scream? If they had, the SU-100’s armor didn’t let their cries escape. More imaginative than he wished he were, Istvan had no trouble hearing those shrieks inside his head anyway.
He scrambled up and out of the foremost trench, rolled across the dirt between it and the next, and flopped down into that one. He found himself not ten meters from two live Yanks.
One of them started to bring up his rifle. Istvan shot first, by sheer reflex, from the hip. His round caught the American three centimeters above the bridge of his nose. The man groaned and crumpled like a dropped sack of flour.
That was nothing but dumb luck, but only Istvan knew it. He felt terrible about it. He didn’t want to kill Americans. But he was also the only one who knew that.
The dead GI’s buddy certainly didn’t. He didn’t see a scared Hungarian Jewish conscript fighting not to heave. He saw a fierce, straight-shooting Communist warrior whose rifle now bore on him. He threw down his own M-1, raised his hands, and gabbled something in English that had to mean I give up!
Istvan frisked him, quickly and clumsily. The American handed him his wallet and wristwatch. Istvan took them, though he cared more about smokes and food and medicine. Then he gestured back toward the rear. Off the new POW went, hands still held high.
He had no guarantee, of course, that some other trigger-happy soldier of the Hungarian People’s Army wouldn’t plug him for the fun of it or because he had nothing left worth stealing. But that was his problem, not Istvan’s. Istvan also did a quick job of plundering the soldier he’d killed. The dead man’s identity disk said he was Walter Hoblitzel.
“I’m sorry, Walter,” Istvan muttered. He meant it. He would rather things had worked out so he could surrender to an American, not the other way around. You got what you got, though, not what you wanted.
“What are you doing there?” someone asked. Istvan turned. It was Andras Orban.
“What do you think I’m doing, you stupid chancre?” Istvan answered. The best way to treat Andras was like the asshole he was. “I killed him, so I’m getting his tobacco and his ration tins.”
“Can I have some cigarettes? I’m almost out,” Orban said.
“Kill your own American, hero,” Istvan told him, and headed west again. He was lucky-Andras didn’t shoot him in the back.
When he caught up with Sergeant Gergely, he did give him some of the tobacco he’d taken from the Yanks. He didn’t like Gergely much, but he had an odd respect for him. Gergely nodded back. “Thanks, kid,” he said. “This beats the shit out of retreat, y’know?”
“Does it?” Istvan didn’t.
“Bet your ass it does,” the sergeant said. “Hope you don’t find out, that’s all.” Not knowing how to answer that, Istvan kept his mouth shut.
5
A Maxim gun spat death across the line toward Cade Curtis. The Russians and Germans had used the water-cooled murder mills during the First World War, long before Cade was born. The Germans moved on to lighter, air-cooled weapons. The Russians, having found something that worked, kept Maxims through the second war, too. And they passed them on to Mao’s band of brigands so the Red Chinese could shoot them at Chiang Kai-shek’s men, and now at the Americans.
The water-cooled Maxim gun might be obsolete. Lighter guns were much easier to haul around. When you advanced, they could come forward with you, not after you. But when the front wasn’t moving much, any old machine gun was about as good as any new one. If your luck happened to be out, old or new would kill you just as dead.
When the passing stream of bullets wasn’t close, Cade stuck his head up over the parapet to make sure the Red Chinese infantry wasn’t coming out of its trenches. The gunners spotted him and swung the Maxim back his way, but not till well after he’d ducked again.
“Anything?” Sergeant Klein asked.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Cade answered. “They’re just throwing lead at us.”
“Nice thing about a water-cooled piece is, you don’t burn through barrels like you do with an air-cooled gun,” Klein said. “All that happens is, the cooling water in that metal jacket starts to boil. The limeys in Italy liked water-cooled guns. When the water got hot enough, they’d pour it out and brew tea.”
“Yeah?” Cade didn’t know whether to believe that or not.
“Honest to God, sir.” The veteran raised his right hand, as if in a court of law. “Not like I never drank any of that tea myself. I used to think it was for limeys or fairies, but when it’s wintertime in the fucking mountains anything hot goes down good. Italy’s got winters a hell of a lot nastier than the steamship lines talk about.”
“How’s it stack up against the Chosin Reservoir?” Curtis asked dryly. “Near as I could tell, if we went any farther north we’d be fighting polar bears.”
“Sir, I wasn’t there for that. My hat’s off to you for coming through in one piece-a hell of a lot of good guys didn’t.” Lou Klein actually did sketch a salute. “From things I’ve heard from you and other people, that would’ve made the Russians and German come to attention in the first winter of their war.”