"When we came here from the Mongolian border, they said there'd be tigers here," said Shigeru Nakayama, another private. "I thought it was more of the same old crap they always give new people, but they meant it."

A major in the regiment had had his men drag in an enormous tiger carcass. He hadn't killed it; Russian artillery had. But he took possession of the hide-and of the innards. A tiger's gall bladder was worth plenty to the people who cooked up Chinese and Japanese medicines. You could probably get something for the rest of the organs, too.

But Hayashi spoke another truth when he said, "The tiger will make noise to let you know it's there. You never hear the damn Russian who puts a bullet in your back."

As if on cue, Russian mortar bombs started landing on the Japanese position. Like any soldier with even a little experience in the field, Fujita hated mortars. You couldn't hear them coming till they were almost there. Then they sliced you up like a sashimi chef taking a knife to a fine chunk of toro. Unlike the tuna belly, you weren't dead before they started. You sure could be by the time they got done, though.

Fujita jumped into a hole. He had more uses for them than sleep alone. Fragments snarled by overhead. A couple of hundred meters away, a Japanese soldier started screaming as if a tiger had clamped its jaws on his leg. Several rifle shots rang out a few seconds later. Another soldier shrieked.

"Zakennayo!" Fujita muttered under his breath. The Russians sent elaborately camouflaged snipers high up into pines that overlooked Japanese positions. Soldiers must have come out to pick up the man the mortars wounded-whereupon the snipers did more damage.

In the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese had accepted surrenders and treated enemy prisoners as well as any of the soft Western powers did, even if yielding was a disgrace in Japanese eyes. Things hadn't worked like that on the Mongolian border. If you gave up there, you took your chances. And the Mongolians and Soviets weren't what anybody would call gentle, either.