Fergus MacDonald's hands.
Fergus jerked it down out of sight, and fell to his knees to examine the neat round hole punched through the papiermAche head.
oh shit! he whispered bitterly. Oh, shit all over itVWhat is it, MacDonald? The bloody Hun, oh, the sodding bastard MacDonald! He's picked the same stand as my boy. Sean did not understand for a moment. He's in among the oak trunks, he's sitting right on top of Mark. They picked the same stand. The vicious stinging discharge of the Mauser was so close, so high and sharp, that for a few seconds afterwards, Mark's ear-drums buzzed with the mosquito hum of auditory memory.
For seconds he was stunned, frozen with the shock of it.
The German sniper was somewhere within twenty feet of where he lay. By some freak of coincidence, he had chosen the same point on the slope as Mark. No, it was no freak of coincidence. With the hunter's eye for ground, both men had selected the ideal position for their common purpose to deliver swift death from hiding. The pendulum of Mark's fortune had swung to the other end of its arc.
Mark had not moved in the seconds since the Mauser shot, but every sense was heightened by the adrenalin that sang through his veins and his heart beat with a force that seemed to reverberate against the cage of his ribs.
The German was on his left, higher up the slope, slightly behind his shoulder. The left was his unprotected side, a -ay from the tangled oak roots.
He trained his eyes around, without moving his head, and in the periphery of his vision saw another of the fallen oak trunks close by. He did not move for another full minute, watching for the flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. There was nothing, and the silence with awesome and oppressive, until a Spandau fired a shot burst, a mile or more away down the line.
Mark began to turn his head towards the left, as slowly as a chameleon stalking a fly. Gradually the distortion of periphery vision cleared and he could sweep the whole of the slope above him.
The nearest oak trunk had been savaged with shrapnel, all the bark was torn away and raw chunks of timber ripped from it. It had fallen across a hollow in the earth, forming a bridge; and although the snow had piled up against it, there was a narrow gap between earth and oak. The gap was perhaps three inches wide at the centre, and Mark could see reflected light from the snow beyond.
At that moment, a minute blur of movement snapped his eyes in his skull. It was a fleeting movement of a mere sixteenth of an inch, but it riveted Mark's attention. He stared for fully five seconds, before he realized what he was seeing.
Beyond the screening end of the oak trunk, the very tip of a Mauser barrel protruded. It had been bound with burlap to break the stark outline and to prevent reflection of light off metal, but the cruel little mouth of the muzzle was uncovered.
The German was lying behind the oak log, like Mark, his right flank protected, facing half-way from Mark, and less than twenty feet separated them.
Mark watched the tip of the Mauser barrel for ten minutes more, and it did not move again. The German had stillness and patience. Once he had reloaded, he had frozen again into that rigour of watchfulness. He's so good that there is no way I can clear the shot, Mark thought. If I move an inch, he'll hear me, and he'll be fast. Very fast. To get a clear shot, Mark would have to move back twenty feet or more, and then he would be looking directly into the muzzle of the Mauser; a head-on shot, with the German alerted by his movements. Mark knew he could not afford to give away that much advantage, not against an adversary of this calibre.
The long still minutes crawled by without any break in tension. Mark had the illusion that every nerve and sinew of his body was quivering visibly, but in reality the only movement was in the glove of his right hand. The fingers moved steadily in a kneading motion, keeping supple and warm, and the eyes moved in Mark's skull, swivelling slowly back and forth across the battered trunk of the oak, blinking regularly to clear the tears that tension and the icy air induced. What the hell is happening up there? Fergus MacDonald fretted nervously, peering into the lens of the periscope that allowed the observer to keep well down below the sand-bagged parapet. The boy is pinned down. General Sean Courtney did not remove his own eyes from the other periscope, but swung it slightly, sweeping back and forth across the slope.
Try the Hun with Cuthbert again. I don't think he'll fall for it again, Fergus began to protest immediately, looking up with those close-set eyes, rimmed with pink now by the cold and the strain of waiting. That's an order, Sergeant. Sean Courtney's broad forehead wrinkled and the dark brows drew sharply together, his voice growled like an old lion and the dark-blue eyes snapped. The power and presence of the man in this mood awed even Fergus MacDonald. Very well, sir, he muttered sulkily, and went to where the dummy was propped against the firing step.
The lash of the Mauser cracked again, and at the shock Mark Anders eyelids blinked twice very quickly and then flared wide open. The golden brown eyes stared fixedly up the slope intent as those of the hunting peregrine.
The instant after the shot, he heard the rattle of the Mauser bolt being drawn back and then thrust forward to reload, and again the tip of the hessian-wrapped muzzle stirred slightly, but then Mark's eyes flicked sideways.
There had been another movement, so fine that it might have gone unnoticed by eyes less keen. The movement had been a mere breath, and it had been in the narrow three-inch gap between the oak trunk and the snow-coated earth. just that one brief stir and then stillness once more.
Mark stared into the gap for long seconds, and saw nothing. Merely shadow and undefined shape, trickily reflected light from the snow beyond. Then suddenly, he was seeing something else.
It was the texture of cloth, a thin sliver of it in the narrow gap, then his eyes picked up the stitched seam in the grey cloth, bulging slightly over the living flesh beneath.
There was some small portion of the German's body showing through the gap. He was lying close up on the far side of the log, and his head was pointed in the direction from which the muzzle of the Mauser projected.
Carefully Mark proportioned the man's body in his imagination. Using the rifle muzzle as his only reference point, he placed the man's head and shoulders, his trunk and his hips Yes, his hips, Mark thought. That is his hip or upper thigh, and then there was a change in the light. The sun found a weak spot in the cloud cover overhead and the light brightened briefly.
In the better light, Mark made out a small portion of a German service belt, with the empty loop which should have held a bayonet. It confirmed his guess. Now he knew that the slight bulge in the field grey material was caused by the head of the femur where it fitted into the cup of the pelvic girdle. Through both hips, Mark thought
