Hunter Sniper

Deke realized that the rifle was right where he’d left it, within reach. He took it in both hands, reassured by the familiar heft of wood and steel. The rifle felt alive in his hands, ready for action.

And so was Deke. To his relief, his fever had broken. Danilo’s tea must have worked its magic. Maybe it had been the doc’s pills. Did they act that fast? Either way, he felt better. He realized that he had spent the previous day feeling as if he were looking through a veil of gauze. Thankfully that veil had lifted.

He raised his head, sniffing the air like a wolf before the hunt.

The morning air carried the smell of burned wood, sweaty soldiers, mud, gunpowder, and a whiff of rotting flesh and jungle decay from the distant hills. The rising sun felt warm on his face as it chased away the night’s shadows.

“Let’s move out,” he said.

What was left of Patrol Easy got to their feet — worn, tired, battered. Nobody griped or argued. The second day of the battle for Ormoc had begun.

* * *

They moved out through the streets, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. Every step was fraught with the possibility of carrying them into Japanese fields of fire that had been set up to ambush the Americans.

“Where the hell are these bastards?” Philly wanted to know.

“They’re here, all right,” Deke said. “I can smell ’em.”

Seconds later, a rifle cracked, sending them all scrambling for cover. Philly dove behind the remains of a cart, while Yoshio tumbled behind a pile of rocks that had once been someone’s garden wall. Danilo simply crouched in the street, his eyes scanning the city landscape.

At the sound of the shot, Deke had frantically searched the street ahead, looking for any sign of movement. They were looking at a street filled with small houses. The Japanese sniper might be hiding in any of them.

There was only one thing to do, and that was to go house to house, clearing out any Japanese.

“Pair up and let’s sweep this street clean,” Deke said. Nobody had put him in charge, and he didn’t actually outrank anybody, but he had stepped into the role naturally. Anyhow, this wasn’t their first rodeo, and they all knew what needed to be done. “Kid, you’re with me. Who’s still got some grenades?”

They all looked at one another, but nobody had any grenades left. There just weren’t enough to go around in the first place, but a grenade was extremely useful for clearing a house.

“Everybody’s out,” Philly said. “I knew it. Dammit, why don’t they get us some grenades?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Deke said. “Everybody knows what to do.”

The men fanned out, Danilo with Yoshio, Philly with Rodeo. There were a few of the rear-echelon men with them, the poor bastards trying their best to look like they knew what they were doing. To their credit, they carried out Deke’s orders without complaint. Everybody just wanted to stay alive.

A rifle cracked again. This time the sniper had found his mark. One of the other soldiers crumpled and went down. His grease-blackened hands, still clutching his rifle as he fell, indicated that he’d been a mechanic before being sent to the front lines. He had done his duty to the fullest, dying a hero, but dead all the same.

By firing, the enemy sniper had given himself away.

Deke was almost certain that the rifle shot had come from a nearby house. It was a poor-looking place, made mostly of thatched walls with a tin roof. There was a burned patch where debris from the artillery bombardment had caught fire but had not managed to burn down the whole place. The thatch walls wouldn’t have been any good at stopping bullets, but there did seem to be a lot of windows, which offered the sniper an advantage.

“He’s in there,” Deke whispered to the clerk. “Cover me.”

Without waiting for a response, he ran toward the house, bobbing and weaving as he went. When he ran, Deke had a naturally loping gait that made him a difficult target — which was a good thing, considering that whoever was in there took a potshot at him. The bullet kicked up mud in the street. In reply, Deke heard a couple of quick shots from the clerk behind him. He probably couldn’t hit a damn thing, but the enemy sniper wouldn’t know that.

Deke sprinted the last few feet, praying that he wasn’t suddenly going to feel a bullet strike him in the chest.

The door to the thatch hut was closed. Deke gave it a kick and thundered inside, figuring that the enemy sniper would be right in front of him.

Nobody.

He worried that the Japanese soldier had given him the slip, but then saw the interior door leading to another room. The door was shut tight, and the sniper would certainly have heard him kicking the door open. He’d be on the other side of this one, waiting for it to open so he could put a round from the Arisaka right into Deke’s guts.

But it couldn’t be helped.

He kicked the door and stormed in.

There was the Japanese, right in front of him.

Even at this point in the war, Deke had rarely been up close and personal with many enemy soldiers.