Ardennes Sniper: A World War II Thriller

Praise for
Ardennes Sniper

by David Healey

“
Ardennes Sniper
will transport you to the place, the time, the struggle that was the Bulge, with a novel that has the crosshairs dead center on a well-told tale.”

—David L. Robbins, best-selling author of
War of the Rats
and
The Devil's Horn

“In
Ardennes Sniper,
David Healey continues the duel he began in
Ghost Sniper,
once again capturing the science and cunning of those who wage war one well-aimed shot at a time.”

—William Peter Grasso, author of the
Jock Miles WW2 series

Copyright © 2015 by David Healey. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotation for the purpose of critical articles and reviews.

Intracoastal Media digital edition published 2015. Print edition published 2015.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Streetlight Graphics

BISAC Subject Headings:

FIC014000 FICTION/Historical

FIC032000 FICTION/War & Military

ISBN:0692547045

ISBN:978-0692547045

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

CHAPTER 1

Caje Cole looked through the rifle scope at the Germans.

Six Wehrmacht infantrymen, passing around a pack of cigarettes in the gray winter dawn. From a distance of two hundred feet, the four power scope wasn’t powerful enough to pick out the brand, but from the flash of red and white Cole guessed they were smoking Lucky Strikes.

Taken off a dead American, he reckoned. No shortage of those, thanks to these Krauts.

One of the Germans laughed, and the sound telegraphed across the frigid air, making the enemy sound much closer. These were battle-hardened Wehrmacht soldiers, wearing winter gear filthy with the mud of a hundred fox holes. They couldn’t see Cole, who had crept all night with Vaccaro toward the German lines, finally burying themselves in a rotting wood pile at the edge of an abandoned farm. Dirty white strips of cloth, wrapped around their rifle barrels, disguised the outlines of their weapons.

The cloth strips were Cole’s idea. Even after months as a sniper, Vaccaro was still a city boy at heart, so it had taken all of Cole’s considerable skill as a hunter to get them this close.
 

Right now, it felt a little
too
close. The Germans laughed again. Cole smelled their cigarette smoke.

He had figured on picking off a German or two, but this group was too good to pass up. The Germans stood around a machine gun. If they got to it in time, Cole and Vaccaro would be dead.

“Take the shot already,” Vaccaro muttered. “I’m freezing my ass off.”

Cole did not reply, but let his crosshairs settle on the German handing out the Lucky Strikes. He let out a breath. Squeezed the trigger.

Gentle-like,
he reminded himself. The pad of his finger added a fraction of tension.

When the rifle fired, it almost surprised him.

The German collapsed. Vaccaro took the next shot and knocked down another German.
 

Cole worked the bolt. Fired again.
 

Vaccaro’s next shot missed, and the last German went for the machine gun. Cole put the crosshairs on him and fired. His ears told him that his bullet had struck the German. When a brass-jacketed round hit a human body it made a solid
whunk
sound like a ripe watermelon being split with a big knife.

Seconds after the first shot, all four Germans lay dead in the snow.

“You missed your second shot,” Cole said.

“That’s why you’re here, Hillbilly.”

The two snipers extricated themselves from the wood pile, then followed a stone wall toward the ruins of a barn. Keeping low, they were careful to maintain a distance between themselves. Always good to make a hard target.

Now came the dangerous part, crossing nearly one hundred feet of open field between the barn and the edge of the Ardennes Forest.

“You go first,” Cole said.

“Easy for you to say and me to do.”

Vaccaro took a big breath and ran. Cole raised his rifle to cover Vaccaro as the city boy dashed for the trees. Once there, he covered Cole as he ran across.
 

Safely in the trees, Vaccaro produced a hip flask filled with calvados. He had gotten a taste for the apple brandy right after the D-Day landing in June. Christmas was in a few days, and then the new year of 1945.
 

“Wish we could have gotten us an officer,” Cole said.

“Look at it this way, Cole. If things go according to plan, those are the last Germans you’ll have to shoot this year.” He handed the flask to Cole.

Cole looked at him with eyes that seemed cut from glass, then took a long drink from the flask and tossed it back. “I reckon we’ll see about that,” Cole said.

• • •

In the winter of 1762 when the Ardennes froze hard, wolves crept down from the mountains and out of the deep shadows of the forests. At first, the people in the isolated villages noticed only the paw prints in the snow beyond the houses and barns, but the wolves themselves remained unseen. The hungry beasts became more bold and visible, attacking sheep, children, even grown men. In local legend it was remembered as
der Winter von den Wölfen des Ardennes,
the Winter of the Wolves of Ardennes.
 

It had been a long time since a wolf had attacked anyone in the hills and forests, but that did not mean danger wasn’t present. In the winter of 1944 the wolves were two-legged, and they were once again about to sweep across the sleepy forests and villages.

One of these wolves was named Gunther Klein. Walking alone at dusk it was easy to believe the legends about the forest that he remembered from his boyhood. But he did not feel much like a wolf at the moment. Truth be told, he was downright nervous and jumpy, because he was a German soldier well behind the American lines—a wolf, perhaps, but one in sheep's clothing. Or, in his case, an American uniform.
 

If caught, he would be executed immediately as a spy.

Klein was one of a specially trained unit led by none other than Otto Skorzeny, the dashing six-foot-four SS commando with the dueling scar or
schmiss
on his cheek. Eisenhower had called Skorzeny “the most dangerous man in Europe,” and it had been Skorzeny’s brainstorm to form this team of one hundred and fifty saboteurs.

In addition to wearing an American uniform, Klein carried a captured M1 rifle. He was making his way toward one of the crossroads villages where it was rumored the Americans had a large fuel depot. His orders were quite simple—blow up the fuel, cut any telephone lines, spread misinformation. Basically, he was a one-man sabotage squad. His secret weapon was that he spoke English fluently.

Klein had slipped through the thin American lines without any trouble. To keep to his schedule, he decided to follow the road into the village. He would have preferred keeping to the woods, but the snow was already knee deep in places. He would just have to take his chances on the road.

"Verdammt, es ist kalt!"
he muttered, teeth chattering, then chided himself. English, you fool. One slip of the tongue in front of American troops and that would be it for him. There would likely be no trial, but only a roadside reckoning. Skorzeny had made that much clear to everyone.

So far he hadn't seen a soul. The situation changed abruptly when he rounded a bend in the winding road and a figure materialized from behind a tree and stepped into the road. Klein swung his rifle at the American GI.

"Easy there, pardner! I was just taking a leak. I saw you coming and wanted to make sure you weren't a German."

"No Germans around here." Klein’s heart pounded so loud he was sure the American could hear it.

"You never know. But I'll bet they're holed up somewhere nice and warm, waiting for us to come to them." He coughed, and Klein smelled alcohol on the man's breath. "Cold as a witch's tit!"

"Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey," Klein said. He was not quite sure what it meant, because it certainly didn't make any sense, but he had been taught that it was a popular American saying.

"That's why I was trying to keep warm in one of the local taverns," the GI said. "I'm headed back to the village. How about you?"

"Yes, the village sounds like a fine idea." Klein winced as soon as he said it. He knew he had come off sounding stuffy. Skorzeny himself once said that Klein spoke English like he had the queen's royal scepter up his ass. He needed to work on sounding more American.

The GI gave him a sidelong look. "Say, what are you doing out here, anyhow?"

"Same as you. Running errands for HQ."

"What unit you with?"

"The two hundred and ninety-sixth engineers."

"Engineers. Huh. I thought you guys were back on the other side of the Meuse River." They trudged along in silence for a minute. The American seemed to be thinking something through. Klein could almost hear the cogs of his brain spinning in the winter quiet. "It is real peaceful out here, though, with all this snow. It's almost like I can hear Frank Sinatra singing
White Christmas.
You know that song?"

Klein knew it was a trap. The American had been working up to it. He kept his answer vague: "Who does not like Sinatra?"

The GI stopped in his tracks and stared hard at Klein. "Hey, who are you, buddy? Everybody knows it's Bing Crosby who sings
White Christmas.
"

The GI took a clumsy step back and his heavily gloved hand slipped toward the holstered .45 on his belt.
 

Too slow. While the GI fumbled with the gun, Klein pulled a knife from a sheath at the small of his back and jabbed it at the GI's heart. But the heavy coat interfered and the point struck a rib. Stupidly, the GI kept trying to get the pistol out of the holster. Klein got a better grip on the knife and struck again.
 

This time the razor-sharp blade slipped between the sixth and seventh rib, driving into the GI's heart. Just like Skorzeny had trained him to do. The man's eyes blinked in shock as his heart stopped. Klein stepped back and let the man topple into the snow. He bent down and wiped the blade on the man's coat, then returned the knife to the sheath.

His own heart hammered in his chest. He had never killed anyone with a knife before and the experience was both sickening and somehow exhilarating.
 

Klein looked around, but the road remained empty and silent except for the whisper of falling snow.

Using the knife was taking a chance because it was less certain than a bullet, but it was better to avoid a gunshot that might attract attention.
 

Klein looked down at the body. He decided not to waste time moving it off the road.
Better him than me,
he thought. To his immense satisfaction, he had thought the words in English.