Savage Sniper

Lieutenant Steele edged closer. Steele commanded their small sniper patrol. He carried a twelve-gauge shotgun, and one eye was covered by a patch. He’d lost the eye at Guadalcanal, and it should have been the lieutenant’s ticket home. However, he claimed to have some unfinished business with the Japanese. Deke understood.

“What have you got?” Steele asked.

“There’s something up in those trees.”

“How many?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“All right. Go check it out. We don’t want to bite off more than we can chew.”

Deke nodded and began to move toward where he thought the enemy soldiers might be hidden.

The dense vegetation seemed to swallow him whole as he crept forward, his senses on high alert. He could feel his heart pounding as he searched for any sign of the enemy. Every sound seemed amplified, every rustle of leaves a potential threat.

Despite his efforts at stealth, he heard a twig snap beneath his boot. He froze, his eyes scanning the trees ahead. Sweat ran down his face, but the hands holding his rifle remained steady as ever.

Waiting, he held his breath.

But there was nothing. No movement, no sound. Just the oppressive silence of the jungle. Even the birds and ever-present insects seemed to have fallen silent.

Deke felt a moment of doubt. Had he been wrong? Was there really nobody there?

No — he had seen something. He was sure of it.

Just then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He spun sideways, his rifle at the ready.

A Japanese soldier was charging at him, a bayonet reflecting in the dappled sunlight under the canopy of trees. The man burst from the greenery, shouting some sort of foreign battle cry.

Deke had only a split second to react. He lifted his rifle and fired. At this range he didn’t have to aim — just point.

The soldier fell to the ground and lay still, apparently dead before he hit the forest floor. The sharp crack of Deke’s rifle had almost immediately been swallowed by the surrounding leaves and branches, leaving the forest as silent as ever.

He kept the rifle pointed at the dead Japanese, but the body didn’t stir. The soldier’s mistake had been trying to skewer Deke with his bayonet. If he’d taken a shot at Deke, the outcome might have been very different.

It turned out that the soldier who had attacked Deke wasn’t the only Japanese in hiding.

A shot rang out, and Deke froze. He heard the crack of a bullet passing overhead. Had the bullet been intended for him? It seemed likely — he was the man closest to the forest.

“Sniper!” Philly shouted, almost by reflex.

“No shit,” Deke grumbled. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Ever so slowly, he backpedaled through the weeds and brush. Sweat trickled down his back. An ant crept over his face, but Deke ignored it, not even bothering to flick it away.

Even in the middle of a war, with the sky filled with planes and the beaches crawling with troops, sometimes everything came down to a single bullet, especially if you were either the one trying to dodge that bullet or the one trying to deliver it.

Another shot was fired, the bullet singing through the air, close enough this time that Deke heard it whip through the brush nearby. The crack of the bullet made his skin crawl.

Dammit. Where the hell is that sniper?

Working his way backward like a retreating crab, Deke eased first his legs and then the rest of his body into a patch of kunai grass and shrubs. He kept working his way into the greenery until not even the muzzle of his rifle was visible. But it was there all the same, pointed in the direction of the enemy. All that Deke could see ahead was a wall of green.

His oasis of greenery provided cover, but like the rest of the patrol, Deke was basically pinned down. He still had no idea where the sniper was hiding, knowing only that the enemy marksman was out there somewhere close and seemed determined to put Deke in his rifle sights.

Now seemed as good a time as ever to try one of the tricks that he had up his sleeve. He remembered the metal shaving mirror in his pack.

Deke had bought it from a vendor selling all sorts of baubles in the ruins of Ormoc. Sure, he could use it for shaving, but he’d also had another idea in the back of his mind. It was just what he would need now to distract the enemy sniper.

The flat metal mirror was polished to a bright shine, much like a military-issue signal mirror. It was similar in its dimensions to the cover of one of Yoshio’s paperback Western novels. There was a hole in one end so that he could hang it from a nail and shave or maybe comb his hair. That took care of the grooming needs of your average GI, including Deke.

The wind rippled the jungle every which way, causing the foliage to flow in a dull green blur that masked any movement by the enemy. Keeping out of sight and working quickly, Deke tied the mirror into the brush nearby so that the breeze made the dangling mirror flash occasionally, a shiny bauble in the jungle to fake out and distract the enemy sniper.