"Lucky us," Luc said in hollow tones. Ever so cautiously, he too peered back the way he'd come. The lines on that dark helmet moving through dead grass were unmistakable. He fired. The Boche scrambled for cover. Luc fired again. The German went down with a howl. He wasn't dead, but he wasn't dangerous any more, either. That would do.

"Good job," Demange said. "But we won't stop them all by ourselves. I wonder if anybody will, this side of Paris." PEKING IN SUMMER WAS HOT and dusty. During the winter, it was colder than a witch's tit. How cold was that? Marines who'd been in Chicago said it was that cold. Pete McGill could compare it to his native New York City. He'd known some cold weather there, but Peking bottomed out worse.

And Peking would have felt cold even if it were in the nineties. As long as the Marines stayed close to the American legation, they were okay. But if they strayed very far into the city, Japanese soldiers were much too likely to whale the crap out of them.

Like any other Marine, McGill was convinced he was a better fighting man than some little, scrawny, buck-toothed, bowlegged Jap. He was convinced he could take two or three Japs, come to that. But when the odds got steeper still, even John Henry the Steel-Driving Man would have found himself in deep water.

The odds did get steeper, too. Peking was crawling with Japs these days. Some of them kept order in the city. The Japanese way to keep order was to shoot first and not ask questions later. Since Nationalist and Communist guerrillas and freelance bandits all afflicted Peking and the surrounding area, that Wild Wild East style had its points.

But even more Japanese soldiers were getting leave in Peking and then climbing onto trains and heading out of town. Pete would have liked it if the bastards never came back, but that was bound to be too much to hope for. They weren't going back to Japan-at least, they weren't heading southeast toward Tangku or Tsingtao, the ports from which they sailed for home.

No, most of them were going northeast on some of the new lines their people had built: up into Manchukuo. That made McGill gloat. "I wouldn't have believed it," he said one day in the NCOs' club, "but the sorry sons of bitches are heading somewhere colder'n this."

"Serves 'em right, sure as hell," another corporal agreed.

Pete emptied his glass. "Hey, Danny!" he called. "Bring me another beer, chop-chop!"

"Right, boss," the Chinese bartender said. The beer came from Tsingtao. It was pretty damn good. The Germans had run the place before the Great War, and they'd built a brewery there. Hitler was a bastard, yeah, but the squareheads knew what was what with beer. The brewery was under new management these days, of course, but some of the old magic remained.

When the beer came, Pete tipped Danny a nickel. To a Chinaman, a nickel was a big deal. Danny bowed almost double. He folded one palm over the other fist, which was what the Chinese did instead of saluting.

A sergeant named Larry Koenig came and sat down with Pete. He ordered a beer, too. Danny brought it over to him. Koenig lit a cigarette and offered Pete the pack-he was a good guy. "Thanks," McGill said. He took one and leaned close for a light.

Raising his mug, Koenig said, "Mud in your eye."

"Same to you." Pete answered the salute with one of his own. They both drank. After sucking foam off his upper lip, Pete lifted his mug again and said, "Here's to all the Japs getting the hell out of Peking."

"Hey, I'll drink to that, but you'll be bluer'n your dress uniform if you hold your breath and wait for it to happen," Koenig said.

"Yeah, I know. It'd be nice, though, wouldn't it?" Pete said. "They sure are moving a lot of guys through here-moving a lot of guys out of here."

"They'll keep Peking garrisoned, though, you bet. Hell, I would in their shoes." Koenig looked at his mug in mild surprise, as if wondering how it had emptied without his noticing. He waved to Danny for a refill. As he waited, he went on, "They hang on here, what are the Chinese gonna do about it? Not much, not so I can see."

"Yeah, man, yeah. Looks the same way to me," Pete said. With Peking in their hands, the Japanese could spill south and west all over the place. They'd done that for a while after overrunning the place. Now the flow was going in the other direction. "What do they need so many troops up in Manchukuo for?"

"Beats me." Koenig paused while Danny set the beer on the table in front of him. A lot of Marines didn't like to talk with Chinamen hovering around them. Pete didn't know whether Danny was a spy or not. He didn't much care, either. He didn't know enough himself to make what he said worth anything to anybody. But if the sergeant wanted to be tight-assed about it, he could. After Danny hustled back behind the bar to build somebody a highball, Koenig resumed: "Gotta be the Russians. I've figured it every different way I could, and that's what it comes out to every goddamn time."

"You really think so?" Pete said. "That'd be one hell of a scrap."

"Damn Russians have shit closer to home than Siberia to worry about," Koenig said. "If it was me, I wouldn't have started fucking with the Polacks when they knew that was liable to bring Hitler down on their necks."

"Yeah, old Adolf's bad news, all right," Pete agreed. "Me, I wonder how much the Russians really do know these days. They've been killing off generals like it's going out of style."

"Maybe we ought to try that. I don't know about the Corps, but it'd sure as hell work wonders for the Army and the Navy," Koenig said.

Pete snorted. Then he giggled. Then he guffawed. He wasn't sure it was a good idea, but he was damn sure it was funny. "I can see the FBI guys coming up to their desks. 'You-come with us!' And out they'd go, and-bang!"

"Plenty of 'em nobody'd miss," Koenig said.

"Ain't it the truth!" Pete nodded. "And you know what else? I bet there hasn't been an army since Julius Caesar's day where the noncoms didn't think it'd go better if some officers got it in the neck."

"Most of the time we'd be right, too." Like any sergeant worth his salt, Koenig was sure he knew better than the guys set over him. Since Pete McGill felt the same way, he didn't argue. Koenig waved for a fresh beer before continuing, "So if the Japs and the Reds bang heads, which way do you bet? My money's on the white men."

"Yeah, everybody said the same thing about the time you were born, too, and look how that turned out," McGill said. Anybody who came to Peking got his nose rubbed in that lesson. You couldn't come here without paying attention to what had happened in the Russo-Japanese War.

Sergeant Koenig turned red. He waited till Danny gave him his new seidel, then said, "You think the little yellow bastards can take 'em?" He paid no more attention to the barman than Pete would have.

"I dunno. They've sure got more combat experience than the Russians do. Hell, they've got more combat experience than just about anybody," McGill answered. "And it's way past the back of beyond for the Russians, and they're fighting somewhere else, and their army's fucked up. So yeah, I guess maybe I figure the Japs'll win."

"I got a sawbuck says you're full of it," Koenig declared.

As far as Pete was concerned, the problems with the Marine Corps started with sergeants, not officers. That attitude would probably change the day he got his own third stripe, but he had it now. Taking a sergeant down a peg would be a pleasure-and so would winning ten bucks. "You're on," he said.

Koenig stuck out his hand. Pete took it. The clasp turned into a trial of strength that ended up a push. They both opened and closed their hands several times after they let go.

Pete started to laugh. "What's so funny?" Sergeant Koenig asked.

"We just made a bet on who's gonna win a war that hasn't started yet," McGill answered. "How dumb will we look if it turns out the Japs're up to something else instead?"