Ghost Sniper

They left the soldier alone and let him aim. Their French guide was standing off to one side, watching the show, and Mulholland caught his men giving her sidelong looks. It was clear that they wanted to impress her. No surprise there. As the colonel had said, she was a knockout. But there was also a tough and mysterious air about the young woman. She had been fighting the Germans a lot longer than any of them, that was for sure.

Chief fired and one of the bottles shattered. He took aim again. There was the sharp crack of the rifle, and instantly the bottle exploded.

“One more, Chief, and you win the Kewpie Doll!”

He took aim and fired, but the bottle remained standing.

“Damn!” he said. “Must have been the wind.”

“It ain’t the wind, Chief,” Vaccaro said. “It’s just that your ancestors were better with a bow and arrow.”

“Screw you, Vaccaro. Let’s see how you do.”

Vaccaro strutted forward—there was really no other way to describe it—and took aim. He fired three times, but hit nothing.

“Are there bullets in your rifle?” Chief asked. “Or were those blanks?”

“Goddamn thing ain’t sighted in. Not my fault.”

“Let me see it a minute, Vaccaro,” said Mulholland, stepping forward to take the rifle. He inspected the weapon, but could detect no obvious fault with it, though it was very possible that the telescopic sight needed adjustment. He put the scope to the eye and one of the bottles sprang closer. With the crosshairs settled just where the shoulder of the bottle began to fatten, he squeezed the trigger, and the bottle shattered.

“Maybe it’s not the rifle,” the lieutenant said, handing it back. “Cole, let’s see you shoot.”

“Yeah, let’s see if the hillbilly here really knows how to use a rifle,” Vaccaro said.

Cole walked to the spot where the three others had shot from. So far, he had been the quietest of the group, and the French guide eyed him with interest. He had a tough, competent look about him that reminded her of some of the Resistance fighters she knew. Cole raised the rifle and fired three times in rapid succession, but none of the bottles was touched.

Vaccaro laughed. “You can’t shoot for shit, Reb! You’re as bad as I am.”

Mulholland was surprised, but he didn’t let it show. He had already seen what Cole could do with a rifle. “That’s all right, Cole. Maybe today just isn’t your day.”

“Uh, sir?” Meacham pointed into the distance, toward the German POW camp. Three bodies lay sprawled on the beach, and several of the POWs as well as the guards were running around, trying to determine where the shots had come from.

“Holy shit,” Vaccaro said. “Reb shot them!”

Mulholland was stunned. “Private Cole, you can’t do that!”

Cole spat. “A lot of men died on this beach. What’s three more dead Germans? I reckon I’m just evening the score.”

“Reb, you are goddamn crazy,” Vaccaro said.

Mulholland wasn’t sure what to do. Technically, Cole had just murdered three prisoners of war.

“Your hillbilly is right,” their guide spoke up. “The Germans killed many innocent people.”

Mulholland was still undecided about how to react when the colonel picked that very moment to wander over from HQ. The lieutenant opened his mouth to say something about the prisoners, but the colonel spoke first. “If ya’ll are done shootin’ up empty bottles, do you think you could shoot some Germans?”

“Shit, sir, Reb here just did that.”

Vaccaro might have said more, but the lieutenant gave him a warning look. That goddamn Vaccaro, Mulholland thought. He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, but he could sure shoot his mouth off.

“What?” the colonel looked confused.

Lieutenant Mulholland started to salute, then dropped his arm upon remembering what their guide had said. “Yes, sir. We’ll move out right away.”

CHAPTER 8

Toward nightfall, when it was safer to move, Von Stenger slipped away from the bridge. If he stayed, it would only be a matter of time before the Americans pinpointed his position. As he knew well from Russia, a sniper who kept moving was one who stayed alive.

So he and the boy hiked toward the beach and the sound of fighting. They kept to the smaller paths through the bocage, which reduced their chances of running into any Allied forces. The two of them alone could move silently and slip off the road, into the brush, whenever the need arose.

“Herr Hauptmann, are we going to stop tonight?” the boy sounded so weary, and Von Stenger could hear how he dragged his feet.

“If you stop, I will shoot you.”

That shut the boy up. Although Von Stenger was much older, years of hard campaigning had given him lean muscles and inured him to the discomforts of not stopping to sleep or eat. Around midnight they heard voices ahead in the darkness—German voices—and came across a small unit that was setting up a series of defensive fallbacks in the hedgerows. Von Stenger volunteered his services as a sniper, and the captain in charge gladly accepted, teaming him up with another pair of snipers.