Pacific Sniper

“Just like the Alamo, only with Davy Crockett fighting on the wrong side.”

Lieutenant Steele looked over at Yoshio. “Ask our prisoner where we can find his buddies.”

Once Yoshio had asked the question, the prisoner talked at length. Deke tried to wrap his head around some of the words, but Japanese made as much sense to him as chickens clucking, and he gave up after a while. Yoshio would let them know if the prisoner had anything important to say.

The prisoner seemed to have relaxed somewhat around his American captors, who were not the monsters that his superiors had convinced him that they would be. In fact, they treated him better than Okubo had. His wounds had pained him, but the food and water had given him enough energy to keep up with the patrol.

For obvious reasons, the young prisoner had attached himself to Yoshio, who was about the same age. After all, Yoshio was the only one he could communicate with in the patrol. Yoshio treated the prisoner kindly enough. At one point, they had even shared a laugh.

That didn’t go over well with Philly. “Don’t get too friendly with that Jap,” he warned Yoshio. “We might still have to shoot him.”

Yoshio glanced at Lieutenant Steele, who didn’t comment one way or the other but took out his map again as if to occupy himself. He seemed reluctant to say that the prisoner’s life still hung in the balance. They could hardly march around for days burdened with a prisoner.

Now the Japanese prisoner eagerly pointed out what Yoshio explained were artillery positions, dug into the steep sides of the mountain.

“He says there are thousands of soldiers there,” Yoshio explained. “They have dug caves and tunnels to turn that mountain into a fortress.”

“I suppose that I ought to take his word for it,” Steele said. “But I want to see for myself. I want some visual confirmation before I invite the whole division to join us here.”

“Invite, huh? That’s one hell of a way to put it, Honcho.”

With more than a little trepidation, the patrol continued forward. The fortified mountain grew closer. Steele took out his binoculars and studied the slopes. Deke did the same through the riflescope, which was not as powerful but revealed Japanese soldiers milling around the tunnel entrances. Other soldiers stood in the bastions as if awaiting the appearance of the enemy. Deke was sure that they would not be disappointed before too long.

It would have been easy enough to pick off a few of the enemy, but that would have been like poking a stick into a hornet’s nest. For now, it was best if the enemy didn’t know they were here.

The lieutenant lowered his binoculars. “That’s about as many Japs as an anthill has ants,” he said. “Rodeo, bring that radio over here.”

Steele made radio contact and described what he had seen. All that they could hear on their end as he wrapped up were a few hasty “Yes, sirs.” When he’d gotten off the radio, the lieutenant looked around at the battered members of Patrol Easy.

“All right, here’s the deal. We’ll have to wait here for a few days until the rest of the division can catch up to us. We can’t take the Japs on ourselves.”

“Wait here? In the jungle?”

“Do you want to go back through all that mess we’ve come through?”

“Hell, no.”

“I didn’t think so. That means we’ve got no choice but to sit tight.”

They made camp, such as it was, rolling out their soggy blankets onto the ground. Despite the heat, a fire would have been nice to dry out their gear, heat up some rations and coffee, and perhaps drive the bugs away, but Lieutenant Steele wouldn’t allow it.

“Don’t forget that those hills have eyes,” he said. From time to time, the lieutenant’s speech sounded slurred, almost as though he were drunk. It seemed to be a side effect of being hit in the head by a Japanese bullet. “The Japs will have all kinds of lookouts. Try not to move around much if you don’t have to, and don’t show any lights. Not so much as a cigarette.”

“You got it, Honcho.”

Steele reeled, reaching out for Deke’s shoulder to steady himself. “Egan, you and Nelly keep alert. That may be our best chance of keeping the Japs off us until the cavalry gets here.”

His orders given, Steele suddenly looked beyond weary. He lowered himself to the ground, rolled himself in his blanket, and promptly fell into a fitful sleep—his shotgun tucked in beside him.

“I don’t like how the lieutenant looks,” Philly confided to Deke in a low voice, out of earshot of the leader of Patrol Easy.

“He’ll be all right,” Deke said, although he had the same misgivings. They would be lost out here without the lieutenant.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Between shifts of sentry duty, the men were left with time on their hands. That evening, before the jungle darkness descended like a curtain, Deke found himself sitting beside Yoshio, who was in a talkative mood.

“You’re so quiet all the time, except when you talk about fighting,” Yoshio said. “You’re always watching things. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that you liked it here.”