Keeping low, Cole chanced a look toward the German lines. He had never been in combat, but it wasn't the first time someone with a rifle had been trying to kill him. You didn't grow up in the mountains without carrying on a feud or two, not if you were a Cole.
But this battlefield was a world away from dodging some mean bootlegger with a deer rifle. He could just see the German position. Directly across from them was a German pillbox with a machine gun, pouring fire down the beach. He could more or less see the tops of three German helmets — the squad operating the machine gun.
He itched to have a rifle in his hands. If there was one thing Cole could do, it was shoot. He was the best marksman in his company — maybe in the entire 29th Division — but the United States Army did not have a separate sniper unit. So his talents hadn't been put to much use.
Unfortunately, Cole's M1 was now somewhere at the bottom of the English Channel. Not that a rifle with open sights would have done him much good at that range.
"What do you see?" asked the soldier who had taken cover with them. Curious, the soldier raised his head to get a look and a lucky round from the Germans took off the top of his skull.
Some of the blood splattered on Jimmy's face. The kid wasn't looking good. He was extremely pale, with a hint of green under the skin. "We ought to shoot back," he managed to stammer.
"I reckon it's too far to hit anything," Cole said.
"I'm goin' to try," the kid said. "Back home, if they was to ask me what I done after comin' all this way, I ain't goin' to say I kept my head in the sand, hidin’ from them Germans."
Before Cole could stop him, Jimmy peeked around the base of the anti-tank post and squeezed off a couple of rounds. Machine gun fire kicked up the sand all around them and Cole dragged the boy back behind the post.
"Let me know next time you plan on killing yourself."
"Too late."
Then Cole saw that one of the rounds had struck the boy square in the chest. He rolled Jimmy onto his back and jammed a hand over the hole. There wasn't a lot of blood, but the hole was leaking pink foam. More foam bubbled out of Jimmy's mouth. Cole had hunted enough animals to know that Jimmy was lung-shot.
"Medic!" Cole screamed. Nobody came, and for all he knew, all the medics were dead.
"I'm scared of dyin', Caje."
"Don't be scared. You're just goin' home is all."
"You tell my ma and pa I done good over here," the boy said. He was now wheezing like a forge billows that had a hole in it. "I'm sure goin' to miss home. You know how in the mornin' it gets light real slow, and the birds wake up, and then the sun finally comes over the mountains."
"I know." Cole pressed harder against the hole in the kid's chest, trying to keep Jimmy's air from leaking out, but the pink foam was pouring out now.
"I'm goin' there now," Jimmy said. "I ain't on this beach no more. I'm goin' home to the mountains."
Knowing it was no use, he stopped pressing on Jimmy's chest and held the boy's hand instead.
"You go on home, Jimmy. It’s all right."
And then the mountain boy died there on the beach, his last breath audible even over the sounds of explosions and gunfire and shouts. His dead eyes stared and Cole closed them, getting sand all over the boy’s face in the process. He brushed it away as best he could.
Then he slumped back against the post. Bullets thunked into it from time to time. Cole scarcely noticed. It had been a long time since Micajah Cole had cried about anything, but he sobbed now until the tears ran down his face. With the tears, too, all the terror of the last few minutes seemed to come gushing out of him.
Jimmy had been like a little brother to Cole. That kid hadn’t belonged here any more than a rabbit belonged in a wolf pack.
Cole swiped at the tears on his face, getting sand in his eyes, and blinked until things came back into focus. More landing craft were arriving. Two Navy ships had moved impossibly close to the beach, anchoring sideways, and they were firing their broadside at the Germans. But still the bullets and shells kept coming at them. As Cole watched, one of the LCVPs was hit and exploded in a geyser of water, twisted metal and bodies.
Cole lay there, deciding what to do. Until he had heard the first bullet hit the landing craft that morning, the invasion hadn't seemed real. The Germans hadn't seemed real, either, considering that he had never even seen one. Now Jimmy was dead. Cole hadn't really hated the Germans. But he sure as hell wanted to kill a few of them for Jimmy. The wind dried the tears on his face, leaving salty trails.
He looked around. He didn't even have a weapon. Jimmy's rifle was now clogged with sand and was just as likely to blow up in his face as shoot.
All around him on the beach were other clumps of soldiers, pinned down in the same way. He noticed a lieutenant nearby, and saw that he was holding a rifle with a telescopic sight. That was unusual, but an officer did have some leeway in equipping himself. Some chose pearl-handled revolvers, which made about as much sense against German machine guns as a cavalry saber. A sniper rifle, on the other hand—
Cole took a deep breath. At that moment, he realized he was about to live another sixty years, or less than sixty seconds. He jumped up and ran toward the lieutenant, diving headfirst behind the little barrier they had thrown up just when a machine gun burst churned the sand. A bullet clipped his boot but missed his actual foot.
"What the hell are you doing, soldier!" the lieutenant screamed at him. "It's no safer here."
"I know that, sir." He nodded at the rifle. "It don't seem like you're using that. Can you shoot?"
"Of course I can shoot!"
"Good enough to hit them Nazis yonder?"
"Maybe not that good."
"I reckon I can."
The lieutenant handed him the rifle. "Then you go right ahead, Private."
Cole checked the muzzle, and the bolt action of the Springfield rifle. Both appeared free of sand and seawater, which was something of a minor miracle. Unlike the M1 he had been issued, this rifle was not a semi-automatic. But in Cole's experience, it was only one shot that mattered. The one that hit the target.
He eased himself around the side of the sand barrier until he could see the machine gun nest through the telescopic sight. The optics were quite powerful. The scope was at least a four power, making the Germans appear four times closer. While he had dimly been able to make out the German gunners before, they now seemed to be a few feet away. He could even see their faces, just visible above the rim of the concrete pillbox. He put the crosshairs over the helmet of the man behind the machine gun and fired. Through the scope, he saw sand kick up a few feet in front of the pillbox. The machine gunner never noticed Cole because his attention was on shooting anything that moved on the beach.
The rifle was sighted in for a closer range. All right, then. He took aim again, this time floating the crosshairs just above the helmet, and then squeezed the trigger.
Cole never really saw the bullet hit home. One moment the German was there, and the next he was gone.
Abruptly, the machine gun stopped firing. Another man moved to take the dead gunner's place. Cole shot him as well. He worked the bolt action again, took aim, and shot the third man in the pillbox.
He started to hand the rifle back to the lieutenant, who shook his head. "You hang on to that, soldier. Where's your unit?"
"Don't know, sir. Mostly dead, I reckon."
"You stick with me, then. We're going to put that rifle to use." The lieutenant shouted loud enough to be heard by the men taking cover nearby. "Listen up! We have to get the hell off this beach or we're all going to get killed. Now let's move out!"
The lieutenant jumped up and ran forward toward the next anti-tank barricade. Cole ran after him. Again, it wasn't much shelter, but it was better than nothing. Other men surged forward all around them, finding what shelter they could, or simply throwing themselves flat against the sand after running ahead a few feet.