David Healey
Pacific Sniper
Epigraph
“And I have told you this to make you grieve.”
Chapter One
Deacon “Deke” Cole crouched in the belly of the landing craft headed for an island occupied by several thousand Japanese troops ready to fight to the death. Right now, though, he had more immediate concerns, such as being crammed shoulder to shoulder with dozens of other men.
He felt like a cork, bobbing up and down helplessly in a boat that made a very small speck in a very big ocean. They had been in these damn boats all night. Deke would not have been reassured to know that their flotilla had just passed over the deepest point of the Mariana Trench, reaching into the blackness more than thirty-five thousand feet below.
As dawn approached, he could hear the angry seas of the Pacific Ocean washing and gurgling insistently against the metal sides.
Slosh, slosh.
Bad as things were in the boat, he found the sound of the ocean even more unsettling. He didn’t like the ocean, didn’t trust it. He had grown up in the mountains of Appalachia and preferred solid ground. Having been on ships for weeks now, making the long voyage from Hawaii, he longed for the feel of rocks and dirt under his feet. Some part of him was looking forward to getting on that island, Japs or not.
The slap of the sea groping for them was the only noise. Nobody spoke because each soldier was caught up in his own thoughts and fears. They all knew that by the end of the day to come, more than a few of their number would be dead. It was a hell of a thing to think about, so Deke simply pushed the thought from his mind.
For others, that wasn’t as easy.
“I’m scared, Deke,” said Ben Hemphill’s quavering voice beside him.
Ben was the same age but seemed much younger. Hell, the poor kid barely needed to shave. Ben had latched onto him like a kid brother. The fact that Ben called him “Deke” reminded him of home because his sister, Sadie, had liked to call him that, once telling him, “It’s a short name to go along with the fact that you’ve got a short fuse.”
Deke looked over at Ben, whose face had gone green — whether from fear or seasickness, it was hard to say. “Stick with me and you’ll be all right.”
“I keep thinking about what happened to all those marines at Saipan. Aren’t you scared?”
Deke nodded grimly. The geography of the Pacific was slippery in his mind, but everybody had talked in hushed tones about how nearly fourteen thousand marines had been killed or wounded taking that not-too-distant island this summer.
Now it was their turn.
Was he scared? He checked himself but didn’t feel any fear about the fight to come. However, he’d had enough of this landing craft. “I just want to get off this boat,” he said to Ben. “Listen, you’ll be all right. Like I said, just stick with me.”
“If you say so.”
“Shut it, you two,” said the sergeant. He glared at Deke, his gaze recoiling from Deke’s scars. On his right side, Deke’s face looked normal, even boyishly handsome, with a proud Scotch-Irish jawline and pale eyes. But on the left side of his face, deep, angry gouges raked from his temple to his chin. Part of an ear was missing.
“Yes, sir,” Ben stammered.
“Voices carry over water. You’re gonna turn us all into Japbait.”
Deke didn’t reply, which he knew would steam up the sergeant. In the predawn darkness, he smiled. He and the sergeant had gotten off to a bad start, and it had never gotten any better. Not that Deke gave a damn.
All around him, isolated in their own cocoons of silence, other men pondered death or feared turning out to be cowards when they had to run into the storm of bullets awaiting them.
They made bargains with God: “If you let me live, I promise I’ll…” Pledges were made to abstain from everything from booze to cards. Charitable acts were planned. Deke reckoned it was a waste of time. He knew from personal experience that God didn’t listen, no matter how much you begged and pleaded.
It was no consolation that they were experiencing the same doubts and fears that Roman legionaries had felt gazing on a horde of barbarians, or that Confederate soldiers had experienced when looking across the field toward the Union lines on Cemetery Ridge that hot day at Gettysburg. Some of Deke’s people had been there, wearing gray, their blood soon to be spilled on the Pennsylvania soil. He supposed that there would be more than a little blood spilled on this day as well. He just hoped to hell that it wasn’t his blood.
After the long months of training together, they were finally going into action.
It all seemed unreal. The darkness only added to the sense of disorientation. Beside Deke, someone retched. Many men were seasick. The navy had fed them well, steak and eggs, all they could eat, and that was what was coming up now. The shame of it was that they knew it would be the last decent meal they’d be getting for a while. Knowing what was coming, Deke had eaten sparingly.
The smell of vomit and nervous sweat mixed in with the strong salty air. Beneath those smells, Deke detected an undercurrent of rotting vegetation as the breeze blew toward them. That smell was the island of Guam, where they were certain that hell awaited.
It was supposed to be summer, but it sure didn’t feel like it here on the water. The tropical breeze had turned cool last night, chilling the damp men in the boat and adding to their misery.
A dog lay stretched out near Deke’s feet. Her name was Whoa Nelly, and she was a military dog rather than a mascot, although the men couldn’t help but spoil her rotten. She had been brought along to help sniff out Japs and warn of infiltrators. The dog whimpered, sick as the men. Deke reached down and patted the dog’s head. “Hang in there, ol’ girl.”
Sergeant Hawley came past again, squeezing his way through the jam-packed men. He didn’t see the dog at his feet and tripped, stumbling against the tightly packed soldiers nearby.
“Dammit!” he turned back and kicked at the dog, making her yelp. “Get that dog out of the way!”
Nobody liked to see Hawley kick the dog, but they knew better than to say anything. The dog’s handler, Private Egan, squatted and managed to interpose himself between the dog and Hawley’s boots. Cursing, the sergeant moved on.
Deke glanced around at the other soldiers, who all looked about as miserable as the dog. He looked over at Corporal Conlon, who slumped beneath the gunwales of the Higgins boat, looking just as worried as everybody else. So much for all his big talk. Conlon held a sniper rifle, a 1903A Springfield with a telescopic sight. Conlon was a good shot, and he never let anybody forget it.
By all rights, the rifle should have been Deke’s. Conlon was good, but everybody knew that Deacon Cole was the best shot in the company, if not the whole division. He’d had the highest range score of anyone. No surprise there — Deke had grown up with a rifle in his hands.
However, accuracy with a rifle was not the only requirement for being the unit’s designated sniper, which was a position of trust and a reward for good soldiering — something that Deke was never going to qualify for. A sniper, paired with a scout, often operated independently. The fact was that Deke couldn’t seem to get along with the sergeant, who was a city boy and made no secret of what he thought of “crackers and hayseeds” like Deke.
Deke’s attitude toward the officers wasn’t much better. It was the way that he always waited a half beat before adding “sir” or was slow to salute. He always had one boot toeing the line of insubordination. It was no wonder that their platoon leader, Lieutenant Thibault, did not hold Deke in high regard. Blame it on Deke’s innate sense of equality and his mountain upbringing; he didn’t like the idea of one man being held above another. The army didn’t agree. These shortcomings had put him out of the running for any special assignments. In the eyes of the command structure, he was going to make good cannon fodder.