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

at first, and then the tables turned on them. You know how a cornered animal gets.”

“Yeah, I suppose I do.”

“Hauer did some pretty ugly things. To be fair, I reckon I did, too. That’s war for you. What’s happening now is what you might call a reckoning. Hauer wants revenge.”

“What do you want, Pa Cole?”

“First of all, I want you to get out of here in one piece.” Cole thought about it. “And the second thing, now that the gloves are off, is that I want some justice.”

“Aren’t you two a little old for all this?”

Cole grunted. “Tell that to Hauer.”

“If you ask me, this is crazy.”

Cole didn’t disagree, but he had learned a long time ago to accept the reality of any situation rather than deny it.

Without any fire or blankets, it was going to be a long, cold night. Cole put his back against a fallen log, facing the direction from which they had come. He leaned the rifle against the log, within easy reach.

“Sit over here right up against me,” Cole said. “Our body heat will help to keep us warm.”

Danny soon nestled against Cole, almost like he had as a little boy. There was some necessity here because the only part of them that stayed warm was where their bodies touched. Their extremities felt cold and they both shivered. Nonetheless, to Cole’s surprise, Danny’s head sagged against Cole’s shoulder and his grandson drifted off to sleep.

Cole willed his own warmth to flow out of him and into Danny. He’d been a hard man all his life and never one to show much emotion—except anger, maybe. There were times when he regretted that part of himself. But even Cole recognized that it wasn’t just warmth he was letting flow into Danny, it was love.

While his grandson slept, he kept awake, every sense alert. He heard the gentle night wind stir the trees overhead, the hoot of an owl, the bark of a fox. He didn’t hear any stealthy footsteps in the forest, creeping toward them. He stayed awake, keeping watch through the night, until just before what he judged to be dawn, when he drifted off.

Cole couldn’t say what woke him up first. It might have been the smack of a bullet hitting the log next to his head, or the sharp crack of a rifle that followed a split second later. He was half asleep, but instinct took over.

“Danny, keep down! Get on the other side of the log.”

Quickly, Cole shook off the last blurriness of sleep like he was throwing back a blanket. Scanning the woods, he guessed that the shot had come from the direction of the valley.

Hauer had managed to track them, probably following their trail through last night’s frosty grass. Now, he was coming after them and his intentions were all too clear.

Cole crawled over the log, putting it between himself and Hauer. Danny was already crouched behind it.

Through the rifle scope, Cole scanned the forest and looked into the clearing, but there was no sign of Hauer. Through the high-powered scope, mostly what he saw was a confusing tangle of tree branches. He reminded himself that the man had been a sniper, after all. One of the best. He wouldn’t be exposing himself needlessly to Cole’s rifle sights.

“Where is he?” Danny asked.

“Somewhere close.”

Cole had to admit that he was a little troubled. He had been asleep; Hauer could have crept right up on them. He also wondered how Hauer had managed to miss.

It had been like that stag. Hauer had been presented with a clear shot that he shouldn’t have missed. What if Hauer had missed on purpose? Cole suspected that Hauer had taken the more masterful shot of intentionally wounding the stag, thus giving him an excuse to trail it into the forest. What if he had done the same thing just now and missed on purpose? If so, it meant that Hauer was toying with them.

Cole didn’t like the situation at all. Hauer knew where they were, but he couldn’t see Hauer.

“Let’s get out of here,” Cole said. “We’re going to make a run for it, deeper into the trees. Keep low, and juke and weave. Whatever you do, don’t run in a straight line.”

“I can do it.” Danny seemed to be reassuring himself.

“Go!”

They jumped out from behind the log and ran, willing themselves to present as small of a target as possible. Danny ran a lot faster than Cole, who struggled to keep up.

Another shot rang out, passing so close that Cole heard the supersonic crack of the bullet. The sound made his spine quiver.

If Hauer had been toying with them before, he wasn’t anymore. Hauer was shooting to kill.

He glanced over his shoulder, rifle at the ready, hoping for some glimpse of their pursuer. All that Cole saw were trees and more trees.

“Hold up,” he called out to Danny, who was getting too far ahead of him. The last thing they needed was to get separated. In this dense forest, they would never find each other again.

Danny stopped running, getting behind a massive old oak for cover. Cole slid in beside him, breathing hard. Not for the first time, he was glad that he had given up cigarettes back in 1944. So many of the old-timers he knew who smoked now had emphysema or even used oxygen—the ones who hadn’t already died of lung cancer, in any case.

“Now what?” Danny asked. Racing through the trees had burned off some of the boy’s initial fright and he seemed calmer. Cole was glad that the boy was thinking about strategy.

“He did have the upper hand,” Cole said. “He had us dead to rights back there. But now, he’s got to come to us.”

“What do we do?”

“We wait for him.”

The massive tree that they had sheltered behind offered good cover. The tree was old enough that some Gallic archer might have passed here, or more recently, a Wehrmacht soldier. One side of the gnarled trunk was festooned with