David Healey - Winter Sniper

“You’ll thank me later,” she said.

They roared off into the winter night.

Ty was where any self-respecting man would be after having his heart crushed by a fallen movie star while being almost simultaneously chewed out by the supreme allied commander in Europe. Kit Henderson sat beside him at the hotel bar and was pouring each of them a third large scotch when a frantic MP came looking for them.

“Sir, one of the prisoners just escaped.”

Ty jumped up. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s gone, sir.”

“Goddamnit!” He was a little woozy from the Johnnie Walker. “I want an extra guard posted around the sniper. And I mean now!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Don’t worry, she can’t go anywhere in this snow,” Kit said. “It’s better than a fence around this place.”

That’s when they heard the muffled sound of snowmobile engines. Ty turned to his friend. “You were saying?”

“Christ.”

They ran for the nearest door, the same one they had gone out of that morning when sending Crandall to his death in the snow. The cold night air sobered Ty instantly. In the distance, he could see the lights of not one but two snowmobiles winking at them. Following them wasn’t a simple matter of jumping onto the nearest snow machine. For starters, they didn’t have coats, hats or gloves and were already shivering in the arctic-like air.

“Come on,” Ty said, and turned back inside. “We won’t do any good if we freeze to death before we get out of sight of the hotel.”

Before they could even get back indoors, another MP came running out to find them. “It’s the sniper, sir. He’s gone too.”

Even over the roar of the snowmobile, Hess sensed that someone was giving chase. He looked over his shoulder. Far behind them he could see the single headlights of several snowmobiles. Maybe half a dozen. Coming fast.

He tapped Eva on the shoulder. “Hurry!”

In response, Eva hit the accelerator and the machine surged forward. She handled the snowmobile well. Zumwald raced ahead of them, blazing a trail through the fresh snow. With their own machine nearly running up on top of him, Zumwald put on a fresh burst of speed.

The trouble was that it was difficult to navigate the woods and fields at night with anything resembling speed. Their headlights stabbed into the darkness but that meant they could really only see the next fifty feet or so clearly. They had only a vague idea of what lay farther ahead. The stars were out, twinkling in an icy, clear sky, but the waning moon hung like a bright fingernail above the mountaintops. The contrast between trees or the occasional boulder and the brightness of the snow was obvious, but that was about it. The real danger was running into a wire fence half-hidden by a drift. Zumwald had already snagged his arm on a barbed wire fence and left part of his jacket behind.

Their pursuers had the advantage of simply following a trail. Hess glanced behind him again, noticing that the headlamps looked closer.

“Keep up with Zumwald!” he shouted to Eva.

“Shut up! Do you think this is easy?”

Eva had to wrestle with the machine, which had handlebars like a motorcycle behind a windscreen. His own shoulder was too shot up to be much use.

They came out into an open field and Zumwald put on a fresh burst of speed. Hess watched with satisfaction as their pursuers’ headlights grew smaller. Shutting off their own headlights would have made them less of a target, but it would have been suicide trying to run through the darkness for any distance. Besides, it would be easy enough for the others to follow their tracks through the snow. Hess realized they could run, but they could not hide.

They crossed another field, churning through the pristine snow. This field had a kind of island in the center where a collection of boulders had forced the farmer to plant his crop around it. Small trees and brush had grown up between the rocks. A sudden idea formed itself in Hess’s mind.

“Flash your lights and head toward those rocks,” he shouted over the engine.

Eva did just that. Up ahead, Zumwald noticed the flashing headlight and steered back toward them. Both snowmobiles pulled up at the edge of the island and Hess motioned for them to switch off the engines. The sudden silence was almost deafening, but in the distance they could hear the whine of the oncoming snowmobiles.

“Just like a posse,” Zumwald noted glumly.

Hess did not know the word. “What is that?”

“A hanging party.”

“Not if I can help it,” he said, and swung off the machine. Pain shot through him with every move but he tried not to let it show. He reached for the rifle strapped to the side of the machine. “I am going to get in among those rocks and wait for your posse. You two get back on those machines and get out of here.”

“What are you talking about?” Zumwald demanded. “We are not leaving you here.”

“He’s right,” Eva said. She took him by the arm. “You are being foolish.”

The look Hess gave her made Eva let go. In the starlight his pale eyes almost seemed to glow. “I can’t get far with this wound. I have a rifle. There is nothing else I need. Now go before they get any closer.”

Zumwald shook his head. “But you can’t —”

“That is an order,” Hess snapped.

Zumwald stared at him, and then got back on the snowmobile. Eva did the same. They lowered their goggles and roared off across the field.

Hess did not wait to watch them go, but crawled in among the rocks and aimed the rifle at where their pursuers would ride out of the trees into the field.

Ty never heard the shot, but only saw the rider to his left tumble off the snowmobile. He thought at first that the man had lost his balance. Then he noticed Yancey jerk his machine around and roll off, hunkering down behind the snowmobile. Ty still didn’t know what was going on until he looked ahead and saw a muzzle flash. Another rider fell and Ty did just as Yancey had, bringing his machine to rest near the sniper, who already had his rifle settled across the seat of the snowmobile and his eye pressed to the telescopic sight.

“What the hell is going on?” Ty demanded, panting. In the field around him, the two remaining riders spun their machines to a halt and hunkered behind them. In the quiet, Ty saw another muzzle flash. This time he heard the crack of the rifle.

“Ambush,” Yancey muttered. “We rode right into them. Son of a bitch.”

Ty struggled to see anything, but could only make out clumps of rock and snow-covered brush in the copse up ahead. He immediately grasped that they were pinned down out here in the open. If they so much as moved, the German sniper would have a target. “Stay down!” he shouted. Then to Yancey “Can you see him?”

“Tricky Kraut bastard,” Yancey said, almost under his breath. “Got hisself dug in like a tick.”

Being careful to keep his head down, Ty worked his .45 free of its holster and pointed it at the copse of trees and boulders. He got two hands around the pistol grip and tensed his shoulders, ready to fire. “I saw his muzzle flash before. He’s somewhere to the left of that big rock.”

“Captain, you might as well put that away,” Yancey said. “He’s out of range and you’ll just make yourself a target when he sees your muzzle flash.”

“Do you have any better ideas, Sergeant?”

“Put your hat on that Colt and stick it up in the air like you’re taking a peek. Oldest trick in the world, but I don’t reckon this Kraut is as smart as he thinks he is.”

Ty did as Yancey suggested, his hands shaking as he pulled off the wool ski cap. Just the cold, he told himself. “Anything?”