Gods & Snipers: A World War II Thriller

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"C'mon," he growled at Frenchie and Vaccaro. Following Cole's lead, they crawled on hands and knees behind the stone wall, following it down toward the river. The Germans were still concentrating their fire at the point on the wall where they had last seen the Americans.

"We get any closer and we can throw rocks at 'em," Vaccaro grumbled.

"Keep moving," Cole said.

The going was hard, with their hands and knees absorbing the roots, stones, and occasional shard of broken glass embedded in the muddy soil. Although they had left their packs back in the village, they were weighed down with canteens, ammo, and half a dozen grenades each. Cole also carried his big Bowie knife. It didn't help that the wall seemed to get lower the closer that they came to the river, cramping their arms and legs as they tried to stay low. If the Germans on the bridge spotted them, the gig would be up. Soon, they practically had to hug the ground.

Cole's plan was to reach a point near the river where they could see under the bridge. He wanted a glimpse of what those engineers were up to. He also had a vague idea that the three of them might be able to make life very short for the Germans stringing the explosives. Then again, the SS troops guarding the bridge itself might have something to say about that.

He glanced up, noticing that the sky was beginning to clear somewhat. The clouds hung low over the hills beyond, but no longer wrapped themselves around the peaks. It was just possible that Allied planes would get back into the air soon. That was fine by Cole — he’d had enough of the gloom and rain. He turned his attention back to the ground and kept crawling.

Finally, they reached the end of the wall. From here, the bank plunged down steeply to the swirling currents below. There wasn't any cover to speak of beyond this point.

"End of the line," Cole said. He chanced a quick peek around the end of the wall. The Germans on the bridge were still focused up the road, toward the point where they had last seen the Americans. This close, Cole could see the German sniper, tight against his rifle, waiting for a target. Cole was tempted to pick him off, but there were bigger fish to fry.

Beneath the bridge, he could see half a dozen SS troops working to lay satchel charges in the framework of the bridge. They stood on the timbers beneath the bridge, shoving the charges against the stone underbelly of the bridge. Other soldiers were busy snaking wires from the charges, edging along the timbers. The wires would run all the way back to the opposite bank, to a detonator.

Cole had not worked much with explosives, but he knew the basics from the rudimentary training that all GIs received. Both sides carried satchel charges for this very purpose: wrecking bridges, railroads, or destroying whatever resource the enemy could be denied. Considering the abuse these charges took being hauled around the countryside in combat conditions, it was a good thing that the explosives themselves were inert. You could drop them, set them on fire, and even shoot them without the charge going off. Setting off a satchel charge required a smaller detonator charge, which was rigged to an electrical device via a wire. In a sense, the arrangement used a method similar to an old flintlock musket, which required a "flash in the pan" to ignite the main charge in the barrel.

He suspected that an explosive bullet fired into the charge might do the trick, but Cole didn't have any of those for the Springfield. German snipers had used explosive bullets on the Russians, and vice versa, in defiance of Geneva Convention rules. Those two nations hated one another on the gut level. So far, German snipers had not used explosive rounds on Allied forces. Short of an explosive round or an electronic detonator, Cole had an idea for what might be the next best thing for setting off a German satchel charge.

"Just like the arcade at Coney Island," Vaccaro said, eyeing the soldiers silhouetted among the timbers. "We can pick them off and win the kewpie doll."

"You know the SS," Cole said. "They'll just send more. And once those sons of bitches on the bridge spot us, we won't be around to stop them."

"Once they have that bridge wired, they'll attack the village," Frenchie said. "Our guys and the villagers won't have a prayer, fighting in two directions."

Cole had to agree. The force on the bridge was well-armed and experienced. If Frenchie was right about them being the same unit that had wiped out the GIs crossing at Dornot, it was going to be a short fight. A likely scenario was that the SS troops would attack, and once the Americans were defeated and their Wehrmacht comrades were across the river, then they would blow up the bridge.

He looked toward far shore and could see the rest of the unit assembling. He tried to count the troops in their dark uniforms, but gave up after twenty. There were at least twice that many, along with the troops holding the bridge. There were a couple of Kübelwagen there, sporting mounted MG-42 machine guns. It became all too clear that the Germans intended to advance across the bridge and hit the GIs defending Ville sur Moselle. The Germans planned to blow the bridge, not hold it — but SS troops never needed much of a reason for an opportunity to kill Allied troops. The SS was hated and feared by the Allies, and the same might be said of the Wehrmacht. The difference came down to soldiers on the one hand, and fanatics on the other.

An officer on the other side stood up in his Kübelwagen and waved the men forward. Cole desperately wanted to pop him, but one officer wasn't worth the risk. The SS troops moved onto the bridge.

Vaccaro was also peering around the wall and saw the SS troops advancing. "Huh, I thought things were bad, but they just went to worse in a hurry."

Frenchie said them coming now, and his knuckles went white as he gripped the rifle even harder.

"I reckon we're about to get caught between a rock and a hard place. What else is new?" Cole gave them a crooked grin, then explained his plan to Vaccaro and Frenchie. "All right, boys, this is where it gets interestin'. When I give the word, I want you to pitch a couple of grenades at those sons of bitches on the bridge. Then give 'em hell. We want them to think that there are a lot more of us than there are. Frenchie, make sure you've got a full clip in that M-1. Shoot, and keep on shootin'."

The M-1 had the advantage of a convincing rate of semiautomatic fire, versus the bolt action Springfield — or the Mauser rifles the Germans carried, for that matter.

"What are you gonna be doing?" Vaccaro wanted to know.

"Me? City Boy, I'm fixin' to blow up this bridge with all them Nazis on it."

"We're supposed to hold this bridge, remember?"

"Ain't likely to happen now, so the best we can do is stop them SS troops from getting across and hitting our rear." He watched Frenchie put a fresh clip in the M-1, and set a couple more on top of the wall within easy reach. "Ready? Now!"

Vaccaro and Frenchie popped over the wall, throwing their grenades at the Germans on the bridge — one, two — then ducked down again. Two ear-splitting explosions resulted. The fragmentation grenades caught the Germans by complete surprise because they were still looking up the road at where they had last seen the Americans. Vaccaro and Frenchie began shooting into the mayhem they had caused with the grenades, forcing the defenders on the bridge to scatter. One of Vaccaro’s rounds caught an SS soldier in the abdomen, causing him to double over and then tumbled over the side of the bridge into the river, where his body landed with an enormous splash.

But the ruse didn't last for long. Already, troops from the second wave of Germans on the far shore rushed forward to bolster the defense. The German sniper was the first to spot the Americans. Cole could see him clearly on the bridge, turning his rifle sights toward Vaccaro and Frenchie. Cole dearly wanted to put a bullet in him and finish what he had started in the forest, but didn't want to give away his own position. Wait, he told himself. The German was going to pay for what he had done to the villagers, and to those kids. He had something special planned for that Kraut sniper, along with the rest of them. Bullets began to smack into the stone wall or whine overhead.

Cole was still positioned at the terminus of the wall, out of the German line of fire. From here, he had a clear view of the underside of the bridge, where the Germans were finishing up the charges and scrambling to get out of there, now that the bridge seemed to be under attack.

Through the scope, Cole picked out a couple of Germans making their way along one of the timbers supporting the bridge. The timber couldn't have been more than a foot wide, so the Germans had their arms raised, gripping the bottom of the bridge to keep their balance as they crab-walked sideways along the timber. He could see the look of concentration on the Germans' face. The muddy river yawned below. Cole wouldn't have been eager to trade places with them. Tucked among the timbers over the Germans' heads, Cole could see where the satchel charges had been placed.

He could easily have shot into the satchel charges, but he knew that would not detonate them. He knew that a grenade could set off the charges. He had seen it done once, when a detonator failed, and the engineer had settled for lobbing a grenade at the satchel charge. The energy of the blast had set off the larger charge. He also knew that a bullet could detonate a grenade because it contained a different explosive, one that was under pressure and thus more volatile when exposed to the energy of a bullet.

The first German soldier didn't seem to have what Cole was looking for, so his crosshairs passed over him and settled on the next enemy soldier. Bingo, bango. He was in luck. From a bandolier across his chest, there dangled a couple of stick grenades. Detonators.

To his right, he heard Frenchie yelp in pain. The firing from the M-1 stopped. Although he was concerned about Frenchie, Cole did not take his eye from the rifle scope. Now, it was all up to Vaccaro. There wasn't going to be much suppressing fire from a bolt-action Springfield.

Seconds later, a bullet snicked the stone wall near Cole’s head. Too close for comfort. Outgunned, he knew that the three of them couldn’t stick around much longer.

He pulled his eye away from the scope long enough to glance at the soldiers on the bridge. He spotted his sniper friend right away because his uniform didn’t match those of the SS troops. He had half-expected to lock eyes with the sniper, but to his surprise, the German was looking up, his rifle now pointed away from Cole.

What had drawn his attention? Was he shooting toward town? Had General Tolliver organized an attack on the bridge?

Cole got back on his scope. He had his own shooting to worry about, and this wasn't going to be an easy shot. He could see the stick grenade in his crosshairs and he could see the German engineer, but the soldier was still shimmying his way along the trestle, with a web of timbers between him and Cole. This was going to be like shooting through a keyhole.

Cole slipped into his shooting trance. The sounds of the battle fell away. He was dimly aware of another bullet striking close, but he ignored the sting of stone fragments against his cheek. He didn’t even pay attention to the trickle of warm blood on his face. All that mattered was this circular field of view. His universe came down to that rifle scope.

Anchored against the stone wall, the rifle felt steady as stone itself. But the German kept moving, moving. Cole bided his time, but soon the German would slide farther away, out of Cole's reach. Then the soldier paused. Cole's finger took up the last fraction of tension in the trigger, so that he was very nearly surprised when the rifle fired. Automatically, he followed through and kept up the pressure on the trigger.

What happened next was instantaneous. Traveling at twenty-eight hundred feet per second, the .30/06 round struck the German grenade, unleashing nearly three thousand foot-pounds of energy. It was like a bullet-sized anvil hitting the grenade at more than twice the speed of sound. Cole expected the grenade to oblige by exploding. The shockwave of the grenade in the confined space under the bridge would shatter timbers and hit the satchel charge like a flint striking steel, unleashing their own kinetic energy in the resulting detonation.

That was what Cole hoped, anyhow. But what he saw was the German soldier stagger, then lose his balance and pitch forward into the water. The grenade had stopped the bullet, all right, but it hadn’t exploded or saved the soldier’s life. Cole’s plan literally sank into the river.

The second soldier looked around, desperately trying to determine where the shot had come from. He began to move even faster along the timber, precarious though it was. Cole could see a grenade stuck into the man’s belt at his hip. He tried to line up the sights on it before the German was out of view. He had one more chance to get this right. More bullets struck the wall near Cole, but he ignored them.

He inhaled, exhaled, let his finger press ever so slightly on the trigger. The rifle fired—

Someone was grabbing him by the shoulders, pulling him behind the wall. Vaccaro was shouting something in his ear. “Down! Down!”

Instantaneously, the whole earth seemed to lift him up and then slap him back down.

Cole pressed his face down into the stone wall as the concussion washed over him. It literally took his breath away. Stunned, he raised his head to see that the whole bridge had lifted into the air, just like a blanket snapped over a bed. Chunks of stone and timber and bodies shot skyward. Through the debris, Cole could just get a glimpse of a plane racing away beneath the cloud cover.

As the bridge settled, pieces of it began to rain down. Some fell into the river, while others struck the river bank and road. Something crushed a portion of the stone wall and Cole realized that it was the spare tire from a Kübelwagen, blown nearly across the river. Another two feet to the left and it would have taken his head off. Despite the ringing in his ears, he heard screams from the direction of the river, but they died as suddenly as they had started. Cole ducked as more debris showered their position.

When Cole looked up, the bridge was a smoking ruin. Something had definitely set off the charges under the bridge in a chain reaction. The question was, had it been the rocket fired by the P47 Thunderbolt or had it been Cole’s second bullet, hitting that grenade?

He might never know, and it didn’t matter, anyhow. The bridge was wrecked and the SS troops were dead. Upon closer inspection, however, he could see that the bridge was not entirely destroyed. Some of the ancient stone and timber had withstood the blast. The bridge pillars still rose out of the muddy water. But where the center span of the bridge had been, Cole saw a gaping expanse.

He noticed the wreckage of a Kübelwagen, upside down, half in and half out of the water at the bottom of the steep bank. Sure enough, the front tire was missing — it was now embedded in the stone wall, having nearly taken Cole’s head off. The officer, driver, and machine gunner who’d been on that vehicle must be in Valhalla right about now, Cole reckoned — or wherever dead SS went. Considering that nothing moved on the wrecked bridge, it was probably safe to say that the whole damn SS squad was in Valhalla, along with that German sniper.

Now it made sense that he had glimpsed the German sniper looking away. He must have seen the plane coming for him like a reckoning. Maybe he’d even taken a shot at it. Cole only hoped that the son of a bitch had felt at least a few seconds of terror when he saw doom itself headed right for him.

Cole looked over to his right. Hunkered down behind the stone wall, Vaccaro nodded at him. He had a dazed look in his eyes. Frenchie looked up from trying to wrap a rag around his bleeding arm. He’d been shot through the upper left arm.

"I was worried you two was goners," Cole said. The words sounded muffled. Somebody seemed to be ringing a bell in his head and his ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton.

"It's not for lack of you trying to kill us," Vaccaro said. "That explosion was too close for comfort. Let's not do that again anytime soon."

"How's that arm?" Cole asked Frenchie.

The kid was using his teeth to pull the bandage tight. "Missed anything important," he said. "No broken bones. Hurts like hell, though."

"Being shot will do that."

Movement in the water caught their eye. They could see an SS soldier swimming toward shore. He appeared to be the only survivor.

Cole put his crosshairs on the German's head and shot him. The body sank beneath the muddy surface.

Frenchie stared at him, looking pale, but didn't say anything.

"Let's get you back into the village," Cole said to him. "I have a notion that Margot is goin' to fix you right up, one way or another.”

Behind them, they could still hear the sounds of the fight taking place in town. There were single shots, interspersed with bursts of automatic fire. It sounded as if the battle for Ville sur Moselle had become up close and personal.

Cole spat dust and the taste of cordite from his mouth.

"You know what, Cole?" Vaccaro said. "General Tolliver is not going to be happy that you wrecked that bridge.”

“Me? Hell, City Boy, it was that plane.”

“I was there, remember? You shot at the same time that the plane hit the bridge,” Vaccaro said. “That plane fired one rocket and you fired one bullet. The bridge blew up and killed all those SS. I mean—" Vaccaro sputtered to a stop, shaken by the destruction that he had seen. "I mean, what the hell? Either way, somebody made one helluva lucky shot.”

"Lucky shot," Cole agreed.