Ghost Sniper

Then the chess board changed abruptly. The American squad came pouring through the gap in the hedge. From the field behind Von Stenger a barrage of Wehrmacht mortars came rolling in. They were firing blind, but it was enough to send the Americans scrambling for cover.

He waited until two more mortar rounds thumped down in the field, then quickly rolled to the left and scooted backwards like a crab until he was down the other side of the thick, ancient wall inside the hedgerow. Briars clawed at his face and the trunks of scrawny trees and saplings grew so close together it was almost like being in a cage. Crawling, Von Stenger could just get through the dense underbrush.

“Come on,” he said to the boy.

“Herr Hauptmann, what about Wulf and Schultz?”

“They will catch up if they are not dead,” Von Stenger said. “Now bring my gear along. We are going hunting.”

• • •

“Good God almighty,” Meacham said. It was as close as he could come to swearing. He was trembling, white faced, on the edge of shock. “I just killed a man.”

“That was some fine shooting,” Lieutenant Mulholland said.

“I really killed that German.”

“Killed the hell out of him,” Vaccaro agreed.

They were looking down at the dead body of a German private. Meacham had fired from the gap in the hedge when the German sniper opened up on Cole and the others running across the field. Meacham’s bullet had caught the sniper in the cheekbone, killing him instantly. The dead man’s hands still grasped the Mauser with its telescopic sight.

Meacham was looking very pale, so Mulholland grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him hard, the way a coach might get a player to get his head back in the game. “This is a war, Meacham. You were doing your duty. You got him, so he didn’t get you or anybody else. Good work.”

Cole hadn’t gotten his German. The mortars coming down in the field had given the other sniper cover to slip away. Cole was fairly certain that if he’d gotten some hint of movement from the sniper, then he would have been able to hit him. No such luck. The German had evaporated like the morning mist.

When the mortars stopped, the squad moved across the field and Cole worked his way back into the hedgerow until he found the spot the German had been using as a sniper’s nest. He spotted the stub of a fancy French cigarette, bright white against the leaf mold, along with the bright brass wink of several empty shell casings. He picked one up and realized that it was not German. They had seen plenty of Mauser casings strewn around the beach fortifications, but none like this.

He bent closer to the earth and found boot prints. He touched them, wondering at the fact that the man he’d been trying to kill—and who had tried to kill him—had made them just minutes before. He guessed the man was somewhere from average height to maybe six feet tall, probably 180 pounds. Farther back he found a different set of boot prints. They were about the same size, but they were made by the cheaper hobnail boots issued to German enlisted men, and these didn’t go as deep into the soil, so it was a lighter man. Maybe a spotter? He understood that the German snipers often worked in teams.

Both sets of boot prints showed where the two men had scrambled and slid down the far side of the ancient wall at the center of the hedge. Clearly, they had gone into the next field, but Cole could glimpse nothing through the thick brush.

He worked his way back out of the hedge and rejoined the other men in the squad.

Meacham still looked pale, while Vaccaro glared at him as he walked up. “Reb, your trick with that stick actually worked.”

“I tugged at the string to make the stick move in the grass so the sniper would shoot at it and give himself away.”

“Holy shit, Reb, you are one backwards son of a bitch,” Vaccaro said, but with something like admiration in his voice. “We’ve got Sherman tanks and bazookas, and you’re fighting the Nazis with sticks and string. The question is, did it work?”

Cole shrugged. “Well, he fired, all right, but I didn’t have a clear shot and I missed. He left a few of these behind.”

Cole held out the brass he’d found in the German sniper’s nest. Lieutenant Mulholland took it, looked at the markings that read 7.62 Л П С r ж and announced, “That’s Cyrillic writing on the casing. I don’t know what it says, but it’s Russian ammunition. He must be shooting a Mosin Nagant, which is a Russian sniper rifle. I don’t know why.”

“I’ve heard it’s a better rifle. Sturdier and more accurate than the Mauser,” Cole said. He thought about that. “The only way to get one would be if you served in Russia.”

“How the hell could some German take away a Russian sniper’s rifle?” Vaccaro wanted to know.

“By shooting him,” Cole said.

CHAPTER 10