David Healey - Ghost Sniper

Killing someone up close was different—harder and colder, somehow. What he had done wasn’t right, but it hadn’t felt wrong, either. Well, it was something to think about, which way a man wanted to be in a war. Would you be like a wild dog and kill just to kill, or more like a wolf—a predator that only hunted when it needed to, but that was feared nonetheless.

Von Stenger was amazed by the view from the church steeple. He could literally see for miles—the long stretch of fields reaching toward the sea to the east, and more countryside dotted with farms and villages all the way to St. Lo. The signs of war were everywhere by now as columns of Allied troops encountered stubborn knots of German resistance. Smoke. Churned earth. Bodies. If only he could have stayed up in the tower, there was no telling how much good he could have done. Targets presented themselves endlessly.

He had been watching for one group in particular, the snipers he had tangled with back in the field. A lucky shot by the Americans had done for Private Schultz, ending his brief career as a sniper, but Von Stenger and Wulf had slipped away with Fritz.

Wulf was stationed at a window in the stairway landing about halfway up. The next-to-useless boy Fritz was downstairs, guarding the entrance to the tower. The thought did not give Von Stenger much confidence, but at least the boy would be able to see the enemy approaching. With any luck, he might fire a few shots that would serve as a warning to Von Stenger and Wulf.

On the road that led toward the sea, Von Stenger caught sight of the group of American snipers who had given him so much trouble. Hallo, alte Freunde. Hello, old friends. He let the crosshairs sweep over them. He picked out the lieutenant leading them as well as the sniper with the flag on his helmet.

Von Stenger was a sufficient student of military history to recognize the flag as a symbol of the Confederate States of America. This sniper would be an American Southerner. He would be tough and resourceful, maybe even a bit of an outlaw. He remembered that the Confederates were called Rebels. Von Stenger was sure this was the man who had outsmarted him back in that field. That was all right. He liked a challenge.

So far, none of the American snipers had bothered with camouflage. More babes in the woods, he thought. There appeared to be a woman with them, which took Von Stenger by surprise. She wore civilian clothes. French Resistance? Well, well. Perhaps the local Gestapo had been too lenient in eliminating the Reich’s enemies. They should have shot a few more Frenchmen—and women—to get the message across.

The tank coming up the road was worrisome. He could tell at a glance that it was no Tiger tank, being much smaller, but it was a threat nonetheless if the Americans opted to open fire on the tower. Behind the tank came what appeared to be a company of infantry, plodding along in the clanking wake of their armored companion.

So many targets, he thought. Where to begin? Von Stenger let the crosshairs float back to the French woman, and then to the sniper with the flag on his helmet. Not yet. His thoughts drifted to Goethe: “It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.”

He settled the crosshairs on the sniper behind them and squeezed off a shot.

Cole looked back to ask Jolie a question and at that moment something zipped past his ear. A split second later he heard the distant crack of a rifle shot.

“Take cover!” the lieutenant shouted, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. Cole felt a little like he had when Norma Jean Elwood caught him skinny dipping in Hog Creek and stole his clothes off the bank. The difference was that Norma Jean was trying to embarrass him, not kill him. He got in close to the hedge and hoped the brush would break up the line of fire. Jolie was right beside him.

Chief wasn’t fast enough getting off the road. The next bullet hit him square in the chest. He had a look of surprise on his face. Chief staggered. Then he sank to his knees in the middle of the dirt road.

“Chief!” Cole ran to him, stooped down, and got one of Chief’s arms across his shoulders. He half dragged, half carried him toward the hedge, but Chief was heavy as hell weighted down with all his gear. Chief’s own legs weren’t moving. Dead weight, thought Cole. Jolie ran out and grabbed Chief’s other arm, and they managed to get him to the hedge, out of sight of the sniper.

Cole shook him. “Chief? Chief?”

But there was no answer. The eyes stared blankly ahead. Looking more closely, Cole could see why—the bullet had struck him in the heart. A 7.62 mm rifle round traveling at thousands of feet per second built up an awful lot of what the Army trainers called kinetic energy. Cole would have described it as being kicked by a mule. Chief never had a chance.

“ Mon dieu, ” Jolie said gently, then reached over and closed Chief’s eyelids. “He is gone.”

There was only one vantage point from which the sniper could have fired. The church steeple. Even so, the steeple was nearly half a mile away. To hit someone in the chest from that distance was goddamn impressive, to say the least. Cole wondered if he could have done that.

Surely, just for a moment, he had been in the sniper’s sights. The thought made his skin crawl.

Lieutenant Mulholland crept along the hedge, out of view of the church steeple, until he reached Cole. “Chief?”

Cole shook his head. “Shot through the heart.”

“That goddamn sniper is in the tower.”

“I know.”

“We’re going to get him,” Mulholland said. “If we don’t, he can shoot up all the woods and fields around here for as far as he can see.”

“All right then,” Cole said. His eyes, which looked like they could have been made of cut glass, were so devoid of emotion that they startled the lieutenant. “Let’s go kill us a sniper.”

There was nothing they could do with Chief’s body but leave it, so they moved it as far off the road as they could so that it wouldn’t get run over by tanks or Jeeps. Lieutenant Mulholland bowed his head and said a prayer, and then in the shelter of the hedgerow, the five of them continued along the road. But now the sniper was busy picking off soldiers in the squad ahead of them. Those soldiers were packed more tightly in the road and had nowhere to go to get out of the line of fire. The sniper was having a field day with them, firing steadily at the crowded troops.

“Like shooting possums in a barrel,” Cole muttered.

“I think you mean fish in a barrel,” Vaccaro said.

“I’ve shot possums, whereas what kind of jackass shoots fish?” Cole said. “Back home, the best way to go fishin’ is with dynamite.”

“That ain’t normal, Reb. Is that what you do for entertainment back there in the hills? The rest of the world just goes to see a movie or maybe a baseball game.”

“Will you both shut up please,” Jolie said in her heavily accented English. “We must stop this German.”

But the Sherman tank was already doing a good job of that. Located at the head of the column, the tank was taking aim at the top of the church steeple. The shells hadn’t been all that accurate, but the scream of the passing rounds must have scared the hell out of the sniper up there taking aim at the soldiers. So far, he hadn’t abandoned his post. His shots, fired at steady intervals, continued to chip away at the American ranks like so many hatchet blows.

Then the Sherman fired again, blowing a chunk out of the church steeple. A tremendous cheer went up from the troops. However, the old stone steeple seemed to dust itself off and remained standing tall. Then the sniper up there fired again, killing a man standing not far from the tank. Undeterred and impervious to the rifle rounds, the swift-moving Sherman roared up the road, closer to the steeple. Five or six soldiers clung to the outside, hanging on for dear life to whatever handles and footholds they could find. Once the tank carried them close enough, they could rush the base of the steeple and put an end to the sniper.