A few seconds later, the first mortar round crashed in, just yards in front of The Squad’s position.
Patchett mumbled, “I hate being so goddamn right all the time.”
Another round landed, this time behind them.
“It’s gotta be only one mortar,” Patchett said. “Not much volume of fire.”
Then the third round came…and a man began to scream to his mother, to God, to anyone he prayed might save him.
A long burst from a Nambu machine gun sent all their faces back into the dirt…
Until they realized the strangest thing:
Not one of its bullets had flown through their position.
But the GI was still screaming.
It was Mike McMillen. He’d been closest to the impact of the last mortar round.
Its blast had sheared off his right leg just above the knee.
The severed limb lay mangled and bloody a few feet away…
Right where McMillen could see it.
Patchett pulled off his belt and used it to fashion a tourniquet around McMillen’s thigh. “We need Miss Smits, right fucking now,” he said, shouting over the wounded man’s howls as he slid a hefty stick beneath the belt to lever it tight.
“I’ll get her,” Jillian replied, and hurried away.
McMillen had stopped begging, but his rant continued, taking a new tack. “I hope you’re fucking happy now,” he said, looking straight at Jock.
“At ease, son,” Patchett said, and then turned to Jock. “Let me help him, sir, while you go check on the rest of the men, okay?”
Jock nodded. He’d listened to gravely wounded men ramble in their delirium many times before, blurting out things they’d regret later if they even remembered saying them at all. He didn’t need that distraction right now.
With Jock gone, Patchett continued, “No call for talk like that, Mike. Besides, you’re gonna be just fine.”
“JUST FINE? How the fuck can I be just fine, Sergeant Major? My fucking leg!”
“It’s just the fear talking, Mike. We’re gonna take real good care of you. It could be worse, you know.”
“HOW THE FUCK COULD IT BE WORSE?”
“They could’ve got your pecker, son.”
“Oh, yeah? Who gives a shit about my goddamn pecker? The only pecker that matters around here is the major’s. And what does he give a shit? He’s got his girlfriend back now. He don’t care he got us all fucked up doing it…two guys dead, probably three, and I’m going to be dead any fucking second, too. All this bullshit, just so he can get his cooch back.”
Patchett pulled the tourniquet tighter and said, “That’s about enough out of you, Sergeant. You’re wrong as wrong can be about that man. But we’re gonna cut you a little slack right now, seeing as how you’re hurt and all…but if I was you, I’d choose my words real careful for a while.”
“It’s too tight, Sergeant Major! Loosen it up, please! It’s hurting like hell.”
“It’s gotta be tight, son. And it’s gonna hurt a lot worse before it gets better.”
Jillian returned with Anne Marie, who took one look at McMillen and said, “He needs morphia.”
Patchett asked, “Do you have any?”
She knelt down and opened her medical kit. “Of course I do, Sergeant Major. When I steal, I steal everything.”
She pulled the syringe from her bag—and more: Jock’s bayonet and a box of matches.
“We need to start a small fire,” she said.
Patchett nodded. He understood fully. “You’re gonna heat up that knife and cauterize, I reckon?”
She smiled as she replied, “Ahh, you’ve had training.”
“Somebody’s coming,” Hadley said as he and Jock huddled behind a felled tree on the perimeter. They raised their Thompsons…
Held their breath…
And watched as Bogater Boudreau came into view.
He was toting a Nambu machine gun and a rucksack full of ammunition for it.
“Holy shit,” Jock said. “That Nambu doing all that shooting…that was you?”
“Yessir,” Bogater replied. “Picked it up off a dead Jap a while back when I ran out of Thompson ammo. Fires a whole lot faster than one of them bolt-action Arisaka pieces of shit. Real handy when you’re on your own, believe you me.”
Jock couldn’t contain his amazement. “So you’ve been in a running gun battle with the Japs ever since we came off the ridge?”
“Pretty much, sir.”
“How many Japs are out there?”
“Now? Not a one, sir. Looked to be about a platoon’s worth, though, at the beginning.”
“And you killed them all?”
“Not all, sir. You guys got a couple of them here and there, I reckon. Did you hear them trucks go up a while back?”
“Those explosions? That was your doing, too, Bogater?”
“Yessir. Damn fools oughta know better than to leave their vehicles unattended. A grenade in the gas tanks did the trick. They even left me some rope to pull the pins with, so I could be far away when they blew. I just did one little thing wrong, sir…”
“You did? What?”
“The Thompson,” Bogater said. “I lost it. Went looking for it but can’t find it no more. I know that’s a court-martial offense and all.”
He was startled when Jock and Hadley burst out in incredulous laughter.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Sergeant Boudreau,” Jock said. “If we live long enough to write an After Action Report, it’ll be in the Destroyed In Contact With The Enemy column. Now come with me. There’s a whole bunch of guys who can’t wait to see you again.”
McMillen was their first stop. When he saw Bogater, he said through his morphine haze, “Son of a bitch. Someone’s raising the dead around here.”
Jock filled Patchett in on Boudreau’s exploits. When he was finished, Patchett turned to the blond Cajun and said, “Damn fine job, Bogater. But don’t you fucking never go running off by yourself again, you hear?”
The fire Anne Marie kindled was now put to a different use: cooking the fish Jillian caught. Even though Patchett was stuffing pieces of catfish into his mouth, it didn’t stop him from grousing, “Them Japs gonna smell this little fish fry ten miles away.”
“They ain’t gonna smell shit,” Bogater replied, “because there ain’t no Japs anywhere near here.”
Patchett cut him a nasty look and said, “That ain’t knowledge, son…that’s faith. You better keep your damn eyes peeled.”
Ace was huddled nearby with the walkie-talkie. He slid the headphones off his ears and said, “If there are any Japs around here—besides me, of course—they sure as hell don’t have a working radio. Lorengau’s going crazy trying to raise someone…anyone.”
Jock’s wristwatch confirmed what the low sun was already telling them: it was time to get the two rubber boats ready. Once night fell, they’d have three hours to row up the Warra and out into the Bismarck Sea. If all went as planned, the submarine would meet them two miles offshore.
“It’s going to be a hard row once we’re in the open sea, Jock,” Jillian said. “The wind and current will try to push us northwest, back toward Manus. It’d be so much better if we had proper boats, instead of these two oversized life preservers.”
“Believe me, Jill, if I had proper boats, I’d use them.”
“We’d better pray some croc doesn’t take a fancy to them while we’re on the river. One bite and—”
“Now see here, Miss,” he said, mimicking her Aussie accent, “I’m told by the US Navy that crocodiles don’t eat rubber.”
“It’s not the rubber they want, you wanker. It’s the flesh inside. Tell that to your bloody Navy. And by the way, sweetheart, you bloody illiterate Yanks shouldn’t be mocking the way others talk.”
Bogater asked, “How come we gotta row two miles to get picked up when they dropped us off a mile offshore?”
“Full moon tonight,” Jock replied. “The silhouette of a sub only a mile out w
ill probably be seen plain as day from shore.”
Even doped up on morphine, McMillen was growing more unsettled. When Anne Marie knelt by his improvised stretcher to check on him, he begged, “It hurts so bad. I need some more morphine.”
She didn’t need to check the time of the last dose written on his forehead in grease pencil—she’d made that mark herself. “It’s not time yet, Sergeant. Not even close.”
“You know, it’s your fault it hurts so fucking bad,” he slurred. “The way you burned me with that knife…”
“I had to do that, or you would have bled to death. I wasn’t equipped to do anything else.”
“Still,” he said, “I hope you’re fucking happy.”
“Fucking happy? That I saved your fucking life? You can be sure I’m fucking happy about that, Sergeant McMillen. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to check on the others.”
McMillen watched the boats being prepared. He listened as Jock and Patchett worked out the passenger list for each boat.
He never heard his name mentioned.
“Major Miles,” he called out, “you’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
Before Jock could answer, McMillen began to cry. Words tumbled from his mouth: “I’m sorry, sir…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean all that shit I said about you and Miss Forbes. Don’t leave me here. Oh God please don’t leave me!”
Patchett gave Jock that look that said, You want me to handle this, sir?
Jock waved him off. No, Top…I’ve got this one.
He knelt next to McMillen, put a comforting hand on his shoulder, and said, “Mike, nobody’s leaving you behind. You’re the given—you’re going to be in the second boat. It’s everyone else we’ve got to figure out a place for.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, sir. You’re gonna dump me in the ocean once we get out there.”
Jock smiled and shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense, Mike. Why would we go through all that trouble just to get rid of you?”
The stricken look slowly vanished from McMillen’s face. Even in his doped-up state, Jock’s attempt at humor did have a certain logic about it that couldn’t be denied.
Chapter Thirty
They’d been on the river for almost an hour, two rubber boats groping their way toward the sea by the stark light of the full moon. In the lead boat, Botkin played with the direction-finding loop on the walkie-talkie, searching for a signal from the submarine tasked with picking them up. Jock asked him, “You got anything yet?”
“Nothing yet, sir.”
“It’s still early,” Jock said. “They’re not expecting us for at least an hour.” He’d tried to sound optimistic, but the words still came out as more of a hope than a certainty.
Hadley and Ace were on the oars. Ace had grown strangely quiet since the last fight with the Japs at the riverhead. Hadley asked, “Something on your mind, Ace?”
“It’s nothing, First Sergeant.”
“Oh, come on. That look on your puss…something’s eating at you. It helps to talk about it, you know.”
Ace turned his head away, not saying a word.
Hadley asked, “You worried about the major hearing us? Just talk quiet. Keep it between you and me. He’s real busy…he won’t hear.”
There was no reply.
“You upset about losing Deuce? You were good buddies and all.”
“No…that’s not it. We both knew the risks when we volunteered for this mission.”
Hadley waited for him to say more but nothing was offered.
“Well, if that’s not it, Ace, then what is it?”
Hadley thought the Nisei would slip into silence once again, but after a few moments, the words slowly began to come.
“It just seems kind of strange, First Sergeant. That last fight we were in—I emptied four magazines but never had a clue who I was shooting at. Never saw the first Japanese soldier…”
“Yeah,” Hadley said, “that’s the way it is most of the time.”
“But not always,” Ace replied. “Those two Koreans I killed…I saw them. I saw them plain as day…and I never asked them what they were doing. I was the only one who could speak to them but I didn’t even bother. I just gunned them down. They didn’t want to be in this war any more than we do. Maybe they were just trying to help us out—switch sides, fight the Japs and all—but I never even thought about asking.”
“Wait a minute,” Hadley cut in. “Any prisoner stupid enough to go for a weapon deserves what he gets. You did the right thing, Ace.”
“Yeah, that’s what the sergeant major said, too. But I’ll never know that for sure, will I?”
“I think you need to put those thoughts right out of your head. Like you said, you knew the risks—this isn’t some Boy Scout hike we’ve been on. It’s a damn war.”
There were a few moments of silence before Ace asked, “Don’t they court martial GIs who shoot POWs? That’s murder, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what kind of legal-eagle bullshit they fed you back at HQ, but out here, anybody going for a gun isn’t a prisoner. He’s a combatant. You did the right thing, dammit. Put a lid on this crap.”
In the distance, the shadowy outlines of mangroves overhanging the river’s banks were yielding to a wide, dark emptiness that could only be the Bismarck Sea. A few more minutes of rowing and the boats would be clear of the river’s mouth. “We’re right on schedule,” Jock said.
Botkin stood on wobbly, landlubber legs in the stern of the lead boat, holding the walkie-talkie high over his head, trying to stretch for every inch of antenna height while searching for the submarine’s signal. Jock didn’t have to ask—he could tell his radioman hadn’t found that signal yet.
Jillian stood in the bow with Jock’s compass. “If we don’t have a radio bearing,” she said, “which way should we steer?”
“South-southeast,” Jock replied. “That should be about right.”
“You don’t sound very sure of that,” she said.
“It’s as sure as I can be, Jill. If we don’t—”
He was cut off by her upraised hand, an emphatic, wordless command to shut up!
She’d heard it first—a different sound on the air…
Different from the swish of the oars slicing the water’s surface…
Different from the hiss of the sea breeze through the mangroves…
The noisy chug of a boat’s motor.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“I do now. That sure as hell isn’t any submarine.”
He told Hadley and Ace to row into the shelter of the mangroves. Waving his red flashlight, he signaled the second boat to do the same.
“Keep a lookout for the bloody crocs,” Jillian said. “They’ll be right at home around here.”
The boats nestled together among the stilt roots of the mangrove not a moment too soon. The roots hid them from the searchlight’s beam sweeping the river mouth.
Jillian crawled onto the raised roots, spying the intruder through binoculars. “Bloody hell,” she said, “it’s a patrol boat. I count five, maybe six Japs on deck.”
Jock crawled alongside her. She handed him the binoculars.
“Holy shit,” he said, “it looks like it’s got at least two mounted machine guns.”
“It’s just an old workboat, Jock. No more than a fifty-footer. See that boom on the aft deck? Probably used to be a shellfish boat that the Nips impressed into service.”
“Old workboat or not, Jill, it’s armed to the teeth. Can that thing come into the river?”
“I doubt it. Takes too much water.”
Jillian was right—the patrol boat circled off the river mouth, showing no intention of coming upstream.
But it showed no intention of leaving, either.
Patchett had clambered from the second boat to join them. Once he got a good look at the patrol boat, he said, “What do you wanna do, sir?”
Jock replied, “We’re going to give her ten minutes t
o clear out.”
“And if she don’t?”
“I’m still working on that one, Top. Got any ideas?”
“Nothing that don’t get us all sunk,” Patchett said.
The ten minutes passed. The patrol boat was still circling the river mouth.
And there was still no radio signal from the submarine.
“Time’s a-wasting, sir,” Patchett said.
“No kidding,” Jock replied. “Jill…that boat’s wooden, right?”
“Yes…most every working boat in this part of the world is.”
“Where would the fuel tank be?”
“In the stern, near the engine.”
“Can you tell if it’s a diesel or not?”
“It doesn’t sound like a diesel, Jock. I’m pretty sure it burns petrol.”
“So it’ll burn easily?”
“Of course. Much easier than diesel will.”
“Top, we still have those tracer rounds for the M1s?”
“Yessir, one box. Haven’t fired a round out of it yet. What you got in mind?”
“Here’s the plan,” Jock said. “They haven’t turned that damn searchlight on for a while…and I’m guessing they won’t unless they get spooked. It ruins their night vision just like it ruins ours. And with this moon tonight, who the hell needs it?”
Every member of The Squad—their faces washed in its pale blue glow—nodded in agreement.
“So this is what we’ll do,” Jock continued. “Bogater and I will take the lead boat with the Nambu and an M1. We’ll get as close as we can…and then set that Jap boat on fire with tracers to the gas tank. The rest of you lay low right here in the second boat.”
Patchett said, “You sure that’s enough firepower, sir?”
“With the Nambu, yeah…that’s enough accurate firepower. It’ll keep their heads down while the tracers light the candle.”
Patchett had another concern: “How close you think you’re gonna get to that boat with that moon and all?”
“If we stick close to the mangroves, we can cut the distance in half and still have a pretty good chance of not being seen. Okay…everyone but me and Bogater out of this first boat.”
Operation Blind Spot (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 4) Page 18
