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

“Your boyfriend is a slob,” Hans said, smiling. The situation might be serious, but he could not resist teasing his grand-niece.

“Uncle Hans, he is not my boyfriend!”

“Hmm,” he said. “Are you so sure about that?”

Angela made an exasperated sound in response.

“All their things are here,” Hans said. “It does not make sense that they left. I don’t trust that Hauer one bit. He is up to something.”

“We need to go look for them,” Angela said. “Maybe they need help. Maybe they are hurt. We need to go right now.”

Hans shook his head. “It is dark out. What would you and I do, an old man and a city girl?”

Angela pouted. “We must do something! I am worried about Danny!”

“I already expressed my concerns to the hunt master. Whatever else we do will have to wait for morning.”

“We can’t wait that long!”

Hans thought about it, knowing his grand-niece was right. The question was, what could they do?

Then he remembered the business card in his billfold. He took it out. On it was the telephone number for the retired American officer who had helped to organize the WWII museum.

“Angela, we must find a phone. We will call Colonel Mulholland. He will know what to do.”

Miles away, Cole and Danny were preparing for another night in the forest. It was clear and cold. Through a gap in the treetops, Cole could see the stars overhead, sparkling bright. He had spent a lifetime looking at those stars. They felt like old friends.

Danny surprised him by saying, “Look, there’s Orion.” He pointed up at the three stars that made up The Hunter’s belt.

“Huh, I reckon somebody was paying attention when I taught him the stars, after all.”

“Sure, Pa Cole. I know all the stars.” He pointed. “There’s Pegasus. There’s Taurus. The Bull.”

While their situation remained desperate, they were both in better spirits. They had built a small fire and roasted some of the pork, and both of them had eaten their fill.

While the fire had been a way of thumbing his nose at Hauer, Cole wasn’t foolish enough to sleep right beside it. Instead, they had made their makeshift camp about one hundred feet away. They had left a couple of bundles of branches on the ground near the fire so that from a distance the bundles would resemble sleeping bodies.

Cole was close enough that he would see Hauer if The Butcher entered the circle of firelight. If that was the case, then Cole planned to shoot him. In part, Cole had broken every rule for stealth and built the fire because he now suspected that it wouldn’t be Hauer’s style to ambush them in the night, or even to pick them off from the darkness. That was outside the rules of the strange game that they were playing. No, he suspected that Hauer would want Cole to see what was coming. He would want to savor his final victory. Hauer would want to gloat. With no sign that help was on its way, Hauer wasn’t in any rush to finish them off.

Cole felt confident that Hauer would wait for daylight. When daylight came, Cole had a surprise of his own planned for his old enemy.

With a full belly, Cole felt new energy coursing through him. Whatever came tomorrow, he would be ready to finish this business with Hauer for once and for all. This was going to be the finish to a fight that had started forty years before.

“Get some sleep,” he said to Danny. “I’ll keep watch.”

Danny didn’t argue. They were both exhausted after a day spent trudging up and down the mountain, trying to stay ahead of Hauer. Danny’s injured ankle and Cole’s own wounds had also drained their energy.

His grandson tugged his coat tighter and rolled over in the leaves to get some sleep.

Cole had no plans of his own to sleep. He smiled to himself. What did an old man need sleep for, anyhow? He had an eternity to rest, and that eternity was coming on fast. No, sleep was for the young. He glanced down at the resting young man, wishing that he could walk with him through life and guide him, but knowing that we each have to make our own way. The best that any parent or grandparent could hope for was to set younger folks on the right path.

He wanted Danny to live and have a chance to follow that path, wherever that might take him. For that to happen, Cole was going to have to kill Hauer.

Instead of sleeping, he took out the hunting knife that he had used to butcher the boar and began to sharpen it. He had no proper sharpening stone with him, of course, but he had found a reasonably flat, smooth stone, speckled with flint, that would serve the same purpose. He spat on the stone and got to work. He worked gently and patiently, so that the sound of steel on stone wouldn’t carry through the woods.

The knife itself was a Böker lock-blade, made in Germany. He hadn’t brought any of his own hand-made knives with him on the trip, but he had to admit that the German knife was a quality product. After a while, he tested the edge with his thumb. The steel took an edge well and held it.

When he was finished with the knife, he moved on to the rifle. Back in his military days, it had always been a source of ribbing—as much as anyone kidded with someone as serious as Cole—that he had the cleanest rifle in the army.

Old habits died hard. He didn’t have any proper cleaning tools to speak of out here in the woods, but he made due. Earlier, he had cut yet another strip from his tattered shirt and soaked it in some of the pork fat from supper. He used the rag to rub down every part of the action that he could reach, along with the exterior metal surfaces to protect them from the nighttime