Ghost Sniper

Cole’s old man was mean as a rattlesnake and drunk half the time on his own moonshine, and it wasn’t until he got to the Army that he realized it wasn’t normal for your daddy to beat the hell out of you on a regular basis. For all his faults, Cole’s pa was also a skilled outdoorsman, what people would have called a mountain man in an earlier time. When he was sober, he taught Cole what he knew.

In the summer of 1933, times were hard all over the country, but they were petty much always hard in Gashey’s Knob. Cole was somewhere between a boy and a man, like he had one foot on each side of a stream and was wondering which way to step. He would always remember it as the Summer of the Bear, and it was one of his most painful memories.

An old black bear had come down out of the mountains and was lurking around cabins, raiding vegetable patches and breaking into chicken coops. Likely the bear was old or sick, and driven by hunger. Old man Thompkins had caught a glimpse of the bear sniffing around his hen house. He reckoned that bear weighed 400 pounds, its muzzle scarred and grizzled with gray. He peppered it with bird shot so that now the bear was old, sick, hungry—and mad with pain.

Cole and his pa came across that bear on their way back from squirrel hunting. They were crossing the high meadow to the west of their cabin and there was the bear in the middle of it, blocking their path home, rising out of the tall grass. He had killed a calf and was feeding on the carcass, muzzle dripping gore like something out of a nightmare. The bear stood close to seven feet tall.

He roared and charged.

Cole ran, but you can’t outrun a bear. Even an old one can sprint fast as a horse. He could still feel his fear, the taste of it in his mouth like pennies.

He worked his jaw. Spat.

Pa had an old double-barreled shotgun with two double-ought buckshot shells. That was all the ammunition he had. He stood his ground and fired when the bear almost had his nose in the barrel.

Sheepishly, heart pounding, Cole came back to where his single-shot .22 rifle lay in the grass.

“Pick it up,” Pa said. “Now give it here. You ain’t man enough yet to carry that.”

Those words hurt worse than any fist the old man had ever hit him with.

Less than a year later Pa was found shot dead in the mountains. The local sheriff called it a hunting accident, but Cole knew different. Like as not, Pa had been sniffing around someone’s still.

Cole became the family provider. They ate what he could shoot or trap, and they ate all right for a change because he turned out to be a good hunter and an even better shot than his old man. Bullets cost hard cash they didn’t have, and sometimes he had one bullet, one shot, and those skinny brothers and sisters went hungry if he missed.

Cole did not miss.

Later on he got wind of who killed Pa. Pa had been no good, but blood was blood, and revenge ran through his veins like snow melt down an icy creek.

If it was possible, his father’s killer was a meaner rattlesnake than Pa had been. He went gunning for Pa’s killer and the two stalked each other for several days in the deep mountain country. Cole walked back out; the other man’s body was buried where no one would ever find it.

Back in the mountains, you had time to think. Cole reckoned that he was always trying not to run from that bear. Since then, he had never run from anything. He was already hard and stubborn like a knot of tree root, and the Army training made him even harder. Like his old man, he had dark moods when meanness radiated off him like it did off a stray alley cat.

One day in boot camp he’d had enough of Jackson bullying the other mountain kid, Jimmy Turner, who was as different from Cole as a deer is from a wildcat. He put a can of beans in a sock and caught Jackson alone one night after lights out. Sent him to the infirmary for a few days.

The drill sergeant was no fool and suspected that Cole had done it. “Goddamnit Cole, Jackson is an asshole and he had it coming.” He stuck his finger in Cole’s face. “But the next soldier you fuck up had better be a German.”

Cole had taken the sergeant’s message to heart.

CHAPTER 13

The German snipers slept that night in an old chateau commandeered by the Wehrmacht. The French owners had fled, leaving the German army to inhabit its rooms and grounds. The house was neglected and damp, but it was far better than the cold woods and fields. The mansion had been converted into an indoor campground by hordes of weary, muddy troops. The Germans had also occupied the kitchen, so there was plenty of hot soup and even fresh-baked bread.

As an officer, Von Stenger was able to secure a room that was grand enough to have been the domain of some long-ago Norman baron. The room was able to accommodate Von Stenger, as well as Wulf and Fritz. He took a chance that the chimney still worked and started a small fire in the fireplace, then worked to clean the Russian rifle.

“Do you need help, Herr Hauptmann?” Fritz asked.