Frosted breath obscured his view as he tried to slow his breathing, reduce the visible plume of warmth and direct it downward into the small depression he’d made in the snow. He’d had to crawl about ten yards out from the treeline to see over a hump in the ground, down into the small village nestled in the crook of a basin, overlooked by two ridgelines and a low, rounded hill. Three roads intersected between the ridgeline, two snaking around the hill on the right and the third coming down the narrow valley from the left. Smoke drifted up from chimneys, disappearing into the gray morning haze. It looked peaceful, but somebody, far from here, had decided that was going to change. Clay could see the tank clearly. Krauts walking casually around it and from one building to another, flapping their arms to keep warm. Turning the binoculars to the right, he focused on a stone farmhouse at the top of the hill. Wooden outbuildings stretched behind it, but the house itself was made of stone blocks, and Clay knew that’s where the machine gun would be.
