Gods & Snipers: A World War II Thriller

Chapter Twenty-Four

At the first shots, Hauer and the other Germans dove for cover. Already, two men were down, one shot through the neck and the other through the chest. Then a third and fourth fell, both hit in the torso. Each bullet arrived with telling accuracy. The sniper on the hill did not seem to miss. Hauer was sure that the sniper must be an American soldier. This was not the work of some untrained Resistance fighter armed with an ancient rifle.

"Sniper!" someone shouted, although by then, the warning was unnecessary.

To the untrained eye, the bullets seemed to cause pandemonium as soldiers scrambled for cover. However, these were veterans of dozens of similar attacks these last few months. The rifle fire had not disrupted them for very long. The sniper had picked off four men quickly, but now there were few easy targets. The Germans organized themselves and started to shoot back into the woods. But as long as the sniper was operating, they were effectively pinned down.

"Hauer!" shouted Unterbrink. The general was sheltering on the far side of the truck. His voice carried clearly, almost like a snarl.

When he heard his name shouted, Hauer made his way toward the general, keeping his head down. Unterbrink looked annoyed that the enemy sniper had managed to disrupt the unloading of the ammunition and the preparations for the attack on the village. The general wanted to know what the hell was going on. "How many snipers are in those woods?"

"It is just one man, sir," Hauer said.

"Are you sure?"

"Did you notice that pause, and then the shots came from a new location? He is moving around to make us think there is more than one of him."

"Verdammt nochmal! I don't care if it is one sniper or one hundred," Unterbrink snapped. "Put a stop to this attack! That is your job, Hauer. He will put us behind schedule. We cannot prepare for the attack if we are pinned down. Now that we have ammunition, we need to attack that village and take it while it is still daylight. For all we know, the sun could show its face tomorrow, and with it those damn Ami planes will return. If that happens, the sniper will be the least of our worries."

"Yes, sir."

Hauer moved off, but he did not immediately return fire. His comrades were already doing that, making it plenty hot for the sniper. He was still shooting at them with telling effect.

The general wanted the Ami sniper taken out, but Hauer had some ideas of his own for how to deal with him. He wondered if this was the same sniper that he had encountered back at the village. He recalled the American's hard stare and felt an involuntary stab of doubt. There had been no posturing on the American sniper's part. The man had been a killer, plain and simple. Hauer had become good at recognizing that quality in other men. Nonetheless, the man had to be something of a fool to attack the German squad, alone and unsupported.

Already, the rest of the unit began laying down a withering fire into the woods. He was sure that the American sniper would slip away. He himself would have done the same. Hauer also had a good idea that the American would fall back to the trail that crossed the ridge and led down to the village. The sniper would follow that trail right back to the Americans, reporting what he had seen. He would warn the Americans and villagers that another attack was coming. Hauer intended to stop him.

His plan was simple. He would move to the right of the sniper and then climb the hill until he reached the trail toward Ville sur Moselle. From there, it would be a simple matter of setting an ambush for the American as he tried to return to the village using that path. No different from hunting a wild pig.

Hauer caressed the hilt of his butcher's knife. With any luck, he might even capture him and teach him a lesson in pain similar to the one he had given the Frenchman. The American wouldn't be so tough once he had been captured and separated from his rifle. Hauer could take his time killing him, then butcher him like a helpless sheep.

And to that end, Hauer had a few tricks up his sleeve.

Dodging the sniper's line of sight, he crept toward General Unterbrink's Kübelwagen. On the retreat back through France toward the fabled West Wall, Hauer had been among those German troops who ransacked French houses to take anything of value. They figured that they were owed something, although the wily French had hidden almost anything of value.

To his delight, though, Hauer had found some old WWI trench armor in a barn. That war had been fought with one foot in the past and one in the future, with horses and even armor being used alongside airplanes and machine guns.

The armored cuirass or breastplate appeared to be of German manufacture, and the hardened alloy steel was nearly a centimeter thick. An old suit of armor was soft as butter compared to modern steel. The armor hooked over one's shoulders and was secured with straps, so that it protected one's chest and belly. To protect the groin and legs, plates had been riveted so that they articulated much like the sections of a lobster's tail. The wearer essentially donned a steel shell.

Cotton padding on the underside was an attempt to make the armor more comfortable and to help absorb the impact of bullets, but the heavy armor wasn't the sort of thing that one wore on a daily basis. Mostly, such armor had been donned by stationary machine gunners with the notion of turning the gunners into human pillboxes.

Amused at Hauer's discovery, General Unterbrink had let him toss it in the back of the Kübelwagen.

"That's just like you, Hauer," the general said. "Everyone else is worried about stealing a silver candlestick, but you found something of practical use."

"Do you think it could actually stop a bullet, sir?"

As a veteran of the Great War, Unterbrink had some experience with the armor. At least, he had seen it used in the field. Unterbrink examined the armor closely, announcing that the armor was an alloy of hardened steel, which would make it extremely tough. "The curved surface of the armor helps to deflect a bullet, even a rifle round," the general had said. "But it is not foolproof. You see, mainly the armor is useful against shrapnel and pistol rounds. The best defense is to wear the armor and then not get shot in the first place!"

"It will certainly stop a pistol round, sir, and maybe a rifle bullet if it hits at an angle."

"That much is true, Hauer. I saw it save more than one's man life. I can't imagine wearing that around all day, however."

This particular armored cuirass included a sort of cup device that had been welded to the right shoulder, enabling the wearer to mount a rifle. Otherwise, the recoil would cause the stock to slide off the rounded armor.

Hauer had taken off the worst of the rust with a wire brush, and then coated the scrubbed metal with gun oil. Good as new.

Given the weight of the armor, many men would struggle with it. Hauer, however, was powerfully built through the torso and shoulders. Butcher's shoulders. He agreed with old Unterbrink that the steel would stop shrapnel or a pistol round, or a bayonet stab, and would likely stop bullets from one of the Americans' lighter machine guns.

The question was, would the armor work against a rifle? The Springfield rifles used by the Ami snipers fired a powerful round. As he had suggested to the general, Hauer thought that the effectiveness of the armor would depend on the range and the angle of the bullet. Working in his favor was the fact that many snipers did not bother trying for headshots because it was too easy to miss. They aimed for center mass.

Anyhow, the armor was better than nothing and if he did get shot and the armor worked, the enemy sniper was going to get quite a surprise.

He slipped the armor on over his tunic, then covered it all with a poncho. With any luck, he had just made himself bulletproof.

"Sergeant!" he called, getting the attention of a battle-hardened Feldwebel nearby.

"What is it, Hauer? We are a little busy now. Maybe you want to go hunting later, eh? We'll get another pig."

Hauer grinned. "Better yet, why don't I go hunting for that sniper? I am going to move up the hill and get behind him."

The Feldwebel gave him a quick nod and spread the word to his men. He had informed the sergeant because the last thing Hauer wanted was to get shot at by his own side.

While the firefight was still taking place, Hauer took off up the hill to the right of where the enemy sniper was positioned. The boys were chewing him up with a steady rate of fire; the Ami wouldn't last long before he had to get out of there if he hoped to survive. Hauer was sure that the sniper intended to harass them rather than go down fighting. There would be time enough for that during the upcoming attack on Ville sur Moselle.

Hauer ran up the hill, laboring under the burden of more than twenty pounds of armor, along with his rifle and extra rounds, not to mention his canteen and other gear. He felt as loaded-down as a peasant's donkey on market day.

He was none too quiet about climbing the wooded hillside, but the shooting below covered up the ruckus that he made. The hill was quite steep and the footing uneven. By the time he reached the trail at the top of the ridge, he was regretting every sausage he had ever eaten and every cigarette he had ever smoked.

Winded, he stood for a few moments with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. Despite the cool temperatures, he was sweating heavily under the iron plating. Briefly, he debated stripping it off, wondering if the armor was only going to be a hindrance, but he decided to keep it on for now. He had already done the hard part in climbing the ridge.

It looked as if he had come out on the trail in the perfect spot to ambush the sniper when he retreated this way. Hauer moved along the relatively flat trail until he found a windfall a short distance off the path. What had once been a mighty oak had blown over in a storm, exposing its tangled roots where they had torn from the ground. Hauer was so used to seeing the result of man-made destruction that it was almost surprising to be reminded that nature still had its own violent forces.

He got behind the downed log, well hidden from anyone coming down the trail. Several weeks before, Hauer had cut a strip of inner tube and stretched it around his helmet like a big rubber band. He took a few minutes now to stuff tips of branches and bits of leaves into the band to break up the outline of his helmet and help him blend into the tangled mass of the windfall.

He set the Mauser in a forked branch to help steady his aim, then took a look through the scope. From here, he had an unimpeded field of fire. The retreating American sniper would walk right into his sights. Just like shooting one of those wild pigs. He regretted that it would be over too quickly. If he had the chance, he would try to wound the sniper, get his rifle away from him, and then finish him with the knife.

Hauer settled down to wait.