"More right rudder! More right rudder!" Lieutenant Walter Bowman yelled into the funnel.Hell, Bowman thought, he can't hear me any better than any of the others could. The instructor looked at the back of his student's head and felt foolish for even trying to use the ridiculous 'intercom'.

The Stearman biplane, in Walter Bowman's very biased view, was one of the finest creations on earth, but the funnel-and-tube communication system was a joke. Bowman unbuckled his harness and prepared to effect the cure that had unintentionally become one of his trademarks.

Grabbing the edge of the cockpit with his left hand and the semicircular cutout in the trailing edge of the upper wing with his right, Bowman lifted himself to a crouched position in the hole in the fuselage in which he had been sitting a second before. With a fluid movement that was the result of having performed this particular maneuver many times in the past, he swung his right leg over the edge of the cockpit and planted his foot on the wing root of the right lower wing. It took serious effort to combat the strong wind blast provided by both the plane's 80-knot forward speed and the prop wash of the big propeller.

Using the bracing wires and the wing strut for handholds, Walter Bowman put all his weight on his right foot, pulled his left leg out of the rear cockpit, and took two more steps into the wind blast until he stood on the part of the wing next to the front cockpit hole in the fuselage.

The student snapped his head to the right and his eyes grew wide inside his flight goggles. He had been rendered unconscious on his first flight with this insane man, and he had been told by his fellow cadets to expect this current atrocity, but it still had not prepared him for the sight of his instructor standing on the wing of the airplane that he, and he alone, was now flying.

Bowman held the edge of the front cockpit with his left hand and a bracing wire with his right. He leaned over and put his mouth next to the cadet's right ear.

"You've got the nose too high. We're still in a climb, and that's why we don't have any speed," he yelled. He let go of the edge of the cockpit and reached in to tap the face of the altimeter for emphasis. "I told you on the ground to level off at five thousand. Look." The student, momentarily horrified that his instructor had let go one of his handholds, looked at the altimeter. The clock-like hands showed that they were at 5200 feet.

Bowman grabbed the control stick and said "I've got it. Keep your feet on the rudders." He pushed the stick forward until the plane was flying straight and level. His position on the side was an awkward one from which to try to exert force on the controls, and it took considerable effort. The airspeed indicator started to climb gradually. He pushed harder, lowering the nose further, and the big Stearman began a slight descent. Keeping and eye on the altimeter, he leveled the plane at five thousand feet.

"Hold it there," he commanded. He released his grip on the stick when he saw that his student had control of it. "Do you see the position of the horizon?" The student nodded his assent. "That's what straight and level looks like. Try to remember it. Now," he shouted, tapping the face of another gauge on the panel, "look at your slip-and-skid indicator." The device he was pointing to was a curved, fluid-filled tube, aligned like a frown. A black ball floated in the clear liquid, somewhat closer to the right end of the tube than the left. "You need more right rudder. Step on the ball, remember?" The student nodded vigorously as he increased pressure on the right rudder pedal. The black ball drifted a bit left of center as the cadet pushed a little too hard with his right leg, then settled in the proper center position when he relaxed pressure slightly.

"That's good," Bowman yelled. "After I get back in, I want you to show me a three-sixty to the left, and then one to the right, staying at five thousand feet." The student nodded, his eyes looking at the relationship of the horizon with the leading edge of the top wing. Bowman tapped the slip-and-skid indicator once more for emphasis. "Make sure your turns stay coordinated while you're in your bank. Then head for home." He patted the cadet on the shoulder, climbed back into his own cockpit, buckled his safety harness, and flexed the muscles in his feet and calves to relax them.

The student looked over his shoulder and saw his instructor nod his head. He rolled the biplane into a thirty-degree bank to the left and held it there. The nose is a little low and we're going to lose a little altitude, Bowman thought. His rudder control is spot-on, though.

Walter didn't need to look at his own instrument panel to judge the young man's efforts. When a turn and bank was properly coordinated, the people in the plane didn't feel their bodies pushed to the outside or falling to the inside of the turn. Walter's favorite demonstration of proper control coordination, when he was in an enclosed airplane, was to set a water glass on the top of the instrument panel and fill it from a pitcher without spilling a drop. This would be no great feat, except that Walter Bowman did it while making the airplane perform a barrel roll. It was a demonstration that had won him not only the respect of the other instructors on the base, but also quite a bit of their pocket money as well.

As the student rolled out of the left-hand 360-degree turn, he saw that he had lost almost 100 feet of altitude. Pushing the stick to the right to roll into his right-hand turn, he increased back pressure on it to raise the nose slightly. His instructor smiled. This kid's going to be one of the better ones. Walter Bowman never lost sight of the fact that in an all too short time, his pupils were going to be using their new skills in a much more hostile environment than clear skies over the coast of the Florida panhandle.

When Ensign Taylor Lowell rolled the wings level on his original heading, he looked at his altimeter. It read a fraction over 4900 feet. His second 360 had been made holding a constant altitude. Ensign Lowell felt a surge of pride that surprised him with its intensity. The fear of not measuring up that accompanied the excitement of flying dropped down a notch.

With a sixth sense about such matters, Lieutenant Bowman felt the difference in the young man's attitude. When they turned back towards the base, he elected to let his student fly it all the way into the landing pattern before taking over the controls for the landing itself. On the way back to the airfield, the big biplane felt a little more steady, its heading a little more consistent, and the thrum of its engine just a little more smooth.

"How'd the babes in the woods do today, Blackout?" Lieutenant Homer Tapscott was grinning at his friend and fellow flight instructor. "I can see you're going to have to requisition another flight suit. The Navy doesn't tolerate shoddy uniforms." Bowman looked down and saw that the bottom of his right pants leg had finally become frayed from high-speed flapping in the wind. The right ones always seem to wear through first he thought. The supply clerk must be getting used to seeing me every ten days or so.

"Any day that ends with the bird still airworthy and free from vomit is a success," Bowman said pleasantly. Walter Bowman was the only instructor at Pensacola whose students had never damaged an airplane, but he had not been able to prevent a few of them from throwing up. "The kids they're sending us seem to get younger and greener every month."

"We're just getting old." Lieutenants Tapscott and Bowman were each twenty-six. "I'm done for the day. Join me at the O.C. for a bit? Grab a Coke?" Tapscott knew his friend never drank alcohol.

Walter Bowman's smile was small, but it showed excited anticipation. "No, I heard Anvil had some good news for me. I think I'll go take a look at his welds." He turned his back and started to walk towards the hangars. He could guess what Tapscott's reaction would be.

"He got the mount finished? The hell with the officer's club-I gotta see this!" Homer Tapscott broke into a trot to catch up with his friend.

The big Stearman looked considerably different than it had several months before. The wings were twentyone inches shorter on each side, and the upper ones had ailerons just like the lowers. The wing struts, handholds, and step had all been reshaped to make them more streamlined. Everywhere that the biplane had been square and angular, it was now more rounded. The landing gear was lighter and slightly taller to compensate for the larger prop that the craft would be using, and the main wheels were covered with beautiful, hand-formed aluminum wheel pants with flawless welds. 'Just like making little bitty sprint car bodies,' Anvil Jenkins had proclaimed.

The biggest change, however, was in front of the firewall. Where once had been a six-cylinder Continental engine displacing 540 cubic inches now sat a nine-cylinder Pratt & Whitney radial with 1320 inches of displacement. Jenkins saw the two men looking at the engine and walked over to them.

"Got it back further than we thought, Lieutenant. Relocated a couple things on the firewall that were in the way"-Walter Bowman saw that this was a gross understatement-"and got her snugged all in tight. Be stronger that way, too, engine won't have as much leverage with a mount a couple inches shorter'n the one came off it."

Bowman examined the handmade engine mount. It was a beautifully formed piece made of myriad short sections of steel tubing expertly welded together. Every part of it had been triangulated. There was not a single bend in any section of tubing. It did not look heavy, but Bowman knew he would have to crash the plane to make the engine mount flex.

"Been thinkin' about what kind of prop to use. I figure you want her to climb like a bandit, sir, so we need one with a flat pitch if you're going to spin her up 500 RPM more than what you're turning now. Maybe have to have one ma-"

"What?" exclaimed Lieutenant Tapscott in disbelief. 'Turn a Wasp five hundred over redline? You'll blow it up!"

Walter Bowman smiled. "I told Anvil I didn't want to exceed factory stress levels. He lightened all the reciprocating parts and cut down the counterweights on the crank to balance it. We got three of the sliderule geniuses in Artillery to give us a new redline based on the new recip weights. They all three came up with the same number independently. Should run all day at the new setting." Tapscott was speechless.

"Shaved the heads, too, along with cleanin' up the ports. I think the engineers at Pratt were maybe plannin' to sell these engines to some Meskins who'd run 'em on creosote. Got to drink grape juice now, but hell, Lieutenant, we got plenty of that." Anvil Jenkins was explaining how he had raised the engine's compression ratio and increased its ability to consume the air/fuel mixture that fed it. Aviation fuels were color-coded by grade, with the highest-octane, 115/145, having a purple tint that earned it the nickname 'grape juice'.

"What about torque factor?" It had been some time since Homer Tapscott had ventured into the hangar, and he was awed by what had taken shape there.

Jenkins smiled. "We been wonderin' about that, sir. Made the rudder 'bout twenty percent bigger, but I figure that old Pratt's going to be kickin' out at least eight hundred, maybe eight-fifty. Don't think Lieutenant Bowman's going to want to use full throttle on takeoff, or he might end up on his back. And I suggest nobody get in a ass-kickin' contest with him in a few months. If he flies this bird as much as I expect, he's going to have the strongest fuckin' right leg on this air base, sir." The mechanic was referring to a phenomenon called 'P-Factor' where, in a climb, the right side of an airplane's propeller had more thrust than its left, necessitating the pilot's use of additional right rudder. The effect was increasingly pronounced with more powerful engines.

"It's going to be airworthy that soon?" Tapscott was amazed.

"Seems like the green ones are bangin' up the trainers less often these days, sir, and, uh, the kids in the shop here are kind of itchy to see if this thing will fly. They got kind of a different attitude 'bout their job since they seen that ass-over-teakettle thing the Lieutenant here did last week."

"We better get back, Homer. I've got ground school to teach. It's looking great, Jenkins." "It's an anvil, sir," the mechanic said with a grin. The two officers returned smiles and departed the hangar.

Anvil Jenkins' comment about the junior mechanics referred to the fact that Walter Bowman, in his endless quest to find out what a Stearman could do, had discovered a flight maneuver no one on the base had ever seen, and had performed it for the base on July 4th.

In virtually all maneuvers by aerobatic aircraft, although the airplane might be pointed straight up, straight down, on its side, or upside down, it is still flying. That is to say, the plane is still responding to control inputs because at least one of the movable control surfaces still has air flowing smoothly over it.

In a stall, the wings quit flying but the rudder and elevator are still effective, and can be used to get the wings providing lift again. In a spin, one wing is not flying, so the plane corkscrews down, but the rudder and elevator are again still effective and can break the plane out of the spin. A snap roll is merely a horizontal spin while flying straight and level. It is performed by forcing one wing to quit flying by abrupt use of elevator and rudder, then reversing the process so that both wings provide lift again after the aircraft has made one revolution. Even in a tailslide, where the plane is flown straight up and allowed to fall back, air is flowing backwards over the elevator and rudder, and moving either of these controls will flip the plane over to where it is flying forward again.

Walter Bowman had discovered that it was difficult, but possible, to make a Stearman quit flying altogether. With little fuel, and with some lead weights firmly bolted to the inside of the plane's fuselage behind the rear cockpit, the aircraft's center of gravity was past its aft safe limit as determined by Boeing engineers. In this configuration, Bowman found that if he initiated a climbing inverted snap roll at a higherthan-average rate of speed and held the controls in that position rather than reversing them to end the maneuver, the Stearman would tumble.

To an observer on the ground, the maneuver looked the same as if a toy metal airplane, designed only to sit on the mantle, had been grabbed by the back end and thrown like a tomahawk across the sky. No two performances of this maneuver were quite the same. The plane tumbled randomly. After two or three somersaults, the huge amount of drag produced by the large wing and fuselage surfaces slowed the Stearman to where it started to fall out of the sky. When it did, it would enter a spin, either an upright one or inverted. These are both standard acrobatic maneuvers (though horrifying to the uninitiated) from which any accomplished acrobatic pilot can recover. The tumble that preceded them, however, was a new one to everyone on the base.

The pilots at Pensacola had taken to calling the maneuver a 'B-Squared,' math notation for BB, which stood for 'Blackout' Bowman. The young lieutenant did not think he had invented something no one else had ever done before; he just couldn't find anyone who had ever heard of such a maneuver, let alone seen it.

Thirty years later the maneuver would be common at air shows around the country. It would be called a Lomcevak, a Czechoslovakian term given the maneuver by a Czech pilot who had mastered it in the early '70s in a Zlin. The word has no literal English translation. Loosely interpreted, it means 'I have drunk too much wine and my head feels awful'. Acrobatic pilots after 1972 would often refer to it as The Hunky Headache'.

The airshow circuit pilots who would employ the Lomcevak in their repertoire in future decades would perform it in purpose-built competition acrobatic machines such as the Zlin, Pitts Special, Christen Eagle, and the Laser. None would use a Stearman, which became a staple of airshows but would be generally relegated to wingwalking acts. Few pilots fifty years after WWII would trust the structural integrity of a plane originally built for $1500 in 1929 to endure the stresses created by a Lomcevak. Fewer still would bolt lead to a plane built in 1929 and move the CG aft of its design limit just to see how much caution the original engineers had exercised.

And not a single one of them would have Walter Bowman's absolute certainty that a Stearman could do anything, if only you were good enough.

September 12, 1942 Okay, feet together, hands up on the risers, knees bent slightly, get ready to drop and roll... Max Collins ran through everything he had been taught and had practiced in jump training. There was one thing Collins could not do, however, and that was change the fact that he was 6'3" tall and weighed 203 pounds in his could not do, however, and that was change the fact that he was 6'3" tall and weighed 203 pounds in his foot canopy while carrying forty pounds of gear.

The other men in his unit were a good forty to fifty pounds lighter, and for the first time in his life, Max Collins wished he were smaller. He had made thirty-one jumps, and had felt every one of them. This was his thirty-second.

Wind moving me back and right, okay, twist a little and... Max Collins' feet hit the ground just a little sooner than he had anticipated, and he had not yet tensed his ankles as he had been taught to do. As he slammed into the hardpacked earth, there was a pop that he felt all the way up to his knee.

Shit! Broken ankle he thought instantly, and cursed himself for failing to remain vigilant. He rolled on the ground and came up on his one good leg, hopping towards the canopy to keep the lines slack so the 'chute wouldn't drag him.

Damn thought Collins, for what would not be the last time. Then another thought filled his mind, and he focused on it: I am going to heal, and I am not going to let this put me on the sidelines. By God, I'm not.

April 17, 1943 Irwin Mann stared at Stern, waiting for him to speak. The older man's eyes were fixed on four handguns which lay on a dilapidated table in front of him. He doesn't look happy Irwin thought. And little wonder. Four well-worn pistols in several calibers, with only a handful of ammunition that may not even fire. Not much to bet our lives on, after his speech last night. Irwin Mann looked around at the others. The faces of many of the men showed unmistakable signs of defeat. Fear was there also. It hung like a noxious fog in the crowded room. The penalty for having a gun was death, and each man there knew it. None of these men had been soldiers. None had been policemen. Not one had ever himself owned a firearm. I doubt any of us know how to use them, even if they do work Irwin thought grimly. No surprise Stern doesn't know what to say.

"We are doomed," came a voice from the group. The older man looked up, but could not tell who had spoken.

"We are certainly doomed if we do nothing," Stern said. "The Nazis have been shipping our people away by the trainload. I can scarcely believe that we were so blind as to think it could have been to someplace better."

"But maybe it is someplace better. They say it is because of the overcrowding here." The speaker's voice had a desperate sound. Stern fixed him with a penetrating stare, and Irwin saw that Stern was acting as a leader should, defusing the feeling of hopelessness that threatened to kill their resistance movement before it had made even a symbolic gesture.

"Are you volunteering to go on the next train? Or are you eager to promise the Nazis you will help them fill the train with others headed for this 'better place', if they let you stay here?"

The man turned his face away in shame at Stern's question.

The reality the men in the group faced was so overwhelming, no one dared speak of it. The decision to implement the 'Final Solution' had been made by the German High Command in early 1942. The residents of the Ghetto did not know that, exactly, but they were well aware that railroad cars were leaving Warsaw every few days with hundreds of their people. It was impossible for them not to piece together what was happening. Nazi soldiers hinted broadly at the fitting end their leaders had devised for the sub-human creatures whose existence they had been forced to endure for so long.

At the Battle of Stalingrad in late 1942, Germany's advance to the east had been stopped in its tracks. Almost a million German troops had perished in that battle alone. Everyone knew that it was just a matter of time before the Nazis were defeated, so some residents of the Ghetto were doing their best to get along with their captors, trying to stay alive long enough for the liberating forces to arrive. The problem was that keeping oneself alive meant helping the Nazis round up others for shipment out of the city, and the shipments were getting larger and more frequent. Some of the Jews had decided that they now had to fight, regardless of the odds.

A young man named Mordecai Anielewicz had called upon others in the Ghetto to mount a resistance effort. Several men with influence in the Ghetto had taken his idea to heart, and had assembled their own groups. Stern was one such person, and he was the reason Irwin Mann and the others were gathered that evening in the small room.

Stern looked away from the man he had reprimanded and returned to the subject of their meager arsenal. "We have done well to amass these weapons," he said, indicating the guns that lay on the table, "And with them, we have a chance. You are forgetting, my good friends, that we have many, many more weapons available to us now, all with plenty of the proper ammunition, and all in good condition." Exactly right Irwin Mann thought as he looked around at the skeptical, tired, faces, all but devoid of hope. And Irwin Mann smiled.

It was a genuine smile, full of comprehension and expectation, and Stern saw it instantly. "Let me have the revolver," Irwin said when he saw Stern looking at him. "It is least likely to malfunction. I will get more weapons for us." All heads swiveled to look at the one who had spoken.

"Your name, young man?" Stern asked softly. Irwin Mann's smile disappeared, and a pained look of shame replaced it.

"I am here in Warsaw because my name was known to those who wish to exterminate us. My wife was taken from me. I pray that she is dead." This brought a gasp from some in the group. "I fear that if she is not," he went on, "she may be in a place where she wishes that she were. I am not known here. I have no friends, and I will make none. But if you will give me that revolver, I will bring you more weapons."

"You believe that one of us might somehow betray you by knowing your name?" One of the older men in the group was speaking. His eyes were narrow slits and his seething anger was quite obvious.

"I believe that many things will happen which we cannot now imagine," Mann said levelly. "I know that I can scarcely believe what I have already seen with my own eyes. There is no benefit in any of us having information about each other that we do not need." He looked at Stern. The old man nodded, and handed him the revolver.

"I asked the Lord to send us a sign. He has done so," Stern said, nodding at Irwin.

No one spoke. All eyes were on Irwin Mann as he slid the gun into the side pocket of his tattered, filthy overcoat and briskly walked away from the group. In a few moments he had vanished up one of the alleys and was gone.

Irwin Mann's heart was racing. The bravado he had shown in front of the others had been utter fabrication. He had been terrified that his voice would crack with the fear that was churning in his guts. He knew nothing about guns. He recalled that he had once heard that revolvers were more reliable and easier to use than the other kind of gun, and had suddenly found himself blurting out his demand for the weapon. In truth, he was not sure he knew how to make the gun fire at all.

The young grocer from Danzig had one tremendous asset, however, and it was what had given him the courage to seize the opportunity to control his destiny. Irwin Mann was a very analytical person who had an innate understanding of machinery. He let this fact give him comfort as he stepped through the doorway of an abandoned building and walked over to a broken window.

With shuffling motions of his feet, Irwin used his ragged boots to sweep the glass and debris away from beneath the window and clear a spot so that he could lie down. He wanted both privacy and decent light. He needed to be able to examine the gun and figure out exactly how it worked before taking any action. He had a plan in mind, but it did not allow for hesitation or uncertainty.

The young Jew took the revolver out of his coat pocket. He knew enough to keep the barrel pointed away from any part of his body and his fingers away from the trigger. He did not know how hard you needed to press on the trigger to make the gun fire. He did not think it logical that a slight touch would discharge the weapon, but he had no intention of doing anything rash to find out.

Irwin turned the weapon in his hands. He knew the fat bulge in the center was the cylinder. It held the ammunition-six shots. He could see the cartridges even though the gun was closed up and ready to fire. The back edges of the brass cartridge cases could be seen through the space between the back of the cylinder and the chassis of the gun. Was chassis the right word? He wasn't sure.

Irwin looked at the front of the gun, not letting the barrel point straight at his head but rather angling away from it. His heart jumped when he saw the dull white-grey of oxidized lead visible in the four chambers of the cylinder that were not in the top or bottom position, and he was struck with a thrilling thought: If a gun like this is pointed at you, and you are dose to it, you can tell if it's loaded or not! He was determined to figure out how to take the ammunition out so that he could better understand how the gun worked.

His attention was drawn to the gun's hammer. It stuck up on the back, and had grooves machined or filed into it. They looked like they were there to provide a non-slip grip for a finger or thumb. He started to pull the hammer back, and as he did so, he saw the cylinder start to turn. He realized he was starting to cock the weapon, and that was something he did not want to do. He slowly lowered the hammer to its original position. The cylinder stopped turning. He saw that there was no longer a chamber lined up with the barrel of the gun. Irwin touched the cylinder and realized that it now would turn freely. He rotated it with his finger, and when one of the chambers in it containing a cartridge was lined up with the barrel, the cylinder locked into position with an audible click. Mann realized he could no longer turn the cylinder with his hand.

I have to unload this weapon, he thought. He looked at what he had believed was the gun's safety catch. It was a serrated, rectangular button on the left side of the gun. He pushed on it. Nothing happened. It was under spring tension and returned to its original rearward position. Irwin pushed it again, with the same result. It doesn't feel like anything is broken. Why won't it stay in the new setting? He held the gun up close to his face, looking in all the gaps and spaces between parts as he pressed the button on the left side forward once more.

Irwin saw minute movement of two of the internal parts. They were both on the centerline axis of the gun's cylinder. He held the button forward and gripped the gun firmly with his free hand, being careful not to touch the trigger. The cylinder, which had been locked rigidly in place, moved slightly. He pushed on it, first to the right, then the left. It swung out of the gun's frame on a pivoting metal arm. All six cartridges were plainly visible. It's not the safety he thought triumphantly. It's a latch to open the gun and load or unload it!

The young man held the gun with the muzzle pointed towards the ceiling of the ruined building and shook it gently. Three of the six cartridges dropped out of the cylinder into his left hand. The other three stayed where they were. Irwin started to look for a stick or a nail to push the remaining ones out from the front. That can't be right he thought. There must be another way.

A slender rod extended from the center of the cylinder. Irwin grabbed it and tried to pull it out, thinking that it was there for the shooter to poke the cartridges out one at a time. It would not move. On an impulse, he pushed on the rod. It immediately slid into the front of the cylinder. At the cylinder's back, a flowershaped piece of metal underneath the rims of the cartridges extended rearward an equal amount, extracting the remaining rounds of ammunition all at the same time. The cartridges fell to the floor, and when Irwin let go of the rod, it snapped back under spring tension and the six-pointed piece of metal attached to its back end was once again seated in the rear of the cylinder. Mann smiled.

He looked the empty gun over carefully. He held it up to the light and peered down the bore. Irwin saw five spiral grooves evenly spaced, twisting down the barrel's interior. In a sudden flash of inspiration, he realized they were there to make the bullet spin and fly straight, like a football thrown by an American he had seen on a newsreel ten years before. As the gun gave up its secrets and revealed the unerring logic of its design, Irwin Mann felt his anxiety replaced with exhilaration, hope, and an overwhelming sense of purpose.

In the next hour, by practicing with the empty weapon, Irwin learned that there were two ways to make the gun fire. First, as he had seen earlier, if he pulled the hammer back until it caught, the cylinder turned into position and the trigger only took a slight pull to make the hammer fall and fire the gun. If he pulled the trigger without first cocking the hammer, it took a lot more effort and it made the cylinder rotate and the hammer retract before falling on the new chamber at the end of the stroke. There is no safety on a revolver he realized. The effort and distance required to pull the trigger when the hammer is not cocked makes it impossible for it to happen by accident. He was also aware of another truth: If the ammunition is bad and doesn't go off, I can try the next cartridge just by pulling the trigger again. That's why I have heard that revolvers are easier to use and more reliable. Irwin Mann's confidence continued to increase.

For the next hour the young Jew practiced pulling the empty gun out of the pocket o f his overcoat, pointing it at an imagined enemy, and pulling the trigger. He realized that an alert adversary might react to a sudden movement, and he tried holding his left arm bent and in front of his body to ward off defensive maneuvers, keeping his gun hand at his side where it touched his waist just above the hipbone.

Got to find a soldier in the area who is alone Irwin thought. The patrols invariably travel at least in pairs, and usually in groups of three. Irwin Mann had no illusions that he would be able to prevail against anything more than a single, unsuspecting enemy. But a soldier will go out alone when he's doing something he doesn't want seen by his companions Irwin reminded himself. This was not unusual. Extortion was common. So was bartering military issue foodstuffs and medicine for the gold and gems that some of the Jews had brought in to Warsaw with them. Rape was also a fact of life. The Germans soldiers would almost never touch the Jewish women in the area-they were seen as subhuman. Lithuanians and Poles had no such qualms. Maybe I can find one on a solo outing with rape in mind Irwin told himself. His thoughts went to the last time he had seen his wife. / will take great pleasure in changing the man's plans.

Most of the soldiers patrolling the Ghetto were in fact not Germans. It was considered light duty, and much of the work was performed by Lithuanian militiamen and Polish police who were viewed with scorn by Nazi soldiers. The benefit of this fact was that if a Lithuanian or Pole went missing, he would be assumed to have skipped out. No one will think he has been the victim of an ambush Irwin reassured himself. Not the first one, at least.

There is also the matter of noise Irwin reminded himself. Even when I find a lone soldier, I must be sure that others do not rush in too soon at the sound of a shot. Risky though it might be, he decided that his best chance would be to shove the barrel of the gun into the fabric of the thick uniform coat that the soldiers wore, before pulling the trigger. It would mean rushing up to the intended victim instead of shooting him from a position of concealment, but Irwin decided it still offered the best probability of success. /; will also be a lot less likely that I'll miss.

He carefully reloaded the revolver and put it back in the right pocket of his coat. from the left pocket he withdrew the other weapon that he intended to use. It was a well-worn but serviceable pair of small Zeiss folding binoculars. He had managed to acquire them several weeks before from a young woman who had also been relocated to the Warsaw Ghetto. Irwin Mann had not been sure how he would use them, but he had never doubted that they would become a great asset.

Using the glasses, Irwin looked out the broken window and up and down the street. H e saw only other Jews trudging beside the buildings. Only one thing to do, then he decided. It's time to go hunting. Mann went back out the doorway and walked into the street. His head was bowed as he took on the defeated, hopeless air of the other residents of the city, but his spirits were soaring. For the first time in months, he felt truly alive.

It did not take long. In a few blocks, he came upon a German soldier who had just finished using the butt of his rifle on a man who appeared to be about sixty-five years old but who was actually fifty-one.

"Filthy cur! You will not again waste my time when you have nothing to trade. Or perhaps you will be on Friday's train and there will not be a next time, eh?" The soldier lad just finished reslinging his rifle over his shoulder when Irwin Mann acted. The young jew thrust the barrel of the .38 revolver against the soldier's spine between his shoulder blades, pushing it into the man with both his hands. He was driving forward just as he would if he had no gun and were trying to shove the soldier across the street. As he felt the man's body start to give under the unexpected force, Irwin pulled the trigger.

He had expected the technique to somewhat muffle the report of the gun, and he was not disappointed. As with any revolver, some high-pressure gases escaped between the thin gap between the cylinder and barrel, so the sound of the shot was still there, but all the burning powder that normally would have blasted out the muzzle was trapped.

That caused a result that Irwin Mann had not expected. With the muzzle of the gun pressed firmly against the Nazi's back, not only had the bullet entered his flesh, but the entire explosive force of the burning powder and high-pressure gases behind the bullet in the barrel of the gun had been directed into the man's body as well. The net effect was the same as if a small explosive charge had been detonated inside the soldier's body. One vertebra, the ends of two ribs, part of one lung, and the edge of the man's heart were destroyed in a millisecond. A slurry of these ruined parts sloshed down onto the dead man's diaphragm, leaving a cavity the size of a cantaloupe where the organs had been just a moment before.

As this happened, the barrel of the gun slid into the entrance hole in the soldier's back and the jagged bottom of the upper section of his ruined spine snagged the gun's front sight. Irwin Mann, who was holding the revolver with an adrenaline-charged grip, was pulled down on top of the falling body. The force of his own weight landing on the dead Nazi drove the air out of the remaining lung and made a retching sound that startled the young man. In the instant before his mind realized what had happened, he thought the man might still be alive Irwin immediately leaped to his feet, withdrawing the gun from the soldier's back, He was vaguely aware of the gore which dripped from it as he thrust it into his coat pocket and grabbed the corpse by the ankles. Irwin turned his head so that if the old man that he soldier had clubbed was looking, he would not see Irwin's face. His heart was racing, and with the strength that fear and excitement can bring, he quickly dragged the body into the alley.

The Jew had half expected to feel nausea after the killing, but the fear of discovery and the fact that his job was far from over combined to fully occupy his senses. He would not feel the magnitude of what he had just done until much later.

Irwin's first surprise was that it was harder to remove an overcoat from a dead body than he had ever imagined. After the coat was off, the former grocer wrapped the rifle in it so that it would be a little less conspicuous. He also took the spare ammunition for the rifle, the 9mm Luger autoloading pistol from the man's belt holster, the spare loaded pistol magazines, and a handful of paper currency. He pulled off the man's boots and socks, and cut off his shirt and pants with a pair of tailor's shears he had carried in his pocket. He then covered the body with debris from the alley. Irwin hoped that to a casual glance from another soldier, it would look like just another Jew who had died of starvation or exposure. The discovery of a slain German soldier would be big news indeed, and elicit a response he could not afford.

Using a different route, Irwi n returned to a building he knew was unoccupied. He knew it was vacant because one of the weaker inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto had died in the basement six days earlier, and the corpse was still there. The stench was terrible, but it discouraged others from using either the basement or the ground floor. Irwin stayed long enough to study the rifle to make sure he understood how it worked.

The rifle was a Mauser 8mm Model 98, a bolt action weapon whose method of function was immediately obvious even to someone with no previous experience. Lifting the round end of the bolt handle rotated the bolt and unlocked it so that it could be drawn to the rear. Pushing the bolt forward from that position placed a cartridge in the chamber, and pushing the handle back down again locked the breech and rendered the gun ready to fire.

Irwin drew back the rifle's bolt and saw a full load of ammunition in the magazine. The top round slipped under the extractor as the bolt reached its rearward limit. He pushed the bolt forward and the top cartridge slid into the chamber. Irwin retracted the bolt once more and the cartridge was thrown out onto the floor. The young man practiced the maneuver until all the cartridges lay at his feet. He was satisfied that he understood the weapon's basic functioning. It did not register on Irwin Mann that the rifle had had no round in the chamber when the soldier had been carrying it.

Irwin wrapped the rifle, the Luger, and the ammunition in the soldier's coat and stowed them under the stairs. He left the overpowering smell of the basement and went outside. It was time to look for more prey.

In the next three hours, using much the same technique, Irwin Mann killed two more armed enemies. The first was a sallow-looking Lithuanian. The other was a conscript of indeterminate origin. The young grocer's efforts netted him two more 8mm Mauser rifles, a 7.62mm Polish Nagant revolver, a Walther P38 9mm pistol, seventy-two cartridges, three packs of cigarettes, a gravity knife, more deutschmarks, and some Polish zlotys. Both soldiers had been carrying their rifles with empty chambers. The handguns had loaded chambers and had been ready to fire, but they had been carried in flap holsters with thongs tying the flaps shut. It would have taken the soldiers less time to load their rifles than to get their pistols free from their holsters. Irwin Mann was too excited to notice this fact.