Savage Sniper

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Deke led the way as the patrol moved fast down the trail, making up for lost time. Danilo kept pace beside him, his eyes alert for any sign of the enemy. Philly tagged along in their wake, hurrying to keep up.

A few miles beyond the spot where the fight had taken place among the huts, the jungle path emptied onto a dirt road in the way that a creek merges with a larger stream. As the road gradually widened, they could see where tire tracks had been pressed into the road when it had been muddy after a rain, but the ruts had then dried into ridges, only to be flooded again by last night’s rain. Because these ridges hadn’t been disturbed, it didn’t appear that the road received much traffic. A few weeds growing in the middle of the road also testified to that fact.

“I’d say that with this ride getting wider, we must be getting closer to something,” Philly said. “I’ll bet it’s that POW camp.”

“From the looks of this road, there’s not a lot of coming and going,” Deke replied.

Danilo held up a hand to indicate that they should all be quiet. Although they had been moving silently other than exchanging a few words now and then, the soldiers and guerrillas held their breath. To be detected at this point would mean giving up the element of surprise and losing every advantage.

They moved forward cautiously, weapons at the ready.

The trees thinned out, and they had their first glimpse of the Japanese POW camp.

The soldiers and guerrillas spread out and kept under cover, taking in the POW camp. The sight before them did little to put them at ease. What they saw was a compound that contained several low, squat buildings enclosed by a high fence strung together out of rusting, tangled wire. At one end stood a tall guard tower that presided over the whole affair.

The overall effect was of something crude and sinister, as if it had all been pieced together out of the surrounding forest, either by primitive man or the forgotten survivors of some apocalyptic event, and the jungle couldn’t wait to take it back.

“I’ll be damned,” Philly muttered. “Will you look at that? They’ve got our boys penned up like monkeys at the zoo.”

“You can be damn sure there’s a machine gun in that tower,” Deke whispered. “From up there, he can hit an ant if it looks at him sideways.”

Philly raised his binoculars. “I think I see somebody in that guard tower. At least, I think I can see somebody. There’s a lot of shade. The question is, Deke, can you pick him off if you have to?”

“Does the sun come up in the morning?”

Deke peered through his rifle scope and immediately felt less confident, despite his bold words. Sure enough, he could make out the barrel of a Nambu machine gun jutting from the tower. The platform at the top of the tower was surrounded by a low railing lashed together out of bamboo, which wouldn’t offer the machine gunner much protection. However, it did provide enough cover to make it a difficult shot. Philly was correct that the interior of the platform was deeply shaded, so it was hard to make out any target.

Deke was sure that he could neutralize the machine gunner if he had to, but it might take a few shots. Meanwhile, the Nambu would be hammering away at targets below.

More troubling than the compound itself was what lay behind it. On the northwest side of the compound, beyond the fence, was a patch of open ground with several fresh graves marked by roughly made crosses. It seemed likely that this graveyard was the only way that anyone had managed to escape the confines of the camp.

To make matters worse, a quick count revealed that the contingent of camp guards was twice the size of their own patrol. They would have to watch the camp for a while to determine how many more guards might be off duty in the barracks shacks or even out supervising a work crew.

The way things were shaping up, this wasn’t going to be an easy job.

The sight of the prisoners was tantalizing. On the other side of the fence, they could clearly see the men whom they were supposed to rescue. If they could just free those men, they could all go home. And yet the prisoners remained out of reach.

“Look at those poor bastards,” muttered Philly, watching the prisoners through the binoculars. “They’re nothing but skin and bones. I’ve seen skid row bums that were dressed better.”

Deke didn’t have much experience with skid row bums, but he had seen plenty of scarecrows guarding farm fields. To his mind’s eye, the scarecrows were exactly what the prisoners resembled, right down to their tattered clothes flapping around sticklike arms and legs. A strong breeze might blow them over. In comparison, the Japanese guards looked beefy and well fed. Whatever food the enemy soldiers had at this point as the noose tightened around the Japanese, they were clearly reserving it for themselves.

Indeed, the handful of POWs they could see appeared thin and ragged. One thing for sure, Deke thought, they would not be able to rely much on the prisoners for help in overthrowing their Japanese guards.

He knew that Lieutenant Steele had been hopeful that the POWs would help to turn the tide once they joined the fight. However, the prisoners that they could see looked too weak to wrestle a kitten, let alone stage an uprising.

It was hard to believe that the decrepit men within the camp had once been proud American soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen. They were truly shadows of their former selves thanks to their treatment at the hands of the Japanese.

“Goddamn bastards,” Philly muttered.

He didn’t have to explain — they all knew what he meant. Deke kept looking through the scope, feeling a slow burn of anger building. It was more than clear that the Japanese were starving the American POWs.

With an effort, he took his finger off the trigger. He lowered the rifle. There would be time later to exact a price from the captors. For now, the priority was to liberate the prisoners from this camp.

Fortunately there were no sentries on the road, and the Japanese seemed oblivious that anyone was watching the camp. The last thing that they seemed to fear was an attack from the outside. You couldn’t blame them, considering that the camp was far off the beaten track. Between the fence and the machine gunner in the tower, all the Japanese efforts seemed intent on keeping the prisoners contained rather than on defense.

As they watched, a work party approached the camp, making their way across a clearing. The men were stripped down to loincloths in the Japanese style, the skin of their arms and shoulders tanned the color of dark leather by the tropical sun. These men were clearly shadows of their old selves, their bones showing in a way that was painful to look at. In fact, it was a wonder that some of them were still on their feet.

Each man had a pole across his shoulders, with a bucket hanging from each end of the pole. The buckets were loaded with rocks, a burden so heavy that many of the men staggered under the weight.

One of the guerrillas had spied previously on the camp and said something to Father Francisco, who relayed to the rest of the patrol that the men were hauling the rocks from a riverbed up the side of a steep jungle hill. According to the guerrilla’s observations, the work crew went out at first light and labored until dark. It was believed that the rocks were going to be used to construct either a road or an airstrip.

No matter the intended use, it was backbreaking work.

One by one, under the watchful eye of a Japanese soldier who wielded a rifle with a bayonet, the prisoners in the work detail dumped out the contents of their buckets into a growing pile of rocks.

When one man did stumble, a Japanese sergeant stepped forward and beat him across the back with a cane, the way that a cruel farmer might beat a mule. All the while, the sergeant screamed at him in Japanese in a voice so loud that it carried all the way to the hidden patrol.

Deke couldn’t understand a word of it, but Yoshio did.

“He is telling him to get up and work, or he will die,” Yoshio interpreted.

It was unlikely that the prisoner understood the words, either, but he certainly understood the meaning. He struggled to get up, unsuccessfully. This seemed to further infuriate the guard, who rained yet more blows down on the prisoner with such force that Deke could hear them clearly as drumbeats.

He put the rifle to his shoulder. Mission be damned, it was time to put an end to that Japanese son of a bitch. He put his sights on the officer’s throat.

Philly caught sight of what he was doing and muttered a warning, “Deke, don’t do it. You’ll get everybody killed, including us.”

Deke wasn’t sure that he cared as long as he could shoot that guard. The sergeant in his sights was broad shouldered and powerfully built, looking as if he could snap most of the prisoners in half if he wanted to. Deke ached to shoot that guard in the worst way. His finger touched the trigger.

Beside him, he felt Philly go tense and heard him say, “Aw, hell. Here we go.”

But Deke held his fire.

He kept his finger on the trigger. Deep down he knew that Philly was right. He’d just have to be patient.

Another one of the prisoners had interceded in the beating, reaching down to help the fallen man. He received several blows from the cane for his trouble and what sounded like curses, but he was able to get the other prisoner back on his feet, and they both managed to reach the rock pile and dump their loads.

The sergeant was still shouting, and the guard with the rifle looked disappointed that he hadn’t been able to shoot anybody. Judging by the number of graves in the boneyard, it was likely that he would get another chance sooner rather than later.

Deke shook his head. This was slave labor, pure and simple. Lieutenant Steele would have explained that it went against every rule set by the Geneva Convention. They already knew that the Japanese didn’t care about that. The few prisoners taken by American forces were treated decently and not expected to work.

But worse than that, what the Japanese were doing was cruel, even vicious. Deke felt his anger sticking in the back of his throat as if he’d swallowed a bone.

It was hot and humid enough hiding out in the dappled shade offered by the jungle. Deke couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to be working in the hot sun.

Reluctantly, he eased his finger off the trigger and lowered the rifle.

“I’ll get you yet, you son of a bitch,” he muttered.

They settled down to wait and observe. There had been some hope that they could sweep in, quickly defeat the Japanese guards, rescue the prisoners, and be on their way.

No such luck. They could see now that those hopes had been overly optimistic. They were outnumbered by the garrison, and the camp appeared well defended. Also, they had not anticipated that the prisoners would be in such rough shape. Even after they were liberated, the journey back to Ormoc would be slow and difficult for these weakened, malnourished men.

“All right, men. It looks as if we can’t just overwhelm the guards,” Lieutenant Steele said. “We’ll have to figure out another way to crack open this particular nut.”

The lieutenant had called a powwow in the shade of a large Malabulak tree; the cotton-like fibers from the seed pods of these trees were used as the filling known as kapok in life jackets. Father Francisco listened intently to what the lieutenant had to say, then relayed the information to the Filipino guerrillas. Their blank faces did not reveal their thoughts once they were informed of the situation. They simply nodded in acceptance.

Deke appreciated the Filipino fighters’ commitment to rescuing the prisoners, the bulk of which were Americans. After all, he supposed that these men all had homes and land that they would prefer to fight for, not to mention families to get back to, but here they were standing up to the Japanese in every way. They were damn good men and tough customers.

“I would almost say that at this point we should simply wait for the Japanese to be finished here on Leyte,” Father Francisco said. “It can’t be that much longer.”

Steele shook his head. “That’s a nice thought, Padre, but we don’t have that much time. The Japanese might not be finished for weeks or months. They seem to have plenty of fight left in them.”

“You make a good point, Lieutenant.”

“Besides, you saw yourself what kind of treatment the prisoners are getting here. I’m not leaving those men in those conditions one hour longer than necessary. The Japanese have already put enough of them in that boneyard.”

“Let me start shooting a few of them, Honcho,” Deke urged. “I can even up the odds.”

The lieutenant shook his head. “Much as I’d like to turn you loose, Deke, I just can’t do that. If the Japanese think they are under attack, there’s no telling what they might do to the POWs. I’m willing to bet that they don’t plan on leaving any of the prisoners alive.”

Deke nodded, as did everyone else. They had already been briefed by Major Flanders back at division HQ about the fate that had befallen POWs at other camps. Vengeful enemy guards had simply executed them rather than see them freed.

“Then what do we do, Honcho?” Philly asked.

“We watch, observe, and figure out a plan.” The lieutenant paused. “Hopefully we’ll figure something out by tomorrow morning at the latest. The longer that we sit out here in the woods, the better our chances of being detected. If that happens, I don’t like to think about what the Japanese might do to the prisoners.”

They sat out the rest of the day, watching and waiting as Lieutenant Steele ordered. The prisoner-of-war camp seemed to be a forgotten outpost, because no one came or went. There were no trucks arriving with supplies, no messengers leaving. The camp commandant almost certainly possessed a radio of some sort to keep in touch with the rest of the Japanese forces, but there was not much activity beyond the work detail and calisthenics for the guards not overseeing the work detail. It was apparent that strict discipline was being maintained even at this remote camp.

Fortunately, the Japanese still didn’t seem to have any inkling that there were enemy troops on their doorstep, although it was an open question how long that could last. For the moment, there didn’t appear to be any extra activity, no guard posts along the fence, and no patrols came along the jungle road. The machine gunner in the watchtower seemed to be their main defense and lookout. One machine gunner armed with a Nambu was more than adequate.

Later in the day, there was weapons inspection for the garrison. They could see the man who must be the camp commandant, tall for a Japanese, going over his men’s weapons and uniforms. He moved with a ramrod stiffness and appeared to have what looked like a bow and quiver slung across his back. This strange choice of weapons caught Deke’s eye.

“What the hell?” Deke wondered, watching through his rifle scope. “I know for a fact that the Nips haven’t run out of rifles.”

The bow and arrows remained a puzzle. However, the commandant clearly took his duties seriously and ran a tight ship, which did not bode well for the mission.

Part of their frustration was that they had no way of communicating with the prisoners inside the compound. The POWs didn’t know they were here. Ideally, there would have been some way to let them know that their situation was no longer helpless. The POWs might even have been able to help them from the inside and organize an escape. But for now there didn’t seem to be any hope of that.

Once darkness arrived, they crept forward to test the fence up close. They were seeking a weak spot where they could snip through the wire, out of the direct line of sight of the machine gunner in the tower.

Philly reported back, “Honcho, that fence is tighter than a nun’s knickers. Nobody is getting past that.”

The priest’s eyes widened at that metaphor.

“Apologies, Padre,” Steele said. He turned back to Philly. “What else have you got? And leave the nuns out of it this time.”

“You got it, Honcho. The fence looks rusty from a distance, but they’ve also got concertina wire all along the base that we’d have to crawl through. Honestly, if we had some sort of vehicle, our best bet would be to ram through the front gate.”

“We’re out of luck there, unless one of you has a tank in your back pocket that you’re not telling me about,” Steele said. “All right, we can’t risk camping out here much longer. We’ve got to think of something, and fast.”

Like the others, Deke had been busy getting the lay of the land. A plan was already beginning to take shape in Deke’s mind, although he didn’t like it the least little bit.