Frozen Sniper

Chapter Twenty-Six

Cole could see that the entire column was falling apart. The unit had lost so many officers and non-commissioned officers that there were few left to direct the men and create any cohesion of purpose. They trudged along, mutual survival being the glue holding them together.

Sergeant Weber and Lieutenant Ballard did what they could to keep their own men going, but there was a lot of the column that was essentially leaderless.

"This is goddamn awful," Pomeroy muttered through gritted teeth. The escape from the Chinese had taken a lot out of him. It was clear that his feet pained him a great deal. Cole didn't want to think about what Pomeroy's feet looked like inside of those boots.

"How are them feet holding up? You want me to put you on one of the trucks?"

"Hell, no. Save the space for somebody who is actually wounded."

"Have it your way," Cole said. He wasn't going to argue. Targeted by the Chinese hit-and-run attacks, many of the trucks had become death traps for the wounded inside.

Upon returning to the column, they had discarded the unfamiliar Chinese rifles and re-armed themselves with American weapons. With so many wounded, there was no shortage of M-1 rifles and carbines. What they lacked was ammo.

Weber approached, holding a spare rifle. With surprise, Cole saw that it was a Springfield with a telescopic sight.

“You better take this,” Weber said.

“Where did that come from?”

The sergeant shrugged. “Let’s just say that the man who had it last won’t be needing it.” He handed Cole a handful of cartridges. “That is all we have. I know you will make each shot count. It is what a sniper does.”

“Thanks, Sarge. You won’t be disappointed.”

Weber nodded curtly and walked off.

Cole hefted the rifle and admired how right it felt in his hands. It had been too long.

There would be time enough later to put the rifle to use. They were surrounded by enemy soldiers, after all. But first things first. There were more mundane things to deal with.

Cole changed his socks and made the kid do the same. His own toes had an ashen white look and felt waxen and numb, but they didn't seem to be frostbitten yet. He thought that it was a strange thing how with bullets and planes and mortars flying, the fight really came down to the state of a soldier's feet.

Progress had been agonizingly slow. First, the column had been halted by a major Chinese roadblock at Hill 1221. It had taken a coordinated attack led by the task force's commanding officer to push the Chinese off the high ground so that the column could get rolling once again.

Around them, the shadows in the hills began to deepen as night approached. Tangles of thickets covered the landscape, interspersed with bounders and ravines, offering perfect cover for the creeping enemy. As the sun sank lower, so did the temperature. They had worked up a sweat running from the Chinese, and now the damp clothing next to Cole's skin was starting to chill him. There wasn’t time to change into anything dry.

He found a couple of overcoats and a slightly scorched blanket hanging off the back of a truck and grabbed them, giving one extra coat to the kid and draping the blanket across Pomeroy's shoulders. Pomeroy accepted the blanket without comment. The coat that he had grabbed for himself was far too big, like he was moving inside a tent, but in the falling temperatures he welcomed any added warmth that he could get.

"I've never seen anything like it," Pomeroy said.

"Me neither," Cole agreed. "Kid, you stick close with us, you hear?"

"I sure will," Tommy said. “One thing for sure is that I’m not going to go chasing off after any Chinese in the bushes again. It’s a sure way to get captured.”

Cole couldn’t argue with that.

The South Korean soldier who had escaped with them also walked nearby, his own unit having scattered. Cole was glad to have the man around because he had shown a lot of fighting spirit. Cole caught his eye and nodded. They couldn't understand one another's words, but the message was clear enough. I got your back and you got mine.

The closest that Cole had witnessed to what was happening to the column was the Wehrmacht collapse at the Falaise Gap in 1944. But even then, the Germans' fierce discipline and spirit had somehow held their army together as it retreated back to Germany.

Looking around, Cole thought that this was something much worse. This was bad. This was the brink of annihilation. The thought had an unreal quality because this was not something that happened to the U.S. military.

He decided that this had nothing to do with courage. He had never seen such brave, tough men. But they were out of supplies. They had run out of food and medical supplies. Worst of all, the U.N. column was mostly out of ammunition. Trucks ran out of gas and had to be abandoned, sometimes with wounded still inside. The cries of injured men who knew they were being left behind were pitiful to hear.

It didn't help that the Chinese attacked relentlessly. Thank God that they couldn't seem to coordinate their attacks, but came at the column in squads — or maybe bunches — it was hard to make much sense of the Chinese forces, which still seemed largely disorganized. What mattered were that there were so damn many of them, and that they held the high ground. Uncontested, they flowed from peak to peak bordering the road, peppering the Americans with small arms fire, grenades, and even mortars on occasion. The Americans fired back, but soldiers were running out of ammunition up and down the column. For the enemy, this was turning into a goddamn turkey shoot.

To the rear, he heard a flurry of gunfire and shouting. It was too far back for him to join the fight without abandoning Pomeroy or the kid, which he wasn't eager to do. In the confusion and the growing darkness, he might never see them again. Cole looked and saw a fight taking place around a truck not more than one hundred feet away. He couldn't tell if it was the Americans pushing back the Chinese, or the Chinese overwhelming the truck's defenders. He got his answer when he heard a dull whump and saw a flare of orange flame as the truck was hit by a Chinese grenade.

This was awful. But it was about to get a whole lot worse.

Cole was just turning to say something to Pomeroy when a rifle cracked and a bullet plucked at his overcoat. Only the fact that the overcoat was a couple sizes too big saved Cole because the round passed through billowing fabric. Whoever had shot at him had not taken that into account.

Cole shoved Tommy down. Pomeroy and the South Korean were already scrambling for cover.

Deep within Cole, the Critter growled a warning. After all, Cole was nothing if not a creature of instinct. He sensed that the shot hadn't been random. Somebody out there had singled out their little group. Maybe even singled out him. Cole had a pretty good idea who it was — their old friend the Chinese sniper. The son of a bitch must have tracked them all the way back to the column. You had to give it to him for being persistent, that was for sure.

"Stay down," Cole hissed at the others. Keeping low, he charged for the cover offered by the nearest truck. Pomeroy followed, close on his heels.

Chen had reached the retreating American column and saw with satisfaction that it was being cut to pieces. He was reminded of how, as a boy, he had once seen the family's chicken peck a snake to death. Attacked from all sides, the snake had exhausted itself striking blindly at the birds. Those hens had punished the snake in the process of killing it, just as the Chinese forces were now doing to the invaders.

There was no shortage of targets, but Chen did not immediately join the attack. He felt a sense of anger toward the captives who had escaped. They had caused him to lose face. The escapees might now think that they were safe, that they had outsmarted him, but he wanted to show them otherwise, which was why Chen was looking for them among the soldiers on the road.

He slipped along the edges of the column, moving like a wraith. He was sure that his quarry had rejoined the column in this vicinity. Now, it was just a matter of finding them among the confusion of troops and trucks.

Finally, he spotted the soldier with the markings on his helmet. Some sort of flag with crossed bars and stars. A rare smile creased Chen's face. The American was walking with a group of other men — very likely the same ones that he had escaped with. Chen had tracked them down.

Chen crept closer to the column, using caution. The Americans were in full retreat, but that did not mean they were not dangerous. When he reached the limits of the scrub brush that he was using for cover, he leveled the rifle at the soldier with the flag on his helmet. Chen considered a head shot, but decided against it as being too difficult. The target was moving, after all. Instead, he aimed for the larger target presented by the soldier's body and pulled the trigger.

To his disappointment, the soldier did not go down. Chen realized that perhaps he had become overconfident in his shooting skills. Even the best snipers missed from time to time. The soldier disappeared behind a truck while the band of men that he had been with scattered like rats.

Chen ran the bolt and loaded another round in the chamber. Where had the man gone? Finally, Chen saw the man's helmet appear from behind the truck and he settled his crosshairs on it. His finger began to take up tension on the trigger. Time to settle this business once and for all, he thought.

Cole had ducked behind the truck along with Pomeroy.

"I guess you pissed off that Chinese sniper," he said. “He came after you.”

"What do you mean, I pissed him off? What about you?"

"You're the one who led the escape," Pomeroy pointed out. "Without you, we'd be locked up in some Chinese stockade by now."

"Thank you — I guess," Cole said. "It just figures that there is a whole war on, and this fella has to take it personal."

"What are you going to do about it?" Pomeroy asked. "You can't hide behind a truck forever."

"Take off your helmet," Cole said.

"What?"

"Here's what we're gonna do to draw him out. Take off your helmet and put it on the end of your rifle, then raise it above the hood of the truck, real slow."

"This actually works?"

"Sometimes," Cole said. "It's about fifty-fifty."

Pomeroy limped into position at the front of the truck and began to lift the helmet above the hood. If the driver of the truck thought that this was odd, he didn't say anything. Hell, he was probably too damn tired to notice.

Cole had positioned himself toward the back of the truck, keeping out of sight below the truck bed, off to one side of the back tire. He slipped off his gloves so that he could operate the rifle more effectively. He used the muddy tire itself to steady the rifle.

He knew that Pomeroy had carried out his assignment when he saw the muzzle flash of the enemy sniper's rifle in the gathering gloom beyond the edge of the road. The Chinese sniper had taken the bait.

Cole fired as soon as he saw the muzzle flash. He strained his eyes to see, but was not able to make out any sort of actual target. This was all guesswork. The flash in the dark was the best that he could hope for here.

He ran the bolt and fired again in the same general direction. Though low on ammo, just maybe he would get lucky. When there was no returning fire, Cole thought maybe that was the case. Maybe he had nailed that sniper, after all. Deep inside him, the Critter was less convinced. He felt his warning instincts stir uneasily. Cole kept searching, but couldn't make out any targets in the gathering gloom.

If that Chinese sniper wasn’t dead, then where the hell had he gone?

Cole crept around the sheltered side of the truck and found Pomeroy eyeing a hole in his helmet.

"I'll tell you one thing," Cole said. "That Chinese feller can shoot."

“Be glad that wasn’t on your actual head.”

"Did you get him?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Stick your head out and see."

"No thanks. I'm good right here."

The column still hadn't moved. Up ahead, they could hear intense firing as some sort of battle got going. Word was coming back that the Chinese had put up a roadblock at a hairpin turn in the road to Hagaru-ri. There was no way around it because of the steep terrain. The only way was to go forward by fighting their way through the enemy roadblock, which wasn't proving easy. Not only were the Americans and their allies exhausted, freezing cold, and low on ammo, but there had already been a terrible price to pay in trying to remove the roadblock.

"Did you hear?" somebody said. "The lieutenant colonel has been hit. Doesn't look good. Who the hell's in charge now, anyhow?"

First the colonel, then the second-in-command who had gotten them to this point. Both brave and highly capable men. So many other lower-ranking officers had met the same fate. It was hard to say whether the Chinese had targeted the officers, or if they had simply been more exposed to enemy fire due to their leadership efforts. With so many of the officers taken out, it was starting to become a situation where it was every man for himself. Cole didn’t like it, not one bit. He didn’t always like officers or agree with them, but a unit as a whole needed leadership to hold it together.

With the column stalled by the roadblock and no clear plan of action evident, the enemy grew emboldened. More heavy firing tore into the column from the surrounding hills. Up and down the column, Chinese squads carried out hit and run attacks, brutally targeting the trucks loaded with wounded or supplies. The enemy was being drawn to the stalled soldiers like moths to a sputtering flame. As darkness fell, the situation grew more desperate.

The lieutenant came along, Sergeant Weber following in his wake. Since Cole didn’t smoke anymore, Pomeroy bummed a cigarette off the sergeant.

“What’s the matter, Sarge, you didn’t get enough fighting in the last war?” Pomeroy asked Weber.

The German shrugged. “Being a soldier was all I knew. When I came to American, it was the only job I could get.”

“Huh. You think the Wehrmacht would be in this jam?”

“You ever hear of Russia, my friend?”

The lieutenant signaled for the nearest men to gather around.

"Listen, fellas. I'm going to be honest with you. The situation is not good. The road ahead is good and plugged tighter than the cork in my grandma’s whiskey jug. We've tried to push the Chinese off, but no go. We just don't have the men or the ammo."

It was shocking to hear that they were now cut off from Hagaru-ri. The men listening absorbed the information stoically.

"What are your orders, sir?" asked a soldier who looked a decade older than the lieutenant.

"We all know that this road leads south to Hagaru-ri," he said. "What we don't know is whether or not we still hold Hagaru-ri. The base may have been overrun. We just don't know, but it's the only chance we've got. The thing is, there's another way to get there besides the road. Basically, the lake runs parallel to the road. If you get out there on the ice and head south, you'll reach our guys — if they're still there."

"Are you saying we ought to make a run for it? What about the wounded? We can't just leave them."

"Listen, I am not saying it's every man for himself. Stick together. I'm going to take one of these trucks and try to get it across the ice. I don't even know if there's enough gas for that, but I'm sure going to try."

The lieutenant moved away toward the nearest truck, and a group of men gathered around him — not more than twenty. It suddenly became clear that this was all the direction that they were going to get. The lieutenant had claimed that it wasn't every man for himself — but he was wrong about that. Surrounded and trapped, the task force soldiers now had to survive any way that they could. The unit was splintering.

Knowing that he had come to a crossroads of sorts, Cole considered his options. He always had been a loner, since his earliest days hunting and trapping in the mountains back home. He knew that his own chances of survival were likely better if he struck out on his own. Alone, he could easily dodge the Chinese and reach the American lines — wherever they were. His best option was to go it alone.

He looked around at the other faces nearby: Pomeroy, the kid, and half a dozen others he barely knew. They looked scared but determined. No way in hell would he ever leave them alone.

Cole nodded at another truck. "You heard the lieutenant. Let's grab that truck and get as many of those wounded out of here as we can."