Savage Sniper

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The next morning before dawn, Deke was roused with the other prisoners to take part in a work crew. He had slept fitfully, to say the least. Being a prisoner of the Japanese was not conducive to a good night’s sleep. Hopefully he would not be a prisoner for much longer.

He ached all over, but he did not complain. He just knew that he had to somehow survive this day and make it to midnight, when the escape from the prison compound would be set into motion.

To his surprise, there was no breakfast to speak of aside from more water. Faraday encouraged him to drink his fill. “It’s best to have something in your belly, even if it’s water.”

“I didn’t expect fried eggs, hash browns, and scrapple,” Deke said. “But I’d settle for a scrap of bread.”

“The Nips only feed us once a day,” Faraday explained. “Don’t expect much — we usually get a broth with just enough vegetables in it to turn the water a little green. A handful of rice now and then.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“I’ve seen men fight over it. It’s not enough to keep a child alive, let alone a grown man.”

It was fair to say that to the average American male who believed that nearly every meal should involve meat and potatoes of some kind, a Japanese diet would have seemed to be lacking even under normal circumstances. Most Japanese ate rice, vegetables, and fish. When they did have meat, it was only a small portion. After a traditional Japanese meal, most Americans would have been left wondering where they could find the nearest hamburger.

The men assembled in the prison yard, lining up for inspection. It was time for the morning head count. Bleary eyed and aching, Deke had no choice but to join them. The mood was not improved by the fact that the stink of the prison latrines clung to the humid morning air.

A couple of men were too weak to report for the roll call. For these men, under these conditions, Deke realized that there was little hope of recovery. There would be no medicine or nourishing food. Their next stop would likely be the boneyard out back. Escape from the prison camp seemed more urgent than ever.

Mr. Suey entered the prisoners’ barracks to check on the weakened men, which involved kicking and punching them to ascertain that the men were not fit to work. Deke could hear the sergeant’s blows landing from where he stood in the prison yard. He was starting to hate the Japanese sergeant even more, if that was possible.

By the time that the sun was poking through the treetops, the men were marching out of a smaller side gate to begin the day’s labor. First, they had to retrieve the yokes with the empty buckets that were being used to haul rocks from the riverbed near the prison camp. A few men also picked up shovels. Deke eased one of the yokes across his shoulders, sucking in his breath at the pain that the touch of the wood prompted in his sore body.

He saw Mr. Suey watching him, a sadistic smile playing across the Japanese sergeant’s lips, and tried not to let his own face betray any emotion. He kept Faraday’s warning in mind about provoking the Japanese. He reminded himself that he had to get through only one day of this, while many others had been here for what must have felt like an eternity.

The day promised to be yet another hot and muggy one. Already the insects were waking up, adding their singsong racket to the vocalizations of the jungle birds. In contrast, the prisoners and even their guards were mostly silent, except for the shuffle of feet along the muddy trail.

The men made their way down the well-worn jungle path. They walked about a half mile, most of it downhill — which meant they would be moving uphill coming back. Finally, they reached the riverbank. The bank seemed to consist of a tangled mat of tree roots holding the soil in place. It was darker at this lower elevation, where the sun hadn’t reached yet. The gurgle of running water threaded through the silence.

The so-called river was more of a stream, barely ten feet across, but the water ran over a bed of stones, each one about the size of a hefty potato. They set to work filling their buckets with the stones, then balancing the load across their shoulders for the trip back up the hill.

There was no talking allowed, so there was only the noise of stones clanging into the empty buckets and then clicking against each other. It was cooler along the stream and still shady, so it was not unpleasant.

The heat of the day promised to build, along with the swarms of insects. So far the only bugs that bothered the men were large, slow-moving mosquitoes. They were so fat with blood that when Deke slapped one, it left a crimson smear on his arm. Other men didn’t have the energy to resist and simply let the mosquitoes feed.

According to the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war could not be expected to work on any projects that served the war effort directly. This rule was open to interpretation and had some gray areas. For example, German prisoners of war held in the United States usually labored on farms. In fact, most seemed glad to be out of the fight and enjoyed the work.

The local communities were often welcoming or at least accepting of the German POWs, knowing that they were usually ordinary men caught between a rock and a hard place when their nation went to war. Many of the prisoners were quite young. After the war, more than a few would even opt to stay.

But didn’t raising crops and farmwork help the war effort in some way? Maybe that was a gray area, but they certainly would not have been put to work in munitions plants.

The Japanese had no such qualms about where or how Allied POWs were used. Often they were put to work building defenses against an Allied invasion. Their captors seemed to think that the more backbreaking the work was, the better. Hard labor was used as a kind of punishment or even to make sure that the prisoners were left exhausted and, therefore, without any energy to cause trouble.

Deke was no stranger to hard work, so he kept pace toiling alongside the others. The only bright spot in the shade along the river was a colorful tropical bird that flitted through the trees, as if taunting the prisoners with its own freedom.

As they gathered rocks from the riverbed, his back and shoulders felt sore, thanks to the beating that he’d taken at the hands of Mr. Suey. But as he worked and the day warmed up, he felt less stiff and was able to do as much work as anyone.

Deke didn’t know why the hell they were hauling rocks. It seemed to be a pointless exercise or perhaps even foolishness on the part of the Japanese. There didn’t seem to be any reason to pave a road in the jungle with stones. The stone-covered portion of the road couldn’t have stretched more than a hundred feet from the gate — and there were many miles of dirt road to go. With the first big rain, it was likely that the stones would all be covered in mud or washed away.

Back home in the mountains, even the poorest dirt farmer would not have resorted to hauling rocks using a yoke and two buckets over his shoulders. Instead, he would have hitched up his horse or mule, or in the olden days an ox, and then he would’ve had the animal drag a sledge loaded with the rocks. However, there were no horses, mules, or oxen to be found in this remote corner of the jungle. Instead, they relied upon the prisoners’ backs and shoulders. The prisoners had been turned into nothing more than beasts of burden.

The day wore on with only a few short breaks for water. As Faraday had indicated, there was no food given. Deke began to feel lightheaded, and it was no wonder. Hell, it was enough to make him miss C rations.

Then again, he had experienced hunger as a boy, and he knew that the best thing to do, even when you were lightheaded, was simply to push through and keep working. You would either find yourself feeling steady again or you would fall over. In this situation, the prisoners didn’t have much choice but to keep working. When he had a chance, he drank more water.

Deke noticed that one of the stick-thin prisoners was really struggling under the load of the stones. He probably should have stayed in his bunk this morning, but he had gone out with the work crew. Now he had drawn the ire of Mr. Suey, who targeted the man with insults and was ready with the cane whenever the man stumbled, shouting what must be curses in Japanese. It was more than Deke could stand to watch.

The third time that the man stumbled, many of the stones fell from the bucket. When it tipped over, Deke reached down to help the man put the stones back.

This seemed to infuriate Mr. Suey, who was immediately there with his cane, raining blows down on both Deke and the other prisoner.

Deke shrugged them off as if it had been only so much rain and tried to interpose himself between the struggling prisoner and Mr. Suey. The Japanese sergeant’s anger heightened to the point where he began kicking Deke in addition to hitting him with the cane. It hurt like hell, especially when Mr. Suey put his boot up Deke’s backside, but Deke wasn’t going to give that son of a bitch the satisfaction of reacting to the pain.

Deke continued to ignore him and kept piling the rocks back into the bucket as if the sergeant did not even exist.

It was hard to say how things would have ended up. The sergeant was in such a state that he might have beaten them both to death. In fact, things appeared to be moving toward a more abrupt end, because the sergeant’s hand reached for the pistol at his belt.

Suddenly there was the sharp bark of a command. The sergeant reined in his blows and glared at Deke. He seemed to have forgotten all about the other prisoner, who hunkered on all fours like a beaten dog, panting with the effort of simply not collapsing.

Deke looked up and realized that he had been saved by Eyeglasses. The Japanese officer was looking at the entire scene with disapproval. The younger man began to berate the sergeant in an angry stream of Japanese. It was clear that Eyeglasses had seen enough and thought that the sergeant was going too far. The sergeant hadn’t quite come to attention, sending a not-so-subtle message that he had little respect for the officer. Finally, Eyeglasses turned on his heel and walked off in evident disgust.

Deke looked back at the sergeant, whose angry stare was now fixed on Deke’s face. He clearly blamed Deke for the chewing-out that he had received.

Deke knew better, but he couldn’t back down from the sergeant’s stare. The sergeant’s face had turned red from his exertions in the tropical heat. His dark eyes were like bits of onyx, almost like the eyes of a shark. Deke’s own glare was in marked contrast, because his own eyes were gray, more like cut glass, but equally unfathomable.

No words needed to be spoken. The one thing that was clear was that both men truly hated each other. The sergeant’s hand drifted toward his pistol again, indicating that perhaps he no longer cared if he drew the ire of his officer if it meant putting the American POW in his place.

Faraday hurried over, keeping his head bowed as if in deference to the sergeant. He breathed a warning to Deke, “What the hell are you doing?”

“I reckon I’ve had enough of this joker,” Deke muttered, not taking his eyes off Mr. Suey’s.

“Look around you, man. There’s not a whole lot that you can do about this situation. Keep your eye on the prize.”

Deke knew that Faraday was right, but it didn’t make things any easier. How he wished to get his hands around his rifle and get the Japanese sergeant in his sights.

He was sure that Mr. Suey felt the same way and would have likely shot him or beat him to death if the officer had not intervened. Next time, if Eyeglasses wasn’t around to keep the lid on things, there was no telling what the sergeant might do. Deke understood that it was even more urgent than ever for them to escape the camp. Clearly Mr. Suey meant to kill him.

All the prisoners had seen what happened, and so the rest of the afternoon passed tensely. It was as if a brooding storm cloud hovered over them all. The other men had been here longer and had seen just how brutal the Japanese could be. They probably understood better than Deke that Mr. Suey was just biding his time.

Later in the day, the commandant himself appeared to check on the progress of the work. Colonel Yamagata arrived on foot, carrying his bow and quiver slung across his back, which Deke found to be an odd sight. Even more than other men, Deke understood that he had one foot in the past and was more than a little old-fashioned. But even he recognized that it was the twentieth century. There were airplanes and submarines, radio waves, and motion pictures. Yet here was a Japanese officer who armed himself with a bow and arrow. But instead of eccentric, Yamagata managed to appear menacing.

The colonel stopped to confer with Eyeglasses. Judging by the pointing that the commandant did and the earnest nodding from the subordinate officer, it appeared that Yamagata was making a few suggestions.

Meanwhile, the attention of some of the prisoners had been drawn to that brightly colored tropical bird sitting high up in a tree, some distance from where they were working in the streambed. Even a tired prisoner could be momentarily awed by the bird’s bright plumage. Its feathers seemed to span all the colors of the rainbow. The bird appeared as a bright point in an otherwise tense and backbreaking day.

Deke didn’t know what kind of bird it was, but if he was going to guess, he would say that it was a parrot. The bird even cried out a few times as if to say, Look at me! Look at me! A few of the prisoners even dared to pause in their work and lean on their shovels to gaze in wonder at the phenomenal creature.

The commandant apparently saw the bird as a distraction. Consequently, Colonel Yamagata was determined to deny the prisoners even that small pleasure.

He glared at the bird, then took the bow from his back, fitted an arrow to the string, and drew it back to his ear. It was an unfamiliar weapon to Deke, but he was impressed at seeing how deftly the colonel handled the bow. He also guessed that you had to be quite strong to draw a bow like that. The razor-sharp tip of his arrow did not waver as he held his aim steady. Clearly the commandant was very experienced with his weapon.

Deke took a moment to study the colonel. Before, he had only seen him sitting down, or standing from a distance. In his spotless uniform, the colonel had a rather commanding presence. He was well-built and taller than even some of the American prisoners. He was certainly better fed — where the majority of the POWs looked skeletal, Yamagata looked chunky by comparison.

Standing off to one side, the sergeant gazed at Yamagata with something like admiration in his dark, beady eyes. Deke noticed that the corners of Eyeglasses’ mouth were turned down in a disapproving look. Like the men, he evidently admired the colorful bird.

Despite Yamagata’s apparent skill with the bow and arrow, the bird made a difficult target. It was some distance away and high up in the tree, roughly the size of a large crow. Deke knew for a fact that there were plenty of GIs who couldn’t have hit the bird with their rifles, much less a bow and arrow.

Deke figured the bird’s chances were good, and that at best the colonel’s arrow would just pass nearby and startle the creature. He caught himself holding his breath.

The colonel released the arrow with an audible twang. The arrow sang through the air, straight and true, so fast that it was hardly more than a streak.

The arrow struck the bird with an explosion of bright feathers. The bird dropped through the tree branches and disappeared. There was no doubt that the arrow had found its mark.

Deke had to admit that he was impressed by the colonel’s ability. He was also disgusted. What was the point of killing a beautiful bird for no good reason? Deke’s rule always had been that you ate what you killed. The colonel turned away, clearly without any intention of retrieving the bird or his arrow. He wore a satisfied smile.

The prisoners, however, were disappointed. It was as if the bird had been a symbol of freedom, the kind of freedom that they were not allowed, and the colonel had snuffed it out as if to deny them hope. The death of the bird had been symbolic in that regard.

Deke thought about the stories he’d heard claiming that the colonel had offered prisoners a chance to escape — or forced them to try — only to shoot them down with his bow. Until that moment, Deke had doubted that the stories were true. He now had no doubt that Colonel Yamagata possessed a wanton cruelty that made Deke hate him all the more.

The colonel returned up the trail, leaving the work crew under the direction of his subordinate officer. Eyeglasses appeared relieved once Yamagata had left — at least, he eased some of the ramrod posture that he had adopted in the colonel’s presence. As for the sergeant, Deke did his best to stay out of his way.

It wasn’t easy. Although the rest of the day passed quietly enough, it felt like they were all walking on eggshells around the volatile Mr. Suey. Again, he was like a storm waiting to break, and he kept casting venomous side glances at Deke. From time to time Faraday traded looks with Deke and gave him a quick, reassuring nod that was too subtle for their Japanese captors to notice. Both men knew that the hours ahead were crucial to the escape plan.

The incident with the commandant skewering the parrot with an arrow had also been unsettling in a different way. Once or twice Deke could have sworn that he heard the cry of the wounded bird from the trees, as if the arrow hadn’t killed the poor creature outright and it was lingering somewhere in the forest shadows. An hour or two passed, and he did not hear the bird cry out again, but only the stillness of the jungle interrupted by the cacophony of insects and the rushing stream.

It was getting near dark when they finally brought in their last load of stones. Deke felt exhausted. He was still sore from the beating yesterday, and the fresh blows he had received today. He knew that as soon as he sat down or stopped moving, his body was going to register every ache. He was so soggy from all the heat that he felt like he could be wrung out like a washcloth. With each step that he took, his feet felt heavy as concrete blocks.

To make matters worse, his rumbling belly reminded him that he had not been fed yet today. Deke almost welcomed the thought of whatever thin soup the Japanese intended to serve up. It was a wonder that the prisoners were able to labor like this, day in and day out, without any real nourishment. No surprise that so many were just withering away to the point where they couldn’t leave their bunks.

Deke was looking forward to whatever grub was served up and perhaps a few hours of rest before their escape plan was set in motion. However, that was not to be the case.

As the POWs reentered the prison compound and made their way toward the barracks, Mr. Suey was there to block Deke’s path.

Here we go again. This is the last damn thing we need.

Trying to avoid another confrontation, Deke did the smart thing and kept his head down.

It did him no good. The Japanese sergeant shouted something that Deke couldn’t understand, other than the angry tone.

But Eyeglasses was there to explain. With a sinking heart, Deke realized that what he had mistaken for humanity in the officer might only have been a difference of opinion about the methods used to discipline prisoners.

“You,” he said. “You are going back in isolation. You have a bad attitude that must be corrected.”

Nearby, Faraday had overheard. He and Deke exchanged a look. This had not been part of the plan. If Deke returned to the hot box, it might spoil their entire plan. Once again, Deke feared that his stubborn pride had gotten in the way.

Now what? He raised his eyebrows at Faraday but got only a blank stare in return. Apparently the man was at as much of a loss as Deke.

Surrounded by enemy soldiers, Deke had no choice but to allow himself to be herded into the cramped hut where he had first been held. This late in the day, it remained uncomfortably warm in there. The prisoners hadn’t nicknamed in the “hot box” for nothing.

There was very little daylight left to seep through the cracks and gaps. The door closed, and he was plunged into almost total darkness.

Deke felt as if he had just been buried alive.