Cole was cleaning his rifle inside the storefront that the Americans had taken over when Frenchie came looking for him. He had Margot with him. Thanks to his language skills, Frenchie and Margot had managed to hit it off.
Good for him, Cole thought, looking the French girl over. He knew that it didn’t take much to spark a romance in these times, when you didn’t know if you would still be here from one day to the next. Got to take some happiness where you can in this world.
Briefly, he thought of Jolie Molyneux, the young French woman and Resistance fighter who had been his squad’s guide in Normandy. Jolie had caused some tension between Cole and Lieutenant Mulholland. The young woman had been badly wounded by a German sniper and the last that Cole had heard, she was still recovering.
Frenchie and Margot might be enjoying one another’s company, but there was nothing happy about Margot's expression at the moment. Worry lines creased her face.
"What's the problem?" Cole asked, setting his rifle aside.
"It's her brother," Frenchie said. "He's missing."
"Missing?" When Cole was growing up, he had sometimes disappeared into the woods for two or three days at a time. Nobody had much wondered where he'd gone. Anyhow, most of the time he had taken off to avoid his old man when he was on a bender. "I reckon he'll turn up."
"Look around you, Cole. We're in a village surrounded by the Germans. Where would the kid go? His name is Marcus, by the way," Frenchie said. "Besides, Margot was talking with one of her brother's friends. This kid said that Marcus and his best friend, Simon, were planning on following Pierre into the woods. Remember Pierre?"
"That tall, skinny French fella?"
"That's the one. He’s actually the mayor. Pierre and two of his buddies decided to reconnoiter and see what the Germans were up to."
"That ain't the smartest thing I've heard today."
"It gets worse. It turns out that Simon is Pierre’s son. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and all that. Simon and Marcus may have followed Pierre into the woods."
Cole picked up the rifle again, put a drop of oil in the chamber, depressed the trigger, and slid the bolt home. The action worked smooth as silk. Even in the dull light, the rifle gleamed. Despite the mud and rough conditions, Cole probably had the cleanest rifle in France. Balancing the rifle across his knees, he asked, ”What’s this got to do with me?"
"Margot was hoping — I was hoping — that you could take a look for her brother."
"In the woods?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"In case you ain't noticed, Frenchie, the woods around here has got Germans in it."
"Why do you think Margot is worried?"
"You could go look for him yourself," Cole pointed out.
"Yeah, but you're the next best thing to Daniel Boone that we've got."
When Cole didn't respond, French snorted and started to walk away. "Hey, forget I even asked. I'll go find the kid myself."
As Frenchie started to walk away, Cole said, "Hang on now. Don't get your panties in a wad. I'll go take a look for the kid."
"Thanks, Cole. I knew you would. You want me to come with you?"
"Hell, no. I reckon you'd make enough noise to let the whole German army know we were traipsing around those woods. What you can do is make sure that General Tolliver doesn't know I'm out looking for some kid when I ought to be helping get ready for the attack. What's that word you used? If he comes looking for me, tell him that I'm reconnoitering."
Frenchie and the girl left, but Cole wasn’t alone for long. He was just reassembling his rifle after cleaning it when the sergeant appeared. He was smoking a cigarette, cupping it in his palm to hide the bright ember. Outwardly, Woodbine appear calm enough, but his chain-smoking habit betrayed his nerves.
“Cole, I was looking for you. The old man thinks that the Germans will hit not long after first light. You and Vaccaro need to be up high so that you can take out as many of the enemy as you can when they come up that road.”
“You ain’t got to tell me twice, Woodbine.”
The sergeant nodded. “I’m just passing the word. Tolliver wants everyone in position.”
“Good thing we’ve got him,” Cole said.
Woodbine furtively crushed out the cigarette butt. “I guess you haven’t heard the rumors, then.”
“What are you talking about?”
“According to Tolliver’s driver, the general is nothing but a bean counter back at HQ. He works in supply. He’s never even been in the field.”
Cole snorted. He was genuinely surprised. “Don’t that beat all.”
“Anyhow, you didn’t hear it from me,” Woodbine said, and moved off into the darkness.
Just before dawn, Cole slipped into the woods on his mission to find the French girl's kid brother. Cole hoped that the Germans took their time launching their attack. With any luck, he would find this kid and be back before the attack started.
It felt good to be alone for a change. He hadn't even dragged Vaccaro along because if the Germans attacked this morning, General Tolliver would need every man he could get to defend the town.
The general would not be happy if he found Cole missing. Cole hoped that Frenchie would hold up his end of the bargain and run interference for him. With any luck, Cole would find these kids quickly and drag them back. Cole traveled light, armed only with the Springfield, his Bowie knife, and a couple of hand grenades for good measure.
The knife was not regulation issue, but had been sent to him by an old friend back home, who had hammered it into shape in his backyard forge. That had been one of the few times that Cole had ever received anything from stateside. The other exception had been a brief letter informing him that his younger brother had joined up and was fighting in the Pacific. He’d gotten Vaccaro to read the letter and then tell him what was in it, claiming that he’d been afraid it was bad news from home.
Cole walked east, watching the sky turn pink where the clouds did not quite touch the horizon. The birds were starting to wake up. He could hear the staccato chatter of gunfire, but it was far to the west on the other side of the Moselle and didn't concern him. He took a deep breath and smelled the damp loam, a wisp of wood smoke from some distant fire, and the musky odor of some animal that shared the forest path. He could almost have been in the mountains back home.
The woods at dawn always had been one of his favorite places. Memories of home and the mountains came flooding back. What he wasn't keen on was the fact that the woods might be crawling with Germans.
The terrain surrounding Ville sur Moselle was steep and rugged. The village itself was nestled in the cleft between large hills that ran down toward the river before leveling off. This terrain forced the Germans to follow the road into the village in order to reach the bridge.
Pierre and the other villagers would have been familiar with the landscape. They must have spent a lifetime walking and hunting in these hills. To Pierre, it must have seemed like child's play to get into the hills above the Germans, spy on them, and report back to the American defenders. Those dumb Frenchmen probably thought they'd be heroes for doing it.
Trouble was, the Germans might get the same idea to conduct some reconnaissance in the woods. The French villagers — much less the boys — would have been ill-equipped to deal with any German patrols.
Cole could guess where Pierre and the others had gone into the woods. A well-worn game trail disappeared into the trees, likely where the deer and wild pigs came down to sample the villagers’ gardens. He bent down and examined a bare patch of mud. It had rained yesterday, but not overnight, so that gave him some time frame for when someone had passed through here. The rain would have washed out any fresh tracks. He saw hoof prints — belonging to pigs rather than deer — and a couple sets of boot prints that were several hours old. Definitely not prints made by German or American boots, which he was more than a little familiar with, so chances were good that he was seeing Pierre's footprints. One of the prints was smaller. Could it be the boy’s?
He walked deeper into the woods, feeling the gloom and the trees press in around him. The sound of birds was reassuring, though. They wouldn't be chirping away if anyone prowled these woods. When the woods fell silent, that was when he needed to worry.
The ground rose quickly as he followed the trail, reminding him of the familiar mountains back home. He found himself getting out of breath. Got to cut out them cigarettes, he thought. He'd been cutting back, but he would be better off giving them up altogether. It didn't help that their rations included cigarettes, as if the Army was encouraging them to smoke.
Focusing on the trail before him, he looked for any other indications of footprints. The pigs had followed this trail and made a mess of it. Here and there, he noticed how the leaves did not quite hide the impression of a footprint in the trail or where a twig lay snapped in two by a boot. People had passed this was, as well as game. Most eyes would have passed over it, but Cole was an experienced tracker and hunter by nature. He could not read words on the page, but he could read these natural signs as plainly as others read a newspaper.
What he saw was that two groups had passed through within the last few hours. The first group was made up of bigger and heavier individuals. It looked like three men, which fit the description that Frenchie had passed along from Margot. The members of the second group — just two, from the looks of it — were smaller and lighter. A couple of boys, more than likely. He'd bet the farm that one of them was Margot's brother.
Cole moved on cautiously. The last thing he wanted to do was surprise the French villagers who might be on the trail ahead. They might think that he was a German and open fire. Considering that the tracks on the trail had been made yesterday, the likelihood of running into the French villagers seemed slim. But stranger things had happened. Worse yet was the possibility of encountering a German patrol sent to probe the American position. Cole didn't relish the thought of being seriously outnumbered, or worse yet, caught in the middle between the Germans and French.
Moving along the trail, he crossed the face of the hill above Ville sur Moselle and the river. There were still enough leaves on the trees that the view of the village below was obscured. In the winter it would be a different story. An enemy sniper could sit up here and pick off the American defenders one by one, so long as he was a really good shot.
Cole grimaced, thinking about that. The German sniper whom he had tangled with yesterday had been that good. More than just good, if truth be told. That German was a crack shot. Cole wasn't in any hurry to face him again.
He came around a bend in the trail and froze. The trail widened here and looked as if this was where pigs or deer foraged or bedded down. But what caught his immediate attention were the three bodies spread across the clearing.
From their civilian clothing, he immediately recognized the dead men as villagers. They'd gone looking for Germans. It sure as hell looked as if they'd found them.
"Goddammit," he muttered.
Cole wasn't eager to get back to the village and tell anyone that he'd found these men. Not like this. The question was, what had become of Margot’s brother and his friend? Maybe there was a chance that they had survived.
He stood and looked around the site, hoping for some clue as to the boys’ fate. He was just thinking that perhaps they had escaped, after all, when he spotted their small bodies several yards into the woods. Not them, too, he thought.
Before he could investigate, Cole heard a groan and realized that one of the men in the clearing was still alive. Approaching, he recognized Pierre from the village. Cole's stomach tightened when he saw the shape that the man was in. Pierre was badly wounded, his abdomen covered in blood.
He knew from his experience as a hunter that a gut-shot animal could live for hours. Even for days. That was why a hunter practiced enough to be a good shot, and if he didn't kill an animal right away, he tracked it down to finish the job. A good hunter didn't want an animal to suffer. Pierre had been left to die a slow and painful death.
Pierre barely had strength to lift his head, but Cole gave him a drink from his canteen. He took a gulp or two, and Cole half expected the water to come leaking out. Once Pierre had the drink, he began to mutter, trying to tell Cole something.
"What?" he asked, moving his ear closer to Pierre's lips.
“Le sniper," he said, barely audible. "Le sniper."
What was Pierre trying to say? Cole was confused at first, but then it began to make sense. Pierre was telling him that a German sniper had done this. He could only guess, but he had a pretty good idea that it was the same sniper who had accompanied the German general into town yesterday. It wouldn’t have been unusual for a sniper to also be scouting these woods. That particular German had looked just about right for this sort of job.
Cole nodded back at Pierre that he understood.
Pierre gasped in pain. The poor bastard was really suffering, and there was no hope for him. Not with his guts lying on the forest floor.
Cole debated what to do. He lacked any means to help Pierre. The man had lost too much blood. He was a dead man, for sure. Trying to move him would only put the man in a state of pointless agony. But Cole wasn't about to abandon him to a painful, lingering death in the woods.
Cole touched Pierre's head gently, turning away his line of sight. The gesture was not all that different from what he might have used on a wounded deer that he had tracked down. Pierre breathed a sigh of relief, as if he knew what was coming and welcomed it.
Cole took a step slightly behind Pierre so that the Frenchman couldn't see what he was doing, raised his rifle, and shot him behind the ear. The sound of the lone shot seemed brutally loud and echoed through the woods and hills.
He guessed from the caked blood on Pierre's clothes that the poor bastard had been out here overnight. Hard as it had been to do, killing Pierre was an act of mercy. The Germans who had massacred the villagers and the two boys would be long gone. With any luck, though, they had heard the gunshot. Cole was sending them a message. It meant, I'm comin' for you.