“You’re Americans?” The pilot lowered his pistol. “Boy, am I glad to see you. The name’s Jake Miller. My plane got shot down.”
“I’m Cole and that there is the Kid. We saw the dogfight, Lieutenant,” Cole said. “When we saw your parachute, we reckoned you might need a little help getting back to our lines.”
Lieutenant Commander Miller’s eyes quickly looked past Cole and the kid to the surrounding brush. “Where’s the rest of your squad?”
“It’s just us. I figured the two of us could move faster and have a better chance of finding you.”
“I won’t complain. Those Chinese had us cornered, that’s for sure. They were following our tracks, so Jang-mi thought we could confuse them along the river, and then circle back. The villagers have a place where they hide in times of trouble, and they even have supplies there. Anyhow, those guys were regular bloodhounds. We couldn’t shake them.”
Cole looked around at the others. He saw an older Korean man and a Korean teenager, who was staring at Cole, wide-eyed. The third Korean was a woman, who was working to bandage the older man’s arm, where one of the Chinese bullets had caught him. Cole took this woman to be Jang-mi. All in all, Cole thought that they had gotten off easy. Another half a minute and the Chinese would have chewed them to pieces.
The young woman met his eyes and said, “You are brave … or a fool.”
Cole raised his eyebrows. “Nice to meet you, too.”
“She’s direct like that,” the Lieutenant said with a grin. “But I’ve got to say, I owe her my life.”
“What happened at the village?” Jang-mi asked.
Cole shook his head.
“Sons of bitches,” the young woman hissed.
“I like this one,” Cole said. “Now let’s get a move on and get back to the line before sunset. Trying to come back through our own lines after dark would be just as bad as having the Chinese after us.”
Chapter Eight
As it turned out, they hadn’t moved fast enough. No sooner had the words left Cole’s mouth, then a flurry of gunfire whistled overhead. Bit of branches flew as bullets chewed up the thicket.
“Damn it all, one of those boys has got himself a submachine gun,” Cole muttered.
“And he’s awfully trigger happy.”
Cole cocked his head, listening to the rhythm of the firing. It sounded like a Thompson submachine gun to him, not one of the Chinese weapons. The Chinese had managed to arm themselves with a fair amount of weapons that were either captured or scavenged off the battlefield.
Considering that the Thompson spewed .45-caliber slugs, this wasn’t good news.
Fortunately, they were all down in a gully, safely out of harm’s way — for now. But Cole didn’t want to press their luck.
More measured shots came between the bursts from the submachine gun. A bullet struck a branch just above the kid’s head, and he ducked lower.
“Someone over there knows how to shoot, that’s for damn sure,” Cole muttered. “They want us to keep our heads down while he takes his time picking us off.”
“When we were leaving the village, I got a glimpse at the Chinese hunting for us,” the pilot said. “One of them was carrying a rifle with a scope. A sniper rifle.”
“Yeah, I saw him when we jumped those guys,” Cole said. “That must be him now.”
Cole had to admit that keeping them pinned down was a good strategy on the part of the Chinese, but he was having none of it. Carefully, he worked his way higher in the gully, his face pressed into the gravel. He was sure that he probably shared the overgrown gully with snakes and other critters, which were the least of his worries now.
He chanced a peek over the rim of the gully. He didn’t have a clear view of the enemy hidden in the thicket. Separating the two sides was a long stretch of sandy beach. Around the halfway point, he could see the bodies of the Chinese soldiers that he and the kid had shot. There was nothing in the way of cover out there.
He caught glimpses of their muzzle flashes, but for the most part, the Chinese were well hidden. One of the enemy soldiers could definitely shoot, which piqued his curiosity. It also caused Cole some uncertainly because his last encounter with a Chinese sniper had not gone well, until their rivalry finally ended on Sniper Ridge.
A bullet plucked at a stone near Cole’s head and he slid deeper into the gully. The enemy marksman had picked him right out.
Keeping low, Cole made his way over to the others. They stayed huddled together as more fire turned the branches overhead into toothpicks.
“That submachine gun is keeping us pinned down,” Cole said. “I’m going to see what I can do about it.”
He crawled out of the gully, following the trunk of a fallen tree that provided some protection. The tree had washed up on the bank in some long-ago flood, its bark stripped away and the wood polished smooth so that it resembled nothing so much as a giant bone.
Cole moved to where he could get his rifle under the log without being seen. The Chinese had the gully pinned down, but they hadn’t spotted Cole — not yet, anyhow. He saw the flashes indicating where the submachine gun was being fired from, and unleashed two quick shots in that direction.
The gunner fell silent. He was either reloading — or one of Cole’s bullet had found its mark.
He belly-crawled back to the gully as fast as he could, keeping the log between him and the thicket.
No matter — a bullet still hit the top of the log near where Cole was crawling, showering him with splinters of driftwood.
“Go! Now’s our chance.”
Jang-mi cast nervous glances toward the Chinese position, but Lieutenant Commander Miller didn’t give her time to consider her options. With an ignominious shove from behind, he propelled her out of the gully and into the thicket. The pilot was next, followed by the boy and the old man.
“Now what?” the pilot wondered.
“Now we run, Flyboy! That’s what!”
Cole barreled through the thicket, wanting to put as many trees as possible between himself and that Chinese sniper, who had made some uncanny shots. He wasn’t all that worried about making noise, although he was quieter than the others, whose progress was marked by the sound of snapping branches and loud curse from Lieutenant Commander Miller as he stumbled, fell flat, then picked himself up and kept going.
Still, a couple of shots pursued them, boring after them through the thicket. It was only by some miracle that no one was hit.
He was surprised by a blur of motion to his left as someone pushed past him. It was Jang-mi.
“You too slow,” she said. “Follow me.”
Cole didn’t know whether to be amused or angry. “Lead the way then, missy. I just hope to hell you know where you’re going.”
To their benefit, Jang-mi did seem to know the way. She led them out of the thicket, where it was slow going, and to a path that led away from the river. Once on the path, they moved quickly now that branches and briars weren’t constant clawing at them.
They paused long enough to catch their breath and take stock.
“Some rescue mission,” the pilot said. “Don’t you wish now that you had brought along some extra help?”
“How ‘bout this, Flyboy. You wait here and I’ll go bring back reinforcements.”
“Here’s a better idea. Why don’t we all go with you?”
“Come along if you want to. I’m just gonna follow this girl.”
“Sounds like a plan,” the pilot said.
A few paces away, Jang-mi just shook her head and then started off down the path.
To hurry them along, a bullet snapped through the air just over their heads.
That was all the prompting they needed to follow Jang-mi, running full tilt down the narrow trail through the thicket along the riverbank.