Out in the open, Deke took a knee and swung the rifle up. The scope of his Springfield sniper rifle gathered the light, and he quickly scanned the sky until he spotted the dark figure of a Japanese soldier in his jump harness, dangling beneath the parachute that had blossomed like a night-blooming flower.
Deke put his crosshairs on the silhouette and squeezed the trigger. The Japanese paratrooper hung limply. Deke’s bullet had found its mark. Quickly, he searched the sky for another target, acquired it, and ensured that another paratrooper was going to be dead on arrival.
However, the paratroopers were not defenseless. The winking muzzle flashes from above indicated that they were shooting back. A bullet snapped the air not far from Deke’s head, and he flinched, feeling his spine quiver. Hearing a bullet fired at you wasn’t something he’d ever get used to.
“Like shooting fish in a barrel!” Philly shouted happily. He wasn’t half the shot Deke was, but that didn’t stop him from firing again and again at the descending paratroopers. The night breeze must have shifted, because the parachutes were suddenly carried directly over Company C’s position.
“Shoot the bastards!” Captain Merrick shouted, as if his men needed any encouragement. “Shoot them down!”
Behind Deke, the rest of C Company had opened fire. Their semiautomatic M1 rifles had a much faster rate of fire than the Springfield sniper rifles. Even Private Frazier joined in with his Browning Automatic Rifle, stitching the sky with deadly bursts.
On the ground, the Americans opened fire with everything they had. A distant artillery piece had even been brought into play. The shells scattered the low-flying enemy transport planes but passed harmlessly through the descending parachutes. It must have been terrifying to be coming down in a parachute and hear the scream of an artillery round go past. The Japanese who made it to the ground would be plenty rattled.
Another grenade exploded and someone screamed. In the dark it was impossible to see the grenades coming down. There wasn’t any warning or any way to dodge what you couldn’t see. Still another grenade went off, so close that Deke was temporarily blinded. He blinked and blinked to clear his vision, glad that he hadn’t been hit by any shrapnel. The Japanese grenades were nothing to mess around with, being every bit as deadly as the American version.
The parachutes did not linger overhead. They soon disappeared beyond the treetops as the Japanese touched down. None landed in the field containing C Company, but they must have landed in another clearing. Deke could hear more shooting in the distance, but he couldn’t tell whether it was the Japanese or the US forces.
“Come on,” Deke shouted, and ran in the direction of where the greatest number of parachutes were raining down.
CHAPTER TWO
In the skies overhead, the artillery and antiaircraft guns had also done their work. The burst of flak resembled small black clouds in the moonlit sky. Having surprised the American forces on the ground, the Japanese planes had flown over nearly unscathed. Nearly.
As they watched, one of the Japanese planes was hit, began to trail smoke, and then burst into flame. Ponderously, the plane began to turn, parachutes spilling from it like seeds from a milkweed pod. The burning plane turned toward the distant sea and slowly disappeared from sight, leaving a trail of glowing sky in its wake. The spectacle was mesmerizing, but the action at hand forced the men to turn their gaze away.
If the soldiers had known what they faced, they might not have run headlong toward where they had seen Japanese troops come down. The paratroopers were crack troops that had seen a great deal of action in China. It hadn’t received much attention, because America was busy fighting its own war, but the Chinese had put up a tough fight against the Japanese invaders. Unfortunately, they had been outgunned and poorly supplied, but they certainly had a fighting spirit in defense of their homeland. The Japanese paratroopers had found that out the hard way, and now they faced American troops.
Just beyond the closest trees, the Americans heard rifle shots and submachine-gun fire.
“Doesn’t sound like one of ours,” Philly panted, struggling to keep up with Deke, whose lanky farm boy’s legs ate up the ground.
“Everybody be careful,” Deke called, not sounding nearly as winded as Philly. “Those Japs came down thicker than jam on a buttered biscuit.”
“Whatever that means,” Philly managed, then put his head down and, with a burst of speed, managed to catch up to Deke.
They burst into the clearing, Yoshio on their heels. Deke saw a paratrooper still struggling out of his harness and shot him.
Immediately stitches of muzzle flashes came from their right. Deke dropped to one knee to make himself less of a target and fired at one of the flashes. The enemy soldier went down.
More GIs spilled out of the trees right behind them. Deke heard a grunt of pain and saw one of the GIs fall. After all that they had been through the last few days on their journey through the jungle, the last thing any of them had expected was for Japanese reinforcements to literally drop out of the sky. Deke cursed when he saw another soldier fall.
Deke picked out another target and squeezed the trigger. Next to him, he heard Philly’s rifle fire almost at the same time. That was two down.
The Japanese probably hadn’t planned on making a fight in this spot, which was nothing more than a random clearing in the surrounding trees, but they were doing a good enough job of it.
The Japanese who were left decided not to stick around. Still firing, they retreated into the trees and lost themselves among the brush and undergrowth.
Deke wasn’t about to let them go so easily. His blood was up. After the tension of the last few days, it was as if something inside him had snapped. With a snarl, he ran after the enemy.
“Deke, where the hell do you think you’re going?” Philly called. There was a curse, and he heard Philly coming after him, muttering, “That stupid redneck is gonna get us all killed. Come on, Yoshio.”
That was the last Deke heard before he crashed into the jungle underbrush. Green and lush as it looked, there was nothing soft or forgiving about the forest. Sharp-edged kunai grass at the edge of the clearing cut his hands as he pushed it out of the way. The spiky leaves of the smaller trees jabbed at his face and eyes.
Deke didn’t care. He just wanted to go after the enemy.
Up ahead, in the darkness, he could make out the brush swaying this way and that as someone forced his way through. Deke put his rifle to his shoulder and pressed his eye to the scope. He caught a glimpse of helmet and fired. There was a grunt of pain. Almost immediately one of the paratroopers fired at Deke, the bullet passing so near that he heard it clip the stem of a palm frond as neatly as a pair of garden shears. Damn, that was close. Deke dropped, hoping the next shot would miss him by more of a gap, then fired at the enemy’s muzzle flash. It was hard to say if he hit anything. All he could see now were the ghostly flashes that had played havoc on his night vision.
He stopped running, hearing noises behind him as Philly and Yoshio caught up.
“What the hell was that all about?” Philly wanted to know.
“Hush now, these woods are crawling with Japanese,” Deke replied, then cautiously moved forward, his earlier battle madness having dissipated. He had gone about fifty feet when he came across the body of the Japanese paratrooper he had shot. The man had been solid and well fed; even his uniform looked new. Many of the Japanese they had faced on Leyte so far had shown the signs of meager rations and a struggling supply chain, although it had little impact on their fighting spirit. This man, on the other hand, did not seem to want for anything.