“And the cave with the snakes?” I asked.
“The cobra cave was somewhat opportunistic, of course, but the idea of salting a confined space with snakes and then luring in your enemy is an ancient Talawan tactic. Throw an irritated cobra into a sleeping hut. Or a green viper into the village well—draw up a bucket, get a terrible surprise.”
My face must have revealed my horror.
“We don’t raid each other’s territories anymore, especially since we have brand-new occupiers. But this hostility is very old and will never change. When your enemy is fierce, you turn Nature against him.”
As good a strategy as any, I thought. But then I had a question. “Today we took out an entire squad from the garrison. Will they come looking for them?”
“I would think so,” he said. “Especially after the cobra incident. Once could be an accident. Twice?” He shrugged.
“How will they know where to look?”
“That depends on whether or not they have more dogs; if they do, the remaining dogs will track that squad’s dogs up to that crack in the caldera rim. The vultures may or may not take care of the bodies, but the signs … well. Pray for rain.”
“So what do we do now?” Rooster asked.
“We hide out here in the woods and see how the Japs react. Now get some rest. I apologize for making you murder those men. Now I must pray for forgiveness.”
“Father Abriol?” Rooster said. “Don’t apologize. Killing Japs is our primary mission.”
“Good to hear,” Abriol said. “But, as a priest, it’s not my primary mission, is it. I’m not asking forgiveness for killing Japs. I’m asking forgiveness for so completely losing control of myself. And for enjoying it so much.”
TWENTY-THREE
We woke to the sound of running feet. Rooster and I sat up in our pallets while the padre went to the steps to see what was happening. A breathless villager ran up to the longhouse and spoke urgently to him. By then a few of the village elders were coming out of their huts. Father Abriol yelled something to one of them and suddenly everybody sprang into action. Two women came and got us.
“Japs are coming here,” Father Abriol shouted after us. He pointed us toward the women. “They’ll hide you.”
The women took us to a very large tree that stood on the edge of the village circle. Using a stick, one of them moved aside a six-inch-thick and very hairy vine, one of several that snaked up the trunk and disappeared into the canopy, and then opened a perfectly camouflaged narrow door in the trunk. She made it clear with hand signals that we should not touch that vine as we turned sideways to get inside. She closed the door behind us.
We stood there in perfect darkness. Or almost perfect. There was a partial moon up, and as our eyes adjusted we discovered there were small slits in the trunk, big enough to admit slivers of moonlight into our living cave. The tree had to be 15 feet at the base, so there was plenty of room for the two of us. The floor of our chamber felt like hard-packed dirt and I thought I could see some boxes and bags stored around the circumference, along with three rifles stacked up against the inside wall. I scanned the interior for snakes, then realized I couldn’t have seen one if I tried. Then we heard straining automobile engines approaching, and our slits began to turn yellow-white as headlights lit up the village. We each found a slit and watched as the entire village came out of their huts to see a Japanese jeep-like vehicle followed by a covered dump truck mashing down the vegetation on either side of the main trail leading into the village. It felt like it was two in the morning, but I had no idea.
The jeep drove right into the center of the village, its yellowish headlights illuminating a frightened crowd of village men gathering around one of the older men, whom I assumed was Lingoro’s headman. There were three passengers in the jeep. We could just barely see women and children with their eyes out on stalks peering out from the entrances to their family huts and then drawing the bamboo curtains across the doorways.
The truck came into the circle, its engine straining and pursued by a cloud of exhaust smoke. It stopped, shut down, and then disgorged a dozen soldiers, armed with what looked to me like submachine guns. They quickly formed a rough semicircle behind the jeep and then assumed a ready position. Both the truck and the jeep left their headlights on, so we couldn’t see faces, only silhouettes. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a small figure got out of the jeep and approached the headman. I couldn’t tell what language he was speaking but he seemed to be pretty angry. Everybody jumped when there was a sudden thump of thunder nearby.
The small man kept going while the headman just stood there, nodding occasionally, but saying nothing. It looked to me like the village men were getting increasingly nervous. When the small man finally stopped his yelling, the elder seemed to have nothing much to say, opening his hands in a gesture of ignorance and shaking his head. “Don’t know nothin’” was what it looked like. Then a familiar figure stood up in the jeep. Even though we couldn’t see his face in the headlights, it had to be Tachibana. He bellowed something in Japanese. The small man acknowledged and then slapped the elder in the face, hard, twice, and then started yelling again. The old man staggered but held his ground. The men surrounding him began to surreptitiously back away, obviously sensing great danger.
In the meantime, Tachibana got out of the jeep. We could see the vehicle’s lights bouncing up and down when he stepped down. The driver stayed put. Tachibana stood for a moment, adjusting his uniform and his swords. He really was a huge man, probably fat but with a frame that could carry it. He was wearing an army cap, but since he was in silhouette because of the headlights we couldn’t see his uniform. He spat out a command in that hoarse voice and the little guy backed away, bowing and scraping, as Tachibana approached the headman. He stopped about three feet away and started to harangue the elder in Japanese. He looked like a figure from the Apocalypse, his round face in deep shadow, as wide as he was tall, his feet slightly apart, and his hands out of sight. He stopped speaking and then cocked his head to one side as if to say, well?
The elder said nothing, still shaking his head. In one violent motion, Tachibana drew that long sword, raised it above his head, and then brought it down on the top of the elder’s head in a flash of glinting steel, hitting the old man so hard that the two parts of his head flopped down onto his shoulders even as Tachibana whirled completely around and took a horizontal swipe with that big blade that sent the two halves of the elder’s head flying out onto the dirt. It happened so fast that the headman’s body had barely begun to collapse before that second cut happened. The other village men quailed and backed away from the headman’s remains.
Tachibana gave another order. Two of the soldiers handed their submachine guns to an adjacent soldier and headed into the terrified crowd of Filipinos, grabbing one and hauling him before Tachibana. This man was older than the rest, but not by much. A soldier stood on either side of him, obviously holding him up because his legs were shaking so badly that he would have fallen down. Tachibana approached him, with that long sword held before him in two hands, its tip just off the ground. He started in again, as he’d done with the elder, roaring at the pale-faced Filipino, who clearly couldn’t understand a word. Finally Tachibana pointed straight up. The man looked up instinctively just as the colonel drove that sword into the man’s gut so hard that half of it came out of his back. Then Tachibana twisted the sword ninety degrees and began sawing at the man’s innards, evoking screams that made me sick to my stomach. He withdrew the sword and the man folded in half, collapsed, and began convulsing on the ground with a whimpering, gargling cry that I’ll never forget.
Tachibana flicked the sword out in a sideways motion to remove the excess gore, and then leaned down and wiped the blade clean on his victim’s shirt. The dying man was crying now, making a liquid, sobbing sound that was horrible to hear. Tachibana made a sound of disgust and passed the blade over the man’s throat, ending it in a surge of dark blood. He backed away from the carnage i
n front of him and looked around the village. He began roaring again, as if talking to the entire village. The remaining villagers were crouched down on the ground trying not to attract his attention. Fat chance, I thought. And then he saw something, as if out of the corner of his eyes. Someone in one of the huts had pushed the bamboo curtain over the door to one side, peered out, and quickly closed it.
Tachibana roared another order, and the semicircle of soldiers raised their weapons and immediately opened automatic fire on that hut. There were so many guns and so many bullets that the hut began to collapse in the jeep’s headlights in a cloud of bamboo splinters and straw dust, accompanied by screams from inside.
Tachibana gave a hand signal and the firing stopped instantly. A small tongue of flame appeared at one edge of the hut and quickly began to grow. A thick bolus of whitish smoke formed at the hut’s door and then grew larger and larger as the entire hut became engulfed. Finally a young woman, obviously wounded and dragging two small children, tumbled out of the door with her clothes smoking. She immediately fell down, bringing the children down with her while she frantically beat at the flames. Tachibana waddled over and almost casually pushed the tip of his sword into her throat, and then did the same to the two crying children crouching next to her.
I heard Rooster curse, felt him start to move, and grabbed him. In front of the colonel the woman’s hut flamed into a large but brief fire. Tachibana stood there, the sword’s tip pushed into the dirt in front of him, and watched the family’s death throes until they were finally still. Then he turned around and roared at the village for about a minute before signaling that they were leaving.
The soldiers got back into their truck and Tachibana heaved himself into the jeep, where the first questioner waited nervously. The vehicles turned around and ground their way out of the shocked village. From out of nowhere a young Filipino boy ran at the back of the truck and threw a rock into it. A brief blast of automatic weapons fire flickered from the darkness in the back of the truck and the boy whirled around, crumpling into a bleeding heap.
The villagers stood transfixed in the light of the burning hut as if in some hellish tableaux. Then two women hurried toward the boy lying at the side of the trail, gently turned him over, and began wailing. The rest of the villagers went to where the elder and the other victim lay.
“Jesus H. Christ, Boss!” Rooster exclaimed. “Did we cause that?”
That same thought was echoing in my mind. It was one thing to read about what the Jap army did to the civilian populations they conquered, but quite another to witness it.
“No,” I said. “That Jap colonel caused this. Can you see the padre?”
We both peered through the slits and watched the villagers trying to deal with the catastrophe in their midst. I, of course, had no idea of where they’d hidden the priest, but assumed he was going to remain hidden in case the Japs had left behind a lone sentry with a radio to see if anyone came out of hiding. I explained that to Rooster and told him we’d stay put too until the villagers thought it was safe.
That took a full hour, and then someone was prying open the hatch in the tree trunk. We stepped out warily, both of us feeling like we needed to find someone to apologize to. In the end we just stood by the tree, not knowing what else to do. We finally spotted the padre, who was kneeling on the ground at the side of the woman from the burned hut and her two children, prayer book in hand. I carefully, very carefully, scanned the faces of the villagers as we stepped into the firelight. The two women who’d run to the boy were still wailing and not paying any attention to us. I thought for a moment I recognized one of them—the young girl who’d been with her mother or grandmother in the lava tube. The girl was especially distraught.
Everyone else seemed to be equally busy, trying to attend to the victims. An invisible water buffalo nearby began bellowing in protest against all the noise. Then we heard men’s voices, raised in argument. Over to one side of the village circle five middle-aged Filipinos were in a hot discussion about something. I could just about guess what that was about. Father Abriol finished his ministrations, covered the bodies with a sheet, and then joined the group.
He talked with them for ten minutes and then came over to where we were standing, his face a study in hatred. Rooster jumped the gun and asked him if we were the cause of this atrocity. I think Father Abriol had anticipated that question.
“No,” he said. “They were looking for me, not you. That first Jap was Kempeitai. He went first because he spoke Tagalog. None of these people speak or understand Japanese. When he told Tachibana that the people were saying they knew nothing of my whereabouts, the colonel took the opportunity for some killing.”
“Why weren’t they looking for us?” Rooster asked. “You said they knew we were on the island.”
“They probably do, but the Japs are nothing if not efficient. They know that two American pilots couldn’t survive very long here unless someone was harboring them. That someone has to be me. Catch me, and the two of you would eventually starve in the forest. No, this was all about finding the treacherous priest. You should know, sadly, he’s done it before.”
Rooster seemed to be mollified, if only temporarily. I gave the priest a look that said: Thanks for that. He nodded. I think he understood our predicament perfectly.
“I’ve told the villagers that we will leave immediately, and that we are going north, to the big volcano fields. I asked them to send a runner if the Japs come back. But in the meantime, something interesting happened. Those men, who were arguing? They told me it was time to kill all these bastards. That’s a big step.”
“Stage two?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes, I think so. They’ll give us food and water, and then we’ll actually go to the lava tube. Telling them we’re going north is a precaution, in case someone weakens. Then we must make plans.” He turned around, saw more people grieving. “But first, I must attend to them.”
As the priest walked back towards the lamentations, Rooster had a comment. “Love that ‘we’ shit,” he muttered, bitterly.
“You know what?” I said. “I think I’m ready to help these folks. Those guys are right: it’s time to kill all these fucking Japs. Just like Halsey wants.”
“C’mon, Boss: How we gonna do that? We don’t even have a sidearm.”
“I’ve got some ideas,” I replied. “But the first thing we have to do is let those POWs know we’re gonna try to rescue them. The second thing is to get some rations in there so they’ll be able to get rescued.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Four nights later Rooster and I were hunkered down in that stand of bamboo across the creek from the POW camp. Not much was stirring over there and the guards all appeared to be keeping inside their tower huts behind mosquito netting, depending on their random spotlight sweeps to maintain security. Father Abriol had taken us up to the lava tube in the wee hours before sunrise, where runners from the villages appeared from time to time to make reports. We learned that Tachibana had visited the other two villages that night and terrorized everyone there, too. I’m making this sound like the town and the villages were organized civic centers. They weren’t. Of the three villages on the southern half of Talawan, Lingoro, the one where we’d been hidden, was the largest, with about five hundred inhabitants. The other two were much smaller and more like coastal fishing camps than proper villages.
The same was true of Orotai. The padre called it a town, but it was more of a makeshift, ramshackle waterfront with one main street wrapping around the actual shoreline. Behind that was that warren of dirt paths and bamboo huts we’d walked through, which included small vegetable patches, homemade enclosures for livestock, and a single communal well at one end of the main street. Sewage was handled by night-soil wagons. There were no commercial piers, as such, but only two wooden piers where the local fishing fleet landed and sold their catch right off the boats. The Japanese had appropriated the larger one for their fleet landing when transiting Jap warships came
in for supplies. The fishermen had been relegated to the other one, which was much smaller and barely standing upright. The “restaurant” where we’d been hidden had been more of a community center than a real restaurant until the Japs took it over and made it into a primitive O-club. The clear area in front of their compound wasn’t really a town square but more of a place where the weekly market would be set up.
Beyond the town and the villages there were other clusters of families and even small tribes who lived mostly along the west coast of the island. Unlike on the tropical islands I’d visited, such as Hawaii, all life here was coastal, because the interior consisted of a half-mile-thick band of snake-infested jungle which then evolved into a second band of hardwood forests and finally into an upland savannah overseen by moody volcanoes. There was no island-wide government, as such, and even the police in Orotai were pretty much self-appointed with the approval of village and town elders. Father Abriol and his Catholic Church had been the one entity whose web of influence extended over the entire southern half of the island. It was no great wonder that the Japs were anxious to find and eliminate him. I was by now convinced that the Japs knew the loss of their two scouting forays could not have been entirely coincidental. Even if they didn’t, those two incidents had given Tachibana an excuse to indulge in his fondness for mayhem. It was definitely time to return the favor.
My plan, which I’d discussed at great length with the padre, and through him with some of Lingoro’s elders, was to first let the POWs know that they had friends outside the compound and to actually show our faces to them. The best way to convince them of that was to get them some food, especially fresh fruit to deal with the scurvy epidemic. Then Father Abriol suggested we’d graduate to rice balls with fish emulsions. I made the mistake of asking what a Filipino fish emulsion was, which turned out to be a mixture of fish oil and salt. Rooster then compounded my error by asking how they made the fish oil.
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