David Healey - Ghost Sniper

An old black bear had come down out of the mountains and was lurking around cabins, raiding vegetable patches and breaking into chicken coops. Likely the bear was old or sick, and driven by hunger. Old man Thompkins had caught a glimpse of the bear sniffing around his hen house. He reckoned that bear weighed 400 pounds, its muzzle scarred and grizzled with gray. He peppered it with bird shot so that now the bear was old, sick, hungry—and mad with pain.

Cole and his pa came across that bear on their way back from squirrel hunting. They were crossing the high meadow to the west of their cabin and there was the bear in the middle of it, blocking their path home, rising out of the tall grass. He had killed a calf and was feeding on the carcass, muzzle dripping gore like something out of a nightmare. The bear stood close to seven feet tall.

He roared and charged.

Cole ran, but you can’t outrun a bear. Even an old one can sprint fast as a horse. He could still feel his fear, the taste of it in his mouth like pennies.

He worked his jaw. Spat.

Pa had an old double-barreled shotgun with two double-ought buckshot shells. That was all the ammunition he had. He stood his ground and fired when the bear almost had his nose in the barrel.

Sheepishly, heart pounding, Cole came back to where his single-shot .22 rifle lay in the grass.

“Pick it up,” Pa said. “Now give it here. You ain’t man enough yet to carry that.”

Those words hurt worse than any fist the old man had ever hit him with.

Less than a year later Pa was found shot dead in the mountains. The local sheriff called it a hunting accident, but Cole knew different. Like as not, Pa had been sniffing around someone’s still.

Cole became the family provider. They ate what he could shoot or trap, and they ate all right for a change because he turned out to be a good hunter and an even better shot than his old man. Bullets cost hard cash they didn’t have, and sometimes he had one bullet, one shot, and those skinny brothers and sisters went hungry if he missed.

Cole did not miss.

Later on he got wind of who killed Pa. Pa had been no good, but blood was blood, and revenge ran through his veins like snow melt down an icy creek.

If it was possible, his father’s killer was a meaner rattlesnake than Pa had been. He went gunning for Pa’s killer and the two stalked each other for several days in the deep mountain country. Cole walked back out; the other man’s body was buried where no one would ever find it.

Back in the mountains, you had time to think. Cole reckoned that he was always trying not to run from that bear. Since then, he had never run from anything. He was already hard and stubborn like a knot of tree root, and the Army training made him even harder. Like his old man, he had dark moods when meanness radiated off him like it did off a stray alley cat.

One day in boot camp he’d had enough of Jackson bullying the other mountain kid, Jimmy Turner, who was as different from Cole as a deer is from a wildcat. He put a can of beans in a sock and caught Jackson alone one night after lights out. Sent him to the infirmary for a few days.

The drill sergeant was no fool and suspected that Cole had done it. “Goddamnit Cole, Jackson is an asshole and he had it coming.” He stuck his finger in Cole’s face. “But the next soldier you fuck up had better be a German.”

Cole had taken the sergeant’s message to heart.

The German snipers slept that night in an old chateau commandeered by the Wehrmacht. The French owners had fled, leaving the German army to inhabit its rooms and grounds. The house was neglected and damp, but it was far better than the cold woods and fields. The mansion had been converted into an indoor campground by hordes of weary, muddy troops. The Germans had also occupied the kitchen, so there was plenty of hot soup and even fresh-baked bread.

As an officer, Von Stenger was able to secure a room that was grand enough to have been the domain of some long-ago Norman baron. The room was able to accommodate Von Stenger, as well as Wulf and Fritz. He took a chance that the chimney still worked and started a small fire in the fireplace, then worked to clean the Russian rifle.

“Do you need help, Herr Hauptmann?” Fritz asked.

“A man always cleans his own weapons. Of course, they need to be fired first,” Von Stenger said, giving the youthful soldier a sideways look. At the church steeple today, the boy hadn’t fired so much as a single shot. He tossed his boots at the boy. “These could do with a shine. Make sure you do it out in the hallway.”

Fritz frowned down at the muddy boots. “Yes, sir.”

The boy took the boots and went out. Over in his corner, Wulf gave a low laugh. He was cleaning his own weapon, the standard-issue Mauser that had been converted to sniper use with the addition of a telescopic sight.

“Honestly, sir, I don’t know where you got him. That boy has his head in the clouds the whole time.”

“You might say I inherited him,” Von Stenger said, thinking back to his old companion Willi, whose body was now likely mouldering in some mass grave the Allies had dug. That was duty for you.

“You should send him away, sir,” Wulf said. “He will only cause trouble for us.”

“He will prove useful when the times comes,” Von Stenger said. “Until then, who else would I get to shine my boots?”

Wulf made a guttural, mirthless sound that Von Stenger took to be a laugh. “Are we going back to the church steeple in the morning, sir?”

“A sniper never returns to the same place if he can help it,” Von Stenger said. He was a little surprised Wulf had thought that’s what they would be doing, but he reminded himself that while Wulf had been to sniper training, this was his first time in actual combat.

Earlier that day, he had worried briefly about being trapped in the church steeple by the enemy, or perhaps once the American tank opened fire. The tank crew had proved to be terrible shots, and then the Tiger tank had come along and destroyed the Sherman with a spectacular show of German superiority. If that was the best that American tanks could do against Panzers, an awful lot of them were going to be turned into burning wreckage.

He found himself lapsing into the instructor tone he would have taken at the sniper school. “Never use the same sniper’s nest two days in a row. Never come and go by the same route. If you can, fire and move on. Those are the rules a sniper must follow if he wishes to survive long on the battlefield.”

“Like you, Herr Hauptmann?”

“Yes, Wulf, like me.”

Fritz appeared in the doorway again. “How many men have you killed, Herr Hauptmann?”

Both the boy and Corporal Wulf waited keenly for his answer, but Von Stenger took so long to respond that they thought it was possible he had not heard the question. Finally, he spoke. “When I began my career, in Spain where we supported General Franco’s troops, I used to keep count. It was a matter of pride. And the Spanish were very tough to kill, so that was something.”

“How many?”

“Eighty in Spain. Then came Poland. I ran out of bullets because there were so many to shoot.”

“You were in Russia,” Wulf said. Every German soldier knew that to have fought and survived as a sniper on the Eastern Front was the ultimate test. “That’s where you earned your Knight’s Cross.”

Von Stenger touched the medal, then shrugged. “Well, I gave up counting back in Poland. One begins to realize that a sniper does not kill so many as a few well-placed bombs, but do you think our Luftwaffe bombers worry about their tally? So I stopped counting. There are many ways to determine one’s success in war. For example, having done my duty for the Fatherland, I came home from Russia with my life, and with this rifle.”