Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

He pulled himself out of bed and heard his people breathing heavily—drunkenly?—around him. He checked his watch. After four, damn! Had Repp left already? Perhaps. But perhaps there was still time.

It had occurred to Vollmerhausen that he might not have warned Repp about the barrel residue problem. So many details, he’d forgotten just this one! Or had he? But he could not picture a conversation in which he properly explained this eccentricity of the weapon: that after firing fifty or so of the specially built rounds, the residue in the barrel accumulated to such an extent that it greatly affected accuracy. Though Repp would know, probably: he made it his business to know such things. Still…

Vollmerhausen drew a bathrobe around himself and hurried out. It was a warm night, he noticed, as he hurried across the compound to the SS barrack and Repp’s quarters. But what’s this? Stirrings filled the dark—a squad of SS troopers moving about, night maneuvers, a drill or something.

“Sergeant?”

The man’s pipe flared briefly in the dark. “Yes, sir,” he responded.

“Is Obersturmbannführer around? Has he left yet?”

“Ah—no, sir. I believe he’s still in his quarters.”

“Excellent. Thank you.” Ebullient, Vollmerhausen rushed on to the barrack. It was empty, though a light burned behind the door of Repp’s room. He walked among the dark, neat bunks and rapped at the wood.

No answer.

Was Repp off after all?

“Herr Obersturmbannführer?”

Vollmerhausen felt edgy, restless with indecision. Forget the whole silly thing? Go on in, be a bulldog, wait, make sure? Ach!

Hans the Kike pushed through the door. Room was empty. But then he noticed an old greatcoat with private’s chevron across a chair. Part of Repp’s “new identity”? He entered. On the desk lay a heap of field gear: the rumpled blanket, the six Kar ’98 packs on the harness, the fluted gas-mask cylinder, a helmet, in the corner a rifle. Repp clearly hadn’t left yet. Vollmerhausen began to wait.

But he again began to feel restless and uncomfortable. You didn’t want to stand in a man’s room uninvited. Perhaps he should slip out, wait by the door. Ah, what a dilemma. He did not want to do the wrong thing. He turned to stride out, but his sudden spin sent a spurt of commotion into the still air, and a single paper, as though magically, peeled itself off the desk and zigzagged dramatically to the floor. Vollmerhausen hurried over and picked it up to replace it.

It was hotly uncomfortable in the room. A fire blazed in Repp’s stove and the smell of his Russian cigarettes filled the air. Vollmerhausen’s eyes hooked on the GEHEIME KOMMANDOSACHE stamped haphazardly across the page top. The title read “NIBELUNGEN,” the exotic spacing for emphasis, and beneath the subtitle “LATEST INTELLIGENCE SITUATION 27 APR 45.”

He read the first line. The language of the report was military, dry, rather abstract, ostentatiously formal. He had trouble understanding exactly what they were saying.

Vollmerhausen was completely lost. Nuns? A convent? He couldn’t make it out. His heart was pounding so hard he was having trouble focusing. So damned hot in here. Sweat oozed from his hairline. He knew he must put the report down instantly, but he could not. He read on, the last paragraph.

He felt a growth of pain in his stomach. I am part of this? How? Why?

Repp asked, “Find it interesting?”

Vollmerhausen turned. He was not even surprised.

“You simply can’t. We don’t make war on—”

“We make war on our enemies,” said Repp, “wherever we find them. In whatever form. The East would make you strong for such a thing.”

“You could bring yourself to do this?” Vollmerhausen wanted to cry. He was afraid he was going to be sick.

“With honor,” Repp said. He stood there in the dirty tunic of a private soldier, hatless.

“You can’t,” Vollmerhausen said. It seemed to him a most cogent argument.

Repp brought up the Walther P-38 and shot him beneath the left eye. The bullet kicked the engineer’s head back violently. Most of the face was knocked in. He fell onto Repp’s desk, crashing with it to the floor.

Repp put the automatic back into the shoulder holster under the tunic. He didn’t look at the body. He picked the report up from the floor—it had fluttered free from Vollmerhausen’s fingers at the moment of death—and walked to the small stove. He opened the door, inserted it and watched the flames consume it.

He heard a machine pistol. Schaeffer and his people were bumping off Vollmerhausen’s staff.

It occurred to Repp after several seconds that Schaeffer was doing the job quite poorly. He would have to speak to the man. The firing had not let up.

A bullet fractured one of Repp’s windows. Firing leapt up from a dozen points on the perimeter. Repp had an impression of tracers floating in.

Repp hit the floor, for he knew in that second that the Americans had come.

Roger played hard to get at first, demanding wooing, but after five minutes Leets was ready to woo him with a fist, and Roger shifted gears fast. Now it was a production, starring himself, directed by himself, produced by himself, the Orson Welles, tyro genius, of American Intelligence.

“Get on with it, man,” said Outhwaithe.

“Okay, okay.” He smiled smugly, and then wiped it off, leaving a smirk, like a child’s moustache of milk.

“Simple. In two words. You’ll kick yourself.” A grin split his pleasant young face. “The planes.”

“Uh—”

“Yeah,” he amplified. “So much on the route he took, so much on tracing it back, following it back to its source—all wrong. He said he thought he heard planes. Or maybe trucks or motorcycles. But maybe planes. Now —” he paused dramatically, letting an imitation of wisdom, solemn, furrow-browed, surface on his face, “I give this Air Corps guy lessons, colonel in Fighter Ops, once a week, little walking-around money. Anyway , I asked him if some guys bounced some weird kind of night action—under lights, middle of wilderness—say in March sometime, maybe late February, any chance you’d have it on paper?”

Leets was struck by the simple brilliance of it.

“That’s really good, Roger,” he said, at the same time thinking that he himself ought to be shot for not coming up with it.

Roger smiled at the compliment. “Anyway,” he said, handing over a photostatic copy of a document entitled “AFTER ACTION REPORT, Fighter Operations, 1033d Tactical Fighter Group, 8th Air Force, Chalois-sur-Marne.”

Leets tore into the pilot’s prosaic account of his adventures: two fighter-bombers, angling toward the marshaling yards at Munich for a dawn strike, find themselves above a lit field in the middle of what is on the maps pure wilderness. In it German soldiers scurry about. They peel off for one run, after which the lights go away.

“Can we track this?”

“Those numbers—that’s the pilot’s estimated position,” Roger said.

“Thirty-two min southeast Saar, one eighty-six?”

“Thirty-two minutes southeast of the Saarbrücken Initial Point, on a compass heading of one eighty-six degrees.”

“Can we get pictures?”

“Well, sir, I’m no expert but—”

“I can have an RAF photo Spitfire in an hour,” said Tony.

“Roger, get over to R and D and pick up those mock-ups of Anlage Elf they were building, okay?”

“Check,” said Roger.

“Jesus,” said Leets. “If this is—”

“Big if, chum.”

“Yeah, but if , if we can get a positive ID, we can…” He let the sentence trail off.

“Yes, of course,” said Tony. “But first, the Spit. You’ll see the Jew. He’ll be important in this too, of course. He’ll have to come in at some point. He’s necessary.”