Pacific Sniper

Pacific Sniper A WWII Thriller

David Healey

PACIFIC SNIPER

By David Healey

Copyright © 2021 by David Healey. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotation for the purpose of critical articles and reviews. Please support the arts by refusing to participate in digital piracy.

Intracoastal Media digital edition published 2021.

Print edition ISBN 978-0-9674162-8-1

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

BISAC Subject Headings:

FIC014000 FICTION/Historical

FIC032000 FICTION/War & Military

Contents

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Note to Readers

Mountain Revenge

About the Author

Also by David Healey

“And I have told you this to make you grieve.”

―Dante, Inferno

Chapter One

Philippine Sea, July 1944

Deacon “Deke” Cole crouched in the belly of the landing craft headed for an island occupied by several thousand Japanese troops ready to fight to the death. Right now, though, he had more immediate concerns, such as being crammed shoulder to shoulder with dozens of other men.

He felt like a cork, bobbing up and down helplessly in a boat that made a very small speck in a very big ocean. They had been in these damn boats all night. Deke would not have been reassured to know that their flotilla had just passed over the deepest point of the Mariana Trench, reaching into the blackness more than thirty-five thousand feet below.

As dawn approached, he could hear the angry seas of the Pacific Ocean washing and gurgling insistently against the metal sides.

Slosh, slosh.

Bad as things were in the boat, he found the sound of the ocean even more unsettling. He didn’t like the ocean, didn’t trust it. He had grown up in the mountains of Appalachia and preferred solid ground. Having been on ships for weeks now, making the long voyage from Hawaii, he longed for the feel of rocks and dirt under his feet. Some part of him was looking forward to getting on that island, Japs or not.

The slap of the sea groping for them was the only noise. Nobody spoke because each soldier was caught up in his own thoughts and fears. They all knew that by the end of the day to come, more than a few of their number would be dead. It was a hell of a thing to think about, so Deke simply pushed the thought from his mind.

For others, that wasn’t as easy.

“I’m scared, Deke,” said Ben Hemphill’s quavering voice beside him.

Ben was the same age but seemed much younger. Hell, the poor kid barely needed to shave. Ben had latched onto him like a kid brother. The fact that Ben called him “Deke” reminded him of home because his sister, Sadie, had liked to call him that, once telling him, “It’s a short name to go along with the fact that you’ve got a short fuse.”

Deke looked over at Ben, whose face had gone green—whether from fear or seasickness, it was hard to say. “Stick with me and you’ll be all right.”

“I keep thinking about what happened to all those marines at Saipan. Aren’t you scared?”

Deke nodded grimly. The geography of the Pacific was slippery in his mind, but everybody had talked in hushed tones about how nearly fourteen thousand marines had been killed or wounded taking that not-too-distant island this summer.

Now it was their turn.

Was he scared? He checked himself but didn’t feel any fear about the fight to come. However, he’d had enough of this landing craft. “I just want to get off this boat,” he said to Ben. “Listen, you’ll be all right. Like I said, just stick with me.”

“If you say so.”

“Shut it, you two,” said the sergeant. He glared at Deke, his gaze recoiling from Deke’s scars. On his right side, Deke’s face looked normal, even boyishly handsome, with a proud Scotch-Irish jawline and pale eyes. But on the left side of his face, deep, angry gouges raked from his temple to his chin. Part of an ear was missing.

“Yes, sir,” Ben stammered.

“Voices carry over water. You’re gonna turn us all into Japbait.”

Deke didn’t reply, which he knew would steam up the sergeant. In the predawn darkness, he smiled. He and the sergeant had gotten off to a bad start, and it had never gotten any better. Not that Deke gave a damn.

All around him, isolated in their own cocoons of silence, other men pondered death or feared turning out to be cowards when they had to run into the storm of bullets awaiting them.