Hunter Sniper

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Just after first light, Philly and Rodeo reappeared, Yoshio with them. Deke was already awake, wondering what the day would bring. He watched the trio scramble to safety before the Japanese had gotten warmed up for the day. He had to admit that they were a sight for sore eyes.

“Well now, ain’t this a surprise,” he said. “I thought you three would stay back at the beach if you could, tanning your hides.”

“What, and miss all the fun?” Philly asked. “Not a chance. Besides, somebody needs to show you how to fight the Japanese. I’d say you’ve done a bum job of it so far.”

“Bum job? Philly, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“What I mean is, the Japanese are still here, aren’t they?”

Deke nodded toward the streetscape with its myriad hiding places. “I hate to say it, but you’d find more Japanese here than you’d find cats at a fish fry.”

“That’s just what I thought, but without the fish and the cats. Where the hell do you come up with this stuff?”

Yoshio had come straight from Captain Merrick, with the message that the rest of the company would be coming up behind them. The captain had made it clear that he planned to make one more push today in hopes of having the Japanese cleared out of Ormoc.

It wasn’t going to be easy, and it promised to be bloody. Deke just hoped that he could hold up his end of the bargain.

“How is Alphabet doing?” Deke asked.

“Doc says he’ll make it. He got lucky. Chances are that he’ll be on his way back to the States before long.” Philly shook his head. “It was touch and go there for a while.”

Deke nodded. “Alphabet always was a tough customer.”

“You look like hell, by the way,” Philly said. “You’ve got bags under your eyes as deep as foxholes. Anyhow, take these. Doc Harmon’s orders. I saw him when we brought Alphabet in.”

He dropped a couple of large pills into Deke’s palm.

“What the hell are these?”

“Got me. But Doc said that it will cure what ails you.”

The pills were so big that they looked like something you would give a horse. He shrugged and choked them down with the help of a few gulps from his canteen.

Even without the pills, Deke was feeling better. Thanks to Danilo having kept watch through the night, Deke had finally gotten some much-needed sleep. That deep and dreamless sleep was like a healing tonic for his tired body. The aftermath of the fever had left him feeling hollowed out, but functional.

He had slept so deeply that he’d woken up in a confused panic, looking for his scoped Springfield.

“Where’s my rifle? Where’s my rifle?”

“Hey, take it easy,” said the clerk, who had been trying to snatch a few winks before the sun rose fully. He stared at Deke’s hand, which was clenched around the hilt of his large bowie knife. A little madness danced in the sniper’s eyes. “Nobody took your rifle.”

Deke realized that the rifle was right where he’d left it, within reach. He took it in both hands, reassured by the familiar heft of wood and steel. The rifle felt alive in his hands, ready for action.

And so was Deke. To his relief, his fever had broken. Danilo’s tea must have worked its magic. Maybe it had been the doc’s pills. Did they act that fast? Either way, he felt better. He realized that he had spent the previous day feeling as if he were looking through a veil of gauze. Thankfully that veil had lifted.

He raised his head, sniffing the air like a wolf before the hunt.

The morning air carried the smell of burned wood, sweaty soldiers, mud, gunpowder, and a whiff of rotting flesh and jungle decay from the distant hills. The rising sun felt warm on his face as it chased away the night’s shadows.

“Let’s move out,” he said.

What was left of Patrol Easy got to their feet — worn, tired, battered. Nobody griped or argued. The second day of the battle for Ormoc had begun.

They moved out through the streets, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. Every step was fraught with the possibility of carrying them into Japanese fields of fire that had been set up to ambush the Americans.

“Where the hell are these bastards?” Philly wanted to know.

“They’re here, all right,” Deke said. “I can smell ’em.”

Seconds later, a rifle cracked, sending them all scrambling for cover. Philly dove behind the remains of a cart, while Yoshio tumbled behind a pile of rocks that had once been someone’s garden wall. Danilo simply crouched in the street, his eyes scanning the city landscape.

At the sound of the shot, Deke had frantically searched the street ahead, looking for any sign of movement. They were looking at a street filled with small houses. The Japanese sniper might be hiding in any of them.

There was only one thing to do, and that was to go house to house, clearing out any Japanese.

“Pair up and let’s sweep this street clean,” Deke said. Nobody had put him in charge, and he didn’t actually outrank anybody, but he had stepped into the role naturally. Anyhow, this wasn’t their first rodeo, and they all knew what needed to be done. “Kid, you’re with me. Who’s still got some grenades?”

They all looked at one another, but nobody had any grenades left. There just weren’t enough to go around in the first place, but a grenade was extremely useful for clearing a house.

“Everybody’s out,” Philly said. “I knew it. Dammit, why don’t they get us some grenades?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Deke said. “Everybody knows what to do.”

The men fanned out, Danilo with Yoshio, Philly with Rodeo. There were a few of the rear-echelon men with them, the poor bastards trying their best to look like they knew what they were doing. To their credit, they carried out Deke’s orders without complaint. Everybody just wanted to stay alive.

A rifle cracked again. This time the sniper had found his mark. One of the other soldiers crumpled and went down. His grease-blackened hands, still clutching his rifle as he fell, indicated that he’d been a mechanic before being sent to the front lines. He had done his duty to the fullest, dying a hero, but dead all the same.

By firing, the enemy sniper had given himself away.

Deke was almost certain that the rifle shot had come from a nearby house. It was a poor-looking place, made mostly of thatched walls with a tin roof. There was a burned patch where debris from the artillery bombardment had caught fire but had not managed to burn down the whole place. The thatch walls wouldn’t have been any good at stopping bullets, but there did seem to be a lot of windows, which offered the sniper an advantage.

“He’s in there,” Deke whispered to the clerk. “Cover me.”

Without waiting for a response, he ran toward the house, bobbing and weaving as he went. When he ran, Deke had a naturally loping gait that made him a difficult target — which was a good thing, considering that whoever was in there took a potshot at him. The bullet kicked up mud in the street. In reply, Deke heard a couple of quick shots from the clerk behind him. He probably couldn’t hit a damn thing, but the enemy sniper wouldn’t know that.

Deke sprinted the last few feet, praying that he wasn’t suddenly going to feel a bullet strike him in the chest.

The door to the thatch hut was closed. Deke gave it a kick and thundered inside, figuring that the enemy sniper would be right in front of him.

Nobody.

He worried that the Japanese soldier had given him the slip, but then saw the interior door leading to another room. The door was shut tight, and the sniper would certainly have heard him kicking the door open. He’d be on the other side of this one, waiting for it to open so he could put a round from the Arisaka right into Deke’s guts.

But it couldn’t be helped.

He kicked the door and stormed in.

There was the Japanese, right in front of him.

Even at this point in the war, Deke had rarely been up close and personal with many enemy soldiers.

The Japanese was a squat, sturdy man, with a long torso and short legs wrapped to the knees in puttees. He had a flat face big as a pie pan and an orange-yellow coloring that did, in fact, remind Deke of a pumpkin pie. This close, the enemy soldier smelled like sweat, and something vaguely fishy emanated from his pores.

The two men faced each other. They weren’t more than twelve feet apart, and yet Deke held his fire. The Japanese hadn’t shot at him. Did this Jap intend to surrender?

Not at all. It became apparent that the Japanese sniper’s Arisaka rifle was hung up in some kind of harness that the Japanese had rigged to steady his aim. The harness had been tied off into the window frame, giving the soldier the ability to swivel instantly and fire accurately at whatever target presented itself — as long as that target was outside. The Jap was having a hard time getting his rifle free, and the narrow window frame prevented him from turning the rifle into the room and pointing it at Deke.

The soldier’s frantic movements seemed to border on panic, but not for long.

With a frustrated bark that might have been a curse, the Japanese soldier let go of the rifle and reached for the knife at his belt. It sure as hell wasn’t a gesture of surrender. The look on the other soldier’s face said it all — it was an expression of sheer outrage. He barked again as he drew the knife.

There was no need to aim the Springfield at this proximity, only to point it at the enemy soldier.

Deke fired.

The sound of the gunshot in the small space made Deke’s ears ring. The bullet hit the soldier in the chest. The smaller man made a sound like oomph as all those foot-pounds of muzzle energy knocked the breath clean out of him.

The Japanese soldier’s look of anger instantly transformed into one of shock and surprise.

Knife forgotten, his hand shifted to the oozing hole in his torso. He took his hand away and looked at the bloody fingers as if inspecting them, then almost absently touched his face, leaving streaks of red like war paint.

Then the soldier began to slide down the wall.

Deke had won the fight, but he wasn’t sure that he would call it a victory.

There was a sound behind him, and Deke dropped and spun, coming within a split second of shooting the clerk, who had finally followed him into the thatched hut.

“You got him!” the clerk said, eyes widening at the sight of the enemy soldier. “I’ve never seen a live one up close.”

“Go on and finish him off if you want to,” Deke said. “You can tell your grandkids how you killed a Japanese face-to-face.”

It was clear from the way that his eyes flicked back and forth between them that the Japanese soldier was still alive, listening to their conversation, even if it was unlikely that he understood a word.

“Maybe we can capture him,” the clerk said, moving closer to the soldier. “Get Yoshio in here, talk to him—”

Deke stepped around the clerk and pulled the trigger again, the sharp rifle blast like a thunderclap. The Japanese slumped, sightless eyes staring.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“He was done for. Might as well put him out of his misery,” Deke said.

Already a fly had come out of nowhere and settled on the dead man’s open eye.

“Do you think he’s the one that shot your buddy?”

“Doubt it,” Deke said. “He’d have to be up higher, not hiding in a hut. But look at the sniper rig he had. I’ll bet this son of a bitch shot plenty of our boys. Don’t go feeling sorry for him.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Deke headed toward the door. “Come on. There’s lots more where he came from. Maybe one of them will even surrender for you, but I doubt it.”

Up and down the street, soldiers were clearing the houses. Most of the houses were empty, but in others there was a short, sharp firefight. By some miracle it was a lopsided affair, with none of the soldiers even being wounded.

“Do you think we got ’em all?” the clerk asked.

The answer came soon enough, when they were met by more sniper fire.

Deke didn’t know where the shot had come from.

But the clerk had seen movement. He pointed excitedly. “There he is, in that window!”

“I’ll be damned, but you’ve got good eyes for a typist,” Deke muttered, then ran for cover.

He slid behind a pile of rocks next to a burned-out vehicle, the clerk running up right behind him.

Deke reached up and pulled him down.

Another bullet whipped down the empty canyon of the street. So far their progress through the city had been slow, hampered by enemy snipers.

When Deke peered over the pile of stones, another bullet came zipping past.

“Stay down,” Deke said. “He’s got us in range, that’s for damn sure.”

Philly came sliding in next. “What’s the plan?”

Deke thought it over. It would be hard to see where the sniper was, considering that he now had them pinned down. He picked up a sliver of mirror that was lying in the street, a relic from the destroyed car. By angling the mirror low and studying the reflection, he was able to study the street behind him.

It was a good thing they had found the mirror, because Deke did not feel confident about raising his head up — it would likely get blown off.

“He’s in that farthest window on that second-floor house. Got to be.”

This was a time when Deke thought it would be nice to have a couple of grenades, or even Private Frazier with his BAR. But they didn’t have any of that.

“Far,” Philly observed.

“You’d be right about that,” Deke said.

But not too far.

Deke grinned.

What he needed was a target. Something to shoot at.

They had to get the sniper to show himself, at least for a moment.

“Hat on a stick?”

“Nah, he ain’t gonna fall for that.”

He knew they had only one chance at this.

“Get ready,” the clerk said. “I’m going to stand up. When I do that, you shoot him.”

“Wait—” Philly said.

“Get ready,” said Deke, gripping his rifle. Nearby, Danilo gave Deke a nod.

An instant later, the clerk stood up, then bobbed back down like a jack-in-the-box. The Japanese sniper shot at him.

But at that exact moment, Deke leaped up and fired.

The Japanese sniper fell, his body draped over the windowsill.

Philly whistled in admiration. “That was some shot, Corn Pone.”

“I reckon I had some help with that one,” Deke said, catching the clerk’s eye. “I wouldn’t go making a habit of that, you crazy dang fool.”

The clerk looked away, but not before a shy smile lit his face.

Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for the next crack of sniper fire.

The silence was interrupted by shouts behind them and the rumble of a tank. The rest of the company was moving up, possibly with the rest of the division, from the sounds of it, steamrolling up and over the enemy. At least there wouldn’t be any enemy snipers lurking in the ruins to shoot them in the back.

The troops rolled forward, engaging with any Japanese who stood in their way.

Hour by hour, the firing died away.

Before dark, General Bruce, the division commander, had rolled into the city in his Jeep. He was able to walk freely down streets in a manner that a few hours earlier would have gotten him killed.

Pleased, he sent a simple message back to headquarters:

“Have rolled two sevens in Ormoc. Organized Japanese defenses wiped out. Bruce.”

The general’s message said it all.

Ormoc, the last large town on Leyte, was now in US hands.