Sniper's Justice (Caje Cole Book 9) by David Healey (best classic books txt) 📗

no shooting at the moment, which meant that they were in the eye of the storm.

As she walked up the street, instead of the usual handful of pedestrians and bicycles, she passed knots of German soldiers. They had thrown together sturdy defenses by turning carts on their sides or carrying out heavy furniture from the houses.

Soldiers were dragging an old bathtub out of a house to add it to the defenses. The sound of the cast iron scraping across a bare patch in the cobblestoned street grated on the ears, sounding unnaturally loud in the still air.

The sight of armoires and sofas—and now, a bathtub—bristling with machine guns and mortars was a strange one, to say the least. However, the village was not currently under attack since the attempt by the Americans had failed the day before. Even from here, the young nun could see the burned hulk of the American tank near the railroad overpass. Of course, no trains had run in many days due to the fighting. Looking more closely, she could see a body hanging half out of the turret, badly burned. More bodies lay scattered in the snowy road, their drab uniforms in stark contrast against the snow.

If her hands had not been full, she would have made the sign of the cross. Instead, she whispered a prayer.

The Germans that she passed in the street smoked and laughed with one another. Some leaned against the walls of the houses, looking all the more bulky menacing in their heavy winter coats.

Judging by their laughter and their easy conversation, they seemed to be old hands at the business of war. Most ignored her, but a few gave her a polite nod and said, “Guten morgen, Schwester.” Good morning, Sister.

“God’s grace to you,” she replied sincerely.

A few of the looks she received were lascivious, however, and she tugged her shawl tighter around her shoulders and face. God forgive them, she thought. Were men so weak that they could lust after a nun?

If nothing else, she felt a sense of relief that the German sniper who had tried to drop a dead man on her head was nowhere to be seen. A glance up at the church steeple confirmed that he wasn’t up there, either.

Above the surrounding hills, the winter sun shone pale and watery through the gauzy clouds. They would find no warmth there this day. The sunlight wouldn’t even reach into the shady places in the village, leaving the ice and cold to tighten its grip.

Most of the villagers who remained stayed out of sight, keeping to the shelter of cellars and the sturdy stone houses. But Sister Anne Marie knew that she could not hide or flee town as the priest had done. That was not why she had answered the call of her faith and become a nun. Her duty lay here. She had not grown up in this village, but in one that was somewhat larger. Still, there were not many options for a poor girl—even a pretty one. Her choices were to become a spinster schoolteacher or nurse, a wife to a young man who was equally as poor, or if she was lucky, to marry some middle-aged merchant who would treat her like a servant.

Instead, the church had offered another choice. She received an education and a certain independence of mind that becoming a wife would never allow. Also, she received some measure of respect when she had donned those habits.

Although the decision had mystified some of her friends and family, she gladly became Sister Anne Marie.

Did she love God? Of course—and she had come to love Him more deeply in the short time that she had been a nun.

On this morning, as war raged, there was nothing that she would rather do than serve God by helping others. This was the truth that kept her warm despite the cold.

Again, the door to the church stood open, although the entrance remained guarded. The guards barely gave her a glance as she came in. They were used to her coming and going by now.

She crinkled her nose against the smell that greeted her inside. The church always had been old and damp, but now she smelled the overflowing latrine buckets against the walls, the musky smell of unwashed male bodies crowded together, and an undercurrent of rotting meat from wounds that desperately needed treatment.

“Hello, Sister,” said the young soldier named Joey, eagerly greeting her. He offered to take the heavy basket from her, but she declined, fearing that as weak as he looked, it might knock him down.

She reached up and touched the bandage around his head. The scalp wound had bled freely and now the cloth was stiff as tree bark. “How is your head?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he said. “A lot of these guys are worse off than me.”

Unfortunately, Sister Anne Marie knew that to be true. “Let me see what I can do,” she said. “Will you help?”

“Sure I will.”

The basket was stuffed with as much as she had been able to forage. A few bottles of water and a few tins of things like canned sausages. She looked around at the more than two hundred men crowded into the church. What she had brought was not enough. What she needed was a miracle, but she was no saint. She dreaded the thought, but she might have to go to the German commander to see if he could help with supplies.

“You there!” shouted a deep voice from the doorway.

Sister Anne Marie turned, and her heart sank to see that it was the German sniper whom she thought she had avoided. “What do you want?” she demanded, realizing that she did not sound very sisterly just then.

“I want to see what’s in that basket.”

Beside her, she sensed Joey starting to take a step forward as if to intercept the German, protecting her. She was sure that would not end well. “No,” she whispered to him, and the boy hung back.

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