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 shimmied 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.
Soon, the Americans would find the tunnel entrance in the church. They would want revenge for the blood he had spilled. They would be coming after him. Von Stenger would be ready when they did.
One hundred meters out he spotted an island of sorts in the flood — a clump of trees and brush encircled by the flood waters. It was perfect for what he had in mind. Eventually, his plan was to rejoin the German forces once they had recaptured Bienville. Until then he would hide in the flooded fields and marshes.
As he waded toward the island, careful to keep his Mosin-Nagant out of the flood waters, he bumped into something that floated just beneath the surface. He used his knee to push it out of the way, but the submerged object shifted and rolled, and he had a terrible start when the thing bobbed up to reveal a human face.
"Scheisse!" he shouted, and jumped back, ready to defend himself.
But the face was pale and bloated, the blue eyes blank. He saw that the corpse wore the uniform of an American paratrooper and that the body was still entangled in parachute cords. The dead man was outfitted with a steel helmet, an M1 strapped across his chest, and a fully loaded haversack. Von Stenger surmised that the poor bastard had become tangled in his parachute lines, then was dragged under by the weight of his gear and drowned. This fate was exactly what the Germans had intended by flooding the marshes and fields in the Allied drop zone. For this soldier, the trap had worked all too well.
He contemplated the body for a moment, then nodded to himself.
Von Stenger drew his combat knife. Working quickly, he cut the drowned man free of the parachute cords and haversack. Then he dragged the body along behind him and continued on his way toward the island.
"Come along, Ami," Von Stenger mused aloud to the corpse. "You and I are going to be good friends."
CHAPTER 26
Wood chips were still flying when Cole came running up with Jolie and Vaccaro. He watched the lieutenant swinging his ax like a mad lumberjack. The oak doors shuddered under each blow but still did not budge.
"Who would have thought the son of a bitch had grenades," Vaccaro said. "He's a sniper, for crissake. But I think maybe I got him."
"Nobody got him," Cole said. "I reckon he's still up there waiting for us."
"In that case, you go first."
"You know, for a city boy, you ain't so dumb as you look."
The axes opened a jagged hole through the door. Someone shoved a pry bar through and got it under the crossbar, but it took three men and some cursing to shift the weight enough to get the doors open.
Cole was the first one through, his rifle at the ready. The room at the base of the tower was no more than fifteen feet on each side, and empty. Although it was bright daylight outside, the interior was chill and shrouded in semi-darkness because the only light came from the few window slits cut into the ancient stone walls.
"Anybody bring a flashlight?" the lieutenant asked.
"No, but I eat a lot of carrots," Cole said, and started up the stairs. Mulholland started to pass him, still carrying the ax, but Cole stopped him with a wave of his hand. "Are you goin' to throw that there ax at him? I got this, Lieutenant."
From a few steps behind, Vaccaro bellowed up the stairway. The words echoed and carried like smoke up a chimney: "We're comin' to get you, you goddamn sneaky Nazi sniper son of a bitch! How do you like that, huh!"
Cole looked down and fixed him with a pale stare. "Vaccaro, what I just said about you bein' smarter than you look? Well, you ain't. If he didn’t hear them axes, you just sent him a telegram that we’re on our way up the stairs."
There was no helping that now, so Cole continued up the ancient steps, worn smooth by centuries of priests going up to ring the bell and summon the faithful to mass.
It would be easy enough for the enemy sniper to ambush them from any of the landings above, but that would have to happen at very close quarters, exposing himself to return fire. If Cole had been the German, and he'd had any more stick grenades, he'd bounce them down the steps. If he had a crate of grenades, the sniper could defend himself up in that steeple until he died of old age. But Cole doubted he had lugged that many up there.
No sense worrying about it. With his finger on the trigger of the rifle, he forced himself up another step, and another. Soon, he could see the rectangular opening into the belfry itself. Cole slung his rifle and drew a .45 automatic, then crept silently up the last few steps.
Back when he was a boy, Cole used to hunt woodchucks. They were animals that resembled a beaver but that dug burrows from which they poked their noses, sniffing for predators.
He had often seen how a fox would wait patiently beside the hole for a woodchuck to put its nose out and provide dinner. Hunting them, Cole had learned the same technique. All you needed to shoot a woodchuck was a nose and maybe an eye showing.