The Master Sniper

And what if twenty-seven targets came out, or twenty-eight, or twenty-nine, meaning a nun or a novitiate or two had come along to watch and help? It was entirely possible, even probable. In Berlin they’d been vague and half-apologetic. Perhaps even the Reichsführer, who’d sent millions East, felt queasy about ordering him to shoot a Swiss nun. Yet they chose Repp for his strength as well as his skill and he’d resolved to make the difficult decisions. If a nun had to die in the cause of making the world Judenrein, clean of Jews, then so be it. He’d kill everything on the scope.

Repp laid down the binoculars as the last of the light died. He clapped his hands, and pulled his jacket tighter. He was cold and afraid of fatigue, which could take his edge. And he was strangely uneasy about all this: so simple, everything had whirred into place. He knew enough to distrust such ease. He shifted an arm and looked at his watch. Almost nine.

Three more hours.

It was almost nine. The drunken lieutenant was explaining but his words kept dissolving into giggles. He was under the impression Roger was an officer and he seemed to think the more he giggled the more trouble he was in, which meant that he giggled even harder.

“The tank carrier, sir, uh, he stripped his gears trying to get her outta the mud, uh, or he thought he would, uh, sir, he put her in reverse and she jumped the road and—” The remainder of the communiqué was lost in a seethe of giggles. The lieutenant was trying to explain why the flatbed truck, designed to transport tanks, lay angled across the road ahead, garish in the light of a dozen purple flares. Around it clustered a group of Americans—they’d drawn duty on VE night and someone had a bottle and whatever they were supposed to do just wasn’t going to get done.

It had been like this most of the way since Schloss Pommersfelden. Nuremberg still lay somewhere in the distance, mythical like Camelot, and to get there they’d have to pass through more of what they’d already seen: drunken joyous men of all nationalities, accidents, honking horns, flares, small-arms fire. And women. In the small town of Forchheim—“Fuck-him,” in GI argot—through which they’d just pushed their way, the nonfraternization law had broken down totally, and young officers were the most audacious offenders. College boys mostly, with no real military careers on the line, they’d turned the town into a fraternity party or prom night. The Jeep had been laid up at a corner behind a column of stalled vehicles before Leets, in a frenzy of rage, had gone forward to find two staff cars hung up on each other in a minor crash, and in the back seat of each a couple necking hotly while around them MP’s argued and screamed. Leets went back and they’d pulled out of line to try an alternate route, but almost ended up in the Regnitz River and did in fact become lost until a studiously inebriated British major of the Guards, elaborately polite, had pointed them back in the right direction.

“Well, Jesus, how long, Lieutenant?” Leets demanded, leaning across Roger. Something in his voice must have startled the youngster. He stepped back abruptly and began to speak in an oppressive imitation of sobriety. “There’s a maintenance vehicle from the motor pool in Nuremberg on the way, uh, sir.”

“Christ,” said Leets in disgust.

He climbed out of the Jeep and pushed by the lieutenant to the truck. The fucking thing was hopelessly locked in, its double-axled set of rear tires having slipped off the roadway into a culvert, hooking there, and as the driver had pulled to free himself, he’d actually twisted the huge flatbed up and out into the air; it looked like a drawbridge stuck halfway, blocking the road completely. It would take a heavy tow truck or perhaps a crane to move the thing.

Up ahead loud voices clashed off one another. Leets looked into the circle of vivid pink light from the flare and saw two men facing each other. They were about to begin throwing punches.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” he yelled.

“Asshole here dumped his fucking truck in the middle of the road, now he won’t move it so I’m go

“You just go on and try it, sucker,” said the other.

“Knock it off, goddamn it,” Leets ordered.

“There’s broads up in that Fuck-him place,” said the first man, “and goddamn I mean to get a piece of ass tonight.”

“All right,” said Leets.

This son of a bitch and his fuckin’ tru—”

“Knock it off, goddamn it!” Leets shouted.

“Captain,” said Roger.

“Shut up, Roger, goddamn it, I got enough—”

“Captain. Let them have our Jeep. We’ll take their car. Everybody’s happy.”

“What are you driving?” Leets asked.

“Ford staff car,” the man said sullenly. “I’m General Taplow’s driver. But, hey, I can’t let anything happen to that car.”

“More pussy in Fuck-him than you ever saw in one place in your life,” said Roger. “Some of them German women are walking around bare-tit.”

“Oh, Christ,” said the man weakly.

“Harry, you’re go

“Bare-tit?”

“Some of ’em even have these little pasty things on.”

“Oh, Jesus. That I gotta see.”

“Harry.”

“Look, you’ll take real good care of that car, won’t you?”

“You know where the Nuremberg airport is, Grossreuth Flughafen?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“That’s where the car’ll be. All locked up.”

“Fine,” the man said, “fine and fine again.” Then his excitement beached itself. “Uh. Didn’t see you was an officer. Uh, sir.”

“Forget it. No rules tonight, that’s the only rule.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get the major and our stuff,” Leets told Roger, who’d already started.

The two groups of men filed by each other in the fading light of the flares. One of the drunken GI’s suddenly looked up at the three fellows passing him, and saw them grave-faced, a trifle solemn, grumpy with their automatic weapons. “Jesus,” he said, stu

As Leets climbed into the Ford staff car, he forced himself to check his Bulova. He didn’t want to but there were a lot of things he didn’t want to do that night that he knew he was going to have to do anyway, and the easiest of them all was to look at the watch.

It was almost ten.

It was almost eleven. Repp felt sluggish from his long wait in the cold rocks. During this time he had closed his mind down with his extraordinary self-control: he had willed out unpleasant thoughts, doubts, twinges of regret. He’d put his mind in a great dead cold place, letting it purify itself in the emptiness. He wasn’t exactly sure what happened in this trancelike state and he’d never spoken of it to others. He simply knew that such an exercise in will seemed to do him a great deal of good, to generate that icy, eerie calm that was the bedrock of the great shooting, the really fantastic shooting. It was something he’d learned in Russia.

But now it was time to bring himself up, out of the cold. He began with exercises, pedantic physical preparations. He rolled to his belly and entwined his fingers, clamping them behind his neck, elbows straining outward. Then, slowly, he lifted his torso from the ground, chin thrusting high on the strength of his stomach. He rocked, stretching, feeling the pain scald as the muscle tension rose; then, sweetly, he relaxed. Up, hold and relax: three sets, ten each. Then the shoulders and upper chest: this was difficult—he didn’t want to do a classic press-up because he didn’t want to deaden his touch by putting his weight on his palms. He’d therefore evolved an elbow press-up, planting them on the ground, gathering his fists before his eyes. Then he’d force the fists down, levering his body on the fulcrum of his elbows—a painful trick that soon had the girdle of muscles around his shoulders, chest and upper body singing. But he was hard on himself and pushed on, feeling at last the sweat break from his body and its warmth come bursting out his tunic collar.