The soldier looked reluctant. He hesitated, then seemed to gather himself. With a shout, he jumped up and fired wildly at the enemy on the slope.
Almost instantly, he collapsed back into the grass and did not stir, dead from a single shot.
“That was too quick,” Okubo muttered to himself. Having remained hidden in the grass himself, he had not spotted the enemy sniper’s muzzle blast. He would have to use another soldier as a decoy. He looked over to his right, where Kimura lay. He hesitated, only because the private had been a useful kosho.
“Private Kimura! It is your turn now. Rise up from the grass and shoot that American!”
“Sir?”
“Do not disappoint me, Kimura. Remember your duty to the Emperor.”
The young soldier looked at him with pleading eyes, but Okubo stared back pitilessly. He did not have time for this. He needed the enemy sniper to reveal himself before the rest of that American patrol climbed out of the ravine.
Reluctantly, the young soldier appeared to make up his mind. The hands holding his rifle trembled as he got to his knees.
Slowly, Kimura gathered his resolve. He knew that what he was doing was nothing short of suicide. Like Okubo, he had recognized that this was the same sniper that they had faced earlier. The American was a good shot — he wouldn’t miss. However, Kimura knew that he had no choice but to obey a direct order.
Meanwhile, Okubo kept his eye on the target.
That did not prevent him from saying impatiently, “Go on. What are you waiting for?”
Kimura stood. A split second later, he gave a cry of pain and collapsed back into the grass, writhing in agony.
Okubo ignored him. The ruse had worked. This time, he had spotted a flicker of movement.
He fired.
Deke spotted a Japanese rise from the grass, showing himself plainly. It was not the samurai-looking guy this time, but he shouted what might have been a battle cry. Deke had been waiting for a target and was ready for him. He fired and was sure that he had nailed the Jap right in the head.
Another one down. How many were left?
Incredibly, another Jap showed himself.
Damn, but that one popped up like a gopher. Deke was so startled that he barely aimed, just put the sights on the enemy soldier and pulled the trigger. He got lucky. The Jap fell back into the grass.
Immediately, a bullet came in and grazed his cheek, producing a burning sensation as if someone had just rubbed his scarred face with a hot coal. Too close for comfort. Deke hunkered even tighter against the big man’s corpse.
More shots thudded into Ingram’s body. The sound was more than a little sickening. Unseen in the grass, the Japs were now targeting him. He fired blindly, hoping that it would at least make them keep their heads down. It didn’t, and the firing continued. He just hoped that meant the squad below was safely out of their line of fire.
He didn’t have a prayer of hitting enemy soldiers that he couldn’t see. On the other hand, the Japs knew exactly where he was. He touched his burning cheek, a reminder that it was only a matter of time before the Japs got a lucky shot.
Staying put was not an option.
The thing that Deke was learning about war was that it broke down into a series of life-and-death decisions. Your actions would either get you killed within the next few seconds, or they might save your bacon so that you lived to a ripe old age. The only thing that you couldn’t do was sit still and let somebody else make your decision for you — not when their decision was to kill you.
“Now or never,” Deke muttered to himself.
He took just one second in his mind to say goodbye to Sadie and his ma. He pictured the spring green of the mountains back home one last time, thinking that it might be the last thought he had, and then he sprang up from behind Ingram’s bullet-riddled body and ran down the ravine.
To call it running was an exaggeration. The path was so steep that he was basically falling down the slope, but somehow his feet managed to stay just ahead of gravity. His arms pinwheeled wildly. More bullets whistled around him. His boot caught on a root, and he went down, tumbling the rest of the way down the path to the bottom of the ravine. He hit so hard that it knocked the wind out of him, but he forced himself to keep going and crawled into the shelter of some rocks.
Gasping for breath, he took stock. His descent down the slope hadn’t been pretty, and one of his knees hurt like hell, but he didn’t have any bullet holes in him, which seemed to be the main thing.
On the other side of the ravine, he could see that the squad was more than halfway up. He lay there a moment, catching his breath, then dashed across the ravine and started after them. This side of the ravine was out of the Japanese sight line. The Japs couldn’t shoot down at them unless they put themselves in the Americans’ own line of fire. If the Japs were smart, Deke reckoned that they would just roll a couple of grenades down the hill and call it a day.
“Thought we lost you,” Philly said. “You’re like a bad penny, Deke. You keep managing to turn up.”
“Ingram is dead.”
“Let’s get out of here before we end up the same way.”
They struggled up the steep path, making their way out of the ravine. Tony Cruz was leading them, seeming not to care that he was headed toward the Japanese with nothing but a single-shot rifle and a machete. His legs pumped tirelessly up the slope, and the Americans had no choice but to follow.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Breathless, they reached the top of the ravine and sprawled in the grass, weapons at the ready. The only one who didn’t seem winded was the Chamorro guide. He crouched on one knee, eyeing the hillside. There was no sign of the Japs, who seemed to have melted away.
“Where did they go?”
“They’re probably setting up another ambush, waiting to hit us somewhere down the line.”
“That’s fine by me. I can wait.”
Quickly, they took stock. The ambush in the ravine had left them shaken and battered.
They had put Steele down, and Deke scrambled across to check on the lieutenant. He rolled him over, looking for a bullet wound, dreading what he would find.
Steele gasped and opened his good eye. He had been knocked out cold. Deke spotted the dent in Steele’s helmet, the metal bright where the paint had been scraped away. He couldn’t believe the lieutenant’s good luck. The bullet had hit him right in the head, but only a glancing blow. Lucky that the Japs used a lighter bullet. A round from Deke’s Springfield would have punched straight through the helmet as though it were a tin can.
“What the hell?” Steele asked groggily.
“Let’s get you moving, Honcho,” Deke said. “No sense being sitting ducks if those Japs come back.”
He helped get Steele up, and together they began to continue unsteadily up the path. After a few steps, he gently shook off Deke’s help. “I appreciate it, son. Really, I do. But I think I’ve got this. Besides, you can’t help me the whole way.”
Despite his insistence that he was all right, it was obvious that Steele had been hit harder than he let on. He had a few dizzy spells. At one point, he bent over and vomited.
“Sure sign of a concussion,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Still, I’ll take that any day over a hole in the head.”
The lieutenant looked around. “Where’s Ingram?”
“Dead, sir.”
Lieutenant Steele nodded, not bothering to correct the “sir.” It was doubtful that there were any Nips around to overhear that slip.
“I suppose I must have known that, but things are a little fuzzy. Damn shame about Ingram. He was a good man. What about his body?”
“We had to leave him behind, sir.”