David Healey - Ardennes Sniper

He dropped to one knee and took aim.

When the other man did not return fire, Von Stenger aimed again, taking his time.

His heart hammering in his chest, Cole ran for the back of the barn, dragging the toboggan along. The rear foundation of the bank barn was several feet above the ground. He tossed down the toboggan, which landed on the snow and immediately began to slide downhill.

Another bullet whipped through the barn, bounced off a rafter, and ricocheted with a whine that made his spine crawl.

The toboggan picked up speed.

Cole jumped and just managed to catch the tail end of the toboggan. He got his knees under him and squatted down. Though it was snowing again, the snow beneath was mostly glazed with ice. With his added weight on the toboggan, it began to pick up speed.

Another shot plucked at the snow inches from where Cole’s hands gripped the front curve of the toboggan.

The toboggan moved fasted on the ice-crusted slow. He was sliding fast toward the road. He leaned one way, then the other, to make the toboggan weave. Another bullet cracked past his ear.

By now, the troops on the road had noticed him. Someone pointed, and a burst of machine gun fire churned up the snow ahead, like a shot across the bow.

“Don’t shoot!” he shouted, but his words whipped back at him.

He gained speed, sliding directly into the guns below.

Lieutenant Mulholland looked up at the burst of machine gun fire, reaching instinctively for his rifle at the same time. He expected to see a tank bearing down on them, but blinked in disbelief at the sight of a soldier on a toboggan.

The soldiers around him were slow to react. They were cobbled together out of stray units, including a few refugees from the Malmedy massacre.

“We could use you with us,” the major in charge had said to Mulholland. “Everything is a goddamn SNAFU, though. Up is down, front is back — nobody knows exactly where the Nazis are or how many there are.”

“What’s your plan?” Mulholland asked.

“To go after the Krauts,” the major said. He wasn’t much older than Mulholland, and etched in his face had the same worry lines that seemed unique to officers. They worried about keeping not just their own socks dry, but everyone else’s, too.

“Sounds like as good a plan as any,” Mulholland agreed.

Now, staring up at the slope above the road, Mulholland thought he had seen everything. But he had never seen a toboggan attack.

“What the hell?” he wondered out loud. He heard another shot, this one from the hill at the top of the field. Snow kicked up beside the toboggan.

Beside him, Vaccaro gasped. “That’s Cole!” he cried. “Tell these dumbasses not to shoot him.”

“Cole?” He squinted.

Without waiting for him, Vaccaro ran toward the Jeep on which was mounted a .50 caliber machine gun. Something had jammed in the feed, but they had just cleared it and were about to shoot again.

“Stop!” he cried. “He’s one of ours!”

Vaccaro pointed at Mulholland, who nodded to confirm what Vaccaro had just said. “Hold your fire! He’s one of ours!” the lieutenant shouted.

Seconds later, the toboggan slid into the road and the rider rolled off, continuing to slide along the frozen road until he crashed into the tires on a stopped truck. The toboggan sailed on into the trees.

The figure got unsteadily to his feet. It was indeed Cole. He was pointing up the hill.

“There’s a Kraut sniper in the barn!”

“You heard the man,” Mulholland shouted. “Light up that barn!”

The machine gun crew had warmed up on the toboggan. The barn was a much easier target. Splinters flew off the sides of the old barn. Incredibly, one of the machine gunners slumped and fell of the Jeep. The German sniper was still at work.

Not for long. The major in charge saw what was happening and shouted orders, waving frantically. The massive barrel of the tank killer swiveled around and took aim at the barn.

Von Stenger rushed the barn in time to see a toboggan sliding away down the steep hillside toward the road. It almost made him laugh to see the American sniper crouched on it, digging into the crusted snow like a paddler in a canoe, desperate for speed. A toboggan ride was for children.

He fired — and missed. The angle from the barn to the sliding toboggan was steep, and he tended to overshoot downhill targets. He chided himself for making such an amateur mistake. To his surprise, he realized that his heart was hammering inside his chest — he had, after all, expected to have to confront the hillbilly in the barn and there was a lot of adrenalin coursing through him.

As he took aim again, this time aiming much lower to compensate for the incline of the hill, he noticed the American troops on the road below. Someone fired a machine gun, churning up the snow around the toboggan, which had picked up speed and flew now across the snow. He surmised that the machine gunner had missed for the same reason he himself had — shooting uphill also required aiming lower. Of course, the machine gunner had the advantage of seeing exactly where his burst was hitting.

Von Stenger fired again, but the toboggan remained a surprisingly hard target to hit as it flew away, weaving this way and that, and shooting downhill was challenging.

Then the toboggan reached the road. He had an opportunity for one more shot. He rested the rifle more carefully against the frame of the door, took a deep breath—

Machine gun fire burst through the barn, leaving the old planks with daylight showing through like a colander. Keeping low, he put the crosshairs on the man behind the machine gun, and fired.

Von Stenger worked the bolt, preparing for another shot, when he noticed that the big muzzle of a tank destroyer was moving in his direction. Seeking him like a large, dark, angry eye.

The barn was about to be turned into kindling by a 15-pound shell traveling at nearly three thousand feet per second.

He got to his feet, ignoring the pain in his leg, and ran like hell.

Cole rolled off the toboggan. He had grown up sliding down his share of snowy hillsides on winter days, but that was for fun. Nobody had been shooting at him. This was just about the wildest sled ride he had ever taken. Mulholland and Vaccaro helped him get unsteadily to his feet. He looked around for other familiar faces. The only one he saw was the Kid’s.

“McNulty? Any chance he made it, after all?”

Mulholland shook his head. “McNulty is dead.”

“I knew it didn’t look good for him, but Christ on a cross, I thought maybe he had a chance.” Cole sighed. “Where’s Jolie at?”

Mulholland hesitated. “She’s been captured by the Germans.”

“What?”

“She and the Kid were coming along the road, hoping to link up with us, and they ran into some Germans instead.”

Cole nodded at the Kid. “They let him go?”

“No, she told him to hide just before the Krauts saw them. She figured her own chances would be better. Once the Germans were gone, the Kid here kept going and found us with this unit—” Mulholland lowered his voice “—which is mostly made up of cooks, clerks and cripples, by the way.”

The Kid walked up, looking like he was about to cry. “It’s all my fault she got captured.”

Cole gave him a long, hard stare, but then looked away and shook his head. “It ain’t your fault, Kid. They would have shot you on sight like those poor bastards at Malmedy. You know these Krauts aren’t taking any soldiers as prisoners. At least they didn’t shoot her on the spot.”

“I’m so sorry, Cole,” Mulholland said.