Deke thought that you couldn’t blame the soldier for shooting at nothing. The moonlit night and jungle cacophony had set everyone on edge.
The American line settled back into uneasy silence. Some nights were like this, Deke reflected. Everybody was jumpy, figuring that something was going to happen. It was like a pot on the stove that was about to boil over. He kept his rifle fitted against his shoulder and his finger on the trigger, just in case.
Back on Guam, they had once opened fire on what had sounded like a Japanese patrol sneaking up on their foxholes. In the morning, they’d discovered that they had slaughtered a small herd of goats. They had felt foolish about it, but better safe than sorry.
They hadn’t seen many goats on Leyte, but there seemed to be an abundance of wild pigs in the forests here, providing a regular source of pork chops for the locals.
Watching the dark forest, Deke didn’t reply to Philly. The sniper was so alert, eagerly scanning for a target, that there was no doubt that he had more in common with the hunters in the dark night than with the prey. Sometimes Deke felt like his rifle was hungry and he needed to feed it with dead Japanese. When he thought about it, he realized that it wasn’t the rifle that was yearning to kill.
He had come a long way from the mountain farm boy that he’d been. He supposed that they had all come a long way.
Deke remembered that, as a very young boy, he had been reluctant to walk out to the barn at night, afraid of what might be out there. Staring at the dark jungle, that boyhood fear seemed laughable now. There hadn’t been anything in the dark to worry about back then — at least not until the bear had come down from the mountain. He touched the left side of his face and felt the deep scars left by that encounter.
The Japanese might actually be out there, like dozens of bears in the dark, with bayonets and rifles instead of claws and teeth. If they weren’t there now, then it would be the next night, or the night after that. When it came to a Japanese night attack, experience indicated that it was only a matter of time.
Deke shook his head, clearing his mind, never taking his eyes off the trees. What he needed was sleep. They all did.
Nobody had slept soundly for several nights, mainly because the Japanese were well known for their nighttime attacks. Unlike their American opponents, they had trained to fight at night and take advantage of the cover provided by darkness. These tactics gave them an advantage against the increasingly superior numbers and firepower of US forces. Also, the US had mostly gained control of the skies over the Philippines, which meant that larger Japanese troop movements could be targeted by US planes during the daylight hours.
Truth be told, the greatest advantage for the Japanese and their nighttime attacks was likely the psychological advantage. Even if the Japanese were nowhere in the vicinity, the slightest sound in the darkness resulted in sleepless hours for the American forces hunkered down in their foxholes.
Deke and Philly were attached to C Company, led by Captain Merrick, a unit fighting its way across the Leyte Peninsula. The idea was to search and destroy any Japanese units that might be using the rugged jungle interior as cover.
The two of them had been among the forces that landed on Red Beach near the town of Palo, just before General Douglas MacArthur had waded ashore. With the fall of strongholds such as Hill 522, much of that coastal area was now under US control.
There was still a lot of fighting to do. In its infinite military wisdom, the army had decided that the snipers of Patrol Easy should be split up, with Deke, Philly, and Yoshio journeying across the mountainous jungle interior of the peninsula. The goal was to link up with US forces that had traveled by sea to capture Ormoc on the west coast of Leyte. The rest of Patrol Easy — Lieutenant Steele, Rodeo, Alphabet, Egan with his war dog, Thor — had been sent by ship to Ormoc.
Ormoc was a well-defended Japanese holdout on Leyte. It didn’t mean that the Japanese had given up or completely lost the fight. They still fought savagely in units of diminishing size, refusing to surrender. It was beginning to seem as if Leyte would firmly be in US hands only when the last Japanese soldier was dead.
So far the trek across the peninsula had not been easy. They had confronted a Japanese unit that blocked their path and had managed to break through in a desperate fight across a jungle ridge. In that fight Deke had managed to outwit a deadly Japanese sniper named Ikeda. It had been a near thing, but Deke had seen to it that Ikeda had gone to meet his ancestors.
He still wasn’t sure that the fight had been entirely fair, but Deke was learning that when it came to war in the Pacific, there wasn’t any such thing as a fair fight. In the end, he was just glad that the Japanese sniper was dead, and Deke wasn’t.
Deke had lived to fight another day — just barely.
“What’s that?” Yoshio asked. Yoshio Shimizu served as their Nisei interpreter, a Japanese American who had opted to show his patriotism by enlisting, despite the fact that his family and many members of his community were now living in an internment camp.
Deke wasn’t sure that he would have been as willing to fight for a government that had essentially imprisoned his family, but he understood better than most the need to prove oneself.
Like many who first encountered Yoshio and his distinctly Asian features, Deke and Philly had met their new squad member with some suspicion. That had been back on Guam. When they looked at Yoshio now, all they saw was a fellow soldier they could count on in a fight.
The only one of their little band who was missing was Danilo, a tough Filipino guerrilla who had been assigned — or possibly volunteered — as their guide through the jungle. He had slipped away to visit family in the area. It was a reminder that while the US forces and the Japanese battled over the Philippines, they were merely interlopers here. For men like Danilo, this was home.
Among the three present on the perimeter at the edge of the jungle clearing, Yoshio’s ears remained the sharpest. The rest were all starting to go a little deaf from the gunfire, Deke in particular. It was an occupational hazard for a soldier.
Yoshio glanced toward the dark jungle sky, listening.
Deke couldn’t hear anything at first. “What is it?”
Yoshio pointed upward. “Planes.”
From high above, the sound of aircraft reached Deke’s ears. This was a little unusual because, by and large, planes from the US did not fly at night during World War II. This wasn’t some lone plane either. There were a lot of aircraft up there.
“I hear it too,” Philly said. “Too high up for us to worry about, anyhow.”
But Deke wasn’t so sure. The sound of the planes seemed to grow louder, almost hovering overhead. Finally, several large transport planes came into sight, silhouetted against the starlight. To their amazement, parachutes began to bloom in the sky, drifting down like pale jellyfish toward the tropical forest.
“I sure as hell hope those are our guys,” Philly said, sounding doubtful.
“Nobody told us about any parachute drop,” Deke replied.
That wasn’t unusual. In typical army fashion, the left hand often didn’t know what the right hand was doing. But the US already had thousands of men landed. Why would they need to drop paratroopers?
The answer came like a gut punch.
Before the paratroopers had even touched down, they had opened fire at targets on the ground. A grenade exploded nearby, dropped out of the sky. These were surely Japanese paratroopers, as incredible as that seemed.
“Take cover!” somebody shouted.
But Deke was already up and out of the foxhole, running toward where most of the parachutes seemed to be coming down.
“Dammit, where the hell are you going?” Philly swore again, then ran after him. Yoshio had no choice but to follow.