Ghost Sniper

“We’ve got orders to clear this field, but German snipers have got the gap covered,” the captain said. “They’ve already shot two of my men. I just wish we had a goddamn Sherman tank with us—we could follow along behind it. But we don’t have one, so thank God you all came along.”

“Us?”

“You’re counter snipers, right? You’ve all got telescope sights on your rifles. Fight fire with fire, I always say. This is your operation now, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” Mulholland said uncertainly. “How many Germans are there?”

“We’re pretty sure there are three because the shots are coming from different directions.”

“Where are they located?”

“Damned if I know. Walk into that field and you’ll find out, Lieutenant.” The captain slumped back against a large stone and lit a cigarette. “Hell, if this is what we have facing us between here and Paris, it’s going to make the beach landing yesterday look like a kindergarten birthday party. Where did you all come ashore?”

“Omaha.”

The captain dragged on his cigarette. “We were at Utah, thank God. I heard what you went through. Sounds like a goddamn nightmare.”

The captain spoke loud enough for them all to hear, and Cole’s thoughts went back to poor Jimmy, shot on the beach. It sure was a long way to go from home just to get killed by the Germans. Cole didn’t really understand what Hitler or the Germans wanted, but he understood the empty stare in Jimmy’s dead eyes.

“So what’s your plan here?” the captain asked.

The lieutenant was taking a while to answer, so Cole spoke up. “I reckon I might have an idea, sir,” he said.

“All right, Cole. It’s got to be better than the plan I’ve got right now, which is nothing.”

“Let me bring two men through that gap to draw the snipers’ fire, and you can locate their position and take them out.”

“Sounds like a good way to get three men killed.”

“We’ll split up and run in different directions. The way I figure it, the Germans will probably miss. It’s hard to hit a running target. Three running targets is confusing. But when they fire, they’ll reveal their positions. We’ll have our boys at the edges of the gap to take them out.”

“Hell, Cole, the only one here who’s good enough to do that is you.”

“Meacham is a good shot. Chief can at least make them keep their heads down.”

The lieutenant thought it over. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than nothing. “Take Vaccaro with you,” he said quietly. “With any luck, he can run as fast as he can run his mouth. The captain here will have to volunteer one of his men to come with me.”

“One more thing,” Cole said. “I need me a ball of twine.”

It took a couple of minutes to organize the attack. The twine was normally used for marking off landing zones and trenches, but Cole had another idea. Meacham slid along the grass to take up a position so that his rifle just peeked out from the edge of the gap. His field of fire was limited by the tall June grass, but the grass in turn hid him from the enemy snipers already in position. He would just have to be lucky and get a clear shot.

Chief would cross the gap and take up position on the other side once Cole started running. Nobody could pass in front of the gap now because the snipers had it covered.

Cole and Vaccaro stripped off their packs and prepared to run like hell through the gap, into the field, toward the enemy snipers. They were joined by a kid from the other squad who had the build of a rabbit.

“Reb, you are about to get us killed,” Vaccaro said.

“When you get in that field, you two run like hell and zigzag to make a poor target. Run at an angle if you can, not right toward them. Whatever you do, don’t bunch up.” He tied the end of a piece of twine to a stick that was about two feet long and handed it to the rabbit-looking kid. The rest of the twine was wound lightly in Cole’s utility pocket so that it would unwind as they ran.

“What’s the stick for?” the kid asked.

“That there’s our decoy. Now, you look like you can run fast. If I was you, I’d run like there was hornets after you. I want you to drop that stick about halfway across.”

On the face of it, running into the field in front of the German snipers seemed crazy and foolish. But the key was to split up. Once, when hunting high up in the hills, Cole had startled a pack of coyotes feeding at a deer kill. He had raised his rifle to shoot one, anticipating that they would flee in one direction, when the coyotes did a curious thing. They split into three or four different directions. He’d been so surprised that he hadn’t got off a good shot at any of the coyotes. They all got away.

Also, he knew it was considerably harder to hit a running target than a stationary one. If the Germans had been using a machine gun, he and the other two runners would be killed in a single burst of automatic fire. But a man with a rifle had to pick a target, lead it, and fire.

Not so easy to do.