Savage Sniper

“It’s easy,” said the soldier, who was obviously proud of his invention. “Honestly, it’s more like a snorkel. You slip it on and make it as tight as possible with the straps. The breathing tube goes in through this slit here. As long as you keep the other end of the tube above water, you can breathe.”

“Can you put together another one of these masks?” Deke asked the inventor. “I want to pay those Nips on the other side of the river a visit.”

“Sure I can.”

Deke had dragged Yoshio along, mainly because he knew that he was a good swimmer. He looked at him now. “What do you think? Are you ready to help me give these bastards some hell?”

Yoshio grinned. “Let’s do it.”

While the soldier made another mask, Deke and Yoshio got organized. Deke decided to leave his rifle behind. Instead, he gathered several hand grenades. Yoshio did the same. If the grenades didn’t do the trick, he always had his bowie knife.

When the rest of Patrol Easy saw what he was planning, they made it clear that they thought he was crazy.

“The Japs will see you coming,” Philly said.

“In this water? You can’t see your hand more than six inches down,” Deke replied. “Besides, you are going to be shooting up a storm to distract them. The last place they’re going to look is the river.”

“If you say so,” Philly said. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Have you got a better idea?”

Philly didn’t.

Lieutenant Steele put it more bluntly. “You are a crazy bastard. If I thought there was another way, I’d tell you to forget it.”

A few minutes later, Deke and Yoshio slipped into the river. On shore, several GIs opened fire along with Patrol Easy. As expected, the Japanese shot back from the cover of the vegetation on the other side.

The two swimmers started out at a point somewhat above where they wanted to end up on the far shore, hoping that the current would carry them in that direction. From shore the distance hadn’t seemed that great, but once Deke was actually in the water, the muddy waterway looked as wide across as the Pacific.

Deke slipped beneath the surface, and Yoshio followed suit. Despite the weight of the grenades, the swimming was fairly easy. Deke used a scissor kick and a sort of breaststroke to carry him across. He swam awkwardly at best, but it was good enough to keep him moving.

Once or twice his legs bumped against something solid that bounced away. He hoped to hell that had been a submerged log and not a fish — or worse yet, a crocodile.

I’ve already been chewed on by a bear, so I reckon it can’t get much worse, he thought.

What he hadn’t counted on was how difficult it was to see anything underwater. From time to time, he had to lift out his head to get his bearings.

The snorkel itself worked well, as long as Deke didn’t dip too far below the surface. He made that mistake once or twice and nearly got a lungful of water as a result.

It also didn’t help that the gas mask was not watertight. Deke had cinched the straps until they nearly cut into his face, but water still leaked in. Before long, it was sloshing around his nose and eyes, but he kept going. He was already more than halfway across, too close to the opposite shore to surface undetected. Dealing with a little water was far better than getting a bullet in the head.

After what seemed like an hour, but what he knew couldn’t have been more than the five minutes needed to swim ninety feet, he reached the opposite bank and hunkered down at the waterline. He felt confident that he couldn’t be seen by the Japanese higher up on the bank. He was more worried about the gunfire coming from the American side of the river. Someone must have spotted him and had the same thought, because the fire slackened.

Now where the hell was Yoshio?

He got his answer a few seconds later when Yoshio surfaced, looking very much like some kind of frogman. They both removed their masks, glad to be breathing freely again.

“Ready?” Deke asked.

Yoshio nodded.

They crawled stealthily up the bank. At a nod from Deke, they pulled the pins. Deke’s hand curled around the cold metal of a grenade, palming it; then his fingers tightened for fear of losing his grip, what with the sweat and the river water still clinging to the grenades. He hoped to hell this worked — he didn’t much like the idea of having to fight the Japanese with nothing more than his bowie knife once the grenades ran out.

He threw the grenade as far as he could up the bank.

There was a sharp blast, then another. A tornado of grass, mud, and debris swirled across the riverbank. Deke kept his head down. Shrapnel sang overhead, punctuated by the dying enemy’s screams. By the time that the last grenade had been thrown, the shooting from the Japanese side had stopped.

For the bridge repair crew, it was now or never.