They didn't know how to give up. Though the Kwantung Army had cut the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Red Army counterattacks showed that the enemy would keep trying to restore the lifeline to Vladivostok.
A buzz in the air… Fujita paused with his hand raised to swat at something. This was no mosquito: this was a deeper sound, almost a rumble. Japanese bombers flew by at night to pound Russian positions farther north. And sometimes the Russians returned the favor. These sounded like Russian machines, sure as hell. Their note was different from those of Japanese airplanes. To Fujita, it seemed more guttural, like the incomprehensible Russian language compared to his own.
"Bombers!" someone yelled in perfectly comprehensible Japanese.
Just before the bombs started whistling down, Fujita did stick a cigarette in his mouth and light it. Why not? It would make him feel a tiny bit better-and, if there were Russian snipers in the neighborhood, they'd be scared out of their wits, too. Those planes were dropping by dead reckoning, dropping blind. Bombers, as Fujita had found, were none too accurate even when they could see their targets. When they couldn't… Any Russian snipers faced at least as much danger as the Japanese on whom they preyed.
The first crashing explosions came from a couple of kilometers behind the trench line. Fujita breathed easier. Let the quartermasters and cooks and the rest of the useless people get a taste of what war was like for a change! How would they like it? Not very much, not if he was any judge.
Then he said, "Uh-oh." That didn't seem enough. "Zakennayo!" he added. The bombs were coming closer. He'd seen that happen before. After the lead plane dropped, the others would use his bursts as an aiming point. But they wouldn't want to stick around any longer than they had to. They'd drop too soon, and the ones behind them sooner still, and…
And Hideki Fujita cowered in his hole as the explosions crept nearer and nearer. "Mother!" someone wailed. "Oh, Mother!" That wasn't a wounded man's scream-it was just terror. Fujita had a hard time condemning the frightened soldier. He was about to shit himself, too.
He almost tore down his trousers so as not to foul them. Only one thing stopped him: the thought that the mosquitoes would feast on his bare backside if he did. He hadn't got bitten too badly there. He clamped down as hard as he could and hoped for the best.
Crump! That one was close. CRUMP! That one was closer-much closer. The ground shook, as if in a big earthquake. Fujita knew more about earthquakes than he'd ever wanted to learn. To their sorrow, most Japanese did.
But earthquakes didn't throw razor-sharp, red-hot shards of steel through the air. Several of them wheeped and snarled by above Fujita's head. Dirt kicked up by the explosions arced down on him. Blast tore at his ears and his lungs. He breathed out as hard as he could. It might not do much good, but he didn't think it could hurt.
Then the bombs started going off farther away. Some of them had to be landing on Red Army positions. Instead of exultation, Fujita felt a kind of exhausted pity for the Russians huddling in their trenches. It wasn't as if his own side hadn't also tried to kill him.
Did blasts murder mosquitoes? He hoped so, but was inclined to doubt it. Nothing else did much good against the droning pests.
He couldn't hear them now. Someone was shouting something. He had trouble making that out, too. Yes, the near miss had messed up his ears. It wasn't the first time. He wondered how long they would need to come back to normal. Time would tell.
The shout came again, more urgent but no more understandable. "Nan desu-ka?" Fujita shouted back. What is it? He heard a little something the next time, but not enough to make sense of what the yelling soldier was saying. "What about Lieutenant Hanafusa?" he demanded.
"He's dead." This time, the key word came through very clearly. The other man added something else. Fujita caught the last part of it: "-left but his boots."
The sergeant's stomach did a slow lurch. He knew what happened to men who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lieutenant Hanafusa's spirit would join the rest of Japan's heroic dead at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. His body… His body was probably splashed over half a square kilometer.
Somebody out there in the night said something else, something with Sergeant Fujita's name in it. "I'm here," Fujita called. "What was that? So sorry, but my ears are ringing like a bell."
Ringing or not, he got the answer very clearly: "You're in command of the platoon till we get a new officer. Sergeant Jojima got his hand blown off, and Sergeant Iwamura's hurt, too. So you're the senior noncom."
"What do we need to do now?" Fujita asked. But the other soldier couldn't tell him that. Only an officer could. And if any officers were left in the neighborhood, he wouldn't find himself in charge of the platoon. So he had to figure it out for himself. One thing looked blindingly obvious: if he ordered the men to retreat, somebody would hang him. "Hold tight!" he yelled as loud as he could. "If the Russians come, drive them back."
That sounded brave-braver than it was, probably. With any luck, the round-eyed barbarians would no more be able to attack than the Japanese were to defend.
So it proved. The rest of the night passed with hardly a shot fired by either side. When morning came, Fujita could see what a mess the bombs had made of the platoon's position and order his men to start setting things to rights. He didn't need to be an officer to see that that needed doing. How much did you need to be an officer to see? Not for the first time, he suspected it was less than officers claimed. IF COPENHAGEN WASN'T A MIRACLE, Peggy Druce couldn't imagine what one would look like. The lights were on. Cars ran through the streets amidst the swarms of Danes on bicycles. Somehow, nobody seemed to get clobbered. No one looked shabby. No one seemed to have even heard of rationing, let alone suffered under it. You could buy all the gas you wanted, and all the clothes you wanted, too.
And the food! My God, the food! Peggy gorged on white bread and butter, on fine Danish ham, on pickled herring-on everything she wanted. She poured down good Carlsberg beer. The only things with which she didn't stuff herself were potatoes, turnips, and cabbage. She'd had enough of those in Germany to last her about three lifetimes.
She did her best not to think of Constantine Jenkins. She was back in touch with Herb. All the cable lines between America and Europe passed through England, and the English allowed no traffic with the continental enemy. But Denmark was a neutral, just like the USA. She and her husband could catch up on what had happened since last October.
On most of it, anyhow. Of course Peggy wouldn't put anything about the embassy undersecretary in a wire, or even a letter. She didn't think she'd ever be able even to talk about what happened with him. I was drunk, she told herself, over and over. And she had been. But she'd been horny, too, or she wouldn't have gone to bed with him no matter how drunk she was.
That wasn't the worst of it, either. Would Herb have got horny, too, there across the Atlantic? Sure he would; Herb was one of the most reliably horny guys she'd ever known. What would he have done about it, with her away for so long? What wasn't he putting into his telegrams and letters? What wouldn't he want to talk about after she got home?
Every time that crossed her mind, she muttered to herself. It wasn't that she'd mind-too much-if he'd laid some round-heeled popsy. But not being able to talk about things with him… That wasn't good. That was about as bad as it could get, in fact. They'd always been able to talk about everything. If they had to put up walls against each other, something precious would have gone out of their marriage-part of the whole point of being married, in fact.