Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

“Captain Leets. There’s just no—”

“Okay, look. Let me give you the real reason you ought to give this guy to us: he’s simply ours. We bought him. You didn’t. You stumbled onto him and don’t even know if you’ve got him. But we bought him with lives. Thirty-four paratroopers checked out on this thing in the Black Forest, twice as many again wounded. And eleven guys in the Forty-fifth Division got nailed back in April. Then there were twenty-five KZ inmates this Repp used up for practice. And finally, an operative of mine, another KZ survivor. He’s at Dachau, in a pit full of stiffs and lime, lovely spot. He deserved better, but that’s what he got. So when I say this Eichmann is mine, because he’s going to give me Repp, then that’s what I mean.”

“It’s not a question of deaths. Men die in this war all the time, Captain”—but not your sort, Leets thought—“but still we’ve got to stick to our procedures. I can’t just… there’s just no way… it’s ridiculous. But—” And then he stopped.

“Oh, hell,” he finally said. He looked away and seemed to breathe deeply. “How old are you?” he finally said to Roger.

“Nineteen, sir,” said Roger.

“A paratrooper. I can see by the boots.”

“Uh, yes, sir,” said Roger.

“Any combat jumps?”

“Six,” Roger lied.

“Young and crazy. Crazy-reckless. Everybody tried to talk you out of it, I bet.”

“Yes, sir,” said Roger.

“But you went anyway, had to show ’em how tough you were, huh?”

“Something like that, sir,” said Roger. “Sicily, the Boot. Into Normandy. The big Holland screw-up. A nasty spell in Bastogne, the Bulge. Some Christmas. Finally the Rhine drop. Varsity, they called it. March.”

That’s only five , Roger, Leets thought. Nobody jumped at Bastogne.

“Oh, and the drop, uh, Captain Leets and Major Outhwaithe mentioned, um, sir, you know, the one—”

“That’s quite a record. Nineteen and six combat drops. What’s it like?”

“Oh, well, um, scary, sir. Real scary. Normandy was the bad one. We came down way off the zone, half the guys in my stick went into water, Germans, see, had flooded the place, pictures didn’t, um, show it, and they drowned. Anyway, I was one of the lucky ones that hit on high ground. Then: confusion. Lots of light, flares, tracers. Big stuff going off. Like the Fourth of July, only prettier, but more dangerous—”

Jesus Christ, thought Leets.

“—but then we got formed up and moved out. First Germans we saw were so close you could smell them. I mean, there they were, right on top of us. I had one of those M-threes, you know, sir, the grease gun they call ’em, and BADDDADDDADDAAADDDAAA! Just knocked ’em down, never knew what hit ’em.”

“You know,” the major said, leaning back in his chair, staring absently off into space, “sometimes I don’t feel I’ve actually been in the war at all, the real war. I suppose I should be grateful. And yet in ten years, twenty years, people will talk about it, ask questions, and I won’t have the faintest idea what to say. I don’t think I ever even saw any Germans, except for the prisoners, and they just look like people or something. I saw some ruins. Once I did take a look through somebody’s binoculars at the Ruhr pocket. Real enemy territory. But mainly it’s been a job or something, paper work, details, administration, just normal life, except there are no women, the food’s lousy and everybody’s dressed the same.”

“Major—” started Leets.

“I know, I know. What’s your name, Sergeant?”

“Roger Evans.”

“Roger. Well, Roger, you’ve packed a lot into your nineteen years, I salute you. Anyway, Captain Leets, this is my war. I can see you have no respect for it. Fine, but still somebody’s got to do the paper business. So while you won’t understand and won’t respect it, nevertheless let me tell you I’m about to do a very courageous thing. Fact is, the CIC brass hates you OSS types. Don’t ask me why. So when I tell you where the officers are, I want you to understand how brave I’m being. No, it’s not a combat jump, but it’s a big risk in its own right. Name of the place is Pommersfelden Castle, outside Bamberg, another sixty or so clicks on up the road. Schloss Pommersfelden, in German. A very ornate place, on Route Three, south of the city. I’ll call them and tell them you’ve got approval. If you leave in the morning, you should get there by late afternoon. The roads are terrible, tanks, men, just a mess. Columns of prisoners. Terrible.”

“Thank you, sir. Would that mean—”

“Yes, of course. Eichmann. We picked him up in Austria last week. If you can get anything out of him, fine, swell. We tried and came up with nothing except the remarkable fact he was following orders. Now, please. Get out of here. Don’t hang around. Okay? God help me if they ever find out about this.”

The drive the next morning was murder. The tanks were bad enough, and the convoys even worse, interminable lines of deuce-and-a-halfs, sometimes two abreast, struggling southward to keep up with the rapidly advancing front; but worst of all were the Wehrmacht prisoners. There were thousands of them, men in Chinese numbers, marching—rather, meandering sluggishly—to the rear in battalion-sized formations, usually guarded by one or two MP’s at either end in a Jeep. The Germans were surprisingly rude, considering their position, insolent, sullen crowds who milled in the road like sheep, stunting progress. Roger again and again had to slow the Jeep to a crawl, honking and cursing, while Leets stood in the back shouting “Raus, raus,” and waving madly, and still they refused to part except at the nudge of a fender. At one point, Leets pulled his Thompson submachine gun from the scabbard mounted slantwise off the front seat, and made a dramatic gangster’s gesture out of tossing the bolt; they moved for that , all right.

Finally, beyond Feuchtwangen, the prisoners seemed to thin, and Roger really belted the Jeep along. Yet Leets was not at all happy. He had the terrible sensation of heading in the wrong direction, for if, as they had speculated, Repp’s target had to be to the south, beyond the reach of the Americans, here they were slugging their way north, putting themselves farther and farther out of the picture.

“I hope this is right,” Leets said anxiously to Tony.

Tony, morose lately, only grunted.

“We don’t really have a choice, do we?” Leets wanted reassurance.

“Not a bit of it,” Tony said, and continued to stare blackly ahead.

They had to swing in a wide arc around the ruined city of Nuremberg and that ate up more time. It lay in the distance under a pall of smoke, though it had not been bombed in months. Ruins were not so remarkable, yet the scope here was awesome. But Leets paid no attention; he used these hours to meditate on Repp.

“You’re talking to yourself,” said Tony.

“Huh? Oh. Bad habit.”

“You were saying Repp, Repp, Repp over and over again.”

At that moment a fighter plane, a P-51, screamed low and suddenly over them, a hundred or so feet up, almost blowing them off the road, Roger letting the Jeep slew a bit before regaining control. The plane rolled over in a lazy corkscrew turn at 380 miles an hour, star white, flaps trim, bubble sparkly with sunlight, whooping kid-like in the pale German sky.

“Jesus, crazy bastard,” yelled Leets.

“He almost strafed us,” yelled Roger.

“Bastard, ought to be reported, I just may report him, flying like that,” Leets muttered in heated righteousness.

“Hey: we’re here,” Roger announced.

“On a wing and prayer,” said Tony.

They pulled into the grounds of Schloss Pommersfelden.