“All right, let’s see how you can shoot,” Honcho said. His welcoming manner turned gruff as he gave orders. “Spread out. Sitting position first. When you hear your number, shoot the target. Deke, you call the numbers. Mix it up, will you? The Japs wouldn’t give you a chance to do things nice and orderly, and neither will we.”
Deke stood behind the line of guerrillas. A couple had seemed mystified by the sitting position, including one of the women. He got her set up, elbows on knees, bone to bone, the rifle locked in place. He put his hands on her shoulders and adjusted her position slightly, getting her to lean into the rifle more.
“That is Juana,” said Father Francisco, who stood nearby. There was a proud tone in his voice. “She is an excellent shot. So is Hector, the last man down.”
Deke grunted. Despite what the priest said, he had yet to see them shoot and wanted to see for himself. “If you say so, Padre.”
He noticed that the four men held relatively new-looking Springfield rifles with iron sights, no telescopes. He assumed that it was the resourceful padre who had managed to obtain the rifles. Even with iron sights, there was no finer sniper rifle. The two women were armed with Arisaka rifles. These were somewhat smaller than the Springfields and fit the women better. They also fired a smaller cartridge with less kick. That said, they were no less deadly and had some advantages over US weapons. The Arisaka rifle was a quieter shooter with a smaller muzzle flash that made it harder to detect when fired from a hiding place in the ruined city. In the hands of Japanese snipers, the Arisaka rifles had killed far too many Americans. Now the tables were turned and the Arisaka was being used against them.
That thought alone made Deke happy.
“Call ’em out, Deke,” Honcho ordered. It was the lieutenant’s habit to use a telescope rather than binoculars, which were pointless for a one-eyed man. He raised the telescope to better see where the bullets struck.
“Three,” Deke said, matching the lieutenant’s gruff tone.
The guerrilla’s rifle cracked, but Deke’s sharp eyes needed no help to see that the bullet had punched a hole outside the target circle. Inwardly, he groaned. Would the rest of these Filipinos do any better?
“Four! Five!” he shouted in quick succession.
Number four hit the target, a hole appearing in the lower part of the circle. The woman named Juana was in position five. Her rifle cracked, and the bullet struck right between the target’s slanting eyes.
Her glance swung toward Deke, giving him a defiant look. He liked her spirit, but one lucky shot did not a sniper make.
They went through a few more rounds, with Deke calling out their numbers, varying the rhythm. Juana kept hitting the target consistently, and the others mostly did.
“All right, let’s switch to prone,” Honcho said.
When it came to the prone position, Juana knew just what to do. Her marksmanship was even better now, all her shots occupying a space about the size of a buttered biscuit.
When she looked up again with that defiant expression, Deke gave her a nod. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a faint smile play across her lips.
After the shooting test, which seemed to satisfy Lieutenant Steele, he gathered the guerrillas for a lecture in the basics of sniper warfare. The GIs had been curious to watch the shooting action, but they had heard this lecture before. They drifted away to smoke cigarettes, except for Deke and Yoshio. Deke had stayed because Honcho asked him to interject now and then. Yoshio stuck around because he couldn’t help learning something.
They took a break for chow, then did some more shooting in the afternoon. Then Honcho declared that their impromptu training course was over.
“You’re all graduated, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “Starting tomorrow, feel free to get yourselves killed or, better yet, stay alive for a while and make yourselves useful by killing a few Japs.”
They all went back to the house, with Patrol Easy staying in the expansive rooms and the guerrillas camping in the courtyard. A watch schedule was set, just in case the Japanese decided to get frisky.
Juana set about cleaning her rifle. Deke drifted over and watched, telling himself that he was curious about the Arisaka. Maybe he had been — at first. He was also impressed by the deft and efficient way that Juana cleaned her weapon. But as Juana deftly went through the steps of cleaning and oiling the weapon, Deke found that his eyes were more focused on her than the Japanese rifle.
She was no statuesque pinup beauty, being shorter and rounder, but she was soft in all the right places. Her hair was dark brown, not quite black, more like the hue of light coffee than midnight ink. Her eyes were a liquid brown like mountain stone after a rain.
Deke was embarrassed when she looked up and caught him studying her. She gave him a frank look in return, her eyes lingering on the scars down one side of his face and neck, the result of the angry, raking claws and teeth of the wounded black bear he had encountered as a boy. Her eyes widened as if alarmed, a reaction that Deke knew all too well. He wasn’t pretty to look at. He turned and walked away.
Philly was waiting for him on the other side of the courtyard, a knowing grin on his face. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were interested in that girl.”
“I was seeing if she needed help, is all.”
“You know what, Corn Pone? I hate to break it to you, but you’re the one who needs help. I think it’s clear that you’ve got it bad for that girl.”
Deke felt his face reddening, a rare sensation for him. “Like I said, I was just seeing how she was doing with her shooting.”
“She’s a good shot, all right. I’d say she shot you right through the heart.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The nightmare that was shaping up in Manila, which Patrol Easy and thousands of other soldiers were walking into, was worsened by a rift in the Japanese command structure, its roots in the rivalry between the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.
Earlier, the overall Japanese commander, General Yamashita, had realized that Manila was not defensible. The city was too sprawling, and the multitude of wooden structures beyond the city center would make it a death trap if any fires broke out. There was also a massive civilian population that only impeded the city’s defense. Yamashita had ordered a withdrawal from the city and was determined to make a stand elsewhere.
However, the naval officer who had taken charge of the defense of the city had different plans. Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s 31st Naval Special Base Force, announced that he would fight to the end in Manila. They had every intention of making the fight into a bloodbath. His officers and troops seemed to agree with him wholeheartedly. Either that or they were too afraid of being labeled as cowards to speak up.
Although his forces were under the command of the Shimbu Army Group, Iwabuchi ignored army orders to withdraw from the city. The fact that this rogue commander was a naval officer left Yamashita in a bind, because the Japanese Army and Navy were autonomous and did not always cooperate or recognize the command structure the way that the Americans did, even between branches of the service. In the end, despite rivalries and jealousies, Americans and their allies understood that they were all fighting on the same side. Also, there was a clear command structure. For the Japanese, that distinction was not as clear. They were army or navy first, and Japanese second.
Iwabuchi’s troops were mostly navy men, more used to ships than street combat, although his forces included the well-trained equivalent of US Marines, and he also commanded a few thousand army soldiers. In the end, it was hard to say whether these soldiers never got the orders to withdraw in the confusion of war or perhaps felt as Iwabuchi did and preferred to make a last stand in the city after working so hard to prepare their defenses in Manila. Major Tanigawa fell into this second category.