Stephen Hunter by The Master Sniper

Author:The Master Sniper [Sniper, The Master]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-09-18T12:00:56+00:00

H.

e expected trouble at the Rheinbrucke and hid in a stand of trees a few

hundred yards down the road. The guards on the bridge appeared to be

regular Army troops, not Waffen SS men, loafing in the sun. Repp

studied them for some time, wishing he had binoculars to bring them up,

see their procedures and moods. He tried to keep himself calm and his

mind clear: only the bridge, its sentry post, and three lazy soldiers

stood between him and safety. Once across, he had only a few blocks or

so through the city to negotiate.

He'd feared a massive jam-up here, a refugee column, farmers' carts

heaped with furniture, frightened children;

officers' staff cars honking, the wounded hanging desperately on the

backs of tanks; grim SS men patrolling for deserters. Instead, only

this pleasant still scene, almost traffickless--occasionally a truck

crossed, and once a sedan, but mostly farmers' wagons heaped with hay,

not furniture, and pedestrians. From his vantage point, Repp could

also see the Bodensee over the rail of the bridge, stretching away,

glinting in the May sun, its horizon lost in a haze: the Lake of

Konstanz, a true inland sea. There seemed no war here at all. Was he

too late? Since Tuttlingen, he'd traveled mostly by night,

staying away from main roads, moving south, always south, across fields

and through scraggly forests: out of touch, on his own, fugitive from

his friends now as well as his enemies.

The sergeant in the sentry booth watched him come, but said nothing.

Repp recognized the type, tired veteran, laconic of speech, economical

of gesture, face seamed with hard knowledge. No need to yell when Repp

was already approaching.

"Say, friend," the sergeant finally said, unlimbering himself from the

stool on which he sat. He picked up his MP by the sling, toting it

with the easy motions of over-familiarity.

"And where might you be headed? Switzerland, I suppose. Don't you

know that's for big shots, not little fishies like you or me?"

Repp smiled weakly.

"No, sir," he said.

"Then what's your sorry story? Running to, or running ^row?"

Repp handed him his papers.

"I was separated from my unit," he explained as the sergeant scanned

them.

"A big American attack. Worse than Russia."

"And I suppose you think your unit's on the other side of the bridge?"

the sergeant asked.

Repp had no answer. But then he said, "No, sir. But my mother is."

"You've decided to go on home then, have you?"

"I'll find an officer to report to after I've seen my mother," Repp

said.

The sergeant chuckled.

"I doubt there's a sober one left. And if you find one, I doubt he'll

give a damn about you. Go on, damn you. 1b mother. Tell her you're

home from the wars."

Repp drew in a deep gulp of the cool air and tried to keep himself calm

as he walked across the great Romanesque bridge between the Lake of

Konstanz's two basins, the vast Bodensee to the east, and the Untersee,

the more picturesque with its steep wooded shores, to the west. At the

end of the structure, he passed under a medieval tower and stepped into

the old city. It was a holiday town, cobbled and quaint, exactly the

kind of place Repp didn't care for.

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