He was none too quiet about climbing the wooded hillside, but the shooting below covered up the ruckus that he made. The hill was quite steep and the footing uneven. By the time he reached the trail at the top of the ridge, he was regretting every sausage he had ever eaten and every cigarette he had ever smoked.
Winded, he stood for a few moments with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. Despite the cool temperatures, he was sweating heavily under the iron plating. Briefly, he debated stripping it off, wondering if the armor was only going to be a hindrance, but he decided to keep it on for now. He had already done the hard part in climbing the ridge.
It looked as if he had come out on the trail in the perfect spot to ambush the sniper when he retreated this way. Hauer moved along the relatively flat trail until he found a windfall a short distance off the path. What had once been a mighty oak had blown over in a storm, exposing its tangled roots where they had torn from the ground. Hauer was so used to seeing the result of man-made destruction that it was almost surprising to be reminded that nature still had its own violent forces.
He got behind the downed log, well hidden from anyone coming down the trail. Several weeks before, Hauer had cut a strip of inner tube and stretched it around his helmet like a big rubber band. He took a few minutes now to stuff tips of branches and bits of leaves into the band to break up the outline of his helmet and help him blend into the tangled mass of the windfall.
He set the Mauser in a forked branch to help steady his aim, then took a look through the scope. From here, he had an unimpeded field of fire. The retreating American sniper would walk right into his sights. Just like shooting one of those wild pigs. He regretted that it would be over too quickly. If he had the chance, he would try to wound the sniper, get his rifle away from him, and then finish him with the knife.
Hauer settled down to wait.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Things were starting to get too hot for Cole, with bullets chewing up the woods around him. Time to get the hell out of Dodge. But that was easier said than done, with lead flying all around him.
A bullet neatly severed a twig just inches from his head. Cole worried that he had overstayed his welcome, like when you drank up all a man's whiskey and he turned mean at the sight of the empty jug. These Jerries were plenty mean right now.
He had brought along a couple of grenades — next best thing to having Vaccaro with him. One grenade was now serving to booby trap the trail back to the village. He pulled the pin on his remaining grenade and threw it across the stream toward the Germans. He didn't know if he'd come close to anybody and he didn't much care. He needed a diversion.
As soon as the grenade went off, he was on his feet and running up the hillside. The blast created enough confusion for him to get out of what had been a tight spot. Thanks to the cover provided by the underbrush, the Germans hadn't seen him retreat.
Still, bullets snicked by close enough to set is hair on edge, some whining as they ricocheted off trees. That sound always made Cole's spine quiver. Cole kept going uphill until he reached the game trail. Then he turned west and ran along the trail as hard as he could.
Cole didn't know if the Germans would come after him or not, once they figured out that he had stopped shooting. He had seen how they were unloading ammunition and preparing for another go at the village and bridge. Once they had run him off, would they even bother to pursue him? Not if he was lucky, they wouldn't. The last thing Cole wanted or needed was a posse of SS soldiers hot on his trail. They'd be mad as hornets, that was for damn sure.
He would have felt better about the situation if he'd had more ammunition. But all that he had left was the clip in the rifle. Five shots? He had not expected a firefight and had shot up most of the ammo that he had carried with him. If the Germans did come after him, and if they had more than five men, then he'd be in serious trouble. In order to travel light, he didn't have a sidearm. He did have his Bowie knife, but he never put much stock in bringing a knife to a gun fight.
While one part of his mind puzzled out his current situation, another, more primitive part of his mind stayed on hyper alert. It was the hunter in him, something deep and primal that never switched off. Cole thought of that part of him as the critter. Sure, the critter was part of him, but also a separate entity hunkered down there in some cave of his mind, sniffing the air with a grizzled snout, ever watchful. So far, the critter had helped keep him alive.
Now, the critter dragged a claw along Cole's backbone to get his attention. What the critter noticed was that he couldn't hear any birds. His ears still rang from the firefight, but even as he moved deeper into the woods there was utter silence. When he had come through this way earlier, there had been a few forest sounds: bird songs, chattering squirrels, the machine gun staccato of a woodpecker. The quiet meant one thing.
He wasn't alone.
Cole stopped and listened. His hearing remained muffled, but he could hear well enough to know that he wasn't hearing anything. No sounds from the trail behind him, and no sounds ahead.
Just because he couldn't hear someone, didn't mean that they weren't there.
He decided to play it safe and get off the trail, at least for now. Surrounding him was dense woods. Whoever was out here was probably on the trail. The last thing he wanted to do was walk right into a German patrol coming from the direction of Ville sur Moselle.
Cole slipped easily among the trees and underbrush. Fall had thinned out the woods, offering less concealment, but it also made movement through the trees easier. He went up the hill, about a hundred feet into the woods, and moved roughly parallel to the trail. He soon lost visual contact with the trail, but he moved steadily east and used landmarks to navigate: an oak tree up ahead with a big knot on its trunk, and when he came even with that tree, he picked out another landmark far ahead, this time a recent windfall with a fresh, split trunk that created a bright spill of color in the drab forest.
He wasn't exactly Injun quiet — moving through fallen leaves and the litter on the forest floor wearing Army boots wasn't conducive to that — but he was sure that if someone waited on the trail below, they wouldn't hear him.
After ten minutes, he had passed the windfall and he hadn't seen anything other than trees or heard anything other than a few distant birds as the forest came back to life. Satisfied, he moved back toward the trail. The going would be a lot faster and he wanted to get back to Ville sur Moselle as soon as possible with a warning that the Germans were about to launch a fresh attack.
Cole stepped onto the trail. Looking east, he thought he recognized the section ahead. A little further on was the trap he had rigged. He would have to watch out for that. Getting blown up by his own trap would be a hell of a thing.
The critter snarled, behind you. Cole spun in time to see a man who had been crouched behind the windfall, looking in the opposite direction. The man spotted him and spun around, holding a rifle, and seeking a target. Maybe it hadn't been the critter at all, but just that motion catching his eye. He caught a glimpse of a German Stahlhelm and rifle with a scope. Without hesitating, he threw his own rifle to his shoulder, got the sights on the German sniper's torso as the man turned, and squeezed off a shot before the Jerry could fire his own rifle.
Cole had heard more than a few bullets hit bodies, both human and animal. They usually made a wet, raw meat sound when they hit. Nothing pretty about that sound. What he heard now was a metallic clang like a bolt tossed into a bucket. It was the oddest damn thing.