A split second after he lowered his head, a bullet cracked through the space where it had been. "Hello!" he said, and didn't come up again, the way he might have otherwise.
"Somebody's laying for you," Benjamin Halevy remarked.
"Thanks a bunch. I never would have guessed without you," Vaclav said. The Jew laughed. Vaclav didn't. "God damn it to hell, that bastard was just standing there asking for it. I know I got him. Not even the Nazis would waste a man of their own for the sake of killing me… would they?" He heard the doubt in his own voice. Who could guess exactly how ruthless the Germans were?
"I'll have a look." Halevy did, cautiously, from ten meters down the trench. "I don't find him now."
"I wonder who he was. He acted like an officer, and a dumb officer to boot," Vaclav said. "You wouldn't see an enlisted man standing there giving that kind of target. The guys who really fight know better."
"Maybe he was from the General Staff," Sergeant Halevy said. "If half of what you hear about them is true, the Nazis with red stripes on their pants don't know shit about the real world."
"Easy to say that," Jezek answered. "They're here in France. They're in Poland. They're all over Czechoslovakia, fuck 'em up the ass. I don't see anybody else's soldiers in Germany. Do you?"
"Well, no," Halevy admitted. "But-" Before he could say anything more, German artillery came to thunderous life. He and Vaclav both dove for cover. Were the Fritzes shelling like that to avenge the Dummkopf Vaclav had knocked over? They did things like that. If the Dummkopf was an important Dummkopf, the Czech had accomplished something worth doing. He consoled himself with that-and hoped the Nazis' vengeance wouldn't come down on him now. WILLI DERNEN EXAMINED what was left of the head from the department-store dummy Oberfeldwebel Puttkamer had kitted out in German helmet and tunic. Even less was left of the dummy's noggin than of the other sniper's head. Willi let out a low, respectful whistle. "That piece packs a fuck of a wallop," he said.
"What makes you think so, Sherlock Holmes?" Puttkamer enquired. Willi's ears felt incandescent. The senior noncom went on, "He knows the tricks, damn him. He was down again before I could fire. I'm sure of it."
"Too bad," Willi said.
"You'd better believe it," Marcus Puttkamer said. "He's still out there. He's still learning. He's still got his goddamn peashooter, too. I slip up even a little, he's gonna smash my skull just like the shitass dummy's." He considered Willi the way an entomologist considered a beetle before sticking a pin through it. "Or maybe yours."
"Thanks a lot, Feld," Willi said. He'd thought about that possibility before agreeing to become the sniper's number two, but not too much. Getting out from under Awful Arno counted for more. Well, he'd done that. But everything you got in this world came with a price tag attached. Part of the price here was drawing the notice of a sharpshooter who carried a gun that could kill you out to a couple of thousand meters. Next to that, even Awful Arno seemed… not quite so awful, anyhow. Willi glanced toward the enemy's lines-but made sure he didn't raise his head above the parapet to do it. "What do we try now?"
Puttkamer lit a Gitane. Like Willi, he liked French tobacco better than the hay-and-horseshit smokes the Reich cranked out these days. After a moment's pause, the Oberfeldwebel offered Willi the pack. With a nod of thanks, Willi took a smoke from it and leaned toward Puttkamer for a light. The first drag made him want to cough. Yeah, this was the real stuff, all right-no ersatz here.
"I don't know what to try right this minute," Puttkamer answered, snorting smoke out his nostrils like a puzzled dragon. "He's good, sure as hell. Oh, and you're right-screw me if he wasn't wearing a Czech helmet again." His stubbled cheeks hollowed as he inhaled.
"Wunderbar," Willi muttered.
"How about that?" the Oberfeldwebel said with an acid chuckle. "What I've got to do is, I've got to get him to make a mistake. If I'm there when he does it, he'll never make another one."
"Sounds great, but didn't you just say he was good?" Willi returned. "So how do you think you can make him screw up?"
"Best idea I've had so far is to keep murdering as many French officers as I can, as far back from the trench as my rifle reaches," Puttkamer answered matter-of-factly. "That won't put his wind up-too much to hope for. But if all his superiors start screaming at him to get rid of the horrible Nazi gunslinger… They might make him move too fast and get careless. Or they might not, naturlich. But I think it's worth a try. If you've got a better notion, sing out. Believe me, I'll listen."
Dernen did believe him. Puttkamer wasn't like Awful Arno, always sure he was right no matter what he said or did. Yeah, there were advantages to getting away from Baatz, sure as hell. "What can I do to help?" Willi asked. He felt like an assistant at a chess tournament. But they wouldn't take pieces off the board. No, they'd take at least one body.
"You can help kill them, that's what. Let's go get you a proper rifle, one with a scope on it," Puttkamer said. "That piece of yours… Well, the factories turn out worse, but they sure as hell turn out better, too."
Having seen what the sniper could do with his special Mauser, Willi didn't argue. He was used to his own weapon, but he felt no forsaking-all-others attachment to it. And even if he had, he couldn't just mount a telescope on it and start picking off French officers a kilometer and a half away. Snipers' Mausers had a special downturned bolt: the telescope interfered with the travel of an ordinary one.
The quartermaster sergeant was as snotty as quartermaster sergeants usually were. "You want one for him?" the fellow exclaimed, as if Willi had a girlfriend prettier than the one a proper quartermaster would have issued him.
"That's right." Marcus Puttkamer left it there. Not only was he an Oberfeldwebel himself, he was also a sniper. Who wanted to argue with him? Nobody with any sense, not even a quartermaster sergeant.
And so Willi got his rifle. "Bolt will take some getting used to," he said. "I reach for the wrong place."
"I did, too. You won't take as long to get it as you think," the sniper said. "But do you feel how smooth the action is? Sniper rifles are made the way they're supposed to be. Now you'd better take care of it. You don't keep it clean, you don't keep it greased, I'll mount a bayonet on it and then I'll shove it up your ass. Get me?"
"Jawohl, Feld," Willi answered. Every sergeant he'd ever served under growled about keeping your weapon clean. Willi was as good about it as anyone, better than most. He could see why it would be especially important for a sniper.
"I want you to spend the rest of the day practicing with the scope," Puttkamer said. "Don't look toward the French lines. They'll see you, and somebody will stop your career before it gets going. Look at our trenches instead. If there's somebody you wouldn't mind seeing dead, find out what he looks like with crosshairs on him. But you're such a sweet guy, you don't have anybody like that, right?"
"Oh, sure," Willi said innocently.
Puttkamer chuckled. "The other thing is, you have to be able to wait. The better you are at holding still, the more targets you'll service. And that's the idea, right?"
"Right," Willi said. The veteran didn't care to talk about killing people. He did it, but he didn't like to talk about it straight on. That was interesting, in its own way.