“Aw, do me a favor and duck your head under for a while. Like maybe an hour.”
Philly laughed and shucked off his pants. Like a lot of soldiers, he no longer bothered with the hot, cumbersome army-issued boxers and wore nothing under the button-fly fatigues when in the field, giving rise to the term “going commando.” He ran down to the ocean and threw himself into the waves. Left behind on the hot beach, Alphabet and Rodeo found the sight of Philly cavorting in the surf too much to bear, so they shucked off their own fatigues and joined him in the cool ocean waves.
Yoshio and Egan looked at each other, shrugged, and ran down to dump their clothes at the water’s edge. Pretty soon, all of them were splashing and generally playing around in the waves, shouting their fool heads off. It was a reminder that, in reality, they were all barely more than kids.
Only Deke and Lieutenant Steele were left sitting on the beach, both a ways apart, looking on. It was clear that neither one of them intended to go for a swim. Steele was an officer, after all. As for Deke, he hated the damn ocean. The sight of all that water wasn’t natural. Give him hills and mountains any day, but not the sea.
They had been cavorting in the waves for maybe five minutes when a rifle shot cut right through the sound of their laughter with an angry crack. A bullet struck the water, raising a white welt on the surface of the blue Pacific, quickly followed by another.
Patrol Easy had been caught out in the open, most of them as defenseless as they could be.
“Sniper!” Yoshio shouted, then dove underwater.
A bullet plucked the water where his head had been an instant before. The Jap sniper’s aim was improving.
Deke was already on his belly, elbows dug into the sand, rifle to his shoulder, looking for a target. A bullet zipped overhead, so close that it left a metallic taste in Deke’s mouth. He worked his hips even harder than he had ground them into that hooker during shore leave on Oahu, trying to sink a fraction of an inch deeper into the sand. The boys in the water were doing their best to stay ducked under, but every time they came up for air, a bullet struck nearby.
He didn’t put his eye to the riflescope yet but scanned the line of jungle scrub that began beyond the beach. Most of the taller trees were ragged or their trunks were snapped off as if they had been caught in a typhoon, though it hadn’t been a storm but the results of heavy shelling from the cruisers and destroyers assembled off the island in the warm waters of the Philippine Sea. Lower down, the scrub was thick enough to hide any number of Japanese snipers. The Jap would definitely be armed with an Arisaka, a rifle that made up for its lack of sheer firepower with its stealth — its lighter cartridge made the shooter’s location tricky to pinpoint. Its lighter load didn’t make it any less deadly, just quieter.
Plus Deke was already going a little deaf from all the damn shelling. After a few weeks of combat, Deke’s eye was practiced enough to search for any bit of movement or the glint of the sun off the glass of a scope or the gleam of a rifle barrel. It didn’t help that the heat rising off the sand made the view flicker and shimmer. The Jap sniper could have been anywhere — and nowhere.
Nearby, Lieutenant Steele was doing much the same thing, although his shotgun was next to useless at this range.
That single sniper had them pinned down good.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Like a bully kicking sand, a long burst of machine-gun fire churned up the sand near Deke’s head. Another burst made the tropical water near the swimmers seem to boil. The sniper wasn’t alone. The Japs also had a machine gun trained on the beach. Things had just gone from bad to worse.
“Cover me,” the lieutenant shouted. An instant later, he was up and running, his boots kicking gouts of sand across the beach. He was heading for the tree line.
Deke watched the crazy bastard charging at the Japs. He fired at nothing, hoping against hope that it would make the enemy soldiers keep their heads down long enough for Steele to make it to cover.
Steele juked left, then right, moving fast. He was the oldest man on the beach by far, but he was in good shape. Either that or the fear of being stitched by the machine gun had given wings to his feet. Another burst kicked up sand all around him, but Steele kept going.
Deke fired at where he thought the machine gun was hidden, once again praying for luck. Then Steele reached the jungle’s edge off to the left and disappeared from sight. One moment he had been there, and the next he was gone. Where the hell is he going?
Deke turned his attention back to finding the sniper. Some part of himself thought, Hell, this is a lot better than splashing around in the ocean. He pushed the thought from his mind and scanned the jungle’s edge for any sign of the enemy marksman. The man was well hidden.
But he couldn’t hide forever. Deke held still, hoping for any sign that would give the sniper away.
The machine gun was still chattering away, alternating between bursts near Deke’s position and the men in the water. Another gout of seawater erupted whenever one of the men raised his head too long.
Although the men had initially been splashing in the surf, they had been forced to move into deeper water, where they could duck under and have a fighting chance of staying out of the enemy’s sights. But it wasn’t easy going. They swam out even farther, closer to where the big ocean swells broke against the edge of the coral reef. There was no way they could go beyond the point where the waves churned in a rush of powerful fury. Still, some of the men were in over their heads.
“Help! Help!” he heard Alphabet shouting. “I can’t swim!”
“Get your feet under you!” Philly shouted back at him. It was easier said than done, with the tide tugging them out to sea and bullets coming at them from the other direction. To make things worse, the coral shelf was sharp and unforgiving, cutting their bare feet.
If the Japs didn’t shoot them, it sounded as if at least some of Patrol Easy might drown. Deke stared even more intently into the shadowy jungle’s edge. Where the hell are you?
Finally, he saw the smallest movement. It might have been dismissed as a bird flitting through the brush, or a flicker of a leaf in the breeze, but Deke caught sight of the outline of a helmet, bent over a rifle sight.
He lowered his eye to his own riflescope and put the crosshairs where he had seen the motion. Had he imagined the glimpse of the helmet? He saw only a patch of jungle now through the scope. Still, he squeezed the trigger, and the rifle bucked against his shoulder.
Through the scope, he saw something droop and realized it was the Jap sniper’s body, sagging under its own deadweight. One down, one nest of machine gunners to go.
As if they had read his mind, the Japs let loose another burst that churned even closer to his head. Sand flew into his eyes, momentarily blinding him. Son of a bitch! How was he even supposed to shoot back?
An instant later, he heard the deep boom of Lieutenant Steele’s shotgun. Then another boom. The machine gun fell silent.
One thing for sure — the Japs wouldn’t be bothering them anymore.
Swiping at the sand and sweat stinging his eyes, Deke still managed to see a figure emerge from the jungle’s edge. It was Lieutenant Steele, carrying his shotgun cradled in the crook of his elbow, not seeming to have a care in the world, like maybe he was returning from a pheasant hunt. Deke couldn’t help but grin.
Now that the shooting had stopped, the rest of the men made their way back in from the sea. Alphabet had to be half dragged, half carried out of the ocean by Philly and Rodeo. He sputtered and coughed up water.
But that didn’t stop him from managing to stammer, “Goddamn sneaky Japs! I can’t wait to kill every last one of ’em!”