Pacific Sniper

Another bullet snapped past.

Deke slipped and slid the rest of the way down the path, and the next thing he knew, he was falling.

He landed in a heap not far from Philly and scrambled for cover.

“Took you long enough,” Philly said.

“You OK?”

“My ass is sore, but nobody shot me yet.”

“Ingram is hit pretty bad. I’ve got to get some bandages back up to him. What about the lieutenant?”

Philly shook his head. They could both see that the lieutenant hadn’t moved. Deke felt something hollow in his soul. A spark of something else was glowing, too, deep down in him. He realized it was rage, just like when poor Ben had been shot.

Deke tamped down his feelings like jamming a ramrod down a barrel. Ain’t no time for that.

He checked his rifle. Deke had taken a pretty good tumble down the slope, but at least the rifle and scope seemed all right. They were still taking fire from a handful of Japanese who seemed to be hidden in the tall grass on the hill above them. Deke fired, hoping that he’d hit something. In response, bullets ripped the air over Deke’s head.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement and ducked. But it was only Philly, who had stood up and hurled a grenade in the direction of where the Japanese down in the ravine were hidden. It was becoming clear that Patrol Easy had walked right into a trap.

“Down!” Philly said, pushing Deke toward the ground.

Seconds later, the “pineapple” grenade went off, scattering its chunks of shrapnel through the Japanese hidden in the grass. They heard screams. Philly hurled another grenade for good measure and heard more screams. The enemy stopped firing.

For all Philly’s complaining and wisecracking, Deke thought that he was a damn fine soldier when he needed to be. He couldn’t think of anyone else he’d rather be fighting alongside. But now wasn’t exactly the time for praise. It was a time for action.

“We need to get out of this ravine and up the other side,” Deke said. “We’re sitting ducks down here.”

“I won’t argue.”

“Go on,” Deke said. “Get the others out of here. Don’t wait for me.”

“Where the hell are you going?”

“Ingram was hit. I need to go back and see if I can do anything for him.”

He looked around and found Egan, crouching next to Yoshio. They both had their carbines trained on the hill above, but from down here, he was sure that they didn’t have a prayer of hitting anything. Their best chance was to follow Philly out of the ravine.

He got some bandages from Egan and started back up the slippery path, which forced him to sling his rifle once again and crawl up the slope, digging in his knees and the tips of his boots to keep from sliding back down into the ravine.

A bullet smacked into the hill beside him.

Nope, I ain’t got a lick of sense.

He kept going.

From the hillside high above the ravine, Okubo had watched the Americans draw closer. He allowed himself a rare smile. The foolish enemy soldiers were walking right into a trap, just as he’d hoped that they would.

“Do you see that, Private Kimura?” he asked. “These gaijin are like chickens, and we are the foxes.”

Beside him, Private Kimura bobbed his head nervously, not looking at all like a fox. “Hai.”

Okubo had fewer than a dozen soldiers with him. Their goal was to watch the Japanese perimeter. Until now, they had seen no American troops.

This must be a scouting party, he thought. The bulk of the Americans had not moved far beyond the beachhead that they had established. Okubo knew this because he had seen it with his own eyes—the Japanese had their own scouts.

After the disastrous banzai attack, Okubo and Kimura had withdrawn with the survivors. Not long after that, he had heard that General Takashina had been killed. The bad news just seemed to compound. But the truth was that the Japanese still had several thousand troops on the island, ready to fight until the end. He thought back to Guadalcanal, when there had been at least some effort at evacuation. But the Japanese Navy could no longer mount such an operation after the battering it had received. At most, there were a few small boats and seaplanes available—hardly enough to transport thousands of troops to safety in the middle of the Pacific.

He counted a handful of men and a dog. More than anything, the Japanese hated the dogs. It wasn’t that they feared them; it was that the use of dogs signaled that the Japanese were seen as quarry to be hunted down, no better than wild pigs or rabbits. The Japanese ought to know—they had used war dogs to terrorize the Chinese and Koreans.

“Hmmph,” Okubo grunted. “I would shoot that dog now if it did not mean springing my trap too soon.”

“I do not like the dogs,” Private Kimura agreed.