Gods & Snipers: A World War II Thriller

Chapter Twenty-Three

It didn't seem right to leave the bodies of the dead villagers scattered across the clearing, so Cole arranged them side by side. He didn't have a shovel, so there was no hope of burying them. The Germans hadn't bothered to take their weapons, so Cole laid them beside the men, like ancient warriors sent to the afterlife with their spears and swords. He picked up the old firearms and sniffed at them, getting a whiff of gun oil but no smell of burned powder. The villagers had never even had a chance to use their weapons.

Cole wasn't much for church-going religion, but he believed in God. You didn’t put a man to rest without a prayer. He took off his helmet and mumbled the Lord's Prayer over the dead. He said the final words more clearly, feeling their power resonate within him:

"For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever. Amen."

Then he committed the dead villagers to the woods and the forest creatures. By springtime, only scattered bones would remain. In some ways, he thought that this was better than going into a hole in the ground.

Moving down the trail toward the German position, all of Cole's senses felt on hyper alert. His eyes sprang to each branch moving in the wind, each flicker of a bird through the trees. He was supposed to be a soldier, but he had murder in his heart.

When he had gone looking for Margot's brother, he had not also gone looking for a fight. His plan had been to take a look in the woods and then get back to help in the defense of the village. But plans had changed. He was bringing the fight to the Germans. Anyhow, when hadn’t he ever been ready for a fight?

He hadn't gone more than a quarter of a mile through the woods when he heard the Germans. Their low, guttural voices in the valley below carried up to him on the ridge. He could smell meat cooking — fresh pork, most likely, over an open fire. Goddam, but that smelled delicious. He'd had to make do that morning with canned rations. In spite of the scene back at the clearing, his stomach rumbled. There wasn't a man alive who could smell roasting meat and not be hungry.

He stopped long enough to mount the rifle so that he could use the scope to spot the Germans through the trees. However, all that he saw were leaves and gray bark. They were still too far away and screened from Cole's view by the surrounding woods.

He continued along the trail, cushioned by the damp leaves. The animals had made such a smooth path that his boots moved silently. He kept his rifle ready. This close to the Germans, he might run into a sentry at any point. After all, the Germans were familiar with the trail, as evidenced by the massacre of the villagers. Chances were good that they would have posted a guard.

The trail led over the hill to the village, but the narrow path was not a practical route for launching an attack with a force that included a Kübelwagen mounting a machine gun. The winding path was better suited to wild pigs or possibly for use by a handful of men, not an entire squad. Yesterday, when the German sniper had peppered the village, he had likely used the trail to use the heights to his advantage. The Germans would make their main attack using the road leading toward the village and river crossing. But Cole became concerned that a handful of Germans could use the trail to get inside the village and surprise the defenders. He would need some insurance against that.

Up ahead, Cole's alert eyes caught movement. A German sentry. Just as he had figured. The man was well-hidden by his blue-gray uniform, which blended into the shadows of the autumn woods. Cole had only managed to get so close because of his natural ability to move silently through the woods. Cole froze, hoping that he hadn't been seen.

The German was leaning against a tree, intent on lighting a cigarette. A machine pistol hung across the man's front, within easy reach. If so much as a twig snapped, the man could cut Cole in two with single burst. The question was, had he already spotted Cole and was pretending not to notice? Maybe he didn’t want to give Cole a reason to shoot him.

In fact, Cole itched to shoot him, but he wasn't ready yet to let the Germans know he was there. The gunshot that had ended Pierre’s suffering had been far enough from the German camp. Now, Cole must be on their doorstep.

The man was too far away for Cole to get at him with his knife and Cole did not want to alert the Jerries with a rifle shot. Before the German could look up, Cole had retreated back up the trail.

Out of the sentry’s line of sight, Cole weighed his options. He was sure that he was close to the German camp, which meant that there were lots of the enemy in the vicinity, and just one of him. The smart thing to do would be to get the hell out of there. But Cole wasn’t always good at doing the smart thing. What he wanted to do was inflict some pain on these Jerries for what they had done to those French kids back in the woods. Also, if the Germans hoped to use the trail as a back door into the village, then Cole planned to close it.

One of the best ways to even the odds and multiply his numbers was to make a trap. Setting traps was one of Cole’s specialties. Trapping had kept food on the table back in Gashey’s Creek, and it had helped him stay alive on more than one occasion here in France.

When he made a run for it down this trail, it would help to have something up his sleeve to slow down the enemy that would surely be coming after him.

He needed something quick to build and deadly. But what?

Cole thought about the things he carried. Twine. A knife. Grenades.

He could easily lash his knife to a sapling and set a trap that would whip the knife into a Jerry coming up the trail after him. But he didn’t want to give up his knife, which had been hand-made for him by an old craftsman back home.

That left the two grenades. He took one out and set it beside the trail. Using his knife, he cut a leafy branch and set it across the trail. Then he tied the twine to a small tree and stretched it across the trail, using the leafy branch to disguise it. The other end of the string he tied to a grenade.

Now came the tricky part. Made him sweat a little, to tell the truth, because if he didn’t get it right he’d be leaving parts of himself scattered around the woods. He depressed the lever and pulled the pin, then wedged the grenade into a tangle of tree roots and then added a flat rock on top for good measure. Gingerly, he eased his hand off the lever to make sure that the rock and tree roots kept the grenade wedged in place. He wasn’t quite happy with the pressure on the lever, so he moved the rock around a bit.

Finished, he stepped back and breathed again. Someone running down the trail would step over the leafy branch, hit the tripwire, and yank the grenade free. One man moving fast might get out of the kill zone in time, but anyone running behind him wouldn’t be so lucky.

His trap set, Cole slipped off the trail into the woods. He wanted to get closer to the German camp without taking a chance of being spotted by the sentry on the trail.

The trees were dense and enough vegetation clung to the underbrush that he was hidden quickly. Moving quietly off the trail, however, was more problematic. Luckily for Cole, the damp leaves favored him and he moved stealthily downhill toward the German camp.

Near the bottom of the hill he crossed a stream, most likely a tributary that flowed into the Moselle. Though narrow, the stream ran deep and was swollen by the recent rain. Cole wasn't in any hurry to cross the muddy, roiling stream. He didn't much like water, having once become entangled in a beaver trap and nearly drowning in a deep mountain creek. The woods began to thin out on the other side of the stream, and he found himself looking at the German camp, no more than a couple of hundred feet away. Using the game trail, Cole had taken the long way around across the hill and come in behind the Germans.

These were the men who had attacked the village. He could see the road leading straight toward Ville sur Moselle and the bridge. The village couldn't have been more than half a mile away. The German force sat astride the road like a bottle stopper — no one in, no one out.

He could see a mix of different uniforms and equipment. Clearly, this unit was cobbled together, much like his own. The only mechanized vehicles were a couple of mud-splattered Kübelwagen. He did a quick count and came up with at least fifty Jerries. Veteran Wehrmacht troops. Hard fighters, as proven by their attack on the village, and ruthless. If they attacked the village en masse or split up to come at the village from two directions, the defenders were going to be in trouble.

Studying the Germans, Cole realized that he didn't have much of a plan. He might have bitten off more here than he could chew. He reckoned that things would get hot as soon as he jammed a stick into that hornet's nest.

Belly to the ground, he studied the Germans through the scope. One of the things about being a sniper that appealed to Cole was that his trade required intense focus. The world was a big place, as Cole had discovered in the Army. He had crossed an ocean, trained in England for the D Day landing, and now here he was in France. Before that, all that he had known were the mountains. Vast as the mountains were, they constituted just one corner of that big ol' world. A telescopic sight simplified matters. Seeing the battlefield reduced to a circle of magnified view reassured him. That little circle was all that a sniper had to worry about.

You saw the enemy in that circle, you shot him. Simple as that.

But today, he reckoned his job wasn't quite that easy. Larger forces were at play, such as the impending attack on the village. Nobody watched his six. And his mind kept going back to the scene of that massacre in the woods. The splattered blood from those kids on the forest leaves and the glistening blue entrails of the eviscerated Frenchman. The memory brought angry bile to his own throat.

Somebody had to pay for that. Considering the number of targets arrayed below, maybe a whole lot of somebodies.

As he watched, a single German military truck drove up. He recognized it as an Opel Blitz, which was somewhat smaller than the U.S. Army's GMC Deuce and a half. He worried that the truck might be carrying reinforcements. That was the last thing he needed. No troops came spilling out, however. Just a couple of guys who had been up front in the cab. Curious, Cole waited to see what the deal was with the truck.

The Germans began unloading the truck. If the truck didn’t carry reinforcements, he saw that it contained the next worst thing. Ammo. If the Jerries were low on ammunition, this explained why they hadn't already attacked the village yet today. Now that they had resupplied, Cole was sure that they would hit the village before nightfall. Maybe even at any minute.

Directing the unloading was a tall German officer. Cole picked him up through the scope and saw hair graying at the temples. He recognized him as the same the general who had carried the flag of truce into the village. He wished that Tolliver would have let him shoot the smug son of a bitch. Cole watched the general shouting and pointing. One thing for sure: when the old man barked, the other Jerries jumped.

Cole thought about taking him out here and now. German units relied more heavily on officers to make many of the decisions. Even the lowliest American GI was more used to thinking for himself. Maybe that was just part of being an American. When it came to the Germans, the trick was to cut off the head of the snake.

He was just lining up the reticle when a soldier went running up to the officer. Something urgent, it looked like. The officer walked off and was soon out of sight behind the truck.

Silently, Cole cursed. He had lost his chance. Another few seconds, and the officer would have been as good as dead. The good news was that he had no shortage of other targets. He could take his pick. It’s just that they weren’t generals.

Cole thought about his position. In front of him was spread the German camp. Easy pickings. Directly in front of him was the roiling stream and behind him, the hill that he had descended from the trail on the ridge. The thought of someone taking the high ground above and behind him made him uneasy. He was somewhat reassured by the fact that they'd have to be part Cherokee to make it down through the woods to get the jump on him without making any noise. Just this once, he wished that he'd brought Vaccaro along to cover his ass.

But like his pa always said, “You go wish in one hand and shit in the other, boy, and see which one fills up first." If his pa was in a good mood, he had followed up that bit of wisdom with a snort. If he'd been drinking, he usually gave Cole's ear a sharp slap with a hand hard as a hickory board. Just thinking about the old man now made Cole's head ring.

Ain’t no sense now in wishin’. His plan was to move around once the shooting started. With any luck, the Germans might think there was more than one soldier hidden in the trees. Cole found a suitable log and got set up behind it. About twenty feet away, he could see a large, moss-covered boulder that would make a good sniper hide. Beyond that was another log.

Once things got too hot, his plan was to high-tail it out of there, back up the ridge. He'd be most of the way down the trail to Ville sur Moselle by the time the Germans got up the nerve to head into the woods.

The scope helped him get up close and personal with the Germans. They were still busy unloading the truck, scurrying around the camp. The tall officer hadn't come back into sight, which was too bad, but you couldn't have everything.

Cole picked out a soldier leaning against the truck, having a smoke while he watched the others works. He put the crosshairs on the German and pulled the trigger.

The man slumped over. Cole worked the bolt and picked out another Jerry holding a wooden box of ammo. He had frozen at the sound of Cole's rifle. Cole shot him.

It was shaping up to be a turkey shoot. The only problem was that these turkeys would be shooting back any minute now.

Cole lined up his crosshairs on a soldier who had stopped to light a cigarette like he didn't have a care in the world. A machine pistol hung from a strap over the German's shoulder. He squeezed the trigger and the German crumpled to the ground. He ran the bolt and acquired another target. This one looked toward the woods, momentarily frozen by the single rifle shot. Cole took him out.

He fired again, bringing down a third German. But the element of surprise was over. Already, the soldiers had scattered for cover. Bullets began to sing through the trees and dig into the hillside. They hadn't figured out where Cole was hiding yet, but if they thought the suppressing fire was going to make him keep his head down, they were right about that much.

He rolled away from the log and belly-crawled like a salamander toward an old stump several feet away. If he kept moving around, he reckoned he could keep the Germans confused. More bullets chewed up the trees overhead. He was at a steep angle above the German position, which meant that most of them were shooting too high. You had to hold low to hit a target above you. Not that he was going to pause right then and give the Jerries a shooting lesson. He got behind the crumbling stump and rested his rifle over it, then got back on the scope.

His pa used to say that Cole had eyes in the back of his head. That was helpful when your old man was a mean drunk. In the woods, it paid to have that kind of sixth sense. Maybe it had kept his ancestors alive when they were fighting Indians and such. He couldn't have told anyone how he knew there was someone coming down the hill toward his position, but he sure as hell sensed it. A few seconds later, he heard boots shuffling through the leaves.

There had been a German sentry up on the trail. When the German heard the shooting below him, he must have gone to investigate and come at Cole from behind. The German was coming at him from higher up the hill, being none too quiet about it. Cole could hear him, even with all the shooting going on. Sounded like a herd of elephants.

Cole got himself turned around and swung the rifle to face the new threat. He didn't put the scope to his eye yet, but stared into the woods, hoping to detect movement.

He and the German saw each other at just about the same time. The German stopped and put his rifle his shoulder. Cole could practically feel those iron sights on him, hot as a brand. A bullet hit the stump behind him, exploding into a shower of soft splinters. A little to the left, he thought. He was sure that the German sentry wouldn't miss again.

Quickly, he got the German in his sights, hardly bothering to aim. As soon as the crosshairs touched the man's torso, Cole jerked the trigger. It wasn’t good technique and it sure as hell wasn’t elegant, but the German doubled over, the rifle spilling out of his grip. Gutshot. Cole took more careful aim this time and finished him.

He hoped to hell that was the only German he had to worry about coming at him from the rear. There were plenty enough Germans in front of him. He got turned around again and settled the rifle across the stump once more. Through the scope, he glimpsed the top of a helmet behind some sort of ammo crate. He lined up the sights and fired, ran the bolt, and looked for another target. The action felt silky smooth and the smell of gunpowder in his nose was intoxicating. He could do this all day long.

But the Germans weren’t going to let him. Already, bullets chewed up the underbrush around him. He had planned on teaching the Jerries a lesson and exacting a price for that massacre in the woods. But he had lost the element of surprise and the tables had turned. He saw that a couple of Germans were maneuvering that Kübelwagen so that they could rake the woods with the machine gun mounted on the back of it. He wouldn't be able to stay here for long, that was for sure.

The fox had gotten into the hen house. But now the big dogs were coming for him.