The general's hands shook when he tried to light the cigarette. Maybe it was just the bumpy road. Von Stenger lit it for him with a Zippo lighter taken from a dead American. As the general leaned in, Von Stenger caught a whiff of alcohol and garlicky sausages.
On the other side of him, Obersturmbannführer Friel gave a low laugh. So, the SS Wunderkind had awakened. "You always had a sense of humor, Kurt. Still reading your Goethe?"
"Of course. I appreciate a man who tries to make sense of the world but admits when he can't. We could use more of that these days."
Von Stenger felt the Wehrmacht general beside him stiffen in alarm. It was getting dangerous to make any criticism of the beleaguered Führer, implied or otherwise. There were rumors that the wrong words could get you strung up on a meat hook in some dark Gestapo dungeon.
Or driven out to the woods in the middle of the night.
To be shot.
Clearly the general did not think it prudent to criticize Hitler in the presence of an SS officer, even one who, like them, might already be condemned. This seemed unlikely, however, considering that Friel was known as one of Hitler's favorite young officers.
"May I have a cigarette?" Friel asked.
"Of course." Von Stenger offered him the pack. "So, do you know where we are going?"
"We are going to see a man who makes sense of the world, my friend."
"Ah."
The flame as Friel lit the cigarette illuminated the twin silver lightning bolts on the collar of his tailored uniform. Beside the lightning bolts were four silver squares known as pips that indicated his rank. The flicker of flame revealed Friel’s craggy, blonde good looks. He could have played an SS officer in a movie. He was not yet thirty. Certainly, he was young to be an Obersturmbannführer.
He and Von Stenger came from similar backgrounds and had traveled in the same social circles in the heady early days of the war, though Von Stenger was a few years older. Both men became soldiers. But that was where the similarity ended. Friel was a capable commander while Von Stenger preferred being a lone wolf. But the most important distinction of all was that Friel was a disciple of the Nazi cause.
Now here Von Stenger was, taking a car ride with a frightened general and an SS Obersturmbannführer in the middle of the night. What had he gotten mixed up in?
After they had eaten, the sniper team started moving again. They had not gone far when Lieutenant Mulholland stopped. "What the hell?" he muttered.
A lump lay in the middle of the road. All the soldiers had seen enough carnage to know it was a dead body. Somehow, a body always looked smaller than an actual person. The snow had not quite covered the dead soldier. He wore an American uniform, of course, because they were far from the German lines or any fighting.
"Poor bastard probably froze to death," Vaccaro muttered from between blue lips.
"Maybe he did, but what's he doing out here in the middle of nowhere?" the lieutenant wondered aloud. "Huh. There's a crossroads village down that way. Maybe he got drunk and was hit by a truck."
"Yeah, but where are the tire tracks?"
Three of the snipers stood over the body. Cole slowly circled them, prowling the edges of the road. He stopped in a place where the snow had only dusted the frozen mud.
The lieutenant bent down and took the corpse by the shoulder, rolling him over. The body wasn't quite frozen. Moving the body revealed a puddle of blood beneath it.
"Jesus, what happened to him?"
The lieutenant had seen plenty of gunshot wounds, but this wasn't one of them. "It looks like he's been stabbed."
"There's no m-m-muggers in the middle of the goddamn woods," Vaccaro stammered. "M-m-must be Germans."
Cole spoke up. His voice had a Southern, hillbilly twang to it. "It weren't no German," he said. "These here are fresh boot prints. Bigger than what he's got on. But the boots belonged to an American."
"How can you tell?"
"Vaccaro, I been starin' at your footsteps for the last six months. I reckon I know what a boot print looks like."
"Huh," Vaccaro said.
The lieutenant gave orders to move the body to the side of the road. "No sense letting the poor bastard get run over. Once we get to HQ we'll send somebody back to pick him up."
Then the snipers moved down the road. Dusk was coming on, and the snowy woods that moments ago had seemed peaceful as a scene on a Christmas card now looked dark and sinister.
CHAPTER 3
The car carrying Von Stenger plunged on through the forest. No one said much. After he finished his cigarette, Obersturmbannführer Friel managed to fall asleep again. The general emitted several deep sighs of resignation. Von Stenger cracked the window, lit another cigarette, and spent some time thinking about the long years that had led up to this moment.
Von Stenger had seen more than his share of action, starting in Spain back in 1938 when Hitler had sent military "observers" to help the cause of dictator Ferdinand Franco. Von Stenger was already an accomplished marksman, and his role was to perfect the art of sniper warfare. He proved quite adept — gifted, in fact. He was not only a good shot from years of boyhood hunting trips, but also quite clever in his tactics.
After Spain, he had seen action in Poland and Russia. God, what a mess the Eastern Front had been. Only the fact that he had been wounded in a sniper duel at Stalingrad and then evacuated to Berlin had saved his life — not so much from the bullet wound as from the onslaught of Russians.
It was in Stalingrad that Von Stenger had earned his nickname, Das Gespent—The Ghost — for his ability to slip unseen among the city ruins and reap Russian after Russian. The effort had earned him the Knight's Cross he wore at his throat, making him Germany's most decorated sniper. Although he had been made an officer almost out of hand because of his family and connections, Von Stenger had resisted being in charge of anything or anyone other than himself.
However, it was only natural that while recovering from his wound that he had served as an instructor at the Wehrmacht's sniper school. He found that he enjoyed teaching snipers. He was good at it. He was older than the trainees, many of whom were hardly more than teenagers, and his reputation preceded him so that his trainees respected him.
While teaching, he thought of ways to be even better as a sniper. He read everything he could on sniper warfare and survival techniques. It was interesting that the British had compiled the most information about sniper tactics, going back to the Napoleonic wars. The German military, too, had a rich tradition of employing Jäger—lone hunters and military scouts equipped with rifles for long-range shooting. He passed the best of what he learned on to his students.
Von Stenger saw teaching as a way station, however. He never doubted that he would return to the field when the time came, and put his knowledge into practice.
It was training and superior equipment that gave the German snipers an advantage — the Americans had no such special training for snipers other than the basic marksmanship taught to all soldiers.
In Russia, more than a few Germans and Russians had been forged into expert snipers. Between the cold and the constant fighting, the Eastern Front had been hell. Now the Russians were pressing at the borders like the Barbarians at the Gates of Rome. Von Stenger shuddered to think of what might happen if Germany's last defenses fell. The Reich that had been destined to last a thousand years now had its back against the wall.
The Allies had swarmed ashore at Normandy on the sixth of June. Since then, Von Stenger had been fighting the Americans, Canadians, English, and the odd Frenchman. It was now December, and the end of the war looked near. Short of a miracle, defeat was almost certain. Germany was running low on petrol, troops, food, and airplanes. Allied planes pounded German cities, slaughtering German civilians by the thousands with incendiary bombs. No, it wouldn't be long now.