HANS-ULRICH RUDEL WATCHED the Hs-123s land one after another. The biplanes were as near obsolete as made no difference. But they could still carry the fight to the enemy, even if Stukas could do more and do it better.

Those Henschels could take it, too. One of them had a hole in the aluminum skin of the fuselage big enough to throw a cat through. It flew, and landed, as if it had just come off the assembly line. Rudel didn't like to think what that kind of hit would have done to his Ju-87. Nothing good-he was sure of that.

Groundcrew men pushed the biplanes toward revetments after they shut down their engines. Before long, the Henschels would fill all of them. Hans-Ulrich's squadron, and the Stukas the pilots flew, were heading east to teach the Red Russians a thing or two.

Sergeant Dieselhorst ambled up. "I was talking to one of the guys in the radio shack," he said. "Sounds like they gave that Peronne place a good pounding."

"All right by me," Rudel said. "But they can't carry cannon under their wings, you know-not a chance in the world."

"Ja, ja." Dieselhorst nodded. "But the scuttlebutt is, the Ivans have more panzers than England and France put together."

"Well, if they do, we'll just have to make sure it doesn't last." Hans-Ulrich spoke with the confidence-with the arrogance-of youth. Dieselhorst, an older man, smiled and nodded and said not another word.

The Stukas flew off to the east two days later. The sun was rising in Hans-Ulrich's face when he rose from the airstrip in France and setting behind him when he put down on the smooth, grassy runway at Tempel-hof, just outside of Berlin. He and Dieselhorst both eagerly hopped out of their Stuka; long flights were tough on the bladder.

Rudel was happier once he'd eased himself, but only for a little while. Then he noticed the armored cars crewed by Waffen-SS men near the edge of the airport. Their turrets were aimed at the just-arrived bombers. "What's that all about?" he asked.

"What do you think?" Sergeant Dieselhorst answered. "They don't want us to bomb up and go after the Chancellery."

"That's crazy!" Hans-Ulrich exclaimed. "We wouldn't do anything like that."

"They're kind of jumpy right now," Dieselhorst said dryly.

"You can't blame them, after… whatever happened here," Hans-Ulrich said. He didn't know the details of the plot against Hitler: only that it had failed. He was glad it had. Treason had brought down the Reich at the end of the last war, and now it was raising its ugly head again? If it was, it needed to be slapped down, and slapped down hard.

"We aren't going to do anything like that. They've already been through us once to make sure we don't." Dieselhorst looked around and lowered his voice before going on, "And they didn't need to do that."

"They thought they did. You can see why. If the Fuhrer couldn't trust the generals right under his eye, how can the Reich trust anybody without checking him out real well?" Rudel said.

"Sir…" Dieselhorst hesitated again, much longer this time. He finally shook his head and started to turn away. "Oh, never mind."

"Spit it out," Hans-Ulrich told him.

"You'll spit in my eye if I do."

"By God, I won't." Rudel raised his right hand with index and middle fingers extended and slightly crooked, as if taking an oath in court. "We watch each other's backs. Always."

"Always? Well, I hope so." Sergeant Dieselhorst's jaw worked, as if he were chewing on that. After another hesitation, he picked his words with obvious care: "You know, sir, there's a difference between not fancying the Fuhrer and being a traitor to the Reich."

"No there isn't!" Hans-Ulrich exclaimed.

Dieselhorst's chuckle held no mirth whatever. "I knew you'd say that. But a devil of a lot of people think there is. That's the biggest part of what this ruckus was all about."

"If you try to overthrow the Fuhrer of the German Reich in wartime, what are you but a backstabber?" Rudel demanded, as stern and certain as his father was about the tenets of their faith. If he hadn't promised Dieselhorst… But he had, and his word was good.

"Some people would say, a German patriot," the sergeant replied. "I don't know that that's true. But I don't know that it isn't, either. What I do know is, there's usually more than one way to look at things."

"Not this time," Hans-Ulrich said.

"I knew you'd say that, too." Dieselhorst stepped well away from the Stuka to light a cigarette. "Well, we'll go on and hit the Reds a good lick. If you think I'm going to sing songs about how wonderful Stalin is, you're even crazier than I give you credit for… sir." He blew out a stream of smoke.

They slept in tents guarded by Waffen-SS men. When they got mush and doughy sausages and ersatz coffee the next morning, the fellow who served them wore the SS runes on his fatigue uniform. No one said much at breakfast. Even Hans-Ulrich was sure the mess-hall attendants who carried off the dirty dishes were listening.

Going back to the airplanes was a relief. Flying off toward the front in the east was a bigger one. At the front, things were simple. You knew who was a friend and who was a foe. Politics didn't get in the way-not so much, anyhow.

Before long, the communication from the ground came from men who spoke German with an odd accent, stressing the next-to-last syllable of every word whether they should have or not. "I'd say we're over Poland," Dieselhorst remarked through the speaking tube.

"I'd say you're right," Hans-Ulrich answered. A flight of gull-winged monoplane fighters badged with the Polish red and white four-square checkerboard paced the Stukas, escorting them through an ally's airspace. That Poland was an ally most Germans disliked almost as much as the Soviet enemy didn't matter… for the moment.

Hans-Ulrich eyed the fighters with wary attention. He didn't think they were anywhere near so good as German Bf-109s. Of course, they wouldn't have to be anywhere near that good to make mincemeat of a Stuka squadron. But they just flew along, friendly as could be. One of the Polish pilots caught Rudel's eye and waved. Hans-Ulrich waved back. What else was he going to do?

He also kept a wary eye out for Russian fighters. The Reds had monoplanes and biplanes, both models with noticeably flat noses. German pilots who'd faced them in Spain said they weren't so good as Messerschmitts, either. Again, though, they didn't need to be to shoot him down. How did they stack up against these Polish planes? He didn't know, and hoped he wouldn't have to find out.

A couple of antiaircraft guns fired on the Stukas when they flew over Warsaw. Colonel Steinbrenner screamed at the Poles over the radio. The firing abruptly cut off. It hadn't hit anybody. What that said about Polish air defenses… It sure didn't say anything good.

They landed at an airstrip about forty kilometers east of the capital. When Hans-Ulrich got out of his Ju-87, artillery was grumbling in the middle distance. Well, it wasn't as if he hadn't heard the same thing plenty of times in the Low Countries and France. He wasn't used to hearing it come out of the east, though.

And he wasn't used to the scenery, either. The land looked almost as flat as if it had been ironed. A cold wind that had a long start did its best to blow right through him. He was glad for his fur-and-leather flying suit. Off in the distance, a shabby village looked like something out of the seventeenth century, at least to his jaundiced eye.

To Sergeant Dieselhorst's, too. "Jesus, what a dump!" the noncom said.

"Now that you mention it, yes," Hans-Ulrich said.

"Don't let the Poles hear you talk like that, or they'll smash your face for you," a groundcrew man advised. "They think we're on their side, not the other way around."