To the rear, he heard a flurry of gunfire and shouting. It was too far back for him to join the fight without abandoning Pomeroy or the kid, which he wasn't eager to do. In the confusion and the growing darkness, he might never see them again. Cole looked and saw a fight taking place around a truck not more than one hundred feet away. He couldn't tell if it was the Americans pushing back the Chinese, or the Chinese overwhelming the truck's defenders. He got his answer when he heard a dull whump and saw a flare of orange flame as the truck was hit by a Chinese grenade.
This was awful. But it was about to get a whole lot worse.
Cole was just turning to say something to Pomeroy when a rifle cracked and a bullet plucked at his overcoat. Only the fact that the overcoat was a couple sizes too big saved Cole because the round passed through billowing fabric. Whoever had shot at him had not taken that into account.
Cole shoved Tommy down. Pomeroy and the South Korean were already scrambling for cover.
Deep within Cole, the Critter growled a warning. After all, Cole was nothing if not a creature of instinct. He sensed that the shot hadn't been random. Somebody out there had singled out their little group. Maybe even singled out him. Cole had a pretty good idea who it was — their old friend the Chinese sniper. The son of a bitch must have tracked them all the way back to the column. You had to give it to him for being persistent, that was for sure.
"Stay down," Cole hissed at the others. Keeping low, he charged for the cover offered by the nearest truck. Pomeroy followed, close on his heels.
Chen had reached the retreating American column and saw with satisfaction that it was being cut to pieces. He was reminded of how, as a boy, he had once seen the family's chicken peck a snake to death. Attacked from all sides, the snake had exhausted itself striking blindly at the birds. Those hens had punished the snake in the process of killing it, just as the Chinese forces were now doing to the invaders.
There was no shortage of targets, but Chen did not immediately join the attack. He felt a sense of anger toward the captives who had escaped. They had caused him to lose face. The escapees might now think that they were safe, that they had outsmarted him, but he wanted to show them otherwise, which was why Chen was looking for them among the soldiers on the road.
He slipped along the edges of the column, moving like a wraith. He was sure that his quarry had rejoined the column in this vicinity. Now, it was just a matter of finding them among the confusion of troops and trucks.
Finally, he spotted the soldier with the markings on his helmet. Some sort of flag with crossed bars and stars. A rare smile creased Chen's face. The American was walking with a group of other men — very likely the same ones that he had escaped with. Chen had tracked them down.
Chen crept closer to the column, using caution. The Americans were in full retreat, but that did not mean they were not dangerous. When he reached the limits of the scrub brush that he was using for cover, he leveled the rifle at the soldier with the flag on his helmet. Chen considered a head shot, but decided against it as being too difficult. The target was moving, after all. Instead, he aimed for the larger target presented by the soldier's body and pulled the trigger.
To his disappointment, the soldier did not go down. Chen realized that perhaps he had become overconfident in his shooting skills. Even the best snipers missed from time to time. The soldier disappeared behind a truck while the band of men that he had been with scattered like rats.
Chen ran the bolt and loaded another round in the chamber. Where had the man gone? Finally, Chen saw the man's helmet appear from behind the truck and he settled his crosshairs on it. His finger began to take up tension on the trigger. Time to settle this business once and for all, he thought.
Cole had ducked behind the truck along with Pomeroy.
"I guess you pissed off that Chinese sniper," he said. “He came after you.”
"What do you mean, I pissed him off? What about you?"
"You're the one who led the escape," Pomeroy pointed out. "Without you, we'd be locked up in some Chinese stockade by now."
"Thank you — I guess," Cole said. "It just figures that there is a whole war on, and this fella has to take it personal."
"What are you going to do about it?" Pomeroy asked. "You can't hide behind a truck forever."
"Take off your helmet," Cole said.
"What?"
"Here's what we're gonna do to draw him out. Take off your helmet and put it on the end of your rifle, then raise it above the hood of the truck, real slow."
"This actually works?"
"Sometimes," Cole said. "It's about fifty-fifty."
Pomeroy limped into position at the front of the truck and began to lift the helmet above the hood. If the driver of the truck thought that this was odd, he didn't say anything. Hell, he was probably too damn tired to notice.
Cole had positioned himself toward the back of the truck, keeping out of sight below the truck bed, off to one side of the back tire. He slipped off his gloves so that he could operate the rifle more effectively. He used the muddy tire itself to steady the rifle.
He knew that Pomeroy had carried out his assignment when he saw the muzzle flash of the enemy sniper's rifle in the gathering gloom beyond the edge of the road. The Chinese sniper had taken the bait.
Cole fired as soon as he saw the muzzle flash. He strained his eyes to see, but was not able to make out any sort of actual target. This was all guesswork. The flash in the dark was the best that he could hope for here.
He ran the bolt and fired again in the same general direction. Though low on ammo, just maybe he would get lucky. When there was no returning fire, Cole thought maybe that was the case. Maybe he had nailed that sniper, after all. Deep inside him, the Critter was less convinced. He felt his warning instincts stir uneasily. Cole kept searching, but couldn't make out any targets in the gathering gloom.
If that Chinese sniper wasn’t dead, then where the hell had he gone?
Cole crept around the sheltered side of the truck and found Pomeroy eyeing a hole in his helmet.
"I'll tell you one thing," Cole said. "That Chinese feller can shoot."
“Be glad that wasn’t on your actual head.”
"Did you get him?"
"Maybe, maybe not. Stick your head out and see."
"No thanks. I'm good right here."
The column still hadn't moved. Up ahead, they could hear intense firing as some sort of battle got going. Word was coming back that the Chinese had put up a roadblock at a hairpin turn in the road to Hagaru-ri. There was no way around it because of the steep terrain. The only way was to go forward by fighting their way through the enemy roadblock, which wasn't proving easy. Not only were the Americans and their allies exhausted, freezing cold, and low on ammo, but there had already been a terrible price to pay in trying to remove the roadblock.
"Did you hear?" somebody said. "The lieutenant colonel has been hit. Doesn't look good. Who the hell's in charge now, anyhow?"
First the colonel, then the second-in-command who had gotten them to this point. Both brave and highly capable men. So many other lower-ranking officers had met the same fate. It was hard to say whether the Chinese had targeted the officers, or if they had simply been more exposed to enemy fire due to their leadership efforts. With so many of the officers taken out, it was starting to become a situation where it was every man for himself. Cole didn’t like it, not one bit. He didn’t always like officers or agree with them, but a unit as a whole needed leadership to hold it together.