"That's the idea," Cole said.
The GI looked from Cole to the scoped rifle in his hands. "You're a sniper, huh? What are you gonna do, sneak closer and pick off some of the enemy?"
"Well, I sure as hell ain't gonna cook 'em breakfast," Cole said. "Now, keep your fool heads down if any shooting starts. Just so you know, if I come back, I'll likely be hauling ass."
"If you come back?"
"Like I said, if I come back."
Leaving the GIs something to think about, he slipped through the line of defenses and began walking parallel to it. The soldiers back in the foxhole had said that they might have heard enemy troops moving around in the dark. Their ears had not been playing tricks on them.
It was no secret that groups of Chinese saboteurs constantly slipped through the lines to do whatever damage they could. The raids were yet another way that they wore down their enemy. Interestingly enough, the UN and American forces didn't go much for that approach. Part of it was simple fear. If the Chinese raiders were captured, which did sometimes happen, they became prisoners of war. Nobody much liked the chances for any American raiders captured by the Chinese. The best they could hope for was torture and death.
Something that had been learned from the captured troops was how they picked their way through the American lines. Cole had heard rumors about it, and he thought that he could put that knowledge to use.
For too long, the enemy had been bringing the war to the Americans. Now, he was going to bring the war to them.
Not far from the foxhole where he had encountered the GIs, Cole found what he was looking for. I'll be damned. The rumors were true. Those raiders hadn't been lying about how they got through the US lines.
Cole looked more closely. It was a sign so faint that most eyes would have missed it. But Cole was a natural tracker, having grown up hunting in the mountains. His eyes could pick out a broken twig or the faintest impression of a footprint on a mountain trail. The markings that he saw now leaped out at him like a road sign.
Coming down through the hills was the faintest line of white powder. It wasn't at all like the sideline on a football field, but more like the spillage from an hourglass. In some places, the line was thicker and in other places it disappeared for a few paces, only to reappear in spurts like dots and dashes on the ground. If you didn't know it was there and you weren't looking for it, your eyes would have dismissed it.
Here and there, the line went up over some rocks or around a boulder. Tellingly, the trail tended to follow any natural cover that helped screen the path from the American sentries ahead.
Cole wet a finger, then bent down and tasted the powder. Bland, but he detected the faint taste of flour. It was the perfect marker because it lasted just long enough before fading into the rocky soil.
He had to give it to the Chinese. He could picture just how they were doing it. They were sending a lone scout to find his way through the American defenses. If they lost one man, so be it. One man could have moved silently through the defenses.
He likely probed the line until he found a way through, a spot where the trenches or foxholes were just a little too far apart or where a rocky outcropping broke up the line of sight, enabling someone to slip through unseen. Cole shook his head in wonder. Sneaky bastards.
Cole couldn't help but think of a finger poked through a hole in a sweater, or maybe a hernia jutting through an abdominal wall. The enemy was looking for a weakness. Once the enemy scout had found that soft spot, he retraced his steps, this time with a bag of flour that leaked a thin stream down onto the ground, marking his path. Later that night or the next night, a raiding party could follow the trail, slipping unseen through the American lines. It was a regular saboteur’s highway.
One thing about the Chinese, Cole thought, was that they were good at being sneaky. It was how they were going to win this war — that and their willingness to throw away their own lives like you threw handfuls of corn to greedy hens.
But the Chinese saboteurs were not the only ones who could move silently through the landscape. Cole did that now, retracing the path that went deep into the rocky ravines surrounding the American position. He passed through thickets and clambered over rocks, moving silently as the sun climbing the morning sky.
You could almost say this was Indian country in that neither side bothered defending it because it was too rough. Behind him was the American line. Somewhere up ahead was the Chinese line.
Easy now. The critter part of him was intent on killing, driven by it, like a wolf with an empty belly. But the cold part of Cole's mind reminded him that the hunter needed to be silent. One misstep, one snapped twig, one clatter of rocks under his boots — and he would surely unleash a hail of enemy machine gun fire. Wouldn't that just cancel Christmas?
Now came the tricky part. It was his turn to get through the Chinese lines. He had to beat them at their own game.
Moving forward, he could actually smell the Chinese before he heard them. It wasn't any kind of judgment about the Chinese themselves, but only the fact that they smelled different, like garlic and stale rice and maybe some seaweed mixed in. Germans had their own smell back in the last war. Like beer and sausage. The Japs had their own smell, too, from what he'd heard. The enemy claimed that the Americans smelled like old hamburgers.
This idea of defining smells might have seemed like foolishness to some, but he knew that in the woods, you could smell game, too — the musky scent of where a fox or coyote marked its territory, or the almost sweet smell the deer left behind where they had bedded down, not all that different from the barn smell of cattle. In part, Cole had given up cigarettes for good in an effort to detect these smells.
Creeping closer, he now heard voices. Speaking in that peculiar sing-song language. It was funny — as much as they'd been fighting the Chinese, they rarely ever heard them talk — except when they were screaming during a bayonet assault. That didn't need any translation.
Cole couldn't understand the words, of course, but he found the rhythm of the language soothing. It wasn't at all harsh and guttural like German — or English, for that matter.
The fact that the Chinese were talking among themselves, even laughing quietly, was a good sign. They wouldn't be listening too hard for trouble, and they certainly weren't expecting him. This white line marked a one-way street, anyhow, as far as the Chinese were concerned.
Coming back the other way wasn't gonna be as easy, if you could call this easy. If he came back at all, as he had said to the sentry, he was gonna be damn lucky.
Now came the hard part. He actually had to slip between the Chinese foxholes and get behind their line. Darkness would have helped, and he had thought about doing this at night, but had ruled that out. First of all, he wouldn't have been able to see a damn thing. He might have crawled right into an enemy foxhole. Second, the sentries would be on alert at night. Finally, it might have been his bad luck to run smack dab into one of those raiding squads. Instead, he had opted to wait for daylight and depend on his stealthiest skills.
Out here on the flank, nobody had bothered to cut down the brush between foxholes, which worked to Cole's advantage. He slung the rifle over his shoulder so that it hung crosswise across his back, then got down on his belly. Quietly, he slithered in under the bushes.
He had encountered more than a few snakes in these hills — the Asian pit vipers that were like a deadlier version of a copperhead particularly liked the rocky landscape — but he hoped it was cold enough now to have sent them into their winter dens. Besides, if the enemy heard him, snakes were going to be the least of his worries.
Cole crept forward, pushing his way through the thickest branches and dry, saw-edged grasses that cut at his face. The enemy's voices were so close now that he had to force himself to remember to breathe. Maybe he had steered too close to a foxhole, but he had no choice but to keep going. Can’t stop now. No way could he get himself turned around without being heard. The only way out of this mess was straight ahead, so he kept crawling.