The troops seemed to be organizing themselves, getting ready to move out, so Cole moved faster. The knoll gave him a vantage point of maybe six feet. He wedged himself down between two big rocks, leaving him a kind of rocky V that he could shoot through while being able to see the bulk of the troops nearby. The range wasn't more than a couple of hundred feet. Easy pickings. The problem was that the enemy wouldn't have any trouble figuring out where the shooting was coming from. Once that happened, things would get mighty hot for him up on this knoll.
Cole picked out what looked like an officer, lined up the crosshairs, and fired. No sooner had the man gone down, then he had another round in the chamber. He picked another target, fired. And again.
Below, the enemy scattered, some going to ground in the few foxholes or just diving into the brush. Whenever somebody got the fool notion to show his head, Cole took it off.
It didn't take long for the enemy to figure out that they were under attack by just one sniper — or where that sniper was hidden. Just as Cole had predicted, bullets began to ricochet off the boulders. Lucky for him, they didn't seem to have a machine gun. But if they brought up a mortar, it would all be over.
A bullet struck the rock near his face, a fragment of rock or lead stinging his cheek. More bullets came in as the Chinese directed fire at him, forcing him to keep his head down rather than shoot back.
Can't stay here. If he did, either a lucky shot would find him or the Chinese would flank him — carrying out a miniature version of the maneuver they were planning for the attacking American force.
Cole got an idea. He took off his helmet and wedged it into the rocky V. Now, the enemy had a target. The Chinese obliged him by increasing their rate of fire.
He didn't plan to stick around. Instead, Cole slipped out from behind the rocks, keeping low, and moved off the knoll and back into the underbrush. He popped up long enough to take a shot at one of the enemy soldiers, then dropped back down. He was hidden for now, but once they figured out that he wasn't on the knoll anymore, they would start chewing up the brush — and Cole along with it. The only solution was to keep moving and stay ahead of them.
He popped up and fired, dropping another one of the enemy. Then he kept moving.
Up ahead, the brush started to thin out and the landscape opened up into barren, rocky scree. He didn't like his chances trying to cross that, but there was more brush on the other side where he could lose himself.
He popped up and fired again. The enemy was figuring this out, though. Bullets began to pepper the long grass and chew through the woody shrubs.
Cole braced himself for the dash across the scree. He didn’t like his chances, but if he could just get across it—
There was a shout from the enemy, and the fire began to slacken as it was redirected in the opposite direction.
He soon saw why. An American unit was advancing toward the Chinese, emerging from the brush of no-man's land between the two lines. Cole grinned. Apparently, the Chinese weren't the only ones who had caught on to the idea of sneak attacks. This unit was trying to flank the Chinese position and maybe come around behind them.
Faced with this new threat, the enemy troops forget all about Cole.
He ran back to the knoll, grabbed his helmet, and got back on the rifle. One by one, the enemy defenders either dropped or fled.
Once the American troops approached, Cole took off his helmet again and waved it at them so that they would know he wasn't Chinese.
A sergeant approached, staring at Cole's scoped sniper rifle in amazement. "You just wiped out half of that unit, soldier. I wondered who was back here, helping us out. Where the hell did you come from?"
"Me? Why, I reckon I'm from Tennessee," he drawled.
The sergeant shook his head. "Crazy goddamn hillbilly," he muttered.
Chapter Twenty-Five
In the valley below the ridge, Lieutenant Ballard was leading his platoon through a hail of gunfire. The attack was on to recapture Sniper Ridge.
Turning to assess how his men were positioned, he watched with dismay as his radioman was hit in the chest, the round passing all the way through Private Gordy and bursting out through the radio itself. Gordy toppled forward under the weight of the radio and didn't move again.
Cursing, Ballard reached down to grab Gordy by the shoulder, turning him just enough to see the sightless eyes. The poor son of a bitch was already dead — as was the radio.
The lieutenant carried one of the new-fangled M-2 carbines, a short-barreled affair that Ballard had pulled some rank to obtain because he liked the idea of carrying the newest and best. Also, the carbine could be fired on a fully automatic setting, although that chewed right through the 30-found magazine.
Ballard was a tall man, and the weapon looked extra small in his big, gangly hands. To be sure, he was regretting the choice right now because the carbine resembled a child's pop gun rather than a serious weapon.
Leveling the carbine at the top of the ridge, he fired several shots at the Chinese defenders. Take that, you sons of bitches. He was sure that he hadn't hit a thing, but it made him feel better.
The apex of the steep ridge was the objective of their attack. Once again, it didn't help that all the enemy troops up there had to do to defend the ridge was to throw rocks down on the attackers. That was something of an exaggeration, but it wasn't far from the truth.
Ballard thought that it didn't help that they had already made this attack a few days before, across this same rough terrain. Although they had managed to capture the ridge, the company that had been left to hold the ridge had been overwhelmed by a nighttime Chinese counter-attack. Now, they were trying to get it back again.
With the radio out of commission, Ballard was going to need a runner to carry messages. Preferably someone small and quick, who wouldn't be missed much in the actual attack.
Looking around again, he caught sight of the kid with glasses. Tommy Wilson. He seemed to recall something about Wilson having played football back in high school. Plus, he was within earshot.
"Wilson! Get over here!" The kid scrambled to the lieutenant's side, both of them taking a knee as bullets whined overhead. Lucky for them, the tendency was to overshoot when firing downhill, which the Chinese were doing now.
"Sir."
"I need you to take a message to Corporal Laurel. You know him?"
"Yes, sir."
"Tell him to move his squad right when we reach that gulch up there. He needs to make contact with the next platoon. We don't need any gaps."
"OK, sir."
"Now repeat that back to me."
Ballard had learned the hard way that half the time, messengers never remembered a damned thing in the heat of combat. He nodded with satisfaction when the kid repeated what he'd said verbatim. Maybe those glasses were proof that the kid wasn't a complete idiot.
The kid started to get up to deliver the message, but the Chinese fire up on the ridge intensified and Ballard pulled him back down. He looked up at the ridge and saw, incredulously, that a Chinese soldier stood up there on a rock, emptying a machine gun at Ballard's troops down below. Several men returned fire, but the man jumped back down, apparently unscathed.
What they needed was a sniper. Where the hell was that hillbilly when you needed him? Cole hadn't been present this morning when the platoon had formed up for the attack, a fact that rankled Ballard, although his absence wasn't all that unusual. Cole liked to be out before dawn, sniping at the Chinese.
Ballard thought again about how Cole had taken this bespectacled kid under his wing. Cole was a tough nut, but he seemed to have a soft spot for the kid. He’d also been loyal as hell to Pomeroy.