David Healey - Ghost Sniper

The German did not drop the rifle, but he was shaking his head wildly and saying, “Nein! Nein!”

“Dropenzie!”

Cole came out of the mill and stepped between the soldier and the German. “He can’t dropenzie . His goddamn hands are taped to the rifle.”

“What the hell?”

The soldier went up and grabbed for the rifle, but only managed to pull the boy off his feet. He went down on his knees. Cole took out a knife. The German kid gasped and shut his eyes. Cole cut the rifle free. “I bet the damn thing ain’t even loaded.”

“Of course it’s frickin’ loaded!” the paratrooper said. “He’s a goddamn German sniper! There’s only one way to deal with a sniper. No prisoners.”

The soldier aimed his rifle at the boy’s head. The young soldier looked up, his voice choked with fear, and said, “No, please!”

“Christ, he speaks English! Sneaky bastard.”

“Don’t shoot him,” Cole said.

“What do you mean, don’t shoot him? You saw what he did to our boys on the bridge. Shot them and left them to die!”

“He ain’t the sniper that done it.”

“How do you know?”

“Look at him,” Cole said. “Does he look like much of a stone-cold Nazi killer to you?”

The soldier looked like he might still shoot the boy. Jolie stepped forward and said, “Cole is right. There are many real soldiers to kill, but this boy is not one of them.”

Jolie’s presence seemed to cool the soldier off. “Aw, hell, he’s your problem now,” he said, and ran off to join the men who were searching the woods. Someone yelled something about there being a dead sniper in a tree.

Jolie said something to the boy in German.

“What are you jabbering on about?” Cole demanded. “I didn’t know you spoke Kraut.”

“It is a useful skill to speak the enemy’s language,” she said. “I told him to stay down on his knees with his hands on his head, and that if he tried to run you would shoot him.”

“Huh. Is that right? You got yourself a rifle. You can shoot him.”

“You are the soldier.”

“Yeah, but I ain’t an executioner.”

“You shot those prisoners on the beach.”

“My blood was up,” Cole said. “Those sons of bitches killed a lot of good men on the beach. This kid didn’t have nothin’ to do with that.”

Jolie spoke to the boy again in German, then turned to Cole. “There.”

“What?”

“I told him you want to shoot him, but I talked you out of it. What do you Americans call it? Good cop, bad cop?”

“You’re pretty clever for a French girl,” Cole said. “But why do I have to be the bad one?”

“That is simple,” Jolie said. “You look mean and crazy, especially because you are wearing a grain sack.”

“Huh. I don’t suppose you brought my clothes along?”

Jolie smiled and handed him a haversack. “Right here.”

He shucked off the grain sack and stood there in his wet boxer shorts, tugging his uniform back on. Being in the Army a few months made you the opposite of shy.

“Come on,” he said once he was dressed. “I want to have a look at this dead sniper. Tell this kid here to come along and to keep his hands up. If he runs, I really will shoot him.”

They moved across the field and into the woods, joining the soldiers who were already there. In the wake of the attack across the bridge, there was maybe a quart of adrenalin still pumping through their veins, making the soldiers hyper and jumpy.

Most of the men were gathered around a tree, staring up at the dead German sniper. It appeared he had roped himself into the tree to prevent himself from falling if he was merely wounded. The dead German’s mouth hung open and his eyes stared wide like some grotesque Cheshire cat.

Now that the tension of the attack was over, some of the airborne troops lowered their weapons and lit cigarettes, studying the corpse in the tree with professional interest.

“I guess Nazi snipers really do grow on trees,” one paratrooper said.

“You wouldn’t be going out on a limb if you said he was dead,” quipped another.

The jokes were bad and tasteless, but it was a way for the men to blow off steam.

“Who wants to climb up there and cut him down?” Lieutenant Mulholland asked.

Cole liked the lieutenant, but he had noticed that the officer had a bad habit or phrasing an order as a question when he wasn’t sure of himself. And sometimes he just plain had some bad ideas.

“To hell with that, Lieutenant,” Cole said.

“It’s the decent thing to do, Cole. We’re soldiers, not barbarians.”

Cole spat into the pine needles. “You saw how that Jerry gut shot those boys on the bridge and let them suffer. I reckon he can stay up there and rot. They got buzzards here, same as home.”

There was a tense silence as Mulholland looked from the tree to the hardened faces around him, and then back at the tree again. After a while he just shook his head and walked away.

Corporal Neville came over and one of the Americans gave him a cigarette. “You are one crazy Tommy,” the American said. “The way you rushed that bridge—well, you’re damn lucky you’re not dead.”

“I couldn’t stand leaving those wounded men out there another minute.” Neville nodded up at the tree. “This lot here were using them for bait to draw us out. Besides, I’m not half as crazy as this hillbilly here. He swam the river and took out the snipers for us.”

One of the paratroopers looked at Cole. “That must feel good, huh, knowing you got one.”

Cole looked up into the tree and shrugged. He had shot this man, killed him with a single bullet, and he looked inside himself for some feeling about that, but he felt nothing—neither good nor bad about it. It was pretty much the way he felt about killing a fox—it was simply something that needed killing.

The paratrooper had more to say: “If you ask me, we ought to grease that little Nazi right over there. He’s a sniper too, which I don’t count as a regular prisoner.”

Cole flicked his cigarette away so he could get both hands on his rifle. He settled his ice chip eyes on the paratrooper. “I captured him, so I reckon that makes him my prisoner, and I ain’t goin’ to let you shoot him.”

“Easy there, Reb,” the paratrooper said, taking a step back from Cole. “I’m just saying, is all. If you want him, then hell, you can have him. He’s your prisoner.”

Cole looked over at the German kid—who dutifully kept his hands on his head—and noticed that the German kept looking around the woods as if searching for someone.

“Jolie, jabber at that boy and ask him who he’s looking for,” Cole said to their guide.

Jolie did just that, asking a few questions in German. The boy answered at length and with some excitement, gesturing wildly, and talking to the point that Jolie finally had to cut him off.

“What’s he goin’ on about?”

“He says there was another sniper, but the boy doesn’t see him, so he must have gotten away. Fritz here says that one’s name is Captain Von Stenger, and he is some kind of super sniper. His nickname is The Ghost. He taught at the sniper training school and he fought against the Russians on the Eastern Front. The boy says this sniper is the one who shot Chief—and one of our snipers up on the hill.”

Cole walked over to where the boy had been pointing. He looked up and had a start when he saw what he thought was someone in a tree overhead. But as he swung his rifle up he saw that it was only a dummy made out of a German uniform stuffed with pine needles. Up close it wasn’t very convincing, but seen at a distance through a rifle scope it would have fooled him. Cole’s position in the mill had kept him from seeing anything but the two rifle flashes, but the dummy would have tricked Vaccaro and Meacham, who had a clearer view up on the hill. Cole had gotten lucky in shooting the real sniper.