“Jock,” she whispered, “are we beating those bastards?”
“Yeah…we’re pushing them back everywhere now.”
“But did we win at Buna?”
When he replied, “Yeah, baby, we did, thanks to you,” she pressed herself against him even tighter. For one brief moment, she seemed quietly content in their tiny world.
Then Jock added, “You’ve gotten so thin, honey.”
“I’m not exactly skin and bones yet, Yank. And you’re quite lean yourself.”
Another few moments of silence before he said, “Jill, that graveyard back at the camp…”
“Those were the women who lost hope. Or weren’t useful anymore.”
He was afraid where her explanation might be going. “Useful?” he asked. “How? What do you mean?”
“No, silly boy. I don’t mean it that way. They had their comfort women for doing the naughty, and we convinced them we were unclean from the very beginning…kept showing them bloody rags until they lost interest. That was Anne Marie’s idea, by the way. She was useful to them because she was a nurse. I was useful because that shithead of a camp commander loved the music…another bloody Jap who studied in Europe before the war and got infected with Western culture.”
“So you played for him?”
“Every bloody night. That’s why I’m still alive, I suppose. I was just about to go perform when your man Deuce showed up at our door.”
In the dim glow of the radio’s dial lights, Ace looked like a student stumped by a tough exam question. His pencil scratching feverishly at the pad, he kept reworking the Japanese characters written there, trying to make some sense of them.
It was no use. He slid the headphones down to his neck and said, “We’ve got problems, Sergeant Major. Their last transmission—the reply to our 2200 report—it’s in some kind of code. It reads like a weather report for the Himalayas. I have no idea what Lorengau’s really saying.”
Patchett replied, “Ain’t that code book we found on that dead sergeant helping any?”
“I don’t even know what half the characters in that book mean, Sergeant Major. If we don’t come up with the right answer, they’re going to know something’s really wrong up here.”
“And you’ve got no idea what that right answer is, son?”
Ace shook his head.
“Then fuck ’em,” Patchett replied. “Don’t send nothing. Maybe they’ll think our transmitter crapped out again.” He checked his watch. “It’s gonna get real interesting around here, boys…and fast. Our Navy’s still gonna be out there in plain view for about four more hours after the sun comes up. That’s how long we gotta hold this OP.”
Cotton Allred asked, “Those guys at the bottom of the mountain…we still gonna take them out at first light?”
Patchett gave it a moment’s thought before replying, “I reckon we oughta. But they may be the least of our troubles now.”
Chapter Twenty
Patchett and Allred braced themselves against trees on the steep slope just above the base of Mount Dremsel. The first rays of dawn broke through the treetops, revealing the truck parked on the trail below. The three restless horses were tethered just beyond it.
Japanese soldiers were nowhere in sight.
“You got line of sight on the truck, son?” Patchett whispered.
“Yep,” Allred replied.
“What do you reckon the range is?”
“Seventy-five yards, Sergeant Major.”
“Sounds just about perfect for you and that M1.” Patchett looked at the Thompson in his hands and added, “Way too far for this thing, though.”
“You want to get closer?”
“Let’s play it by ear, son. Just remember, we need to shoot us some Japs…not waste bullets killing trucks and horses.”
The driver’s door opened and a groggy Japanese soldier stepped out.
“Want me to take him?” Allred asked, peering down his rifle’s sights.
“No. Let’s see how many there are first. Look…he’s headed to the back of the truck. All right…he’s yelling at them in there. I reckon he’s the man in charge.”
One by one, four men emerged from the canvas-topped truck bed. They seemed just as bleary-eyed as the man who woke them.
“The leader,” Patchett said. “Take him before he puts on that fucking helmet he’s got in his hands.”
Allred squeezed off a shot. The leader’s head ruptured and sprayed its red-pink contents on the other soldiers like a watermelon splattered against the wall.
“Keep going, son,” Patchett said.
In the second it took the four Japanese still standing to override their disbelief and flee, Allred got off two more shots.
Two more Japanese went down.
The other two ducked behind the truck.
Patchett said, “I think they’re gonna try to get away on them horses. Stay here, take your best shot. I gotta get closer.” He stood and tried to run down the steep incline.
But it was too steep. Patchett lost his balance and went tumbling down the slope, losing his helmet and the Thompson along the way.
Allred couldn’t see the Japanese—But I sure as hell can see them horses.
He leveled his sights on the first horse—the fine white stallion—pulling frantically at its tether. Patchett’s words echoed in his head: We need to shoot us some Japs…not waste bullets killing horses.
I got five rounds left in this clip…two Japs, three horses…
I can do this.
A mottled brown horse shot from behind the truck. A rider clung to his side, using the horse as a shield just like the matinee cowboys in the movies.
Allred aimed at the barrel of the galloping horse and fired.
Shit! Missed!
He aimed and fired again.
The horse’s back legs buckled and he went down on his side—right on top of his rider.
Another horse—a black one, with the last Japanese soldier hugging his back—dodged his fallen comrade at a gallop as he made good his escape toward Lorengau.
Allred squeezed off one more round before the horse vanished around a curve in the trail.
Shit. Missed again.
Patchett had recovered his feet and his weapon. He walked slowly toward the truck, letting the muzzle of the Thompson lead the way into the truck’s cab and under the canvas of the bed.
Nobody else home.
He paused to look at the slain leader.
Good head shot…pretty fucking grisly. Pretty fucking dead, too.
The second man Allred shot was obviously dead, too. But the third man was not. He lay on the ground, hands clutched to his throat, blood spurting through his fingers.
Listen to that gurgle, Patchett told himself. Poor bastard’s neck-shot, choking on his own blood.
“Sorry, Tojo,” he said, and fired a single bullet into the dying man’s head.
He walked away slowly, telling himself, God, I hate this shit. But these fucking little savages started it.
Allred came down the slope, managing to keep his feet the whole way. He walked slowly toward the brown horse—still heaving and screaming, trying and failing to stand—and put him out of his misery with a point-blank shot to the head.
He did the same for the struggling man still trapped beneath.
“I fucked up, Sergeant Major. One got away.”
“I know, son. Ain’t nothing we can do about it now.”
They walked back toward the foot of the spiral staircase. The white stallion was still tethered to the truck. He was still frantic.
“What do we do with him?” Allred asked.
“Cut him loose, son. We done killed enough helpless animals for one day.”
Allred did as he was told. The white horse fled down the trail toward Lorengau at top speed.
Patchett said, “Them dumbasses left their rifles in the truck. Grab ’em, son…they might come in handy.”
They hadn’t gotten far up the spiral staircase when the
burst of a Thompson began to echo around the mountainside.
Allred asked, “What the hell could they be shooting at up there?”
“We’d best find out right quick, son. I’ll lead, you keep our asses covered.”
Jillian was right: at sunrise, the six native women vanished into the jungle. “Good thing,” Tom Hadley said. “They ate us out of house and home last night. We’ve barely got a day’s rations left. And only a couple of hours’ worth of water.”
Oscar Solo returned from a scouting patrol to the POW camp full of news. “Much hariap at camp, Major Jock. Much—”
Jock stopped him. “You mean hurry up, Oscar? Like they’re doing things in a rush?”
“Yes, Major Jock, yes. Many soldia go from camp big rush-rush.”
“Well, we expected they’d come looking for us,” Jock replied.
“No, Major Jock, no! Not us! Not women, too! They take trail…but not to Lorengau. They go other way.”
“Other way? You mean to the mountain?”
“Yes, Major Jock, to the mountain. You leave only six men up there. They could have big trouble quick-quick. We go help them now, no?”
“Yeah, of course we’re going to help them.”
Jock pulled out the map and did a few quick calculations. It would take them six hours to get back to Dremsel along the route they came—maybe more if the barefoot Jillian and Anne Marie couldn’t keep up in the jungle. The Japanese and Korean troops on the trail could probably make it in four. He was so focused on the map he didn’t realize Jillian was looking over his shoulder—not until her finger fell on the concentric contour lines representing Mount Dremsel.
“Is this the mountain?” she asked.
“Yeah…and Patchett’s at the top.”
“So what’s the problem, Jock? Let’s go help him.”
“The Japs will get there way before us, Jill. If we try to use the trail, we’ll be too exposed, too vulnerable…and I’m not sure how fast you ladies can go through the jungle on bare feet.”
She looked offended as she replied, “Baby, I haven’t had shoes on my feet for a year, Anne Marie even longer. Our feet aren’t the problem—they’re so tough we can walk on broken glass. They’ll get us through the jungle faster than any of you wankers.” She pointed to the shoeless Oscar. “And bare feet don’t seem to slow him down any.”
The image of the two women sprinting barefoot through the jungle gave Jock an idea. Pointing on the map to a spot a few miles down the Lorengau trail, he said, “Okay, if we can move that fast, maybe we can get to this point here—ahead of the Japs—and set up an ambush.”
Oscar and Hadley leaned in for a look at the map. Hadley said, “There’s a village near there, sir. Is that going to be a problem?”
Before Jock could say anything, Oscar replied, “No problem, Sergeant Tom. Maybe big help. We get water there.”
Patchett and Allred reached the OP at Dremsel’s peak breathing sighs of relief. They hadn’t had to fight anyone to get back up the mountain. All seemed peaceful and in order—until they saw the look on Stu Botkin’s face. He didn’t say anything, just pointed toward the tents, his head hung low like a schoolboy caught red-handed breaking some cardinal rule.
In front of the tents, Ace Nishimoto was hunched over the lifeless bodies of the two Koreans. He held his hand to his face as if trying to shield himself from grief. His Thompson lay on the ground beside him. When he saw Patchett walking toward him, he scrambled to his feet, trying to wipe the tears from his eyes.
The sergeant major asked, “All right, what happened here?”
“They must’ve untied themselves,” Botkin said. “We heard the shooting down the mountain…and the next thing we knew, Park and Sung were in the tent, picking up weapons.”
“Which one of you shot them?”
It was Ace who replied, “I did, Sergeant Major. I thought they’d try to shoot us. But…I don’t know…maybe they were just…”
He fell quiet, overcome.
Patchett stood silently over the bodies for a few moments. Then he said to Ace, “You did the best thing, son. You did good.”
Ace didn’t seem so sure. “Did I?”
“I’m afraid you did.”
Botkin asked, “Who’s going to bury them, Sergeant Major?”
“No one of us, that’s for damn sure. We might get real busy here. But we just gotta hang on to this OP for a few more hours…and then we’re on our way to that boat going home.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Oscar signaled the column to a halt. He was full of pride as he said, “Look, Major Jock, very fine place here to kill Japs.”
Jock crawled a few yards forward, popped his head through the dense jungle foliage, and found himself looking at probably the best ambush spot he had ever seen in his life. Here, the trail dropped to a gulley-like run, straight and narrow for almost fifty yards. Being the low point of the surrounding terrain, the natural drainage kept it muddy all the time, a quagmire a man could only slog through. A ridge on each side would place his men almost ten feet above the trail’s floor, looking down on their hapless quarry from positions of excellent concealment.
It was a perfect killing field. A small enemy unit walking into it could be erased to the last man in a matter of seconds—even by an ambush team as lightly armed as Jock’s men.
There was only one problem: no Japanese were in that killing field.
There were none in sight on the trail leading to it, either.
Jock asked Oscar, “They couldn’t have gotten past here already, could they?”
“No, Major Jock. They must walk very slow.”
Tom Hadley added, “That mud isn’t even churned up much. If a bunch of Japs passed recently, it would be.”
“No shit,” Jock replied. “Oscar, how about that village we talked about? Where is it, exactly?”
“We cannot see, but it’s right over there. Right through trees.” Oscar pointed down the trail, in the direction of Lorengau…
And that’s when the Japanese walked into view.
“Where soldia are, Major Jock…that is where village is.”
“We might be in business yet,” Jock said. “Tom…I’m looking at no more than twenty men. You agree?”
Hadley took a long look with his binoculars. “Yeah. No more than that, sir.”
“Okay, then,” Jock said, “you, McMillen, and Deuce set up real quick on the other side of the trail. I’ll take this side with Bogater, Youngblood, and Oscar. My side will work from the head of their column down, your side from the tail up. Start shooting when I do.”
“Got it, sir.”
As Hadley gathered his team, Jock crawled back into the underbrush to make sure Jillian and Anne Marie were safely tucked out of the way. Like all soldiers before imminent combat, he was tightly strung and hyper-alert. When he found the women, what they were doing did nothing to ease his tension: Jillian was in obvious discomfort as Anne Marie rubbed some liquid from a bottle on her bared shoulders.
“What the hell’s wrong, Jill?” he asked.
Anne Marie did the explaining. “Her shoulders have been dislocated several times. She often has pain there. The liniment helps.”
“Dislocated? How the hell did that happen?”
“How do you think?” Anne Marie replied. “She was tortured…hung by her arms, sometimes for hours, often with heavy weights dangling from her feet. The only thing that saved her from worse treatment was the camp commander might have missed his precious music.”
Jillian offered a pained smile that still managed to radiate a sense of victory. “I never was very good at obedience, was I, Jock? Don’t worry, Anne Marie will have me fixed up in a minute.”
“Good, because a minute’s about all we’ve got. The Japs are coming and we’re setting up an ambush. Both of you…get behind those big trees over there…and stay there until someone comes and gets you.”
Jillian asked, “Can I have a weapon?”
He pulled his .45 pistol
from its holster. “Think you can fire this, Jill? You know the nasty kick it’s got, especially if those shoulders hurt.”
“Of course I can fire it. A little pain in the shoulders is better than being dead.”
“Just stay down,” Jock pleaded before hurrying back to the trail.
When he got back to his team, there was another surprise. “They stopped, sir,” Bogater Boudreau reported. “They’re just sitting there, where that village is supposed to be.”
“Maybe they rest,” Oscar said. “Fill their canteens. Steal food.”
Bogater added, “We sure could use a refill on our canteens, too, sir.”
“We’ve got bigger fish to fry right now, don’t you think, Bogater?”
“Yessir. I reckon we do. Didn’t mean to—”
“Yeah, fine,” Jock snapped. “Let’s stay focused here.”
Thank God for sergeants. They pick the damnedest times to remind you of stuff you already know full well.
Jock gazed through binoculars down the trail. “Why the hell are they just lounging around like that?”
They all pondered that question for a few moments. Then Oscar said, “Listen…that noise.”
Jock didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary at first. It sounded like another variation on wind through the jungle, a gentle, continuous swish that wouldn’t have caught his attention. But the swish grew louder—and a faint rumble began to provide a counterpoint, a contrast that changed this seeming sound of nature into something mechanical.
“Holy shit,” Bogater said. “Bicycles.”
Not just a few, either. There was a swarm of Japanese soldiers on bicycles rolling up the trail. Like those on foot before them, they stopped at the village.
Bogater asked, “Where the hell did they come from? There weren’t no bikes at that prison camp.”
Operation Blind Spot (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 4) Page 12
