Pacific Sniper

To call it running was an exaggeration. The path was so steep that he was basically falling down the slope, but somehow his feet managed to stay just ahead of gravity. His arms pinwheeled wildly. More bullets whistled around him. His boot caught on a root, and he went down, tumbling the rest of the way down the path to the bottom of the ravine. He hit so hard that it knocked the wind out of him, but he forced himself to keep going and crawled into the shelter of some rocks.

Gasping for breath, he took stock. His descent down the slope hadn’t been pretty, and one of his knees hurt like hell, but he didn’t have any bullet holes in him, which seemed to be the main thing.

On the other side of the ravine, he could see that the squad was more than halfway up. He lay there a moment, catching his breath, then dashed across the ravine and started after them. This side of the ravine was out of the Japanese sight line. The Japs couldn’t shoot down at them unless they put themselves in the Americans’ own line of fire. If the Japs were smart, Deke reckoned that they would just roll a couple of grenades down the hill and call it a day.

“Thought we lost you,” Philly said. “You’re like a bad penny, Deke. You keep managing to turn up.”

“Ingram is dead.”

“Let’s get out of here before we end up the same way.”

They struggled up the steep path, making their way out of the ravine. Tony Cruz was leading them, seeming not to care that he was headed toward the Japanese with nothing but a single-shot rifle and a machete. His legs pumped tirelessly up the slope, and the Americans had no choice but to follow.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Breathless, they reached the top of the ravine and sprawled in the grass, weapons at the ready. The only one who didn’t seem winded was the Chamorro guide. He crouched on one knee, eyeing the hillside. There was no sign of the Japs, who seemed to have melted away.

“Where did they go?”

“They’re probably setting up another ambush, waiting to hit us somewhere down the line.”

“That’s fine by me. I can wait.”

Quickly, they took stock. The ambush in the ravine had left them shaken and battered.

They had put Steele down, and Deke scrambled across to check on the lieutenant. He rolled him over, looking for a bullet wound, dreading what he would find.

Steele gasped and opened his good eye. He had been knocked out cold. Deke spotted the dent in Steele’s helmet, the metal bright where the paint had been scraped away. He couldn’t believe the lieutenant’s good luck. The bullet had hit him right in the head, but only a glancing blow. Lucky that the Japs used a lighter bullet. A round from Deke’s Springfield would have punched straight through the helmet as though it were a tin can.

“What the hell?” Steele asked groggily.

“Let’s get you moving, Honcho,” Deke said. “No sense being sitting ducks if those Japs come back.”

He helped get Steele up, and together they began to continue unsteadily up the path. After a few steps, he gently shook off Deke’s help. “I appreciate it, son. Really, I do. But I think I’ve got this. Besides, you can’t help me the whole way.”

Despite his insistence that he was all right, it was obvious that Steele had been hit harder than he let on. He had a few dizzy spells. At one point, he bent over and vomited.

“Sure sign of a concussion,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Still, I’ll take that any day over a hole in the head.”

The lieutenant looked around. “Where’s Ingram?”

“Dead, sir.”

Lieutenant Steele nodded, not bothering to correct the “sir.” It was doubtful that there were any Nips around to overhear that slip.

“I suppose I must have known that, but things are a little fuzzy. Damn shame about Ingram. He was a good man. What about his body?”

“We had to leave him behind, sir.”

Steele nodded without commenting. Ingram wouldn’t be the first American whose body had been left behind on Guam, and he wouldn’t be the last.

“Someone will come back to get him someday.”

Deke was starting to feel gloomy, thinking that he had let them all down. He had taken out those two Jap snipers in the ravine, but he hadn’t spotted the other soldiers hidden there—not to mention the marksmen hidden on the hill. Deke felt as if he had led Patrol Easy right into a trap.

As a result, the lieutenant had almost been killed. Ingram had been shot, and there was nothing that Deke had been able to do for him. He had avoided the same fate only by the skin of his teeth.

The lieutenant was the closest thing that he’d had to a father, and Deke had let him down and almost gotten him killed.

Up ahead, the Chamorro guide kept moving relentlessly. He appeared more than a little impatient with the slower pace, which was necessary for Lieutenant Steele to keep up. They were exposed out here in the rolling grasslands—every last one of them felt it. They were just lucky that the Japanese patrol had moved off.

The breeze carried the faint sound of an engine to their ears.

“Anybody hear that?”

“Just keep going,” Steele said.