"Je suis dans le merde," Luc muttered. Up shit creek or not, he had to do something. He climbed out of the foxhole and crawled toward the wounded Boche.

Firing had slacked off. That could end any second, as he knew too well. None of the few rounds flying about came close-the Germans weren't aiming at him, anyway.

"I'll take you in," he called to the soldier in field-gray, hoping the fellow understood French. "We'll fix you up if we can."

"Merci," the man answered in gutturally accented French. "Hurts."

"I bet," Luc said. The bullet had torn up the German's left leg. "Can you climb up on top of me?"

"I'll try." The Boche did it. He felt as if the fellow weighed a tonne-he was a bigger man than Luc, and weighted down with boots and helmet and equipment. Slowly-the only way he could-Luc crawled back toward the French line. Seeing what he was doing, the Germans paid him the courtesy of aiming away from him.

Other hands reached out to pull the wounded man off him. The German groaned as they got him down into the trenches. Luc had never been so glad to get under cover again himself. "Whew!" he said. "I felt naked out there."

"You did good, kid," Sergeant Demange said, and handed him a Gitane.

"Thanks." Luc leaned close for a light.

"You didn't go out there pretty damn quick, I was gonna plug the motherfucker," Demange said.

"Yeah, I figured. That's why I went." Luc's cheeks hollowed as he sucked in harsh smoke.

"Maybe they'll learn something off him," the noncom said. "He'll sing like a goddamn canary, and sergeants, they know stuff." Not without pride, he tapped his own chest.

"Was he a sergeant? I didn't notice," Luc said. Demange rolled his eyes. Grinning, Luc added, "If I'd known that, I would've shot him for sure."

"Funny man," Demange said scornfully. "You got that crappy hash mark on your sleeve, so you think you're entitled to be a goddamn funny man."

"Sergeant, if it meant I'd come through the war without getting shot, I'd never make another joke the rest of my life," Luc promised.

"Oh, yeah?" Sergeant Demange said. Luc's head bobbed up and down as if it were on springs. Demange spat out a tiny butt, crushed it underfoot, and lit a fresh Gitane. Then he returned to the business at hand: "Well, you don't need to worry about that, on account of it doesn't." Luc already knew as much. All the same, he wished Demange hadn't spelled it out. ANASTAS MOURADIAN WAS DRUNK. Yes, a blizzard howled outside. Even so, a proper Soviet officer wasn't supposed to do any such thing. Sergei Yaroslavsky knew that perfect well. He would have been angrier at Mouradian if he weren't drunk himself.

They couldn't fly. They had plenty of vodka. What were they going to do-not drink it? Try as he would, Sergei couldn't come up with a good reason for leaving it alone.

Ivan Kuchkov was bound to be drinking with his fellow enlisted men. If the Chimp got smashed, the rest of the aircrew should, too. It showed solidarity between enlisted men and officers. It also showed that neither enlisted men nor officers had anything better to do when they couldn't get an SB-2 off the ground to save their lives.

"If Hitlerite bombers show up now, if we have to take shelter outside, we've got plenty of antifreeze in our blood," Sergei said.

"Never mind Hitlerite bombers. What about Hitlerite soldiers?" When Mouradian was sober, he spoke excellent Russian. He stayed fluent when he got drunk, but his Armenian accent turned thick enough to slice.

Sergei laughed and laughed. When he got drunk, everything was funny. "Where would Hitlerite soldiers come from?"

"Out of the sky. With parachutes. Like they did in Holland and Belgium." Anastas looked around the inside of the tent, his eyes big and round like an owl's: he might have expect Nazi parachutists to pop up any minute now.

That owlish stare only made Sergei laugh harder than ever. He looked around the inside of the tent, too. Enough of the wind outside got in to make the flame from the kerosene lamp flicker. That wasn't why his wide, high-cheekboned face registered dismay. "We're out of pelmeni! And pickled mushrooms! Where'd they go?"

Mouradian patted his stomach. "Good. Not spicy enough, but good." Being a southerner, he liked everything full of fire. As far as Sergei was concerned, the mushrooms and the meat dumplings were fine this way. Russians had all kinds of snacks that went with vodka. Even a half-skilled cook at a forward airstrip could do a decent job with some of them.

"We had a big plate of them," Sergei said sadly. The plate was still there. But for a couple of crumbs from the pelmeni, it was bare. Sergei sighed. He pointed at Anastas. "Not even the fucking Germans would be crazy enough to drop parachutists in this weather."

"God shouldn't have been crazy enough to make this weather." Mouradian must have been very drunk, or he wouldn't have talked about God so seriously. It gave Sergei a hold on him, which wasn't something anybody in the USSR wanted to give anyone else. Of course, there was something close to an even-money chance neither of them would remember anything about this come morning.

Even without dumplings or mushrooms, Sergei raised his tumbler. "Za Stalina!"

"To Stalin!" Anastas echoed. They both drank. The vodka was no better than it had to be. It went down as if Sergei were swallowing the lighted kerosene lamp. The really good stuff slid down your throat smooth as a kiss, then exploded in your stomach like a 500kg bomb. But this got you there, smooth or not.

Sergei sighed. If it was harsh now, he'd feel it worse in the morning. The good stuff didn't make you think elephants in hobnailed boots were marching on top of your skull.

"We have aspirins?" he asked.

"Somewhere," Mouradian said vaguely. Then he brightened. "We'll have more vodka."

"Da." That cheered Sergei up, too: at least a little. Another dose of what made you feel bad could make you feel better. He reached for the bottle again. If he drank it now, he'd feel better right away.

"Leave me some," Anastas said.

"Leave me some, sir," Sergei said. The drunker you got, the more important military discipline seemed…unless, of course, it didn't. He passed Mouradian the bottle. They drank till there was very little left to drink. They would have drunk till nothing was left to drink, but they both fell asleep first.

Getting up in the morning was as bad as Yaroslavsky had known it would be, or maybe a little worse. The first thing he did was drink half the remaining vodka. He would have drunk all of it, but Anastas snatched the bottle out of his hands. "To each according to his needs," the Armenian croaked, and no one in the USSR, no matter how hung over, dared quarrel with unadulterated Marx.

Fortunately, the aspirins turned up. Sergei dry-swallowed three of them. Mouradian took four. As sour as Sergei's stomach already was, the aspirins felt like a flamethrower in there. If he belched, he figured he could incinerate the whole airstrip.

Mouradian didn't look or sound much happier. "Breakfast," he said. The mere thought made Sergei groan. Then Anastas added, "They'll have tea-coffee, too, maybe."

"Well, maybe." Sergei peeled back the tent flap and looked out. The sun shone brilliantly off snow. He squinted at the alarming landscape. "Don't want to bleed to death through my eyeballs," he muttered.

"Tell me about it!" Mouradian said fervently.

Both being brave men, they made it to the field kitchen. Shchi-cabbage soup-seemed safe enough to Sergei. Anastas stuck to plain brown bread. The cooks had one battered samovar full of tea, another full of coffee. After getting outside of some of that-and after the aspirins took hold-Sergei decided he'd live. Eventually, he would decide he wanted to.

The radio blared out music. Mouradian turned it down. Sergei would have loved to turn it off, but he didn't dare. People might think you didn't want to listen to the news. If you didn't want to listen to the splendid achievements of the glorious Soviet state, people would wonder why not. Some of the people who wondered would have NKVD connections, too. And you'd be heading for a camp faster than you could blink.