Broken Jewel - [World War II 05]

by David L. Robbins

  “That’s me,” Tal said. “I’ll come.”

  “We can’t make that promise,” Lucas answered, cutting him off.

  Gusto bypassed Lucas, speaking straight to Tal.

  “I’ll have a guerrilla team waiting in the ravine. They’ll take you to talk directly to the Americans.”

  The Americans? Tal was going to help the soldiers plan the raid on Los Baños!

  “Here?”

  “No. At their headquarters outside Manila.”

  “Through Jap lines?”

  “The Eleventh Airborne is in Parañaque. There’s something you need to understand, boy.”

  Lucas said nothing, making it clear he had no control over Tal.

  Gusto continued. “This is twenty miles through Japanese territory. You’ll be in an open banca on the bay for six hours, with enemy patrols on the lookout the whole way. Then through five miles of enemy jungle. I make no guarantee you’ll arrive. All I can do is give you the promise that my guerrilla team will be dead with you if anything happens.”

  Men would die to protect him. Tal nodded, solemn at the responsibility, eager to embrace it.

  “Will I be able to get back for the rescue?”

  “That’s up to the army.”

  Tal’s excitement waned. Could he leave the camp and not return? What about Carmen and Remy, and Yumi? They’d promised to save each other. If Tal disappeared, Remy could fend for himself. But could he protect himself and the girls the day of the raid? Who’d make sure Carmen and Yumi weren’t left behind? After all this time, could Tal miss the big moment?

  Gusto fixed his attention again on Lucas. “Pick three of your people. All of them have to be fit enough to make the trip to Parañaque. They have to know the camp inside and out. All three will go to Barrio Tranca first. Romeo will send one west to the Americans. The other two will be taken east to Nanhaya. Romeo will keep them safe there until word comes that the first one reached the American lines. If not, Romeo will send another, then another.”

  Gusto rose. On his feet, commanding, he continued to address Lucas.

  “Pick your people. This boy will do, but if he can’t come, find another. The army gave me this order. I’m giving it to you. Three internees. Four nights from now.”

  Lucas stood, Tal beside him. The committeeman, far taller than Gusto, lacked the guerrilla’s resoluteness. Poorly shaven, pistol at his hip, Gusto glared and did not relent.

  They followed him to the rear door. Gusto told Tal, “I believe I will see you again.”

  Tal led Lucas back to the ravine, to the camp, and under the wire.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  T

  HE POINT man waved his arms, hissing at Bolick and the five guerrillas. “Off the trail. Japs coming. Go, go!”

  The guerrillas ducked into the brush and fanning ferns on both sides of the path. Bolick doffed the big radio from his back, dashing into the jungle. He drove his chest and knees into the mossy ground, the radio clumped beside him. He held his breath. On the dark trail, a Japanese patrol came their way

  A motion beside Bolick made him jerk. Young Romeo landed without a rustle. He held a brown palm up for stillness. Romeo laid aside his carbine. With a sound that blended with the night noises of breezes and beasts, he slid from his belt the long bolo. He raised his chin at the knife on Bolick’s belt.

  The first boots and khaki leggings stole past on the trail. Beneath the metal brim of his helmet, Bolick saw only the legs of the passing Japanese. Romeo coiled, drawing up his knees. Bolick couldn’t do much damage with a blade in hand-to-hand combat; he was a large man, the kind needed to heft a military radio, slow compared to the guerrillas or the Japanese. He pulled away the leather holster strap from the grip of his Colt .45.

  Boots paraded by on the moist earth. Leaves and roots at Bolick’s eye level blocked him from seeing more than the soldiers passing in front of him. Three had gone by so far. Four more stepped along the trail. The Japanese were bunched tightly. Likely, they were scared.

  The jungle quieted. Bolick and the guerrillas were not the only ones watching.

  The last soldier’s heel rose and fell on the trail, disappearing behind the veil of plant life. A night bird cawed, a piercing imitated tweet from Romeo to signal his guerrillas.

  Romeo leaped to his feet. Bolick heard nothing of the man, saw only a starlit flash of his bolo.

  Bolick yanked the pistol from its holster. Still flat on his belly, he didn’t know what to do. Stand or lie flat? Charge? Wait?

  He made the decision of an airborne solider. He scrambled to his feet, Colt leveled and ready.

  Three Japanese were already down, the other four were set upon by long knifes. No one loosed a shot. Bolick advanced up the trail, sidearm poised. With no more than a whisk of sound, seven enemy soldiers lay dead or dying on the trail. Before any of the Japanese could moan or beg, each was dispatched where he lay by the machetes. The guerrillas teamed up to dump the bodies far from the trail. Each Filipino shouldered an abandoned rifle. Romeo lifted two off the ground. Bolick found his radio, slipped into the straps, and joined the guerrillas on the trail.

  The point man vanished forward again. Bolick walked in the middle of the guerrilla pack, three in front, three behind. The young leader Romeo had not a drop of blood on him, not even his knife.

  Bolick whispered, “Why’d you do that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You could have just let ‘em go. They were already past us.”

  “A month ago, maybe. Not anymore, sergeant.”

  The path twisted with the terrain until it moved into the open, alongside Laguna de Bay. The town of Nanhaya was two miles ahead on the shore. A low half moon laid a white finger on the water, always pointing at Bolick.

  “Hey, Romeo.”

  “Sergeant.”

  “Where you from? I never got around to asking you.”

  “Los Baños. My father was on the faculty at the college there. I was a biology student.”

  “I’m from a big city. Philadelphia. You hear of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great town. Got everything and everybody. And food. You ever have a Philly cheesesteak?”

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “You come to Philly, I’ll take you. It’s the bread, that’s what makes a real cheesesteak. You can get one in New York, Boston, but you don’t want ‘em. You like baseball?”

  “I’ve heard of the Yankees.”

  “Okay, forget baseball. You married?”

  “Yes. Magdalena.”

  “That’s great. Where is she?”

  “At our house, in Los Baños.”

  The pinprick lights of Barrio Nanhaya glimmered across the water, another ten minutes ahead. Bolick wanted to chat. The pretty path and dappled bay drew him out, but Romeo and his guerrillas moved silently, ruling out banter. Bolick missed his airborne buddies, men he could talk with.

  He wanted to go home, where dying and killing were not asked of you. He didn’t like Philly much anymore. He wanted to live in open spaces like this, maybe in a small town beside a lake. The war made Bolick want more quiet than a city could offer.

  On the outskirts of Barrio Nanhaya, Romeo’s men were met by a team from Terry’s Hunters who led them to camp. Bolick set up his radio in a ragged tent close to the fire pit; the cloth stank of smoke. At midnight, he sat to a meal of rice and bananas.

  No one in Terry’s Hunters felt like talking, either.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  R

  EMY SLID shut the garage door. In the midday sun, he propped his hands on his knees and spat in the dirt. He shouldn’t be displaying his exhaustion and disgust like this where anyone could see him. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he’d set down the tools and walked away.

  Remy couldn’t build any more caskets. The dead had outpaced him. Two more died today, one from malaria, the lawyer Herring, the other malnutrition, tall Janeway; four mo
re yesterday, three the day before, one of whom, a deranged fellow, tried to eat his own mattress. Nagata had put a stop to more bamboo rods coming into the camp. He’d issued an order that anyone caught dealing with locals would be shot, along with the offending Filipinos. None of the internees had the energy to scour the camp to find materials for caskets. The gravediggers had grown so worn down they’d been tripled in manpower, needing a dozen sets of hands to shovel out each hole.

  The increasing rate of deaths wore on the camp as it did Remy. Everyone was weary of bloated bodies, men and women known to all and barely recognizable in their final forms. Remy secured their green coffin tops, then joined another round of pallbearers to carry the corpses through camp to the cemetery. The loudspeaker announced the deaths, the times of their funerals. After each service, Remy trudged to the garage to begin another casket alone.

  The bamboo was depleted, Remy was finished. The dead were not. Remy wanted to crumple into his bunk. He eyed his nearby barracks; he’d get no privacy there. He set his back against the garage door and slid down, tugging the brim of his fedora to cover his eyes and announce he was not welcoming company. The camp, huddled in its hunger, left him alone.

  Remy stayed through the sun’s peak. He knew too much from listening to the radio and to Tal, from the caskets before he closed them. He wanted a few hours where he learned nothing more of deaths in the camp, slaughters and battles outside it.

  The gray shadow from the garage crept down his legs. When his sandals were in shade, Lucas rounded the corner.

  “Tuck. What are you doing?”

  “Not much. Thinkin’.”

  “About what?”

  “Same as everybody. Tired of this.”

  “Mind if I sit?”

  “It’s a free country.” Lucas didn’t chuckle with Remy. The committeeman arranged himself in the dirt. Remy asked, “How’d the meeting go?”

  “We just wrapped it up. Not so good.”

  “The committee didn’t believe you?”

  “Oh, they believed me, all right. Problem is, they absolutely don’t want anything more to do with the guerrillas. Just the army. They pretty much ordered me to stay in the camp.”

  “They did that before. You ignored ‘em.”

  “Can’t do it this time. I barely made it the mile and a half around Boot Creek. This mission calls for someone to go twenty miles through Jap lines.”

  “So you’re callin’ it off?”

  “No.”

  Remy’s stomach sank. “You’re still sendin’ Tal.”

  “Yeah.” Lucas drew a circle in the dirt, hesitant. “I’ll be honest with you. I never thought much of your boy before. I’ve changed my mind. You can be proud of him.”

  “Always was. But thank you.”

  “All right. I suppose you know we need to send three men total.”

  Remy puffed his cheeks. The boy had been tight-lipped when he returned from the meeting with Lucas. That was all right, he was supposed to be.

  “No. First I heard of this. Why you need so many?”

  “It’s twenty miles through Jap territory. If the first man doesn’t make it, the next in line has to go. Then the last one. This is too important.”

  Clearly, Lucas assumed the first man would be Tal.

  “Who else you talkin’ to?”

  The committeeman picked his words carefully. “Look, you know I can t go around recruiting people to slip under the wire and run off with the guerrillas. If the committee found out, they’d slap me in the brig. Next thing they’d do is tighten the watch on the whole camp. Your boy’ll be the first one they’ll bird-dog. Worse, everybody’s already worried about that pit. If word spread that I’m working with the guerrillas because I think the Japs are about to shoot us any day, it could cause a panic. That just might be the spark they need to start pulling triggers. So.”

  Remy lifted his fedora to rub a hand across his pate.

  “How are the Japs gonna react to three of us missin’ roll call?”

  “Nagata’ll probably holler a lot and send some men out to look for them. More cutbacks on rice; we’re already getting no meat. Threats. Nothing the camp can’t stand for a few more days until the army gets us out of here.”

  Remy gazed around the late-afternoon camp, vexed that this was his world, cordoned off and dying in dribs and drabs, likely scheduled to die all at once on some fast-coming morning. He beat the felt fedora across his thigh, as though to spur a horse. Scissoring his legs under him, he shoved off the ground. Remy dusted grit off his sore buttocks and the backs of his legs.

  “Where you going?” Lucas asked.

  “You can’t talk me into this. I’m gonna go find my kid. See if he can.”

  ~ * ~

  In the kitchen, Tal sat in a circle with thirty men and women. In front of each stood a twenty-five-kilo sack of palay.

  The boy ground a rounded bit of wood into the bowl in his lap. Others pressed hard on rolling pins over metal cooking pans. From the doorway, Remy watched them labor to polish the unhusked rice. The Japanese had announced they would provide no more clean rice. Now, two thousand pounds of palay had to be prepared by hand, every day, to remove the razor-sharp husks. The call had gone out for volunteers. Remy kept busy building coffins. He figured Tal would be here.

  The muscles in his boy’s arms flexed and relaxed, stringy, veined, fading along with everyone else. The camp would live or die on this rice. The last three pigs went into the stew two nights ago. Nagata announced there would be no more meat, though a dozen cattle grazed in a field outside the camp. Even greens had become scarce, with many local farmers taking to the hills. The Filipinos sensed the same evil coming as Remy had and lit out for safety before the ill wind blew their way.

  With the exception of the boy, none of the people grinding at the palay were aware of how numbered were the days of Los Baños. Each had the task of husking fifty pounds of rice, so the camp could ensure another meal. If they knew what Remy or Tal had in their heads, if slaughter was on their minds, would they work so hard to save one another? Lucas was right, he couldn’t tell anyone.

  One woman, then another, rose from the group, massaging their bony knuckles. They caught Remy’s eye and smiled. This raised Tal’s head.

  Remy aimed a thumb over his shoulder for the boy to follow him outside.

  He sat on the kitchen steps.

  Tal arrived beside him. “What’s up?”

  “Lucas came to see me. The committee meeting didn’t go his way.”

  Tal checked behind him to be sure they had privacy. “What’s he going to do?”

  “It’s still on. He said he needs to send three, one at a time to be sure someone gets through. I’m guessin’ you knew about this.”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “I understand. I reckon that Lucas has got you figured to be the first in line.”

  “He does.”

  “Boy.”

  “You’re not going to talk me out of it.”

  “I’m not tryin’ to. I just want to hear you tell me why you gotta do this.”

  Tal licked his lips, steeling himself. “Okay. Don’t take this wrong.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I thought about it a lot, leaving you and Carmen behind. Then I figured you’ll be okay, and you’ll look out for her if I can’t for some reason. But this is the first time in my life I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time. I can do this. Gusto knows it, so does Lucas. Carmen picked me for it.”

  “That she did.”

  “It’d be a help if you said you believe in me, too.”

  Remy recalled holding the newborn Talbot, standing beside his dog-tired and proud mother. This wasn’t the first time in the boy’s life he was in the right place.

  “I do, boy.”

  Remy totted up the dangers for Tal of going, the cost to the camp of not going. He asked his luck what he had done to be chosen like this, to send his son.

  “Thanks,” Tal said. �
��Did Lucas mention who else he’s thinking of?”

  “No, he didn’t. You got a say in this. Who do you trust?”