"We're supposed to hold this bridge, remember?"
"Ain't likely to happen now, so the best we can do is stop them SS troops from getting across and hitting our rear." He watched Frenchie put a fresh clip in the M-1, and set a couple more on top of the wall within easy reach. "Ready? Now!"
Vaccaro and Frenchie popped over the wall, throwing their grenades at the Germans on the bridge — one, two — then ducked down again. Two ear-splitting explosions resulted. The fragmentation grenades caught the Germans by complete surprise because they were still looking up the road at where they had last seen the Americans. Vaccaro and Frenchie began shooting into the mayhem they had caused with the grenades, forcing the defenders on the bridge to scatter. One of Vaccaro’s rounds caught an SS soldier in the abdomen, causing him to double over and then tumbled over the side of the bridge into the river, where his body landed with an enormous splash.
But the ruse didn't last for long. Already, troops from the second wave of Germans on the far shore rushed forward to bolster the defense. The German sniper was the first to spot the Americans. Cole could see him clearly on the bridge, turning his rifle sights toward Vaccaro and Frenchie. Cole dearly wanted to put a bullet in him and finish what he had started in the forest, but didn't want to give away his own position. Wait, he told himself. The German was going to pay for what he had done to the villagers, and to those kids. He had something special planned for that Kraut sniper, along with the rest of them. Bullets began to smack into the stone wall or whine overhead.
Cole was still positioned at the terminus of the wall, out of the German line of fire. From here, he had a clear view of the underside of the bridge, where the Germans were finishing up the charges and scrambling to get out of there, now that the bridge seemed to be under attack.
Through the scope, Cole picked out a couple of Germans making their way along one of the timbers supporting the bridge. The timber couldn't have been more than a foot wide, so the Germans had their arms raised, gripping the bottom of the bridge to keep their balance as they crab-walked sideways along the timber. He could see the look of concentration on the Germans' face. The muddy river yawned below. Cole wouldn't have been eager to trade places with them. Tucked among the timbers over the Germans' heads, Cole could see where the satchel charges had been placed.
He could easily have shot into the satchel charges, but he knew that would not detonate them. He knew that a grenade could set off the charges. He had seen it done once, when a detonator failed, and the engineer had settled for lobbing a grenade at the satchel charge. The energy of the blast had set off the larger charge. He also knew that a bullet could detonate a grenade because it contained a different explosive, one that was under pressure and thus more volatile when exposed to the energy of a bullet.
The first German soldier didn't seem to have what Cole was looking for, so his crosshairs passed over him and settled on the next enemy soldier. Bingo, bango. He was in luck. From a bandolier across his chest, there dangled a couple of stick grenades. Detonators.
To his right, he heard Frenchie yelp in pain. The firing from the M-1 stopped. Although he was concerned about Frenchie, Cole did not take his eye from the rifle scope. Now, it was all up to Vaccaro. There wasn't going to be much suppressing fire from a bolt-action Springfield.
Seconds later, a bullet snicked the stone wall near Cole’s head. Too close for comfort. Outgunned, he knew that the three of them couldn’t stick around much longer.
He pulled his eye away from the scope long enough to glance at the soldiers on the bridge. He spotted his sniper friend right away because his uniform didn’t match those of the SS troops. He had half-expected to lock eyes with the sniper, but to his surprise, the German was looking up, his rifle now pointed away from Cole.
What had drawn his attention? Was he shooting toward town? Had General Tolliver organized an attack on the bridge?
Cole got back on his scope. He had his own shooting to worry about, and this wasn't going to be an easy shot. He could see the stick grenade in his crosshairs and he could see the German engineer, but the soldier was still shimmying his way along the trestle, with a web of timbers between him and Cole. This was going to be like shooting through a keyhole.
Cole slipped into his shooting trance. The sounds of the battle fell away. He was dimly aware of another bullet striking close, but he ignored the sting of stone fragments against his cheek. He didn’t even pay attention to the trickle of warm blood on his face. All that mattered was this circular field of view. His universe came down to that rifle scope.
Anchored against the stone wall, the rifle felt steady as stone itself. But the German kept moving, moving. Cole bided his time, but soon the German would slide farther away, out of Cole's reach. Then the soldier paused. Cole's finger took up the last fraction of tension in the trigger, so that he was very nearly surprised when the rifle fired. Automatically, he followed through and kept up the pressure on the trigger.
What happened next was instantaneous. Traveling at twenty-eight hundred feet per second, the .30/06 round struck the German grenade, unleashing nearly three thousand foot-pounds of energy. It was like a bullet-sized anvil hitting the grenade at more than twice the speed of sound. Cole expected the grenade to oblige by exploding. The shockwave of the grenade in the confined space under the bridge would shatter timbers and hit the satchel charge like a flint striking steel, unleashing their own kinetic energy in the resulting detonation.
That was what Cole hoped, anyhow. But what he saw was the German soldier stagger, then lose his balance and pitch forward into the water. The grenade had stopped the bullet, all right, but it hadn’t exploded or saved the soldier’s life. Cole’s plan literally sank into the river.
The second soldier looked around, desperately trying to determine where the shot had come from. He began to move even faster along the timber, precarious though it was. Cole could see a grenade stuck into the man’s belt at his hip. He tried to line up the sights on it before the German was out of view. He had one more chance to get this right. More bullets struck the wall near Cole, but he ignored them.
He inhaled, exhaled, let his finger press ever so slightly on the trigger. The rifle fired—
Someone was grabbing him by the shoulders, pulling him behind the wall. Vaccaro was shouting something in his ear. “Down! Down!”
Instantaneously, the whole earth seemed to lift him up and then slap him back down.
Cole pressed his face down into the stone wall as the concussion washed over him. It literally took his breath away. Stunned, he raised his head to see that the whole bridge had lifted into the air, just like a blanket snapped over a bed. Chunks of stone and timber and bodies shot skyward. Through the debris, Cole could just get a glimpse of a plane racing away beneath the cloud cover.
As the bridge settled, pieces of it began to rain down. Some fell into the river, while others struck the river bank and road. Something crushed a portion of the stone wall and Cole realized that it was the spare tire from a Kübelwagen, blown nearly across the river. Another two feet to the left and it would have taken his head off. Despite the ringing in his ears, he heard screams from the direction of the river, but they died as suddenly as they had started. Cole ducked as more debris showered their position.
When Cole looked up, the bridge was a smoking ruin. Something had definitely set off the charges under the bridge in a chain reaction. The question was, had it been the rocket fired by the P47 Thunderbolt or had it been Cole’s second bullet, hitting that grenade?
He might never know, and it didn’t matter, anyhow. The bridge was wrecked and the SS troops were dead. Upon closer inspection, however, he could see that the bridge was not entirely destroyed. Some of the ancient stone and timber had withstood the blast. The bridge pillars still rose out of the muddy water. But where the center span of the bridge had been, Cole saw a gaping expanse.