Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

The young soldier grabbed him roughly by the arm, pulling him up with great disgust, the STG momentarily lowered in the effort, and as Repp was twisted upward he laid the P-38 barrel against the youth’s throat and shot it out; then, as the boy fell back, very calmly Repp pivoted, steadying the pistol with the other hand under the butt, and shot the young officer in the face, disintegrating it. He shot two other men off the hull of the self-propelled gun where they sat, paralyzed, and dropped the pistol. He stood and pried the STG from the tight fingers of the first soldier, who lay back behind sightless eyes, slipping into coma, his throat spasming empty of blood. He wouldn’t last long.

Repp’s finger found the fire-selector rod of the assault rifle just above the trigger guard and he rammed it to full automatic, at the same time palming back the bolt. Three more SS men careered from behind the vehicle. He shot from the hip without thinking, one long burst, half the magazine, knocking them flat in a commotion of dust spurts. He ran another burst across the bodies just in case, the earth puffing and fanning from the strike of the bullets.

Repp stood back, the weapon hot in his hand. The whole thing had taken less than five seconds. He waited, ready to shoot at any sign of motion, but there was none.

What waste, what sheer waste! Good men, loyal men, doing their jobs. Dead in a freak battleground accident. He was profoundly depressed.

Blood everywhere. It speckled the skin of the self-propelled gun, swerving jaggedly down to the fender, where it collected in a black pool. It soaked the uniforms of the two men who lay before the big vehicle, and puddles of it gathered around the three he’d taken in the last long burst. Repp turned. The boy he’d shot in the throat lay breathing raspily.

Repp knelt and lifted the boy’s head gently. Blood coursed in torrents from the throat wound, disappearing inside the collar of his jacket. He was all but finished, his eyes blank, his face gray and calm.

“Father. Father, please,” he said.

Repp reached and took his hand and held it until the boy was gone.

He stood. He was alone in the road, and disgusted. The engineers had fled.

Goddamn! Goddamn!

It made him sick. He wanted to vomit.

They would pay. The Jews would pay. In blood and money.

Ugh!

Roger sat in his Class A’s on the terrace of the Ritz. Before him was a recent edition of the New York Herald Tribune , the first page given to a story by a woman named Marguerite Higgins, who had arrived with the 22d Regiment, some motorized hot shots, at the concentration camp of Dachau.

Roger almost gagged. The bodies heaped like garbage, skinny sacks, ribs stark. The contrast between that place and this, Paris, Place Vendôme, the ritzy Ritz, the city shoring up for an imminent VE-Day, girls all over the place, was almost more than he could take.

Leets and Outhwaithe were there, poking about. Roger was due back in a day or so.

But he had come to a decision: he would not go.

I will not go .

No matter what.

He shivered, thinking of the slime at Dachau. He imagined the smell. He shivered again.

“Cold?”

“Huh? Oh!”

Roger looked up into the face of the most famous tennis player of all time.

“You’re Evans?” asked Bill Fielding.

“Ulp,” Roger gulped spastically, shooting to his feet. “Yes, sir, yes, sir, I’m Roger Evans, Harvard, ’47, sir, probably ’49 now, with this little interruption , heh, heh, number-one singles there my freshman year.”

The great man was a head taller than Roger, still thin as an icicle, dressed in immaculate white that made his tan seem deeper than burnished oak; he was in his late forties but looked an easy thirty-five.

Roger was aware that all commerce on the busy terrace had stopped; they were looking at Bill Fielding, all of them—generals, newspapermen, beautiful women, aristocrats, gangsters. Fielding was a star even in the exotic confines of the Ritz. And Roger knew they were also looking at him .

“Well, let me tell you how this works. You’ve played at Roland Garros?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, we’ll be on the Cour Centrale of course—”

Of course, thought Roger.

“—a clay surface, in an amphitheater, about eight thousand wounded boys, I’m told, plus the usual brass—you’ve played in front of crowds, no nerve problems or anything?”

Roger? Nervous?

“No, sir,” he said. “I played in the finals of the Ivies and I made it to the second round at Forest Hills in ’44.”

Fielding was not impressed.

“Yes, well, I hope not. Anyway, I usually give the boys a little talk, using Frank as a model, show them the fundamentals of the game. The idea is first to entertain these poor wounded kids but also to sell tennis. You know, it’s a chance to introduce the game to a whole new class of fan.”

Yeah, some class, most of ’em just glad they didn’t get their balls blown off in the fighting, but he nodded intently.

“Then you and Frank will go two sets, three maybe, depends on you.” Roger did not like at all the assumption here that he was the sacrificial goat in all this. “Then you and I, Frank and Major Miles, our regular Army liaison, will go a set of doubles, just to introduce them to that. Agreeable?”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Fielding. Uh, I saw you at Forest Hills in ’31. I was just a kid—” Oops, that was a wrong thing to say.

Fielding glowered. “Not a good tournament for me.”

“Quarters. You played Maurice McLaughlin.”

Fielding’s face lit up at the memory of the long-ago match; he was just coming off his prime then, his golden years, and still had great reserves of the good stuff, the high-octane tennis, left. “Oh, yes, Maurie. Lots of power, strength. But somehow lacking… Three and love, right?”

He remembers?

“That’s right, sir.”

“Yes, well, I hope you’ve got more out there than poor Maurie,” said Fielding disgustedly.

“Uh, I’ll sure try,” said Roger. Fielding was certainly blunt.

“All right. You’ve got transportation out to Auteuil, I assume.”

“Yes, sir, the Special Services people have a car and—”

Fielding was not interested in the details. “Fine, Sergeant, see you at one,” and he turned and began to stride forcefully away, the circle opening in awe.

“Uh. Mr. Fielding,” said Roger, racing after. His heart was pounding but once out at the Stade, he’d never have a chance.

“Yes?” said Fielding, a trifle annoyed. He had a long nose that he aimed down almost like the barrel of a rifle. His eyes were blue and pale and unwavering.

“Frank Benson. He’s good, I hear.”

“My protégé. A future world champion, I hope. Now if—”

“I’m better,” blurted Roger. There. He’d said it.

Fielding’s face lengthened in contempt. He seemed to be turning purple under the tan. He was known for his towering rages at incompetence, lack of concentration, quitters, the overbrash, the slow, the blind, the halt and the lame. Roger smiled bravely and forged ahead. He knew that here, as on the court, to plant your sneakers was to die. Attack, attack: close to the net, volley away for a kill.

“I can beat him. And will, this afternoon. Now I just want you to think about this. Continuing this tour with someone second-best is gonna kinda take the fun out of it, I’d say.”

The silence was ferocious.

Roger thrust on. “Now if I bury him, if I pound him, if I shellac him—” He was prepared to continue with colorful metaphors for destruction for quite some time, but Fielding cut him off.