The sailors cheered. They stamped their feet. A couple of them whistled shrilly. Only later did Lemp wonder why. As long as they stayed in harbor, they were safe. Any time they went hunting, they laid their lives on the line. And they were glad to do it. If that wasn't madness…

Of course it was. He had a case of the same disease. So did the British sailors who tried to bring merchantmen into their harbors, and the other sailors who set out to sink U-boats. So did the soldiers in German Feldgrau, and so did the bastards in assorted shades of khaki who tried their best to stop the Wehrmacht.

Without that kind of madness, you couldn't have a war. Julius Lemp took it for granted. So did men far more important than he.

"What did Donitz say?" asked a machinist's mate.

"That we were bad boys for sinking an American liner. That we could have got the Reich into all kinds of trouble. But we didn't," Lemp answered. "He also said he needed people who could shoot straight."

More cheers rose. These were so loud and raucous, Jochen stuck his nose into the wardroom to see what was going on. Nobody told him. Miffed, he slouched back outside. The soldiers started clapping and stomping again.

"We'll go out there and do some more straight shooting," Lemp said. The men shouted agreement. They were good fellows, all right-and crazy the same way he was.

For more than two years, the war in Spain had electrified the world. Everybody could see it foretold what would happen when Fascism squared off against Marxism. Both sides threw what they could into the struggle. Italian troops, German planes, Russian tanks…Most of the bodies, on both sides, stayed Spanish.

Not all. Chaim Weinberg wouldn't have left New York City without a strong feeling that something had to be done to stop Fascism before it exploded all over Europe. He wasn't the only one: the International Brigades were proof of that. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Republic remained a going concern despite everything Marshal Sanjurjo could do to crush it.

And then, when the Internationals were about to get pulled from the line, the big war did break out in Europe. Spain's fight was suddenly Britain and France's fight, too. Materiel flooded south across the Pyrenees as the French border opened up. It seemed too good to be true.

It was. As soon as Hitler turned his troops on the Low Countries and France rather than Czechoslovakia, the flood didn't go back to being a trickle. It dried up altogether. Everything the French could make, they shipped northeast to shoot at the Boches.

Germany and Italy had already pretty much forgotten about Spain. With the French and English navies in the war, the Fascists had a much harder time getting through than they'd had before. And they needed their toys to use against the Western democracies.

So Spain went from being the cockpit of world attention to the war that everybody forgot. Everybody, that is, except the poor, sorry bastards still stuck fighting it.

Lately, Sanjurjo's men on an outpost a few hundred meters away had found themselves a new weapon: a loudspeaker system. It crackled to life now: "Come over to the winning side!" a Spaniard shouted, and the loudspeaker gave him something close to the voice of God. "Come over to us, and we'll feed you what we eat ourselves. It's lovely chicken stew tonight! Don't miss it!"

"Ha!" Chaim said, and turned to Mike Carroll. "You know how to make Sanjurjo's chicken stew?"

"First, you steal a chicken," Carroll answered wearily. "That's an old one. Got a smoke?"

"Yeah." Chaim gave him a Gauloise.

"Lovely chicken stew!" the Nationalist boomed again.

"Thanks. Tastes like shit, but thanks." Carroll puffed happily. Chaim agreed with him-the French tobacco did taste like shit. But Gauloises and Gitanes were better than no cigarettes at all-and better than roll-your-owns made from other people's (and your own) butts.

"Chicken stew-with dumplings!"

"Lying cocksucker," Chaim said without much rancor. Every so often, guys from the other side deserted. From what they said, the Nationalists were just as hungry, just as miserable, as the Republicans.

"Maybe their officers have chicken stew," Carroll said.

"Now you're talking," Chaim said. Republican officers ate and lived no better than the men they led. It was an article of faith on this side that the enemy's officers exploited their soldiers-they were fighting for class distinctions, after all. Some of what the deserters said supported that: some, but not all. The Republicans mostly discounted anything that disagreed with what they'd thought before.

"Wonderful chicken stew! All you can eat!"

Somebody in the Republican lines fired at the loudspeaker. If you were hungry and cold and miserable, talk of food could drive you nuts. And you had to be nuts to shoot like that. At long range, with the crappy rifles and cheap ammo most Republicans carried, how likely were you to hit what you aimed at? Even if you did, what kind of damage could you do? And besides…

Chaim pulled his entrenching tool off his belt. It was very well made; he'd taken it off a dead Italian. He started digging. "That stupid asshole's gonna bring some hate down on our heads."

"Tell me about it." Carroll's entrenching tool consisted of some scrap iron a smith had beaten flat and then bolted to a stick. But it moved dirt, too. He deepened his foxhole and added dirt to the parapet in front of it and the parados behind.

Sure as hell, the shot woke up the Nationalist artillery. Sanjurjo's men had more guns and better guns than the Republicans. Hitler and Mussolini had been lavish in supplying their Spanish friends till they got distracted. Nobody on the Republican side had ever been lavish with anything, not till the Czech fight started and not for long enough then.

Fragments wined and snarled overhead. Chaim dug like a mole, trying to make what vets of the last war called a bombproof. He should have done that a long time ago. He knew as much, but nobody liked to dig without need. Now the need was here.

Mike Carroll made dirt fly, too. They both stopped about the same time. Somebody not far away had been wounded, and was making a godawful racket. "I'd better go get him," Chaim said, though he could think of few things he wanted to do less. As if to convince himself, he added, "God knows I'd want somebody to pick me up if I got hit."

"Yeah." Carroll also scrambled out of his hole, even if he'd just improved it. Not being by himself above ground made Chaim a little less lonely. It also made him wonder if he'd have to try to make pickup for two. Well, if he stopped something himself, somebody was out there to make pickup on him.

He scuttled along like a pair of ragged claws-some damn poem picking the exact wrong moment to bounce around in his head. Like a snake would have been closer, because his belly hugged the ground every second. Off to his left, Mike also looked flattened by a steamroller.

To add to the joy, a couple of Nationalists started shooting at them with rifles. Luckily, none of the rounds came close. Spaniards, whether Nationalists or Republicans, made piss-poor riflemen. Chaim didn't know why that was true, but it sure seemed to be. The bullets got close enough to scare him cracking past, but no closer than that.

He crawled past some trench a shell hit had caved in and flopped down into the earthwork beyond with a sigh of relief. Mike Carroll made it, too. There lay the wounded guy, trying to clutch his chest and his leg at the same time and howling like a banshee. Two other men from the International Brigades were nothing but raw meat and blood-no blaming them for not helping their buddy, because nobody could ever help them again.

"Fuck," Carroll said hoarsely. "See who it is?"

Chaim hadn't noticed-one injured fighter sounded much like another, no matter which language he'd grown up speaking. Now he took a look. "Fuck," he echoed. "It's Milt."