Sniper Ridge

Chapter Fourteen

Dutifully, Pomeroy was working the enemy defenses with the binoculars.

"What I'd like to know is this," Pomeroy began. "Why did you drag me out here this morning? You should have brought the kid. He worships the ground you walk on, you know. He can't help it; he's easily impressed. Unlike me. If you had wanted him to, he would have shined your boots out here while you were at it."

Cole didn't say anything for a moment, not quite sure how he felt about someone supposedly worshiping the ground he walked on. He sure as hell didn't deserve that and it worried him a little. Deep down, he also suspected that Pomeroy was right about that.

"Listen here, New Jersey. I brought you along because you know what the hell you're doing and you don't get excited about it," Cole said. "Also, if the fat falls in the fire, I know that I can count on you."

"What fat and what fire?" Pomeroy wanted to know. "I wish you damn hillbillies would just speak plain English."

"The fat and fire I'm talking about is if the Chinese attack," Cole said. "They already took back Sniper Ridge. What if they want this ridge, too? You just never know when they'll turn the tables on us."

"Well, thanks for that," Pomeroy said. "I mean, who would want to miss maybe getting bayoneted, mortared, and shot when he could have been sleeping all nice and cozy in his tent this morning? You are a hell of a guy, Hillbilly."

"That's about what I thought you would say," Cole replied.

"What do you think? Is he out there this morning?" Pomeroy wanted to know.

Cole took his eye away from the scope long enough to scan the distant ridge. The light had grown quickly, picking out details that had been obscured in shadow just minutes before. The sense he had was like the woods on the morning of a hunt. Sometimes you could just feel a buck out there waiting for you in the shadows. At any moment, he would step into a clearing and present the perfect target. It got so you could tell right away whether or not a hunt was going to be successful.

Cole sniffed the air, enjoying the rich tang of fall. If there hadn't been a war on, it might have been a decent morning. At the same time, some part deep within him thought, Who are you joshin'? You love every bit of this, right down to getting one of those enemy soldiers in your sights. If the other soldier is hunting you back, even better.

Pomeroy was still awaiting his answer, so Cole said, "Oh, I reckon he's out there, all right. He's like us. He's been out here since first light, already in position and waiting."

"Did you seriously tell all that by sniffing the air?" Pomeroy wondered. "What are you, some kind of wolf? A coyote, maybe?"

Cole snorted. "Maybe I am something like that."

Pomeroy didn't reply, thinking that over.

As it turned out, he had plenty of time to ponder while they waited for something to happen. Cole went back to the scope and Pomeroy scanned the enemy ridge with the binoculars. The morning calm would likely lull some poor American boy into carelessness. He would show himself; there would be a rifle crack as the opposing sniper opened up business for the day. With any luck, Cole would shoot back.

As it turned out, they didn't have to wait long. The report of a rifle broke the morning quiet in the way that an egg is tapped against the side of a bowl, releasing the yolk. The rifle shot was followed by excited shouts and then a single cry for a medic.

When the call for a medic wasn't repeated, Cole figured that the poor boy shot by the Chinese sniper most likely wasn't going to be needing a medic, after all, because he was already gone.

The enemy sniper had taken the bait. The question was, could Cole now bring him down?

"If I didn't know better, I'd say he was almost directly across from us," Pomeroy said in a hoarse whisper, not taking his eye from the scope. "Anyhow, that's where it sounded like the shot come from. There was some echo in there, but if I was gonna bet, I'd say that's the spot, right around one o'clock."

"That's about what I thought, too," Cole said. "It's hard to see anything over there."

"Yeah," Pomeroy agreed. "You want rocks, I can find you lots of those. Enemy snipers, not so much."

"Keep looking," Cole said.

Not much after that, the enemy sniper fired again, picking off another soldier. Cole tried to ignore the cries of agony that, mercifully, did not last long.

"Definitely right across from us," Pomeroy said. "No doubt about it."

"Yep," Cole agreed.

However, pinpointing the sniper's hiding place would be more than a little difficult. As Pomeroy had pointed out earlier, the entire ridge was nothing more than a jumble of rocks and stunted brush with a few boulders thrown in for variety. He could be hiding anywhere in that mess. It went without saying that the enemy sniper would be as well-discussed as Cole, his rifle wrapped in cloth to break up its outline.

The only consolation was that looking across at the American lines, the sniper wouldn't be able to tell where he and Pomeroy were, either. There was simply too much territory to cover.

After a while, Pomeroy put down the binoculars and had a drink from his canteen. He dug around in the rucksack and found a half-eaten chocolate bar. He picked away some dirt and sawdust that was stuck to it and then started munching. "You want anything?"

"No," Cole said. The truth was that he liked to be a little hungry when he hunted. It kept his senses sharp. His pa had taught him that much on their morning hunts in the mountains. Those mornings seemed like a lifetime ago, but in reality it hadn't been much more than ten years. So much had happened since then.

Once Pomeroy had finished his snack, he suggested, "Should we try the old helmet on a stick?"

"That's about the dumbest idea I've heard in a while. He ain't gonna fall for that."

"All right, then," Pomeroy said. "Have it your way. We'll wait him out and let him pick off a few more of our boys."

Another hour went by before Cole said, "I guess you'd better find a stick."

Pomeroy found one. "My helmet or yours?"

"It was your idea, New Jersey, so we'll use your helmet."

"I was afraid you'd say that," Pomeroy said.

There was a reason that the helmet on a stick was one of the oldest tricks in the book. First of all, you didn't need any special equipment, just someone dumb enough to hold onto the helmet while it was raised into a sniper's line of sight. Second, from a distance it was hard to tell if the helmet was a ruse or not. A helmet was also hard to resist as a target. What rat didn't like cheese?

Cole kept his eye pressed tight to the scope, focused on the general area where he suspected that the other sniper was hiding. He waited, but nothing happened.

"Jiggle it up and down," he told Pomeroy.

Pomeroy did that, but nobody took the bait. Finally, Pomeroy lowered the helmet and put it back on his head, being careful to stay below the rim of the trench.

"Any other bright ideas?"

"I'll think about it," he said. "Now keep your eyes open."

It was just possible that they were too far away, and that the helmet was too small of a target for the enemy sniper to see.

Then again, maybe he just wasn't going to fall for it?

Cole didn't have other tricks up his sleeve at the moment. He settled down to wait. If nothing else, he was patient.

"What the hell are those guys doing?" Pomeroy asked.

"What guys?"

"Over there on the left."

Cole watched, incredulous, as a squad left the relative safety of the defenses and moved into the no-man's land between the two ridges. They were probing the enemy position, which wasn't all that unusual. It was what happened whenever some officer got bored. Cole had been on the short end of that particular stick more than a few times himself.

With an enemy sniper active, this was nothing but foolhardy.

The men picked their way down the slope. Their job was to approach the enemy defenses but not actually attack. They were to draw fire to help determine where the defenses on the ridge were strongest. Basically, they were decoys.

The Chinese dropped a mortar round or two from the top of the ridge, but the squad was out of effective mortar range. They were also too far away for anyone but a really good marksman to hit, so there were only a few desultory shots from the ridge. These were quickly silenced. Apparently, the Chinese were telling their men to hold their fire and not waste ammunition.

Cole realized that he was holding his breath. When the sniper didn't fire right away, he remembered to breathe again.

"Maybe he packed it in already," Pomeroy said.

But that turned out to be wishful thinking. No sooner had the squad entered the tangle of barbed wire below and started picking their way through, then a rifle shot rang out. One of the soldiers below threw back his arms and collapsed.

The others ran for cover, but there wasn't much down there to hide behind other than more barbed wire. Some threw themselves flat or got into shell holes, but not before the sniper had fired again, dropping another man.

Two shots. Two men down. This son of a bitch didn’t miss.

"This is goddamn awful. They're sitting ducks down there," Pomeroy said. He glassed the opposite ridge desperately. "I think I see him. Got a little puff of smoke or something. Just past that old tree."

Through the scope, Cole spotted the gnarled tree. Stripped of any vegetation, the bark had been shredded by bullets and shrapnel. And then he saw just a hint of motion. It wasn't the sniper, he realized. It was someone with a pair of binoculars. Like Cole, the enemy sniper must also have a spotter. He didn't see a helmet, which was interesting; the spotter seemed to be wearing an officer's hat with a splash of red on it. What kind of sniper was important enough to have an officer calling the shots for him?

The kind of sniper that didn’t miss, that’s who.

Straining through the scope, he tried to pick out something that might be the sniper. However, the man was too hidden. Although he could see the spotter, that's not who he wanted to shoot. The sniper would just find another one.

He noticed the spotter's head tilt to the right, as if talking to someone one. Cole still couldn't see the enemy sniper, but he picked a spot four feet to the right of the spotter, and fired. He worked the bolt and fired again for good measure.

Even if he couldn't possibly hope to hit the enemy sniper, Cole could give him something to think about by sending a couple of bullets in his general direction.

But in the process, he had managed to give himself away. Maybe there had been a glint off the lens of his telescopic sight. Maybe it was a glint off Pomeroy's binoculars.

Whatever the case, a bullet came in and he heard Pomeroy go, "Unnhh." Delayed, he heard the crack of the distant rifle shot an instant later.

He still hadn't seen a thing, so he put down the rifle and turned toward Pomeroy. He was sitting in the mud at the bottom of the trench, clearly stunned, one hand pressed to the side of his head. Blood ran between his fingers.

"You're hit, you're hit!" Cole said, crawling toward him. He pulled Pomeroy's hand away, afraid of what he might see.

Pomeroy's hand looked managed, and also his ear. A ribbon of torn flesh dangled from it. Some of his scalp was ripped up. Miraculously, the bullet had just missed his skull.

Cole realized what had happened. Pomeroy had probably let down his guard and stood too far above the trench to get a better view. He had still been holding the binoculars when the bullet had hit his left hand and then his ear.

"How bad is it?" Pomeroy asked.

"You'll be all right," Cole said. "Missed your head. Chewed up your ear and some of your fingers."

In Cole's mountain drawl, it came out as fangers.

"Hurts like hell."

Pomeroy's ear and scalp were also bleeding like hell, with blood running down his neck and soaking into his uniform tunic. Cole shouted, "Medic!"

He got a gauze pack and used it to staunch some of the flowing blood. A medic was running toward their position, stooped over as far as he could go, hoping to dodge the next bullet.

To give the medic a better chance of reaching them in one piece, Cole got back on the rifle and put a round into the spot where he thought the sniper might be hiding. This time, the spotter was nowhere to be seen.

"Dammit that stings," Pomeroy said. "The worst part is that they'll send me home now for sure."

"Some folks have all the luck," Cole said.