Cole said, "Makes sense to me. Maybe somebody at headquarters needs to start listening to what you've got to say."
"I won't hold my breath," the soldier said. "Say, is there any more of that coffee around here?"
"Go on back to the kitchen and them 'em that the hillbilly sent you."
"The hillbilly. Hah, I like that." The soldier seemed to notice Cole's rifle for the first time. "You're that sniper I heard about? Shoot some for me. I tell you what, though. If you come through our section, tell the guys first so that they don't shoot you by accident. Some of the guys are getting trigger happy, if you know what I mean. These Chinese have 'em spooked."
The soldier and his buddies went in search of more hot coffee.
Cole had been right about how the Chinese were reaching the American lines. The method that they used to mark their trail was something new and useful. He supposed that he should be thankful that the Chinese had already done the hard part by finding a way between the ridges. Now it was his turn to turn the tables and get behind the Chinese lines to get the drop on that enemy sniper.
He would just have to hurry up and get the job done before the counter-attack on Sniper Ridge.
Darkness was falling by the time Cole returned to his tent. The other guys were sitting on the ground in the last of the light, smoking cigarettes, and starting to shiver as the autumn chill increased. Sometimes, quick fires were made, but no one sat around them for long due to the threat of Chinese snipers, who could easily have crept close enough to pick out targets in the firelight. One by one, the soldiers in the squad peeled off for their tents and the warmth of their sleeping bags.
But not Cole. He was just getting started.
He spread a blanket in front of his tent and lit a candle. He then set his rifle on the blanket, with his intention being to give it a good cleaning. The feeble, flickering light was just enough for him to work by without drawing any unwanted attention from the enemy. There was also something timeless about the flame. It could just have easily have been one of his ancestors, cleaning a Kentucky long rifle by firelight.
Sitting Indian-style on the ground, he set to work. There was already a running joke that Cole had the cleanest rifle in Korea.
Pomeroy used to kid him, "Hillbilly, you could do surgery with that rifle."
"What kind of operation would I do with a rifle?”
“You could remove someone’s appendix, or shoot out their heart—”
“Surgery,” Cole said.
He took the rifle apart now, laying the pieces out on the blanket. He took off the scope, shucked out the bolt, and disassembled the trigger mechanism. He then began cleaning the rifle, working through the bore with the patch and gun solvent, swirling out the powder residue and even tiny unseen bits from the bullet jacket.
Any bit of grit wedged in the rifling could potentially throw off the accuracy of the bullet, so his goal was to make the barrel as clean as when it had left the hands of the machinist. When he was done, that barrel and that rifle would be a slick as a whistle.
He worked several white cotton patches through the bore until they came out clean. When he held the barrel up and looked through it into the candle flame, the rifling reflecting the light in all of its well-oiled, precision-machined glory.
If he could have crawled through that barrel toward that light, he was sure that he could have found God on the other side.
Next, he went to work on the chamber, the bolt, and the trigger assembly. He used a fine brush to scrub them clean of any powder or metal residue, then rubbed them down with gun oil. His fingers began to grow a little numb in the cool air, but Cole was so engrossed in his work that he didn't notice. He worked until the smooth steel felt buttery under his fingertips.
Back home, he had started making custom hunting knives, taking up the trade that his old friend Hollis had practiced in his mountaintop forge. It had been Hollis who made Cole's Bowie knife with its razor-sharp, Damascus steel blade. A soldier now had that knife, having stolen it off Cole. The thought rankled him.
When Hollis had passed, before Cole returned from the last war in Europe, he had left all his tools, even his shop, to Cole. It had been the best thing that anyone had ever done for him. Hollis must have known that someone like Cole would lose himself in the craft. It had certainly kept him away from the darker corners of his mind — and from the whiskey bottle that had been his own Pa's downfall.
Cole had found that he was good at the precision work required for making knives, though not yet as good as Hollis had been. If he ever got home again, he would be glad to get back to turning blanks of steel into knives, improving his craft with each one.
When Cole was finished with the rifle, he looked at all the pieces spread out on the blanket. By themselves, they were simply parts. Chunks of metal. One by one, he reassembled them expertly, each piece of metal fitting smoothly into the other until the rifle was whole again, gleaming and deadly with purpose.
Cole took the rifle back to the tent where, once again, the kid was already asleep, exhausted from a day of sentry duty. Cole felt tired himself, and he felt that pang of hunger in his belly, a good kind of hunger, an ache of animal drive.
He reckoned that maybe he'd just had a run of bad luck up there across from Sniper Ridge, but he was going to show the Chinese enemy that on a good day, there was no beating Caje Cole.
He curled himself around the rifle and slept a blessedly dreamless sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cole was up before first light, the critter deep within him uncurling its claws as he set out from camp in a killing mood. The morning dawned cold and crisp, sharp as the edge of a knife and gleaming like a blade once the sun crept over the mountaintops. The rifle felt cold and deadly in his hands.
His preparations the previous day had honed him to a sharp point, but the truth was, he had been preparing for moments like this his whole life. He was a hunter by nature. Now, it was time to hunt the enemy.
His time might be limited. The orders that had come around for another attack on Sniper Ridge meant that he might be on the wrong side when the shooting started. He would just have to figure that out when the time came.
Leaving alone felt right because this was a one-man job. He didn't need to worry about getting anyone else killed. It was going to come down to him and the Chinese sniper. One of them was not going to survive this morning, and Cole was determined to make sure that it was going to be the other guy who didn’t make it.
His plan was a little crazy, the kind of thing you usually cooked up over too much moonshine and then worked to forget about the next morning, along with your aching head. But Cole set out to make it happen. As he climbed the ridge he thought, ain't no goin' back now.
He climbed toward the front line of American defenses, off on the left flank. The men were more spread out here because the threat of a full-on Chinese attack was unlikely. The heaviest defenses were centered along the lower point of the ridge above the base camp. The Americans depended on the rough landscape itself to do a better job of defending their position than any rows of concertina wire.
He spoke in a hushed tone to a couple of soldiers in a foxhole.
"Been quiet around here?"
"Thought we heard some enemy troops last night, but didn't see anything," the GI said.
Cole nodded. "You probably heard right. My guess is that they come and go through here. Listen, I'm gonna move out in front of you. Spread the word. Don't go shooting me."
"You're headed the wrong way," the GI told him. "Nothing out there but rocks and Chinese."