by David Healey
Sniper’s Justice
David Healey
SNIPER’S JUSTICE
By David Healey
Copyright © 2021 by David Healey. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotation for the purpose of critical articles and reviews. Please support the arts by refusing to participate in digital piracy.
Intracoastal Media digital edition published March 2021. Print edition ISBN 978-0-9674162-7-4
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BISAC Subject Headings:
FIC014000 FICTION/Historical
FIC032000 FICTION/War & Military
Contents
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part II
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part III
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About the Author
Also by David Healey
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
— Samuel Johnson
Part I
Chapter One
January 1945, Vosges Mountains, France
Waiting in ambush, Caje Cole shivered in the freezing fog and snow but didn’t take his eyes from the rifle scope. Any minute now, he expected to see a German unit come into view on the snow-covered road below.
All around him, the other squad members were ready. Vaccaro crouched at Cole’s elbow, sighting down the barrel of his own rifle. Lieutenant Mulholland stood behind a tree, pointing his weapon down the slight incline in the direction from which they expected the Krauts to appear. Cutting through steep hills, the road seemed to pass through a tunnel of thick spruces and hemlocks arching overhead, adding to the winter gloom.
“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Vaccaro whispered.
“You thinking? That sounds about the same as you pulling the pin out of a grenade,” Cole responded without taking his eyes off the road. “Give me a few seconds, so I can take cover.”
“Very funny, Hillbilly. What I’ve been thinking is that it probably hurts less to get shot in cold weather. You’re so damn numb that you can’t feel it.”
“City Boy, everybody knows it hurts more to get shot when it’s cold,” Cole said. “Take a hammer and whack your thumb in January and then whack it again in July. See which one you like better.”
“What kind of test is that? I’m talking about getting shot.”
“The thing is, you can only test it once when you get shot. Now with a hammer—”
“Quiet, you two,” the lieutenant said. “Save it for the Krauts.”
Cole grinned. Mulholland was getting antsy. Cole couldn’t blame him. Their squad had been sent back along this road to intercept the Germans behind them. They weren’t necessarily supposed to stop the Krauts, but to buy the rest of the unit some time.
With any luck, they might even lead the Germans right into a trap. Unfortunately, the squad would be serving as the bait.
The cause of the hold-up that necessitated this delaying action was the condition of the mountain roads. The trucks carrying the soldiers and supplies down the slippery, snow-covered roads were having a terrible time negotiating the hills and curves. The nimble Jeeps with their chain-wrapped tires fared somewhat better. Finally, one of the Studebaker trucks had slid sideways into a ditch and managed to get itself stuck.
The problem was that the truck now blocked the road, so they couldn’t just leave it. It was a fact of life that any truck that got stuck instantly became crudely personified as a stubborn bitch. Half a mile behind them, every soldier in the unit, no matter how weary and frostbitten he might be, was now pushing that truck, some of them hauling on ropes secured to the front bumper, trying to get that stubborn bitch out of the ditch.
From the other direction, they all knew that the Germans were coming. It was the squad’s job to slow them down while the rest of the unit got the road cleared.
Everybody kept saying that the Germans were beaten, but apparently, the Germans in these hills hadn’t gotten the message. Every time they ran into the Krauts, those bastards fought like hell.
“I wish those Kraut bastards would hurry up and get here,” Vaccaro said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Just keep your eyes open,” Cole said.
If there was one thing that Cole had, it was patience. He tended to move slowly and deliberately, a perfect economy of motion without any wasted effort. When he did move in a hurry, it caught people off guard.
He was like a hawk floating easily in the high air that suddenly dives to strike its prey with vicious precision.
If Cole was a hawk, then Vaccaro was more like a junkyard dog. Nonetheless, they made a good team. Cole’s nickname was Hillbilly, a nod to his Appalachian roots. As for Vaccaro, everybody called him City Boy, which fit his Brooklyn origins. Just about every soldier had a nickname, earned for some action or personality trait. As for the greenbeans in the unit, nobody even bothered to give them names. They tended not to last that long.
“Here they come,” the lieutenant said.
Off in the distance, they heard the rumble of motorized vehicles. Mixed in was the distinctive sound of an enemy tank. It was funny how you could hear the difference between a Sherman and a Panzer. This Panzer was definitely coming closer.
If it was any consolation, the Germans would be having just as hard of a time navigating the narrow winter roads. In fact, they might even be having a harder time of it, considering that if the Krauts had a Tiger with them, those tanks were twice the size of a Sherman.
“That’s just great,” muttered Vaccaro beside him. “Tanks. Why does it have to be tanks?”
“We’re just lucky, I reckon,” Cole said.
“We’d be a whole lot luckier if we were about ten miles behind the lines, eating Christmas leftovers.”
Cole didn’t have an answer for that. Like the others, he knew that they weren’t even supposed to be fighting any battles. After a hard fight across France, his squad had been scheduled for some well-deserved R&R over the Christmas holiday.
However, Uncle Adolf had made other plans for the holidays. The Germans had launched a surprise attack through the Ardennes Forest, forcing exhausted troops who had been looking forward to some rest back into the fight—Cole and Vaccaro among them.
The attack had been massive, with thousands of infantry and hundreds of Panzers. Most incredible of all, the Germans had staged their forces in complete secrecy, catching the Allies totally unawares. Nobody had expected troops to attack across that rugged terrain, lending to the element of surprise.
As a result, German forces had pushed the Allies back across 50 miles of hard-won ground, which was a bitter pill to swallow. Since then, the attack had faltered and the Germans had mostly been contained in what had come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Once again, Cole and hi
s fellow soldiers had hoped for some respite. During the battle, he had managed to defeat an enemy sniper known as Das Gespenst once and for all.
Cole had expected to have some time to savor his victory against Das Gespenst and catch up on his sleep. But then on New Year’s Day, the Germans had gone and shown that they were by no means finished. To start off 1945, Hitler had masterminded Operation Nordwind through the Vosges Mountains to the south of the initial attack. Having rallied the forces pushed back initially by Allied forces, the second half of the Battle of the Bulge had begun. Steeped in myths and legends that spanned centuries, the Vosges region was dotted with small villages, valleys, and mountain peaks popular with hunters. This time of year, it was also wintry and frozen.
Cole had heard it said before that war was hell and life wasn’t fair, and he agreed. He also thought that war in Europe was cold. Somewhere in the Pacific, his cousin Deacon Cole was fighting the Japanese. That sounded like a tropical vacation compared to this.
Trying to ignore the fact that he was shivering, Cole listened to the sound of the tank grow louder. He had taken off his gloves before getting set up with the rifle, and his fingertip felt numb on the trigger. Since that morning he had also noticed a scratchy throat coming on, and his bones felt achy. He tried to ignore that, too—the last thing he needed was to get sick out here. As if the cold and the fighting weren’t bad enough, adding to the men’s misery was the fact that the flu had been going around.
Right now, he had more immediate concerns than the flu. If there was one thing that any infantryman feared, it was the German Panzers. The tanks were not invincible—the GIs had certainly proved that by now—but against a Panzer, their individual rifles might as well be pea shooters. Their squad didn’t have one of the new recoilless rifles or even a bazooka. After all, their orders were to slow down the Krauts while the rest of the unit got the road cleared.
Among the trees below, a snowy branch suddenly moved, despite the fact that there wasn’t any wind. Then another branch slightly higher than the first one quivered. Clumps of snow fell. Beyond this localized disturbance, the rest of the forest remained still.
It was a curious phenomenon that could have been chalked up to some forest creature, but Cole knew better. He guessed correctly that it meant a German was climbing the tree, trying to get a glimpse of the road ahead.
For their ambush, the squad had picked a spot where they had a commanding view of a bend in the road. The Krauts weren’t foolish enough to come around that bend right into any waiting guns. Always cautious, they had sent a scout ahead.
“Hey, twelve o’clock,” Vaccaro whispered, suddenly deadly serious. “See that tree moving?”
Cole didn’t respond, but pressed his eye tighter against the rim of the telescopic sight. The icy metal felt as if it was cutting into flesh, but he ignored it, willing his eye to see every detail of the forest below. Another branch quivered, then stopped. High in the tree, Cole caught a glint of something. Binoculars? Rifle scope? The German scout was looking right at them. They just had to hope that they had hidden themselves well enough to fool the scout.
Cole held his fire, although he could easily have picked off the German. He wanted the Germans to think that the road ahead was clear and that there wasn’t any danger.
Seemingly satisfied that this was the case, the tree branches moved again, this time in the opposite order as the scout descended. Cole had to hand it to the Kraut. Other than the stirring of the branches, which would have been hard to notice if you weren’t looking for it, the scout had moved silently and stealthily.
Meanwhile, the Germans came closer. They could hear them, but not see them. The clanking of the panzer treads on the hard-packed ice of the road became distinct. They heard a few commands shouted over the relentless engines—a few Kübelwagen vehicles along with the Panzer. Even if the Allied planes had been flying, the Germans would have had good cover under the canopy of the evergreen forest.
“Here they come,” Mulholland muttered. “Steady … pick your targets.”
There was no need for him to say it. After months of combat, these men knew the drill. All of them aimed their weapons, held their breath, intent on the targets soon to appear around the bend.
They didn’t have to wait long. First to appear were a handful of soldiers wearing white winter camouflage smocks. In the old days, these would have been called skirmishers—sent out ahead of the main force to probe the presence of the enemy.
Still, the men around Cole held their fire, awaiting an order from the lieutenant. The Germans on the road below came closer. Now, the roar and clank of the Panzer sounded even louder. The stink of exhaust reached them like an affront to the clear mountain air. The tank took up most of the road. Despite its size and weight, the Panzer was having some trouble on the icy incline, lurching sideways on the road before straightening itself out.
Cole set his sights on the man in the turret of the Panzer.
“Fire!” Mulholland shouted.
The first burst of gunfire dropped three of the enemy soldiers. The others scattered into the ditches and trees. They knew better than to throw themselves flat on the road, right in the path of the Panzer, where they would be turned into German pancakes.
Through the scope, Cole could see the tank commander in the Panzer turret, pointing in the squad’s direction. It was all too clear that the Unteroffizer was ordering the Panzer to target them. The barrel of the tank’s gun swiveled toward them, the muzzle looking big and black as a pit into hell. Any second now, the Panzer was going to blow them all to Kingdom Come.
Not so fast, Cole thought. He squeezed the trigger. The tank commander slumped in the turret. Cole’s squad had a temporary reprieve from the threat of the Panzer’s main gun. That didn’t prevent the tank’s heavy machine gun from buzzing like a metallic hornet’s nest.
More soldiers poured in from the sides of the tank, setting up an assault on the squad’s position. Cole had seen it all before. You could count on the Germans to be efficient. After years of battle, they knew their business.
Then again, so did the squad. The soldiers around Cole poured a withering fire down the road. The squad had the advantage of being behind cover, while the Germans on the road mostly remained exposed.
Down on the Panzer, someone from below pushed the body out of the turret and the dead Unteroffizer rolled down the side of the tank and fell to the snow like a sack of grain. He noticed that unlike the infantrymen, the tank crew didn’t wear camouflage.
Another man appeared in the turret, this one armed with a Schmeisser. He let off a burst in the direction of Cole’s squad, then shouted something down into the tank. Once again, the big gun began to swivel in their direction.
“Ain’t gonna happen,” Cole muttered. He put his crosshairs on the soldier in the turret, and fired. The tanker slid back down into the hatch.
But this time, there was no stopping the Panzer from sending a round in their direction. The tank fired. The muzzle blast lit up the forest canopy with an orange glow, the shock wave from its big gun making the branches all around dance as if hit by a gust of wind. Snow showered down.
Traveling at nearly four thousand feet per second, the tank round whooshed over their heads and struck the road behind the squad, punching a hole in the icy road. They had dodged a bullet—a damned big bullet, at that—but the squad might not be so lucky again. Already, the Panzer’s gun was angling lower.
“Fall back!” Mulholland shouted.
Nobody needed to be told twice. Their orders were to delay the German advance, not stop it. For that, they would have needed a lot more firepower.
Besides, the Americans up the road had a surprise in store for the Germans.
Cole slipped from behind the fallen log that he had been using for cover, even as a burst of fire from the Panzer’s 7.92 mm MG 34 machine gun chewed up the bark. Time to go.
The squad began a running battle back to the rest of the unit. They stopped now and then to fire at the G
ermans who had outpaced the tank.
Cole threw himself down flat on the road, locked his arms into a prone position, and waited for the tank to come back into sight. He was disappointed that the tank crew had figured out not to put anybody back in the turret—either that, or they had run out of crew to sacrifice. Instead, a couple of soldiers had climbed onto the tank to serve as its eyes and ears as it navigated the road. While the Panzer had viewing slits and periscopes like any tank, it was easier to drive when somebody had eyes on the road. One of the soldiers leaned over the hatch to shout instructions down into the tank.
Cole picked him off.
Then he and the others were up and running again, back toward the main position.
“I hope they know we’re coming,” Vaccaro panted, laboring to run in the awkward pac boots. Though the rubberized boots kept their feet more or less dry, it was like trying to run with canoes strapped to your feet. It didn’t help that the rubber soles slipped and slid on the hard-packed road.
“They’d have to be deaf not to have heard that Panzer,” Cole said, chancing a look back over his shoulder. So far, the road was empty, but they could hear the enemy tank approaching with its steady clank, clank and straining engine.
Around another bend in the road, they found the rest of the unit. The truck had been pulled out of the ditch, and already the convoy was rolling on. But they had left behind an insurance policy in the form of a Jeep with a recoilless rifle mounted on it. The Jeep sat in the middle of the road, its weapon pointing toward the oncoming Germans. The gun had been sighted in on a crest in the road. All they needed was a target. From the shouts of the approaching Germans and the sound of the Panzer echoing through the forest, they wouldn’t have to wait for long.
