Sniper Ridge

Chapter Sixteen

Cole stepped forth into the cold gray light of dawn. There was none of the anticipation that he had felt yesterday. None of the excitement of the hunt. Certainly, he did not pause to revel in any memories of heading out at first light to hunt with his father. No, this morning felt like he was slogging his way toward a duel or maybe to an execution — hopefully not his own.

"Stick with me and keep your head down, kid," he murmured to Tommy Wilson. He wanted to keep the kid within whispering distance because sound traveled far on the morning air. A few wisps of cold mist drifted close to the ground. The air dragged at them, feeling heavy and cold.

"How far have we got to go?"

Cole paused long enough to nod at the peak ahead. "There's a place where I want to set up on yonder ridge."

"Isn't that near where you set up yesterday?"

"Thereabouts."

"Won't he be expecting you, then? The other sniper, I mean."

"That's the whole idea, kid. We've got to find each other to try and kill each other."

The kid didn't have an answer to that, so they kept heading up the trail. The slope was gradual at first, but would rise more steeply the closer that they came to the ridge.

Cole had mixed emotions about dragging the kid into this mess. On the one hand, the kid was dependable and would do what Cole told him. He had enough sense to keep his head down or he wouldn't have survived this long. A lot of soldiers hadn't — the life expectancy wasn't exactly long for a greenbean fresh from boot camp. But even Cole had to grudgingly admit that the kid was no greenbean anymore. Tommy Wilson had trudged his way out of the Chosin Reservoir with the best of them. Since then, he had seen plenty of action as part of the rifle squad.

On the other hand, Cole was wary of this Chinese sniper that he was about to confront. That son of a bitch could shoot like nobody’s business and he was slippery as an eel. More than likely, it had been this same sniper who settled Heywood's hash. Yesterday, the sniper had damn near killed Pomeroy. Another inch and, well, that would have been that.

Cole hadn't been able to protect Pomeroy, who was a seasoned veteran. How the hell was Cole supposed to protect the kid?

As far as Cole was concerned, all bets were off.

"Like I said, kid, keep your head down and don't take any chances today," he found himself saying. He didn't add that he had almost gotten Pomeroy killed yesterday, so didn't want to see the kid added to the casualty list.

The ground rose and their leg muscles began to get a workout. Cole's breathing deepened, sounding loud as a forge bellows in the quiet morning, although that was likely just his imagination. Good thing they were traveling light. Cole had his rifle and spare ammo, a canteen filled with lukewarm metallic-flavored water, and some rations stuffed in his pockets. The kid carried about the same, along with the binoculars. Miraculously, they were unscathed after yesterday's close call, which was a good thing because a decent pair of binoculars was hard to come by on the front lines. The binoculars seemed to be fine, except for Pomeroy's blood dried into the nooks and crannies.

He approached the same trench where he had set up yesterday. Silently, he jumped down into it. The kid followed, but looked around a little mystified. The low wall was still set up, along with a rest that Cole had created, complete with an old folded sheet of canvas.

"Here?" Tommy asked. "It looks like some other sniper was already using this spot. Wait a minute—"

"Yeah, this is where I was yesterday. Now he'll know where to find me," Cole said.

Breaking every rule in his book, Cole was returning to the same location. Generally, a sniper who moved around survived because he wasn't expected in the same place. Routine led to danger — an enemy who knew your approach and exit routes might simply be waiting to pick you off. But Cole didn't expect that to be the case here. He'd had the sense this morning that he was headed to a duel, and he wasn't far off.

Cole did make a few adjustments, adding a few more stones in front of the trench where the kid was positioned. He was shorter than Pomeroy, anyhow, so that was something. As long as the kid didn't go sticking his head up, he ought to be fine.

Ought to be, Cole reminded himself.

It took Cole just a few minutes to set up and get his bearings. Through the scope, he studied the ridge in front of them. It looked about the same. He told the kid where the enemy sniper had been set up yesterday.

"That ain't to say he won't move around," Cole said. "Keep your eyes open."

"Maybe he won't even be there."

"Oh, he'll be there."

"How do you know?"

"He'll be there." To himself, he added because he's just like me.

Slowly, the defenses around them woke up for the day, now that it was getting light enough to see the enemy position. Any night when there hadn't been a Chinese surprise attack was a good one. Any morning when you woke up at all was a good one when you were on the front line.

Across from them, Sniper Ridge was coming into sharper focus. Beyond it stood the twin peaks of the hill known as Jane Russell, with Pike's Peak nearby. Cole thought that maybe Pike's Peak was back in Chinese control — or had that been two days ago? It was hard to say because the two sides swapped faster than partners at a barn dance. Dosey-doe, away we go.

For now, the enemy was dug securely into the hilltop.

"I feel sorry for the poor bastards who have to push them off," he said. "All they had to do two days ago was throw rocks down at us."

"One step forward, two steps back," the kid agreed.

From time to time, a few bursts of artillery rained down on the ridge to help keep the Chinese pinned in place. The shells passed overhead with a sound like ripping paper before striking with an earth-shattering detonation. Not to be outdone, the Chinese released a few volleys of their own artillery fire back at the American positions.

Now that it was getting light, they could already hear the drone of approaching aircraft. A couple of planes came in low over the ridge off to the east, saying good morning to the enemy with a round of napalm.

It was lucky for the US and UN forces that they never had to worry about air superiority. There had been some noises about the Chinese having some planes, but they had never seen any.

"Give 'em hell, boys," Cole muttered, watching the hillside blossom with a bright orange fireball that billowed out into a gaseous ball before fading to shades of red and black. Shreds of burning flame were left behind on the mountainside as the fire claimed shrubs, scrub trees, and whatever else lay in its path — such as the Chinese soldiers occupying the trenches there.

From a distance, the bombing made for a captivating show. Up close, the bombing must have been terrifying. The slight breeze shifted, and after a while, Cole caught a whiff of the smell of the burning jellied gasoline. The stink of it roiled his stomach.

Their bombs dropped, the planes turned to circle over the American-held ridge. They waggled their wings, coming in low enough to make out the figure in the cockpit, then swept away toward the distant coast.

"I wouldn't mind being a pilot," the kid said. "That's got to be the easiest job in the world. Fly in, drop your bombs, fly back in time for dinner."

"Not so easy when you have engine troubles or when somebody decides to shoot at you."

"I'd take my chances," the kid said. “It’s got to be better than being in a foxhole.”

Cole was glad to keep his feet on the ground and on dry land, for that matter.

He turned his gaze back to the enemy's ridge, looking for targets.

They had come out here to get the attention of the enemy sniper. It was time to poke the hornet's nest. Short of being able to determine where the sniper was hiding — if he was even out there at all this morning — the next best thing was to pick off a few of the enemy soldiers. If he started doing that, then somebody would notice him, eventually.

Cole's practiced eye soon saw some movement on the ridge opposite them. Just as on the American side, the enemy troops were waking up and starting their day. That meant there were orders to relay. Messages to carry. Even rations to deliver, because the Chinese relied more on freshly cooked food than the US and UN forces, who had their packaged rations. From the evidence that they had found in abandoned or captured enemy defenses, it appeared that the enemy lived mostly on rice. Cole almost felt sorry for them. Rice was a hell of a thing to have to fight a war on.

The soldier he spotted was moving from foxhole to trench to boulder, keeping his head down as if he might have felt Cole's crosshairs tracking him. His grayish uniform and furtive movements made him resemble nothing more than an overgrown gopher.

At this distance, Cole did not want to attempt a moving shot. He kept his crosshairs on the man, following along with him as he disappeared behind cover and then reappeared, until the enemy soldier finally came to a halt. It was hard to say why he had stopped, and it really didn't matter.

Cole felt the rifle kick against his shoulder. The bullet required nearly one full second to traverse the distance between ridges, during which time the soldier did not move. Consequently, the bullet hit him and flung him around, as if he had been punched in the shoulder. He went down and did not get back up.

A little to the left next time, Cole thought.

"You got him!" the kid exclaimed, watching through the binoculars. He had pushed his glasses up out of the way and had his eyes right against the binoculars. Lowering the binoculars, he pushed the glasses back down and blinked as his vision adjusted. "Wow, that is really far. You know what, I can barely even see that far, especially without my glasses."

"Then you'd better not lose your glasses."

"Where did you learn to shoot like that?" the kid asked.

"Just comes natural, I suppose."

"You know, some people are just good at baseball. Or at football. But they also get plenty of practice."

Cole thought about it. "I practically grew up with a rifle in my hands," he admitted. "I can't even tell you how old I was when I first went into the woods by myself with a rifle."

"My parents would even let me have a BB gun," the kid said. "They were afraid I would shoot songbirds. Mom said it was bad luck to kill a sparrow. She was worried about me killing birds and look at me now, here in Korea."

"It's a hell of a thing, kid," Cole snorted. "Your folks might have let you take to the woods with a rifle if'n they'd been hungry enough and needed you to bring supper home."

"Not unless you could shoot a meatloaf."

Growing up in the mountains had been different, he supposed. There were always chores to do, from hauling water to feeding the hogs to taking a hoe to the garden. Had he ever really been a child? Not in the usual sense of being a carefree little boy. In the mountains, a child was something that you put to work earning his keep as soon as possible. A child was another mouth to feed.

As for taking to the woods with a rifle when he was barely big enough to carry it, his careworn mother didn't have much say in the matter and it was just possible that his old man had been too drunk to care, or off in the hills making moonshine.

Cole turned back to using the scope to scan for his next targets. Nearby, he knew that the kid was doing the same thing with the binoculars.

Something wriggled at the back of Cole's mind, thinking about the shot that he had just taken. The downed man was just another anonymous soldier, and yet he was like every soldier in some way. Cole had just taken away everything that the man ever had or ever would have. He had just deprived him of life.

It was a hard thing to think too much about. But killing is what he did. It's what any soldier did.

Whenever Cole felt himself growing soft, or reluctant to pull the trigger, he only had to remember the soldiers that he and Sergeant Weber had found frozen in their foxholes on the shores of the Chosin Reservoir, eyes iced over, or the screams of the wounded when the Chinese set fire to the trucks and ambulances they captured on the retreat from Chosin. Those memories hardened his heart.

To be sure, the Chinese had been particularly cruel. He supposed part of it was simple revenge. The attacking Chinese forces had been mown down in huge numbers. Although the enemy forces greatly outnumbered the Americans and their UN allies, the advantage in firepower clearly lay on the American side. A single BAR could cut a vast hole in the attacking line.

In fact, not all of the Chinese attackers back then had even carried rifles. The first wave had been armed, of course, mostly with inferior Chinese-made bolt-action rifles that were no match for the semi-automatic M-1 rifles and carbines used by the US troops.

The second wave of Chinese attackers were expected to pick up weapons from their fallen comrades. Their only weapons were stick grenades, strapped into special holsters or simply shoved into their pockets. Cole supposed that was better than nothing, but you had to get close enough to toss a grenade, and many didn't.

There was no going back, however. No retreat for the Chinese troops. The Chinese attacks had included a third wave made up of the political officers. This last group was well-armed with pistols and even submachine guns, but their role was not as assault troops. Instead, their mission was to shoot any soldiers from the first two waves who dared to retreat.

With those Chinese troops caught between a rock and a hard place, it was almost possible to feel sorry for them.

Once the enemy started overtaking the slow-moving US trucks on the single road leading from Chosin, they had turned the tables by slaughtering the wounded inside.

The Germans had been tough customers in the last war, and there had been brutal incidents like the Malmedy massacre at the Battle of the Bulge, but such war crimes were the exception. Even they drew the line at outright murder of POWs and wounded.

Soldiers captured alive by the Chinese or their North Korean allies had a good chance of staying that way because the Chinese wanted to keep them that way as negotiating pawns.

But the Chinese didn't want to be bothered taking care of any wounded. In fairness, they could barely take care of their own. But it was the way that they went about it that was so godawful. First, they fired through the canvas sides, and then they tossed in grenades or ran forward with torches to set the trucks ablaze.

Sons of bitches.

When he thought about those things, the screams of men being burned alive and the terrible smell of it, Cole didn't mind killing so much.

"Off to your right, about a hundred feet from the last one," said the kid, binoculars pressed to his eyes.

Cole glanced away from the scope just long enough to see that the kid was barely showing anything but the top of his helmet above the rim of the trench. He ought to be safe enough; the enemy sniper would need to be eagle-eyed to catch a glimpse of him.

Following the kid's directions, Cole looked through the scope and spotted that man as well. He put the crosshairs on him. He fired again, and again, reaping the enemy as soon as a target presented itself.

The kid was proving himself to be almost as much of a good spotter as Pomeroy had been, which was saying something. Of course, located as they were in the American lines, Cole and the kid could devote their full attention to the targets on the ridge. Nobody was going to be sneaking up behind him, which would have been a concern anywhere else.

"I've got to take a leak," the kid announced.

"Do it right here in the trench," Cole said.

"You sure?"

"Have you gotten a whiff of this hole, kid? You wouldn't be the first to use it as a latrine. Anyhow, you crawl out of this trench, and somebody is sure as hell gonna see you. That other sniper is out there. He knows I'm in the vicinity. No point in giving him something to shoot out."

A few moments later, he heard the kid's stream splashing down to mix into the mud at the bottom of the ditch. The kid kicked some dirt over it and got back on the binoculars.

Although there were a few desultory potshots from the Chinese line, nobody made any real effort to challenge Cole.

With the kid working as his spotter, he continued to pick off any enemy soldier who showed himself on the opposite ridge. He was like a turkey buzzard, picking clean the bones on a carcass — the carcass in this case being the enemy defenses.

There was no sign yet of the enemy sniper.

Where are you, you son of a bitch?