That only made Baatz madder. "You don't know what the devil you're talking about. Wait till they chuck you into Dachau. You'll wish you only had machine guns to worry about."

The blackshirts had said the same thing. Willi wasn't about to take it from Awful Arno. "Give me a break. If telling the truth is disloyal, then I guess I am. Jesus Christ, the war is screwed up. Even a blind man can see it. Even you should be able to."

"You're not just talking about the war," Baatz said. "You're talking about how we're fighting it. And if you say that's gone wrong, you're saying the Fuhrer's leadership isn't everything it ought to be."

"Yeah? And so? He's the Fuhrer. He's not God, for crying out loud. When he takes a crap, angels don't fall out of his asshole," Willi said.

Awful Arno's eyes widened. He looked like an uncommonly sheltered child hearing about the facts of life for the first time. "He's the Fuhrer," he said, on a note as different from Willi as could be.

"Ja, ja, and the Grofaz, too," Willi said: the cynical contraction of the German for greatest military leader of all time. "But if he's so goddamn great, how come we're retreating? How come Paris is way the hell over there?" He pointed west.

Before Baatz could answer, a mortar bomb burst a hundred meters behind them. They both threw themselves flat. More bombs came down, some of them closer. Fragments whined and snarled overhead. Willi looked around without raising his head. Sure as hell, that Frenchman had bailed out. And a couple of sheep were down and kicking. Spit filled his mouth. Mutton chops!

Arno Baatz shielded his face with his arm, as if that would do any good. "So Dachau is worse than this, is it?" Willi said.

The corporal nodded without raising his head. "You'd better believe it is. And everybody who doubts the Fuhrer will end up in a place like that." Conviction filled his voice.

"Scheisse," Willi said. "If he messed up the war-and he damn well did-somebody needs to doubt him, don't you think? I hope to God I'm not the only one, or Germany's even more screwed up than I figured."

"He's the Fuhrer. If we live through this, Dernen, I will report you."

"Go ahead," Willi said, wondering if he would have to make sure Awful Arno damn well didn't live through it. He would if he had to, but he didn't want to. Killing someone on his own side in cold blood wasn't what he'd signed up for. He went on, "I'll call you a motherfucking liar and say you always had it in for me-and that's the truth, too. You think the officers don't know what kind of asshole you are, Baatz? Yeah, report me. It's your word against mine. I bet they believe me, not you, and you end up in the concentration camp."

"You don't get it, do you?" Baatz sounded almost pitying. "This is security we're talking about. Of course they'll believe me."

"They'd believe somebody with a working brain, maybe, but not a fuckup like you," Willi retorted. "Like I said, they know better. Go ahead, report me, cuntface. You'll find out." Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong. Maybe nobody'd take any chances, and they'd both wind up in Dachau. If they did, he was willing to bet he'd last longer than Awful Arno.

And maybe they wouldn't live through this, and it would all be moot. Willi lifted his head a few centimeters. Something that wasn't a sheep moved atop the next little swell of ground to the west. Willi brought his rifle to his shoulder and snapped a shot at it. It disappeared down the back side of the hillock.

"What was that?" Baatz asked.

"Well, it might have been a hippo escaped from the zoo. Or it might have been a Frenchman." Willi chambered a fresh round. "Odds were it was a Frenchy. So if you want to live long enough to rat on me, get your empty ostrich head out of the sand and start acting like a soldier." He'd never had the chance to tell off a noncom like this. It was fun. It might almost be worth getting shot. Almost. If Baatz got shot, too…

Two French soldiers came over that hillock. They were more cautious than the first fellow had been-they knew there were Landsers on this side, which he hadn't. Willi fired at one of them. Then he rolled away from Baatz and into the bushes. Once the shooting started, you wanted as much cover as you could find.

Awful Arno fired at the poilus, too. He was a decent combat soldier; even Willi, who'd despised him for a year now, would have admitted as much. He headed for something that might be cover, too. Off to the left, a German MG-34 started sawing away. A small smile crossed Willi's face. He loved machine guns-his own side's machine guns, anyhow. They were the best guarantee a poor ordinary ground pounder had that he'd go on pounding ground a while longer.

The MG-34 didn't just knock over enemy soldiers. It made them concentrate on it, so they forgot all about Willi and Baatz. He got a clean shot at a fellow crawling along in a khaki greatcoat. The fancy Mauser thumped his shoulder. The poilu doubled up. Sorry, buddy, Willi thought, but you would have done the same thing to me.

They held the French in place till the late afternoon. By then, Willi had a well-positioned, well-protected foxhole-but no sheep carcass to keep him company, dammit. Even so, he was ready to stay a while, but a runner came up to order the line back half a kilometer. The Germans withdrew under cover of darkness.

Willi and Arno Baatz almost tripped over each other. They exchanged glares. "Grofaz," Willi said again, defiantly. If the Fuhrer was so fucking smart, how come they were going backwards? Pretty soon, even Awful Arno would start wondering about things like that. Wouldn't he?

Chapter 23

Sailors threw lines from the U-30 to the men waiting on the pier. The other ratings caught the ropes and made the U-boat fast. "All engines stop," Julius Lemp called through the speaking tube.

"All engines stopped," the reply came back, and the diesels' throb died into silence.

Lemp sighed. Especially since the Schnorkel had come to let the diesels run almost all the time, that throb had soaked into his bones. Doing without it felt strange, unnatural, wrong. He sighed again. "Wilhelmshaven," he said to no one in particular. "Home port."

"Sounds good to me," Gerhart Beilharz declared.

"Well, sure it does," Lemp said. "You won't have to wear your iron pot all the time."

"No, and I'll probably clonk myself a couple of times when I don't have it on," the tall engineering officer answered. "Too goddamn many doorways aren't made for people my size, and sometimes I forget to duck."

"That is a bad habit for a U-boat officer," Lemp said with mock severity.

"I'll try to unlearn it." Beilharz stretched. The space right under the conning toward was the only one in the boat where he could do that without clouting somebody. "Be good to get my feet on dry land again, even if it'll feel like it's rolling under me for a little while."

"They'll probably pin an Iron Cross First Class on you for the snort," Lemp told him. "It did us some good, no two ways about it."

"I'm glad you think so, Skipper. I know you had your doubts when the technicians installed it."

That was putting things mildly. Lemp didn't feel like rehashing it, though. All he said was, "We've earned some time ashore."

As the sailors trooped off the U-boat, a commander nodded to Lemp and said, "Admiral Donitz's compliments, and he would like to speak with you at your convenience. If you would care to come with me…"

At your convenience plainly meant right this minute. And if Lemp didn't care to go with the commander, he damn well would anyway. Two unsmiling sailors with rifles and helmets behind the officer made that obvious. "I am at the admiral's service, of course," Lemp replied, which meant just what it said.