"Engineers. Huh. I thought you guys were back on the other side of the Meuse River." They trudged along in silence for a minute. The American seemed to be thinking something through. Klein could almost hear the cogs of his brain spinning in the winter quiet. "It is real peaceful out here, though, with all this snow. It's almost like I can hear Frank Sinatra singing White Christmas. You know that song?"
Klein knew it was a trap. The American had been working up to it. He kept his answer vague: "Who does not like Sinatra?"
The GI stopped in his tracks and stared hard at Klein. "Hey, who are you, buddy? Everybody knows it's Bing Crosby who sings White Christmas."
The GI took a clumsy step back and his heavily gloved hand slipped toward the holstered .45 on his belt.
Too slow. While the GI fumbled with the gun, Klein pulled a knife from a sheath at the small of his back and jabbed it at the GI's heart. But the heavy coat interfered and the point struck a rib. Stupidly, the GI kept trying to get the pistol out of the holster. Klein got a better grip on the knife and struck again.
This time the razor-sharp blade slipped between the sixth and seventh rib, driving into the GI's heart. Just like Skorzeny had trained him to do. The man's eyes blinked in shock as his heart stopped. Klein stepped back and let the man topple into the snow. He bent down and wiped the blade on the man's coat, then returned the knife to the sheath.
His own heart hammered in his chest. He had never killed anyone with a knife before and the experience was both sickening and somehow exhilarating.
Klein looked around, but the road remained empty and silent except for the whisper of falling snow.
Using the knife was taking a chance because it was less certain than a bullet, but it was better to avoid a gunshot that might attract attention.
Klein looked down at the body. He decided not to waste time moving it off the road. Better him than me, he thought. To his immense satisfaction, he had thought the words in English.
Klein had no way of knowing it, but the dead soldier was the first casualty in what would become known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hidden on the other side of the mountains, nearly two thousand German tanks and two hundred thousand men waited for the order to attack.
The lone wolf on this lonely road would soon be joined by the pack. It was to be the winter of the wolves all over again.
CHAPTER 2
If snow was money, every GI in the Ardennes Forest would have been filthy rich by now. All it did was snow. Then freeze. Then snow some more. It was hard to tell where the dull leaden sky ended and the whitened fields and woods began. A group of soldiers trudged along a road through this gray landscape, shoulders hunched, resigned to the cold.
There were six of them, all carrying rifles with telescopic sights. Snipers. They wore dirty white ponchos made from bedsheets in an effort at camouflage, and the snow that dusted their shoulders helped them blend into the backdrop of forest. Some of the trees hung over the road so that in patches the frozen mud was nearly bare. Most of the men kept their heads down, trying to keep the snow out of their faces.
Only one man, who walked last in the line, further back from the others, scanned the surrounding trees constantly. Cole was unofficially the deadliest sniper in the United States Army. Unofficially, because the Army didn’t track such things, not like they kept track of the number of planes a pilot shot down, for example. But word had gotten around. Just hours ago, he and Vaccaro had taken out a squad of Germans that strayed too close to the American lines.
Cole had pale eyes with so little color that they resembled ice. He was taller than average and lean like a fence post. Though covered in grime, a Confederate flag was just visible painted on his helmet. In a nod to their Southern heritage it had been painted by Jimmy Turner, another country boy whom Cole had tried to keep alive at D-Day — and failed.
Vaccaro looked back. He was an Italian-American of average height and build from Brooklyn. In his own mind, he thought he looked like Rudolph Valentino and somehow managed to wear his helmet at a jaunty angle. "Cole, what's eating you?"
"Too quiet," the other sniper said.
"Quiet is fine by me," Vaccaro said. "But I would give my left nut for some sunshine and warm weather." He stuttered the words because he was shivering in the cold. "Hell, I'd give both nuts to be at Coney Island on a July day rubbing coconut oil into some girl's shoulders. Mmmm."
"Vaccaro, if you give away your nuts that's all you’re gonna be able to do to her," Cole said. "Unless you plan to talk her to death, which wouldn’t be no surprise."
"Cold as my Johnson is right now, I'm not sure it's ever gonna thaw out, anyhow."
A moment of silence passed as the men mentally checked the status of their own Johnsons. It was definitely cold enough for concern. For weeks now they had been battling the cold and its consequences — everything from frozen gear to frostbite to shivering all night in their blankets. And it was only mid-December, with the heart of winter still ahead.
These men had been at D-Day and fought their way across France and into the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. Germany was nearly on the horizon. They could almost taste the end of the war. It was warm and sweet in their mouths like the mulled wine the locals drank at Christmas, or maybe the lips of that girl Vaccaro dreamed about, with a little tongue slipped in. These snipers had been through hell and back. But now they were in a quiet backwater of the war that even offered a few opportunities for some R&R. Some soldiers had even seen Marlene Dietrich performing nearby with a USO tour. The snipers would settle for spending Christmas someplace indoors, sleeping and eating. Real turkey dinners, if they were lucky.
Lieutenant Mulholland signaled for a stop. The weary men flopped down in the snow, except for Cole, whose eyes continued to scour the woods, looking for any sign of movement.
"Cole, you need to relax," said Vaccaro. "There ain't a German around for miles."
Cole ignored him and searched the trees with his rifle scope until he was satisfied that they were alone, then joined the others in munching chocolate bars and smoking cigarettes. In the cold, the brittle Hershey bars tasted like wax. He sat a little apart and kept his rifle across his knees. In the Ardennes Forest in December 1944, staying alert was just part of staying alive.
Sometime after midnight on December 15, the highly decorated German sniper Hauptmann Kurt Von Stenger sat in the back seat of a staff car roaring through the night. He was wedged between a nervous Wehrmacht general named Rothenbach and SS Obersturmbannführer Aldric Friel, who was so relaxed that he seemed to have fallen asleep. Handsome as a Nazi poster boy come to life, Friel was a firebrand who had made quite a name for himself, first as an adjutant to Heinrich Himmler and then as a ruthless tank commander in Russia. Even asleep, Friel seemed to radiate energy.
Von Stenger stared out into the trees that loomed in the headlights. No one knew where the winding road would take them. He had been on leave from the fighting in France and Belgium when the summons came in the form of an SS driver appearing at his door. So much for a Christmas holiday.
No one knew why they had been summoned to this mysterious meeting in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, piled into staff cars driven by grim young SS soldiers. Clearly, the general thought they were being taken out to the woods to be shot.
It was not out of the question.
"Relax, Herr General. Here, have a cigarette," Von Stenger said. He offered the man one of his trademark gold-tipped Sobranie cigarettes. "Why drive us all the way out here to shoot us? It seems like a waste of petrol."