He did not bother to slide his own rifle into the window, just in case the other sniper also had good eyes or a spotter with powerful binoculars.
Crawling on his belly, he reached the stairs and then descended from the bell tower itself. Rivulets of blood ran into his mouth, filling it with a salty, coppery taste. He touched his cheek and his fingertips came away bloody.
Annoyed, he shook out a pocket handkerchief and touched it to the wound. Had the bullet been just a few centimeters higher, he would have caught a lead slug in the face rather than a few shards of wood.
Von Stenger ran through the town, keeping low.
In the hours before the attack, he had set up a total of three shooting locations. One in the church steeple, one on the roof of a warehouse, and one in the attic of the Rathaus, or town hall.
He would keep the American guessing.
Cole fired the fourth shot and rolled off the chair onto the floor. If the Ghost Sniper returned fire, Cole had given away his position.
No shots answered, but he slipped from the room in a crouch and went down the stairs, then out the back as Jolie had done.
Four shots from the same position was taking an awful chance when confronting someone like this German, but no one had fired back. That meant he had killed or at least wounded his opponent. He sure as hell hoped so. But the Ghost Sniper was nothing, if not patient. What if he had only been biding his time, lining Cole up in his crosshairs?
Cole did not plan on giving him that chance.
Von Stenger was disappointed to leave the church steeple. It was such a superb sniper's nest because of the commanding view. But the first rule of staying alive as a sniper was to stay on the move.
He was nothing if not prepared. Having already set up his other sniper’s nests, he felt like the hunter rather than the hunted, even trapped within the confines of La Gleize.
It was toward this nest in the town hall that he moved now, keeping the handkerchief pressed to his face.
The hillbilly sniper had found him. The shot had been good, but it had been a roll of the dice. At the distance involved, the hillbilly was only guessing at the target.
But with luck, Von Stenger would turn the tables. He knew where the sniper was hiding.
And unlike the American, he would not miss.
Having abandoned the church steeple, Von Stenger went up the stairs to the top floor of the town hall. The space had long since been cleared of any town officials. SS troopers occupied the first floor, using it to set up a machine gun. Von Stenger nodded at them, and they gave him a grin in return.
“Das Gespenst!” one of the SS men shouted heartily.
The story had spread about how he had driven right into a nest of American snipers, and wiped them out.
He had gone about preparing this second sniper's position with some care.
On a desk near the center of the room he had placed a stack of books and topped it off with a helmet. From a distance, in the shadows of the room, the dummy might very well resemble a sniper.
There was a row of three large double-hung windows. He had opened one window directly in front of the crude dummy. It was just the sort of anomaly that an enemy sniper would notice.
During the night he had taken a large knife and gouged a hole in the plaster and lath near the bottom windowsill of the far right window. The exterior was covered by wood sheathing and then clapboard. He had started to carve his way through that wood, but quickly lost patience. So he had gone down and found a 12-gauge fowling gun some townsperson had left behind in a nearby house. It took four shots, but he blasted a hole right through the side of the building.
He used the big blade of the knife to widen the hole.
It was through this hole that he extended the rifle. He hoped that a sniper would focus on the obviously open window. Meanwhile, Von Stenger would have his sights on whoever opened fire at the top floor. If that bait was not sufficient, he planned to set up the old shotgun to blast from atop the desk. That should draw fire like lightning to a lightning rod.
Von Stenger settled into his hidey hole and found what he was looking for — the shadowy second floor where he had last seen the hillbilly sniper.
He did not hurry — he was savoring the moment.
Through the scope he could see into the room. He could make out a table and a chair.
But there was no one there. Was the American gone? Like Von Stenger, he must have moved on to another location. It would be up to Von Stenger to draw him out. He set to work rigging the shotgun to do just that.
CHAPTER 27
Cole crossed the street, being careful to put the taller buildings and a few trees between himself and the line of sight from the steeple. Just in case. The back of his neck crawled with each step. He could almost feel Von Stenger’s crosshairs on him.
He found Vaccaro just where he had left him, down by the wall that ran parallel to the hamlet’s central cross street. The church stood directly behind him. He felt better with a stone wall between him and the German.
"How many did you get so far?" he asked Cole.
"One, maybe. Hard to say for sure."
"Are you kidding me? I'll bet I've shot six of these Kraut bastards so far. They're so worried about the tanks up on the hill and the planes hitting them again that they aren't paying attention to me picking them off." Vaccaro looked at him. "One? I can guess which one it was. He's like your Moby Dick."
"He's the only one that matters right now."
"Then you won't mind if I go back to helping us win the war?"
"You go right ahead." Cole slumped behind the wall next to Vaccaro, who went back to scanning La Gleize for targets. Despite what he had said, it wasn't so easy to pick off the enemy. The SS troops did not readily expose themselves to sniper fire.
Vaccaro made a satisfied noise. "You're like a lucky rabbit's foot, Cole. I just saw a muzzle flash in the top floor of that big building in the square. There's even a window open up there. That dumb Kraut sniper should have just hung up a sign. Come to papa."
Cole thought about that. Was it just some fool up there with a rifle, or was it a trap?
He reached out to grab Vaccaro's leg just as he fired.
Vaccaro bent toward him. "What?" He sounded annoyed. “You made me miss.”
Leaning over is probably what saved him. The incoming bullet struck the stone where Vaccaro's head had been and grazed his neck instead.
He flopped down next to Cole. "Son of a bitch, I'm hit!"
"Let me see."
"Goddamn, Cole. Is it bad? It hurts like it’s bad." The two of them worked through the layers of clothing to get a look at the damage. Cole saw that the wound in Vaccaro’s neck was a bloody mess.
"We best get you to a medic."
"I won't argue."
"That sniper hung out a sign all right. It said, ‘Vaccaro, you are a goddamn idiot.’ "
"Thank you for your sympathy," he said. "Don't you worry about me. I'm just sitting here bleeding to death."
"Let me help you over to the field hospital."
For all his bravado, Vaccaro was losing some blood and was going into shock. Cole tugged Vaccaro's arm across his own shoulders, and together they made their way to the old stone church.
Vaccaro sagged, his legs suddenly like stone. He was surprised that Cole didn't seem to notice the extra weight. The guy was skinny, but he must have had oak where his muscles should have been.
The pretty local girl appeared at the door of the hospital, once again wearing her blood-spattered apron. She saw them approach, and reached up to tuck a stray strand of hair back under the cap she had donned.