Savage Sniper

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

With the steady peck of the Nambu machine gun keeping them pinned down, the men inside the bunker and in the surrounding defensive foxholes were forced to stay low. Whenever the machine gun let up, they returned fire. The bunker door had been open for easier communication with the men in the foxholes beyond, but the lieutenant ordered it closed once the machine gun opened up.

One thing for sure was that both sides had reached a stalemate. The Americans weren’t going anywhere. Meanwhile, the Japanese couldn’t get at them. What happened next was anybody’s guess, but time was not on the Americans’ side.

“All they need to do is wait us out,” Deke said, risking another look through the scope. Instantly the tangled vegetation on the far side of the clearing sprang closer to his eye. He didn’t see any movement or targets, so held his fire. The running fight against the Japanese had used up more ammo than they had anticipated. Each shot needed to count.

“Yeah, we’re low on ammo, water, and food,” Philly agreed. “Plus, I hate to say it, but it’s starting to stink in here.”

“You got that right.” Deke wrinkled his nose. With so many men forced to shelter inside the bunker, one corner had been designated as the latrine area. Aside from the firing slits, there wasn’t much in the way of ventilation.

“So we sit here for how long?” Philly wondered.

“I don’t see Colonel Yamagata as the patient type. He’ll want to put an end to this sooner rather than later.”

“You mean the Japanese are gonna try something to shake us loose?”

“Damn straight,” Deke said.

Lieutenant Steele called for an ammo count.

“We have thirty rounds between us,” Yoshio replied. He and Rodeo were paired up, covering one of the firing slits.

Deke and Philly counted out their clips. “About the same,” Deke said.

“All right, I’ve got a dozen shells left,” Steele said, referring to his twelve-gauge shotgun. “Father Francisco and his boys are in the same boat. I wish to hell that we’d brought more ammo.”

Nobody needed to remind Steele that ammunition was heavy, and they had been traveling light on this raid. The goal had been to liberate the POWs, not engage in a running battle.

“That’s not much ammo for a last stand,” Philly said.

“Who the hell said anything about this being a last stand?” Steele demanded. “We came here to liberate these men and get them back to our lines, which is exactly what we are going to do.”

“You got it, Honcho,” Philly quickly agreed.

Deke knew that the lieutenant could make all the speeches that he wanted to, but their ability to achieve the mission goal was being severely limited by their firepower. Of course, the prisoners themselves didn’t have a weapon among them. Deke also knew that Colonel Yamagata was no fool. He would have guessed the Americans’ situation and would do something soon to force an outcome.

Also, much of the day had been lost to the stalemate. Already the sun was getting low through the treetops. It was hard to say whether nightfall would give an advantage to the Japanese or to the Americans, who might use darkness as cover to slip through the encircling enemy.

Deke didn’t have to wait long before he was proved right about the Japanese taking action, although in this case, being correct gave him no pleasure. Through the scope, he detected movement at the edge of the forest where the attackers had taken cover. He let his breath out, waiting for a target.

“Here they come.” Philly had seen it too.

All at once the Japanese burst from the forest and into the clearing. Deke counted a dozen men, all screaming their heads off and dashing toward the bunker with bayonets gleaming on the ends of their rifles. Most also had grenades strung around their necks. There was no doubt what they had in mind. They planned to get close enough to get some of those grenades through the firing slits. If that happened, the interior of the bunker would be a perfect detonation chamber for an explosive, the shrapnel causing terrible destruction. No, the Japanese couldn’t be allowed to get that close.

On the plus side, the appearance of the men out in the open gave Deke and the other snipers plenty of targets, like serving up biscuits on a plate.

Or so he thought. Deke was just about to fire when the enemy’s machine gun opened up, strafing the side of the bunker. Another burst raked the foxholes, sending the Filipino fighters scrambling for cover.

It was impossible not to duck your head down out of sheer reflex. When Deke put his head back up, the Japanese were already halfway across the clearing and closing fast.

“I want fire on the enemy now!” Steele screamed, a little unnecessarily. Following his own orders, he ran to the firing slit on the side facing the assault and poked his rifle through the opening.

Deke put his sights on the closest Japanese and fired. The man went down. He worked the bolt, picked out another target, and fired. He was shoulder to shoulder with the other snipers, and their deadly accurate fire was having a devastating effect on the enemy assault. Already half the attackers were gone.

Deke had the thought that the Japanese were damn stupid.

That was when there was a warning shout from the other side of the bunker.

“There’s a bunch more of them coming up our backside,” Faraday cried. He was facing the fresh wave of attackers with a useless pistol, having emptied his gun earlier in anger at the Japanese for one of their stray shots killing a POW inside the bunker. His plan seemed to be that he would simply use it as a club if the enemy got close enough.

“Deke, Philly, get over there, now!” the lieutenant shouted. “Rodeo, Yoshio, you cover this side with me.”

Deke pushed past the knot of ex-POWs huddling in the center of the bunker to get at the firing slits on the other side. Faraday and Cooper were there, keeping an eye on the Japanese. They had no weapons, but it was clear from their expressions that they would punch at the Japanese through the firing slit if it came down to it.

“Get down before you get yourself shot,” Deke growled, shoving Faraday aside to get a clear angle of fire.

It was immediately obvious to Deke that the initial charge across the clearing was nothing more than a feint, because on this side of the bunker, a half-dozen enemy soldiers approached silently, at a crouch. Several were loaded down with grenades. This facet of the bunker had the largest blind side because of the solid door set into the middle of the wall. The foxholes on this back side were empty, the Filipino fighters having been lured away to face the charging enemies.

Deke was sure that the grenades were intended to breach the door. Solid as it looked, if the Japanese piled enough grenades against the door, it might just splinter.

The Japanese soldier leading the sneak attack looked up. Deke caught a glimpse of his face, and a jolt of recognition went through him.

“I’ll be damned if it ain’t Mr. Suey,” he muttered.

“That’s him, all right,” Faraday agreed. “Put a bullet through the middle of his ugly mug for me, will ya?”

“You got it.”

“Who the hell is Mr. Suey?” Philly wondered.

“Nothing but the meanest Jap bastard you ever met,” Faraday said. “Every guy here would like to get his hands on that son of a bitch and tear him to pieces.”

Deke was trying to save them the trouble. He hadn’t endured nearly as much at Suey’s hands as the POWs had, but nonetheless, during his time in the hot box, he had dreamed about the moment when he got the enemy sergeant in his crosshairs.

But Suey wasn’t making it easy. He ran at a crouch, moving fast, dodging right and left. Deke took his time aiming. He didn’t want to wing Suey. He wanted to kill him.

His finger tightened on the trigger as Suey finally ran straight up the middle to cover the last few yards to the bunker.

Got you now.

Except at that moment someone shouted a warning from behind him. He felt Faraday grab him and pull him down. The next instant, the bunker was filled with an earsplitting blast, like being caught inside a tin can with a firecracker.

He turned to see that one of the Japanese attackers had managed to shove a grenade through the firing slit on that side. It had detonated with devastating effect.

“I’m hit!” Rodeo shouted, reeling away from the firing slit, blood streaming from the side of his face.

Shrapnel from the grenade had also left several of the ex-POWs torn and bleeding, not to mention stunned and deafened.

Another grenade tumbled through the opening and rolled into the middle of the bunker.

“Look out!” Yoshio shouted.

Quick as lightning, Cooper launched himself across the bunker and pounced on the grenade like a cat on a mouse. The thing went off with a sickening whunk as Cooper’s body absorbed the blast. There was no doubt that he had just traded several lives for his own.

Lieutenant Steele raised himself up and jammed his shotgun through the firing slit. The twelve-gauge made short work of whatever attackers had made it close enough to the bunker wall to get those grenades in.

The twin grenade blasts had pulled Deke’s attention away from his own firing slit. When he looked again, Mr. Suey was no longer in sight, safely in the bunker’s blind spot. Deke cursed, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He heard a thud on the other side of the door, leaving no doubt that the Japanese planned to blast their way through.

“Fire in the hole!” Deke shouted to warn the others.

But he didn’t plan on letting the Japanese off the hook that easily. Taking a few steps back, he leveled his rifle at the thick door and fired.

Deke knew from experience that the Springfield fired a .30–06 round with enough power to punch through a six-inch tree trunk. More than one enemy soldier had found that out the hard way. He reckoned that his bullet could get through the door. With any luck, one of those slugs would drill a hole right through Mr. Suey.

He got off three shots before the door blew.

The blast knocked Deke backward, clean off his feet. Splinters of the door flew inside through the roiling smoke. As the smoke cleared, it was evident that the door had remained in place, but it now hung askew like a tattered curtain.

The first Japanese that pushed his way into the bunker died when he was cut nearly in two by a blast from Lieutenant Steele’s shotgun. Steele advanced on the blown door, pumping the shotgun and firing, screaming bloody murder all the while. Another enemy soldier came through the door and died.

Steele ran out of shells. Cursing, he grabbed hold of one end of the hot barrel, holding the shotgun like a baseball bat.

Somehow Deke managed to keep a grip on his rifle, although the blast that shattered the door had knocked him down. Ears ringing and dizzy, he got to his feet.

At that moment, it was Mr. Suey who came through the smoking, broken doorway. In one hand, he held a pistol. In the other, he held a grenade.

His sand-colored tunic was stained with blood, evidence that perhaps one of Deke’s bullets through the door had winged him.

Mr. Suey held the grenade up triumphantly, shouting something unintelligible in Japanese. His eyes widened in recognition when he spotted Deke pointing the rifle at him.

“Aw, shut the hell up,” Deke said, and shot him.

The impact of the bullet knocked Mr. Suey backward. He tumbled back out through the door, and the grenade went off. The blast knocked away a few more boards so that the broken door hung in its frame like a lopsided, gap-toothed smile.

A momentary quiet settled over the bunker and clearing as both sides tried to figure out what to do next.

Once again, the quiet did not last long. One of the former prisoners decided that he’d had enough. He’d had enough of being hungry and thirsty. He’d had enough of fearing death at the hands of the enemy. After so many long months of cruel captivity, who could blame him? Freedom had seemed so close, only to be denied again at the hands of the enemy. Unable to take any more of it, the man simply snapped. The open door left by the grenade attack beckoned.

The man leaped up with a burst of energy that would have seemed impossible only minutes ago. After all, he was little more than skin and bones, what remained of his ragged uniform flapping around his skinny arms and legs.

Deke recognized him as one of the quieter captives who had kept his head down, seemingly intent on survival. The man’s name was Truslow.

“I’ve had it!” Truslow shouted. “I’m getting out of here!”

To his credit, Faraday tried to stop him. He jumped up and tried to get between the man and the door. “Hold it, Truslow! Just hold it! Where the hell do you think you’re going? We’re surrounded!”

“I can’t take it anymore!” Truslow shouted, then managed to dodge around Faraday and head for the door. Looking on, Deke and the others were too stunned to act.

A split second later, the man was out the doorway. He jumped over the heads of the startled Filipino fighters in the foxholes and began running for all he was worth across the open clearing.

The man’s sudden appearance in the open seemed to have taken the enemy by surprise, because they held their fire.

Where Truslow hoped to escape to was hard to say, because the clearing really was ringed by Japanese troops hidden within the cover offered by the encroaching forest. His escape attempt was somewhat helped by the fact that it was starting to get dark, and the dusk was growing thicker. With any luck, his momentum might carry him clear through the enemy perimeter.

Alas, it was not to be. A lone figure stepped from the forest into the clearing. The figure was instantly recognizable as Colonel Yamagata because of the bow he brandished. He already had an arrow nocked. In the time it took to take a breath, Yamagata’s powerful arm drew back the string and released an arrow.

The arrow’s fletching made it visible like a white flash in the dusk as it sailed straight and true, burying itself in Truslow’s chest cavity. Truslow threw his arms wide like a man beseeching the heavens, then tumbled to the ground, ending his run for freedom a few feet short of the edge of the clearing.

Yamagata. Deke had his rifle up once he had recovered his wits, but by then the archer had faded back among the trees.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Faraday was muttering, staring out through one of the firing slits at Truslow’s lifeless figure in the distance. An enemy rifle cracked, and he was forced to duck down.

“That’s it,” Lieutenant Steele announced. He had positioned himself in front of the bunker door to block the exit, just in case anyone else got the idea to make a run for it. “One way or another, we are getting out of here.”