Sniper Ridge

Chapter Twenty-Two

Cole was up before first light, the critter deep within him uncurling its claws as he set out from camp in a killing mood. The morning dawned cold and crisp, sharp as the edge of a knife and gleaming like a blade once the sun crept over the mountaintops. The rifle felt cold and deadly in his hands.

His preparations the previous day had honed him to a sharp point, but the truth was, he had been preparing for moments like this his whole life. He was a hunter by nature. Now, it was time to hunt the enemy.

His time might be limited. The orders that had come around for another attack on Sniper Ridge meant that he might be on the wrong side when the shooting started. He would just have to figure that out when the time came.

Leaving alone felt right because this was a one-man job. He didn't need to worry about getting anyone else killed. It was going to come down to him and the Chinese sniper. One of them was not going to survive this morning, and Cole was determined to make sure that it was going to be the other guy who didn’t make it.

His plan was a little crazy, the kind of thing you usually cooked up over too much moonshine and then worked to forget about the next morning, along with your aching head. But Cole set out to make it happen. As he climbed the ridge he thought, ain't no goin' back now.

He climbed toward the front line of American defenses, off on the left flank. The men were more spread out here because the threat of a full-on Chinese attack was unlikely. The heaviest defenses were centered along the lower point of the ridge above the base camp. The Americans depended on the rough landscape itself to do a better job of defending their position than any rows of concertina wire.

He spoke in a hushed tone to a couple of soldiers in a foxhole.

"Been quiet around here?"

"Thought we heard some enemy troops last night, but didn't see anything," the GI said.

Cole nodded. "You probably heard right. My guess is that they come and go through here. Listen, I'm gonna move out in front of you. Spread the word. Don't go shooting me."

"You're headed the wrong way," the GI told him. "Nothing out there but rocks and Chinese."

"That's the idea," Cole said.

The GI looked from Cole to the scoped rifle in his hands. "You're a sniper, huh? What are you gonna do, sneak closer and pick off some of the enemy?"

"Well, I sure as hell ain't gonna cook 'em breakfast," Cole said. "Now, keep your fool heads down if any shooting starts. Just so you know, if I come back, I'll likely be hauling ass."

"If you come back?"

"Like I said, if I come back."

Leaving the GIs something to think about, he slipped through the line of defenses and began walking parallel to it. The soldiers back in the foxhole had said that they might have heard enemy troops moving around in the dark. Their ears had not been playing tricks on them.

It was no secret that groups of Chinese saboteurs constantly slipped through the lines to do whatever damage they could. The raids were yet another way that they wore down their enemy. Interestingly enough, the UN and American forces didn't go much for that approach. Part of it was simple fear. If the Chinese raiders were captured, which did sometimes happen, they became prisoners of war. Nobody much liked the chances for any American raiders captured by the Chinese. The best they could hope for was torture and death.

Something that had been learned from the captured troops was how they picked their way through the American lines. Cole had heard rumors about it, and he thought that he could put that knowledge to use.

For too long, the enemy had been bringing the war to the Americans. Now, he was going to bring the war to them.

Not far from the foxhole where he had encountered the GIs, Cole found what he was looking for. I'll be damned. The rumors were true. Those raiders hadn't been lying about how they got through the US lines.

Cole looked more closely. It was a sign so faint that most eyes would have missed it. But Cole was a natural tracker, having grown up hunting in the mountains. His eyes could pick out a broken twig or the faintest impression of a footprint on a mountain trail. The markings that he saw now leaped out at him like a road sign.

Coming down through the hills was the faintest line of white powder. It wasn't at all like the sideline on a football field, but more like the spillage from an hourglass. In some places, the line was thicker and in other places it disappeared for a few paces, only to reappear in spurts like dots and dashes on the ground. If you didn't know it was there and you weren't looking for it, your eyes would have dismissed it.

Here and there, the line went up over some rocks or around a boulder. Tellingly, the trail tended to follow any natural cover that helped screen the path from the American sentries ahead.

Cole wet a finger, then bent down and tasted the powder. Bland, but he detected the faint taste of flour. It was the perfect marker because it lasted just long enough before fading into the rocky soil.

He had to give it to the Chinese. He could picture just how they were doing it. They were sending a lone scout to find his way through the American defenses. If they lost one man, so be it. One man could have moved silently through the defenses.

He likely probed the line until he found a way through, a spot where the trenches or foxholes were just a little too far apart or where a rocky outcropping broke up the line of sight, enabling someone to slip through unseen. Cole shook his head in wonder. Sneaky bastards.

Cole couldn't help but think of a finger poked through a hole in a sweater, or maybe a hernia jutting through an abdominal wall. The enemy was looking for a weakness. Once the enemy scout had found that soft spot, he retraced his steps, this time with a bag of flour that leaked a thin stream down onto the ground, marking his path. Later that night or the next night, a raiding party could follow the trail, slipping unseen through the American lines. It was a regular saboteur’s highway.

One thing about the Chinese, Cole thought, was that they were good at being sneaky. It was how they were going to win this war — that and their willingness to throw away their own lives like you threw handfuls of corn to greedy hens.

But the Chinese saboteurs were not the only ones who could move silently through the landscape. Cole did that now, retracing the path that went deep into the rocky ravines surrounding the American position. He passed through thickets and clambered over rocks, moving silently as the sun climbing the morning sky.

You could almost say this was Indian country in that neither side bothered defending it because it was too rough. Behind him was the American line. Somewhere up ahead was the Chinese line.

Easy now. The critter part of him was intent on killing, driven by it, like a wolf with an empty belly. But the cold part of Cole's mind reminded him that the hunter needed to be silent. One misstep, one snapped twig, one clatter of rocks under his boots — and he would surely unleash a hail of enemy machine gun fire. Wouldn't that just cancel Christmas?

Now came the tricky part. It was his turn to get through the Chinese lines. He had to beat them at their own game.

Moving forward, he could actually smell the Chinese before he heard them. It wasn't any kind of judgment about the Chinese themselves, but only the fact that they smelled different, like garlic and stale rice and maybe some seaweed mixed in. Germans had their own smell back in the last war. Like beer and sausage. The Japs had their own smell, too, from what he'd heard. The enemy claimed that the Americans smelled like old hamburgers.

This idea of defining smells might have seemed like foolishness to some, but he knew that in the woods, you could smell game, too — the musky scent of where a fox or coyote marked its territory, or the almost sweet smell the deer left behind where they had bedded down, not all that different from the barn smell of cattle. In part, Cole had given up cigarettes for good in an effort to detect these smells.

Creeping closer, he now heard voices. Speaking in that peculiar sing-song language. It was funny — as much as they'd been fighting the Chinese, they rarely ever heard them talk — except when they were screaming during a bayonet assault. That didn't need any translation.

Cole couldn't understand the words, of course, but he found the rhythm of the language soothing. It wasn't at all harsh and guttural like German — or English, for that matter.

The fact that the Chinese were talking among themselves, even laughing quietly, was a good sign. They wouldn't be listening too hard for trouble, and they certainly weren't expecting him. This white line marked a one-way street, anyhow, as far as the Chinese were concerned.

Coming back the other way wasn't gonna be as easy, if you could call this easy. If he came back at all, as he had said to the sentry, he was gonna be damn lucky.

Now came the hard part. He actually had to slip between the Chinese foxholes and get behind their line. Darkness would have helped, and he had thought about doing this at night, but had ruled that out. First of all, he wouldn't have been able to see a damn thing. He might have crawled right into an enemy foxhole. Second, the sentries would be on alert at night. Finally, it might have been his bad luck to run smack dab into one of those raiding squads. Instead, he had opted to wait for daylight and depend on his stealthiest skills.

Out here on the flank, nobody had bothered to cut down the brush between foxholes, which worked to Cole's advantage. He slung the rifle over his shoulder so that it hung crosswise across his back, then got down on his belly. Quietly, he slithered in under the bushes.

He had encountered more than a few snakes in these hills — the Asian pit vipers that were like a deadlier version of a copperhead particularly liked the rocky landscape — but he hoped it was cold enough now to have sent them into their winter dens. Besides, if the enemy heard him, snakes were going to be the least of his worries.

Cole crept forward, pushing his way through the thickest branches and dry, saw-edged grasses that cut at his face. The enemy's voices were so close now that he had to force himself to remember to breathe. Maybe he had steered too close to a foxhole, but he had no choice but to keep going. Can’t stop now. No way could he get himself turned around without being heard. The only way out of this mess was straight ahead, so he kept crawling.

Something moved in the brush off to his right and Cole froze. Automatically, his hand went to his knife. It was a standard-issue combat knife, not the hand-forged Bowie knife that he had lost at the Chosin when he was briefly captured, but Cole had honed this blade to a wickedly sharp edge. Slowly, he eased the knife out of the sheath.

The movement stopped. He heard a satisfied grunt, and then came the unmistakable sound of a stream of urine pattering on the ground. So damn close it almost splashed him. Cole froze. The Chinese soldier farted loudly, sighed contentedly, then buttoned up and moved away. He was sure that the Chinese had designated latrine areas, but out here, if there were no officers around, who cared? It was easier to take a few steps away to relieve yourself. That soldier couldn't have known how close he'd come to getting stabbed.

Cole moved on, right through a damp place that was likely courtesy of the soldier, but all he cared about was being silent. Slowly, each move calculated, he moved forward until the sounds from the foxhole faded a bit and moved around to his rear quadrant. He had managed to sneak right past the enemy.

The brush began to thin, giving way to a boulder-strewn field, like the backwash from some long-ago flood. Keeping low, he worked his way through the boulders, thankful that the ground was too rough for the Chinese to have dug any foxholes here. He was now on Sniper Ridge, to the east of the center where the bulk of the two armies faced each other. Nobody seemed to be around, and there wasn't any sign of established enemy occupation in this section. No roads, no telephone lines. Just rocks and brush. Just the way he liked it.

Cole moved east toward the center of the line, following the northern face of the ridge, behind where the enemy line was located. His plan was to stealthily move parallel to the enemy position, keeping out of sight using whatever cover was available, until he came to the center where the enemy sniper had been hidden on the previous days. With any luck, Cole would be right behind him.

But first, Cole had to get there. If sneaking through the enemy position was a crazy idea, there weren’t even any words to describe what he was doing now. Bat shit crazy? That came close.

Of course, he was breaking every goddamn rule he could think of. If the Chinese caught him, they'd likely shoot him as a spy. Maybe torture him first. As for his own side, he hadn't asked for permission to go on this one-man mission because he was sure nobody would have given it. What if he never came back? He grinned. Desertion wasn't much of an issue in Korea. Where the hell would anyone go? Wasn't anything or anyone that was real welcoming in this place. Nope — Lieutenant Ballard and all the rest would just figure that Cole had fallen off a cliff somewhere.

Not that Cole gave a damn. He had some business to settle.

Pushing all other thoughts out of his mind, he kept moving, keeping to the brush and boulders. Once or twice he crossed a path leading down from the face of the ridge, but didn't encounter anyone moving up or down to the Chinese line.

Eventually, he reached a path that was bigger and wider than the rest — big enough for numbers of men or maybe even artillery to be dragged into position. He must be near the Chinese center. Off in the distance, he saw a few tents, even a wisp or two of smoke rising into the still morning air. With a shock, he realized that he could actually see the Chinese HQ. Holy hell, Hillbilly, this shit is gettin' real.

He turned south now and began bushwhacking toward the peak of the ridge itself. The ridge ran like the back of a bony, swaybacked mule, narrow in some of the high places, lower and wider in others. He got onto one of these high places so that when he raised his head above the rocks and brush, he could see down the length of the mule's spine.

From here, he could see the network of Chinese defenses: men in their trenches and foxholes, machine gun nests, a bunker or two that must have sheltered command centers. It was like a goddamn army of ants. Chinese ants.

Almost directly beneath him was a knobby outcropping that he had memorized all too well from staring at it from the opposite direction. The landmark was known as Mao's Ears. The enemy sniper was somewhere down there.

Moving his scope slowly, slowly over the surrounding foxholes and trenches, he searched every square foot. He could see what was invisible from the American side. From here, he could see the back end of the Chinese position.

Finally, he spotted what he was looking for. A Chinese soldier, crouched in a hole, peering through a rifle with a telescopic sight. To his surprise, it was only the sniper by himself this morning. What had become of the spotter? Never mind; it just made Cole's job a fraction easier. One man to eliminate, instead of two.

In spite of himself, Cole felt his heart quicken. His sights were already on the sniper's back. Wasn't even that hard of a shot. Hell, at this range, he could have taken out his pistol and had a good chance of hitting him. All that he had to do was squeeze the trigger.

But not yet. The absence of the enemy sniper's spotter reminded Cole that he had better pay attention to his own surroundings. Cole was on his own here — he wasn't getting any help. Without anyone to watch his back, it was possible for someone to sneak right up on him. His plan would go all to pieces if he got back shot right about now. Hell now, that would ruin his whole day.

He turned away from the ridge and swept his scope across the landscape around him. He didn't see anything threatening.

Behind him, looking down, he also had a good view of the distant Chinese HQ. Out of curiosity, he put the scope to his eye and saw the movement of troops and vehicles. It was a long ways off, but in the still air, he felt confident that he could have sent a bullet down there if the need arose. He watched for a while through the scope. There seemed to be some commotion as more vehicles arrived and some of the Chinese brass got out. A knot of what must be officers surrounded one man in particular, apparently out of deference.

There wasn't anything special about the man that Cole could see, other than the fact that his frame looked somewhat older and heavier. The Chinese didn't go much for fancy uniforms. However, he was clearly a man of some importance. He turned to say something to an aide, who went racing away on some errand. That there has got to be a Chinese general.

Cole thought about that. He hadn't come all this way to shoot a general. Hadn't been his plan at all. But here was the opportunity, staring at him right through the rifle scope. It was like he'd gone squirrel huntin' and walked right up on a big ol' twelve-point buck. A man would be a fool to stick with the plan and shoot at squirrels instead.

Cole felt torn. He owed it to Pomeroy to shoot this sniper. He owed it to all those dead and wounded American boys he had seen in the field hospital. This sniper had done that to them. He had come all this way to triumph over his enemy, even had him in his sights, and yet, the general could be the more important target.

He paused, thinking it over. If he fired first at the general, the enemy sniper was so close that he would hear the shot and be alerted. Cole might lose his chance.

Already, he was running out of time. In the distance, he heard the concussive whump of artillery firing. Rounds began to strike the ridge far to his right, sending the enemy scurrying. The beginning of the artillery barrage could only mean that the planned attack had begun. The artillery fire walked back from the ridge, even with where Cole was hiding, although not in the area he was in. He had to hurry it up before all hell broke loose or the artillery shifted its aim and pulverized him in the process.

Taking his eye off the scope, he looked at the sniper, still in his hole, then down at the Chinese HQ that was a lot farther down the ridge.

He had to decide, right now. Shoot that general, or the sniper?