Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

Vollmerhausen not only knew that it wasn’t his fault the prisoner had escaped, he knew whose fault it was. It was Captain Schaeffer’s fault. The man was incompetent. Schaeffer was involved in most things that went wrong at Anlage Elf. He’d seen the type before, a real SS fanatic, sullen and stupid, a brutal, suspicious Nazi peasant. Vollmerhausen had explained this very carefully to anybody who cared to listen, though not many of them did.

Now he was going to explain it to Repp.

“If,” he began, “if Captain Schaeffer’s men had been adequately trained, had reacted quickly, had treated this whole enterprise as something other than a holiday rest camp, then the prisoner could never have escaped. Instead they blunder about like comedians in a farce, shooting at each other, screaming, turning on lights, hooting and tooting. A disaster. I thought the Waffen SS, especially the famed Totenkopfdivision , had a reputation for efficiency. Why, the most inept conscriptees—old men and youngsters—could have performed better.” He sat back smugly. He’d really told them. He’d really let them have it.

Repp sat, toying with something at his desk. He did not appear particularly impressed. He certainly could be a cold chap.

But Schaeffer, there too, rose to his own defense.

“If,” he replied, talking straight to Repp, “there had been no”—he pronounced the next words with special precision, knowing how they hurt— “machine failure , if Herr Ingenieur-Doktor had been able to get his gadget to do its job—”

Gadget?

“Slander! Slander! I will not be slandered! I will not be slandered.” He rose, red-faced, from the chair.

Repp waved him down.

“So that the Obersturmbannführer had been able to take out his targets as the mission specifications call for—”

“There was no machine failure,” screamed Vollmerhausen hysterically. He was always being slandered, lied about. He knew people called him a kike behind his back. “I deny, deny, deny. We checked the equipment until we were blue in the face. It had integrity. Integrity. Yes, problems, we work around the clock, the Waffen SS should work half so hard, problems with weight, but the machine works. Vampir works.”

“The fact remains,” insisted the young captain—some men just could not accept defeat gracefully—“the fact remains, and no Yid argument is going to change it, that Vampir displayed twenty-five targets and there were twenty-six subhumans out there.”

It was obvious. “He slipped away before, don’t you see?” said Vollmerhausen. “He slipped out on your men before. I’m told he was a Jew, an educated fellow. He must have realized something was up and in the moments—”

“He was seen leaving the field, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor,” Repp said quietly. “And fired upon.”

“Yes, well,” Vollmerhausen sputtered, “he’d obviously, well, it’s clear that he separated himself before and so he wasn’t within the range of the mechanism.”

“Herr Obersturmbannführer, the men swear he was standing among the corpses.”

“The main question must be,” Vollmerhausen bellowed, cork-screwing insanely out of his seat, “why wasn’t the area fenced? My people slave into the night over Vampir, yet the Waffen SS is unable to construct a simple fence to hold a Jew in.”

“All right, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor,” said Repp.

“A simple fence to stop a Jew who—”

Repp said, “Please.”

Vollmerhausen had several points yet to make and he’d just thought of five or six of them when Repp’s stare fell across him. Something quite frosty in it. Extraordinary. The eyes cool, almost blank. The demeanor so perfectly calm, almost unnaturally calm. Repp had an incredible talent for stillness.

“I was simply—but no matter,” Vollmerhausen said.

“Thank you,” said Repp.

Another silence. Repp was masterful with silences, and he let this one drag on for several seconds. The air in the room was dead. Vollmerhausen shifted in his chair uneasily. Repp kept it so hot in here; in the corner the stove blazed away merrily. Repp, in faded camouflages, made them wait while he took out and, with elaborate ceremony, lit one of those Russian cigarettes he smoked.

Then finally he said, “Of the Jew, I have decided to let the matter drop. He’s somewhere in the forest, dead. They are not a hearty, physical race. They have no will to survive. Doom is their natural fate, and in the forest he’ll locate his own quickly. Therefore, I’m recalling the patrols.”

“Yes, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” said Captain Schaeffer. “Immediately.”

“Good. Now as for Vampir.” He turned to Vollmerhausen.

Vollmerhausen licked his lips. They were dry. His mouth was dry. He returned to a familiar, discomfiting litany: What am I doing here, locked up in a wild forest with SS lunatics? It was a long way from the WaPrüf 2 testing ground outside Berlin.

“As for Vampir, I’m afraid I must require another test, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor.”

Vollmerhausen swallowed. So that was it, then. Another load of Jews would be brought in, fattened up, shot down.

“More prisoners, Herr Obersturmbannführer?” he asked.

“That’s all finished, I’m afraid,” said Repp. “Which I’m sure makes you happy, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor.”

“It was unpleasant, yes, killing—”

“You must have a hard heart for these hard times,” said Repp. “You’d lose your uneasiness around death in a day in the East. But the Reichsführer informs me that the camps are no longer in the disposal business.”

“Animals, then,” said Vollmerhausen. “Pigs would do it. Or cows. About the—”

“I think not. Vampir must locate people, not animals, at four hundred meters’ range. And it must not weigh more than forty kilos. Those are the limits.”

Vollmerhausen moaned. Back to weight again. “I don’t know where I’m going to get ten more kilos. We’ve taken off all the insulation, we’ve got the lead sulfide down to a minimum without sacrificing resolution.” He looked desperate. “It’s that damn battery.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way. After all, you’ve got the best men and equipment in the Reich. Far better than up at Kummersdorf.” As he spoke he’d begun to tinker again with a piece of metal or something on his desk, an innocent, entirely reflexive habit.

“We’ve tried everything. A smaller battery won’t put out the necessary current. A—”

“I’m sure a great miracle will happen here,” Repp said, taking great pleasure in the phrase.

Vollmerhausen, fascinated, could see the thing he worked in his fingers. It was a small black cube, metallic, with a spindle through it. But that’s all.

“Miracles cannot be requisitioned like machine pistols, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”

“You’ll do your best, I’m certain.”

“Of course, sir. But forty kilos is so little.”

“I just want to explain the importance here. I want to emphasize it. Our actions are only part of a larger campaign, involving agents in other countries even. Still, we are the most important; we are the fulcrum . Do you understand? Great and heavy responsibilities have descended upon us. This is a privilege rarely given soldiers. Think about it.”

He paused, to let the grave information sink in.

“And so for the test,” he said.

“Yes, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Vollmerhausen said.

“I think I’ve found an unlimited supply of targets for you. A whole world full of targets. I’ve just had word from Berlin. One hundred miles north of here, the Americans have crossed the Rhine. They’re on our soil, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor. It seems that I must demand that you quickly find a way to knock those ten kilos off Vampir. And then you and I are going hunting.”