Jolie put her wrists to her lips so that she could get her teeth at the rope. Whoever had tied her up knew his business. The knots were tight as rocks. Giving up, she tried her teeth on the rope itself. It was the sort of rough, bristly rope that lacerated her lips and gums. She could chew her way through — if she had a few days to do it.
She might only have hours — or minutes. It would help if she had more light to see what she was doing.
Jolie threw off the blanket and sat on the wooden bench that sufficed as seating for the troops who would normally ride back here. She attacked the rope anew, first trying to saw it along the edge of the wooden bench. When that did not work, she tried her teeth again.
The truck came to yet another stop, bouncing her wildly on the seat. Her teeth slid off the rope and cracked together painfully. She might as well be trying to chew her way through steel cables.
It looked as if she wasn’t going anywhere.
Cole had grown up setting traps, catching animals for their skins or meat, so a trap for the German sniper came to mind immediately.
Using his hunting knife, he cut a branch about the thickness of a finger into six-inch sections, and then slashed each one to the sharpness of a rattlesnake fang.
Several saplings grew along the creek bank near his hiding place. He selected a green sapling that was big around as a broom handle, and went to work cutting it down with a few quick strokes of his heavy knife.
Next, he drove the point of the knife near one end of the sapling, neatly splitting that end. He inserted the sharpened sticks, then bound them tightly together with the tough grape vines. The result he had hoped for would have looked something like a three-pronged fork, but this was even better — the prongs stuck out at different angles like a knot of barb wire.
Staying low, and trying to keep his movements to a minimum, he wedged the other end of the sapling horizontally between two small trees at about thigh height. He tied more string to the end with the sharp sticks, then ran the string under a smooth-skinned branch to serve as a fulcrum.
The trigger was simple to make. He used the stump of the sapling he had cut down — it was embedded as firmly into the ground as a stake — and cut a groove near the end. He cut a groove in another six-inch length of wood, and tied the other end of the string to that. Then he pulled the sapling taut. It took some adjustment, but when he was done he basically had the rigging for a snare. The sapling stump and the other piece of wood were the trigger device — all the tension of the curved sapling was held in place by that floating piece of wood.
Normally, a bit of meat would bait the trap. When an animal took the bait, it released the trigger and sprang the snare. But with the trap Cole had set, there would be no snare, just the sharpened spikes whipping through the air at the end of the sapling.
He eased out of his coat, hoping he would not regret leaving it behind. A piece of string ran from the coat to the trigger, out of sight. He would use his coat as bait.
Cole sat for a while, waiting for it to get darker. The cold seeped deeper into his muscles and bones. Cole was mostly bone and sinew so there wasn't much insulation from the cold. He put some snow in his mouth and let it dissolve. It had the double advantage of satisfying his thirst and disguising his position by preventing his breath from rising up as warm vapor.
When he was ready, he began to move ever so slowly out of his hiding place, hoping that the brush along the creek would screen him from view of the hillside above. So far, he had been lucky.
He worked backward until he reached the creek again, then eased into the water. The icy water was like an electric shock that didn't end, but he forced himself to wade against the current, keeping close to the bank nearest the slope. He continued back to where his original footprints came down into the creek. His plan was to backtrack along the path he had used to get into the forest. He eased out of the water, praying he wasn’t in the Ghost Sniper’s sights.
He had one last thing to do. He reached down into the crystal clear water and found a smooth rock the size of a baseball. Then he pitched it toward where he had hung his coat in a tree, and set his trap.
Cole started up the hillside, shivering despite the fact that he was nearly running.
CHAPTER 19
Von Stenger heard the crash in the brush below and pressed the rifle scope tight to his eye, searching for the source. Had the American fallen? Was he making a run for it?
He spotted a patch of olive drab. Exhaling, he put the crosshairs on the target and pulled the trigger.
Von Stenger waited for an answering shot that never came. Dead was dead.
He left his hiding place, not being particularly cautious, and started down the hillside. The American had been roughly where he expected, but the noise had helped him pinpoint the coat in the tangle of brush.
He kept going until he reached the edge of the creek and worked his way into the thicket. The brush was dense here; briars scratched at his snow smock and he slipped it off.
He saw the empty coat draped in the bushes — and froze. Where was the hillbilly? Gone. He sensed that he was alone in the woods. The other sniper had managed to escape by fooling him with this scarecrow.
Von Stenger shook his head. How long ago had the hillbilly slipped away? Probably when he had thrown the rock. Von Stenger had spent precious time maneuvering down the hillside, creeping up on the scarecrow.
With a sigh, Von Stenger reached for the coat.
A blur of movement registered and he started to duck and turn, but not before the sapling whipped at him and the three sharp stakes bit into his leg.
Von Stenger screamed.
Struggling up the hillside, Cole heard the scream and grinned. That would give the German something to chew on. Hopefully, it would also buy him some time. Once again, he was at a disadvantage because all that the German had to do was follow his tracks. As hunting went, it was not much of a challenge.
He could have stayed and tried to get the jump on Das Gespenst, but he had a more immediate problem — keeping from freezing to death. The temperature was in the low teens, and it was starting to snow again. The falling snow wrapped the woods in a hushed shroud and dark shadows filled the gaps between the trees.
Cole was not a big believer in ghosts and spirits, but he had to admit that this woods felt spooky.
He forced himself to move faster. He was so cold and exhausted that each step through the deep snow required Herculean effort. Running was impossible, but he managed to propel himself up the hill at a good pace. He got to the top, then half ran, half slid down toward the ravine below, and started up the hill on the other side.
The damaged rifle was only slowing him down, so he tossed it away.
If Von Stenger didn't get him, the cold sure as hell would. Wet and without a coat, he needed shelter and warmth. The sun would be going down soon, and he didn’t like his chances of making it through the dark forest where every root and rock waited to trip him.
At the top of the next hill, his luck changed. The woods ended, opening to a field that sloped sharply toward the road. An old barn stood just beyond the trees.
Cole ran for it.
Von Stenger was angry. It took a lot for him to lose his temper. He prided himself on self control. An angry sniper was a dead sniper. Looking down at the stakes jutting from his leg, he realized he felt more anger than pain.
The American had set a trap, and he had walked right into it. He continued to underestimate this hillbilly sniper.