Ghost Sniper: A World War II Thriller Page 16

  With the German in the church steeple above him, there was nowhere safe to be on the roof, though the ridge of the roof itself offered some protection. Keep moving, Cole. He rolled and a bullet nicked the roof tiles near where his head had been a moment before, blasting Cole's face with shards of slate.

  Move. Now.

  Cole had climbed up carefully because the ancient roof slates were brittle and slippery with what someone might have described poetically as moss, but which was really more like the algae you found on rocks near the edges of slow-moving creeks.

  He knew he had seconds before the next shot killed him. There was only one way to get down, and that was fast. He scrambled toward the edge of the roof, gaining momentum until he was moving feet first across the slick slates like a kid down a snow bank. He tossed his rifle free, catching a glimpse of it pinwheeling into thin air, then tried to catch the edge of the roof to slow himself down. If all went well he could hang down off a gutter and his feet would be six feet closer to the ground.

  It didn't work that way. His hands missed the gutter and he felt his belly lurch sickeningly as he dropped like a wing-shot bird toward the ground.

  Helpless, he fell.

  He hit the top of a truck parked below, then bounced off and landed on the hood. His next stop was the cobblestoned street, where he landed so hard that it knocked the breath clean out of him. He had a scary few seconds trying to get his lungs working again. Then his breath came back in a gush.

  He was out of sight of the German sniper now, so he took his time getting up and taking stock. Nothing broken, but he hurt like hell. Cole glanced up at the roof, which seemed very high above where he sat, aching and bleeding, on the cobblestoned street.

  He reckoned he was damn lucky that some French farmer had left his battered truck parked beside the house, though the roof of the cab was more like a metal slab than a feather bed. Still, it had broken his fall somewhat. Otherwise, he would have landed right on the cobblestones and burst open like a watermelon.

  Cole looked around for his rifle. He found it a few feet away, and his heart sank at the sight of it. The stock was cracked, the scope busted. He picked it up and a little shower of broken glass tinkled down on the cobblestones like frozen tear drops. Christ on a cross. Here he was with a sniper lording it over town and half the German army on its way, and him without a goddamn rifle. Don't it just figure. Maybe he could throw rocks at the son of a bitch.

  "Have you lost something?"

  The French voice came out of the shadows, and he was still disoriented. He spun around, trying to locate the source. Then Jolie materialized as she stepped out from behind the truck.

  "Busted my rifle, and damn near busted my ass permanently," Cole said. "By the way, I reckon that's your sniper friend up in the church tower."

  "He is not mon ami." She reached out a hand and helped him up. "Are you all right?"

  “Darlin’, I done fell off a roof. How the hell do you think I am?”

  “It seems like a reasonable question.”

  "Well, I reckon I'd be a lot worse with a bullet in me. How the hell did he get up there?"

  Jolie shrugged. "He is the Ghost Sniper."

  Cole did not care to admit it, but he was shaken by far more than the fall from the roof. Jolie had made sure this so-called Ghost Sniper would come to Bienville by practically handing him a party invitation. All things being equal, Cole would have had a good chance of eliminating someone who had been a deadly killer of their own troops. But the German had beat them at their own game.

  Cole did not like to be outfoxed, and that was just what the German sniper had done. Now the other sniper had the high ground, the upper hand, and here was Cole cut and bruised with his rifle busted. As a matter of fact, he was getting worked up about it. Gettin' goddamn mad. He took a deep breath. Gettin' mad got you killed. He knew what he had to do was get even.

  "Here, take my rifle," Jolie said. "You are much better with it than I am."

  "Jolie, them Germans movin' toward town ain't here to play patty cake. You best be able to shoot back."

  "I hate to say it, Cole, but there are many GIs who won't be using their weapons anymore. I will take one of those."

  Cole nodded, and she handed him the rifle she had used for her shooting lesson. It was the Mauser K98 they had taken off the dead German sniper who had been hidden in the forest. He knew it was a good rifle—probably superior to the 1903 Springfield. It had a nice heft to it and the scope was better than the American one had been. Say what you wanted to about the Germans, but those bastards knew how to make good rifles and good optics.

  She passed over several clips of ammunition. While there weren't enough rounds to get the average G.I. through a brief fire fight, it was more than enough for a sniper. Cole had only one target in mind. He needed just one bullet for that.

  He glanced up at the church steeple. Another shot rang out, and somewhere in the town another American died. I'm comin' for you, you son of a bitch.

  CHAPTER 24

  Up in the church steeple, Von Stenger watched the American sniper tumble off the roof and he sent a final bullet after him like a kick in the pants, hoping for a lucky hit.

  Was the sniper wounded? He knew at least one of his bullets had come close. If nothing else, the American sniper was going to have a painful landing and perhaps a few broken bones. It was hard to know the man’s fate because the other sniper had fallen off the far edge of the roof, so that the house itself blocked his view.

  At any rate, he would not be hearing from the American anytime soon—and he was the only enemy sniper Von Stenger really had to worry about.

  He felt a vague sense of disappointment because he had welcomed a challenge, or something akin to a duel. The French girl had clearly summoned him to Bienville in hopes that the American sniper would put an end to him. However, he had outwitted them because the last thing anyone expected was for him to appear in their midst.

  Shot after shot, he now continued to wreak havoc in the streets below. The Americans darted from building to building in confusion. It was a little like watching ants scramble. Out of sheer frustration, one of the American soldiers fired a rifle grenade at the tower, but it only bounced off the thick stone walls and detonated mid-air with an ear-splitting blast, scattering shrapnel through the streets. Someone cried out in agony.

  As the morning light grew brighter, Von Stenger concentrated his fire on the makeshift barricade the Americans had erected at the edge of Bienville. Although the barricade was equipped with a .50 caliber machine gun, the Americans' hasty efforts at defense were almost laughable. The barricade consisted of a wooden cart turned on its side, a few old wine casks filled with earth, even some bales of straw, in hopes that they might deflect a bullet. That was wishful thinking. He supposed the barricade might help them hold off infantry, but there would be Panzers as well, and the tanks would make short work of the defenders.

  As soon as he picked someone off, another soldier scrambled to get behind the .50 caliber machine gun. The deadly weapon had been facing down the road, ready to cut down the advancing Germans, but now they were trying to get it turned around to fire on the church tower. Von Stenger wasn't about to let them. Thick as the stone walls were, he didn't wish to test them against the heavy slugs of the machine gun.

  Two more soldiers worked to reposition the gun. He shot one, worked the bolt action of the Mosin-Nagant, and then shot the second man, who slumped forward over the gun itself. Eins, zwei, drei ... there were now half a dozen bodies around the machine gun emplacement, but who was counting?

  A few shots peppered the walls of the tower, but Von Stenger had been careful not to present himself as a target by staying well back from the slit windows. He was positioned very nearly in the center of the tower.

  One bullet did pass through the slit and bounced around inside the bell chamber like a fat, very angry bumblebee trapped in a jar. The noise made his blood run cold. The bullet finally spent itself and Von Stenger breat
hed again. He always had been lucky, but knew better than to push that luck.

  It would only be a matter of time before the Americans found someone who could shoot well enough to put shot after shot through the slit window ... and one of those zipping bullets would give him a fatal sting. He planned to be long gone before that happened.

  He emptied his next-to-last clip at the soldiers scurrying below. He thought he had brought enough ammunition, but was quickly running low. It was all a little too much like being at a pheasant shoot, where the helpless birds were released before the so-called hunters, where they were quickly gunned down.

  Von Stenger knew he could not stay up in the tower forever. The massive doors that closed off the entrance to the steeple steps from the main nave of the church itself were made of ancient oak, more like iron than wood. The doors were heavily barred—all a hold-over from the violent medieval era when most buildings were constructed with defense from attack in mind. The French priests had not been fools.

  Of course, a few explosives or a heavy machine gun would turn the oak doors to splinters. But the interior of the church was now a hospital, filled with badly wounded men who were not easily moved. The Americans would think twice before trying to blast through the doors. The only alternative was to chop through them by hand.

  Targets were getting harder to find, so he took a break from shooting to light a cigarette. He would let the Americans think that the pause in his shooting meant that he had been killed by some lucky stray shot. That would draw them out.

  • • •

  Lieutenant Mulholland gathered a group of men to make a run at the church where the sniper was hidden in the tower. From his earlier visit to the church, he knew that oak doors led toward the stairs into the tower. Breaking them down would not be easy, but he and his men had rounded up a few axes, a pry bar, and even a couple of garden mattocks. Basically, they had collected anything that they could use to chop at the doors.

  "Vaccaro, you and Cole cover us," he said.

  "Don't worry, Lieutenant, we'll give that Nazi some lead to chew on," Vaccaro said.

  Jolie came running up and took a position next to Cole, armed with an M1. Mulholland knew that he had ordered her to stay in the church to help the wounded, not fight.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I am fighting."

  "Like hell you are!"

  "I may be a woman, Lieutenant, but I am not much of a nurse," she said. "I am much more useful with a rifle."

  Mulholland would have argued, but there wasn't time. "Have it your way," he said. He nodded at Vaccaro and Cole, and the two snipers aimed their rifles at the slit windows in the church tower. "The rest of you, let's go!"

  They ran straight for the church. Mulholland could see that it would be impossible for the sniper to shoot almost straight down at them, so the faster they got to the church, the better their chances would be.

  Behind him, Vaccaro and Cole fired a few quick shots at the tower to make sure the sniper kept his head down.

  Mulholland sprinted for the church. We're gonna make it, we're gonna make it—

  He hadn't counted on the grenades.

  • • •

  Up in the tower, Von Stenger spotted the group of soldiers running toward the church with axes and crowbars. He had to smile. The sight of these men armed like peasants reminded him of the movie Frankenstein that he had seen in Berlin. Von Stenger did not care much for movies, but that one had been amusing.

  He did not smile for long. The men were quick as rats, and they darted through the streets toward the church before Von Stenger could get a good shot at them. They charged toward the entrance to the church.

  The narrow slits of the church tower made it awkward to shoot straight down, but Von Stenger had anticipated this situation by bringing along four stick grenades. He unscrewed the "bottle-cap" base and tugged the ceramic bead that ignited the five and a half second fuse, then dropped it out the window above the doorway below. He quickly followed it with a second grenade.

  Even up in the tower, he felt the shock wave of the double blast. The screams below told him that the grenades had been effective.

  CHAPTER 25

  The blasts came in rapid succession, knocking Mulholland down and literally filling his mouth with dirt as he skidded belly first across the ground. He heard men screaming and wondered how badly he was hurt.

  He rolled over, his ears ringing from the concussion. To his surprise, he seemed to be in one piece. He'd heard before that the German stick grenades were mostly about the flash and bang—not nearly so deadly as the American "pineapple" grenades. However, it was clear to Mulholland that the German grenades were more than effective. Two men were on the ground now, writhing in pain. One of them had an ugly leg wound, the torn flesh looking like raw steak. Mulholland crawled the last few feet into the stone doorway of the church, and the other survivors followed.

  Fritz, who was now one of several surrendered Germans working in the makeshift hospital, rushed forward to help Mulholland to his feet.

  "I'm OK, I'm OK," he said, shoving Fritz toward the door. "Do something for those poor bastards out there."

  The medic and the German doctor who had appointed themselves in charge of the church hospital confronted him. "No weapons in the church, Lieutenant!" the medic said. "The Jerry doc and I agreed that this is neutral ground."

  "In case you haven't noticed, there's a Jerry sniper up in the steeple. Now get the hell out of my way, unless you want me to shove this ax up your ass sideways."

  They rushed up the aisle past the pews filled with wounded Germans, Americans and French civilians toward the oak doors at the back of the church, to one side of the altar. He gave one a shove with his shoulder, but it didn't budge.

  "Barred shut from the inside, goddamnit! All right, boys, get chopping!"

  • • •

  Von Stenger heard the gunfire increasing in town and thought that his ploy with the stick grenades had drawn the Americans' ire. But no additional shots seemed to be striking the tower.

  Keeping well back from the windows, he looked down the road leading toward town. The view from the church tower was really quite spectacular, and now that the sun was properly up he could see for miles. The sunlight sparkled across the flooded fields and revealed the miles of rich green bocage country beyond that. It was shaping up to be a lovely June day. Coming up the road was a Tiger tank flanked by a unit of advancing infantry. To a German soldier, that was a sight even more lovely than the French countryside. Out in the open, however, the Wehrmacht infantry was exposed and the American fire even at that extreme range was having a telling effect. There would be some empty rooms at the old chateau tonight.

  Then the infantry fell back and the Tiger rolled forward alone. Its massive turret gun fired, sending a shell screaming toward town. The shell whistled past the church tower and landed among the houses at the far end of town. The high explosive round detonated, flattening several dwellings into rubble.

  Von Stenger was far less worried about Americans armed with axes chopping through the oak doors than he was concerned about his own side's tanks. Their assumption would be that the church tower was occupied by the Americans or by American observers keeping an eye on German movements. The Tiger tank would be targeting the church tower, and the tank gunners were highly trained and notoriously accurate. They would soon have the range worked out.

  Time to go.

  He went down the cold, stone stairs, taking his time. When he reached the base of the tower, he heard the dull thud of an ax hitting the oak doors. So his stick grenades had not gotten everyone. No matter. By the time they chopped through those doors, he would be long gone.

  The trap door was still open. It had been covered over by an old rug, which now lay crumpled to one side. Von Stenger thought about that, shut the trap door, and dragged the rug over it. It would take someone that much longer to discover the door under the rug. Lifting one side, he got the edge of the trap door open and sh
immied under it. The door was very heavy, and it was only with great effort, muscles straining, that he was able to hold it up enough to slip under. The effort was worth it. Standing on the rickety ladder in the tunnel itself, he lowered the trap door so that the rug would now cover it again once the trap door was shut.

  He descended the ladder carefully—the brittle wood threatened to collapse under his weight. Then he was down on the tunnel floor, crouched over. He clicked on his battery-powered torch and made his way back toward the tunnel entrance in the marsh.

  He was surprised to find that water was sloshing under his hands and knees and getting deeper as he crawled forward. What on earth? He could see the tunnel entrance up ahead, a bright hole in the darkness, and moved toward it, but something was wrong—the tunnel exit wasn't nearly as bright as it should be in full daylight. Puzzled, he stared ahead and realized what it was. The tunnel entrance was nearly under water.

  Von Stenger crawled faster. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but the water seemed to be rising by the minute. The approaching high tide, along with the spring flood itself, was soon going to fill the opening of the tunnel with water. But there remained a gap between the surface of the water and the roof of the tunnel entrance. Holding his rifle high, above the water line, he took a deep breath and pushed through the last few feet of the tunnel.

  Fully prepared to swim for his life, he bobbed up in the flooded marsh. As he got his feet under him, he realized with relief that the water in the flooded field was no more than waist high or chest deep at the most, even now with the approach of high tide. Of course, in the tunnel one was forced to go along on hands and knees, so the flood there could drown you.

  He had brought along a length of rubber tubing to use as a breathing tube in case he had to slip under the water to escape, but there was no one around to see him, so he simply waded out into the flooded fields.