The Sojourn - Andrew Krivak [41]
Zlee then explained that we would do nothing until a warm front came through, in anticipation of which we would set out in the direction of the peak to the north of us, settle into our hide, and wait for the shooter to show himself.
“How do you propose to see him before he sees you, or, more likely, kills another one of my sentries?” Prosch asked. The corner of his mouth lifted to what looked like a faint smile every time he posed a question, and I wondered if he was using us and every other sharpshooter who had come through here for a bizarre game of cat and mouse that broke up the boredom of his war.
Zlee said that on the morning when the temperature rose above freezing, the sentry would be a mannequin, “the best likeness your man in supply can create.” We would attempt to get a visual on him, and at the very least would see his muzzle flash when he fired. With that, perhaps, we might be the ones to fire next.
Prosch stood, head down, for what seemed like too long, and then he looked up at us. “A ruse. Yes. I like it. Don’t worry, Corporal Pes, our sentry will be so lifelike, you’ll expect him to salute. All that will remain is for you and your twin to shoot straight, and well.”
It was almost a month before the mercury rose above zero in those mountains, an evening in late February, when full cloud cover came in after a day of strong sun and trapped the heat. Already, each week seemed to bring more daylight, and you could feel the moisture rising and evaporating in the air, so we reported to Prosch and had the night sentries replace the man who was to take over at 0400 with our dummy.
They gave him a cigarette at 0600 and had the sentry prop him up so that his face showed through a gun mount on the parapet. That same sentry had orders to lie on the floor next to the mock guard until 0800, or until someone fired in his direction, after which he was to yell as loud as he could, while still undercover, “Sharfschütze!” The artillery commander gave the forward gunners orders to wait for three minutes after the shot and then to fire in the direction of Campomolon, regardless of whether they could tell exactly from where the shot had come.
From sunset until first light, Zlee and I watched from a tight grouping of rocks just above the tree line a mountain away, expecting the shooter to be hiding in a slow-rising forest of firs that began at an elevation slightly higher than Cherle, about six hundred yards east-southeast of the fort. If we were right, we’d have a long but clear shot across the valley, a distance of almost eleven hundred yards, we reckoned, the longest we’d ever attempted, longer than any Austrian sharpshooter had ever recorded, but the closest we could get to this enemy who knew those mountains better than we did without letting him know that we were there, too.
There was a long and deceptive silence then on that battlefield of peaks and crags and valleys, as the sky lightened and the snowcaps reflected changing hues of rose, until, within minutes, as though the curtain had lifted on a play we’d written below, we heard the crack of a rifle and a distant more urgent cry of “Scharfschütze!” and then another crack, soon after which (too soon by my count) artillery let loose a hurried salvo into Italian territory, and everything was quiet again.
Zlee never took the shot. With the rising mist came a breeze, strong enough to make his long-distance attempt no more accurate than if he had been looking down the barrel of a musket. As for me, spotting into that dawn from a distance too great, I could see nothing of what was unfolding down below, and so we were caught not knowing what to do. If we abandoned our hide and reported back to Prosch, we’d be marked ourselves, and not likely to get another chance to outshoot our shooter. If we stayed put, there was no guarantee he would return to the same position for more hunting the next day, or any day after, and Prosch would certainly believe that we had deserted. He’d only be happy only with the head of some foe on a silver platter,