Samurai & Snipers полностью

Panting, Philly looked back at the heavily defended legislative building and said, “That’s gonna be a tough nut to crack.”

Deke spat out a mouthful of dust. “That ain’t no nut, city boy. That’s a damn cannonball. Good luck cracking that.”

Nearby Honcho was looking around with concern. “Anybody see where that boy got to?”

“Last time I saw him, he was hightailing it over here with the rest of us,” Rodeo said.

“Well, I sure as hell don’t see him,” Honcho said. He raised his voice and called, “Roddy, where the hell are you?”

They all looked back toward the no-man’s-land of the city square that they had just navigated, but the boy was nowhere in sight.

Running for his life, Roddy made a fateful last-minute decision not to stick with the Americans. They seemed intent on getting away from the Japanese, running for cover, which seemed to Roddy to be completely the wrong direction. They should have been running toward where the prisoners were being held. Thanks to the immortal perspective of youth, he didn’t think that any of the bullets were meant for him. His only thought was I’ve got to get my father back. He hadn’t figured out how he was going to do that but had acted on impulse. He now felt as if the whole weight of rescuing his father had fallen on his thin, young shoulders.

He veered left, hooking back toward the hulking legislative building. The storm of bullets followed the soldiers but left Roddy alone, as if he had just managed to swim out of a riptide.

He was small enough that the Japanese didn’t see him making his way through the rubble. That was what saved him in the end. He paused, hiding, and studied the landscape around him to pick out a path to take. Even his young mind recognized that a frontal attack on the huge building wasn’t going to work. Instead, there had to be a back way, or a side way. It didn’t really take a military genius to understand the situation. After all, young boys knew about such things from their own games of chase and war. You outsmarted your enemy by finding their weak point, which was just what he set out to do.

Although his mind vaguely registered the fact, he didn’t realize just how much danger he was in. At any moment a Japanese sniper might spot him. The machine gun atop the building might open fire again once its crew had been replaced. His short life might be over in an instant.

But he was in too deep to go back, entirely on his own in this no-man’s-land of a battleground. He had no choice but to stick with the plan that he had set for himself.

Little did young Roddy know that he was on a collision course with the Japanese.

Back in the shadows of the bank building, Lieutenant Steele announced that they were going to send out a search party for the boy. In their hearts, Patrol Easy knew it was the right thing to do, but that didn’t mean they were happy about it.

“Let’s face it, that dumb kid is probably dead,” Philly pointed out. “He had no business being with us in the first place.”

Deke glanced at Juana, who was normally stoic. He knew that, like Honcho, she had grown fond of the boy in the short time that he had been part of their patrol. She looked stricken at Philly’s words.

“Shut up, Philly,” Deke muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

Philly looked as if he wanted to say more, but he glanced at Deke and went quiet.

“Look, fellas, I don’t like this any better than you do,” Honcho explained. “But I don’t like the idea of leaving that boy out there if there’s any chance he’s still alive. What are we going to do, get his father away from those Japs and then break the news to him that we got his son killed?”

It was a valid point.

In the end, Deke and Philly volunteered to look for the boy.

“I thought you said the boy was as good as dead?” Rodeo said.

“If Deke wants to go look for him, that’s good enough for me,” Philly said. “Besides, somebody’s got to keep him from getting his crazy cracker ass shot off.”

Rodeo wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure it’s not the other way around? Seems to me that most of the time Deke is the one saving you.”

Philly did his best to look indignant. “Are you being serious right now?”

Juana wanted to go along to help look for the boy. Deke’s first instinct was to say no, but then he thought better of it. He realized that he somehow felt protective of Juana. He wondered where in the hell that feeling had come from. She was as good of a soldier as any of them. Maybe even better than most. Juana was tough, reminding him of his sister, Sadie. What would Sadie have said if Deke had tried to keep her from doing something because he thought it was too dangerous? Hell, she would have belted him in the gut, that was what. He was sure that Sadie and Juana were cut from the same cloth.

Grinning at Juana, he nodded. “We’ll take all the help we can get with the Japs so close,” he said.