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

Cole watched the Germans warily, keeping them in his sights. “We ain’t got time for prisoners, Lieutenant. We ought to just shoot ‘em. Stand back and I’ll take care of it.”

“Hold it, Cole! Battalion could use some intel. We’ll send these three back to see what they can tell us.”

Cole didn’t lower his rifle. It was as if the weapon had a mind of its own. They were in the middle of an attack. Prisoners required guarding. He told himself that he was being practical, not cruel. He was a hard man, but not a monster.

But truth be told, he had seen too many good American boys killed. In his mind’s eye, he could picture all the bodies in the snow from this bloody Battle of the Bulge. What a goddamn waste. He couldn’t seem to take his finger off the trigger.

The Germans must have seen something in Cole’s stance. He wasn’t a captor, but a killer. Beneath the rim of his helmet, his eyes glittered in the light of the winter’s dawn and the fires burning in town.

One of the prisoners began to plead quietly, “Bitte, bitte, bitte.”

Mulholland looked over and saw Cole standing there as if frozen in place. “Cole, that’s an order!”

“What about those poor bastards at Malmedy, Lieutenant? Do you reckon they ever had a chance?”

“Dammit, Cole! Don’t make me say it again!”

Reluctantly, Cole lowered the rifle. “Have it your way, Lieutenant. You want me and Vaccaro to take these Krauts to HQ? We’ll be back here in no time.”

“Hell, no. I’m not sure they would make it with you guarding them.” Mulholland looked around. He turned to another soldier in the squad. The man had been wounded lightly in the arm. “Private, take these prisoners back to HQ. See to that arm while you’re at it.”

“Yes, sir,” the private said. “C’mon, Hans. On your feet. Looks like it’s your lucky day.”

The lieutenant turned back to Cole and glared at him. Now that it was getting lighter, the anger in his face was clear. “If it’s Germans you want to kill so badly, Cole, then follow me. There’s plenty more of them in the village.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cole felt chastened. The lieutenant was right. What had he been thinking? He realized that he had been fighting this war too damn long.

With the Americans now entering the village, the narrow streets had been turned into a battleground. Some of the Germans were veterans of the fighting in the Soviet Union and were all too familiar with street fighting. Wingen sur Moder was no Stalingrad, but the battle for the town was becoming just as vicious.

Very efficiently, the Germans had placed machine-gun positions at the street corners, giving each machine-gun nest a clear line of fire in several directions. All that the attackers could do was scurry from house to house, trying to stay under cover until those machine guns could be knocked out.

“Every last one of these houses has been turned into a damned bunker,” Vaccaro said. “They can hit us from any direction. What the hell are we supposed to do?”

“We take this village one house at a time, that’s what,” Cole replied. “Now, cover me.”

Without waiting for a response, Cole dashed toward the nearest house. It was tall and narrow, offering a good vantage point up and down the street.

His movement was met with muzzle flashes from the windows, then bullets plucking at the snow around his feet, but he managed to reach the back corner of the house and hugged the wall. He stayed there for a moment, gasping for breath and realizing that he still felt pretty weak from the flu. Suddenly, he found himself having a terrible coughing fit. Hell, maybe he ought to still be in bed instead of being out here, fighting the war.

Inside the house, the Germans could hear him. He could definitely hear them inside, shouting excitedly to one another. The angle was all wrong for the Germans in the house to get a shot at him. However, he couldn’t just hide out here all day. Vaccaro was right about every house being a bunker. At any moment, somebody might spot him and pick him off.

One of the Germans leaned out of an upstairs window, trying to get a glimpse of where the American had gone. Cole raised his rifle and fired, sending the enemy soldier tumbling to the snowy ground.

There was another open window on the ground floor, but none of the Krauts was dumb enough to stick his head out. Cole got down low and crawled under the window. Across the way, he spotted Vaccaro, giving him covering fire. Bullets smacked into the house. Cole just hoped to hell that Vaccaro didn’t shoot him by accident.

From his position under the window, Cole pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it inside. The ear-splitting blast was almost instantaneous. He heard screams and curses despite his ringing ears. Leaping to his feet, he fired through the window at anything moving in the smoke.

There were still Germans upstairs, though, and they weren’t too happy. He could hear them shouting angrily and rushing down the stairs. The interior of the house echoed with automatic fire. Cole ducked back down; his single-shot Springfield wasn’t any match for that. Now what?

He needn’t have worried. In the confusion, Vaccaro had scrambled across to the house. He emptied a clip from his semi-automatic M-1 into the interior of the house, and then for good measure, tossed in another grenade.

“Fire in the hole!”

Another blast tore through the downstairs, followed by more screams. The grenade had silenced the enemy within. This was going to be an ugly business, repeating the same process from house to house. Not all of the attacks on the houses were one-sided victories, like this one had been. The growing number of American bodies in the streets was evidence of that.

“You all right?” he shouted at Vaccaro, even though the City Boy was just a few yards away. Neither of