Or not so easy. If you were Hogan or Paddy White, or one of those other poor bastards had a big piece of armor plating, or a chair, or something suddenly pop out of their heads or ass.

Oftentimes he’d get himself bruised and half crushed worming his way around some obstacle, only to find he’d come to a dead end, trapped in a cranny created by the intersection of two impassable walls. Sometimes you could see good clear space, but it lay just beyond a gap too narrow for anyone but a stick figure to squeeze through. It was infuriating, was what it was. And dangerous, too. Old Chief Kelly got the back of his head blown out lingering too long at one such break in the maze. Moose Jr. didn’t have no fancy education, but there were some things you picked up quick anyway. With Chief Kelly’s brains splattered all over his graying sweat-stained T-shirt, Moose Jr. didn’t mess around with no recon at places like that. He just stuck his rifle into the gap and let go a few rounds.

It was an old Springfield bolt action, which was a pain. He’d have given a month’s pay for one of them new M1 Garands. Semiautomatic, gas-operated. Fired a .30-caliber round as quick as man could pull the trigger, according to Slim Jim. But a Springfield still made an agreeably large hole in a fellow, and Moose Jr. was almost certain he’d accounted for at least one of them untrustworthy Jap niggers with his.

A group of shots hammered at the far side of the bulkhead just in front of him. A Jap bulkhead, he was pretty sure. He’d been planning on darting around there in just a second, but the volley forced him back behind cover. He tasted that strange orange dust that floated away from the impact point whenever the nip rounds hit metal instead of flesh. Nips then, for sure. Goddamn if he wouldn’t like to get a look at the guns they were using. Had to be some kind of secret weapon, the way they didn’t seem to damage anything but human flesh. Apart from the smear of orange dust, they didn’t leave no trace at all. Unless they got you in the arm or chest or full in the face like poor old Kelly. God-a-mighty they’d leave a hell of a mess then. Like nothing he’d ever seen—and the old man had let him sneak a peak at some crime scene photos once. Pictures of a freelance bootlegger machine-gunned by some of Al Capone’s boys. A terrible sight, but nothing like the unholy meat salad laying where Chief Kelly’s bald noggin had once sat.

“Moose! Moose! They Japs up there?”