They went up and down the line. Willi saw it in ways he never had before. He knew there were places where you had to keep your head down if you wanted to keep it on your shoulders. But he hadn't worried about the spots from which you could peer across to the enemy's position and see what the French and the Czechs and the rest of that rabble were up to.

"You don't want to do your observing from the same spot twice in a row," Puttkamer said, like a teacher explaining how to multiply fractions. "Somebody'll be watching for you to be stupid. No patterns. Never any patterns. Flip a coin and follow it if you have to, to keep from giving them a handle on you. If you don't know ahead of time what you'll do next, the other boys can't, either."

"That makes sense," Willi said. "What will you want me to do? Draw the Czech's fire, right? Sounds like a good way for my folks to get a wire they don't want."

"The idea is to get him to shoot at you, not to get him to shoot you. There's a difference, you know," the sniper answered. "You'll do the kind of things the Czech did with me-show your helmet without leaving your head in it. Keep an eye peeled for the sun shining off a telescope or binocular lenses. For God's sake, let me know if you see anything funny. Maybe we'll get you a sniper's rifle, too, instead of the worthless piece of shit you're lugging around now. How's that sound?"

"All right, I guess." Willi's grin was twisted. "Besides, I'm yours for now. Awful Arno's washed his hands of me."

"That's good luck, not bad," Puttkamer said. Willi had to hope he was right. SERGEANT HALEVY SET A HAND on Vaclav Jezek's shoulder. "You're not the hunted," the Jew said. "You're the hunter. That's how you've got to look at it."

"I'm the hunter. Uh-huh. Sure." If Vaclav sounded distinctly unenthusiastic, the way he sounded reflected the way he felt. And he had his reasons. He picked up the helmet the German sniper had ventilated. "If I'm the hunter, how come he did this to me and I haven't done a goddamn thing to him?"

"You weren't wearing it." Halevy looked on the bright side of things. He could afford to-the Nazi wasn't trying to spill his brains out on the bottom of a trench.

"No shit!" Vaclav said. After a little while wearing a French model brain bucket, he'd got his hands on another Czech pot. This one didn't fit as well as the older helmet had, but it didn't have those two neat 7.92mm holes in it, either. He did like it better than the Adrian, which protected less of his head. Of course, nothing protected you from a direct hit by a rifle round. You'd need a helmet as thick as the side of a tank to do that. And you'd need a rhino's neck muscles to wear it. He did think the Czech model was better than the Adrian for keeping shell fragments from needling through his skull.

Halevy made a small production out of lighting a cigarette. "Aren't you happy, though?" he said after a couple of puffs. "Now the French officers are glad you carry that antitank rifle. They aren't trying to get you to turn it in any more."

"Terrific!" Jezek said. "That's on account of the Fritz is punching their tickets for them, and they want me to make him quit."

"Even French officers think they're entitled to live." Benjamin Halevy spread his hands, as if to say What can you do? "Poor bastards don't know any better."

Vaclav opened his mouth, then closed it again without saying anything. He had to work that through before he answered. After a moment, he tried again: "Only a Jew would come out with something that knotted-up."

"Why, thank you!" Halevy said, without any irony Vaclav could hear. "Maybe I should wave my circumcised cock at the German. Then he'd want to kill me as much as he wants to get you."

"I wish I could work out how he thinks," Jezek said fretfully. "The other Nazi was easier."

"He figured he'd get you because he was a German and you weren't. This guy is better than that, anyway," Halevy said.

"He's a lot better than that, dammit," Vaclav said. "Half the time, I don't even think he knows where he'll shoot from next."

"How could he not?"

"Shit, for all I know he rolls dice or something. One he goes here, three he goes there, six he goes somewhere else. Wherever he goes, he nails people."

"You're doing the same thing to his side," Halevy said.

"I know. But I haven't got a glimpse of him." Vaclav hardly heard his own reply. Rolling dice… He'd only been running his mouth when he said that. But it sure made sense now that it was out. How could you stalk a man if he had no pattern you could find? You couldn't. Vaclav had a couple of yellowish ivories in his own pocket. He'd made a little money with them-lost a little, too. Maybe they had uses he hadn't thought of before.

He had his favorite places from which to observe the German line, and from which to fire at the Fritzes when he found the chance. Now, knowing the Nazi sniper was on the prowl behind the barbed wire and shell holes separating the two sides, he gave up on those familiar places. He had the feeling that, if he put an eye up to one of his loopholes, a Mauser bullet would greet him an instant later. Maybe he was only being jumpy, but he didn't believe in taking chances.

Of course, he was also taking chances in finding new spots from which to watch the enemy. One of the reasons his favorite places were favorites was that they were good places. He could watch the Germans and shoot at the careless ones with little risk to himself. When he went somewhere else, the Nazis had a better chance to spot him and knock him over.

But-he hoped-the sniper wouldn't be looking for him in these new spots. He had a dirty green cloth he draped over his telescope so the German wouldn't notice it, and to keep the lens from flashing in the sun.

Plenty of Wehrmacht men passed through his field of view. He wished he could kill them all, and more besides. He didn't shoot at all of them, though, or even at very many. By the nature of things, a sniper had to pick and choose. He wouldn't last long if he got greedy.

Some of the Germans had taken to twisting their shoulder straps so they covered up the pips and embroidery that marked higher ranks. Sometimes Vaclav noticed that. When he did, he tried to hit the men who'd got cute. How often he didn't notice, of course, he couldn't begin to guess.

Every so often, he saw Germans scrutinizing the lines the Czechs and French held against them. One of them was simply too brazen for belief. The way he stood head and shoulders above the parados, binoculars in hand, infuriated Vaclav. Did the son of a bitch think nobody would punch his ticket for him? He might as well have mailed out engraved invitations with SHOOT ME! on them.

Vaclav took care of that for him. The antitank rifle thundered and slammed hard against his right shoulder. As soon as he fired, he ducked, a habit he'd acquired not long after he started sniping. You could see what you did later, and from somewhere else. After you'd taken your shot, you couldn't change anything anyway.

A split second after he lowered his head, a bullet cracked through the space where it had been. "Hello!" he said, and didn't come up again, the way he might have otherwise.

"Somebody's laying for you," Benjamin Halevy remarked.

"Thanks a bunch. I never would have guessed without you," Vaclav said. The Jew laughed. Vaclav didn't. "God damn it to hell, that bastard was just standing there asking for it. I know I got him. Not even the Nazis would waste a man of their own for the sake of killing me… would they?" He heard the doubt in his own voice. Who could guess exactly how ruthless the Germans were?

"I'll have a look." Halevy did, cautiously, from ten meters down the trench. "I don't find him now."

"I wonder who he was. He acted like an officer, and a dumb officer to boot," Vaclav said. "You wouldn't see an enlisted man standing there giving that kind of target. The guys who really fight know better."