David Healey
Jungle Sniper
Epigraph
“To the People of the Philippines, I have returned.”
CHAPTER ONE
Lying in the hole, staring out into the tropical night, Deacon Cole kept his eyes focused on the darkness and his finger on the trigger.
Anchored to the earth, he was like a creature of the forest. Each one of his senses felt alive. A rivulet of salty sweat ran down his face and stung his eye. He blinked it away. A breeze touched his cheek, carrying the smell of the jungle — decay mixed with the sickly sweet fragrance of a night-blooming vine that was almost like the honeysuckle back home. He heard singing insects and the distant snap of a twig.
The last sound served as a reminder that Deke and the rest of Patrol Easy weren’t alone.
Somewhere out in that dark jungle were hidden Japanese soldiers — maybe hundreds of them. They wouldn’t stay hidden for long. It was only a matter of time before they launched one of their nighttime sneak attacks. When they did, Deke and his rifle would be ready for them. He stroked the smooth metal of the Springfield 1903A sniper rifle’s trigger, eager to shoot the first Japanese that he saw. Maybe it was his imagination, but the rifle felt alive in his hands, just as ready as he was to send a well-placed bullet drilling through the darkness.
He strained to see something, anything, but the jungle directly ahead of the US line remained as impenetrable as the darkness he’d see looking down a well. He stared until the blackness began to swirl, his brain imposing patterns on the void.
Only the sky showed lighter above the treetops, a few brooding hills beyond blotting out the stars. Not more than a quarter of a mile behind them was the beach that they had landed on this morning before fighting their way inland.
“Hold the line,” had been Lieutenant Steele’s command. “Whatever the Japs throw at us, we hold the line.”
That had been the order, and that was what they were going to do.
Not that they had much choice.
If the Japs decided to push them back, the soldiers didn’t have anywhere to go, other than to make a swim for it out to the US fleet. Maybe that was the generals’ intention — it was either fight or drown.
He wasn’t so sure that the squids would be all that eager to take back a bunch of grunts. Besides, the squids seemed to have their hands full with the Japanese Navy still on the prowl.
“I reckon we’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” Deke muttered to Philly, who shared the foxhole with him.
“Back where I’m from, it’s called having your nuts in a vise,” Philly replied. “As far as I’m concerned, the Japs can have this damn island if they want it so bad.”
Deke had to admit that he’d never heard of Guam, which was just a flyspeck in the vast Pacific Ocean, until a few days before they had landed here. In terms of square mileage, the island was smaller than his native Hancock County back home.
Guam wasn’t someplace famous, not like Hawaii or even Guadalcanal, well known after the godawful fight there, but Guam had been in American hands since the last century — until the Japanese had taken it over. Now the Americans were here to take it back.
“You see anything?” asked Philly, who was nothing more than a disembodied whisper coming from the blackness a few feet off to Deke’s left. Deke was a loner by disposition, but out here in the night, he welcomed the sound of Philly’s voice.
“Hell no, I don’t see anything. It’s darker than a banker’s soul out there,” Deke replied quietly.
“That’s dark, all right,” Philly agreed. Considering that America had just come out of the Great Depression, in most people’s minds there wasn’t much worse than a banker. It had been a greedy banker who had put Deke and his family off their land back home.
Although Deke couldn’t see him, he could smell Philly’s fresh sweat, with an added aroma of stale cigarettes. Deke was one of those rare GIs who didn’t smoke, but he supposed that he smelled just as bad in his own way. His cotton fatigues had never completely dried out after getting soaked in the surf coming ashore, and he now felt soaked through all over again from sweat and dew.
It didn’t help that this place was so damn hot and humid, like the worst August night back home. There was some breeze off the sea, but down here in their hastily dug foxholes, the movement of the night air didn’t do them much good. The slight breeze wafted the fetid smell of the jungle toward them, close and dank. There was something unnatural and unhealthy about the smell, not at all clean and fresh like a mountain forest.
His eyes continued to play tricks on him, filling the black stew with swirls and shapes, any one of which might be a Japanese soldier sneaking up on them.
Deke felt a tickling sensation as something ran across his hand in the dark, some kind of many-legged beetle or maybe a spider. Lord knows he’d seen some big ones here at the edge of the jungle. The damn things could probably take down a rabbit. A few men had been sent back to the beach with bites that swelled up bigger than baseballs and hurt like they’d been smacked with a bat.
But spiders didn’t much worry a country boy like Deke. He held still without letting go of his grip on the rifle, feeling the tickle of scurrying insect feet on his flesh. Thankfully, whatever the critter was, it moved on.
Philly cursed quietly: “Son-of-a-bitch Japs. I know they’re gonna attack us. Why the hell don’t they just get it over with?”
“Just keep your eyes open.”
“Sure, I’ve got my eyes open, but what difference does it make? Might as well keep them closed. Can’t see a thing.”
“If there’s anybody out there, you’ll see them once they’re on the move.”
“I sure as hell hope so. Those sneaky Jap bastards blend right in.”
In the dark, it was easy to think of the enemy as something inhuman, something right out of the heart of the jungle. Yet Deke had the passing thought that just maybe the Japanese were nervous themselves as they prepared to run at the American line. More than a few of them were going to meet their maker.
In addition to the fear factor of a night attack, the darkness helped the Japanese dodge American aircraft. Japanese planes had been in short supply, given the US dominion in the skies. However, the fighter planes did not fly at night, giving the Japanese a window of operation.
Deke glanced again at the dark where Philly lay shrouded in the foxhole. Philly might sound anxious, but Deke knew that he could count on him, even if he couldn’t see him. They had been thrown together only recently, part of a sniper squad cobbled together under the command of Lieutenant Steele. The lieutenant lay hidden nearby in another foxhole, along with the rest of their sniper squad.
Having seen his buddy from basic training killed during the first few minutes of the landing on Guam, Deke had been reluctant to make any new friends. By his very nature, Deke tended to put a hard shell around himself and not let anyone in. But sometimes you did have to put your trust in the man on either side of you. Slowly Deke was realizing that he might be able to do that with the men of this patrol, starting with Philly.
The city boy was a loudmouth, all right, but from what he had seen so far of Philly, he would hold his ground if the Japs launched one of their dreaded banzai attacks. From the shooting test that Lieutenant Steele had given them earlier, it was clear that Philly wasn’t the greatest shot. He certainly wasn’t Deke’s equal — not that many were when it came to a raw talent for hitting anything that he could put his rifle sights on.