Click.
Paul froze. Oh, Jesus, he thought. The sound had come from almost directly above him, and it was a bullet being chambered in a rifle. The sniper was going to shoot. He squinted and stared at a cluster of limbs about thirty feet above him. Was it the Jap or were his eyes fooling him? The cluster of branches could be a platform hiding the sniper or they could be a perfectly natural accumulation of fallen debris. If he fired at it and was wrong, he would have given away his position to the sniper, and that sort of mistake could be fatal. He stared at the branches and willed the Jap to do something to give himself away.
A stick slowly moved by the branches and began to project out. As Paul watched in fascination, he realized that he was looking at the barrel of a rifle. He shrieked and fired his carbine on full automatic until the clip was empty. The sound deafened him for an instant. Leaves and twigs exploded from the trunk of the tree and the camouflaged firing platform.
Then there was silence.
"Who fired?" yelled Mackensen.
"I did," Paul answered hoarsely.
Mackensen was beside him. "You get him?"
Paul gestured upward. The obscuring branches had come off the tree, and what remained had taken on a distinctly human form as it dangled facedown. It was limp and lifeless, but human. Then whatever had been holding the body to the tree came loose and the Jap commenced a fall to the ground, his body hitting several limbs that slowed his descent.
The body landed only a few feet away from Paul and Mackensen. A second later the Arisaka rifle clattered down beside its owner. Several of Paul's soldiers had emerged from their refuges and looked at the Jap, who was now sprawled awkwardly on the ground.
Mackensen moved to check him out. "Be careful," Paul said.
"Hell, sir"- Mackensen grinned- "if that fall didn't make him go off, nothing will. I really don't think he's booby-trapped." He inserted a booted foot under the man's armpit and rolled him over on his back. Paul gagged. One of his shots had ripped off the man's jaw, while others had ripped open his chest and stomach.
Humming idly, Mackensen went through the Jap's pockets and pulled out his papers. There was nothing terribly exciting. He announced that the Jap was an enlisted man in a unit they already knew they were fighting.
Mackensen straightened up and handed the papers to Paul. "I don't read their shit all that well, sir, but I think this says he's seventeen years old. He also wasn't that good a shot since he didn't hit nothing."
There was a snapshot of an older couple who were probably the dead man's parents and another of a young girl dressed in a demure kimono. It chilled Paul. He had a picture like that in his wallet and he visualized some Jap soldiers looking at it and commenting crudely. He wondered what they would have thought of Debbie's photo. Would they have laughed at his parents the way his men were now doing with the Jap's and make noises about whether they wanted to flick the girlfriend? Probably, Paul decided.
There was some Japanese paper money as well, and he gave it to the soldiers. It was worthless, but everyone wanted some to send home as a souvenir.
Paul looked more closely at the corpse. Mackensen had said he was seventeen, just about the same age as Debbie's brother. He was small and frail and looked more like thirteen than seventeen. Most Japs were smaller than Americans, but this man couldn't have been more than five feet tall and probably didn't weigh more than a hundred pounds.
Then Paul noticed how unhealthily thin the dead man was. He was almost emaciated and Paul made a note to pass that fact on to battalion. The only bodies they'd seen lately had been badly burned or shredded, which made it impossible to estimate their overall health. If everyone in the Japanese army was as hungry-looking as this sorry cadaver, then the Japanese supply system had completely broken down.
Hell, just last night Paul and his men had eaten a hot chicken dinner from a mobile field kitchen. When was the last time the Jap'd had a full meal? Weeks, he guessed, and it was probably boiled rice. If the Jap army was starving, that was good news.
Paul checked the man's equipment. The uniform was worn thin and in tatters. It was a far cry from what he and the others were wearing. It was still above freezing, but the air was damp and chill, just what his mother referred to as perfect pneumonia weather. This poor Jap must have been freezing, which might have thrown off his aim.
The slowdown in the American advance had permitted rear-echelon units to move closer to the front, and the men had actually been able to warm up in a tent with a portable stove the other day. Paul wondered when the dead boy had last been warm.
The young man's footwear was as bad as the rest of his gear. The soles of his boots had worn through and been replaced by pieces of wood. Paul looked at his own combat boots and wet-weather gear. He was dry and fairly comfortable. How the hell had the dead boy even been able to function? Again, it was information to send back to battalion.
A couple of men had checked the Jap's mouth and pronounced in disgust that there were no gold fillings. Paul felt a queasiness in his gut and walked away. He found refuge behind a bush and puked everything that was in his stomach, including what might have been left of that hot chicken dinner. He heaved until his stomach hurt and then his body shook. He had just killed a man and the reaction had set in.
Finally, he got control of himself and rejoined his men. Mackensen looked at him sympathetically. "You okay, sir?"
Paul chose to lie. "I'm fine."
"Your first?"
Paul took a mouthful of water from a canteen, swirled it around his mouth to cleanse it of the taste of bile, then spat it out. "Yeah. It shows, doesn't it?" He was slightly ashamed of his reaction in front of the rocklike first sergeant.
"Well, sir, that puts you one up on me," the first sergeant said with undisguised admiration. "That was damned good shooting and great hunting."
Paul thought Mackensen was kidding. His first sergeant had to have killed scores of the enemy. But then, who knew whether you actually killed or not? Many times Paul's men had blazed away at an unseen enemy, or in the general direction where they thought the Japs were. The results were impersonal and generally unknown. This type of killing was unique.
The only other times they'd actually seen the Japs they'd killed were during that banzai charge and when they'd taken out that bunkered-in tank.
"Thanks, top," Paul said, and managed a grin. "That means a lot coming from you." He saw looks of undisguised admiration on the others in the area. 1st Lt. Paul Morrell was a killer. Killer Morrell had blown a Jap's ass out of a tree and saved their lives. With the GIs' sense of exaggeration, he knew the legend would grow and have him shooting a score of Japs out of a score of trees and with only six bullets. Well, the only life he was certain he'd saved was his own.
Paul recalled Ruger's comment about his not firing during that earlier Jap attack and how upset he'd been to realize it. Now, not only had he fired his carbine, but he'd killed with it. He would not, however, tell anyone that this was the first time he had actually fired his weapon in anger. Killer Morrell. He decided he sort of liked it. More important, if it gave his men more confidence in his abilities, then it was all to the good. All he had to do now was make sure he deserved that confidence.
Part Four: Resolutions
Chapter 63
Maj. Stan Kutchinski was furious. For the second time in the last three missions, an engine was acting up and he would have to abort the bombing run. As he looked down at the gray-black ocean almost twenty thousand feet below him, he cursed another missed opportunity. This should have been his sixteenth mission, but an oil leak in one of the B-29's four engines had changed all that.