The Master Sniper Read Online Free
Author: Stephen Hunter
carbine.
“Something right up your alley,” the major sang out gleefully, and without fear of retribution. He enjoyedconsiderable advantage over the bloke: he was smaller and a few years older to begin with, cut on roughly half the scale. He was quicker, wittier, more ironic, better connected. His employers, the Special Operation Executive of MI-6, were a better bunch than Leets’s; and finally, he’d once upon a time saved the American’s life. That was back in the shooting war, in June of ’44.
Leets, a beat behind already, queried in his reedy Midwestern voice, “Small arms, you mean?”
“That
is
what you do in the war, is it not?” asked Tony.
Leets ignored the sarcasm and received from Tony’s briefcase a tatty-looking scrap of yellow paper, almost the texture of parchment, as though it had passed through many hands.
“Been around, huh?” Leets said.
“Yes, lots of chaps have seen it. It’s not terribly interesting. Still, since it is guns and bullets, I thought you might care to have a look.”
“Thanks. Looks like a—”
“It’s a telex.”
“Yeah, some kind of shipping order or something.” He scanned the thing. “Haenel, eh? Funny. STG forty-fours.”
“Funny, yes. But significant? Or not? You’ll give us your evaluation, of course.”
“I may have some things to say about it.”
“Good.”
“How fast?”
“No rush, chum. By eight tonight.”
Swell, Leets thought. But he had nothing to do anyway.
“Okay, let me dig out the specs on the thing and—” But he was talking to air. Outhwaithe had vanished.
Leets slowly drew out a Lucky, lit it off his Zippo and went to work.
Leets was a biggish man, not slobby fat, but ample, with a pleasantly open American face. He was far into his twenties, which was old for the rank of captain he wore in two bars on his collar, especially in a war in which twenty-two-year-old brigadier generals led thousands of airplanes deep into enemy territory.
He looked like a studious athlete or an athletic scholar and now that he limped, compliments of the Third Reich, and occasionally went white as the pain flashed unexpectedly across him, he’d acquired a grave, almost desperate air. His many nervous habits—unpleasant ones, licking his lips, muttering, gesturing overtheatrically, blinking constantly—half suggested dissipation or indolence, though by nature he was an austere man, a Midwesterner, not given to moodiness or mopery. Yet lately, as the war roared by him, someone else’s invention, he’d been both moody and mopey.
Now, alone in the office—another source of bitterness, for he’d been assigned a sergeant, but the kid, an energetic young beast, had a tendency to disappear on him at key moments such as this one—he brought the telex close to his eyes in an unselfconscious parody of bookish intellectual and, squinting melodramatically, attempted to master its secrets.
It was a pale carbon of a shipping order out of the Reich Rail Office, a part of the Wehrmacht Transport Command, authorizing the G. K. Haenel Fabrik, or factory,near Suhl, in northern Germany, to ship a batch of twelve
Sturmgewehr
-44’s, formerly called
Maschinenpistole
-44’s, cross-country to something called, if Leets understood the nomenclature of the form,
Anlage Elf
, or Installation 11. The 44 was a hot assault rifle, tested in Russia, that had lately been turning up on the Western front in the hands of Waffen SS troops, paratroopers, armored-vehicle commanders—glory boys, hard cores, professionals. Leets had a memory of the thing too—he’d lain in high grass on a ridge above a burning tank convoy while Waffen SS kids from an armored division called “Das Reich” had poured heavy STG-44 fire into the area. He could still hear the cracks as the slugs broke the sound barrier just above his head. It fired a smaller bullet than the standard rifle—it hadn’t the range—but at higher velocity; and it was lighter and tougher and could pump out rounds
“Something right up your alley,” the major sang out gleefully, and without fear of retribution. He enjoyedconsiderable advantage over the bloke: he was smaller and a few years older to begin with, cut on roughly half the scale. He was quicker, wittier, more ironic, better connected. His employers, the Special Operation Executive of MI-6, were a better bunch than Leets’s; and finally, he’d once upon a time saved the American’s life. That was back in the shooting war, in June of ’44.
Leets, a beat behind already, queried in his reedy Midwestern voice, “Small arms, you mean?”
“That
is
what you do in the war, is it not?” asked Tony.
Leets ignored the sarcasm and received from Tony’s briefcase a tatty-looking scrap of yellow paper, almost the texture of parchment, as though it had passed through many hands.
“Been around, huh?” Leets said.
“Yes, lots of chaps have seen it. It’s not terribly interesting. Still, since it is guns and bullets, I thought you might care to have a look.”
“Thanks. Looks like a—”
“It’s a telex.”
“Yeah, some kind of shipping order or something.” He scanned the thing. “Haenel, eh? Funny. STG forty-fours.”
“Funny, yes. But significant? Or not? You’ll give us your evaluation, of course.”
“I may have some things to say about it.”
“Good.”
“How fast?”
“No rush, chum. By eight tonight.”
Swell, Leets thought. But he had nothing to do anyway.
“Okay, let me dig out the specs on the thing and—” But he was talking to air. Outhwaithe had vanished.
Leets slowly drew out a Lucky, lit it off his Zippo and went to work.
Leets was a biggish man, not slobby fat, but ample, with a pleasantly open American face. He was far into his twenties, which was old for the rank of captain he wore in two bars on his collar, especially in a war in which twenty-two-year-old brigadier generals led thousands of airplanes deep into enemy territory.
He looked like a studious athlete or an athletic scholar and now that he limped, compliments of the Third Reich, and occasionally went white as the pain flashed unexpectedly across him, he’d acquired a grave, almost desperate air. His many nervous habits—unpleasant ones, licking his lips, muttering, gesturing overtheatrically, blinking constantly—half suggested dissipation or indolence, though by nature he was an austere man, a Midwesterner, not given to moodiness or mopery. Yet lately, as the war roared by him, someone else’s invention, he’d been both moody and mopey.
Now, alone in the office—another source of bitterness, for he’d been assigned a sergeant, but the kid, an energetic young beast, had a tendency to disappear on him at key moments such as this one—he brought the telex close to his eyes in an unselfconscious parody of bookish intellectual and, squinting melodramatically, attempted to master its secrets.
It was a pale carbon of a shipping order out of the Reich Rail Office, a part of the Wehrmacht Transport Command, authorizing the G. K. Haenel Fabrik, or factory,near Suhl, in northern Germany, to ship a batch of twelve
Sturmgewehr
-44’s, formerly called
Maschinenpistole
-44’s, cross-country to something called, if Leets understood the nomenclature of the form,
Anlage Elf
, or Installation 11. The 44 was a hot assault rifle, tested in Russia, that had lately been turning up on the Western front in the hands of Waffen SS troops, paratroopers, armored-vehicle commanders—glory boys, hard cores, professionals. Leets had a memory of the thing too—he’d lain in high grass on a ridge above a burning tank convoy while Waffen SS kids from an armored division called “Das Reich” had poured heavy STG-44 fire into the area. He could still hear the cracks as the slugs broke the sound barrier just above his head. It fired a smaller bullet than the standard rifle—it hadn’t the range—but at higher velocity; and it was lighter and tougher and could pump out rounds
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