MATT HELM: The War Years

by Keith Wease

  I suppose it was a solemn moment, kind of like finally consummating the marriage after a long courtship. Well, the real consummation was still to come, but I'd spent three full days preparing this equipment and bringing it here; just taking it out should have been celebrated with a little ceremony, say a toast or a prayer. However, it was no time to be drinking, and I've kind of got out of the habit of praying. I just reached in and took the big rifle out of the case, leaving the rest of the packing inside.

  It was a heavy match barrel on the long Mauser action, shooting a hand-loaded version of the .300 Holland and Holland Magnum cartridge that I'd cooked up myself. I slipped off the rubber bands and removed the corrugated cardboard that gave additional protection to the scope, a twenty-power Herrlitz. We'd used European components so if we were killed or caught, there wouldn't be too much Yankee debris left lying around. I was carrying my death pill, never mind where, so I couldn't be forced to identify myself as an American. We didn't want anybody wondering why an American citizen was on French soil, murdering an important British officer.

  The stock was a plain, straight-grained hunk of walnut without much sex appeal, but it was fitted to the barrel with artistry. A regular G.I. leather sling completed the outfit.

  It was quiet there just below the peak of the hill as I got ready, except for an occasional muffled shout from the grounds of the mansion.

  I saw Ryland pick up the case I'd dropped, fingering it gently.

  "It is an impressive firearm," he said.

  "Let us hope the man we came to impress finds it so," I replied.

  He glanced at me sharply and started to speak, but checked himself and was silent, watching while I rigged the rifle sling for shooting and dug the box of cartridges out of the bag he held. They were big, fat shells. They looked as if an ordinary service round had had a clandestine affair with some anti-aircraft ammo. I could only get four of them into the gun: three in the magazine and one in the chamber. I stuck the box in my pocket, put the rest of the packing back inside the bag and zipped it up, leaving him to carry it.

  With the big rifle in hand, we crawled back to the top of the hill. "Let's see what we've actually got here."

  I took the bag from him and folded it for a rest, laying the rifle across it. I had to hunt a bit to pick up my target - those big target scopes have a narrow field - then the soldier standing just below the courtyard was clear and sharp in the glass, but he still wasn't exactly at arm's length. It was going to be one hell of a shot, if I made it.

  I lay there telling myself hopefully that at least the wind wasn't blowing. "Five hundred and fifty yards," I said. "Approximately. That, Ryland, is over five hundred of your meters. Your estimate was damn near forty percent off."

  "You can read the distance?" He sounded more interested than apologetic.

  "There is a scale inside the telescope," I said. "You take a man like that one, approximately six feet tall - at least I hope he wasn't a pygmy or a giant - and you place the lowest division of the scale at his feet and read the range opposite the top of his head, making allowances for the helmet. Then you take this figure and enter the table I have attached to the stock of the rifle, here. You learn that to hit a target five hundred and fifty yards away, the way this particular rifle is sighted at this particular time, you must hold over eighteen inches. In other words, I will have to shoot for the top of the head to hit the chest."

  Actually, of course, I hadn't ever believed the story of four hundred yards. I'd sighted the rifle in at four hundred and fifty yards, and run my compensation table from three hundred to six hundred, just in case. There has seldom been a spy yet, or a hunting guide for that matter, who wouldn't underestimate a range badly. You always hope the day will come when somebody will hand you the straight dope, but a forty percent error wasn't much more than par for the course.

  "That's what I call progress," Ryland said. I couldn't tell whether he was being ironic or not.

  "Sure," I said. "It assumes that I can find a man the right size to take the range from, and that he's standing up straight, and that I'm not looking at him from too great an angle up or down. It assumes the gun it shooting where it was when I made up the table, a few hundred miles away in a different climate. And at five hundred meters, it takes this bullet the better part of a second to reach its target. A walking man can cover six feet in a second, so we'd better hope he stands still for us. What's his routine?"

  He grinned at my sarcasm. "You must be very good with that rifle, Eric; otherwise you wouldn't be so pessimistic."

  I grinned back. It's nice dealing with professionals. He was right. Only an amateur brags about how good he is with a gun - or any other weapon for that matter.

  "Sir Robert is led out by two guards, always," he explained. "They usually stand by the door while he walks around a little. Sooner or later, he will sit down on one of those stools around the table in the middle and have a cigarette or two. Is that still enough for you?"

  "Good enough. How long before he comes out?"

  "Probably another two or three hours, if he comes out this morning. If not, he'll be out just after noon."

  "Okay, you're the spotter," I told him. I'd given him the pair of binoculars I'd brought with me. I want you to be watching through those glasses when I fire. If I miss, you tell me where it goes so I can correct the next shot properly."

  "There won't be time for many shots," Ryland said. His expression didn't change, but it was clear nevertheless that he didn't like my talking about misses.

  I said, "If there's time for one, there's generally time for two. If I miss, look for the sparks and pieces of concrete where it hits and give me the distance I'm off. In meters or fractions of a meter if you like. Give me the direction by the clock. Twelve o'clock, three o'clock, six o'clock, nine o'clock, or points in between. You understand?"

  "Yes. I've shot at the targets, if without much success, at least at this distance."

  "Good. Once he's down, try to spot a few extra targets for me until we run out of time. When you say go, we go, okay?"

  "Righto, old chap," he replied, grinning. I could find myself liking the guy, if I didn't watch it.

  "From what you said, we'll have plenty of warning, so if you don't mind watching by yourself, I'm going to get some sleep. It's been a long three days and an even longer night. Wake me when he first comes out." I slid back down a little, taking the rifle case with me for a pillow. I actually did go to sleep, which I think impressed him more than anything.

  About three hours later, he woke me up with a whispered, "Eric!" He knew enough not to touch me. When you wake a professional up by touching him, you risk some fairly unpredictable responses, depending on the circumstances. I yawned and stretched and pulled myself together, splashing some water on my face from the canteen he'd brought with us. I took a swallow and then went behind a tree to take care of some urgent business, no bladder distractions, thank you. I wondered idly how many important shots, and great opportunities, had been missed because somebody had to go at the wrong time.

  Picking up the bag, I crawled up beside him and got the rifle into place. I settled myself comfortably behind it and shoved off the safety, double-checking, by looking, that it was really all the way off. That's another mistake that's been made by people who should have known better, including me. Then I remembered the box of cartridges, still in my pocket. Well, nobody's perfect. Now I knew why my thigh was a little sore. I must have rolled over on the box in my sleep. I opened it and set it where I could reach it easily. I didn't know if I'd have time to reload, but Mac had suggested - and I'd explained to Ryland - that it wouldn't hurt to have more than one dead body down there, just to confuse the issue a little - with Sir Robert just one of several victims, a case could be made for him being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We didn't particularly care what the Germans thought, but if rumors of a firefight at the mansion leaked out, the more casualties the better. We should have a fair amount of time, due to the high wall surroundi
ng the grounds, with no opening anywhere near the base of our hill.

  Ryland was right. The two guards stood right there by the door, perfect secondary targets, as Sir Robert walked around and back and forth across the courtyard. Then it was just a matter of waiting. I'm not an iron man; I had the usual quota of palpitation and perspiration. I resisted the temptation to look around, perhaps selecting other targets. I also resisted the impulse to try for him during his momentary stops; if he started moving again, the bullet would strike behind him. I just lay there forcing my body to relax along the ground. I was just an eye at the ocular, a finger on the trigger.

  After almost ten minutes that seemed like two hours, my mind was beginning to whisper the thoughts you try to keep suppressed: You could have got him that time, you idiot. Maybe he's given up smoking and never sits down. Look at him standing there looking over the wall, a perfect target. It comes with the territory. All you can do is grit your teeth and try to think of something else. Fortunately, Ryland knew enough to keep silent, although I could hear the rustling sounds as he stirred from time to time - no doubt he had his own demons.

  Finally, Sir Robert sat down in one of the stools and lit a cigarette. He had chosen the one closest to our position, putting his back to us, a nice broad, tempting target. Instead, I settled the crosshairs on the cowlick on the top of his head. I heard Ryland stir impatiently beside me, still silent. I wasn't aware of adding the last fraction of an ounce to the pressure already on the trigger, but the big rifle fired.

  It made a hell of a noise in the quiet valley; it was like setting off a cannon-cracker in church. It slammed back against my shoulder and cheek. It's not a fun gun to shoot.

  "Call it," I said, working the bolt fast and trying to pick up my target again in that lousy scope. "Call it, damn you!"

  "He's hit," Ryland said calmly. "He is falling off the stool."

  Then I had my man back in the field. He had slumped across the table and slid off to the deck. I gave it the same rough eighteen inches of Kentucky elevation and fired again. There was the same volcanic eruption and the same piledriver blow against my face and shoulder.

  "Good show, old chap," Ryland said in his calm voice. “Here come the guards. "

  As I yanked the bolt back and slammed it home again and brought the scope back in line, I could see the two guards bending over Sir Robert. They didn't really know what was going on. The thunderous report of the Magnum would have sounded vague and directionless down there, like distant blasting. At that range you can shoot at a deer all day, if you're that bad a shot, and he'll never even stop browsing until you land one close.

  I took out the first guard, but the second one finally got smart and ran for the door. Giving up on him, I chambered the last round as Ryland started spotting additional targets.

  "To your left, about ten meters, just below the courtyard. Why aren't they taking cover?"

  I didn't waste my time explaining, concentrating on getting as many shots in as I could. Since the target didn't matter, I took the most conspicuous one, an officer just standing there looking around for the source of the distant - to him - sounds he couldn't identify. I settled the crosshairs on the insignia of his hat and let go. I started hand-loading and got two more in three shots before they started scattering. It was confused as hell down there and they still hadn't located our position. I reloaded, feeling a little ashamed at myself for taking advantage of their lack of training for a situation such as this.

  I mean, ours was a new type of warfare for them. They were trained to respond to a direct assault or even long-range artillery fire. This kind of sudden death accompanied by a small "pop" wasn't something they were used to. One brave soldier stood behind his machine gun, moving it back and forth in our general direction, hoping to spot a target. I hope they gave him a medal - posthumously, of course.

  I think we got lucky. From the total confusion apparent in the scene below, the officer I shot must have been the commander of the detachment, and nobody seemed to be giving any orders. We heard the "rat-a-tat" of machine gun fire, but no bullets came near enough to our position to notice.

  I guess the second guard had finally raised the alarm, because several officers came running out of the front door of the mansion. As they paused in astonishment at the sight of their men running around in all directions, I got one more. As I looked around for a second one I heard Ryland's calm voice.

  "I say, old boy, that last shot seemed to have done it. They've located us."

  I looked around the scope and saw two officers pointing at us - well, in our direction - and screaming orders. With leadership once again established, several soldiers started toward the gate to get to our hill. I sent the last two shots in their general direction to slow them down, then grabbed the rifle bag and started crawling down the backside of the hill, followed by Ryland.

  As soon as we could stand without being seen, we took off as rapidly as the underbrush allowed. With the head start we had, as well as knowing the best path through the brambles and bushes, we never even saw any Germans.

  After all the planning and the excitement of combat, the escape was anticlimactic. I spent three days hidden beneath the floorboards of a safehouse - a hiding place that was used for the French equivalent of the Civil War's "underground railway" - and then was brought back to England by boat, once the hue and cry had settled down.

  Mac congratulated me and gave me a week off in London. The official story was that Sir Robert had bravely committed suicide to avoid interrogation by the Gestapo. The Germans might have told a different story, but they weren't asked. I never saw Ryland again, but would have been proud to work with him, anytime, had the occasion presented itself.

  Chapter 15

  I'm not particularly tolerant, and I don't really believe that everybody's equal. Depending on what I needed him for, I'll judge a man by his IQ, or the score he makes on the target range, or the speed at which he can take a car around a track; and anybody who tries to tell me that some people aren't brighter than others, or better shots, or faster drivers, is wasting his time. But except for recognition purposes, I've never found the color of a man's skin to be much significance in our line of work, and the idea of killing off a bunch of people just because of a slight chromatic difference or religious belief seemed fairly irrational to me.

  As more and more information leaked out of the German-occupied territories, the full picture of the systematic genocide on the part of Hitler's regime against the Jews became painfully clear. We began getting requests for action against various concentration-camp officials, apparently on the rationalization that they deserved to die for their atrocities, never mind the military importance of the target. It was like we were a new toy in the hands of the bureaucrats, the ones who knew of our existence, and they wanted to expand the rules of the game.

  Mac wasn't playing. "We're not avenging angels," he told us once at our base outside London, "and we're not judges of right and wrong. It would satisfy my soul to sign the death warrant of every concentration-camp official in the Third Reich, for instance, but it wouldn't contribute much towards winning the war. We're not in business to satisfy my soul or anybody else's. Keep that in mind."

  There was, of course, one exception to this rule. Whether to satisfy our souls or prosecute the war, we did try for Hitler himself - that is, certain optimists and egotists among us did, on three different occasions. I had no part in that. It was on a voluntary basis, and I'd taken a look at the preliminary reports on the job and come to the conclusion that it couldn't be done, at least not by me. I wasn't going to get myself killed volunteering for the impossible, although under orders I'll stick my neck out as far as anybody.

  After the third attempt - from which, like the first two, no one returned - counter-intelligence started hearing of queries from the continent, reaching the German espionage apparatus in Britain, concerning the possible existence of an Allied Mordgruppe aimed at Der Fuehrer. This, of course, although a little off the beam, woul
dn't do at all. For the Germans to suspect the existence of anything remotely resembling our organization - whether aimed at Hitler or anybody else - was bad enough; what really worried Mac, however, was the possibility of the rumor getting back to the States.

  All the Germans could do, aside from taking a few precautions, was squawk; but the outraged moralists back home could put us out of business in short order. Killing Nazis was very commendable, to be sure, but it must be done, they'd cry, according to the rules of civilized warfare: this Mordgruppe sort of thing was dreadful, besides being very bad propaganda for our side. I wonder just how many good men and good ideas were sacrificed before the shiny, cellophane-wrapped god of propaganda. There were times when I got the distinct feeling that even winning the damn war was frowned upon because it might have an adverse effect upon our public relations somewhere, perhaps in Germany or Japan.

  Anyway, our activities were sharply curtailed for several months, and all further volunteers for the Big One, as we called it, were told to relax and forget it; henceforth we'd confine our attentions to less conspicuous targets. Mac's worst enemies had always been the gentle folks back home. As he'd said himself once, there wasn't much danger of the Nazis breaking us up, but one softhearted U.S. Senator could do it with a few words. Ironically, it seems to be all right to plan on, and create the machines for, exterminating millions of human beings at a crack, but just to send out a guy to rub out another who's getting to be an active menace, that's considered very immoral and reprehensible. I must say that I don't get it. Why honor and respect a guy who drops a great indiscriminate bomb, and recoil in horror from a guy who shoots a small, selective bullet?