Having made their rough camp for the night, they soon learned that they were not alone. Along with the Filipino guerrillas, a handful of women emerged from the forest, appearing silently out of the shadows. They carried jugs of water and baskets of food, which they quickly distributed to the guerrilla soldiers.
The soldiers spanned many ages, but most were young men. After all, such a rugged existence, not to mention following the steep jungle trails, was a young man’s game.
Deke didn’t know the language, but it was clear to him that many of the women seemed to know these rough soldiers. There was a tenderness between them, smiles and looks of concern over fresh wounds. Surely these women must be the mothers, wives, and sisters of the Filipino soldiers.
The priest moved among the men and women. He had a rough-but-gentle manner that made him a natural leader. He laughed with some and bowed his head in prayer with others. He seemed to know just what each person needed to tap their inner strength. After a few minutes, the women made their goodbyes and slipped back into the tropical forest. Apparently it was too dangerous for them to stay.
Eventually, Father Francisco came around to the soldiers of Patrol Easy, who had claimed a corner of the clearing as their own.
“I’ve got to warn you that we’re a difficult flock, Padre,” Lieutenant Steele said.
“Yeah, we’re sure as hell not a flock of sheep,” Philly said.
Deke noted that the priest did not seem daunted in any way as he approached.
“Here, let me take a look at that shoulder,” the priest said. “It looks as if it has bled through the bandage.”
“It’s just a scratch,” Bat said gruffly. Far be it from a marine to complain about being shot — never mind the fact that his shoulder was now covered in a bloody bandage. Honcho had done the best that he could earlier. However, it was just a field dressing. Bat’s shoulder would need more medical attention soon.
“Then you will not mind if I take a look,” the priest persisted. “I have had quite a lot of practice attending to wounds, unfortunately.”
Bat shrugged, which turned out to be a mistake, because the motion caused him to wince.
Deftly, the priest pulled back the bandages to inspect the wound. “Through and through, praise God. You are fortunate, my son. Another inch lower, or to the left, and you would be speaking with Saint Peter right now rather than a lowly priest.”
Deke also couldn’t help but wonder about the caliber of the Japanese sniper rifle. There was no doubt that the Japanese snipers were deadly enough. However, if he’d been firing a heavier round, the outcome for Bat might have been very different.
Father Francisco inspected the wound and changed the bandage expertly, doing so with practiced hands that barely caused Bat to grimace. “There, you will heal now. Just do not get shot again.”
“Easier said than done, Padre,” Bat said. “You know all about that hill we’ve got to go up in the morning to take out that battery. Easier said than done.”
“Do not worry, my son. I will be there with you — and so will God.”
Nearby, Ball snorted. “Padre, I know this guy pretty well. If that bullet had hit a little harder, I can guarantee that he’d be roasting like a marshmallow over a campfire right now. Down in that other place, you know.”
Father Francisco shook his head. “Do not be so sure. What you might think of as ‘sin’ would probably not get Saint Peter to so much as raise his eyebrows these days. Did you drink too much or enjoy the company of women? Play cards? These are merely the foibles of young men. I am sure that God did not intend for us to live as saints all the time. No, my son. Men are fools and will always do weak, foolish things. Usually, these are sins against ourselves. God can forgive us those sins. This is why there is confession and purgatory.” The priest shook his head. “Other sins cannot be forgiven so easily. I am talking about cruelty. I have seen terrible things these last two years during the Japanese occupation. Innocent men shot for no reason. Women raped. Churches destroyed. Our sisters in faith terrorized. Things so terrible that I have been caused to question my faith at times.”
Deke was sure that the priest could have found an easier refuge than the jungle, hiding out with these guerrilla fighters, but he had some inkling as to the path the priest had chosen. “Has being out here in the jungle, helping these Filipino guerrillas, helped you keep your faith?” Deke asked.
“Indeed, it has, my young friend.” The priest studied the raking scars on Deke’s face. “Did you get those in the war?”
“No.”
When Deke didn’t elaborate, the priest didn’t press him for an answer. Instead, he nodded in the lieutenant’s direction. “I also noticed that your lieutenant has one eye. How unusual. Under the rules of your army, he could go home, could he not?”
“I reckon he wants to stay and fight.”
“Good,” the priest said. “He seems to see more than some men who have two good eyes.”
If the priest had chosen to do so, he could have gone into far more detail about the atrocities carried out by the Japanese against the church — indeed, against the entire civilian population. After all, the story of the Catholic church in the Philippines was a long and thorny one. Jesuit priests had arrived with the Spanish in the early fifteen hundreds, and the first mass had been celebrated on Leyte. The Filipinos had quickly embraced their new religion. The church had brought education with it, and Western ideals, even if they were sometimes imperfect.
But the church had not been without enemies. Pirates raided the coastal towns and villages established by the Spanish, killing the priests and enslaving the Christian converts. Spanish forces had finally put an end to the pirates.
The church had taken another blow centuries later when United States forces had won the Spanish-American War. The Philippines became a US possession, and all Spanish citizens had been required to leave — including the priests who had been educated in Spain and were thus considered to harbor a colonial mindset and foreign loyalties. In their place, a new generation of priests ran the churches and tended to the flock. These priests had been born in the Philippines and were thus closer to the people.
Father Francisco was part of this new generation that had grown and flourished during the decades of American administration. Of course, the US promoted freedom of religion as well as a healthy separation of church and state.
Then came the arrival of the Japanese in 1941. Since then, the church had suffered greatly at the cruel hands of the Japanese, who targeted any organization that they thought might undermine their authority.
Bat nodded as he inspected the neatly wrapped bandage, and the priest moved off to talk with some of the Filipinos. “It’s all well and good to have a priest and God on your side, but what I’d really like tomorrow morning is a company of marines to go up that hill with us,” he said.
“This is all we’ve got,” Ball pointed out.
“Then I guess it’s gonna have to do.”
The soldiers had spread out in the space between the low-growing molave trees. In reality, there wasn’t much of a camp to make. They had been traveling as light as they could. Aside from weapons and explosives and ammunition, they didn’t even have a blanket between them, but it didn’t matter.
This was the tropics — the temperature never fell below seventy-five degrees, even at night. They settled for tugging their jackets more tightly around themselves as best as they could and fell asleep almost instantly. They’d been awake for most of the previous night, and so they were exhausted, to say the least.
After the long tropical twilight, night came on, and the soldiers around Deke slept fitfully. There was a lot riding on what would happen in the morning — not only were their own lives at stake, but they couldn’t help but think of the hundreds or thousands who might die if they couldn’t knock out that battery.
Deke cleaned his rifle using the small bottle of gun oil and patches that he’d brought along for that purpose. It was too dark to really see if he was doing a good job, but it didn’t matter. The feel of the metal under his fingertips was reassuring, and he worked the oil into the action until the steel was almost silky to the touch.
He felt a hand squeeze his shoulder. It was the lieutenant, who had taken the first watch.
“Better get some sleep, son,” he said. The lieutenant was old enough that Deke almost felt like an actual son at times. Not for the first time, he realized how much he missed his own father. He just hoped that if his pa was looking down on him from somewhere above, that Deke would make him proud. “I know for a fact that you and that rifle won’t let us down.”
Deke said, “I just want to finish up here.”
The lieutenant nodded and moved off.
Deke reassembled the rifle, finally sliding the bolt back into place.
He recalled the Japanese sniper that he’d seen earlier that day. He wasn’t afraid of the enemy sniper — not exactly. After all, he had managed to survive the Samurai Sniper that he’d run into on Guam, a marksman who had been every bit his equal. The Samurai Sniper had escaped with the small number of Japanese troops who had managed to flee Guam as the American noose tightened. Deke wasn’t in any hurry to meet him again.
If the sniper that he’d crossed paths with today was half as good, reaching those guns at the top of the hill wouldn’t be easy. He reassembled the rifle carefully, knowing that tomorrow might put him and the Springfield to the test.
Not for the first time, Deke wondered just what he had gotten himself into. He sure was a long way from the mountains. Back home, the mountains would be well into fall, with crisp mornings, cool nights where the stars shone clear over the peaks, maybe a fox barking in the distance, and the leaves turning orange and red so that it almost looked as if the hills were on fire.
The warm, humid jungle was a long way from that. The only sounds came from singing insects and the distant drone of an aircraft — most likely a Jap plane on patrol. To be sure, they were deep in enemy territory. At the moment, it seemed almost impossible that they would ever wrest this island — not to mention the entire Philippines — from Japanese control.
Still, Deke couldn’t think of a place where he’d rather be — among these good men, helping these people, fighting the Japanese. He sometimes wondered if that meant there was something wrong with him.
The others would do their duty, but for Deke, this was something else altogether. This was what he was meant to do, the same way that a wolf was meant to hunt.
The only other member of Patrol Easy who seemed to feel the same way was Lieutenant Steele. In his own way, the lieutenant seemed just as content as Deke to be here.
Steele was still awake, pulling the wrapper off a chocolate tropical bar and munching it slowly. The look on his face indicated that his thoughts were elsewhere — probably on their next move. He kept his shotgun upright between his knees. Deke also kept awake and stared into the jungle, his ears straining for the slightest sound. But all he could hear were a few birds and the ever-present insects gossiping in the treetops.
Deke closed his eyes and fell asleep almost instantly. It was like when he’d been a boy on the farm and had barely been able to get into bed before falling asleep.
Before he drifted off, Deke took some satisfaction in the fact that they’d been on the run from the Japanese troops most of the day, hiding out, but in the morning, it would be time to bring the fight back to the enemy.
The surprise attack on their hilltop fortress had put the Japanese on high alert. No enemy ships had been spotted, and yet a small enemy force had launched an attack. This brought on a flurry of doubt and questions that struck at the confidence of the Japanese. Where had the enemy come from? What was their mission? The appearance of the enemy soldiers had created uncertainty — and anger.
One of those angry soldiers was Ikeda, who was holding his sniper rifle with a white-knuckled grip. Truth be told, Ikeda felt thoroughly red-faced in the wake of the surprise attack. After all, he had seen the signs that raiders had landed on the beach. If only he had been a little faster, he might have cut them off or given Noguchi more of a warning so that they could have been prepared.
In part, he thought that the attack on the hill was his fault. Somehow, it felt as if he had allowed or enabled the attack. Over and over again, he reviewed his actions, wondering where he had failed.
Ikeda knew that he had held off making any warning shots because he had hoped to overtake the raiders and didn’t want to give himself away. Some part of him had wanted to play the hero, and he realized that had been a costly mistake.
Given his personal failures, his only thought now was to go after the raiders. He had shot at least one of them with his sniper rifle, even if he evidently hadn’t killed the enemy soldier outright, and he would be more than happy to finish the job.
“Sir, I will organize a squad to pursue the enemy,” he said to Noguchi. He had found the officer outside the bunker to the massive battery, busy directing new machine-gun emplacements.
Noguchi put his hands on his hips and blew out a big breath of air. “No,” he said.
Ikeda was stunned. “Sir? I do not understand. What if they come back? We must hunt them down first.”
Noguchi appeared surprisingly calm, despite the fact that the enemy soldiers had attacked the hill. The rest of the Japanese soldiers on the hill, men and officers alike, did not look nearly as calm. They ran in all directions, jumping into trenches, having traded their shovels for rifles. The officer watched it all and nodded with satisfaction. Rotund and short, he suddenly resembled a Buddha figure more than ever, a reminder that Noguchi was not a career military man but an engineer who had been pressed into service as an officer.
Ikeda scowled, thinking that a real officer would have ordered him after the raiders. He shifted from foot to foot, unable to contain his energy and his anger.
“The enemy will not return anytime soon. Not today,” Noguchi said. “Maybe tonight, under cover of darkness. There were no more than a dozen raiders, if even that many. What can so few hope to accomplish? They will need to rely on stealth — and darkness, if they have any hope of a successful attack on the battery.”
“The battery?”
“Of course, Ikeda. Why else would American soldiers be here? There is no doubt that they plan an invasion. They know that they must destroy this battery before their invasion of our little beach. But their hopes are misguided.”
“With all respect, sir, let me take a group of men and track them down.”
Noguchi clapped a meaty hand on Ikeda’s shoulder. While the sniper looked grim and angry, Noguchi had a smile on his face. “I want you here, Ikeda. Why chase the fox when he will come to you? It is likely that these enemy soldiers are highly trained. On this hill, we have every advantage that in the jungle we do not have. Not only that, we all know that there are Filipino guerrillas at work under the direction of that Jesuit priest.”
The Japanese knew all about the priest who lived in the forest alongside the Filipino fighters. It was true that the guerrillas had been a constant thorn in their side during the months of work. While the Filipinos stopped short of an all-out attack, they had constantly harassed the Japanese supply lines. The guerrillas knew better than to attack organized troops and patrols. However, soldiers who made the mistake of venturing too far into the undergrowth often did not come back. It had been a great cause of frustration to Ikeda, who found it hard to chase ghosts that simply melted into the jungle and who knew every animal trail and ravine so well.
But he wasn’t about to admit as much to this officer.
“I do not fear a few peasants and their filthy monk!” he shouted.
Noguchi raised his eyebrows at the outburst. As casual as Noguchi seemed compared to other officers, considering that he was an engineer and builder first and foremost, even he had his limits to breaches of discipline, and that included questioning orders.
“I appreciate your fighting spirit, Ikeda. Truly I do, and we will put it to use yet. You see, I am not talking about fear, but about strategy.”
Ikeda still wasn’t sure that he understood. His every instinct was still to go on the hunt. Yet he had no choice but to respond, “Of course, sir.”
“Our orders are not to chase raiders but to prepare for the defense of this hill — which is a key to defending this island. It may seem like a distant outpost, an unimportant task, but make no mistake that Leyte is a stepping-stone to our homeland. That is why the Americans want this hill, and this island. You and that rifle of yours will not allow the raiders to get this far, will you, Ikeda? Your men will be in position to defend this hill at any cost against another attempt to destroy this bunker and those guns. That is why I want you here, not chasing shadows around the forest.”
Chastened, Ikeda’s doubts about Noguchi had abated. The officer seemed well aware of the threat but was not allowing himself to make a hotheaded reaction.
Ikeda straightened, coming to attention. “Hai!”
“Good. We shall wait for the Americans to return — and when they do, this time we shall be ready.” Noguchi nodded at the crew that was busy around the entrance to the bunker, digging frantically. “Besides, if the raiders do make it this far, to the top of the hill, there will be a surprise waiting for them.”