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dropping. Even before officers’ whistles shrilled, urging the men to their posts, Willi was up on a firing step, a round chambered and a fresh clip in his Mauser. Klaus Metzger stood beside him. Both men peered out into the snowstorm.
    Was that motion there, or only Willi’s anxious imagination? He didn’t want to wait around and discover he’d made a mistake by getting killed. Nothing up ahead belonged to his own side—he was sure of that. Shoot first and ask questions later, then, just like a Western from America.
    Klaus fired a split second after he did. Did the other
Landser
think he saw something, too. Or was he simply following Willi’s lead? One of their bullets—they never did know which—was rewarded with a scream of anguish. The French soldiers sneaking up under cover of the blizzard opened fire then. Willi shot back, working the Mauser’s bolt as fast as he could.
    Other men along the line also banged away. The
poilus
weren’t close enough to throw grenades into the trenches. Another minute or two of sneaking and they would have been. Willi slapped a new magazine onto his rifle.
    Then the Germans’ MG-34s opened up. The froggies cried out in despair. Machine guns put so many rounds in the air, they didn’t have to be either lucky or good to hit you. They just had to keep firing, keep traversing so their bullets didn’t all follow the same path, and sooner or later a man out in the open would stop one. Usually sooner.
    The French attack petered out. Willi didn’t know how many casualties the men in the crested helmets and khaki took. The swirling snow kept him from seeing most of them and let the
poilus
bring them back in their withdrawal. He didn’t think this was a cheap little affair, though.
    He turned to Klaus Metzger, who’d stayed steady as a veteranthrough it all. “You did good,” Willi said, and clapped him on the back. “Here. Take a knock of this.” He offered his canteen, which held some highly unofficial applejack.
    “Whew!” Klaus said after drinking. “That’s got teeth, but it sure hits the spot.” They grinned at each other. Willi hoped he’d just made a friend.
    SERGEI YAROSLAVSKY WONDERED what to make of his new copilot and bomb-aimer. Vladimir Federov looked more like a sergeant—or a private first class—than a second lieutenant. He was short and squat and powerful, with a broad face, high cheekbones, and gray-blue eyes that showed nothing. He cropped his sandy hair close to the dome of his skull.
    As an infantryman, he obviously would have been first-rate. As a flyer … Sergei wasn’t so sure. Anastas Mouradian talked too damn much. Stas
thought
too damn much. By all appearances, that wouldn’t be Federov’s problem. But Mouradian was outstanding in the cockpit. Sergei feared
that
wouldn’t be Federov’s problem, either.
    A safe question first: “What’s your father’s name, Comrade Lieutenant?”
    “Mikhail, Comrade Pilot.” By his accent, Federov came from somewhere near Moscow. Not from in the city, or Sergei didn’t think so, but also not from somewhere in the backwoods.
    “All right, Vladimir Mikhailovich. I’m Sergei Valentinovich.” Maybe Vladimir would turn to Volodya, as Anastas had become Stas. Or maybe not. Yaroslavsky shrugged to himself. Time would tell.
    “And our bomb-dropper is …?” Federov asked.
    “Ivan Kuchkov. He’s a sergeant, a very strong man, and nothing scares him,” Sergei answered. “Of course, he has his quirks, but who doesn’t?”
    “Nobody, I’m sure,” Federov agreed politely. “What are some of his?”
    “Why don’t you see for yourself? You’ll meet him soon.” Sergei didn’t want to say that the bomb-aimer made the burly Federov svelte by comparison. He also didn’t want to say Sergeant Kuchkov was one of the hairiest men he’d ever seen, not just on his head but all over hisbody. People called Kuchkov the Chimp, but not where he could hear them do it: he had a habit of throwing men who used