Frozen Sniper

Chapter Seventeen

Tonight, the Chinese attackers seemed emboldened, as if determined to finish off the Americans for good. Maybe they'd had enough of hunkering down by day and hiding from the planes dumping napalm on them. Shouting and firing as they came, they seemed intent on finishing the job that they had started last night. A bullet snapped past Cole's head and he flinched, causing his next shot to go wide.

The Chinese were definitely within mortar range and he heard the thump of mortar rounds being fired from the American lines. However, the mortar fire seemed wildly inaccurate. There were also a lot of duds. What Cole couldn’t know was that the severe cold had caused many of the mortar tubes to warp, affecting their accuracy. The middle of a battle was one hell of a time to discover the problem.

A few of the GIs launched rifle grenades at the attackers. Once they came close enough, they hurled grenades instead.

The problem was that the Chinese themselves were close enough to throw grenades. Their arsenal included stick-type grenades similar to what the Japanese and Germans had used in the last war. They also used a relatively crude type of grenade with a burning external fuse. The hissing grenades began to fall among the defenders, exploding with a deadly thump. From time to time, the Americans got lucky and the snow snuffed out the fuse. The snow did not affect the function of the American “pineapple” grenades — the problem was that they just didn't have enough of them.

"Jesus, I'm almost out of ammo!" Pomeroy shouted. "What the hell are we gonna do?"

"Pitch some grenades at the sons of bitches."

For the defenders, each foxhole had become like an island in a storm or a castle in a siege. Desperately, they tried to keep the swarms of attackers from overwhelming them.

This wasn't like fighting the Germans, who had approached each attack with an almost mathematical precision. The Germans had not exposed themselves needlessly, but worked forward using cover and suppressing fire. They had been tough and tenacious bastards who knew their business.

Cole was certain that if they had faced a German force this size that the defenders would have quickly been swept into oblivion — and most likely the Germans would have detailed a company to deal with the Americans while the bulk of the division went around them. But the Chinese didn't seem to have any strategy or plan other than to overwhelm the defenders through sheer force of numbers.

It was a strategy with a terrible cost, as shown by the bodies now piling up like snowdrifts in front of the American and ROK positions. So far, the defenders still possessed superior firepower thanks to the BARs and M-1s.

The Chinese crept closer, some of them literally leaning forward into the hurricane wind of rifle fire. More and more of them fell, but they kept coming, closer and closer.

Cole realized that the Chinese were within thirty feet of him. A soldier broke away and charged toward the foxhole, shouting and firing from the hip as he ran. Cole shot him, but the man kept coming, so Cole shot him again.

Beside him, Pomeroy grunted with the effort of hurling a grenade. "Down!" he shouted, just before the grenade went off uncomfortably close. But it had given the Chinese something to think about. For the first time, the attackers seemed to hang back.

But still, a few attackers broke away and ran at them. Cole fired at one man, but the second got within six or seven feet of the foxhole, so close that Cole's muzzle blast actually burned a hole in the soldier's white cotton tunic. Another grenade went off, pushing them back yet again.

Cole noticed a Chinese soldier sitting in the snow just a few feet away. Both of the man's hands gripped an ugly wound in his belly. The wounded soldier was looking right at him, saying something to him in Chinese. You could always pick out a word or two of German, but the Chinese sounded like raucous birdsong to his ears, like angry crows bickering. Did the man want to surrender? Was he begging for help? Cursing Cole? He shot the man through the heart, ending his suffering and silencing him forever.

Another soldier appeared, launching himself at Cole. From down in the foxhole, Cole jabbed at him with the bayonet, which caught in the man's belly and refused to come out. Screaming in agony, the soldier fell into the hole, his weight dragging Cole's rifle out of his hands. He grabbed his Bowie knife and slashed at the soldier's throat, finishing him, then wrapped his hands around the rifle stock and kicked at the body until the bayonet pulled free. Cole smelled blood and the tang of waste from the dying man's shattered bowels.

Someone leaped over the foxhole. Cole caught a glimpse of the puffy white uniform and fired at the man's back, sending him sprawling in the snow. When the man fell, he dropped something into the bottom of the foxhole. Cole realized that the soldier had been carrying a Bangalore torpedo, probably to use it against one of the trucks that was parked just inside the American line of defense. The torpedo consisted of a bamboo pole, from which dangled a silken bag filled with high explosives. A fuse sputtered and smoked, burning steadily toward the charge.

A Chinese grenade would have been bad enough. This was more like an actual bomb. They had maybe a few seconds before they were all blown to kingdom come.

"Look out!" Cole shouted, trying desperately to scramble out of the foxhole. Weighted down with gear and his rifle, he realized he wasn't moving fast enough.

"I've got it!"

Suddenly the kid was down in the bottom of the hole, scooping snow onto the fuse, which fizzled one last time and went out.

"You just saved our sorry asses, kid," Cole said gratefully. "Another few seconds and we would have been blown to kingdom come."

"I'm almost out of ammo," the kid replied.

"Me too."

Cole chanced a look over the rim of the foxhole at the enemy. Fortunately, Pomeroy had been keeping up a steady fire, but the Chinese were still coming.

"I've got an idea," Cole said, reaching for the Bangalore torpedo. "Have you got a light?"

"I don't smoke."

"Goddammit, neither do I. Trade places with Pomeroy. We need covering fire."

The kid leveled his rifle at the enemy and started shooting, while Pomeroy crouched beside him in the bottom of the hole. He saw at once what Cole had planned. "You are a crazy son of a bitch, Hillbilly," he said. "But it might just work."

"If we can send this bomb back at them, it could buy us some time."

Pomeroy fished in his pocket for his lighter. They had already shed their gloves and mittens in order to shoot, but now the backs of their hands were nearly frozen while their fingertips were burned from the heat of handling the hot rifle barrels. Pomeroy took out a Zippo lighter and struggled to get his stiff thumb to roll the wheel mechanism to strike a spark.

A Chinese mortar thumped nearby, showering them with snow and debris. "Dammit!" Pomeroy shouted. He dropped the lighter, then fumbled for it among the snow and loose rocks at the bottom of the hole. "That was close."

"Never mind that," Cole said. "Just get that fuse lit."

He picked up the Bangalore torpedo and tilted it so that his body sheltered it from the wind. On the third try, Pomeroy got the Zippo sparked. He held the flickering flame to the fuse, which was damp, and took a few seconds to catch. Finally, it started sputtering like a Fourth of July sparkler. Considering that the fuse had been put out once, he reckoned that he only had a few seconds.

He swung the end of the bamboo pole and hurled the Bangalore torpedo at the advancing Chinese.

"Down!" he shouted.

All three of them hugged the belly of the foxhole. At first, nothing happened, and the Chinese were so close that they could hear them shouting commands at one another. That reminded him to put both hands over his ears.

In the next instant, the air seemed to get sucked out of Cole's lungs and the ground jumped. Boom. A wave of heat and light washed over them. When they looked up again, the enemy advance in front of them was shattered. The enemy soldiers no longer came in waves — or maybe they had just moved on to find an easier position to attack the poor bastards there.

"That put a dent in them," Pomeroy said, his voice touched by awe.

"I reckon that wasn't the last of them," Cole said.

Unfortunately, he was right. All around them, the night was filled with tracer fire and muzzle flashes. Nearby, a BAR kept up its constant chatter and off the right, a machine gun let loose with burst after burst. Flares still filled the sky, so that there was no hiding the sheer numbers of Chinese.

Their respite from the battle was all too brief. A group of three Chinese soldiers ran at them, seemingly out of nowhere. Cole shot one, but the other two were suddenly upon them, leaping down into the foxhole.

Pomeroy clubbed one with his rifle. Once the man was down, he hit him again for good measure. The third enemy soldier was grappling with the kid, trying to stick a bayonet in him, but the kid had grabbed hold of the rifle and was struggling to wrestle it out of the Chinese soldier's grip.

Cole used the butt of the M-1 to smash the Chinese soldier in the head. The soldier let go of the rifle, then took a wild swing at Cole, hitting him with a glancing blow across the chin. The Chinese soldier didn't get a chance to swing at him again. Behind him, Tommy had picked up the enemy soldier's rifle and rammed the bayonet home. The man's eyes grew wide in surprise, and then he crumpled.

Screaming, the kid plunged the bayonet at him again and again.

"All right, kid, you got him," Cole said, taking Tommy by the shoulder. He reached for the rifle taken from the Chinese soldier and saw that it was an M-1. The sons of bitches must have scavenged it off the battlefield. "He had one of our rifles. Search his pockets. Maybe he's got some ammo."

The kid was still too stunned to react, but Cole pulled him down so that he wouldn't make a target. In the dead enemy soldier's pockets he found several clips of ammunition for the M-1. They were back in business.

He gave some of the clips to Pomeroy and kept the rest for himself. They started firing at any Chinese who charged their position. All too soon, Cole heard the ping as the empty clip ejected. He jammed in another clip and started shooting again. This wasn't marksmanship, he thought as he pulled the trigger again and again. It was slaughter. He didn't know enough about the enemy to hate them, or really know much of anything about them. He was shooting to survive. Kill or be killed. Ping went the clip again.

How much longer could they do this? Either until the bullets ran out or some Chinese soldier took a lucky shot.

In the distance, the bugles started sounding again. The Chinese attack began to ebb. Incredibly, although the Chinese troops were among them, all around them, as a matter of fact, they had not succeeded in completely overwhelming the U.S. and ROK troops, who were still holding fast. The Chinese soldiers began to retreat back up the slope. No more flares were fired, but as the light faded, he could make out small groups of retreating soldiers, many of them helping wounded comrades along.

"Good riddance," Pomeroy said. The voice next to him started Cole. He had almost forgotten that he wasn't alone.

"You're still alive?"

"Just barely," Pomeroy admitted.

"Kid?"

"Yeah." The kid's voice sounded shaky, either from fear or cold — maybe a little of both.

"I just hope to hell that these bastards are done for the night," Pomeroy said. "If they attack again, we're all goners."

"Amen to that," Cole said.

A single rifle shot cracked in the distance from the Chinese side, and someone cried out from one of the nearby mortar squads. Some Chinese sniper was still at work up there.

"Keep your heads down," Cole said, mostly for the kid's benefit.

For the most part, the American guns had fallen silent, letting the enemy retreat unmolested. It would have been nice to think that this was some gesture, an esprit de corps between enemies, but Cole reckoned the truth was a lot simpler. The fact was that most of the Americans were just about out of ammo.

Pomeroy was right. If the Chinese returned, the Americans were all goners.