Vaccaro might get them all killed on account of his loud mouth alone.
The lieutenant was a decent officer — he sure as hell had been brave enough on the beach yesterday, taking chances that Cole himself wouldn't have, if the lieutenant hadn't been leading the way. Mulholland was all right for an officer.
The French girl trailed a few paces behind the lieutenant. Cole was puzzled by the fact that she didn't seem particularly excited or grateful that they had come to liberate her country. She had a hardness to her, like a soup bone with all the meat boiled off. No nonsense. She also didn't talk too much, which was a quality Cole admired in a woman.
He pushed thoughts about his companions aside and kept his eyes moving, looking as far ahead as possible. The hedgerow country was unlike anything he had seen before. These hedgerows were ancient, going back to Roman times. They had begun as simple berms of earth to separate fields in order to corral livestock and define ownership. Over the centuries, brush and trees had grown on top of the earthen berms to form thick, almost impenetrable walls of greenery.
The hedgerows covered most of the Cotentin Peninsula as completely as a quilt across an old double bed. Unpaved lanes and roads passed through the bocage, some of these so thickly overhung with greenery that going down the road was like passing through a tunnel. After dark, the bocage would have been the perfect setting for a werewolf story.
But in this nightmare world, there were no werewolves or vampires. Snipers were far more real and deadly. This living maze was perfect for defensive action such as that now being undertaken by the Germans as they worked to thwart the Allied advance. Worse yet for the Americans was the fact that the few points of high ground scattered around the bocage offered an excellent vantage point. A German sniper on one of these hill tops could look down into the fields and lanes — and pick off anything that moved. In the hours after D-Day, nearly all this high ground had been occupied by German troops moving into defensive positions.
Their squad had orders to engage the enemy. But first, they had to find them. Cole suspected that the French countryside would not be quiet for long.
After the French woman's remark about the Germans mining the roads, most of the others kept looking down at the dirt and grass, expecting to see some hint of a mine, but Cole reminded himself that he needed to look up for the real danger, which happened to be German troops, snipers, and Panzers.
"This is where we leave the road," Jolie said. "The road here will just take us in a circle. It is necessary to have to use a map and compass from this point on."
Lieutenant Mulholland followed Jolie's suggestion and led them toward a gap in a hedgerow into an expanse of field, newly green with spring. They entered the field only after Lieutenant Mulholland and Meacham had advanced some distance into it. The field encompassed perhaps twenty acres and was ringed by the green-walled hedgerow, which managed to give the field the feel of a sprawling football field surrounded by bleachers.
On the opposite side of the field was a similar gap that Cole figured led to the next field over. A squad of American soldiers was crouched on either side of the gap. He could see two bodies sprawled in the grass just inside the neighboring field.
They moved around to the edge of the field, keeping out of any line of fire offered by the gap, then approached the other squad. Mulholland got together with the squad leader. Though their voices were low, Cole was close enough to hear the two officers talking.
"We've got orders to clear this field, but German snipers have got the gap covered,” the captain said. “They've already shot two of my men. I just wish we had a goddamn Sherman tank with us — we could follow along behind it. But we don't have one, so thank God you all came along."
"Us?"
"You're counter snipers, right? You've all got telescope sights on your rifles. Fight fire with fire, I always say. This is your operation now, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir," Mulholland said uncertainly. "How many Germans are there?"
"We're pretty sure there are three because the shots are coming from different directions."
"Where are they located?"
"Damned if I know. Walk into that field and you'll find out, Lieutenant." The captain slumped back against a large stone and lit a cigarette. "Hell, if this is what we have facing us between here and Paris, it's going to make the beach landing yesterday look like a kindergarten birthday party. Where did you all come ashore?"
"Omaha."
The captain dragged on his cigarette. "We were at Utah, thank God. I heard what you went through. Sounds like a goddamn nightmare."
The captain spoke loud enough for them all to hear, and Cole's thoughts went back to poor Jimmy, shot on the beach. It sure was a long way to go from home just to get killed by the Germans. Cole didn't really understand what Hitler or the Germans wanted, but he understood the empty stare in Jimmy’s dead eyes.
"So what's your plan here?" the captain asked.
The lieutenant was taking a while to answer, so Cole spoke up. "I reckon I might have an idea, sir," he said.
"All right, Cole. It's got to be better than the plan I've got right now, which is nothing."
"Let me bring two men through that gap to draw the snipers' fire, and you can locate their position and take them out."
"Sounds like a good way to get three men killed."
"We'll split up and run in different directions. The way I figure it, the Germans will probably miss. It’s hard to hit a running target. Three running targets is confusing. But when they fire, they'll reveal their positions. We'll have our boys at the edges of the gap to take them out."
"Hell, Cole, the only one here who's good enough to do that is you."
"Meacham is a good shot. Chief can at least make them keep their heads down."
The lieutenant thought it over. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was better than nothing. "Take Vaccaro with you," he said quietly. "With any luck, he can run as fast as he can run his mouth. The captain here will have to volunteer one of his men to come with me."
"One more thing," Cole said. "I need me a ball of twine."
It took a couple of minutes to organize the attack. The twine was normally used for marking off landing zones and trenches, but Cole had another idea. Meacham slid along the grass to take up a position so that his rifle just peeked out from the edge of the gap. His field of fire was limited by the tall June grass, but the grass in turn hid him from the enemy snipers already in position. He would just have to be lucky and get a clear shot.
Chief would cross the gap and take up position on the other side once Cole started running. Nobody could pass in front of the gap now because the snipers had it covered.
Cole and Vaccaro stripped off their packs and prepared to run like hell through the gap, into the field, toward the enemy snipers. They were joined by a kid from the other squad who had the build of a rabbit.
"Reb, you are about to get us killed," Vaccaro said.
"When you get in that field, you two run like hell and zigzag to make a poor target. Run at an angle if you can, not right toward them. Whatever you do, don’t bunch up." He tied the end of a piece of twine to a stick that was about two feet long and handed it to the rabbit-looking kid. The rest of the twine was wound lightly in Cole's utility pocket so that it would unwind as they ran.
“What’s the stick for?” the kid asked.
"That there’s our decoy. Now, you look like you can run fast. If I was you, I'd run like there was hornets after you. I want you to drop that stick about halfway across."
On the face of it, running into the field in front of the German snipers seemed crazy and foolish. But the key was to split up. Once, when hunting high up in the hills, Cole had startled a pack of coyotes feeding at a deer kill. He had raised his rifle to shoot one, anticipating that they would flee in one direction, when the coyotes did a curious thing. They split into three or four different directions. He'd been so surprised that he hadn't got off a good shot at any of the coyotes. They all got away.