Cole saw it as a chance to get even. To get even for the miles they had trekked across the frozen hills and forests in pursuit of the Germans. To get even for Rowe and McNulty. To get even for the Americans murdered in the snowy field at Malmedy.
"Do you think he's out there?" Jolie asked.
"Oh, I reckon he is," Cole said. He didn't need to ask who Jolie was asking about.
"How can you tell?"
"I can feel him." Jolie didn't have to ask him what he meant. She knew, because she could sense him, too. This was the German who had shot her, after all.
The thought made her shudder. Von Stenger had nearly killed her at Bienville, shooting her in order to draw out Cole and put him in Von Stenger's sights. To him, she had been nothing more than bait.
"You get him this time," she said. "Don't stop until you do."
The snipers were spread out in an uneven line, hidden among the various buildings and stone walls in the village. Lieutenant Mulholland had chosen a spot where a shell had torn through a couple of small buildings, leaving a jumble of timber and stones. The Kid was spotting for him, using a huge pair of field glasses. Vaccaro was to his right, hunkered behind a stone wall.
"The thicker, the better," he had announced in picking it out.
Cole wanted height. So he had chosen the second floor of a bakery. It offered a good view of La Gleize. The thick stone walls helped, too.
He did not go to the window, where he would have been an obvious target. Instead, he put a wooden table in the middle of the room, put a folded blanket on top of the table, and rested his rifle on that. His view of the town across the field was limited, but that's where Jolie came in. Armed with binoculars, she could move freely between windows, if need be, trying to spot the Ghost Sniper.
"How will you know where to find him?" she asked.
"Give it some time."
They did not have to wait long. The snipers were not the only American troops in the village. Other soldiers were busy setting up defensive positions or ferrying messages between points on the battlefield. For the snipers, these other soldiers were the canaries in the coal mine.
A soldier passing below Cole's window crumpled and fell. The shot had come just as a German tank fired, so it was impossible to tell the location of the shooter.
"Anything?" Cole asked Jolie, who was low to the front window, looking out with the binoculars, trying to see some clue as to Von Stenger's location.
"I see nothing."
Cole swept his telescopic sight over La Gleize, located across the snowy fields that were now a no-man’s land. He saw targets — mostly German machine gunners and a few tank commanders with their heads out of their hatches, directing their fire. He left those targets to Mulholland and Vaccaro. There was just one target he had in mind. Das Gespenst.
In the streets below, another soldier fell. This one did not die cleanly, but dragged himself to the base of a wall, then lay still.
Cole moved his scope across the edge of La Gleize once again. There was no sign of Von Stenger.
He thought again about Bienville. The man had been clever, slipping into the town and then occupying the church steeple. Another time in Normandy, he had occupied a church steeple and managed to pin down an entire American company almost singlehandedly.
Cole realized he had been looking for Von Stenger in the front lines of the fighting, which was far too obvious for Von Stenger.
"Jolie, do you see any church steeples in La Gleize?"
There was a pause while she looked. "Yes. Ten o'clock. But you will have to move closer to the window to see it. "
Reluctantly, Cole slid his table forward several feet until he could see the church steeple. It was stone, substantial, and offered a commanding view of the countryside around La Gleize. He judged the distance to be maybe 300 yards — far behind the front lines.
You would have to be a very good shot to hit anything reliably at that distance. Das Gespenst had proven himself to be a good shot — and then some. The last thing that Cole wanted was to end up in those crosshairs.
The same went for Jolie. She had already been in Das Gespenst's sights once before, and it wasn't going to happen again, if he had anything to say about it.
"Jolie, I want you to go up to that church here in the village and see if you can help that girl we saw. There's an awful lot of wounded."
"You are as bad as the lieutenant, wanting to send me away."
"Aw, don't go arguing with me now. Go out the back and keep every building you can between yourself and those Germans over there. Go in the back door of that church. I reckon it's got one. And once you're in that church, don't so much as stick your nose out. Stay inside those stone walls."
"You found him, didn't you?"
"I reckon I did. Trouble is, he'll figure out where I am right quick once I shoot at him."
"Let me stay and help you."
"No, Jolie. Remember what happened last time? He might just use you to get at me, and I can't let that happen."
"Cole—"
"The best way that you can help me is not to be here. That is, unless you've got a cannon up your sleeve. This is between me and him."
She slid back from the window, careful to keep her head down. "You are stubborn like a horse's ass."
"The expression is 'stubborn as a mule,' " he pointed out.
"I know what the expression is, you horse’s ass," she said. "Do not get shot."
Then she slipped out the door and down the stairs.
Once she was gone, he put the scope on the church steeple. Cole waited. Long years of hunting had taught him how to let minutes, even hours, pass without notice. He was nothing if not patient. Part of his mind drifted. The other part stayed locked on the small field of view afforded by the scope.
Then he saw what he was looking for. Not so much a stab of flame as a shifting of the air around the distant, open windows in the stone steeple above La Gleize.
Got you now, you son of bitch.
But Von Stenger was not standing at the window with a swastika painted on his chest. That would be too much to hope for. No, like Cole himself, he would be farther back in the room to avoid becoming a target.
Cole put his crosshairs on the window, moved them up and to the right to allow for elevation and windage. He exhaled. It was a hell of a long way to shoot, but he tried not to think about that. His finger took up tension on the trigger.
Slowly, slowly.
When the Springfield kicked his shoulder, it felt like a surprise.
High above La Gleize, the bullet whipped through the window of the church steeple and struck the stool that Von Stenger had rested his rifle upon. Splinters swarmed up and stung his cheek, drawing blood. The impact was startling enough to knock him down, which was just as well, because seconds later another bullet came through the window and struck the far wall. The sound of the ricochet in the small space made Von Stenger tighten his sphincter.
Keeping low, he crawled to a window to the right of the one he had been shooting through. He used a monocular periscope to chance a peek so that he would not need to expose his head. Where had the shot come from?
His opponent was eager to kill him, so the third shot was not timed to be disguised by the noise of a simultaneous tank round. The crack of the rifle directed him to the cluster of buildings just beyond La Gleize.
A fourth shot.
Von Stenger was impressed. He had no doubt that this was the hillbilly sniper. He knew that the American was using a bolt action Springfield rifle. To fire four shots in rapid succession over a distance of 300 meters into a space no larger than a coffin lid was good shooting.
Yes, the enemy truly wanted to make sure that he was dead.
Von Stenger had the quick eyes of a hawk. In the gloom of a second-floor window in a shop, he spotted the muzzle flash, magnified by the periscope.