"Heil, mein Führer!" the Rottenführer said, snapping to attention with a click of his heels.

"Forget that shit," Hitler said. "Everything in Munitions okay?"

"Yes, mein Führer. Mein Führer, there is blood on your coat."

Hitler looked curiously at the Rottenführer. "There is nothing wrong with you?"

"I've got a bad stomach, mein Führer. I couldn't drink a drop of blood last night."

"You didn't drink any blood?" Hitler thought for a moment. "Nor did Hickenlooper."

"What is wrong, sir?"

"Wrong? We are under attack, you Schwachsinnige!" With the Rottenführer available here, Hitler decided to take another look outside. "Guard Munitions," Hitler ordered, and headed down the corridor.

Outside, Hi, his gas mask secured to his belt, paused to watch Crowley and the other freed captives fleeing toward the jungle, the stronger ones helping the weaker. SS men were too busy dying to stop them. Hi turned and looked toward the balcony of Hitler's quarters. Where was the Führer? About to head for Gebäude Ein, Hi saw, from the corner of his eye, someone step out of Gebäude Drei. Hi turned to look.

It was Hitler.

So this is the enemy, Hitler thought. He had let himself be bamboozled. Hi and Hitler began approaching each other slowly, eyes locked. Hitler still held the Luger, useless, of course, against a vampire. Within a few feet of each other they stopped. They stood in virtually the center of Neuanfang, the dead and the dying scattered around them. One dying Schütze, then another, called out in a gurgle, "Mein Führer . . . "

Hi and Hitler stared at each other with calm mutual hatred. Hitler discarded the Luger. "Oberschütze," he rasped. He unsheathed his SS dagger.

"Mein Führer," Hi said, drawing his dagger too.

"You are behind this. You are one of my mistakes, Oberschütze."

"What do you plan to do about it?"

"First, I demote you. You are nothing but a Schütze again."

Hi smiled. "Who is left, besides you, to outrank me?"

They heard someone come out of Gebäude Drei. They both glanced over to see who it was.

The Rottenführer, looking around in shock at the inexplicable carnage on the compound, drew his dagger and walked toward Hi. Flanking Hitler, he stopped a few feet from the American.

Hi had quit smiling. But he was standing his ground. "Okay," he said to Hitler with a nod toward the Rottenführer, "who else besides him?"

Hitler glanced at the Rottenführer. "I ordered you to stay at Munitions." He said it good-naturedly.

"But I desire to assist you, mein Führer." The Rottenführer was staring coldly at Hi.

"Well, then," Hitler said. With a smile he told Hi, "You are a dead little Schütze."

Hitler and the Rottenführer stepped warily toward Hi with their daggers. Hi took a fighting stance with his. But the Nazis then stopped. All three of them heard something, faint, but getting louder, as they looked off toward the west. About damn time, Hi thought. It was the Canutama planes.

The Dusty Dragon, Eat My Dust, and Duster Offer were flying in formation, fairly low over the jungle, for their first pass over Neuanfang, already in the three pilots' sight. The pilots had had to estimate the distance and flight time, and could only hope, assuming that the powder was needed, that it wasn't too late.

Hitler, thinking they were fighter planes as he saw them approach in the distance, looked at Hi with amusement. "Ha! They think to destroy me with bullets or bombs?" Hitler knew he was protected by vampire physics, though Einstein himself would have trouble explaining it. Like so-called virtual particles, coming and going in the quantum vacuum, a vampire's body, if destroyed, would with few exceptions--such as destruction by a stake or a Schutzstaffel dagger--immediately reassemble itself. And remain undead. Thus vampires, as in some sense vacuum fluctuations, made quantum theory a darker side of the cosmos.

Of course, the effect on vampires of a thick cloud of garlic powder remained to be seen. Unwittingly Hitler was to be a test case. Turning toward the oncoming planes, Hitler lifted his arms, dagger raised, offering himself in defiant disdain.

"Here I am!" Hitler screamed at the planes, on course to fly straight over his head. "Let me have it!"

As soon as the planes reached the clearing, and began releasing their garlic powder, Hitler saw that these were not fighters. And he knew he must be in trouble when he saw the descending, roiling, dustlike cloud, and with a glance at Hi saw him putting on a gas mask.

Hitler barely had time to lower his arms before the thick swirl of garlic powder enveloped him, the Rottenführer, and Hi. Hitler, wheezing, lungs seared, eyes burning, fell to his knees. The Rottenführer reeled, desperately trying to breathe. Hi, masked and unaffected, couldn't see either Nazi in the blanketing cloud, but heard Hitler gaspingly order, "Kill him! Killll him!" Hi moved in Hitler's direction, dagger set to strike, but then saw the staggering Rottenführer, dagger raised, come at him out of the blinding swirl.

Hi stabbed the crazed Rottenführer in the chest, barely missing the heart, as the Nazi, his dagger slicing Hi's shoulder, collided with him. They both fell to the ground, while Hitler struggled to his feet in the thinning garlic cloud. While Hi and the Rottenführer, both still with daggers in hand, wrestled on the ground, Hitler hurried toward Gebäude Drei. Half-maddened by the garlic, the Führer did a crazy-jointed dance as he went.

The Rottenführer was too crazed by the garlic to put up a good fight. Rolling up on top of him, Hi plunged his dagger deep into the Nazi's heart. Dropping his dagger, the mortally wounded Rottenführer thought he was seeing some beatific vision as he looked up into Hi's masked face.

"Mein Führer!" the dying Nazi called out. "Mein Führer, I found it! The missing gas mask!"

The Rottenführer died happy.

As Hi ran after the Führer, the crop dusters were banking, to come back for their second pass. McKay, Diego, and the commandos had donned their gas masks, and were crashing through the thicket for the clearing, at the edge of which, according to plan, they would wait for the instant of the second powder release before charging the compound, to tangle with any surviving undead.

Meanwhile the Countess and released captives had already passed by the commando team, which told them to keep heading east, as far away as they could get, and then wait. McKay, upon seeing the Countess approach, had told Diego, "Look at that woman in red. She looks like Countess Borca." Both men immediately thought about Eva. Diego rushed over and stopped the Countess as she was passing. "Countess Borca?" he asked. "Is Eva Perón coming out?"

"She is probably doomed," the Countess said. "The foolish woman went back to help."