Righteous Sniper

CHAPTER NINE

Cole’s trap was a simple one. He suspected that the enemy sniper would be back in position by first light, moving under the cover of darkness. That was, if the sniper returned, which was a big question mark. It was a standard rule of sniper warfare never to return to the same hide two days in a row. Another basic tenet was to avoid taking the same path to and from a sniping position. If someone knew where to expect you to walk into his crosshairs, your number would be up.

However, Cole felt confident that the sniper would be back and might not be overly cautious. The German would be thinking that he wasn’t facing a Russian sniper well versed in the cat-and-mouse game of sniper warfare. No, he’d think these Americans wouldn’t know Schmalz aus Butter — lard from butter.

The sniper’s nest in the church steeple was simply too good for him to pass up.

He’ll be back, Cole thought.

Cole had puzzled out how to get at the sniper. He knew well enough that there was more than one way to skin a cat. One option would have been to enter the church and go after him or even ambush him inside the church.

He had told the sergeant that he’d trap the German sniper like a coon up a tree. But the more Cole thought about it, he decided to give something else a try.

After sending Vaccaro back to town, he looked through the outlying sheds and barns until he found what he needed. He used quick bursts from his flashlight to search the buildings. He lucked out and found both items after looking through just a few outbuildings.

Next, he returned to the path that the enemy sniper had taken, following the German’s tracks through the snow. Although it was dark by now, he avoided the flashlight as much as possible for fear that the light might bring unwelcome attention — from both sides.

When he reached the gap in the stone wall that the sniper had passed through, Cole paused. He looked around, taking his bearings. Just to one side of the gap stood a stone barn, creating a backdrop that would silhouette the sniper when the time came. There was cover where Cole could set up nearby. This would do nicely.

Working quickly, he strung twine across the gap, about a foot above the snow. He anchored one end of the twine by tying it around a stone in the wall. The other end ran under the legs of a milking stool that he’d found in a barn. He put a rock on top of the stool to weigh it down, enabling the stool to serve as a fulcrum of sorts. The final leg of twine ran to the wire handle of a milking pail that Cole set atop the wall. The bucket contained a few empty milk bottles and a pair of cowbells.

He was counting on the fact that, in the dark, the enemy sniper wouldn’t see the twine. Its light color helped it blend into the snowy background, especially at night.

He’d been worried that the sniper might slip right past him when the German returned in the dark, enabling the sniper to turn the tables on Cole. Once the sniper hit that string, the resulting racket would let Cole know when the man was crossing through the gap in the fence.

All that he needed now was some luck.

Plus, he’d need a little help from Vaccaro.

“You’re sure this will work?” Vaccaro wondered.

“Hell no,” Cole said. “But if it doesn’t, the way I figure it, you’ll be the one who gets shot.”

“Gee, thanks.”

It was near midnight and the temperature was below freezing. They were in the no-man’s-land on the outskirts of Bastogne between the American and German lines. There were a few scattered houses, outbuildings, and small fields — all appeared to be deserted at this hour.

The snow that had melted slightly during the day was now a frozen crust that crunched under their feet as they moved into position. A freezing fog had rolled in, through which sleet and a little fresh snow still managed to fall. Miserable though it was, the weather served their purposes well, the cold and darkness discouraging soldiers on both sides from doing anything but staying bundled in their foxholes.

They retraced their steps until they came to the spot where the sniper had shot at them yesterday. Cole could see where the bullet had struck, leaving a brighter mark against the drab stone. That had been a little too close for comfort.

Cole led the way to the hiding place he had picked out. He wormed his way beneath an old hay wagon with a shattered wheel, which caused one side of the wagon to nearly touch the ground. Once Cole got under there, no one could see him. He rested his rifle across one of the broken spokes. Wrapped in a white rag, the muzzle was all but invisible. From where he lay, he would have had a perfect view of the gap in the stone wall, no more than one hundred feet away. Would have had — if it hadn’t been dark.

That was where Vaccaro came in. Cole had set up his spotter in the lee of the stone wall, no more than twenty feet from the gap that Cole hoped the sniper would come through. Vaccaro had his own rifle and a .45, but the only thing he’d be pointing at the enemy was his flashlight.

“When you hear that racket start, you light him up,” Cole explained. “I’ll do the rest.”

“Dammit, hillbilly. That Kraut will start shooting as soon as he sees my flashlight.”

“Ain’t likely,” Cole replied.

“Why the hell not?”

“’Cuz he’ll be dead by then.”

“What if he’s not?”

“Then turn off your flashlight and shoot back.”

“There’s got to be an easier way to do this.”

“Listen here, city boy. They say that son of a bitch has shot at least a dozen of our boys. Shot them smoking cigarettes, shot them walking down the street. Hell, he even shot them taking a leak.”

“Yeah.” Vaccaro had heard the stories.

“When that flashlight hits him, he’ll know for a split second that I’m about to punch his card. That’s why we’re going to do it this way.”

“All right then. Let’s do it.”

They waited in the foggy, frozen night, shivering. Despite the cold, Cole could feel some of the snow melting beneath him and starting to soak through his clothes, adding to his discomfort. He wished that he’d thought to bring a blanket. He doubted that Vaccaro was faring any better. It was going to be a long, cold wait for them both.

Deep down, Cole knew that his approach smacked of revenge rather than soldiering. He grinned at the thought. Sometimes you needed a little vengeance.

What they were doing, simply put, was setting a trap to catch the sniper — a fatal and deadly trap.

If the sniper had a split second in which to realize that he was a dead man, even better.

The thought warmed him so much he forgot the cold.

Cole had always loved traps and trapping. As a boy he’d spent long days working his trapline. He collected the animals he caught, then reset the traps or moved them to a different location. He was no John Colter, trapping beaver in the far reaches of the frontier, but deep in the mountains he could go all day without seeing another human being. He had liked that just fine.

Cole was not one to sit and watch the birds and clouds. Restless by nature, he had kept on the move, working his way along the mountain streams and across remote ridges. The steep landscape and the toil of carrying the traps had turned his lean body hard and wiry. Wind, cold, rain, heat — the weather was just something to be acknowledged, something to push through to the next ridge, the next bend in the creek.

He had learned to move without a sound, sometimes walking right up to an unsuspecting fox or deer, so silently had he passed through the woods, like a forest creature himself. If he could take a shot at any game, he took it. Often he had just one or two bullets, and they were not to be wasted. Those skills had served him well in this war.

The Coles always had lived off the land. While the rest of the country suffered through the Great Depression, the hard times never changed for the Cole family.

The animals that he collected in his traps varied. There were a few beaver in the more remote mountain creeks, but he also caught fox, possum, muskrat, and raccoon. The pelts weren’t worth as much with the demand for fur being low on account of the Great Depression, but he would at least bring in enough to buy another handful of bullets and maybe some canned goods. Anything else, and the Cole family pretty much made their own or made do.

His trapping trips weren’t only about making money. In the end, he just liked being alone in the deep mountain woods. Once he got to be a teenager, he would sometimes disappear into those woods for two or three days at a time. At night, he would roll himself in a blanket and sleep by his campfire, cooking whatever he had caught over the flames. The mountains, his rifle, a fire, a blanket, fresh water from a mountain stream, something to eat that he had hunted or trapped — Cole realized it was all a man needed in this world.

Some might say that he had been born a century too late, but the old ways still existed if you sought them out.

Now, on the outskirts of Bastogne, waiting for his trap to be sprung, Cole let the time pass over him like currents over stones in a mountain creek. He stayed alert even as one part of his mind drifted. Occasionally he heard Vaccaro fidget. That city boy was noisy as a herd of buffalo.

But his ears stayed sharp for other sounds. From the town held by the Americans came the grind of gears and sleepy curses. From the distant woods came the occasional guttural words of German, carried far on the chill, foggy air.

Then he heard the crunch of footsteps approaching across the frozen snow. The footsteps were coming from the direction of the German lines. He put his eye to the scope and his finger to the trigger.

He had no doubt that this was the enemy sniper.

As the sniper approached, the footsteps slowed and grew stealthier. It was almost as if he could sense the trap — and if the sniper was good enough, maybe he could. At one point, the footsteps paused, and Cole could imagine his quarry stopping to sniff the air for trouble.

The footsteps resumed, approached the gap in the stone wall, and passed through. Cole realized that he hadn’t needed the trip wire at all, not with the crunchy snow.

But the enemy soldier hit the twine anyway, yanking the milk pail off its perch, spilling the empty bottles and cowbells onto the ground. The clatter made Cole jump even though he’d been expecting it. He supposed that the German sniper might be having a heart attack right about now.

But it wasn’t his heart that was going to kill him.

Vaccaro flicked on his flashlight, catching the enemy sniper like a deer in the headlights.

Through the scope, Cole got a good glimpse of him. The man was bundled in winter gear, rifle slung over his shoulder, a scarf over his face — but Cole could see the man’s eyes clearly. They were blue as they caught the light and wide open in surprise.

Cole put his sights over the man’s heart and squeezed the trigger.

In the circle of light, he watched as the shot knocked the man backward into the gap in the stone wall.

Vaccaro clicked off the light. Seconds later, he was running at a crouch back toward Cole’s position.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, panting from the effort of running through the snow. “Between that racket and that light, we’re bound to attract attention. We don’t want our own guys shooting at us.”

Cole couldn’t agree more. They were in no-man’s-land. Not everybody knew they were out here, and the GIs in Bastogne would be jumpy. He crawled out from under the wagon, and in the dark they weaved their way through the outlying yards to return to the center of Bastogne.