Ghost Sniper

He felt a vague sense of disappointment because he had welcomed a challenge, or something akin to a duel. The French girl had clearly summoned him to Bienville in hopes that the American sniper would put an end to him. However, he had outwitted them because the last thing anyone expected was for him to appear in their midst.

Shot after shot, he now continued to wreak havoc in the streets below. The Americans darted from building to building in confusion. It was a little like watching ants scramble. Out of sheer frustration, one of the American soldiers fired a rifle grenade at the tower, but it only bounced off the thick stone walls and detonated mid-air with an ear-splitting blast, scattering shrapnel through the streets. Someone cried out in agony.

As the morning light grew brighter, Von Stenger concentrated his fire on the makeshift barricade the Americans had erected at the edge of Bienville. Although the barricade was equipped with a .50 caliber machine gun, the Americans’ hasty efforts at defense were almost laughable. The barricade consisted of a wooden cart turned on its side, a few old wine casks filled with earth, even some bales of straw, in hopes that they might deflect a bullet. That was wishful thinking. He supposed the barricade might help them hold off infantry, but there would be Panzers as well, and the tanks would make short work of the defenders.

As soon as he picked someone off, another soldier scrambled to get behind the .50 caliber machine gun. The deadly weapon had been facing down the road, ready to cut down the advancing Germans, but now they were trying to get it turned around to fire on the church tower. Von Stenger wasn’t about to let them. Thick as the stone walls were, he didn’t wish to test them against the heavy slugs of the machine gun.

Two more soldiers worked to reposition the gun. He shot one, worked the bolt action of the Mosin-Nagant, and then shot the second man, who slumped forward over the gun itself. Eins, zwei, drei… there were now half a dozen bodies around the machine gun emplacement, but who was counting?

A few shots peppered the walls of the tower, but Von Stenger had been careful not to present himself as a target by staying well back from the slit windows. He was positioned very nearly in the center of the tower.

One bullet did pass through the slit and bounced around inside the bell chamber like a fat, very angry bumblebee trapped in a jar. The noise made his blood run cold. The bullet finally spent itself and Von Stenger breathed again. He always had been lucky, but knew better than to push that luck.

It would only be a matter of time before the Americans found someone who could shoot well enough to put shot after shot through the slit window… and one of those zipping bullets would give him a fatal sting. He planned to be long gone before that happened.

He emptied his next-to-last clip at the soldiers scurrying below. He thought he had brought enough ammunition, but was quickly running low. It was all a little too much like being at a pheasant shoot, where the helpless birds were released before the so-called hunters, where they were quickly gunned down.

Von Stenger knew he could not stay up in the tower forever. The massive doors that closed off the entrance to the steeple steps from the main nave of the church itself were made of ancient oak, more like iron than wood. The doors were heavily barred—all a hold-over from the violent medieval era when most buildings were constructed with defense from attack in mind. The French priests had not been fools.

Of course, a few explosives or a heavy machine gun would turn the oak doors to splinters. But the interior of the church was now a hospital, filled with badly wounded men who were not easily moved. The Americans would think twice before trying to blast through the doors. The only alternative was to chop through them by hand.

Targets were getting harder to find, so he took a break from shooting to light a cigarette. He would let the Americans think that the pause in his shooting meant that he had been killed by some lucky stray shot. That would draw them out.

• • •

Lieutenant Mulholland gathered a group of men to make a run at the church where the sniper was hidden in the tower. From his earlier visit to the church, he knew that oak doors led toward the stairs into the tower. Breaking them down would not be easy, but he and his men had rounded up a few axes, a pry bar, and even a couple of garden mattocks. Basically, they had collected anything that they could use to chop at the doors.

“Vaccaro, you and Cole cover us,” he said.

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant, we’ll give that Nazi some lead to chew on,” Vaccaro said.

Jolie came running up and took a position next to Cole, armed with an M1. Mulholland knew that he had ordered her to stay in the church to help the wounded, not fight.

“What are you doing here?”

“I am fighting.”

“Like hell you are!”