“Nailed him!” Sergeant Dieselhorst yelled through the tube. “He’s on fire!”

“Good.” Hans-Ulrich climbed as steeply as he could. He picked another camouflaged panzer and dove on it. Two more rounds. Another burning machine, or so the rear gunner assured him. Some of the crewmen on the other panzers popped out of hatches to blaze away at the Ju-87 with pistols and submachine guns, but Rudel wouldn’t lose any sleep over that. Small-arms fire could bring down an airplane, but it didn’t happen every day, or every month, either.

He blasted three more Russian panzers. The rest started up and skedaddled for the nearest trees. Then Dieselhorst said, “I’m getting reports of planes in the neighborhood.”

“All right. We’ll go home.” Hans-Ulrich had heard the reports in his earphones, too. He hadn’t wanted to do anything about that. Sometimes discretion was the better part of valor, though. He could gas up again and hit the Ivans on a stretch of front where they didn’t have any air cover.

A flak shell burst under the Stuka, staggering it in the sky. No, the Russians didn’t want him around anymore. He gave the plane more throttle. If they’d got set up a little sooner, they might have knocked him down. Not now.

“Just another morning at the office,” Sergeant Dieselhorst said.

“Aber naturlich.” Hans-Ulrich laughed. Why not? Just another day at the office, sure-and they’d lived through it.

Sergeant Hideki Fujita had thought winter in the Siberian forests was about as bad as anything could be. It was worse than winter on the border with Mongolia, which made it pretty appalling. But winter in front of Vladivostok turned out to be worse yet. It was as cold as the rest of Siberia, with the same wet, heavy snowfall. But it was out in the open-nowhere to hide from the relentlessly probing Russian artillery.