Ghost Sniper

Wood chips were still flying when Cole came running up with Jolie and Vaccaro. He watched the lieutenant swinging his ax like a mad lumberjack. The oak doors shuddered under each blow but still did not budge.

“Who would have thought the son of a bitch had grenades,” Vaccaro said. “He’s a sniper, for crissake. But I think maybe I got him.”

“Nobody got him,” Cole said. “I reckon he’s still up there waiting for us.”

“In that case, you go first.”

“You know, for a city boy, you ain’t so dumb as you look.”

The axes opened a jagged hole through the door. Someone shoved a pry bar through and got it under the crossbar, but it took three men and some cursing to shift the weight enough to get the doors open.

Cole was the first one through, his rifle at the ready. The room at the base of the tower was no more than fifteen feet on each side, and empty. Although it was bright daylight outside, the interior was chill and shrouded in semi-darkness because the only light came from the few window slits cut into the ancient stone walls.

“Anybody bring a flashlight?” the lieutenant asked.

“No, but I eat a lot of carrots,” Cole said, and started up the stairs. Mulholland started to pass him, still carrying the ax, but Cole stopped him with a wave of his hand. “Are you goin’ to throw that there ax at him? I got this, Lieutenant.”

From a few steps behind, Vaccaro bellowed up the stairway. The words echoed and carried like smoke up a chimney: “We’re comin’ to get you, you goddamn sneaky Nazi sniper son of a bitch! How do you like that, huh!”

Cole looked down and fixed him with a pale stare. “Vaccaro, what I just said about you bein’ smarter than you look? Well, you ain’t. If he didn’t hear them axes, you just sent him a telegram that we’re on our way up the stairs.”

There was no helping that now, so Cole continued up the ancient steps, worn smooth by centuries of priests going up to ring the bell and summon the faithful to mass.

It would be easy enough for the enemy sniper to ambush them from any of the landings above, but that would have to happen at very close quarters, exposing himself to return fire. If Cole had been the German, and he’d had any more stick grenades, he’d bounce them down the steps. If he had a crate of grenades, the sniper could defend himself up in that steeple until he died of old age. But Cole doubted he had lugged that many up there.

No sense worrying about it. With his finger on the trigger of the rifle, he forced himself up another step, and another. Soon, he could see the rectangular opening into the belfry itself. Cole slung his rifle and drew a .45 automatic, then crept silently up the last few steps.

Back when he was a boy, Cole used to hunt woodchucks. They were animals that resembled a beaver but that dug burrows from which they poked their noses, sniffing for predators.

He had often seen how a fox would wait patiently beside the hole for a woodchuck to put its nose out and provide dinner. Hunting them, Cole had learned the same technique. All you needed to shoot a woodchuck was a nose and maybe an eye showing.

If Cole stuck his nose above the floor level, he was fairly certain he would get shot. So he stuck the .45 up instead and sprayed shots in several directions. The noise was deafening. He surged up the steps and into the belfry, both hands on the gun, ready to fire.

Nobody there.

He was soon followed by Mulholland, Vaccaro and Jolie. “He really is the Ghost Sniper,” Jolie said.

“He was here, all right,” Cole said. He had noticed a gold-trimmed cigarette butt on the stone floor. With his boot, he toed at an empty shell casing. The Cyrillic markings were just visible. “Our sniper shoots a Russian rifle. It was him.”

“He didn’t just vanish,” the lieutenant said. “He could be hiding.”

They made a quick inspection of the tower room. The windows were too narrow to crawl out. There was no attic to hid in. Down below, the oak doors had been barred shut from inside—which meant the sniper hadn’t slipped out at the last instant just ahead of them.

“Huh,” Cole said.

Vaccaro, still panting from the climb, looked around the empty room. “Reb, I know you’re a man of few words, so let me say them for you: Where the hell did he go?”

Cole lingered at one of the slit windows long enough to see the advancing German column. There were an awful lot of Germans heading for Bienville. However, they were forced to stay on the road because of the flooded fields surrounding the town and roadside.

If he could have stayed up in the tower, there was no telling how many he could pick off. Then the Tiger tank fired and a shell whistled close by the tower. If their aim got better, the tower would not be standing much longer.

He started back down the stairs.

“Cole, where are you going?” Mulholland demanded.

“Well, sir, he ain’t up here.”

They descended quickly, not worrying about an ambush on the stairs this time. But the room below was as empty as ever, with a bare stone floor. The only furnishing was a tattered rug on the floor.