He and Farnum slid through a gap in a fence that marked the end of a farmer’s field and moved silently through what remained of the crops. It amazed Tinker just how quietly a big man like Farnum could move. It was like he was just a whisper in the night. Whispers, however, weren’t so heavily armed.
“We getting there, Tinker?”
“Soon, sergeant, real soon.”
A short while later, Tinker put his hand on the other man’s arm. “Now tell me what you see.”
Farnum snorted. It came out as part laugh and part snarl. “It looks like a German tank trying to disguise itself as a haystack.”
“That’s right and there are dozens of them like that, all scattered around and hidden. If you were a pilot flying overhead you’d only see a blob of hay, and anyone one the ground is being kept away.”
“Really? I didn’t see any sentries or guards.”
“It’s the middle of the night and they’re getting tired and sloppy. Contrary to what they’ve been told, they ain’t supermen and they need their beauty sleep.”
Farnum silently agreed. If what they’d been told was true, the German army was being whittled down and the men left were under great strain. American planes could be dropping death on them at any time. This reminded Farnum of something.
“Tinker, do our people know about this place?”
“I don’t think so. I just found it yesterday. Why, are you worried you might get bombed?”
“It crossed my mind.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, sergeant. I don’t think the info’s gotten through to your pilots, and I haven’t seen a nighttime attack by your boys yet. Now we’ve got to get closer to that tank. There’s something else you should see.”
When they reached the tank, they carefully stood up in the shadow cast by the moon. The tank was immense and made larger because it was literally wrapped in hay that enhanced its bulk.
“It’s huge, sergeant.”
“That it is,” Farnum said quietly. There was something different about this tank. Not only was it larger, a monster, but the silhouette was different. It dawned on him.
“Tinker, are all the tanks you found shaped like this?”
“A lot of them, yeah, but not all of them. Why?”
“Because this is trouble, big trouble. This is one of their God-damned Panthers, and they are perhaps the best tank in the world. Killing these things has got to be a priority.”
The Panther weighed more than forty tons, had sloped armor, and its main weapon was a high velocity 75mm gun. The U.S. simply didn’t have anything that could stand up to it. Of course, there hadn’t been any fights between Panthers and Shermans, but it looked to him like that time might be right around the corner.
“We could open up the fuel cap and drop in some dirt and rocks. That’s stop them.”
“That’d only slow them down, Tinker. Somehow I think they’ve got mechanics who would fix them, and an inventory of spare parts. No, these babies have got to be bombed.”
Farnum smiled. He liked the idea of sabotaging at least one of them. As a kid he’d done it to a neighbor’s car. He’d hated the neighbor for kicking his dog and nobody had ever found out.
They found the cap, opened it and quietly dropped in several handfuls of debris. The sergeant wondered if the tank had any kind of filter that would stop trash from getting through to the engine.
They heard voices. A barn at the other end of the field showed light as a side door opened. A couple of German soldiers walked out. They were unsteady; they’d been drinking. He thought about killing them but decided against it. It would be easy, but then the Nazis would know that they’d been discovered.
No, they would get the word up the chain to someone who could send a few dozen bombers to saturate the field with bombs. That would be by far the better way to do it. Get them all, not just one or two.
“Halt!”
“Shit,” muttered Tinker. Someone had seen motion from across the field. The sentry who’d spotted them yelled again and then called for help. He had a whistle which he blew frantically, the shrieks piercing the night.
Tinker and Farnum forced themselves to move slowly and deliberately. Maybe the might would still protect them. It would take some minutes for the guard to get reinforcements and get to where they were.
They found the gap in the fence and slithered through. In a short while they were protected by trees and bushes. Behind them, they could hear Germans yelling to each other and arguing. The two men continued on to where they’d parked Tinker’s car. They got in and drove away. They started laughing.
Farnum slapped Tinker on the shoulder. “Let’s go call in some bombs. Then what say we get ourselves a couple of beers and watch from a safe distance.”
Private Hipple no longer felt like deserting and returning to west-by-God Texas. His comrades now respected him, perhaps even feared him. Even Colonel Canfield had become aware of his actions and this time in a positive manner.
Like many men who lived in the still primitive west, he could shoot and shoot extremely well. In his opinion, most of the northern city boys in his unit were miserable shots and, when the fighting began, had either fired wildly or frozen and not fired at all. A lot of them simply shot in the general direction of Europe instead of at the enemy. Not Hipple. He’d killed his first German when they’d attacked the beachhead. It hadn’t been a difficult shot at all. The German had only been a hundred yards or so away and he’d dropped him with one bullet square in the middle of his chest. The kraut had stopped, flailed his arms, and then dropped backwards.
“Great job,” his sergeant had said. Hipple said that it was an easy shot. Killing a running rabbit at two hundred yards was a good shot, he’d added. A quarter of a mile made it a great shot. The sergeant had nothing to say.
He killed his second and third Germans in short order and during the same fight — again nothing difficult, just efficient. His fourth kill was a tank commander who’d foolishly opened his hatch so he could look around. Dumb ass move, he’d commented later. One bullet at four hundred yards had blown the top of the German’s head off. The idiot hadn’t even been wearing a helmet. Even better, whoever was driving the tank put the thing in reverse and disappeared into the smoke, smashing anything that got in his way.
His buddies had cheered him and it felt good. Killer Hipple they’d called him. The lieutenant said he reminded him of Sergeant York, whoever the hell he was.
So now he was officially a sniper. He was supposed to have a spotter, but he’d declined. He said that all the other boys in his company were city types whose idea of stalking meant not yelling too loud. Even the lieutenant, a snotty kid from Harvard, thought that comment was funny and the city boys seemed relieved that they didn’t have to go with him out into no man’s land.
The krauts had an outpost in front of the American lines. It consisted of a couple of soldiers looking for American activity, which was steadily, painfully, creeping up towards Toronto. The Germans were fighting every inch of the way and if he could kill some of them it might save the lives of his new buddies. Thus, he was stalking the outpost. Maybe they even had a sniper with them. The Germans had some boys who were really good shots and he thought it would be real nice to nail one of them.
Hipple had positioned himself during the night. He thought he was a few hundred yards from the Germans. When dawn came, he saw that his estimate had been right. He could see the slight scar in the earth where they had dug in. He caught motion and studied the area before concluding that there were no more than three Germans hidden there.
He waited patiently and didn’t move. It wasn’t difficult. He’d spent lots of time stalking prey and waiting for the prey to come into range was part of the game. He smiled as a German looked over the lip of the small trench. A second German was now visible to that man’s left and Hipple decided that the second man was the sniper.