Lieutenant Steele squinted with his one good eye. “More like twelve hundred,” he said.
“Yeah, I’d say about that,” Deke replied.
He took off his pack and put it on the hood of a truck, then set his rifle on the pack. The Weaver scope mounted on his Springfield was relatively low power — good enough for the closer ranges of jungle fighting, but next to useless at this distance. But you had to work with what you had.
However, he also had something of a secret weapon. The Springfield normally fired a 150-grain round, but he had managed to obtain a few rounds of 180-grain ammunition that was technically a hunting round. The rounds had come from a grizzled master sergeant who had heard of Deke’s reputation and pressed them into his hand with the admonition “Use ’em well, son.” Deke planned to. Considering that there were four hundred grains to an ounce, the difference in weight seemed minuscule. However, the heavier bullet could shoot farther and more accurately. And hit harder. He still had a few in his pocket, saved up for a special occasion. This seemed like as good a time as any.
Philly was suddenly beside him, glassing the ridge with binoculars far more powerful than Deke’s scope. “See that Jap gun about two o’clock from us?”
“I see it,” Deke said after a moment, spotting it through the scope. “I’m gonna reach out and give them a poke.”
He breathed in and held it. He reminded himself that he was shooting uphill and at a considerable distance. In theory, his bullet could reach that target. In reality, you had to be able to see your target. It wasn’t like one of the big naval guns where you could fire beyond the horizon. He made the mental calculations, raised his aim a bit, and squeezed the trigger.
At this distance, it took a few heartbeats for the bullet to reach the Japanese target.
“Got him,” Philly said beside him.
Deke worked the bolt and fired again.
“A little high and to the right.”
“Yeah,” Deke said. He worked the bolt, adjusted his aim, then fired again.
“Hit,” Philly reported.
Deke kept it up, firing more quickly now that he had the range figured out, targeting first one gun crew and then another. He was dimly aware of the gunners around him hurrying to get into position. Finally, there came the satisfying boom of a howitzer sending a round toward the Japanese. A burst of flying dirt on the ridge showed that the gunners were off target, so they worked to adjust their aim.
One of the Japanese guns got into play, sending a round screeching over their heads. The civilians who were still on the road dashed for cover.
“Get in the ditches!” Steele shouted to his men. “We’ll let the big boys duke it out for now.”
But Deke was reluctant to leave his position. With more shells beginning to land on the ridge, it was proving harder to spot targets through the flying dirt and smoke. Enemy shells began to land uncomfortably close. One hit a truck nearby and the vehicle exploded. A fearless gun crew — those who had survived the close round, anyhow — worked to get their howitzer unhitched from the burning truck.
“Dammit, Deke, take cover!” Steele was shouting.
Something held Deke in place, however. A moment later, he understood why. The rising sun battle flag that had taunted them earlier from the peak still flew. A knot of Japanese officers had appeared under it and stood watching the fight unfold. For all Deke knew, it might even be General Suzuki or even General Yamashita up there.
The targets on the ridge had been far, but the officers were even farther. At this distance, it was impossible to target one man, but the Japanese had helped him out by standing close together. They probably weren’t concerned about a sniper at this range, but Deke had a little surprise for them involving the heavier rifle bullet.
He made some adjustments, raising the rifle slightly, and then squeezed the trigger. To his satisfaction, one of the distant enemy officers toppled to the ground. The others hurried for cover. It wasn’t much payback for what the Japanese had done to these poor civilians, but Deke figured it was a decent down payment.
Finally, Deke ran for the ditch and dove in next to Philly just as another shell exploded nearby. The bottom of the roadside ditch had a foot of water in it from the recent rains, but that didn’t stop him from crouching down and getting soaked in the process. The body of a Filipino lay half in and half out of the ditch, killed either by shrapnel or having been a victim of Japanese bayonets. Deke didn’t investigate too closely.
“I was watching through the binoculars,” Philly said. “You got him, all right. That was some shooting.”
“Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then,” Deke replied.
Philly shook his head. “You and your damn hillbilly sayings. Did you see how those Japs were standing up there like they ruled the roost? These Japs all think they’re a bunch of samurai.”
“I’m no samurai, I’m just a sniper,” Deke said, nodding toward the distant hill where the Japanese officer lay dead. “Then again, which would you rather be?”
The 305th’s gunners were giving as good as they got, and maybe even better. The roar was deafening as the crews worked frantically to load a shell, do a quick check of their aim, yank the lanyard, eject the shell, and then do it all over again. They had done this so many times that their motions looked smooth and easy. A cheer went up when they scored a direct hit on one of the enemy’s gun crew.
Deke grinned. “Well now, it’s good to know I’m not the only one around here who can hit something.”
But the Japanese were far from beaten. A Jap artillery round landed in the road, toppling a howitzer and showering the soldiers with dirt and shrapnel.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Shells tore through the air and great geysers of muddy earth erupted all around Patrol Easy as the American and Japanese gunners duked it out. Deke huddled in a ditch, shoulder to shoulder with Philly and Honcho, feeling the ground quake. Overhead, hot shrapnel hissed through the air. The sound sent a shiver down Deke’s spine, and he pressed himself deeper into the ditch. There was a time to fight back and there was a time to take cover — which was now. He thought of the unlucky bastards manning the guns, exposed to all that flying metal.
Mercifully, the firing began to slow. The duel finally ended when the guns of the 305th had scattered the Japanese troops on the ridge and wrecked most of their artillery.
“Cease fire!” an officer shouted. Slowly, the howitzers fired their last shots and fell silent. The only sound now was the ringing in everyone’s ears.
Through binoculars, the artillery officers studied the damage. Deke borrowed the binoculars from Philly and did the same.
Many of the Japanese guns had been destroyed in the exchange. The American gunners had clearly gotten the upper hand, with more accuracy and a higher rate of fire. Smashed and broken equipment littered the slope.
The Japanese infantry that they had seen earlier was now under cover or had withdrawn into the forest lower down on the ridges. This meant that the Americans would only have to fight them later. It was a bit unnerving that the size of the Japanese force they had seen earlier outnumbered their own. The Japanese might be hidden for now, but all those enemy troops were still out there.
New orders arrived from headquarters, and while the orders were not unexpected, they were not what the soldiers wanted to hear.
“We’re being told to pursue the enemy,” Lieutenant Steele announced. “And that’s what we are going to do.”
The column moved out. As the road climbed deeper into the hills, it became clear that the field artillery would not be able to continue. The road became more like a muddy track as it rose steeply. The forest pressed in closer, and in places tree limbs reached out and waved in the breeze as if to snatch at the soldiers. Although the ridge where they had seen the enemy was still some distance away, it was hard to shake the feeling that they were walking into an ambush.
“I don’t like this one bit,” Philly muttered.
“We can agree on that,” Deke replied. “I don’t like the looks of this place at all.”
He kept his eyes on the path ahead, seeing with some trepidation that it continued into the hills. The whole area might be crawling with Japanese troops bent on revenge after the shelling they had taken. Deke had assumed that the Japanese troops had retreated, but he had the disturbing thought that maybe they had advanced instead. A few steps behind him, Danilo also scanned the forest, but the Filipino didn’t seem any more alarmed than usual, just cautious.
Finally, the time came to leave the field artillery behind. The bulk of the 305th would turn around and make its way back to the road, where it could fire on the enemy again if the Japanese made an appearance. Patrol Easy would have to forge ahead with a platoon of supporting infantry, meaning that there would be no more than fifty men under Lieutenant Steele’s command.
It soon became apparent that the Japanese had chosen a perfect natural fortress. What had been the road became little more than a rocky, washed-out trail. It was also perfect for walking into an ambush. However, Danilo seemed to have other ideas about how to reach the area where they had last seen the Japanese.
“This way,” he said, offering no further explanation.
Deke and Philly looked at each other, shrugged, and followed in Danilo’s wake as he began to cut through the woods, going downhill. The rest of the soldiers followed. At the rear of the column, Lieutenant Steele didn’t so much as question the change in direction. Danilo had been with them so long that there was nothing to do but follow him.
At the bottom of the hill, they reached a massive ravine. Sheer rock walls rose up one hundred feet on either side of them, the stone faces wet with the runoff of springs. High above, there was enough flow from a spring or stream to create a small waterfall, the sound of its rushing water echoing off the ravine’s walls. The rock face was interrupted by a few plants and shrubs clinging to the rock in clumps, like the badly shaved face of an old man. Deke found the place strangely beautiful in its mixture of rock and lush growth, as if God had swiped a shovel through the hills and then let the greenery slowly return.