Chapter 1

Guns thundered on both sides of the Ebro. General Sanjurjo’s Fascists had modern German and Italian pieces, guns that could put a shell on an outspread blanket five miles away. The Republic had a few Russian howitzers that weren’t bad. The rest were the artillery pieces the Republicans had started the fight with. After more than two years of civil war, they kept only vestiges of their original rifling-and they weren’t such hot stuff back when they were new.

Crouching in a foxhole west of the Ebro, Chaim Weinberg decided he feared his own side’s guns more than the Fascists’. When the enemy Spaniards or their German advisers opened up, at least you had a good notion of what they were shooting at. If it wasn’t you, you could relax.

But when the Republican artillery started shooting, you always needed to be on the jump. Those shells might come down on the Fascists’ head…or they might come down on yours. You never could tell. Neither could the poor, sorry bastards firing the guns.

“Aren’t you glad we came from the States?” asked Mike Carroll, another volunteer from the Lincoln Battalion.

Before Chaim could answer, somebody’s shell burst much too close. Shrapnel and shards of shattered stone screamed through the air. He listened for shrieks, but didn’t hear any. Luck. Nothing but dumb frigging luck.

“Aren’t you?” Carroll persisted.

“Chinga tu madre,” Chaim told him. He wouldn’t have said anything like that even in English before he sailed to Spain. Well, he was a new man now. That new man needed a shave (at the moment, he also needed a razor). He was scrawny and hungry. He was filthy. He was lousy. But damned if he wasn’t new.

He’d never fired a rifle before he got to Spain. Hell, he’d never even handled a rifle. He could field-strip his Mauser blindfolded now. He’d started out with a crappy French piece, and got this much better German one off a dead Nationalist soldier. Keeping it in cartridges was a bitch. But keeping the French rifle in ammo would have been a bitch, too. Logistics was only a bitter joke to the Republicans.