“Hush now,” Deke muttered, aggravated by Philly’s voice in his ear. His full concentration was on the landscape ahead.
Danilo moved forward a dozen feet to Deke’s right, just as tense and wary. They could hear the whir and grind of the tanks, along with the occasional rattle of gunfire as the spider holes were cleared out — it was the sound of annihilation.
But the ground was climbing quickly, rougher and rocky, so that the tanks were becoming less effective. Rocky outcroppings and large trees halted their forward motion. The tanks moved to the flanks, where the ground was flatter, searching for a way around the ridge ahead. Deke and Danilo would have to be the unit’s ears and eyes now.
Deke didn’t mind. He was feeling much better today after the bout with fever had left him weakened. I’m almost feeling like my old self, he thought. In the distance, a Japanese sniper rifle cracked. Yessiree, feeling better just in time to get myself killed.
Despite the fact that a rough, unpaved road ascended the slope, the ridge ahead posed a serious obstacle. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that the ridge was almost without trees toward the peak as it emerged from the forest, like a full head of hair with a bald spot on top. Shouldn’t they follow the lead of the tanks and go around it? After a brief confab of the officers and scouts, Captain Merrick made it clear that he wanted to climb the ridge.
“If anyone is going to take the high ground around here, it’s going to be us, not the Japanese,” he said. He turned to Lieutenant Steele. “I know I can count on you and your snipers to make that happen.”
“Will do,” Honcho said.
Deke was studying the ridge. “We best go ahead and take a look-see before everybody else,” he said. “Ain’t no telling what’s on the other side.”
“All right,” Steele agreed. “Take Philly and Danilo with you.”
“You got it, Honcho,” Deke said.
Together, the three scouts scrambled up the steep slope, trying to be quiet and feeling exposed as the trees fell away into an open landscape of brush, shrubs, boulders, and clumps of kunai grass that offered perfect concealment for any enemy sniper. The road that they had been following seemed to run out of energy and ended at a terraced field that some farmer had carved out of the slope, whatever crop had grown there long since given over to weeds.
They bushwhacked their way forward. The ridgeline itself had been hit by naval artillery shells, leaving it looking like a badly plowed field. At the same time, all those shell holes created perfect defensive positions.
“I tell you what, I sure hope that the Japanese didn’t get up here ahead of us,” Deke whispered. “If they did, they can just throw rocks down on us.”
Danilo grunted as if he understood and agreed, although Deke still hadn’t puzzled out just how much English the Filipino understood. The Filipino guide’s eyes never wavered from the landscape ahead, where any number of enemy troops might be hiding.
The navy had done a spectacular job of lobbing shells ahead of the Ormoc landing. As usual, it had been quite a show, but it didn’t appear that the naval bombardment had done much more than blow hell out of this hilltop and surrounding patches of jungle. It would have been nice to have the support of those big guns now, but the fleet had pulled back out of sight of land for fear of Japanese planes and ships. The fleet didn’t want to be penned in by the confines of the bay, where its ships couldn’t maneuver effectively if they came under attack.
“What do you think, Deke?” Philly asked quietly as they made their way up the slope, ever so cautiously. Slowing their progress was the fact that all three of them were trying to keep their rifles at the ready, but they kept having to sling their weapons in order to scramble across the larger spills of boulders or up and down shell holes.
“I don’t like it,” Deke replied. “Something doesn’t feel right, like I can almost feel a Japanese soldier holding his breath up ahead. But come on, we’ve got to check it out.”
Their pace slowing, all three of them were breathing heavily by the time they reached the top of the ridge. It was almost knifelike up there, no more than just a few feet wide. The company would have to scramble across that ridge before coming down the slope on the opposite side, which by all appearances was equally as steep.
Considering that their orders were to keep moving rather than hold any ground, Deke wondered at the wisdom of crossing the ridge at all, other than the obvious necessity of making sure that there weren’t any Japanese troops up there. So far they hadn’t seen signs of any.
All three men lay on their bellies and edged forward. Philly seemed content to let Danilo take the lead, but Deke slithered faster until he came even with the Filipino.
The two of them peered down the opposite slope, and what they saw made them both freeze.
Philly was slightly behind Deke, who held up a hand, indicating for him to stop. Philly started to ask a question, but Deke signaled for him to be quiet.
Deke said a silent prayer that for once Philly would be able to keep his mouth shut. If he so much as asked anything in his usual loudmouth voice, which was better suited to hailing a taxi than to scouting within a stone’s throw of the enemy, then all three of them were as good as dead.
Blinking through the sweat in his eyes, trying to ignore the hammering of his heart, Deke looked down at a trench dug into the slope a few feet beyond the ridgeline. He could see the helmets of what appeared to be an entire Japanese company dug into the slope. The soldiers all had fixed bayonets and looked ready to use them.
Deke held his breath. The soldiers were so close that Deke could almost have reached down and tapped the nearest soldier on the head.
They were so close that he could smell them, that slightly fishy, oily scent that seemed to hang around the Japanese. He knew from his boyhood spent hunting in the mountains that all game animals had a smell that clung to their lairs and bedding places — the muskiness of a fox den was different from the pungent smell where deer in rut bedded down, for example.
He wrinkled his nose, hoping the Japanese couldn’t smell him. Whatever an American smelled like, he was sure it was oozing out of his sweaty pores.
It was only by some miracle that he and Danilo hadn’t been spotted.
Deke and Danilo eased back from the ridgeline, still crawling on their bellies. Both men could move with the silence of a caterpillar, or maybe a snake in the grass, as they reverse-wriggled away from the Japanese. Finally they settled in beside Philly.
“What?” Philly had the good sense to whisper the question. “From the look on your face, it can’t be good.”
“Japs,” said Deke. “Lots of Japs. There must be an entire company dug in just on the other side of that ridge, waiting for us, well, waiting for somebody to show themselves.”
“I’ll be damned,” Philly said. “It’s a good thing we took a look-see first.”
“Yeah,” Deke agreed. “The Japanese won’t be happy that we’ve gone and spoiled all their fun. We’d better scoot back down this hill and warn the others. Whatever the hell you do, don’t make any noise, or we’ll have the whole damn bunch down on our heads.”
“You got it,” Philly said. “You know me. I’m quiet as a Caddy rolling on new tires.”
They started to move down the slope toward the rest of the company waiting at the base. Philly hadn’t gotten more than ten feet when his foot kicked a loose rock that tumbled down the slope. Ordinarily it would not have been very loud, but in the tense silence, the rolling stone sounded like thunder itself.