Savage Sniper

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

At first light, the soldiers shrugged back into their clothes, which were not entirely dry, but better than the sopping-wet rags they had been. Considering the constant damp and humidity, they would likely be soaked again in no time.

All around them could be heard the constant patter of water droplets shedding from the foliage following last night’s rain. Morning mist lingered among the tree trunks. The forest bore the scars of the storm, with a few broken tree limbs scattered around. Nearby, a large tree had split cleanly in two, the new wood bright and running with sap. No doubt the tree had been struck by lightning. They had certainly heard a few lightning bolts strike near their shelter.

Above them, through the canopy of trees, a blue sky shimmered. It was the calm after the storm, the rain having cleansed the air and thinned the forest of weak trees. Deke thought that the day looked promising.

Philly seemed to be the only one compelled to talk and interrupt the silence. “Hey, somebody call room service and order up some breakfast. I’ll take some coffee for starters, then some bacon and eggs.”

“Pancakes for me,” Yoshio said.

Of course there wasn’t any pot of fresh coffee, and certainly no pancakes, so they had to settle for a few swigs of canteen water that tasted stale and metallic. Deke sighed. He never had stayed in a fancy hotel, but his mouth watered at the thought of some biscuits and gravy. The closest thing a soldier in the field could get to breakfast was the “Chopped Ham, Egg, and Potato” C-ration. It came in a sixteen-ounce can and was wildly unpopular. Deke munched on a few crackers instead.

Their small task force reunited. A few of the guerrillas had taken their chances sheltering in the forest, none too eager to spend the night in the confines of the abandoned Japanese fortifications. They emerged dripping wet from the forest, but evidently ready to face whatever the day presented. Many of the guerrillas had lived rough like this for weeks, if not months. They were a hardy bunch.

“How did you sleep?” Father Francisco inquired pleasantly, as if they had all just passed the night at a roadside inn rather than in a jungle potentially crawling with enemy troops.

“Just fine, Father,” Lieutenant Steele said, looking amused. “The maid even left a mint on the pillow.”

The priest shook out his damp cassock, and a centipede the size of a pinkie finger fell out and crawled away. “Look at that little fellow,” he said. “I have to say, I would have preferred a mint.”

The guerrillas ate a quick breakfast, sharing a loaf of home-baked bread that was only somewhat damp from the rain. Father Francisco said a brief prayer over it first. Religion seemed to thrive in these bitter conditions.

Then the group moved out, Danilo and Deke once more in the lead. In the wake of the storm, the air among the trees felt more oppressive than ever. They moved through a humid funk.

It was not easy going. The storm made it necessary to constantly stop and clear fallen trees and brush blocking the jungle trail. The guerrillas’ bolo knives made quick work of the obstacles, while Deke used his bowie knife to hack at the coils of vines that had fallen across the trail.

Mosquitoes pestered the men, clouds of them so thick that they buzzed constantly in their ears. Spiders hadn’t wasted any time weaving new webs across the path, taking advantage of the swarms of insects that had hatched in the wet conditions left by the storm. Out at the front of the column, Deke broke through the webs and tangled with a few spiders that would have given a tarantula a run for its money.

Along with the humidity, the tension of this mission seemed to have grown more palpable. A cloud passed over the morning sun, plunging the path into gloom once again. The day suddenly felt less promising.

“According to the map, we still have a ways to go,” Lieutenant Steele said. “The storm cost us a lot of time, and the mess it left isn’t helping any.”

“At least there haven’t been any Japanese through here,” muttered Philly, who was following a few feet behind Deke, more than happy to let him clear the way.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Deke responded. “The closer that we get to that POW camp, there’s bound to be some Japanese around.”

Deke had a sixth sense about these things, and his instincts had never let him down before. He knew for a fact that he wouldn’t still be here if he hadn’t learned to trust those instincts. It was like some sort of internal weather vane that you ignored to your peril.

He wasn’t the only one attuned to the surroundings. Up ahead he saw that Danilo had also adjusted his pace and grown more cautious. Instead of bulling through the debris across the path, Danilo was going under it or around it, moving quietly. Deke followed his lead and did the same.

He could sense that they were being watched, although it seemed impossible that anyone else could be out here in this dense forest or see any distance through it. He raised his rifle and peered through the scope, scanning the trees ahead for any sign of movement.

Except for a few birds flitting through the trees, there was nothing.

Slowly, Deke lowered his rifle. Something about this section of forest they were moving through just didn’t feel right.

As they rounded a bend, they came across a small clearing. In the center of the clearing were several small huts made from tree saplings and thatch. Deke counted at least a half-dozen huts — not enough to count as a village, perhaps not even big enough to be a hamlet, but an outpost of some kind.

A thin wisp of smoke curled up from one of the huts, as if from a small cooking fire. Clearly this village had been occupied recently, but no one appeared to greet them. The place was empty as a ghost town.

Deke had a bad feeling about this.

The column came to a halt. Both the lieutenant and the priest crept forward to confer with Deke and Danilo.

Deacon scanned the area for any signs of movement, rifle at the ready.

“This can’t be the compound,” Steele whispered, nodding at the huts while he kept both hands wrapped around his shotgun. “There’s sure as hell no fence around it, for starters. This is something else altogether.”

“No, we are not nearly close enough to where the POWs are being held,” Father Francisco agreed. “My men who have seen it say that the compound is much larger and well defended.”

“Then what is this place?” Philly wondered. “I don’t see any Japanese.”

“Philly, just who the hell else would be out here?” Deke asked.

“I don’t like it,” Philly said, pointing at the chimney smoke rising from the hut. If somebody wasn’t still in there, then they were nearby. “It’s spooky.”

“Yoshio, give them a howdy,” Steele said. “Let’s just see if anybody is around.”

Yoshio crept forward cautiously and shouted a greeting in Japanese.

“Ohayou!”

The only response was silence.

They would soon have their answer as to who occupied the huts.

Steele issued his orders. “Deke, you and Philly work your way around the back. I’ll cover the front with Father Francisco and his men. Keep your eyes open, everybody. Let’s figure out just what the hell is going on here.”

The team split up, moving silently through the jungle toward their assigned positions. Deke and Philly circled the huts cautiously, their rifles at the ready. The damp ground enabled them to move silently.

Deke felt that, just maybe, they were going to get lucky for once and get the drop on whoever was in these huts. It would be even luckier, he supposed, if whoever was here had simply fled.

As they moved around to the rear, the rest of the group slowly advanced into the village itself.

The silence was broken when a shot was fired from the hut that had the smoke trailing out of it. Apparently it had been occupied, after all. One of the guerrillas went down.

In that moment Deke realized it was a trap.

“Get down,” he shouted, shoving at Philly’s shoulder.

No sooner had they hit the ground than rifle fire began pouring from the trees beyond the clearing. Bullets ripped the air overhead.

Deke gritted his teeth and took a deep breath, feeling a rush of adrenaline course through his veins. He didn’t feel any fear, but only an eagerness for action. He raised his rifle and started firing at the edge of the forest, where the enemy was hidden.

Philly followed his lead, firing back at the enemy. The firefight was intense, with bullets whizzing past them and clipping the leaves and branches at the edges of the jungle.

Deke could feel the sweat pouring down his face, his heart racing. He knew that his life was on the line, that he was exposed out here in the clearing, but he also knew that he had a job to do. He kept firing, although none of the enemy had shown themselves. He did hear a few of the unseen enemy shouting at one another in voices that were distinctly Japanese.

Fortunately there were no machine guns in the mix, or they would have all been goners, caught as they were in the open. The intense rifle fire was punishing enough. The crackle of rifles on both sides punctuated the air.

The enemy had known they were coming and had been ready for them. Perhaps the Japanese had heard the patrol hacking its way up the trail, or maybe they had even glimpsed the lights and activity in the abandoned bunkers the night before. In any case, the trap had been set, and they had waited for the Americans to blunder right into it.

Desperately, Deke looked around for a target. He couldn’t see any of the enemy, so the best that he could do was fire at the muzzle flashes visible in the shadows. He fired, once, twice, three times, until there were no more shots from that section of the forest. More shots came from the hut, but Rodeo tossed in a grenade, and that was that.

Meanwhile, the Filipinos weren’t about to stay pinned down. They made a dash for the forest, closing the distance to the trees in a mad sprint, bolo knives flashing in their hands. It was clear that the guerrillas planned to finish this fight up close and personal. Deke shuddered at the thought.

Directly to his right, he heard a wet chunk, a scream, and then silence. The guerrillas swarmed among the trees, seeking out and ending the enemy one by one. The fight was over in minutes. As the shooting died out, Deke and the others straightened up and looked around wearily, all of them exhausted as they started coming down from the sudden rush of adrenaline and coated in sweat.

One of the enemy soldiers had managed to stagger back into the clearing before he collapsed and died. Deke was surprised to see that the man was in rough shape. He looked too skinny, and his uniform was practically in tatters. Something about the condition of this soldier, and this remote collection of huts near the abandoned bunkers, just didn’t add up. What were these Japanese doing out here, so far removed from the active fighting on Leyte?

“I’ll bet that these are deserters,” the lieutenant said, seeming to guess Deke’s thoughts. “They were probably out here, waiting out the war. We just happened to stumble across them. I guess maybe not all the Japanese are determined to fight until the end.”

There wasn’t anybody left alive to interrogate.

“Too bad for them,” Philly said.

Nonetheless, the short fight had not been without casualties. The rifle firing from the hut had claimed one of the guerrillas. Deke didn’t know the man’s name, but he was a fellow soldier all the same. As he watched, the priest knelt and gave the man last rites, even though he had already passed.

A quick search of the huts seemed to support Lieutenant Steele’s theory that this was a community of deserters. The Japanese soldiers that they had come across until now seemed to have adequate food and supplies — certainly they had plenty of ammunition. Some were even relatively fresh troops, rushed to the fight from elsewhere in the Japanese war effort. These men, however, had very little. There was even some evidence that they were trying to survive off the forest by hunting and eating small game, although that was a challenging task.

Were these men already convinced of Japan’s defeat, or were they simply without hope? No one would ever know. Of course, the soldiers had put up a fight against the patrol rather than simply surrendering or running away, but maybe they’d felt as if they had no choice. The war had reached the point where survival was not a foregone conclusion after you surrendered to the enemy. There was too much anger and loss on both sides for that.

It was a shame, Deke thought. These men had tried to take themselves out of the fight but hadn’t quite made it out to the other side. In another month or two, the men who had been hiding out in this hamlet might have been able to walk out of the forest and surrender once the fighting had ended and bitter feelings toward prisoners had eased. Now they would never leave this place.

Neither would the dead guerrilla. The other Filipinos used their bolo knives to hack a shallow grave among the jungle roots. Never mind the fact that those roots would soon grow back and envelop his remains. He and the dead Japanese would remain here until Judgment Day. Of course, no energy was wasted burying the enemy dead.

The only consolation was that this place remained peaceful and quiet when there wasn’t a skirmish being fought. Already an orchestra of insect and bird noises was building. A tropical breeze stirred the tree fronds overhead.

Deke recognized the man but did not know his name. There wasn’t even so much as a blanket that the man could be wrapped in. Instead, his arms were arranged neatly at his sides, and his hat was used to cover his face. His comrades looked glum but evidently had come to accept that this was the price of freedom that must be paid on occasion.

Father Francisco said a few prayers, and the grave was filled in; then a rough cross was lashed together out of two sticks and stuck into the ground.

“Let’s move out,” Lieutenant Steele said once the man was buried. He picked up his shotgun, which had been leaning against a stump. “I want to get as close to that POW camp as we can before nightfall.”