WWII is winding down. Germany’s defeat is a foregone
conclusion; just a matter of when. At a secret installation near the Black
Forest, a couple dozen Jewish POWs are being fattened up before parading them
in to a dark field at midnight where 24 are cut down by a single shooter in a matter on minutes –
practice.
The master Nazi sniper Repp is testing the latest weapon in Germany’s
arsenal. The first generation of a night vision scope. Repp is a hero of the fatherland from his exploits on the eastern front where on one day he had something like 325 kills in 330 shots from his position in a tower overlooking a prime intersection.
But 25 POWs were herded to that field. One escapes because
he was invisible to the scope and manages to work his way to the allied lines
where the escapee gets interrogated by the OSS in London. Over multiple sessions and some dogged investigative work, the OSS
slowly learns about the secret installation, a last gasp Nazi assignment for
Repp called Operation Nibelungen.
Considering the technological advance of a night vision
scope and whom it is for, the question is the target. Eisenhower? Churchill?
The Pope? Hitler? Someone else? OSS launches an attack on the installation with
3 goals in mind. Kill Repp. If that fails, get or destroy the night vision
scope. Failing that, get to the camp's records to learn the target and time
line.
Hunter jumps back and forth between the 3 OSS staffers and Repp and slowly tightens the noose around Repp. Hunter jumped to my power rotation with one book, iSniper.
Guess I could look at this book as being the other bookend to Hunter’s
collection of sniper stories. It wasn’t Bob Lee Swagger quality, but once the OSS puts the clues
together and the chase is on in earnest, Hunter applies the screws to the
reader, keeping me firmly planted in my seat to its conclusion 150 pages later. Not his Hunter’s best, but far,
far from his worst. Hunter remains a charter member of my power rotation.
East Coast Don
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