It wasn’t that easy. The enemy snipers they faced had often gone through specific training in the subtle art of targeting the enemy. He’d heard that to pass sniper training, the Krauts had to undergo a test in which they remained undetected by their instructors. They learned to camouflage themselves. They learned patience. They learned tricks to fool their prey. They learned to sleep and eat and relieve themselves in a hole in the ground. If they failed these tests, they did not earn their Scharfschütze badge.
German snipers were not just marksmen, they were trained killers.
That’s what we’re up against, Cole thought.
Americans liked to see themselves as great hunters and crack shots, and there was some truth to the fact that compared to most Europeans, many Americans had grown up with rifles and firearms. Wasn’t every American supposed to be a cowboy at heart, or maybe Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett all rolled up into one?
For every Cole who had grown up hunting, it seemed like there were just as many men like Vaccaro who had only known pavement under their feet.
However, the Germans and the Russians also had a great tradition of hunting and a culture around firearms. German snipers tended to have been hunters in their youth. Most had grown up in the countryside. Their skill with a rifle had been honed by training. Some of the sharpshooters had experienced battle against the Soviet Union, and that included taking on the highly skilled Russian snipers.
You either learned quickly, or you died.
Cole and Vaccaro had learned their trade the hard way — by trial and error. It helped that Cole also had a natural cunning.
Looking at that church steeple, Cole knew that he would need all his skills to nab the German hiding up there.
“Let’s go have us a look,” he said.
Cole started off through the space between them and the church steeple, moving cautiously across the yard and even small barnyards. He constantly kept something between him and the sniper’s position, whether it was a stone wall or the corner of a building.
They moved carefully and quietly through the maze of narrow alleys that crisscrossed the town. The frozen ground was hard and uneven, dotted with rocks and clumps of torn earth from the shelling. These threatened to trip up Cole’s feet, but even in the ruts he managed to move lightly. Vaccaro clumped along behind him, making enough noise for them both.
Cole exhaled a cloud of breath in the cold air, his stomach tight with anticipation. Battle-worn after these months of war, he had experienced more than a few moments like this, those moments where life and death hung in the balance. It wasn’t fear but the thrill of the hunt.
As they inched closer, they passed through a dense thicket of rosebushes encircling a house, the branches bare and twisted, grasping with thorns, like the gnarled hands of ancient whispering souls. The scent of damp earth and decaying leaves filled Cole’s nostrils, a reminder of the funk from which all men sprang and to which they would return.
Not that Cole was in any hurry for that. So he took his time working closer to the church steeple.
As Cole and Vaccaro continued to analyze the situation, they noticed a small group of civilians gathering in the distance, near the church, their heads bowed in prayer. It looked like a funeral. A sudden gust of wind blew through the town, sending a shower of snow across the ground. The townspeople turned up their coat collars and kept praying.
They would have made easy targets, but the sniper seemed content to ignore them, saving his bullets for American soldiers.
Vaccaro whispered urgently, “Even if we get close enough, we can’t risk firing near those people. They’d be caught in the cross fire. The last thing we need is any collateral damage.”
“Yeah,” Cole agreed. “Let’s go at him from the other side. Maybe he won’t be expecting us then.”
As they scoped out the situation, they spotted a civilian wearing a tweed beret, picking his way through the landscape of low stone walls and outbuildings. Clearly he was headed in the direction of the German lines.
“Where the hell does he think he’s going? Maybe he’s a German spy.”
“No Kraut would be caught dead wearing a beret, even if he is a spy. That’s one of the locals. He must be friends with the Jerries.”
“We ought to shoot the bastard.”
“Let him go. No point attracting attention to ourselves.”
Their stealthy efforts weren’t enough. A shot rang out and struck the corner of a house just as Cole slipped behind it. Dust and bits of stone chips flew.
“Dammit! Another split second and that bastard would have gotten me.”
“You’re lucky it’s starting to get dark or he might not have missed.”
Cole nodded, thinking that Vaccaro was right about the fading daylight. His eyes flicked back and forth between the church and the distant hills. He wasn’t sure whether it was the movement or something else that had caught the enemy sniper’s attention. All he knew was that his heart was pounding. The sniper’s bullet had been close.
Keeping low, he eased the rifle scope up to his eye. He ached to return fire, but there was no target visible.
Another shot came from the direction of the tower. No bullets struck nearby, and Cole had the sinking realization that the sniper had probably just shot another unsuspecting GI on the streets of Bastogne. It was just what they had been sent to prevent.
They didn’t have much time before dark. As the hidden sun began to dip below the horizon, the shadows deepened and the light faded, making it more difficult to see the sniper’s position. The church steeple was being cloaked by the darkness. Darkness had come slowly, but it now seemed to accelerate like a flood tide.
Then, a small miracle. The setting sun sank below the level of the clouds, revealing itself like the smiling face of a lover under the covers. The final beacon of light illuminated the entire town, bathing the rooftops of Bastogne in glowing light. The church steeple stood out like a lighthouse. They were close enough now that he could see footsteps in the snow, leading away from the church across the fields. He followed the footsteps out and glimpsed a figure trotting across the field, carrying a rifle with a scope.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered. He put his rifle to his shoulder, desperate to settle the crosshairs on the Kraut sniper, but the man was too far away.
It’s still worth a try, he thought. He raised the sights to a point above the man’s head, allowing for the drop of the bullet.
Then the sun dipped behind a hill. It was like pulling down a window shade.
The enemy sniper in the distance faded to a gray blur and was gone.
Behind the rifle, Cole grinned his feral grin, his sharp white teeth showing.
It was just as well that he hadn’t fired and warned off the Kraut. The man must have thought that he’d made his getaway unseen.
He knew that the enemy sniper would return in the morning. It went against the rules to shoot from the same position again, but Cole suspected that the church steeple was simply too good to pass up.
No, the enemy sniper would be back in the morning, intending to claim more American lives. And when he returned, Cole would be waiting for him.
They made their way back toward the American lines. The winter darkness was falling, and he couldn’t see the sentries, although he knew they were there. He and Vaccaro kept to cover just in case the sentries proved trigger-happy.
“Black strap,” Cole called out, giving the sign.