David Healey
Righteous Sniper
A World War II Novel
Epigraph
If I have to choose between peace and righteousness, I’ll choose righteousness.
CHAPTER ONE
Seven roads converged on Bastogne, and Caje Cole was on one of them, in the back of an open truck with several other men, rushing toward the fighting at the encircled town.
On second thought, the idea that the truck was “rushing” anywhere was more like wishful thinking, considering the rough condition of the forest road. Even the term road was a stretch, since this was little more than a one-lane track through the woods.
“Beats walking,” said a soldier on the bench opposite him.
“If you say so,” Cole replied.
“You think the Krauts are done yet?” the soldier said, looking concerned. “As soon as we get some tanks up here, that’s got to be it for them.”
Cole gave the GI a harder look. The fresh-faced soldier in his new uniform was definitely a replacement sent to the front line, and Cole knew damn well that greenbeans didn’t last long.
Not in this cold. Not against SS troops. Not against battle-hardened Wehrmacht soldiers either. And definitely not against Tiger tanks.
Cole just snorted and shook his head. He knew that any further conversation would be a waste of breath. The poor son of a bitch didn’t know he was dead yet.
Ignoring the GI, he kept his gaze focused on the surrounding forest that the road passed through. Grime and gunpowder darkened Cole’s face, but his bright eyes, clear as cut glass, stood out in the winter gloom. He kept a good grip on his sniper rifle. The cloth swaddled around the telescopic sight — an effort at camouflage — had once been white, but the fabric was now muddy and stained with dried blood.
Winter wind whistled in Cole’s ears, and a few stray pellets of sleet stung his cheeks. He tried rearranging the scarf, covering the lower part of his face, but it didn’t do much good against the frigid onslaught. The sun had dared to emerge that morning but had long since retreated behind a wintry gray veil.
Against the cold, he wore a ragged pair of gloves that he’d cut the fingertips out of, the better to work the rifle. He wiggled his fingers to keep them from getting too stiff.
Meanwhile, Cole surveyed the landscape.
He knew that the Krauts were out there somewhere.
They might be around the next bend in the road.
Or maybe the one after that.
If he saw them first, just maybe he’d be able to keep this GI across from him alive for one more day.
Hell, maybe he’d even be able to keep himself alive.
The rest of their sniper squad rode with him in the back of the truck. He glanced at Vaccaro, who was slumped against Hank Walsh, the young soldier they called “the kid,” both sound asleep.
Either that or they were dead from hypothermia. In this weather, Cole reckoned it was a toss-up.
Still looking at Vaccaro, Cole shook his head and grinned, lips curling back from sharp-looking teeth. In the dim light, the smile gave his face a wolfish appearance.
That damned Vaccaro. He was a real idiot sometimes, but Cole reckoned that Vaccaro was the only buddy he had in the whole damn army. He’d better do what he could to keep him alive.
Cole kicked Vaccaro’s boot. The other man stirred but didn’t come fully awake. Still alive, then.
He recalled how Vaccaro had caught up to them at the last instant and had barely managed to climb into the truck.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Cole had demanded.
“Yeah, yeah, I missed you too.”
“You dumb bastard. You ought to have stayed in the hospital.”
“I wanted to make room for somebody who needed it.”
“Some people ain’t got any sense. Vaccaro, maybe you ain’t the dumbest guy in the world, but you better hope he don’t die.”
“Aw, stuff it in your corncob pipe, hillbilly.”
Then Vaccaro promptly fell asleep.
Cole, Vaccaro, and Hank were all that was left of their sniper squad, not including the lieutenant. They had lost Rowe and McNulty just days ago. Cole hoped to hell that they didn’t lose anybody else. But you couldn’t go into battle hoping that you would survive. Just the opposite. In some strange way, a sense of fatalism helped keep you alive.
Lieutenant Mulholland rode up front with the driver, which was his prerogative as an officer. The cab provided shelter from the wind, but the bouncing truck would be punching him in the kidneys just like the rest of them.
For troops on the move, it would have been better if the road was completely frozen, but the passage of vehicles had turned the surface into a sticky brown stew of slush and mud ladled out into endless potholes.
There had been a tattered canvas cover on the back of the truck, which had initially blocked some of the wind but did nothing to keep the cold at bay. The cover had been so shredded that it had finally given up the ghost and blown off a couple of miles ago, leaving the men exposed to the elements.
Riding in the truck wasn’t any joyride, given that it jarred Cole down to his bones. Maybe the cold made those bones feel more brittle. The driver was sure as hell managing to hit every tree root and pothole, the jolt of each bump telegraphing its way up through the stiff frame of the truck, to the wooden benches, then directly into Cole’s spine. Hell, even his teeth threatened to rattle loose.
All available vehicles had been pressed into service to move troops to where they were needed. Following in the wake of the truck was a jeep, so heavily laden with men that the top-heavy vehicle kept threatening to tip over.
Every hundred yards or so, the truck rolled down into a hole so deep that the odds came down to a coin toss for whether they would be getting out again. Then there would be a tremendous jolt, from which it seemed unlikely that their forward momentum would recover.
But each time, after a tense moment in limbo, the truck would continue bouncing down the rutted road.
Worse, Cole couldn’t shake the feeling that they were sitting ducks as they crept along.
He kept his eyes on the woods.
There were few good roads through the Ardennes region, a fact that the fighting armies on both sides had come to know all too well. The terrain was hilly, even mountainous, punctuated by stretches through mountain valleys and fields, all dormant now and covered by drifts of fallen snow. In the bare patches, the ground showed through, frozen and brown with dead grass.
Narrow bridges crossed the winding mountain streams, where there were often villages that had grown up around the bridge or around a mill powered by the stream.
Considering it was December 1944, the scenery should have been right out of a Christmas card, but war had spoiled it. The charred hulks of burned tanks marred the crossroads, and dead bodies lay semifrozen in the snow at the roadsides. Instead of the smell of spiced cider or baking cookies that so many GIs remembered from the Christmas season, there was an occasional sickly-sweet odor of burned flesh and the stink of spilled fuel.
As they passed one of these grisly vignettes of death and destruction, the GI across from Cole leaned over the side of the truck and vomited.
Cole couldn’t blame the poor bastard, but he was used to such scenes by now.
As a reminder that the Germans were far from beaten, a flurry of shots rang out. A pattern of bullet holes appeared like stitchwork in the sides of the truck. A man cried out in pain as he was struck by a bullet.
“Everybody out!” Cole shouted, reaching over to shake Vaccaro and the kid, who were still groggy after being awakened by the sound of gunfire.