Hunter Sniper

Deke swung the rifle that way and saw a Japanese soldier running right at them. In the flickering light of the battle zone, Deke saw that the enemy wasn’t carrying a rifle but was armed with a stick bomb. These were long poles with a high-explosive charge attached to one end. The Japanese called them Shitotsubakurai. The explosive charge would detonate on impact, essentially being a primitive pressure-sensitive bomb.

It was hard to say what the purpose of the stick was, considering that the amount of explosive would certainly vaporize the soldier delivering the bomb. But if that length of stick gave the soldier some sense of hope that he would somehow survive the attack, so be it.

Through the scope, he could see the Japanese soldier’s open mouth, screaming a battle cry as he charged.

Deke shot him.

Crazy bastard, Deke thought. What was the point of that?

Then a cold stab of realization went through him. Just beyond their foxhole several barrels were stacked. Then more and more barrels. Holy hell. They were sitting right next to the fuel dump for the airfield.

The berserk Japanese soldier hadn’t been trying to break through their lines. He’d been intending to blow up the fuel dump. If he had succeeded, the explosion would have taken out most of the company. As for the airfield, it would be rendered unusable — most likely, at least part of the landing strip would be reduced to a large burned hole in the ground.

All three seemed to figure it out at once. They looked at the stacked piles of highly flammable aviation fuel, at the advancing Japanese paratroopers, and then at one another.

“Dammit!” Philly said. “I don’t want to get blown up.”

Yoshio muttered, “Chikushō.” Oh shit! No translation was required to understand that it was not something that he would have said in front of his mother.

“Yeah,” Deke said. “That last fella was close. Just don’t let them get any closer.”

But the Japanese seemed to have made up their minds that they were going to blow up that fuel stockpile, even if it was the last thing they did. Destroying the airstrip and the fuel dump appeared to be the paratroopers’ primary mission.

Another Japanese soldier broke away from the paratroopers. Like the previous man, he was similarly armed with a stick bomb. He ran at a crouch toward the American position. Incredibly, he seemed to leap over a burst of machine-gun fire lit by tracers and kept right on going.

“It’s another runner, ten o’clock,” Yoshio said.

“I see him,” Philly said.

He fired, but the man did not go down.

“He’s still coming,” Yoshio said.

“Dammit, I’m out!” Philly shouted, fumbling in the dark for another stripper clip. “You’ve got to get him, Deke!”

Deke was already tracking the enemy soldier through his scope. Hitting a moving target was no small feat, even for the best marksman. The challenge was compounded by the flickering, uncertain light of the battlefield. Also, Deke and the others were being shot at. Bullets sang above their helmets, and it took a huge amount of willpower not to duck down out of sheer instinct. There was a very real possibility that Deke would get shot in the head before he could squeeze that trigger.

Deke got his rhythm going, swinging his sights through the man to a point just ahead of him, moving the sight along, matching his speed. With any luck, the target would essentially run right into the path of the bullet.

Easy, easy—

He flinched at the nearby detonation of what sounded like a mortar. Yoshio yelped in pain.

Dammit. Deke got back on target. The Japanese runner was quick. He had already covered too much ground. There was time for just one shot before the runner covered the distance to the fuel depot and detonated that stick bomb.

Deke put everything else out of his head. Time seemed to slow down. He repeated the process of swinging through the man again, matching his pace, holding the crosshairs there. The runner reached the edge of the fuel dump, where a pile of barrels had fallen over and rolled across the airstrip.

The Japanese gave a keening cry, either of terror or victory, nobody could be sure.

Deke squeezed the trigger.

What happened next happened fast. The rifle kicked against his shoulder, the runner tumbled, the stick bomb hit the ground — and exploded.

A blast wave of searing air washed over Deke’s face. Clumps of burning fuel spread across the field and even landed in the jungle, burning like will-o’-the-wisps among the trees.

But nothing else exploded.

As Captain Merrick’s company concentrated their fire, the fight seemed to go out of the enemy paratroopers. Either that or many of them had been killed. Private Frazier opened fire with his Browning Automatic Rifle and swept the jungle’s edge with a long burst. The effect was like a gale force wind scattering the embers of a forest fire. The enemy fire immediately became more sporadic, then died down altogether.