David Healey: Winter Sniper

“Yes, sir.” Ty kept his back ramrod straight.

“I don’t care so much about myself. I’ll take my chances like any soldier. But it’s Mamie I’m concerned about. She could have been killed. Frankly, I don’t think she really understood what war was about until what happened this morning. She’s pretty shaken up.”

“Please give her my apologies, sir. I never meant —”

Ike waved him to silence the way another man might shoo a fly. “Captain, I am well aware that you saved my life in Washington. Putting yourself between me and a sniper’s bullet makes you three parts brave and one part stupid. What you did today was the other way around. I want you to see that Sergeant Crandall gets a proper burial at Arlington. He didn’t have a wife or children, so that much is a blessing. And the next time you intend to protect my life, let me know. My wife and I will be in a lot less danger. Now, dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ty found Joe Durham and Kit in the hallway. Durham disappeared back into Ike’s suite, but Kit lingered for a moment.

“You’re not wearing manacles, so it looks like Ike decided not to have you court martialed,” Kit said.

“Yeah.” Ty realized he was soaked through with sweat.

“You can thank Mamie for that.” Kit lowered his voice and whispered conspiratorially, “You know how rocky things have been between her and Ike. When you accidentally call your wife by your lover’s name you end up sleeping on the couch. Poor Mamie needed a lot of comforting after what happened today. The kind that happens with the bedroom door closed, if you know what I mean. Ike ought to give you a medal for saving his marriage.”

Rumors flew around the hotel kitchen like dinner plates about how a German sniper had been caught trying to assassinate General Eisenhower. Then there was the mysterious and beautiful spy locked in her room upstairs. Zumwald listened as he worked peeling potatoes and scrubbing the dinnertime pots and pans until almost ten o’clock that night. There seemed to be an awful lot of dirty dishes because the day’s excitement had made everyone hungry and the kitchen staff was shorthanded because of people not being able to get to work through the snow.

Hess , he thought. You’ve gone and done it now .

It was really all the Western novels he had read that got him thinking about breaking Hess out. In a lot of stories the bad guy or sometimes the hero got himself locked up in the local jail on charges of being a horse thief or a murderer. There was always a hanging threatened in the morning. So the condemned man’s gang would break him out of jail. Sometimes they dynamited the wall or used a horse and a rope to pull the bars off the windows. Many times the jailor conveniently fell asleep and somebody — generally a woman who had it bad for the soon-to-be-hanged hero or villain — slipped in and stole the keys right off his belt.

Peeling potatoes and scrubbing plates, Zumwald thought about that. In a Western novel the escape plan always worked and the gang rode off with six guns blazing at the inevitable posse. But this was real life. There were machine guns and Jeeps instead of revolvers and horses. Plus there was never a foot of snow covering the ground in the stories Zumwald read.

Zumwald thought some more about the snow and on his smoke break he walked out back to where the resort’s snowmobiles were kept. With a little imagination, you could almost see yourself riding off into the sunset on one of those.

When a guard finally got around to coming by the kitchen to pick up some dinner for the prisoner, Zumwald volunteered to carry it. He shrugged on his coat and slipped a rolling pin into one deep pocket. He had considered one of the kitchen knives, but he wasn’t interested in killing anyone if he could help it.

Hess was being kept in a guest cottage not far from the actual hotel. Zumwald followed the guard; they trudged out on a path of trampled snow. When the guard bent down to unlock the door, Zumwald hit him on the back of the head with the rolling pin. That was another trick he’d read about to knock someone out, but in real life it didn’t quite work. The guard fell to his knees but started to get up. Zumwald hit him again, and this time the guard slumped into the snow.

“Sorry,” he muttered, then stepped inside the cell. Hess was supine on a cot and he sat up with some effort. Zumwald was concerned; he hadn’t considered that Hess might be hurt. The man seemed so invincible. “Can you get up?”

“Zumwald. What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too. I’m here to get you out of this place.”

“You are a fool. Get out of here while you can.”

“Too late. I already hit the guard over the head.”

“Well, why spoil the moment.” Hess got stiffly to his feet. With Zumwald supporting him by the arm, they made it to the door. At their feet, the guard groaned. “Have you got a plan?”

“Ever ride a snowmobile?”

“Take his rifle and his belt,” Hess ordered. The coldness in the sniper’s voice almost made Zumwald regret his decision. “He’ll have spare ammunition.”

“All right.” In the distance, the lights of the hotel sparkled.

“Where is Eva Von Stahl being held?” Hess asked.

“The spy? I heard about her. She’s in her room under guard. I know because they sent food up.”

“You have to get her. I’ll wait outside.”

“Are you crazy?” This was not how it worked in a Western.

“We don’t leave German soldiers behind.”

Zumwald was thinking this was not a good idea, especially because Hess had no suggestions for how to get past the guard, but there was no arguing with the sniper. He helped Hess across the snow, thinking how easy it would be simply to walk back into the nice, warm kitchen and throw himself on the mercy of the American authorities. Instead, he left Hess by the snowmobiles and returned to the kitchen. He poured a mug of coffee and placed it in a five hundred degree oven for several minutes. While it heated up, he asked somebody what room the spy was in because he was supposed to take coffee up to the guard. Then he picked up the phone and called Room 203. He told the woman who answered to put on a coat.

Then Zumwald removed the mug from the oven, being careful to use tongs. He placed the mug on a tray and carried it carefully to the service elevator. Thirty seconds later he presented the coffee to the grateful guard outside Room 203.

“Careful,” he warned. “It’s hot.”

Of course, Zumwald neglected to warn the guard just how hot. The poor man left skin on the handle and in his haste to let go managed to spill most of the scalding liquid down the front of his pants. While the man cursed and hopped about in pain, Zumwald unlocked the door. Being something of a movie buff, he instantly recognized the woman who waited on the other side. Her renunciation of Nazi Germany and defection to America was legendary. Zumwald noticed that her idea of winter gear was a fur coat worn with army boots. She was also carrying a suitcase.

“Good God,” Zumwald said. “You?”

“Get moving,” she said, pushing past him. “We haven’t a moment to lose.”

She and Zumwald ran to the service elevator. He was aware of a kind of uproar beginning to build in the hotel as they got off the elevator by the kitchen and dashed out into the snow. Hess had started up two of the snowmobiles and they stood idling while he strapped the rifle across his back and buckled on the ammunition belt. “One for you,” he said to Zumwald, nodding at the other machine. He turned to Eva Von Stahl. “You’ll have to drive.”

Eva nodded, then handed off her suitcase to Zumwald. “Luggage?” He was incredulous.