“Deke, everybody says how you’re a great shot, so don’t let me down now. You see that Japanese officer near the top of the ridge? I’ve been watching him through my binoculars. The son of a bitch must lead a charmed life. He’s up there directing the whole damn attack. I need you to take him out.”
“All right,” Deke said.
“He’s pretty far away,” Merrick said doubtfully.
“He ain’t that far. Not as far as Japan, anyhow. As long as I can see him, I can hit him,” Deke said, then looked around for Philly, who was twenty feet away, busy dealing with a Japanese soldier who had run close to their position. He looked around some more and his gaze settled on the skinny clerk. “Soldier, I need you to cover our asses. Don’t let any Japanese run up and stick us with a bayonet. The captain here is gonna watch through those binoculars of his and tell me how to correct my aim if I miss.”
“You got it.”
Deke had managed to tell Captain Merrick what to do without giving him orders. The captain was now watching the ridge intently through his binoculars.
Deke’s telescopic sight was not as powerful, but he could still see the officer up there. The man held a stick and was pointing it here and there, directing the additional soldiers who crossed the ridge. He appeared to be shouting orders. From his vantage point on high ground, the Japanese officer could evidently see where the US line was weakest and send his fresh troops to attack.
Go on and yap, little dog, Deke thought. You won’t be yappin’ long.
Deke lined up the crosshairs on the Japanese officer. The tendency when firing uphill was to aim too high, which Deke compensated for. There was a little wind off the ocean, so he adjusted his aim accordingly.
Deke couldn’t have explained how he knew where to aim. He just did it out of natural instinct. It was no different from shooting at a big buck up on a ridgeline back home. A buck that thought he was safe up there, beyond the reach of any two-legged hunter.
The target had ceased being a person in Deke’s mind. He was simply the prey, and Deke was the hunter.
His concentration was interrupted as a bullet whipped past. He’d even heard the crack of a rifle, much too close for comfort. Startled, he pulled his eye away from the scope, losing track of the target. He refocused on a patch of ground about fifty feet away, where a Japanese soldier was running at him, bayonet leveled and screaming his fool head off.
“You still with me?” he asked the scrawny clerk. “Now would be a good time to start shooting.”
“On it,” came the reply. There were three quick shots off to his right, and the attacker went down.
“Don’t let him get so close next time,” Deke said.
He turned his attention back to the rifle, putting his eye back to the scope. The ridgeline sprang closer. There was the Japanese officer, pointing his stick downhill, right at the American line and shouting something that needed no translation. Another few minutes and there wouldn’t be any American line.
The officer had cleverly spaced out his men rather than commit them in a single attack that could have been wiped out with a well-placed machine gun. Pure and simple, his plan was to grind them down.
Deke lined up the sights on the Japanese officer, once again doing the mental calculations that placed the crosshairs slightly above the man and to the right.
Off to one side, he heard the skinny clerk’s rifle fire two rapid shots. He must have stopped another attacker in his tracks.
This time, there was no interruption as Deke squeezed the trigger.
He missed.
He hadn’t seen where his bullet had gone, but the man was still standing. It didn’t help that the officer kept moving around.
Quickly, Deke worked the bolt and ejected the spent shell, which flickered away in the sunlight. A little whiff of smoke came out, followed by the refreshing acrid smell of burned gunpowder; then the smooth brass casing of a fresh round slipped into the chamber.
He had almost forgotten that Captain Merrick was watching through the binoculars.
“Come on, take out that son of a bitch,” Merrick said, a sense of urgency in his voice, which didn’t help Deke feel any calmer. The captain added, “You hit a little to the left.”
The second part was more helpful, considering that Deke hadn’t seen where his bullet had gone. Deke didn’t respond, already concentrating on his next shot, his eye glued to the round disk of glass on the telescopic sight. For Deke, the battlefield had shrunk to just the few feet of the slope visible through the scope, and he shut out everything else.
He let the crosshairs hover even more to the right, aiming at thin air, then squeezed the trigger.
Through the scope, he saw the Japanese officer crumple to the ground, his lifeless body sliding a few feet down the slope.
“You got him!” Captain Merrick cried, still watching through the binoculars. What appeared to be a junior officer had run to the fallen officer and crouched over him.
Deke was still hunched over the rifle, so he shot the junior officer for good measure.
Merrick finally lowered the binoculars and stared over at Deke, clearly impressed. “I could have taken potshots at that officer all day and not even have come close. I’ve got to say, you are pretty good with that rifle, son.”
Deke worked the bolt. “Who do you want me to shoot next?”
“Any son of a bitch in a Japanese uniform, that’s who.”
Having lost the officer managing the attack, the Japanese assault began to fall apart. Some Japanese even began to retreat back up the slope, which they wouldn’t have dared to do if the officer had still been up there with his swagger stick.
The icing on the cake came when the soldiers heard the familiar rumble of clanking tracks and roaring engines. The tanks had returned, having given up on their mission of trying to go around the ridge. Long stretches of rice paddies had blocked their advance, with the heavy tanks unable to cross the water-filled fields.
The two Satan tanks opened fire on the slope covered with Japanese forces. Their main guns punched new holes in the rocky slope.
A few soldiers even cheered.
A brave Japanese soldier ran right at the tanks, brandishing hand grenades in both hands as if he single-handedly intended to take them out with nothing more than his frenzy and the grenades. He was mowed down by a machine gun before he’d gotten nearly close enough to hurl the grenades.
Once the tanks were within range, they unleashed the fury of their flamethrowers. The flames licked at clumps of grass and brush that had provided concealment for the Japanese. Enemy soldiers were forced to run, some of them on fire as the jellied gasoline clung to them. The ones who had escaped the flames were cut down by machine guns and rifle fire.
It was all too clear that the back of the Japanese assault had been broken. The remaining troops began to withdraw back up the slope, at first in groups of two or three, and then by entire patrols.
Captain Merrick gave the order to advance, and men began racing up the slope, herding the Japanese before them like a pack of frightened sheep chased by demented shepherds. The loudest and wildest of the pursuers turned out to be some of the rear-echelon troops, shouting like banshees and waving their rifles like clubs as they went after the enemy.
The retreating Japanese forces ran past the body of their fallen officer without a second glance, then crossed over the ridge and disappeared.
The battle had finally been won. The beachhead was safe for now. In a sense, the fight had been an important turning point in that it was now unlikely that the Japanese would mount another meaningful offensive. Their tactics now would be purely defensive.
Exhausted and bloodied though they were, the soldiers would push on past the ridge to bring the fight to the Japanese dug in at Ormoc. The airfield there still needed to be captured.