Stephen Hunter: The Master Sniper

There was no moon. The night was dark and pure, pressing down. The prisoners spread out in a line and faced back toward the Germans.

“It’s in front of you boys, brass, tons of it. Have to get it up before the snow.”

Snow? It was clear tonight.

Shmuel obediently worked his fingers over the frozen ground, found a shell. He found another. It was so cold out. He looked around. The guards had left. The prisoners were alone in the field. The trees were a dark blur in the far distance. Stars towered above them, dust and freezing gas and spinning firewheels. Far off, unreachable. The field was another infinity. It seemed to stretch forever. They were all alone.

“Hey, he’s sleeping,” said someone, laughing.

Another man slid himself carefully on the ground, shoulders flat to the earth.

“You jokers are going to get us all in trouble.” The same voice laughed.

Another lay down.

Another.

They fell relaxed, turned in slightly, tucking the knees under, seeming to pause at the waist then gently lurching forward.

Shmuel stood.

“They’re shooting us,” somebody said quite prosaically. “They’re shoo—” The sentence stopped on a bullet.

Prayers disturbed the night; there was no other sound.

A bullet struck the man closest to him in the throat, driving him backward. Another, slumping, began to gurgle and gasp as his lungs flooded. But most perished quickly and silently, struck dead center, brain or heart.

It is here. The night has come, Shmuel thought. Nacht, nacht , pressing in, claiming him. He always knew it would come and now it was here. He knew it would be better to close his eyes but could not.

A man ran until a bullet found him and punched him to the ground. A man on his knees had the top of his head blown off. Drops landed wet and hot on Shmuel.

He alone was standing. He looked around. Someone was moaning. He thought he heard some breathing. It had taken less than thirty seconds. The shooting was all over now.

He stood in the middle of the field, surrounded by corpses. Now he was really alone.

A shape in the dark moved. Then others. Shmuel could see soldiers picking their way toward him in the darkness. He stood very still. The Germans began to kneel at the bodies.

“Right in the heart!”

“This one in the head. That Repp fellow really can shoot, eh?”

“Hold that noise down, damn you,” cried a voice Shmuel recognized as the pipe smoker’s. “The officers will be out here soon.”

A soldier was standing six feet from him.

“What? Say, who’s that?” the man said in bewilderment.

“Hauser, I said keep the noise down. The offi—”

“He’s alive!” bellowed the soldier, and began to tear at his gun.

Shmuel willed himself to run. But he couldn’t.

Then he was fleeing blindly across the field.

“Damn, I saw a prisoner.”

“Where?”

“Stop that fellow. Stop that man.”

“Shoot him. Shoot him.”

“Where, I don’t see a damned thing.”

Other voices mingled in confusion. A shot rang out, loud because it was so close. More shouts.

Shmuel had just made it into the trees when the lights came on. The Germans were pinned in a harsh, white glare, losing more seconds. Shmuel caught a glimpse of the Shoemaker moving fast into the light, automatic gun in one hand. A whistle shrilled. More lights flickered on. There was a siren.

It was at this moment, as he seized a moment’s rest, that a revelation hit him. A moment of perfect, shimmering lucidity enveloped him and a truth that had these many months been just beyond knowing at last stood revealed. His heart tripped in excitement.

But no time now. He turned and lurched into the forest. He began to run. Branches cut at him like sabers. Once he tripped. He could hear Germans behind him, much commotion and light; the glare of heavy arc lamps filled the sky. He thought he heard airplanes too, at any rate some kind of heavy engine, trucks perhaps or motorcycles.

Then the lights were out, or gone. He was utterly confused and quite frightened. How long had he been gone and how far had he traveled? And where was he going? And, would he be caught? Miraculously, his feet seemed to have found a path in the heavy undergrowth. He wanted badly to rest but knew he couldn’t. Thank God the food and labor had given him strength for all this, and the coat the warmth. He was a lucky fellow. He plunged on.

The sun was just up when Shmuel finally lay down in the silence of the great forest. He lay shuddering convulsively. He seemed to have come to a vault in the trees, a cathedral of space formed by interlocking branches. The silence was thunderous in here; he interrupted it only with his breathing. He felt himself at last escaping into sleep.

His final thought was not for his deliverance—who could question such caprices?—but for his discovery.

Meisterschuster , master shoemaker, he heard, or thought he’d heard. But the boy was a North German, he spoke fast and clipped and the circumstances of the moment were intense. Now Shmuel realized the fellow had said something just a syllable shy of Meisterschuster . He’d said der Meisterschütze .

The Master Sniper.

Caparisoned in elegant damp Burberry, imperially slim, impossibily dapper, with just the faintest smudge of ginger moustache to set off his boyish though firm features, a British major named Antony Outhwaithe bore down on a large target that hunched behind a typewriter in an upper-story office.

“Hello, chum,” called the major, knowing the American hated the chum business, which by now, winter of ’45, had in London become quite tiresome, “greetings from Twelveland.”

The American looked up; a bafflement fell across his open features, just the merest foreboding of confusion.

His name was Leets and he was a captain in the Office of Strategic Services. He wore olive drab wool and silver bars and looked unhappy. His crew cut had grown out thatchily and his face had accumulated pockets and wattles of fat. He had just been typing the final draft of what was certain to be the most unread document in London that month, a report on the new grip configuration of the Falschirmjaeger-42 , the German short-stroke paratroop carbine.

“Something right up your alley,” the major sang out gleefully, and without fear of retribution. He enjoyed considerable advantage over the bloke: he was smaller and a few years older to begin with, cut on roughly half the scale. He was quicker, wittier, more ironic, better connected. His employers, the Special Operation Executive of MI-6, were a better bunch than Leets’s; and finally, he’d once upon a time saved the American’s life. That was back in the shooting war, in June of ’44.

Leets, a beat behind already, queried in his reedy Midwestern voice, “Small arms, you mean?”

“That is what you do in the war, is it not?” asked Tony.

Leets ignored the sarcasm and received from Tony’s briefcase a tatty-looking scrap of yellow paper, almost the texture of parchment, as though it had passed through many hands.

“Been around, huh?” Leets said.

“Yes, lots of chaps have seen it. It’s not terribly interesting. Still, since it is guns and bullets, I thought you might care to have a look.”

“Thanks. Looks like a—”

“It’s a telex.”

“Yeah, some kind of shipping order or something.” He scanned the thing. “Haenel, eh? Funny. STG forty-fours.”

“Funny, yes. But significant? Or not? You’ll give us your evaluation, of course.”

“I may have some things to say about it.”

“Good.”

“How fast?”

“No rush, chum. By eight tonight.”