Hunter Sniper

Ordinarily such a scene would have been nauseating, but Deke now took it in stride. What were they all becoming?

If he needed any reassurance about the carnage, all he had to do was look at the spot where a few dead GIs had been gathered at one end of the company’s position. The four bodies had been laid out in a neat row, their faces covered with coats or blankets, giving them some measure of dignity in death. A detail trooped past with entrenching tools to dig graves. Between the heat and the inadequacy of the digging tools, it was doubtful that the graves would be very deep. It was too far to carry the bodies, so a shallow jungle grave would have to do.

No such effort was made for the dead Japanese — they would rot where they had fallen. There was little doubt that the vultures and other scavengers would pick at their bones, because little went to waste in the jungle. Again, Deke felt a kind of numbness at the thought. After all, these bastards had been trying to kill them just last night.

With some bad luck, or if the night had been darker and they hadn’t spotted the parachutes coming down, it might have been all of them lying out there. Deke still didn’t feel like he hated the enemy, but more and more, he was starting to wonder.

“Damn these Japs,” he muttered to no one in particular. The words simply vented like steam from a cast-iron radiator.

“What?” Philly asked.

“Nothin’.” Deke shook his head. No point in trying to explain himself.

A sergeant came around, looking for Yoshio. That in itself was a little unusual. Having been attached to the company as scout-snipers, the three of them — along with Danilo when he was around — were officially part of the company, yet somehow were not.

Captain Merrick had seemed to realize that they knew their business and left them to it. Most of the time, their job was to lead the column down the jungle trail, on the lookout for any threats of ambush. When there was trouble, they were the first to deal with it.

“You’re that guy who speaks Japanese?” the sergeant asked.

“Hai,” said Yoshio, who was not without his own sense of humor.

The sergeant stared at him a long beat, not without a little malice. Yoshio looked Japanese, and he sounded Japanese — some GIs just couldn’t get used to the idea that he wasn’t the enemy, even if he was as American as they were.

“Yeah, well,” the sergeant finally said, “Captain Merrick’s got a prisoner. He wants you to question him.”

Yoshio grabbed his rifle and helmet, which he’d taken off hoping for respite from the morning heat, and scrambled out of the foxhole.

Deke and Philly looked at each other, then grabbed their own gear and followed Yoshio out of the hole.

Captain Merrick had made his HQ in a foxhole near the center of the line of holes that delineated the company’s position at the perimeter of the airfield. The only concession to it being the HQ seemed to be that the hole was somewhat bigger, was also occupied by a radioman and the company’s last remaining medic, and, stretched across the top, had battered camouflage netting that struggled to block the harshest rays of the sun.

Crouching in the hole was Captain Merrick, leaning over a wounded Japanese soldier. The man was propped up against the sides of the foxhole. His arms hung limply at his sides, and it was evident that he wouldn’t have had the strength to sit up on his own. The soldier who had been a terrifying enemy a few short hours ago was nothing but a pathetic dying figure now.

Merrick was crouched over the wounded man and leaning forward as if to hear what the captured Japanese had to say. The man was speaking softly, but in his own language, leaving Merrick looking frustrated. At least the man was talking. If they wanted to find out what the enemy soldier had to say, they didn’t have much time.

The Japanese soldier groaned when Merrick touched him, but refused even a drink of water with a weak shake of his head. Deke always expected the enemy to be older somehow, battle-hardened warriors, but this Japanese looked like he might be nineteen or twenty, younger than Deke.

Deke could see a large open gash in the man’s thigh, almost to the bone. Thick, dark blood had collected in puddles around the wound, despite an effort to apply bandages. The smells lingering in the bottom of the foxhole were not good ones — sweaty bodies, mud wet from the dying man’s blood, a whiff of intestines.

Captain Merrick sat back on his haunches when he saw Yoshio slide into the foxhole.

“Sir,” said Yoshio. “You wanted to see me?”

Merrick nodded at the wounded prisoner. “This one is singing like a canary, but I’ll be damned if I can understand a word of that gibberish. You’re supposed to be an interpreter, right? Maybe you can make out what he’s saying. Headquarters has been on us to gather some intelligence. Something, anything, that they can use to give us an idea of how many Japs are still out here and what sort of supplies they have. See what you can find out.”