Rising Sniper

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Deke and Philly struck out on their own, leaving the trail to bushwhack their way across the face of the hill. They could see blue sky above the treetops, but down among the palm fronds the morning remained dark and shadowy, which worked in their favor. The surrounding vegetation was lush, green, and silent, absorbing the sound of them passing through.

Deke put his head down and ran hard up the path, not worrying about stealth at this point. He doubted that there would be enemy troops on this part of the hill. Besides, the earlier that they hit the Japs on the slope, the better.

Lean and hard from years of working on the farm, not to mention boot camp and hard living in the Pacific, Deke maintained a pace that forced Philly and the others to struggle to keep up. Despite the shady surroundings, they were all soon sweating mightily in the tropical heat and humidity.

“You must be in a hurry to get shot,” Philly grumbled.

“Sooner we get there, the better our chances,” Deke replied, and lengthened his stride so that Philly had to struggle even harder to keep up.

Yoshio and the guerrillas accompanied them for part of the way. It was more than a little disconcerting to see Yoshio decked out like a Japanese soldier, right down to the familiar fatigue cap that Jap officers favored. It was nice to see that Yoshio had promoted himself to officer status, Deke thought. Then again, having Yoshio look the part of an officer was part of the subterfuge.

The Filipino guerrillas also wore bits and pieces of Japanese uniforms. They sure as hell wouldn’t pass a parade inspection, but from a distance, it ought to be enough to fool the Japs — at least for a few crucial minutes.

Philly had also taken notice and said, “Yoshio sure looks like a Nip.”

“Yeah, but at least he’s our Nip.”

There remained a language barrier between the Americans and the Filipinos, but Father Francisco had given the guerrillas their instructions that morning. They seemed to understand the mission well enough.

Deke was reassured by the presence of his old pal, Pinstripe. Unlike Philly, the wiry Filipino had no trouble keeping up with Deke, although, after the incident with the Jap sentry, Pinstripe remained wary of him. He kept his fellow guerrillas moving along in Deke’s wake.

Pinstripe also seemed to know a few words of English. When they came to a thick wall of vegetation that blocked their progress, Deke was suddenly aware of a whirring sound and the flash of a blade past his ear. He flinched, taken by surprise by the sight of Pinstripe hacking through the underbrush with his bolo knife, which had a blade at least a foot and a half in length. The other guerrillas followed suit.

“Ándale,” Pinstripe said, wielding the bolo until a kind of doorway opened in the undergrowth, revealing an animal path ahead. “Hurry.”

Deke didn’t need to be told twice, but surged ahead. They were still far enough down the slope that there were trees and jungle scrub to give them cover. The tall palm shrubs reached above their heads, keeping them obscured from any curious eyes above. They moved steadily uphill, rushing to get into position before the second half of the team began their attack on the bunker high above.

“Are we going in the right direction?” Philly asked, gasping for breath.

“Gonna find out.”

Soon, it was time for Yoshio and the band of Filipinos to go their own way. They were going to strike out directly across the face of the hill, while Deke and Philly moved still higher.

“Good luck, Yoshio,” Deke said. “I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”

“Kōun o,” Yoshio replied, then trotted away with the guerrillas who were going to impersonate Japanese troops. Pinstripe brought up the rear, watching for any stray Japanese who might give them away.

“I wish people would talk English around here. What do you think Yoshio just said?” Philly asked.

“I’m pretty sure it was Japanese for, ‘Stop asking so many damn questions.’ You’re making everybody nervous.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

They reached the front part of the steep hillside that had been transformed into the Japanese defenses. Most of the trees and vegetation had been cleared, leaving the hillside open. Of course, the ground was veined with trenches and pockmarked with pillboxes and firing pits. Some were clearly marked by the baskets of earth and even concrete that had been used to fortify them, while others were cleverly hidden.

Deke hoped that he never had to attack and capture this hill — it would be a nightmare. What they planned on doing was going to be hard enough. To take this hill would require boots on the ground because bombing alone from ships or from the air would never be enough to completely wipe out these defenses.

He looked toward the summit. The top of Hill 522 was basically divided into two ridges that branched out from the main spine of the hill to create a kind of Y shape, one branch of the Y being slightly higher than the other. Near the peak of the topmost branch of the Y, Deke could see the cave-like entrance of the bunker that protected the powerful Japanese battery. From up there, the Japanese gunners would have a commanding view of the approaches from the sea and beach. With any luck, the rest of Patrol Easy would be hitting that bunker soon.

Deke would leave them to it. His plan was to climb to the lower branch of the Y that formed the summit. Up there, he would make himself at home in one of the Japanese rifle pits. He and his Springfield would give the Japs plenty to think about.

But first, they had to get there, which was easier said than done. Having entered the cleared portion of the hill, they had lost their cover and now had to rely on the series of Japanese trenches to traverse the face of the slope. The trenches would have been fine if it hadn’t been for all the damn Japanese.

Sprinting up a trench, they went around a switchback and came face-to-face with a soldier holding a shovel. Apparently, the Japanese still weren’t finished with their fortification efforts.

The Jap shouted something that sounded like, “Hey!”

Deke was so startled that he froze. Lucky for him, the Jap did too. They stood for a split second, staring at each other.

Deke didn’t want to fire a shot or risk damaging the rifle and its delicate telescopic sight by swatting the soldier with it. Still shaken by the incident this morning, he was reluctant to use his knife again.

The Jap started to open his mouth and might have shouted more to sound the alarm, if Philly hadn’t surged past Deke and hit the soldier in the forehead with the butt of his rifle. Whunk. The Jap went down instantly and didn’t move.

“Thanks,” Deke muttered.

“Aren’t you glad you brought me along? That probably messed up my rifle, though. I hope it can still shoot straight.”

“Is he dead?”

“If he isn’t, then he’s going to have one hell of a headache when he wakes up. Either way, who the hell cares? Let’s keep moving.”

They kept going, this time with Philly in the lead. He kept his rifle ready, butt first; however, they didn’t encounter any other enemy troops. Apparently it was still too early for the work crews to be out in full force.

After another minute of hard climbing, they reached the secondary ridge, from which they could look down and see the rest of the hill sweeping away. Slightly above them was the topmost ridge with the brooding presence of the bunker. All in all, Deke had a good view in all directions.

That was when Deke spotted what he was looking for. It was a Japanese version of a foxhole, encircled by roughly woven baskets filled with soil and partially covered with a tarp that must have been intended to hide the hole from above. He slid into the hole, with Philly right behind him. The hole smelled of dirt, of course, but something else — dirty canvas on account of the tarp, and urine, like maybe some Jap had taken a leak in the hole.

Never mind that. This was prime real estate, a good shooting spot, even if it smelled bad. He was sure the location was exactly why the Japanese had put a sniper nest here. This morning, he would be using it against them.

“This is where I set up shop,” Deke said. He pointed to a similar foxhole nearby, close enough that the two men could communicate easily. “You take that one. If the Japs drop a mortar on my head, no sense in both of us gettin’ killed. If they get me, you keep shooting. Remember, every Jap we kill is one less to shoot at Yoshio or the rest of our boys up on that hill.”

“I’ll be damned. It’s gonna be like a shooting gallery!” Philly exclaimed. There was no doubt this was a good position, offering a clear field of fire down the slope, which was why the defenders had put a foxhole here in the first place.

“It will be a turkey shoot, all right, at least until they figure out we’re here.” In the back of Deke’s mind, it nagged at him that anyone shooting down at them from the ridge with the bunker would have a distinct advantage. He hoped to hell that the Jap sniper that he’d run into yesterday didn’t figure that out, or it was going to be a pretty lousy morning dodging bullets.

Besides that, the Japs had all sorts of nasty surprises up their sleeve, from their grenades that looked like cans of beans, to so-called knee mortars for close combat, to the Nambu machine guns that could plow up a field quicker than Farmer Brown’s prize mule.

“Listen up, your job is to watch my back. Shoot any of those Nip bastards who come sneaking around up here.”

“You got it.”

They’d been hurrying all morning, but now was the time to take it slow. In his deliberate way, Deke got organized. Haste makes waste, Pa used to say. He took off the small haversack that he had carried up the hill on his back and set it on the edge of the hole, then laid his rifle across it to make a passable benchrest for his rifle. He scooped dirt over the haversack and the rifle barrel where it protruded from the hole to help disguise them. He kept the muzzle clear, of course.

It helped that he had already wrapped strips of dirty fabric across the rifle and the telescopic sight itself to break up the outline of the weapon. He worried about the glint of glass from the telescopic sight, but that couldn’t be helped. If the Japs figured out where he was hunkered down, they would be sure to rain hellfire upon his head — and on Philly’s head as well.

He backed himself deeper into the hole, then pulled the tarp across. Once he started shooting, enemy eyes would be hard-pressed to spot him unless they did happen to pick up on that reflection off his riflescope. He reached for his canteen and took a long drink of water, which might be his last for a while.

In stark contrast to the jungle growth, the hill spread out below him was barren of any vegetation, a vast network of trenches, pillboxes, and dugouts. The scene before him looked like one of those pictures of the trenches in an old photograph from World War I, but all built on a slope. Jap soldiers moved about, carrying shovels or bossing around the crews of Filipino workers, oblivious to the US sniper who had them in his sights.

Then he settled himself behind the rifle, butt pressed into the cup of his shoulder, cheek to stock, eye to the scope, finger on the trigger. He breathed in, breathed out.

It nagged at him that if some Jap sneaked up behind him, he’d be a goner. He’d have to trust that Philly was watching his back. Now he’d just have to wait for the show to begin, and that depended on Yoshio and his band of Filipino guerrillas.

Right on cue, he heard shouting down the slope. Through the scope, he saw a small group of what appeared to be Japanese soldiers running up the hillside. The man in front was waving his arms and hollering something in Japanese. Deke couldn’t understand the words, but they sounded urgent.

He grinned, realizing that this was Yoshio and his band of guerrillas in disguise. Yoshio was doing a damn fine job of sounding like a Jap officer. From a distance, Yoshio and the guerrillas looked convincingly like enemy soldiers.

The Japs seemed to think so too. Heads popped up from hidey-holes around the slope, sentries that Deke hadn’t seen before. Good thing he and Philly had taken the back door onto the hill, or they wouldn’t have gotten far before stumbling right into a nest of Japs.

An officer stood up from a trench, hand on the hilt of a sword, and shouted something at Yoshio, who shouted back and pointed down the hill.

Yoshio’s ruse was very convincing in that the last thing this seemed like was an attack. It looked for all the world like Yoshio and his men were fleeing from American soldiers who must be on their heels, still hidden in the greenery below. All eyes were now looking down the hill, away from the summit where, Deke hoped, Lieutenant Steele and the rest of the gang were trying to blow up the bunker.

But the ruse couldn’t last forever. Yoshio spoke the language, but he and his group of Filipino guerrillas were only passable as Japanese soldiers from a distance. Their uniforms were piecemeal, and Deke could even see the collar of Pinstripe’s shirt sticking out from the Japanese tunic. Up close, he felt sure that the officers could tell the difference between a Jap and a Filipino.

Already, two or three officers were moving to intercept Yoshio — probably trying to determine what the hell was going on.

Maybe they were wondering if the Americans had landed. That seemed unlikely, considering that the sea was visible from these heights, and Leyte Gulf remained blue and empty of ships.

Deke tracked the lead officer in his scope, finger on the trigger. Not yet.

He could hear Philly muttering from his own foxhole, as if urging Deke to shoot. “Come on, come on.”

Deke ignored him. Soon enough, there was going to be all kinds of shooting.

Below, the officer had reached Yoshio and stood a few feet away, shouting at him in Japanese. Realization seemed to dawn on the Japanese officer. He stopped shouting. He stared at Yoshio, momentarily speechless, then reached for the pistol on his belt.

Deke squeezed the trigger and shot the officer in the back, leaving a coin-size wound visible through the scope. The officer crumpled as if somebody had cut his puppet strings.

Deke squeezed off another shot, managing to take out a soldier who had been standing at the officer’s elbow.

That was when all hell broke loose on Hill 522.

That morning, the Filipinos had been given orders to pick targets as they came up the hill. Now they opened fire. A guerrilla who had been passing a machine-gun nest quickly shot all three soldiers before they knew what was happening. He and another guerrilla slid into the hole, swung the Nambu machine gun around, and opened up on the Japanese. The satisfying rhythm of the machine gun firing at enemy soldiers soon filled the air.

Elsewhere, a guerrilla had gotten hold of a grenade. He tossed it into a trench, taking out the Japanese squad waiting there. The work crews of Filipino men ran for cover.

Yoshio was shooting in all directions like a wild man, but he was too exposed, making himself a target for every Jap on that hill.

“Get down, you dang fool,” Deke muttered. He fired at a soldier who was charging in Yoshio’s direction with a fixed bayonet, dropping him.

But Deke’s mission wasn’t to protect Yoshio. He tore his eyes away from his squad mate and scanned the slope for Japanese officers. Truth be told, they were the brains of the operation. The Japanese didn’t trust their enlisted men to think for themselves and relied on officers far more than did the Americans.

If you wanted to create chaos, you had to shoot the officers.

Deke took his time picking out his targets, swinging the crosshairs through and past any enlisted men.

His sights settled on an officer waving a sword, and Deke shot him through the chest.

Looking around for another target, he spotted an officer trying to organize a charge to sweep the guerrillas off the hillside.

Deke dropped him.

From above, he had a clear view of the hillside below and its defenses. Some of the machine gunners were dug too far into the hill for him to get a good shot at them. One by one, their nests came into play as they figured out what was happening on the hill. The Japanese had set up fields of fire to cover the open ground, and he saw two guerrillas mowed down in a single burst of machine-gun fire.

He spotted a stab of flame coming from a dugout hiding one of the deadly Nambu guns and fired at the flashes. It took three shots before the machine gun fell silent.

He fired again and again.

He was in the process of reloading when the first bullet plucked at the tarp. He heard the round ricochet and go winging off into the distance with an unpleasant metallic whine that made his spine tighten.

“Philly!” he shouted. There was no point in being quiet anymore, not with all the shooting going on.

He heard Philly shout back, “Hey, Deke, somebody is shooting at you.”

“You don’t say. Where’s it coming from?”

“To hell if I know.”

“See if you can find out.”

Another bullet whistled in, apparently not aimed at Deke’s hidey-hole this time, but at Philly. “Dammit!”

“Keep your head down.”

A Jap sniper had found them.