Rowe bent over and retched. "Shit," he said. "This is awful."
"Yeah."
"Hey, anybody need help?" the lieutenant called out. His only answer was the wind sighing across the field. He tried again. "Can anybody hear me?"
"I dunno, Lieutenant. I think they all bought the farm."
Then, ever so faintly, a voice cried out, "Over here."
They rushed to the spot. All that they could see was a jumble of bodies. Vaccaro said, "Buddy, we don't know which one is you. You have to wave your arm or something."
One of the bodies raised an arm and they hurried over. He was just a kid, half hidden by a corpse on top of him, spattered with blood. No wonder the Germans had missed him.
They pulled him out and got him to his feet, then half carried, half dragged him away from the carnage. It seemed amazing that he had come through the massacre without a physical scratch. But some wounds couldn’t be seen. The kid was shivering badly, probably from a combination of shock and cold. To their surprise, it was Jolie who sat him down on the stone wall, wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, and hugged him tight. Vaccaro handed her a flask. "Here, give him some of this calvados. That ought to warm him up."
Gradually, the shivering eased enough that the lieutenant walked over to ask the GI a few questions. Cole, Vaccaro and Rowe were still combing the field for any survivors.
"You want to tell me your name, soldier?"
"Hank Walsh, Battery B, 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion — the whole unit is wiped out, sir."
"What happened?"
Private Walsh recounted how his unit had just passed through Five Points on its way to St. Vith when the Germans opened fire. "They had panzers, sir. King Tigers. They knocked out the first and last vehicles in the convoy and we were stuck on the road. Some of the men wanted to fight, but the others told them to surrender. What were we going to do against Tiger Tanks? So we got out of the ditches and the Germans rounded us up."
"Wehrmacht?"
"No, sir. These were SS."
The lieutenant and Jolie exchanged a look. "Hard cases."
"The Germans took most of our vehicles because they had a lot of men on foot. Most of their column moved off, and they left just a few guys guarding us in the field. Then one of them just up and shot one of our guys. Then all the Germans started shooting. It was over in a few minutes." He fought back a sob. "I'd be dead right now if it hadn't been for my buddy, Ralph. He tackled me and the bullets hit him instead."
"It looks like those bastards made sure they did the job right."
The kid shuddered. "They walked through the field, and anybody who was still alive, they shot him or caved in his head with a rifle butt."
"Jesus."
"Ralph was wounded so bad he was out of his head, just mumbling nonsense, and they shot him. I tried to tell him to keep quiet—” The kid choked back a sob.
“It’s all right,” Mulholland said. “You did what you could.”
“I held my breath, hoping they would think I was dead."
"Well, you made it." The lieutenant clapped him on the shoulder in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but it almost knocked the skinny young GI off the wall.
The others came back, looking grim. "There’s nobody else alive, sir."
Mulholland muttered, "Son of a bitch."
The kid finally broke down and sobbed.
After the lone survivor of the massacre had told his story, Cole had to spend a few minutes alone. He was well aware that most people thought he was a hard case, and maybe he was. Lord knows he had seen his share of bad things in this war, and done a few of them himself. Nobody could call him a saint. But something about the massacre scene affected him deeply. It was the idea of shooting American boys like hogs in a pen.
The bodies in the field told the story plain enough. The Americans had been gunned down where they stood.
He noticed that two of the bodies were much farther away than the others. The poor bastards had almost made it over the fence and escaped.
It was a long way to hit someone with a submachine gun — especially if you were occupied shooting lots of targets close up. Certainly it was too far for a pistol shot. Which meant a rifle.
He knew from experience that a moving target at that range was not easy. Hitting two running targets was damn near impossible. He doubted it was the work of your typical infantryman, SS or not.
Curious now, Cole moved closer to the road. It was easy to tell where the killers had stood because their footprints were surrounded by spent shell casings.
Cole scanned the ground, looking for some other clue — for what, he was not sure. Cole was good at reading tracks, but mostly what he saw were a lot of German boot prints, of which he had seen his share over the last few months. Empty brass cartridges, of course. A few cigarette butts. An empty wine bottle. What had been left behind did not tell him much, and yet it told him everything. The SS men had massacred the Americans, had a smoke and passed around a bottle, then moved out into the field to finish the job.
A little off to the side, a different cigarette butt caught his eye. It was much fancier than the others, gold tipped, of a kind Cole had learned was called a Sobranie. He had learned about those cigarettes during his first few days in Normandy, when he had encountered the vicious German sniper nicknamed Das Gespenst. The Ghost.
Cole considered himself to be a good sniper. But the German… well, there was a reason he had that nickname.
Cole looked again at the snowy ground. Two more brass cartridges winked up at him, more elongated than the others. Rifle rounds rather than machine guns rounds. He looked across the field at the two distant bodies of the GIs who had almost escaped. Two shots. Two dead soldiers. He bent down and picked up one of the rifle cartridges. A closer look revealed that the cartridge was stamped with the alien-looking characters and symbols of the Cyrillic alphabet, which meant that these were from a Russian rifle chambered for 7.62 mm rather than the usual 8 mm Mauser rounds.
If it was possible, Cole now felt colder.
There was just one German sniper Cole knew of who smoked gold-tipped cigarettes and used a Russian rifle.
Das Gespenst. It couldn't be. And yet here was the proof, staring back at him.
He was sure the son of a bitch had died in a flooded field outside Bienville after shooting Jolie and very nearly killing Cole. Even Cole had to admit that he’d gotten lucky when an artillery barrage had rolled in, stopping the German sniper from finishing the job. He had reckoned that the shelling had turned the German into hamburger.
Cole clenched his fist around the brass shell casing.
The Ghost Sniper had returned.
CHAPTER 9
Klein felt like a fox that had sneaked into the henhouse. Since killing the lone American on the deserted road, he had avoided any one-on-one encounters. Instead, he mixed in with large groups by saying that he had been separated from his unit, which was easy enough because the Americans were in such disarray. Rumors flew like the snow. Patton was on the way! Hitler himself was leading the attack! None of it made much sense, but the German attack had created a blizzard of confusion.
As a saboteur, he would do what he could to make the situation worse.
Later that day, Klein fell in with a group of muddy, half-frozen American soldiers. Lucky for him, they were all too tired and cold to be curious about where he was from. No one broke the silence. The only sound was that of boots tramping through the slush.