The Master Sniper (35 page)

“Well,” said Felix wearily, “it’s your funeral, not ours.”

“No,” said Repp. “It won’t be my funeral.”

He went over; he could see smudge marks from Felix’s fingers on the sheen of the cool, oily metal of the rifle components; these somehow bothered him.

“Of course it has not been opened until just now?”

He knew Felix was giving the driver a look of disbelief, but he heard the voice ring out, though without conviction, “Just as we were instructed.”

Repp assembled the rifle quickly, threading the gas piston, operating handle and spring guide into the receiver, inserting the bolt camming and locking units, forcing the pin into the hinge at the trigger unit pivot, and locking the whole together. It took seconds. Then, without ceremony, he loaded each of the six magazines, thirty rounds apiece, with the special subsonic ammunition with the spherical bullet heads. He set the rifle and clips aside, and checked off the connections and wiring in the electro-optical pack. Finally, after examining it closely for defects and finding none, he locked the night scope itself with its infrared lamp to the zf.4 mount on the receiver of the STG-44, using the special wrench. Turning the bulky weapon sideways, he edged a magazine into the housing, feeling it fit into the tolerances; then with a sharp slap from the heel of his palm he
drove the magazine home, hearing it snap in as the spring catch hooked.

“You look like a doctor getting ready to operate,” said Felix.

“It’s just a tool, that’s all, a modified rifle,” Repp responded, uneasy at the man’s apparent awe of the equipment. “Now help me with this damned thing.”

He put on the battle harness, with canteen and pouches for the magazines, and over that fitted the instrument rack. Felix and the youngster helped lift the thing into position, and he stepped into it like a coat, pulling the straps tight. He stepped away from them, taking the full weight.

“Christ, that’s a heavy bastard. Will you make it?” asked Felix.

“I’ll make it all right,” said Repp grimly, as he looped the sling on the rifle over his shoulder. One last glance at his watch; it was 2:45
P.M.

“Sir?” The driver. He held something bright out. “For you. For afterward.”

Repp took it: Swiss chocolate, wrapped in green foil.

“Thanks. Breakfast. A good idea.” He dropped it in the pocket of the Tiger coat, then stepped away from the table, taking the full heft of the rifle for the first time. He felt the blood drain from his face with the effort. A hand touched his shoulder.

“Are you all right?” Felix asked.

“And if I’m not, you’ll go?” Repp said. “No, I’m fine, just have to get used to the weight. I’ve been living too soft lately.”

“Too many
Fräuleins,”
said the irritating Felix.

Repp left the barn, into the sunlight, blinking. Already
he could sense his body growing used to the weight.

Quickly the trees swallowed Repp. He moved among them in plunging, deliberate strides, a manifesto of purposefulness. But already the straps cut into him. Sweat broke out on his skin. His muscles became warm and fluid in the effort and he knew—from Russia—that if one pushed hard enough, if one had enough resolve, enough need, enough concentration, one reached a stage beyond pain, where great feats of endurance and stamina were possible. Repp knew he needed greatness today; he needed everything he had, and then more, and he was prepared to offer it. He was quite cheerful at this stage, full of confidence, hungry for the test, alert and content.

He forced his way through the underbrush, not looking back at all. He knew that higher, where the air was thinner, this rough new forest of elm and oak and a thousand tangles would give way to an ancient one of virgin pine, somewhat like the interior of the Schwarzwald. The travel would be much easier then, through solemn ranks of trees on pine-needle-packed dust which would billow up in great clouds, catching in the slanting sunlight as he rushed along. But that was hours away still; now, only this thick green stuff, sticky with sap and gum, every step of the way urging him to slow. He felt himself moving through screens and curtains, each one yielding finally to another; the visibility was limited and the air moist and close. The leaves were all wet; steam seemed to rise here and there. He felt he was in jungle. But he knew he’d be all right if he just stuck to his
compass bearing, ignoring the paths he now and then passed, leaping over them, feeling clean each time he avoided their temptation. He aimed to reach the spine of the mountain and there stick to it for a long session of even-keel walking, before dipping down on the other side. He’d begin the descent long before reaching the severe peak that loomed above the timberline 5,000 meters or more.

He forged ahead, fighting the increase in the incline, sidestepping where possible, climbing over where not, the clumps of rocks that began to sprout in his way. As he rose along the mountain the forest began a gradual change; he almost didn’t notice it and could pick no one moment when it had one character and another when it had a different one; or perhaps a cloud, far above, had sealed off the sun. At any rate, it ceased soon to be a jungle; the trees, though more majestic, were farther apart; denseness gave way to longer, gloomier perspectives; that sense of tropical green light, opaque chlorophyll in the sun, vanished in a darker pall. He felt as if he were in a cellar, clammy cool, tubed and catacombed, a jumble of ambiguous shadows, pools of abstract blackness, sheer thrusts of light at unexpected points where a gap in the canopy admitted the sun. The trees grew huge and gnarled. The undergrowth remained but now it fought its way through a carpet of decomposition, matted leaves, vegetable matter returning to the gunk of creation. There was a splendor in this dark vision, but Repp was in no frame of mind to enjoy it. He concentrated on movement, on pace, though once in a while reached with relief a flatter place where the mountain itself seemed to pause in its race upward.

In one such he himself seized a moment for rest. He was alone in the trees. He could hear his own breathing, ragged and forced, in the gloom. He was uncomfortably warm. He still hadn’t reached pines. Nothing seemed familiar; it was like no forest he knew and he knew plenty of forests. He actually wished he’d hear a bird hoot or an animal cry: sign of some animate thing. His eyes scanned ahead: only massed-together trunks, white or gray scars of rocks standing out among them, some mossy and dull, and utter silence. The rifle sling was taut against his shoulder and the straps from the pack knifed deeply into him. He ignored a dozen or so other small agonies—scratches, a twisted ankle, sore joints, the beginnings of a cramp—but the straps really bothered him. Yet he knew to fuss with the damned thing now would be a mistake. He bent and tried to get the thing higher on him, so as to carry it more with body than with shoulders. Painful as it was, he took some sustenance in remembering how close they’d been to going operational at over fifty kilos. Under those conditions he’d be exhausted now. That strange little geek Hans the Kike really got the job done: the man deserved a medal. Right now Hans the Kike was a bigger hero to Repp than any of them. Thank God the Germans could produce men like him.

Wearily, he began his march again. The rocks had become quite troublesome by now, and he had to pick his way through defiles and up sudden smooth slopes. At one point he came even with a break in the trees and could see out: in the far distance a kind of blue haze. Actually, since he was facing north, and visibility was good, it might actually be Germany he could see. But
what difference did it make? He pushed himself on. Ahead, nothing but the steady rise of the mountain, blanketed in trees and dead leaves and scrawny bracken and thistles. No pines yet, not easy travel. He feared he was losing time. He didn’t even want to stop for water, though his throat was parched. His boots occasionally slipped in the treacherous footing and once he went down, badly banging a knee on a stone. It throbbed steadily. He felt also as though he had a fever. He felt unnaturally hot. He’d imagined it would be much cooler up here. Why was it so warm?

Where was he going? Did he even know? Yes, he knew.
Wir fahren nach Polen um Juden zu verschlen
. He was going to Poland to beat up the Jews. He’d seen it chalked on the sides of the troop trains in 1939, next to grotesque profiles of heavy kike faces, beaked nose, primitive jaws, almost fishlike: a horrible image. He was going to Switzerland to beat up the Jews: it was the same thing, the same process, the same war. He was going to beat up Jews.

The pain in his shoulders increased. He ought to slow or even rest, but he knew he couldn’t. He was obsessed with failing light. If he didn’t get there before dark he was lost.

He was going to beat up some Jews.

Jews.

You killed them. Messy, disturbing work. No one liked it, and in Berlin they were wise enough to see that those few who did should not have been on the firing line. It was a responsibility, a trust, a commitment to the future.

Repp had asked for the special duty.

He’d been wounded after Demyansk and though the wound wasn’t serious—a crease across the thigh, healing quickly—his blood count was so low, they had wanted to put him on less rigorous duty. But Repp wanted to be a part of the other business, the other war. It was simple duty: no one forced him, and he did not enjoy it. It was simply part of the job, a bad part, but one had to get through the bad parts too.

The day that swam to his mind now was in October, 1942, at Dubno Airport in Volhynian Province in the Generalgouvernement. Why this day? It was not so terribly different from most days. Perhaps it was the cigarette and the girl, or more precisely the odd congruence of the cigarette and the girl.

It was a Siberia. It tasted wonderful, filling his head with a most pleasant buzz. He was only then learning of the joys of these fierce Russian things that tasted like burning villages and left him just a bit dizzy. He sat at the edge of a pit on a cool sunny day. Everybody was being very kind, because the business could get messy and difficult and hard on everyone. But today things were going quite nicely. A lot of people were around, civilians, relaxing soldiers, some with cameras, smiling, security policemen.

The gun across his legs was a Steyr-Solothurn, designated an MP-34. It was a wonderful old weapon, beautifully crafted though quite heavy. It had a fine wood stock and a perforated barrel and a horizontal magazine feed system. Repp loved it: the Mercedes-Benz of machine pistols, too elegant and precise for wartime production. The barrel had finally cooled. He nodded to a black-uniformed security policeman. The man disappeared
behind a bulwark of earth that had been gouged out to form the pit, and Repp for just a second was alone with his morning’s work: there must have been five hundred of them by that time, filling half the excavation, most of them lifeless, though a cry would now and then rise. They did not look so bad; he’d seen many worse bodies on the Eastern front, their guts blown out, shit and legs and shattered skulls all over the place; these people were neatly slumbering, though there was a great deal of blood.

The policemen got another group into the pit. An old man with a child, a mother and father and several young children. The mother was crooning to them, but the father did not seem to be much help. He looked terribly scared and could hardly walk. The children were confused. They were talking that infernal language of theirs, almost a German dialect, yet hideously deformed, like so many things German they touched. Yet Repp could not hate them, naked women and men and children, walking daintily into the mud, as though they wanted to keep their feet clean. There were several other women, the last of them a girl in her twenties, young and dark and quite pretty.

As Repp wearily stood, hoisting the gun up with him, he heard the young girl say, to no one in particular, “Twenty-three years old.”

What a remarkable thing to say! He thought about it later. Curious: what had she meant? I’m too young to die? Well, everybody’s too young to die, miss.

Repp engaged the bolt, braced the weapon tightly against his ribs, and fired. The bullets thudded neatly across the bare backs and they fell quivering. They lay,
one or two convulsing. It was odd: you never saw the bullets hit or the blood spurt and yet before they were still they seemed doused with it, red, thin, pouring from every orifice. A child moved again, moaned. Repp fingered the selection switch back to single shot and fired, once, into the skull, which broke apart.

Then he changed magazines.

Everybody was happy when Repp did the shooting. He was quick and efficient. He didn’t make mistakes or become morose after a while as so many of the others did. He even came to believe that it was best for the Jews too. “Better me,” he said later that day, drinking coffee, “than some butcher.”

Repp saw light ahead. At that same moment a new sensation became apparent to him. He was moving without trouble, through clean, flat forest floor. He’d reached the high virgin forest. He rushed on to the light. He stood at the crest, amid pine and fir, in cool air. He looked about, his eyes tracing the ridge he was on to a peak, stony and remote. Across the way, he could see other mountains, their shapes softened in trees, and beyond that the true Alps, snowy and heroic.

But Repp’s vision was drawn downward. His eyes followed the carpet of forest sliding away for thousands of feet down the slope of the mountain, until finally it gave way to cultivated land, checkerboarded, but much of it green, the Sitter Valley in the Canton of Appenzell. He could not see the town—it was in another leg of the valley—but there was the convent, a medieval church, high-roofed with two domed steeples and a jumble of
other subsidiary buildings, walled off from the world. He could see the courtyard from here too.

He knelt swiftly and peeled the rifle from his shoulder. He braced it on the bipod and stood for just a moment, freed at last from a part of the burden, though of course the bulky pack on his shoulders still hurt. But then he was back down, sliding the hatch off the opaque face of the Vampir apparatus. He saw the light strike it. Did it glitter, seem to come alive; or was that his imagination?