Fortunately, Cole and Vaccaro found the 118th before they found any trouble of the Kraut variety. Like every American GI in France, these guys looked haggard and worn out. Like Cole, they wore the same M41 Style Field Jackets they had come ashore with weeks before. Though durable, the densely woven cotton fabric was now stained, ripped, and filthy. Nobody had showered or shaved in days.
They barely looked up as Cole and Vaccaro appeared with their sniper rifles. Again, Cole was reminded that soldiers on both sides had mixed emotions about snipers. At best, there was a mystique about snipers. They were held apart from an ordinary rifleman because of their skill and special equipment. At worst, they were seen as sneaky sons of bitches, and disliked accordingly.
"Who's in charge of this here goat fuck?" Cole asked, and followed the pointed fingers until he found a young captain crouched over a map.
The captain flicked his eyes over Cole's face, and then at the rifle.
"I understand that you're here to solve our sniper problem," the captain said. "Fight fire with fire, right?"
Cole was immediately taken aback by the officer's Boston accent, so different from his own that it was difficult to fathom that they both came from the same country.
"Yes, sir."
"Here's the situation, Cole. We need to get up this road toward Saint Dennis de Mere. Only there's a German sniper who has set up shop in those trees up ahead. We could go around him, but it’s not exactly convenient." He waved a hand in the vague direction of the fields beyond. The road was hemmed in by hedges and fences. "For all we know, the Krauts may have planted mines. This road is the most direct route, and we've got a schedule to keep."
Cole looked to where the officer was pointing. Sure enough, there was a bend in the road ahead, where the road passed around a copse of trees. The sniper had hidden in those trees, and from that vantage point now commanded the road. It was a textbook example of how a single sniper could delay an infantry unit as effectively as a tank.
Cole considered his options. Continuing down the road would be suicide. Anyone who left cover would instantly be in the sniper's sights.
He would be another dead man among many.
He thought about the sniper in the trees. Having grown up hunting and trapping in the mountains he had learned to think like the game he was stalking. It might seem silly, the idea that he could get inside the head of a deer, or a bear, and predict what that animal would do, or where he would go. But Cole could. It was what made him a good hunter — that, and being a damn good shot.
Most animals did the expected because they followed their instincts. Their brains followed a road map to get them through various situations. Humans weren't all that different.
What would the German sniper do? Bide his time and wait. If the Americans attempted a full-on assault, the German could simply slip away — after inflicting severe losses. It was more than likely that the sniper was hidden in one of the treetops, which would offer a better vantage point. The disadvantage for the German sniper was that a tree could also become a trap.
The way Cole saw it, the possibility that he could tree that sniper like a ‘coon was the best he could hope for.
Cole looked at Vaccaro. "Hounds and foxes?"
Vaccaro groaned. "You and your goddamn hillbilly games. You know I hate hounds and foxes."
The captain was looking at them like headquarters had maybe sent him a couple of nut cases. "Hounds and foxes? What the hell has that got to do with anything? I've got a sniper holding up my squad, soldier."
"Don't worry, sir,” Vaccaro said. “It's a strategy that me and Cole here use. Hounds chase foxes, you know. We'll make the fox think we're chasing him, but meanwhile, there's a lone hound sneaking up on the sly."
"Lone wolf," Cole corrected him. "That'd be me, sir."
The captain shook his head. "Snipers. You're in a three-way tie for crazy with paratroopers and combat engineers."
"Thank you, sir," Vaccaro said. "That means a lot."
Cole turned to the captain. "All right, here's what I'm fixin' to do. I'm a gonna get off this here road and into this field right here—" in Cole's accent, the last two words sounded like rye cheer " — and work my way toward them trees. In exactly ten minutes, you hit them woods with everything you got. Vaccaro will stick with you and try to get a shot from the road. Ya'll are the hounds, you see. I'll be sneaking up on him on the sly. If Vaccaro don't get him, then I'll see where he's at when he shoots back."
The captain glanced at his type A-11 Army-issue watch, manufactured in Waltham, Massachusetts. Checking the alignment of the white hands on the black face, he said, "Ten minutes. You got it."
Taking a cue from the captain, Vaccaro checked his own watch. Or rather, watches. He had three strapped to his wrist. Spoils of war.
Their plan agreed upon, Cole eased his way into the field, careful not to attract any attention from the enemy sniper. To help create a diversion, Vaccaro took a couple of potshots at the German's position.
Cole chose the field to the north because his view of the copse of trees would not be blocked by the elbow in the road. This way he was traveling around the point of the elbow, rather than being caught in the crook. The countryside was more open here and the field reflected that, being mostly a wide-open expanse that stretched toward a distant line of trees. At one edge of the field, maybe two hundred yards away, was an ancient stone barn. Perfect cover for a sniper. Cole eyed the barn warily, but it appeared empty. There was a stillness about the structure. The only German around was in those woods, blocking the road ahead.
He crept forward.
Throughout the field were large boulders that generations of farmers had failed to move, allowing the scrub brush to grow up around them. Farmers back home did the same. These formed islands of vegetation in the cultivated field, which was otherwise knee-high with barley.
He slung the rifle so that it hung across his front, then got down on his hands and knees and started to crawl. The damp earth soaked his knees. Bits of stubble from last fall's crop jabbed into his hands. His plan was to reach one of those islands of stone and brush. From there, he would have a good vantage point toward the cluster of trees that hid the German sniper, and he would have some cover of his own.
Cole hit a patch of briers that snagged his trousers and stubbornly wouldn't let go. He got hung up and freed himself only by using his hands to pull away the brier canes. It hurt like fire, and his hands came away bloody. He kept moving.
Before he could get into position, shooting started on the road. Damn, but that captain was punctual. It sure didn't seem like ten minutes. Cole never bothered to wear a wristwatch — what good did it do for a sniper to watch the time pass? Not only that, but the glint of a crystal watch face had fatally betrayed more than one soldier. He had warned Vaccaro about that, but the damn fool city boy wouldn't listen.
Cole stopped crawling and got ready to shoot. He would have liked to make it to one of those islands of rock and brush to find a solid rest for his rifle, plus some cover, but he was out of time. The hounds were already busy shooting.
He had to shoot now, while the sniper was distracted.
He would have preferred firing from a prone position, but the vegetation blocked his view. A sitting position was his only option. He sat Indian-style, but kept his ankles as flat to the ground as possible. He hooked the sling through his right arm to help steady the Springfield, and then put his elbows over his knees, not bone to bone because that would be unsteady, but meat to meat and sinew to sinew. He bent forward at the waist, getting right up on the scope.
From the barn, Rohde watched the American sniper with professional interest.
It was past mid-morning when Rohde had heard an American squad exchange fire with Scheider, and probably getting the worst of it. That Scheider was a good shot, damn him. He ended up pinning down the squad to the point that they bunched up on the road.
Rohde was just beginning to think that his plan wasn't going to work. The Americans were being stubborn. Instead of trying to flank Scheider, and moving into Rohde’s killing field, they were shooting it out on the road.
Again, to pass the time, he addressed his dead brother. The American strategy is always to move forward. They never think about moving sideways.
That’s when he had noticed the other sniper. A flicker of motion caught his eye. Wait. Carl, what was that?
Rohde fixed his eyes straight ahead, relaxing his focus so that his eyes would naturally detect any movement in the field. There. Quickly, his sharp eyes went to the motion. It was not the entire squad moving to flank Scheider. Just one man. One with a telescopic sight on his rifle. An American sniper, which was something of an unusual sight.
Rohde felt his heart beat faster. A sniper would be a rare prize.
Captain Fischer might even put Rohde in for a medal sooner, rather than later.
After he killed this sniper, he would go down and take his rifle. Maybe the American weapon would be better than this Stück Müll fat old Hohenfeldt had given him.
Studying the sniper through the telescopic sight, Rohde saw a lean man who moved with the stealth of an animal, belly low to the ground. The American had something painted on his helmet. It looked like a flag of some sort.
Rohde pressed his eye closer to the sight, straining to see across the distance. The flag appeared to be a red rectangle traversed by a blue St. Andrew's X-shaped cross, with stars inside the cross. It looked a bit like the flag of Norway, as a matter of fact, but Rohde was sure that he had never seen this particular flag before. What in hell? Maybe it was a unit designation of some sort. This sniper wouldn't have been the first American to decorate his helmet in some way. In much the same manner, the Americans were always drawing pictures on their tanks and planes, and giving them silly names.
Germans saw that as akin to defacing military equipment. No tank commander in the 5th Panzer would ever decorate his Tiger tank with a picture of a half-naked woman. Who would even consider such a travesty?
Rohde let the American belly crawl through the field, knowing that he could take him at any instant. That thought made him tingle down to his boots with what was almost a sexual feeling of anticipation. Strange, isn’t it, Carl, to have the power of life and death over someone without him knowing it? He watched with professional interest as the sniper got into a sitting position and aimed toward the copse of trees that hid Scheider.
It was all Rohde could do not to snort at the sniper's confidence. The American was a long way from where Scheider was hidden. Did the American really think he could shoot accurately from that distance? With a sitting stance, no less?
Cole scanned the treetops.
Down the road, bullets snicked at the tree branches hiding the German, but the sniper managed to return fire, keeping the Americans pinned down.
He glimpsed a burst of something deep in the shadows among the trees. It could have been a muzzle blast, or maybe just a sudden movement.
With a mental image locked in place of where he had spotted the movement, he fired. Worked the bolt, sending a brass .30/06 shell spinning away. Acquired the woodsy patch where he had seen a ripple of movement. Fired again.
The sniper in the woods fell silent.
As Rohde watched, the sniper fired, and the shooting in the copse of trees fell silent. To hit Scheider at such a distance, this American must be a sniper of some skill.
Rohde was more than a little impressed. Rohde was glad that he had not been the one in the enemy's sights. One shot from the American and Rohde's problem with his rival was solved.
In payment, Rohde would kill the American quickly. He lined up the sight on the back of the American's helmet. The bullet would take him square in the back of the head.
Rohde held his breath and squeezed the trigger.
Cole shifted to get a better look through the scope and in the next instant something inside his skull went whang.
He just had time to think, "Who in the hell hit me in the head with an ax handle?"
Then everything went black.
When Rohde fired, two things had happened as instantaneously as the primer igniting the powder in the cartridge. First, Rohde felt the satisfying jolt against his shoulder of the Mauser's recoil. In the same instant, the American cocked his head.
The American had gone down, but because the sniper had moved just as Rohde had fired, he couldn't tell if the bullet had struck true.
He ejected the spent shell and slapped the bolt into place. The rifle jolted out of position, and he wasted precious seconds repositioning the weapon.
Hop, hop, hop. It was like he could hear his old training instructor shouting into his ear. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Feeling rushed and nervous, Rohde got off another shot too quickly, because it kicked up dirt near the American's head. He took a deep breath. Take it easy, he told himself. The American wasn’t moving. Maybe that first bullet had done for him.
He lined up the sight right between the sniper's shoulder blades.