The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter
The doctor wrapped the slug in a gauze patch and handed it over to Leets.
“There, Captain. I hope you can read the message in it.”
Eager now with his treasure, Leets insisted on adding one last stop to the tour of the combat zone. He’d learned from Ryan that the divisional weapons maintenance section had set up shop in the town of Alfeld proper, not far from Graves Registration, and they headed for it.
Leets entered to find himself in a low dark room lined with workbenches. Injured American weapons lay in parts around the place, a brace of .30-caliber air-cooled perforated jacket sleeves, several BAR receivers, Garand ejector rods, Thompson sling swivels, carbine bolts, even a new grease gun or two. Two privates struggled to dismantle a .50-caliber on a tripod, no easy task, and in the back another fellow, a T-5, hunched over a small piece, grinding it with a file.
Leets, ignored, finally said, “Pardon,” and eventually the tech looked up.
“Sir?”
“The CO around?”
“Caught some junk last week. Back in the States by now. I’m pulling the strings for now. Sir.”
“I see,” said Leets. “You any good on the German stuff?”
“Meaning, Can I get you a Luger? The answer is, Can you get me thirty-five bucks?”
“No, meaning, What’s this?”
He held out the mashed slug.
“Outta you, sir?” asked the tech.
“No. Out of a kid up on the line.”
“Okay. That’s that new machine carbine they’ve got, the forty-four model. You catch SS boys with ’em, right?”
“Right.”
“Seven point nine-two millimeter kurz. Short. Like our carbine round.”
He took it from Leets and held it close.
“All right,” he said. “A hundred for the forty-four, five bucks apiece for any spare magazines you can get me.”
Oh, Christ, Leets thought.
“One fifty,” the tech upped his bid, “provided it’s in good condition, operational, no bad dents or bends. You get me one with the barrel-deflection device, the Krummlauf, and I’ll jump to two bills. That’s top dollar.”
“No, no,” said Leets, patiently, “all I’m interested in is this slug.”
“That’s not worth a goddamned penny, sir,” said the sergeant, offended.
“Information, not dollars, goddamn it!”
“Jesus, I’m only talking business,” said the sergeant. “I thought you was a client, is all, sir.”
“Okay, okay. Just look at the fucking bullet and tell me about it.”
“Frank, c’mere, willya? Frank’s our expert.”
Frank untangled himself from the struggle with the .50 and loped over. Leets saw that if the tech was the business brain, Frank was the esthete. He had the intellectual’s look of scorn; this was too low for him, he was surrounded by fools, more worthy ways of spending one’s life could certainly be found.
He picked the piece up, looked at it quickly.
“Let’s weigh it,” he said. He took it over to the bench and balanced it on the pan of a microscale, fussed with the balances and finally announced, “My, my, ain’t we got fun.” He rummaged around on the bench and produced a greasy pamphlet, pale green, that read “ORDANCE SPECIFICATIONS AXIS POWERS ETO 1944” and pawed through it.
“Yes, sir,” he finally said, “usually goes one hundred and twenty grains, gilding metal over a soft steel jacket. Inside this jacket is a lead sleeve surrounding a steel core. A newer type of powder is used. But this here mother weighs in at one forty-three grains. And there ain’t no steel in it at all. Too soft. Just plain old lead. Now that’s no good against things. Won’t penetrate, just splatter. But into something soft, meaning people, you got maximum damage.”
“Why would they build a bullet out of pure lead in wonderful modern 1945?” Leets asked.
“If you’re putting this wad through a barrel with real deep grooves, real biters, you can get a hell of a lot of revs, even on something moving slow. Which means—”
“Accuracy?”
“Yes, sir. The guy on the gun can put them on fucking dimes from way out if he knows what he’s doing. Even if the bullet’s moving real slow, no velocity at all. The revs hold her on, not the speed.”
“So it’s moving under seven hundred feet per second? That’s slow, slower than our forty-five.”
“Right. And at seven hundred fps or less, you’re under the sound barrier.”
“No pop. It’s better than a silencer, isn’t it?” Leets wanted to know.
“Yes, sir. Because any baffle system cuts down on feet per second, so you get a drop off in accuracy and range. Someone real smart figured all this out. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
So that’s how they did it, Leets thought.
“Hey, Captain, you get a line on this gun, you let me know,” said the tech. “It sounds nice. I’d go a thousand for it.”
When they got back to Ryan’s shop to wait for the plane that would take them back to London, the major asked an innocent question.
“Hey,” he said, “by the way, what’s Anlage Elf?”
That got Leets’s attention. He yanked up, staring hard, feeling the breath sucked from him.
“Your CO,” said Ryan, baffled by the intense reaction, “he bumped a high-priority telex through. It’s just down from Division.”
“CO?” said Leets.
“Colonel Evans.”
That son of a—
“He wants you back fastest. He says he found Anlage Elf.”
PART TWO
Gesamtlösung
(General Solution)
April–May 1945
13
Repp had a special request.
“Now, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor, if all goes well,” he said one morning, “all your inventions will work wonderfully. It’ll be like the tests, the targets out front, I’m shooting from a clear lane, protected. Eh? But suppose things get a little mixed up?”
“I’m not sure I—”
“Well, old friend, it’s possible”—Repp was smiling—“there’ll be some boys interested in stopping me. I might find myself in a ruckus with them, a close-in thing. Have you ever been in a fire fight?”
“No. Of course not,” said Vollmerhausen.
Again Repp smiled. “The weapon you’ve given me is superb for distance and dark. But fire fights take place where you can see the other fellow’s dental work, tell if he’s still got milk on his tongue from breakfast.”
Vollmerhausen saw immediately what Repp was driving at. Repp, equipped as no man ever had been for the special requirements of the mission, was in a more conventional engagement as good as unarmed. The heavy scope, with its cathode tube, energy converter and infrared light blocked out his view of the standard iron battle-sights.
“I can hit a germ at four hundred meters,” Repp said, “at midnight. Yet a man with a fowling piece has the advantage at fifty meters. Can you help me out? I’d hate to have all this end up in disappointment because of some accident.”
Vollmerhausen puzzled over the problem, and soon concluded that he could spot-weld still another piece, a tube or something, under Vampir, to serve crudely as a sight. It wouldn’t be on the weapon’s axis, however, but rather parallel to it, and thus it would have to be adjusted in its placement to account for this difference. He chose the carrying case of a K-43 scope, a nicely milled bit of tubing of acceptable weight and length; and he mounted at its rear rim a peephole just a trifle right of center and at its front rim a blade just a trifle left of center. Repp, his head a little out of position, would line the blade in the center of the peephole, and find himself locked into a target 100 meters out where the line of his vision intersected the flight of the bullet. Nothing fancy; crude in fact, and certainly ugly, grotesque.
The original outlines of the once sleek STG-44 were barely visible under the many modifications, the cluster of tubes up top, a reshaped pistol grip, the conical flash-hider, and the bipod.
“Or truly beautiful. The modern architects—not thought highly of by certain powerful people, I admit—” Vollmerhausen was taking a real risk but he felt his new kinship with Repp would allow such a radical statement—“say beauty is form following function. There’s nothing very pretty about Vampir, which makes it beautiful indeed. Not a wasted line, not an artificial embellishment.”
“Form follows function, you say. Tell me, a Jew said that, didn’t he?” He was fiddling again with that curious black thing, that little metal cube.
Vollmerhausen wasn’t really sure. “Probably,” he admitted.
“Yes, they are very clever. A clever race. That was their problem.”
It was not long after this unsettling conversation that another curious thing began to happen. Or rather: not to happen. Vollmerhausen began to realize with a distinct sensation of reluctance that he was done. Not merely done with this last modification, but done completely. Done with Vampir.
There was simply nothing to do until the team came for the gun.
In this involuntary holiday, Vollmerhausen took to strolling the compound or the nearby woods, while his staff fiddled away their time improving their quarters—technical people love to tinker, and they’d worked out a more efficient hot water system, bettered the ventilation in the canteen, turned their barrack into a two-star facility (a joke was making the rounds: after the war they’d open a spa here called Bad Anlage). Now that the pressure was off, their morale rose remarkably; the prospect of leaving filled them with joy, and Vollmerhausen himself planned to check with Repp as soon as possible about the evacuation. Once, in his strollings, he even passed his old antagonist Schaeffer, resplendent in the new camouflage tunic all the soldiers had brought back from a tank-warfare course they’d gone to for two days, but the SS captain hardly noticed him.
Meanwhile, rumors fluttered nervously through the air, some clearly ridiculous, some just logical enough to be true: the Führer was dead, Berlin Red except for three blocks in the city center; the Americans and English would sign a separate peace with the Reich and together they would fight the Russians; Vienna had fallen, Munich was about to; fresh troops were collecting in the Alps for a final stand; the Reich would invade Switzerland and make a last stand there; a vast underground had been set up to wage war after surrender; all the Jews had been freed from the KZ’s, or all had been killed. Vollmerhausen had heard them all before, but now new ones reached him: of Repp. Repp would kill the Pope, for not granting the Führer sanctuary in the Vatican. Absurd! Repp was after a special group that Himmler had singled out as having betrayed the SS. Repp would kill the English king in special retribution; or the Russian man of steel. Even more insane! Where could Repp get from here? Nowhere, except south, to the border. No, Vollmerhausen had no ideas. He’d given up wondering. He’d always known that curiosity is dangerous around the SS, and doubly dangerous around Repp. Repp was going to a mountain, that’s all he knew.
It occurred then to Vollmerhausen, with a sudden jolt of discomfort:
Berchtesgaden was on a mountain. And not far. Yet the Führer was supposedly in Berlin. The reports all said he was in Berlin.
The engineer suddenly felt chilly. He vowed not to think on the topic again.
* * *
Vollmerhausen was out of the compound—a beautiful spring day, unseasonably warm, the forest swarming green, buzzing with life, the sky clear as diamond and just as rare, spruce and linden in the air—when the weapon team arrived. He did not see them, but upon his return noticed immediately the battered civilian Opel, pre-war, parked in front of Repp’s. Later he saw the men himself, from far off, civilians, but of a type: the overcoats, the frumpy hats, the calm, unimpressed faces concealing, but just barely, the tendency toward violence. He’d seen Gestapo before, or perhaps they were Ausland SD or any of a dozen other kinds of secret policemen; whatever, they had an ugly sort of weariness that frightened him.
In the morning they were gone, and that meant the rifle too, Vollmerhausen felt. Twice before breakfast staff members had approached.
“Herr Ingenieur-Doktor? Does it mean we’ll be able to go?”
“I don’t know,” he’d answered. “I just don’t know.” Not needing to add, Only Repp knows.
And shortly then, a man came for him, from Repp.
“Ah, Hans,” said Repp warmly, when he arrived.
“Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Vollmerhausen replied.
“You saw of course our visitors last night?”
“I caught a glimpse across the yard at them.”
“Toughies, no? But sound men, just right for the job.”
“They’ve taken Vampir?”
“Yes. No reason not to tell you. It’s gone. All packed up. Carted away.”
“I see,” said Vollmerhausen.
“And they brought information, some last-second target confirmations, some technical data. And news.”
Vollmerhausen brightened. “News?”
“Yes. The war is nearly finished. But you knew that.”
“Yes.”
“Yes. And my part of the journey begins tonight.”
“So soon. A long journey?”
“Not far, but complicated. On foot, most of it. Rather drab actually. I won’t bore you with details. Not like climbing aboard a Hamburg tram.”
“No, of course not.”
“But I wanted to talk to you about your evacuation.”
“Evac—”
“Yes, yes. Here’s the good news.” He smiled. “I know how eager your people are to get back to the human race. This can’t have been pleasant for them.”
“It was their duty,” said Vollmerhausen.
“Perhaps. Anyway, you’ll be moving out tomorrow. After I’ve gone. Sorry it’s so rushed. But now it’s felt the longer this place stays, the bigger the chance of discovery. You may have seen my men planting charges.”
“Yes.”
“There’ll be nothing left of this place. Nothing for our friends. No clues, no traces. Your people will return as if from holiday. Captain Schaeffer’s men will return to the Hungarian front. And I will cease to exist: officially, at any rate. Repp is dead. I’ll be a new man. An old mission but a new man.”
“Sounds very romantic.”
“Silly business, changing identities, pretending to be what one’s not. But still necessary.”
“My people will be very excited!”
“Of course. One more night, and it’s all over. Your part, Totenkopfdivision’s part. Only my part remains. One last campaign.”
“Yes, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”
“The details: have them packed up tonight. Tomorrow at ten hundred hours a bus will arrive. It’s several hours to Dachau. From there your people will be given travel permits, and back pay, and be permitted to make their way to destinations of choice. Though I can’t imagine many of them will head east. By the way, the Allies aren’t reported within a hundred kilometers of this place. So the travel should be easy.”
“Good. Ah, thanks. My thanks, Herr Obersturmbannführer.” He reached over and on impulse seized Repp’s hand.
“Go on. Tell them,” Repp commanded.
“Yes, sir, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Hans shouted, and lurched out.
Tomorrow! So soon. Back into the world, the real world. Vollmerhausen felt a surge of joy as if he’d just glimpsed the sea after a trek across the Sahara.
It was in the general confusion of preparing for the evacuation that night that a thought came to him. He tried to quell it, found this not difficult at first, with the technicians rushing merrily about him, dismantling their elaborate comfort systems in the barrack, storing personal belongings in trunks, even singing—a bottle, no, several bottles appeared and while Vollmerhausen, teetotaler, couldn’t approve, neither could he prevent them—as if the war were officially and finally over and Germany had somehow won. But later, in the night, in the dark, it
He pulled himself out of bed and heard his people breathing heavily—drunkenly?—around him. He checked his watch. After four, damn! Had Repp left already? Perhaps. But perhaps there was still time.
It had occurred to Vollmerhausen that he might not have warned Repp about the barrel residue problem. So many details, he’d forgotten just this one! Or had he? But he could not picture a conversation in which he properly explained this eccentricity of the weapon: that after firing fifty or so of the specially built rounds, the residue in the barrel accumulated to such an extent that it greatly affected accuracy. Though Repp would know, probably: he made it his business to know such things. Still …
Vollmerhausen drew a bathrobe around himself and hurried out. It was a warm night, he noticed, as he hurried across the compound to the SS barrack and Repp’s quarters. But what’s this? Stirrings filled the dark—a squad of SS troopers moving about, night maneuvers, a drill or something.
“Sergeant?”
The man’s pipe flared briefly in the dark. “Yes, sir,” he responded.
“Is Obersturmbannführer around? Has he left yet?”
“Ah—no, sir. I believe he’s still in his quarters.”
“Excellent. Thank you.” Ebullient, Vollmerhausen rushed on to the barrack. It was empty, though a light burned behind the door of Repp’s room. He walked among the dark, neat bunks and rapped at the wood.
No answer.
Was Repp off after all?
“Herr Obersturmbannführer?”
Vollmerhausen felt edgy, restless with indecision. Forget the whole silly thing? Go on in, be a bulldog, wait, make sure? Ach!
Hans the Kike pushed through the door. Room was empty. But then he noticed an old greatcoat with private’s chevron across a chair. Part of Repp’s “new identity”? He entered. On the desk lay a heap of field gear: the rumpled blanket, the six Kar ’98 packs on the harness, the fluted gas-mask cylinder, a helmet, in the corner a rifle. Repp clearly hadn’t left yet. Vollmerhausen began to wait.