Winter Sniper: A World War II Novel

Chapter 20

Ty rode out to meet the small plane that had just buzzed overhead. His old friend Captain Grantham had sent a telegraph with the marksman’s name and expected date of arrival.

The drive to the airfield took about ten minutes, following a winding road through woods and past cornfields where last year’s stubble poked up through the snow. There was no landing strip at the resort, but this one had been built nearby to meet the wartime needs of the impromptu military R&R facility and hospital. In a way, White Sulphur Springs was an unusual choice of location. It was too far removed from any metropolitan area to be convenient. At the same time, the resort’s isolation gave the military all the privacy it needed. Besides, there wasn’t much demand for luxurious surroundings while American boys were fighting and dying in the Pacific and in Europe. The facilities were being put to good use until the war ended.

It was the opinion of Ike’s whip-cracking chief of staff, Joe Durham, that the general ought not to be bothered with the details of providing security during his visit to the resort. He simply assured the general that precautions were being taken. This did not mean Ty had a free hand. He had run the idea for bringing in a sniper of their own by Durham, who had approved. Durham was a man who appreciated initiative. “I’m going to hand security off to you,” Durham had said. He studied the gash on Ty’s cheek and the nasty purple bruise that bloomed across his cheekbone. “If you think you’re up to it.”

Ty had jumped at the chance. Durham had urged him to handle things quietly — there was no point in upsetting Mamie Eisenhower with a lot of extra guards.

It was only as Ty watched the plane descend that he understood the enormity of the task he had undertaken. The morning was clear and cold, and they arrived at the airstrip in time to see the plane descend from a blue sky that seemed to go on forever. A single passenger got out. The pilot helped him unload a duffel bag, which the passenger slung over his shoulder, stooping under the load. Ty and the driver stood by the car, waiting.

Ty was taken aback. He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but the man who had gotten out of the plan looked far from deadly. The soldier who approached, weighted down under the duffel bag, was no more than five-feet-eight and maybe one hundred and forty pounds. Yet up close he looked like some kind of knobby tree root that had been dug up and left to dry in the sun. His leathery skin seemed permanently tanned and from the crow’s feet around the man’s eyes Ty guessed he was mid-thirties or older — which might explain some of the attitude at running into a much younger officer. The driver stepped forward to take the sergeant’s duffel but he swung his shoulder away.

“I carry my own gear, son.”

“Sergeant Yancey?” Ty asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Captain Walker,” Ty said, putting steel in his voice, getting on top of Yancey. Ty had met his kind before, weathered NCOs who didn’t think much of college-educated officers. At the same time, from the smirk Yancey wore, Ty couldn’t help but feel that he was only playing into Yancey’s hands, proving the sergeant’s suspicions that he had another asshole junior officer on his hands. Ty was mad at himself for doing it and at the sergeant for making him do it.

“If you aren’t Yancey, you’d better get your ass back on that plane before it takes off again. If you are Yancey, then you’d better salute damn quick or you might end up back on that plane anyway.”

“Is that right?” The dark eyes bored into his own. “Then who would you get to shoot this assassin of yours? This ain’t like plinkin’ tin cans with a BB gun.”

When the driver opened the trunk, the new arrival eased his duffel bag inside. He straightened up and gave Ty a half-hearted salute. “Sergeant Yancey reporting for duty … sir.”

“Let’s take a ride, Sergeant. I want you to see the terrain.”

Yancey didn’t move right away. He was studying the ugly gash on Ty’s cheek. “This don’t exactly look like a combat zone around here. How did you get that? Ruckus down at the Officer’s Club? Or maybe cut yourself shavin’?”

“Rifle butt,” Ty said.

Yancey raised his eyebrows and seemed to make a fresh assessment of the officer in front of him but made no further comment as they got into the vehicle.

Yancey’s eyes flicked everywhere as they drove the short distance to the resort grounds. “Good cover around here, but it’s cold as a bitch. Tell me something, Captain. You really think some Russian sniper is going to find some tree to hide behind and shoot General Eisenhower?”

Ty listened to Yancey’s flat Southern accent and tried to judge where he was from. Not one of those moonlight and magnolias states but not Texas, either — maybe Arkansas or Missouri. Just the kind of place you would imagine some tough nut of a rifleman to come from.

“He already tried in the city,” Ty said. “Seems to me you couldn’t ask for a better hiding place for a sniper than all these woods.”

“A lot of these Russian snipers are women,” Yancey said. “You ever think about that?”

Ty touched the scar on his cheekbone. “I got a good look at him,” he said. “It wasn’t a woman.”

“One guard dog ain’t gonna be enough,” Yancey said, still absorbing the landscape. His tone had changed and he sounded more thoughtful. “You need about a dozen of me, sir.”

“You’re the only guard dog we’ve got.”

Yancey snorted. “I don’t reckon there’s any chance General Eisenhower will do the smart thing and stay indoors.”

“The general says he won’t be held hostage.”

“That’s the thing about generals,” Yancey said. “They get to thinkin’ that their shit don’t stink and their veins don’t bleed. You know, in ancient Rome it used to be the job of a slave to go around with the generals and whisper in their ears, ‘You are mortal’ or some such shit. Maybe you need to whisper in Ike’s ear and save us all a lot of trouble.”

“Already tried that,” Ty said.

“I reckoned you might have.”

The car let them out near the hotel entrance and Yancey insisted on walking the grounds right away. He got his duffel from the trunk and took out a leather gun case.

“You want your rifle?” Ty was surprised.

“Last thing I want is to get out there in the woods and have the son of a bitch get the drop on me.”

“You mean he might be out there right now?”

Yancey just looked at Ty and shook his head, as if amazed that any officer could be so dumb. He then proceeded to unbuckle the straps on the leather case, revealing a gleaming rifle on the sheepskin liner.

“I’ve got my forty-five,” Ty said, patting the holster at this belt. He had taken to wearing the pistol since the assassination attempt.

“Useless hunk of junk against a sniper,” Yancey muttered. “Might as well throw rocks.”

Ty wrestled with his temper, reminding himself that they were on the same team. It was the sniper he ought to be mad at. A sniper who might already be out there. Hadn’t thought about that. Ty scanned the snow-covered forests, wondering if the sniper was watching them at that very moment. He felt his skin crawl at the idea.

They hiked up into the woods, following the trails that had been stamped into the snow, neither of them saying a word. His earlier confrontation with Yancey had set Ty’s head to hurting again and the blinding whiteness of the snow didn’t help. Ty started to work up a sweat, breathing heavily — making a promise to himself that he would cut back on the cigarettes and the booze one of these days — while next to him the smaller man barely seemed to be exerting himself. Yancey moved so quietly that at times Ty had to look over his shoulder just to make sure the man was still following him.

Panting, Ty paused to catch his breath. “Well, what do you think?”

Yancey took in his surroundings before answering. They were standing among the trees. The white immensity of the resort hotel was visible through the snow-covered branches, on the other side of the expanse of lawn. They could see soldiers moving about and a member of the hotel staff, using a grain shovel to clear away more of the snow. Ty came to the unsettling realization that none of the people in the distance had any idea that they were being watched. They were so far away that the shovel flashed in a glint of sun as it scooped up more snow; a second later came the faint sound of metal scraping against concrete. A bullet would have felled any one of the people in the distance without warning before the sound of the shot ever reached them.

“That hotel is five hundred, six hundred feet from here,” Yancey said as he judged the distance, squinting against the brightness of the snow. “He’d have to be one hell of a shot to hit the general from out here.”

“But could you do it?”

Yancey shaded his eyes with a knobby hand and thought about it. “Let me show you something, Captain,” he said, and then proceeded to put the rifle to his shoulder. “Bang. I just shot the general.”

“I think I get the point,” Ty said as Yancey lowered the rifle. He couldn’t help admire the weapon. “What is that, anyway?”

“Model 1903 Springfield,” Yancey said. “Thirty caliber with a three-power scope. This rifle is designed for sniper warfare, Captain. That hardware you’ve got strapped on might properly be called a hand cannon. It’s got the accurate range of a kid throwing a green apple. Got to be within twenty feet to hit anything — maybe ten feet for you.”

“Go to hell, Yancey.”

The sergeant just chuckled. Then he looked Ty in the eye. “I could do it,” he finally said. “I could hit the general from here. Not a head shot, mind you — nothing fancy. I reckon I’d rather be on that high ground to the west, but the cover here ain’t bad. I’d get down low, in among some bushes, and nobody would ever see me.”

“Could you get away?”

Yancey swept a hand around them at the trees. “Tell me what you see, Captain.”

“Woods.”

“That’s right. A goddamn shitload of trees. Hard to follow tracks back in here because the snow is too broken up. I would think a good man would have a trick or two up his sleeve about tracking, anyhow. Lay a false trail, run up a stream. Buy hisself some time. Once he got in them deep woods back in the hills, you ain’t gonna find him.”

Ty nodded. None of this was anything he wanted to hear, but it only confirmed what Ty had suspected in the first place. He had wanted an actual sniper’s opinion on how to defend against an assassin with a rifle. He took it on good faith that Yancey was one of the best — Captain Grantham wouldn’t have sent him if he wasn’t. If anyone could get inside the sniper’s head, Ty believed Yancey could.

“Let me make myself perfectly clear, Sergeant. Your mission is to protect the general for the duration of his stay here. The enemy has a sniper, and now we’ve got one on our side.”

Ty knew that if the general insisted on his daily walks, it would be much easier for the assassin than it would be for Yancey to protect Ike. Yancey was no fool; he must have known it too. But he only grinned in reply to Ty’s orders. “I’ll be ready,” he said. Then Yancey added half to himself “You know, I’ve hunted just about everything there is to shoot. Moose, bear, wolf. It’s about time I got me a Russian.”