Operation Fishwrapper (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 5)

by William Peter Grasso

  Jock nodded yes.

  “Good,” the tall native replied. “Come…come see Meneer Dyckman.”

  Jock turned to the Navy men and said, “I think we might’ve just hit that jackpot, lads.”

  Andreas Dyckman seemed less than pleased to have the Americans in his camp. Jock’s first impression of the man: His head looks like it’s on fire! The hair and beard were a vibrant red, slowly turning a brilliant orange in random places as it whitened with age. This tall and burly Dutchman—senior to all present by many years but fit as a much younger man—held court over his collection of fugitives from the Japanese. They numbered twenty-four European men of various ages—plus the sixteen native men and women loyal to the Dutchman. The village of huts they had created on this high ground overlooked the plateau that covered most of southern Biak. In outward appearance, it looked no different than a native village. Only the collection of white faces within its confines betrayed it.

  In crisp English, Dyckman told Jock, “We fled here when the Japanese first arrived two and a half years ago. They have little interest in this part of the island. All the harbors and good land for airfields are on the opposite coast. Keeping hidden from them is not terribly difficult.” He pointed to the tall native who led Jock and the Navy men to his enclave. “Josiah tells me that despite the islander you killed, you were not followed. That is the only reason you are allowed to be here.” His tone was less than welcoming. Almost hostile.

  “And we’re most grateful to be here, Mister Dyckman…but I’m a little confused. Aren’t we all on the same side?”

  “I once thought that, Major Miles…until the deaths of our wives and children at the hands of your pilots changed my mind.” The Dutchman glared at the two naval officers as he said it. The golden pilot wings on their chests had indelibly marked them as enemies.

  “But perhaps you can be of some use to us,” Dyckman said. “We saw the flames of your crash—”

  “That fire wasn’t from the crash,” Jock interrupted. “We started it to get away from the Japs who showed up.”

  “No matter,” Dyckman continued. “Did any of your radios survive the crash, Major?”

  “Maybe…if they didn’t burn.”

  “Well, we’ll know shortly. My men will be back from your wreck before nightfall.”

  Glancing toward the boar being roasted on a spit, Dyckman added, “Come and have some supper. You and your men must be starving.”

  The reason for Dyckman’s interest in the Cat’s radios became apparent in short order. Jock was led to a hut containing a radio station, complete with multi-band receiver, transmitter, a bank of storage batteries, and a hand-cranked generator. Everything was in perfect working order…except the transmitter.

  “It hasn’t broadcast a single dot or dash in two years,” Dyckman said. “We’re not sure what’s wrong with it…we’re copra farmers, not radio experts. And we don’t have spare parts, anyway.”

  “Two of the men with me are radio experts,” Jock replied. “Maybe they can get this set back on the air.”

  Jock imagined Dyckman would be as enthused as he was at that prospect, but the Dutchman’s words didn’t reflect it: “For all the good it did last time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dyckman settled slowly onto a stool. He voice took on a softer, doleful tone as he said, “February 1942, when the Japanese began sweeping down from the Philippines, we planned to escape. But we had only a few small boats, so we sent the women and children first. They set out just before nightfall. It’s just a short sail to Japen Island—not even fifty kilometers—and an even shorter one from there to New Guinea. We were in radio contact with the Dutch military at Sarmi and told them refugees would be coming over the water. It did no good.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “They weren’t even out of sight when the planes attacked them.”

  “And you think they were Allied planes? Hell, back then American planes weren’t even here yet…just a few Aussie and Dutch. How can you be sure they weren’t Japanese?”

  “American, Australian, Dutch, it’s all the same to the dead. At any rate, Major Miles, when the slaughter was over the planes flew south, back toward New Guinea. Japanese planes would have flown north or west.”

  “Well…I can see your point there, Mister Dyckman.”

  “Yet, we clung to the faint hope they’d somehow survived. Days went by before we learned they never arrived. Our escape plan was a total failure: they’re dead, we’re trapped here.”

  Radio static and snippets of voices in a jumble of languages filled the hut as the Dutchman spun the dial through the shortwave bands. “Let’s see if your General Eisenhower has been thrown back into the English Channel yet,” he said, settling on an Australian station.

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Mister Dyckman,” Jock replied.

  “I wish I shared your optimism, Major.”

  Chapter Six

  It was nearly dawn when Andreas Dyckman’s scavenger team returned from the Cat’s crash site. The team’s leader—a young Dutchman named Hans—was the closest thing Dyckman had to a radio expert. The five natives under his direction had stripped anything that looked remotely like communications gear from the wreck and lugged it back to the camp.

  Dyckman had begun to despair they’d never return. “What took you so long, Hans?”

  “We had to wait until some gekken went away,” Hans replied.

  Jock asked, “What the hell are gekken?”

  “Crazy people, Major,” Dyckman replied. “It’s what we call islanders who are enamored with the Japanese and try to emulate them.”

  “Like that one I killed yesterday on our walk here?”

  “Yes. You were fortunate you ran into only one. They usually come in groups...islanders who banded together over some grievance against the Dutch. The Japanese invasion was the spark that ignited their rebellion.”

  “And the Japs give them weapons?”

  “No, Major…even the Japanese are not that stupid. But like any other sprawling organization, their military loses things from time to time…”

  “Loses…as in gets stolen?”

  “Perhaps, or they simply leave stuff behind by accident when they relocate. The Japanese are ruthless but far from perfect.”

  “I see,” Jock replied, “but the Japs I’ve fought—if they caught you with their stuff, you’d be executed on the spot.”

  “Of course. The Japanese on Biak are no different.”

  “So why the hell would a native walk around with a Jap weapon?”

  “That’s one of the reasons we call them gekken, Major Miles.”

  Morales and Baum walked into the radio hut. Both let out shrill whistles of surprise when they saw the Cat’s radio gear—some of it still trailed several feet of wiring crudely hacked from the plane by machetes.

  “Gee, this stuff didn’t get burned hardly at all,” Morales said, “but damn…it looks like you guys took an ax to it.”

  “Our tooling for this sort of work is quite limited, sir,” Hans replied. “We had no choice. My apologies.”

  “Ahh, no apology necessary. And you don’t have to call me sir.” Morales pointed to the two chevrons stenciled on his sleeve and added, “I work for a living.” Then he grew serious and asked, “Was Mister Becker still there?”

  “There was a dead American flyer still in his seat, if that’s who you mean.”

  “Yeah…him.”

  “Shit,” Sid Baum muttered, “sure wish we could have buried him…and the other three guys, too.” But then, like a man possessed with renewed purpose, he said, “So speaking of tools, you at least got a couple of screwdrivers so we can dig into this transmitter of yours and see what’s what?”

  As the two Navy men went to work, Jock had another question for Andreas Dyckman. “Those sympathizers…the gekken, as you call them…do they know you’re here? And if they did, wouldn’t they report you to the Japanese?”

  “I s
uspect they have,” Dyckman replied, “but the Japanese have far bigger problems than a tiny group of Europeans hidden away in the forest, wouldn’t you say?”

  Hector Morales wiped his sweaty brow and announced, “It’s no use. We can’t get this transmitter of theirs working, sir. We need some final amp tubes, but our sets don’t have the right ones, so we can’t cannibalize them. But we’ve got another idea…”

  Jock replied, “What’s that?”

  “Simple…we can jury-rig their generator and power supply to our transmitter from the Cat. It’ll take a little doing…we’ll need to come up with some kind of soldering iron. Sid may already have that one figured out.”

  Sid Baum was holding a foot-long iron rod filed to a point. “If I make a wooden handle for the blunt end so I can hang onto the darned thing once it gets hot, we can stick the pointy end into a fire for a while and voila…we’ve got a soldering iron. It’ll be a slow process, going wire for wire, but it should work. We don’t have a roll of solder, so there won’t be much of it on the connections…only what we can salvage from what’s already there. They’ll be a little brittle, but if we’re gentle with it…”

  “Sounds like a hell of a plan,” Jock said, “but how slow do you figure this slow process will be?”

  Baum replied, “We can probably have it up and running sometime tomorrow...Right, Hec?”

  Morales nodded in agreement.

  That sounded like good news to everyone except Andreas Dyckman. Deep in troubled thought, he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his tattered shorts and shuffled out of the radio hut. Jock was right behind him.

  “That transmitter may save you, Major Miles,” Dyckman said, “but it does me and my people little good now.”

  “What are you talking about? It’ll get you and your people off this island.”

  Dyckman’s initial reply was a few beats of skeptical laughter, soft and mournful notes trapped behind a tight-lipped smile. Then he said, “You put me in an awkward position, Major. If the Americans come now and drive off the Japanese, there is no point in my leaving. I must stay and reclaim my property. But you say the Japanese are far stronger here than your generals suspect, and you wish them to delay their invasion.”

  “Not for long, Mister Dyckman…just until we’ve prepared better.”

  “How long would that be, Major?”

  “That’s really not for me to say…a month, maybe two.”

  This time, Dyckman’s laughter turned derisive. “And you believe that your fears—and yours alone—will persuade your generals to delay their precious plans? And here I thought you military officers were serious students of history. Didn’t the last war teach you anything at all?”

  “I’m just trying to do my job, Mister Dyckman.”

  “I have no doubt of that, Major, and I won’t stand in your way. That gives me another problem, though…”

  “What’s that?”

  “If we keep transmitting from the camp, the Japanese will come after us for certain. We can’t push our luck too long. We’ll have to relocate…and frequently. Will you be capable of that, Major?”

  “Capable? Why wouldn’t I be capable?”

  “Your leg…is that an old wound? It seems to be bothering you.”

  “Don’t worry yourself about my leg, Mister Dyckman. It’ll get me wherever I need to go.”

  Sid Baum and Hector Morales had put up with the annoying presence of their two pilots all day. Lieutenant Simpson and Ensign Richards, hovering over them like fidgety shadows, had proved just as irritating—and just as useless—as the swarms of flying insects pestering the radiomen struggling to get the Cat’s transmitter back on the air. The sun was going down now, forcing the tedious work to continue in the dim firelight. Sid Baum had finally had enough of the officers’ needless supervision.

  The soldering iron grew cold and useless again. Reheating it in the fire for what seemed like the hundredth time, Baum said, “You know, gentlemen, you’re not really bringing a whole lot to this party. Watching us like hawks isn’t helping you or us a damn bit.”

  Simpson replied, “We just want to make sure we get the hell out of here, Baum, as quickly as possible.”

  “That’s what we want, too, sir…but dogging us won’t make this job go any faster. We’ve got to be real careful what we’re doing here. We hook up a wire wrong and this whole thing can go up in smoke…and then we’re all really fucked.”

  He hesitated, weighing his next words carefully before finally saying them: “So, unless you gentlemen know something about wiring up a radio, how about you cut us some slack and get lost? With all due respect, of course.”

  “Due respect, my ass, Baum. I tell you what…we’ll get lost. But you’d better not fuck this job up, or…”

  “Or what, sir? How could we be in more trouble than we are right now?”

  Simpson grumbled something unintelligible; Baum and Morales were sure they heard the word brig in there somewhere. He motioned for Richards to follow him, and they both beat a hasty retreat.

  As they did, the pilots felt sure they heard Baum mumble something unintelligible, too. They were sure they heard the word shithead in there somewhere.

  He couldn’t sleep. Jock lay on a mat outside the hut, trying to count stars. The burning, haggard feeling in every exhausted sinew of his body was nothing new. Every combat soldier had learned to deal with it:

  You’ll sleep when you’re dead.

  Exhausted or not, his mind was in overdrive, planning what the first radio message would say—if and when the transmitter worked.

  Even more difficult: planning what to do if the transmitter wouldn’t work.

  He wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. Andreas Dyckman appeared out of the shadows and sat down beside him.

  “If we move,” the Dutchman said, “we should head north, into the mountains. They can only come at us from one direction then.”

  Jock nodded. He’d been thinking the same thing.

  “Of course,” Dyckman continued, “if you’re lucky, you’ll be long gone. It won’t be your problem.”

  Jock had been thinking that, too. And more: “You know, even if we get picked up, you can still be a big help to our invasion force with that radio, funneling intel our way.”

  “Forgive my lack of enthusiasm, Major Miles, but a radio has never brought me anything but sorrow.”

  “You confuse me, Mister Dyckman. If you’re so down on having a working transmitter, why did you bend over backwards to salvage one from the crash?”

  “That’s very simple, Major. I did it on the slim hope that if we can tell them where we are, then maybe we, too, won’t be attacked by your planes.”

  Dyckman rose to his feet. “I’ll let you sleep now, Major.”

  “Ahh, who’s sleeping? But hold on a minute. I need to tell you something. I’ve been in a situation just like the one you’re in.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. I thought my wife was dead, too, lost at sea off Buna. I finally gave up and resigned myself to it…and I let a little bit of me die, too.”

  “But she wasn’t dead?”

  “Nope. Turned up a year later on Manus Island in a Jap POW camp. She’s back in New Guinea now, working at Allied Headquarters.”

  “And your point in telling me this?”

  “My point is this, Mister Dyckman: never give up hope.”

  “I appreciate your trying to cheer me, Major Miles…but I know what I saw.”

  Chapter Seven

  In war, good news always seems to come with bad news attached. For Colonel Dick Molloy, the good news was that Jock Miles was alive and well on Biak. Even better, he was transmitting fresh intel the general staff needed to know immediately.

  The bad news: that intel showed just how badly they were underestimating the strength of the Japanese force they’d soon face.

  The Japs are turning that rock into a damn fortress, with enough air power to sink a big chunk of our invasion fleet before they ev
en get near the place.

  Biak will be like Buna all over again. Maybe worse.

  He barged into the office of General Willoughby, MacArthur’s intelligence chief, the message from Jock in hand. Willoughby’s aide jumped out from behind his desk and blocked the open doorway to the general’s inner sanctum.

  “You can’t go in there, Colonel,” the aide said.

  Molloy was about to shove this obstruction wearing captain’s bars out of the way when Willoughby’s irritated voice boomed from within the office.

  “At ease, Colonel,” the voice said. “You’d better have one hell of a good reason for this rude behavior, dammit.”

  “I believe I do, sir,” Molloy replied, striding up to the general’s desk. “I’ve got bad news—real bad news—from Biak.”

  Willoughby let out a frustrated sigh. “What is it this time, Richard?”

  Molloy began to fill the general in on the details of Jock’s report. He wasn’t halfway through when the general held up his hand: stop.

  “That Miles of yours…he keeps popping up like a bad penny, Richard. What I don’t understand is why you’re getting sucked into all his hysteria. Of course the Japanese will have airfields on Biak…and this is old news, anyway. His first report—the one when they were still airborne—was duly noted.”

  “Duly noted, sir…and promptly ignored.”

  The general’s eyes flashed with anger. “At ease, Colonel. I won’t tell you again.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but I know what we’d like to believe is the Jap situation on Biak, but it just doesn’t add up to what Miles saw. We’re facing an air and ground defense far more formidable than—”

  Again, the general’s hand went up.

  “What he saw at night, Richard…at night, from a couple of thousand feet up. You know as well as I do the tricks the eye can play on an overactive imagination under those conditions.”