Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [118]
The low drone soared overhead again, a murmur so swift that it was gone almost before it registered on Cray. Then another dull report that filtered down the field.
The flyaway sounds told him he had found the right place on the army base. Cray waited, invisible in the bush.
7
CORPORAL EWALD HEGEL lay on his belly on the straw mat, his chin against the rifle's checkered stock, his eye at the telescope's ocular lens.
"Don't let your face drift close to the scope, Corporal." The instructor stood above the shooter, his hands around a pair of binoculars. "The scope will kick back and cut your cheek and forehead to the bone."
"Yes, Sergeant."
"And can you feel the pulse in your finger? Look for the pulse."
"I think so."
"Wait until you do. Pull the trigger between pulses. Otherwise the pumping of your heart will draw you off the target."
The corporal squinted into the scope. "Yes, Sergeant."
The instructor moved to a second shooter, who was also prone on a mat, a rifle in front of him. The sergeant bent low to correct the position of the second shooter's finger on the trigger. "The side of your finger shouldn't touch the trigger at all. It'll nudge the rifle sideways as you pull it back."
The second shooter replied tunelessly, "Yes, Sergeant."
Behind the prone riflemen and the instructor were eight other Wehrmacht soldiers, each with a rifle on a sling over his back. They waited their turns at the firing line. A second sergeant stood on an overturned crate, binoculars in one hand and a megaphone in the other. He was the rangemaster. He once had a proper tower for his work, but dive- bombers had destroyed it, and destroyed it again after it had been rebuilt, and all that remained of the tower was a pile of fractured wood fragments along the firing line. Near the rangemaster was a wooden box containing flags of several colors.
The targets were above the butt six hundred meters down range. A cratered wasteland separated the shooters from the bull's-eyes. Corporal Hegel's weapon was a Mauser, but resembled the standard-issue Wehrmacht rifle in name only. The barrel was made of Norwegian steel — the entire steel plant had been barged across the North Sea to Germany — and was fully a centimeter wider than a regulation barrel. The wooden stock and grip—which snipers call the furniture—were also heavier than those on the standard Mauser. The weight added stability.
"Hegel, you've got a crosswind."
"The rifle is clicked left two points, Sergeant." Hegel waited, trying to sense the pulse in his arms. He thought he had it. He counted along with his heart, then brought back his finger.
The Mauser barked and kicked up. Snipers know that even smokeless powder smokes. A translucent globe of smoke trailed away from the barrel.
"I could see your finger fidget from here," the instructor said as he brought up the field glasses.
Downrange, a black circle on a pole rose from the butt and covered the new hole in the target.
The sergeant peered through the binoculars. "A wart. Second ring, six o'clock." A wart was a shot that was on the white but touching the black ring. "You've got a way to go, Hegel."
"Yes, sir."
"Let's rotate the pit, Sergeant." The rangemaster brought up the megaphone and called out, "Cease fire on the line."
He brought out a red flag and waved it above his head. When, six hundred yards away a red flag answered by crossing back and forth in front of the target, the rangemaster announced, "The range is closed."
"Hegel, you and Pohl are due in the target butt."
As the instructor turned to his other sniper students, Corporals Hegel and Pohl rose from their firing positions, slung their Mausers