“Then better make each shot count.”
“I thought that I might pray.”
“That might not be a bad idea,” Steele agreed.
Although the ceiling was quite low, the bunker was surprisingly spacious even when crowded with so many men. The weakest POWs were immediately put into the two rough bunks. To Deke’s nose once again came the vaguely fishy smell that he always seemed to associate with the Japanese. Although the bunker clearly had not been occupied by the enemy for quite some time, the smell still lingered.
Here in the jungle, concrete had not been used in the bunker’s construction. Instead, the bunker was built of rammed earth, stone, and even logs cut from the forest. Nonetheless, it seemed sturdy enough to keep any attacker except maybe a tank at bay. Although he felt reassured, there was also the nagging thought that while none of the enemy was getting in, none of the defenders would be getting out as long as they were surrounded by the Japanese. They were trapped like rats in a box. Deke pushed that uncomfortable thought from his mind.
He took up a position alongside Philly. Yoshio and Rodeo covered the other firing slit. Father Francisco and the guerrillas had taken charge of the other firing slits.
“How are we doing for ammo?” the lieutenant asked.
“Getting low,” Deke replied. He had used up a surprising number of bullets keeping the enemy at bay on the path.
“Same here,” said Yoshio.
Father Francisco had already warned that the guerrillas’ ammo supply was getting low, which wasn’t reassuring. It didn’t help that the Americans and the Filipinos were largely armed with different weapons — several of the guerrillas still carried Arisaka rifles that had been liberated in one way or another from the Japanese.
The arrangement left the bulk of the former POWs in the foxholes ringing the bunker, nervously awaiting their fate. Faraday and Cooper were armed with pistols, which wouldn’t do much good unless the Japanese came extremely close to the American position.
“We’ve got company,” announced Deke, who was peering out at the clearing. He spotted the Japanese swarming down the path, spreading out and taking positions around the bunker.
“Listen up, everybody,” Steele announced. “We are getting low on ammo. We need to make each shot count.”
“How the hell are we getting out of here, Honcho?” Philly wanted to know. “The Japanese are going to have us surrounded.”
“We would’ve been sitting ducks on that trail,” the lieutenant responded. “Now we’ve got them right where we want them. We can whittle away at them while these men rest, and then once it’s dark, we can slip away.”
“Sounds good to me, Honcho,” Philly said.
“Dammit, Philly, I wasn’t asking your opinion. Now act like a sniper and shoot anybody that the enemy sends against us.”
Deke decided that the lieutenant was being optimistic for the benefit of those listening. The look in his one good eye told a different story — Lieutenant Steele knew damn well that they were in a tight spot.
The Japanese attack began not with a fusillade of bullets, but with a single arrow. The arrow flashed through the air and arced down into one of the foxholes. A man screamed as the arrow pierced him.
Only then did the shooting begin.
Deke didn’t fire blindly. He was waiting for one target in particular — well, make that two. He wanted to put a bullet through Mr. Suey and then through that bastard of a commandant. It was almost like a physical ache, an itch that needed to be scratched. Say what you wanted about war, but sometimes it did get personal.
“If anybody sees that son of a bitch with a bow and arrow, let me know,” Deke said, turning and shouting to the others before giving his attention back to the firing slit in front of him.
Deke had to admit that he was impressed all over again by the commandant’s archery skills. The bow had a longer range than Deke might have expected. Yamagata had managed to shoot one of the guerrillas without exposing himself. He was beginning to wonder if maybe he had underestimated the Japanese archer. On the face of it, a bow and arrow seemed to be a useless weapon against rifles and bullets, but there was just something so terrifying about it. Deke couldn’t help but wonder if this was how his ancestors had felt, fighting the Indians while holed up in a wooden stockade with a long rifle.
As if to punctuate his thoughts, an arrow came right through one of the firing slits and buried itself in Rodeo’s upper arm, the one that the butt of his rifle had been tucked into. Deke rushed over to Rodeo and pushed him to one side, hoping for a glimpse of Yamagata.
He spotted the archer at the far end of the clearing, where he had stepped away from the cover of the forest to fire his arrow. By the time that Deke acquired that spot in his rifle scope, Yamagata had vanished back into the trees.
Deke fired anyhow, hoping that he might get lucky and his bullet would find Yamagata in his jungle hiding place.
“What the hell, Deke?” Rodeo demanded indignantly. He clutched at his arm, clearly in pain.
“Sorry,” Deke muttered. “I wanted a shot at that son of a bitch. The commandant of that Japanese camp likes to play with bows and arrows.”
“Did you get him?”
“No,” Deke said bitterly.
“I’d say the commandant does more than play with bows and arrows,” Yoshio pointed out. He had come over to help Rodeo and was wrapping a rag around the base of the arrow. The tip had entered the fleshy part of Rodeo’s biceps, but hadn’t gone all the way through, leaving the full length of the arrow still jutting out. When Yoshio grasped the arrow, testing how firmly it was embedded, Rodeo yelped in pain.
“Hey, that’s not a goddamn stick shift!”
“You can’t fight with that arrow the way it is, and we cannot leave it buried in you. It will get infected,” Yoshio said. “It must be removed.”
“How the hell are you gonna do that?” Rodeo demanded.
“I have an idea.”
Without any warning, he used the now bloody rag to get a good grip on the shaft of the arrow and shoved until the point came out the other side of Rodeo’s biceps.
Rodeo screamed and made a fist, drawing back his good arm as if about to slug Yoshio. “You son of a bitch!”
Deke grabbed Rodeo’s fist before he could punch Yoshio. “Hold on, Yoshio is right. It’s got to come out.”
Yoshio made the rest of his treatment plan clear by digging in his pack for the wire cutters they had used to get through the perimeter fence. He snipped off the tip of the arrow, then pulled the shaft backward, freeing it from Rodeo’s arm. Once again, Rodeo howled.
Yoshio sprinkled some sulpha powder on the entry and exit wounds, then bound it tightly with the rag. Yoshio was the nearest thing they had to a medic, and once again he had demonstrated his medical skills. “There,” he said, nodding with satisfaction. “Good as new.”
“Good as new my ass,” Rodeo replied. “I can tell you one thing. It’s gonna hurt like hell to shoot this rifle. At least I’ll get a Purple Heart out of it.”
Honcho had overheard that last part. “Purple Heart? Hell, no. I hate to tell you this, Rodeo, but nobody would believe me if I put you in for a medal because you got shot with an arrow.”
“Well, dammit all, then.” Rodeo appeared genuinely disappointed. “That’s not fair.”
Yoshio grinned. “Maybe you will get shot next with an actual bullet and get yourself a medal after all.”
“You’re a regular barrel of laughs.”
Another arrow came soaring in, picking off another one of the Filipino guerrillas in the foxholes. Deke noted that you could possibly get out of the way of an arrow — if you saw it was coming.
“Dammit, where the hell is he?” he muttered to himself once again. Through the scope, he was watching the spot where he had last seen Yamagata, but there was no sign of him. The arrow had come from an entirely different direction. Just liked a skilled sniper, Yamagata knew to move around.