Iron Sniper

by David Healey

  Most animals did the expected because they followed their instincts. Their brains followed a road map to get them through various situations. Humans weren't all that different.

  What would the German sniper do? Bide his time and wait. If the Americans attempted a full-on assault, the German could simply slip away—after inflicting severe losses. It was more than likely that the sniper was hidden in one of the treetops, which would offer a better vantage point. The disadvantage for the German sniper was that a tree could also become a trap.

  The way Cole saw it, the possibility that he could tree that sniper like a ‘coon was the best he could hope for.

  Cole looked at Vaccaro. "Hounds and foxes?"

  Vaccaro groaned. "You and your goddamn hillbilly games. You know I hate hounds and foxes."

  The captain was looking at them like headquarters had maybe sent him a couple of nut cases. "Hounds and foxes? What the hell has that got to do with anything? I've got a sniper holding up my squad, soldier."

  "Don't worry, sir,” Vaccaro said. “It's a strategy that me and Cole here use. Hounds chase foxes, you know. We'll make the fox think we're chasing him, but meanwhile, there's a lone hound sneaking up on the sly."

  "Lone wolf," Cole corrected him. "That'd be me, sir."

  The captain shook his head. "Snipers. You're in a three-way tie for crazy with paratroopers and combat engineers."

  "Thank you, sir," Vaccaro said. "That means a lot."

  Cole turned to the captain. "All right, here's what I'm fixin' to do. I'm a gonna get off this here road and into this field right here—" in Cole's accent, the last two words sounded like rye cheer "—and work my way toward them trees. In exactly ten minutes, you hit them woods with everything you got. Vaccaro will stick with you and try to get a shot from the road. Ya'll are the hounds, you see. I'll be sneaking up on him on the sly. If Vaccaro don't get him, then I'll see where he's at when he shoots back."

  The captain glanced at his type A-11 Army-issue watch, manufactured in Waltham, Massachusetts. Checking the alignment of the white hands on the black face, he said, "Ten minutes. You got it."

  Taking a cue from the captain, Vaccaro checked his own watch. Or rather, watches. He had three strapped to his wrist. Spoils of war.

  Their plan agreed upon, Cole eased his way into the field, careful not to attract any attention from the enemy sniper. To help create a diversion, Vaccaro took a couple of potshots at the German's position.

  Cole chose the field to the north because his view of the copse of trees would not be blocked by the elbow in the road. This way he was traveling around the point of the elbow, rather than being caught in the crook. The countryside was more open here and the field reflected that, being mostly a wide-open expanse that stretched toward a distant line of trees. At one edge of the field, maybe two hundred yards away, was an ancient stone barn. Perfect cover for a sniper. Cole eyed the barn warily, but it appeared empty. There was a stillness about the structure. The only German around was in those woods, blocking the road ahead.

  He crept forward.

  Throughout the field were large boulders that generations of farmers had failed to move, allowing the scrub brush to grow up around them. Farmers back home did the same. These formed islands of vegetation in the cultivated field, which was otherwise knee-high with barley.

  He slung the rifle so that it hung across his front, then got down on his hands and knees and started to crawl. The damp earth soaked his knees. Bits of stubble from last fall's crop jabbed into his hands. His plan was to reach one of those islands of stone and brush. From there, he would have a good vantage point toward the cluster of trees that hid the German sniper, and he would have some cover of his own.

  Cole hit a patch of briers that snagged his trousers and stubbornly wouldn't let go. He got hung up and freed himself only by using his hands to pull away the brier canes. It hurt like fire, and his hands came away bloody. He kept moving.

  Before he could get into position, shooting started on the road. Damn, but that captain was punctual. It sure didn't seem like ten minutes. Cole never bothered to wear a wristwatch—what good did it do for a sniper to watch the time pass? Not only that, but the glint of a crystal watch face had fatally betrayed more than one soldier. He had warned Vaccaro about that, but the damn fool city boy wouldn't listen.

  Cole stopped crawling and got ready to shoot. He would have liked to make it to one of those islands of rock and brush to find a solid rest for his rifle, plus some cover, but he was out of time. The hounds were already busy shooting.

  He had to shoot now, while the sniper was distracted.

  He would have preferred firing from a prone position, but the vegetation blocked his view. A sitting position was his only option. He sat Indian-style, but kept his ankles as flat to the ground as possible. He hooked the sling through his right arm to help steady the Springfield, and then put his elbows over his knees, not bone to bone because that would be unsteady, but meat to meat and sinew to sinew. He bent forward at the waist, getting right up on the scope.

  From the barn, Rohde watched the American sniper with professional interest.

  It was past mid-morning when Rohde had heard an American squad exchange fire with Scheider, and probably getting the worst of it. That Scheider was a good shot, damn him. He ended up pinning down the squad to the point that they bunched up on the road.

  Rohde was just beginning to think that his plan wasn't going to work. The Americans were being stubborn. Instead of trying to flank Scheider, and moving into Rohde’s killing field, they were shooting it out on the road.

  Again, to pass the time, he addressed his dead brother. The American strategy is always to move forward. They never think about moving sideways.

  That’s when he had noticed the other sniper. A flicker of motion caught his eye. Wait. Carl, what was that?

  Rohde fixed his eyes straight ahead, relaxing his focus so that his eyes would naturally detect any movement in the field. There. Quickly, his sharp eyes went to the motion. It was not the entire squad moving to flank Scheider. Just one man. One with a telescopic sight on his rifle. An American sniper, which was something of an unusual sight.

  Rohde felt his heart beat faster. A sniper would be a rare prize.

  Captain Fischer might even put Rohde in for a medal sooner, rather than later.

  After he killed this sniper, he would go down and take his rifle. Maybe the American weapon would be better than this Stück Müll fat old Hohenfeldt had given him.

  Studying the sniper through the telescopic sight, Rohde saw a lean man who moved with the stealth of an animal, belly low to the ground. The American had something painted on his helmet. It looked like a flag of some sort.

  Rohde pressed his eye closer to the sight, straining to see across the distance. The flag appeared to be a red rectangle traversed by a blue St. Andrew's X-shaped cross, with stars inside the cross. It looked a bit like the flag of Norway, as a matter of fact, but Rohde was sure that he had never seen this particular flag before. What in hell? Maybe it was a unit designation of some sort. This sniper wouldn't have been the first American to decorate his helmet in some way. In much the same manner, the Americans were always drawing pictures on their tanks and planes, and giving them silly names.

  Germans saw that as akin to defacing military equipment. No tank commander in the 5th Panzer would ever decorate his Tiger tank with a picture of a half-naked woman. Who would even consider such a travesty?

  Rohde let the American belly crawl through the field, knowing that he could take him at any instant. That thought made him tingle down to his boots with what was almost a sexual feeling of anticipation. Strange, isn’t it, Carl, to have the power of life and death over someone without him knowing it? He watched with professional interest as the sniper got into a sitting position and aimed toward the copse of trees that hid Scheider.

  It was all Rohde could do not to snort at the sniper's confidence. The American was a long way from where Scheider was hidde
n. Did the American really think he could shoot accurately from that distance? With a sitting stance, no less?

  Cole scanned the treetops.

  Down the road, bullets snicked at the tree branches hiding the German, but the sniper managed to return fire, keeping the Americans pinned down.

  He glimpsed a burst of something deep in the shadows among the trees. It could have been a muzzle blast, or maybe just a sudden movement.

  With a mental image locked in place of where he had spotted the movement, he fired. Worked the bolt, sending a brass .30/06 shell spinning away. Acquired the woodsy patch where he had seen a ripple of movement. Fired again.

  The sniper in the woods fell silent.

  As Rohde watched, the sniper fired, and the shooting in the copse of trees fell silent. To hit Scheider at such a distance, this American must be a sniper of some skill.

  Rohde was more than a little impressed. Rohde was glad that he had not been the one in the enemy's sights. One shot from the American and Rohde's problem with his rival was solved.

  In payment, Rohde would kill the American quickly. He lined up the sight on the back of the American's helmet. The bullet would take him square in the back of the head.

  Rohde held his breath and squeezed the trigger.

  Cole shifted to get a better look through the scope and in the next instant something inside his skull went whang.

  He just had time to think, "Who in the hell hit me in the head with an ax handle?"

  Then everything went black.

  When Rohde fired, two things had happened as instantaneously as the primer igniting the powder in the cartridge. First, Rohde felt the satisfying jolt against his shoulder of the Mauser's recoil. In the same instant, the American cocked his head.

  The American had gone down, but because the sniper had moved just as Rohde had fired, he couldn't tell if the bullet had struck true.

  He ejected the spent shell and slapped the bolt into place. The rifle jolted out of position, and he wasted precious seconds repositioning the weapon.

  Hop, hop, hop. It was like he could hear his old training instructor shouting into his ear. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  Feeling rushed and nervous, Rohde got off another shot too quickly, because it kicked up dirt near the American's head. He took a deep breath. Take it easy, he told himself. The American wasn’t moving. Maybe that first bullet had done for him.

  He lined up the sight right between the sniper's shoulder blades.

  Chapter Eleven

  When Cole came to twenty seconds later, he found himself staring at the blue summer sky, wondering what the hell had just happened.

  He knew that he’d been shot. Somehow, he was still alive. His head was ringing, but there didn’t seem to be any blood.

  He tried to piece together the last few seconds before he'd been knocked out, hoping that it would give him some clue as to the shooter’s location.

  Cole had been listening for the sniper in the copse to shoot again, not sure that he'd hit him. He had tilted his head to hear better.

  Just at that instant, the bullet grazed his helmet. The shot had not come from the direction of the copse, but from behind him. Cole realized that if he hadn't happened to turn his head just then, the bullet would have drilled through his skull.

  Much later, when he'd had time to think on it, he reckoned that maybe he had somehow heard that bullet coming for him, outrunning sound itself. His pa had always said that he'd been born with eyes in the back of his head. It was damn near the only nice thing the old man had ever had to say about him.

  Even with a glancing blow, all that energy still rattled his skull enough to knock him out for a few seconds.

  The M1 helmet issued to U.S. troops since April 1941 was comprised of 2.85 pounds of steel alloy, shaped to encase the skull in a protective layer of metal that was a uniform one-eighth of an inch thick. Made by the McCord Radiator and Manufacturing Company, the helmet was famously tough and could be used for everything from a trenching tool to a hammer for tent stakes and even a cooking pot if the need arose, although this last use was discouraged because intense heat made the metal too brittle to withstand shrapnel. There were even rumors that a sergeant outside the town of Bienville had snapped and used his helmet to beat a captured SS officer to death. This use, also, was officially discouraged.

  Tough and multifunctional as a helmet was, it could not stop a round from a Mauser K98.

  Cole had gotten his bell rung good and proper, although his head had not actually rung like a bell. No, that was far too poetic a way of putting it. The sound inside his skull was more like what you heard when a sledgehammer pounded a rock.

  Mountain people had a saying for being in a bad situation. I'd jest as soon be in hell with my back broke. That was about how he felt just then in the middle of a field, in some Kraut sniper's sights, his head full of shattering rocks.

  The sniper wasn't done with him. Another bullet kicked up the dirt inches from Cole's face. Aw, hell.

  His only chance was to find some cover. The nearest option was one of those big rocks that the farmer had plowed around.

  While that made some kind of sense to his scrambled brain, his body itself seemed unwilling to move.

  But it was move or die.

  He began to count.

  One. Two. Three—

  Rohde could not believe that he had missed his second shot.

  Willing himself to take his time and make the next shot a killing one, Rohde steadied his breathing. His heart still hammered with excitement, however, which did not help his aim.

  He was angry with himself for missing not once, but twice. What kind of Dummkopf did that? He would not be putting that in his report to Captain Fischer when he brought him the American sniper's rifle as a trophy.

  What made him even more uncomfortable was knowing that he himself could be in some unseen enemy's sights. The business of sniping was multi-layered in that you never knew who was watching, or who was creeping up behind you. It was like chess; you thought that you were thinking two moves ahead, but your opponent was three moves ahead. Checkmate.

  The thought was enough to make him pull his eye back from the scope and tilt his head to listen. Was it possible that the soldier in the field was some sort of decoy to distract him while others crept into the barn? His ears rang from the two shots, but even so, he would have heard any telltale sounds from the barn below.

  The sleigh bells he had hung on the ladder remained silent.

  Reassured that he was still alone in the barn, he pressed his eye once more to the scope.

  He wasn't sure how hard the American was hit. Was the American sniper dying or simply dazed?

  One more shot would settle that question.

  He had to make it count. He kept the post sight settled right between the American's shoulder blades.

  Rohde took in a breath, held it, and let his finger take up tension on the trigger.

  At that moment three hundred feet away, Cole coiled his arms and legs under him and sprang up out of the grass, running like hell.

  He dodged and weaved like a jackrabbit.

  He heard a shot, but kept going. He knew exactly how long it took to work the bolt action of a rifle and aim again because he had done it himself hundreds of times.

  One Mississippi.

  Two Mississippi.

  When he got to three, he juked sideways.

  The bullet passed through the air that Cole's body would have occupied a fraction of a second longer.

  The sound was enough to turn his legs to rubber, but he kept running, jack rabbiting it as he went. The big rock with the brush around it was just ahead.

  One Mississippi.

  Two Mississippi.

  He gave himself until three Mississippi and dove for cover, glad to get a thick boulder and brush between himself and the shooter.

  The fact that the German sniper held his fire told Cole that he'd made it. The rock wasn't any bigger than he was, so Cole willed himself to shri
nk into the surrounding brush. He sunk down, panting hard.

  Winded, heart hammering, skull ringing, Cole kept his head down and bunched his knees up to his chin. He wasn’t aware that the only part of him showing was a patch of his left shoulder that didn't quite fit behind the rock.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the barn, Rohde watched in disbelief as his first shot missed when the American leaped up. He worked the bolt, tried to hold the sight on the running man, and fired just as the American danced to the left. He fired and missed. He was still getting the sights lined up when the soldier dived into the brush surrounding a rocky place in the field.

  The rock was hardly bigger than a bushel basket, but it was enough to give the sniper cover. Rohde muttered a curse, then noticed a bit of khaki-colored uniform showing above the rock. It was hard to tell just what he was looking at—part of an arm, maybe, or maybe a shoulder.

  Rohde set his sights on that target and fired.

  When the German sniper in the barn fired again, Cole felt the bullet strike like somebody punching him in the arm. His body went numb at the impact and he hugged the shelter of the rock, willing his body to shrink behind it. Then the pain began, the searing agony of a million raw nerve endings.

  Cole had not been shot before. The closest approximation he could imagine to what he felt now was having someone drive a hot railroad spike into his upper arm.

  He couldn't decide if he was scared, or just pissed off. Maybe a little of both. What he did know what that it hurt like hell.

  Trying not to move more than necessary, Cole inspected the damage. Despite the pain, one glance told him that he was lucky. The bullet had cut a groove into the flesh and muscle of his upper left arm, almost like a slash. Blood ran down his arm and puddled in the humus of decayed leaves. Within a few minutes, the worst of the bleeding stopped.