When he returned, having filled his mug with a thick sludge from the bottom of the coffee pot, the editor waved him over.
"Sir?"
"Good story, kid. Next time, go easy on the melodrama. Remember that there'll be another hill to fight over tomorrow."
Major Wu was with the other troops that had withdrawn after the collapse of the defense at Sniper Ridge. The Americans had paid dearly for their victory. By Wu's estimation, the enemy now held approximately one square mile more of territory in the Taebaek Mountain range. Above the 38th Parallel, Wu knew there were more than 46,000 square miles — most of them held by Chinese forces. The American victory was a pebble in a bucket.
Every battle, won or lost, pushed the UN forces closer to reaching an agreement at the negotiation table because the enemy had little stomach for the lives being lost. The memory of the old war in Europe was still too fresh.
Nonetheless, there had been heavy losses on the Chinese side as well.
He was looking down at one of the casualties now.
The body was torn and battered, but recognizable. It was Li Chen, the celebrated sniper.
He had been shot through the heart.
A photographer stood nearby. "Should I take a photograph of the fallen hero, sir?"
"No, no photos yet," Wu said.
Along with the body, Chen's fellow soldiers had carried the story of what had happened. A murderous enemy sniper had somehow gotten behind the lines and surprised Chen. He hadn't so much as gotten off a shot. The infiltrator was described as having a strange symbol painted on his helmet. The soldiers thought it was a flag of some sort, but it was not a United States flag.
"Perhaps the sniper was from one of the other imperialist nations, sir?" one of the soldiers suggested. “England? Australia?”
Wu shook his head. He was familiar with this flag and with this sniper, having encountered them before. "No, it is what the Americans call a Rebel flag." When the soldier looked at him blankly, he explained, "It is a badge of regional identity."
Looking down at the body, Wu searched his heart for some emotion. After all, he and Chen had spent many hours together. But Wu would have been the first to admit that there was a gulf of differences between them. Chen had been a simple peasant soldier, though gifted with the eyes of an eagle. As a political officer, Wu was something more than a simple foot soldier, and far more ambitious.
Wu realized that he did not feel a sense of loss so much as one of disappointment. Chen had failed. Ultimately, this meant that Wu himself had failed. This left a taste like ash in his mouth.
The American sniper who had slipped behind the lines had rattled everyone. It was not so much that he had defeated Chen, although that was something. Worse, someone had shot a general from a great distance just as he arrived to inspect the forces arrayed there. It had never happened before that a general had been killed in such a way. Due to the timing of events, Wu had no doubt that this assassination had been the work of the same sniper who had killed Chen.
He shook his head, turned away from the torn and bloody body.
The soldiers who had borne back Chen's body also presented Wu with the sniper's rifle — or what was left of it, anyway. The barrel was bent; the bolt was missing.
One of the soldiers held out the smashed remains of the telescopic sight.
"This is how we found it, sir."
Wu smacked his hand away, but he was smiling as he did so. "Are you so much of a fool that you would bring me a smashed rifle sight? What use is it? Better to have brought me a rock, or a stick of wood."
Wu's facial expression did not match his harsh words, and the soldiers fell silent and stood at attention, waiting for Wu to dismiss them.
Wu let them wait a while longer. Chen's defeat created many problems, not the least of which was that it would be bad for morale once word got out that an American sniper was responsible. Worse yet for the major would be the fact that he apparently had not picked the right man for the job.
It would be much, much better for him if Chen had not been killed.
Wu thought about that. He was a spinner of tales, was he not?
Wu looked around at the handful of soldiers who had carried back Chen's body and reported to him. His eyes passed over the stupid one who had presented him with the shattered rifle scope. Finally, his glance fell upon a sturdy soldier holding a Chinese-made Hanyang 88 rifle, which was practically an antique.
"You there, come forward."
“Sir?”
“Are you a good shot with that old rifle?”
“Good enough, sir.”
“Excellent.”
Next, Wu waved the photographer over and explained what he wanted. He ordered the others to dig a hole and bury the dead sniper. Meanwhile, several photographs were taken of the soldier crouched behind a rock, his sturdy rifle pointed at an imaginary enemy. Wu stood slightly behind the photographer and directed him to take photographs in which the soldier's face was turned away, making it hard to identify him.
When they were finished, Major Wu clapped the soldier on the shoulder, smiling merrily all the while. "Congratulations on your many victories today. You have claimed many enemy lives in the battle and made them pay dearly for their hollow victory."
"Sir?"
"You are now Li Chen, the sniper. Report to me in the morning."
Major Wu had come to the powerful realization that the truth would be whatever he said it was. Li Chen had lived. There would always be a Li Chen. If this man fell, another would take his place. He turned away, a happy grin on his face.
With Sniper Ridge recaptured, the Chinese were still occupying the next hill, the one nicknamed Jane Russell for its resemblance to a woman's bosoms, and probably the hill beyond that.
Cole was set up on the ridge, deep in a foxhole, his eye to his rifle scope. One might have thought that the victory at Sniper Ridge would have prompted a brief interlude in the overall battle, but that was not the case.
Early that morning before dawn, the Chinese artillery had opened fire to shell the ridge; the US artillery had fired back. Now that it was light, planes patrolled the sky again, attacking behind the enemy lines where the artillery couldn't reach.
Cole was here to shoot anything that moved. Whenever an enemy soldier made the mistake of showing himself, Cole's crosshairs found him.
He spotted what might be an officer moving from trench to trench. Cole tracked him through the sight and as soon as the man paused, his finger caressed the trigger. Across a gulf of no-man's land, the enemy soldier fell. Automatically, Cole worked the bolt and loaded another shell into the chamber. If he felt any emotion at all about having just shot an enemy soldier, it was a sense of satisfaction that he'd been on target.
Behind him, he heard the scuffle of careful movement across the rocks and dirt that formed the network of trenches and foxholes on the ridge. Some had been dug by the Chinese, and some by the American forces, so jumbled now that it was impossible to tell which was which. It was necessary to keep one's head down because the enemy still had its snipers — they just weren't as deadly as Cole.
He was working alone. There should only be Americans up here, but you never knew. The Chinese were still making their infiltrations behind the lines, made even easier by the fact that they'd had plenty of time to get the lay of the land around here. He glanced up long enough to catch a glimpse of the soldier working his way toward him. Satisfied that there wasn't any danger, he got back on the scope.
A few minutes later, the kid crawled into the foxhole. "It's me," he said. "Don't shoot."
"Kid, I heard you comin' from about a mile off," Cole said. "You done made more noise than a herd of buffalo."