David Healey
Sniper's Justice
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
Part I
Chapter One
Waiting in ambush, Caje Cole shivered in the freezing fog and snow but didn’t take his eyes from the rifle scope. Any minute now, he expected to see a German unit come into view on the snow-covered road below.
All around him, the other squad members were ready. Vaccaro crouched at Cole’s elbow, sighting down the barrel of his own rifle. Lieutenant Mulholland stood behind a tree, pointing his weapon down the slight incline in the direction from which they expected the Krauts to appear. Cutting through steep hills, the road seemed to pass through a tunnel of thick spruces and hemlocks arching overhead, adding to the winter gloom.
“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Vaccaro whispered.
“You thinking? That sounds about the same as you pulling the pin out of a grenade,” Cole responded without taking his eyes off the road. “Give me a few seconds, so I can take cover.”
“Very funny, Hillbilly. What I’ve been thinking is that it probably hurts less to get shot in cold weather. You’re so damn numb that you can’t feel it.”
“City Boy, everybody knows it hurts more to get shot when it’s cold,” Cole said. “Take a hammer and whack your thumb in January and then whack it again in July. See which one you like better.”
“What kind of test is that? I’m talking about getting shot.”
“The thing is, you can only test it once when you get shot. Now with a hammer—”
“Quiet, you two,” the lieutenant said. “Save it for the Krauts.”
Cole grinned. Mulholland was getting antsy. Cole couldn’t blame him. Their squad had been sent back along this road to intercept the Germans behind them. They weren’t necessarily supposed to stop the Krauts, but to buy the rest of the unit some time.
With any luck, they might even lead the Germans right into a trap. Unfortunately, the squad would be serving as the bait.
The cause of the hold-up that necessitated this delaying action was the condition of the mountain roads. The trucks carrying the soldiers and supplies down the slippery, snow-covered roads were having a terrible time negotiating the hills and curves. The nimble Jeeps with their chain-wrapped tires fared somewhat better. Finally, one of the Studebaker trucks had slid sideways into a ditch and managed to get itself stuck.
The problem was that the truck now blocked the road, so they couldn’t just leave it. It was a fact of life that any truck that got stuck instantly became crudely personified as a stubborn bitch. Half a mile behind them, every soldier in the unit, no matter how weary and frostbitten he might be, was now pushing that truck, some of them hauling on ropes secured to the front bumper, trying to get that stubborn bitch out of the ditch.
From the other direction, they all knew that the Germans were coming. It was the squad’s job to slow them down while the rest of the unit got the road cleared.
Everybody kept saying that the Germans were beaten, but apparently, the Germans in these hills hadn’t gotten the message. Every time they ran into the Krauts, those bastards fought like hell.
“I wish those Kraut bastards would hurry up and get here,” Vaccaro said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Just keep your eyes open,” Cole said.
If there was one thing that Cole had, it was patience. He tended to move slowly and deliberately, a perfect economy of motion without any wasted effort. When he did move in a hurry, it caught people off guard.
He was like a hawk floating easily in the high air that suddenly dives to strike its prey with vicious precision.
If Cole was a hawk, then Vaccaro was more like a junkyard dog. Nonetheless, they made a good team. Cole’s nickname was Hillbilly, a nod to his Appalachian roots. As for Vaccaro, everybody called him City Boy, which fit his Brooklyn origins. Just about every soldier had a nickname, earned for some action or personality trait. As for the greenbeans in the unit, nobody even bothered to give them names. They tended not to last that long.
“Here they come,” the lieutenant said.
Off in the distance, they heard the rumble of motorized vehicles. Mixed in was the distinctive sound of an enemy tank. It was funny how you could hear the difference between a Sherman and a Panzer. This Panzer was definitely coming closer.
If it was any consolation, the Germans would be having just as hard of a time navigating the narrow winter roads. In fact, they might even be having a harder time of it, considering that if the Krauts had a Tiger with them, those tanks were twice the size of a Sherman.
“That’s just great,” muttered Vaccaro beside him. “Tanks. Why does it have to be tanks?”
“We’re just lucky, I reckon,” Cole said.
“We’d be a whole lot luckier if we were about ten miles behind the lines, eating Christmas leftovers.”
Cole didn’t have an answer for that. Like the others, he knew that they weren’t even supposed to be fighting any battles. After a hard fight across France, his squad had been scheduled for some well-deserved R&R over the Christmas holiday.
However, Uncle Adolf had made other plans for the holidays. The Germans had launched a surprise attack through the Ardennes Forest, forcing exhausted troops who had been looking forward to some rest back into the fight — Cole and Vaccaro among them.
The attack had been massive, with thousands of infantry and hundreds of Panzers. Most incredible of all, the Germans had staged their forces in complete secrecy, catching the Allies totally unawares. Nobody had expected troops to attack across that rugged terrain, lending to the element of surprise.
As a result, German forces had pushed the Allies back across 50 miles of hard-won ground, which was a bitter pill to swallow. Since then, the attack had faltered and the Germans had mostly been contained in what had come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Once again, Cole and his fellow soldiers had hoped for some respite. During the battle, he had managed to defeat an enemy sniper known as Das Gespenst once and for all.
Cole had expected to have some time to savor his victory against Das Gespenst and catch up on his sleep. But then on New Year’s Day, the Germans had gone and shown that they were by no means finished. To start off 1945, Hitler had masterminded Operation Nordwind through the Vosges Mountains to the south of the initial attack. Having rallied the forces pushed back initially by Allied forces, the second half of the Battle of the Bulge had begun. Steeped in myths and legends that spanned centuries, the Vosges region was dotted with small villages, valleys, and mountain peaks popular with hunters. This time of year, it was also wintry and frozen.
Cole had heard it said before that war was hell and life wasn’t fair, and he agreed. He also thought that war in Europe was cold. Somewhere in the Pacific, his cousin Deacon Cole was fighting the Japanese. That sounded like a tropical vacation compared to this.
Trying to ignore the fact that he was shivering, Cole listened to the sound of the tank grow louder. He had taken off his gloves before getting set up with the rifle, and his fingertip felt numb on the trigger. Since that morning he had also noticed a scratchy throat coming on, and his bones felt achy. He tried to ignore that, too — the last thing he needed was to get sick out here. As if the cold and the fighting weren’t bad enough, adding to the men’s misery was the fact that the flu had been going around.