Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  “How do you keep the camera dry?” Sessions asked.

  “Wrap it in a couple of rubbers,” McCoy said.

  Sessions laughed appreciatively.

  “Do you go armed?”

  “I have a knife I take with me,” McCoy told him. “But the worst thing I could do is kill a Jap.

  Sessions nodded his understanding. Then he said, “Tell me the truth, McCoy. There’s no reason I couldn’t go, is there? If you were willing to take me, I mean.”

  “Christ, Lieutenant, you don’t want to go.”

  “Yes, I do, McCoy,” Sessions had said. “If you’ll take me, I’ll go.”

  Then he walked to the bed and picked up the peasant suit.

  “I’d like to have a picture of me in one of these,” he said. “It would impress the hell out of my wife.”

  He looked at McCoy and smiled.

  “I really would like to go with you, McCoy,” he said. It was still a request.

  “Officers are supposed to be in charge,” McCoy said. “That wouldn’t work.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Sessions said. “You’re the expert, and I know it. It’s your show. I’d just like to tag along.”

  “Once you get your shoes in a rice paddy, they’ll be ruined,” McCoy said. It was his last argument.

  “Okay,” Sessions said. “So I wear old shoes.”

  So he took Sessions with him. It went as he thought it would, and the only trouble they had was close to the Jap compound. Sessions panicked a little when he hadn’t heard McCoy for a couple of minutes and came looking for him, calling his name in a stage whisper.

  They didn’t find any German PAK38s, but neither did they get caught. And McCoy was by then convinced that the PAK38s existed only in the imagination of chairwarming sonsofbitches in Washington, bastards who didn’t have to crawl around through rice paddies or fields fertilized with human shit.

  Sessions was so excited by his adventure that when they got back to the Christian & Missionary Alliance Mission, he insisted on talking about it until it was way too late to even think of getting together with Ellen for a quickie before breakfast.

  After it was light, they killed the roll of film in the camera by taking pictures of each other dressed up like Chinamen.

  McCoy hoped that the pictures of Sessions dressed up that way might get the guy off the hook in Washington. They might decide to forget that the Japs had caught him if they saw that he had at least tried to do what they’d sent him to do.

  The next night, however, McCoy refused to take Sessions with him when he went to see what he could find near the mission at Weifang. It was a different setup there, the Japs ran perimeter patrols, and he didn’t want to run the risk of the both of them getting caught. Sessions didn’t argue. Which made McCoy feel a little guilty, because the real reason he didn’t want to take Sessions along was that he slowed McCoy down. If Sessions wasn’t along, maybe he could get back to the mission in time for Ellen to come to his room.

  That hadn’t done any good. When he got back, Sessions was waiting for him. Sessions kept him talking (even though there hadn’t been any German cannon at Weifang, either) until it was too late to do anything with Ellen. It was really a royal pain in the ass doing nothing with her during the day but hold hands on the front seat for a moment, or touch legs under a table, or something like that. Or he would catch her looking at him.

  He decided to take Sessions with him to look at a motorized infantry regiment, the 403rd, near Huimin, because it was the last chance they would have on this trip. If there were some of these German cannons at Huimin, Sessions might as well be able to say he found them. Otherwise—having gotten himself caught by the Japanese—he was going to come off this big-time secret mission looking like an asshole. The pictures of him dressed up like a Chinaman weren’t going to impress the big shots as much as his report that he had been caught.

  McCoy was beginning to see that Sessions wasn’t that much of your typical Headquarters, USMC, sonofabitch. What was really wrong with him was that he didn’t know what he was doing. And he could hardly be blamed for that. They didn’t teach “How to Spy on the Japs” at the Officer School in Quantico. It was a really dumb fucking thing for the Corps to do, sending him over here the way they had; but to be fair, that was the Corps’ fault, not his.

  And at Huimin, they found PAK38s. The 403rd Motorized Infantry Regiment (Separate) of His Imperial Majesty’s Imperial Fucking Army had eight of them. And the eight had the wrong canvas covers. So they’d taken covers from the Model 94s and put them over the PAK38s.

  They didn’t fit. The muzzle of the PAK38s, with its distinctive and unmistakable muzzle brake, stuck three feet outside the two small canvas covers. And with the Model 94s parked right beside them—looking very small compared to the PAK38s—there was absolutely no question about what they were.

  McCoy shot two thirty-six-exposure rolls of 35-mm black and white film in the Leica, and then a twenty-exposure roll of Kodacolor, although he suspected that one wouldn’t turn out. Kodacolor had a tendency to fuck up when you used it at first light—McCoy had no idea why.

  Sessions was naturally all excited, and had a hard time keeping himself under control. But he didn’t order McCoy, he asked him whether it would be a good idea to send somebody—maybe him, maybe Zimmerman—right off to Tientsin with the film. Or to take the whole convoy to Tientsin instead of making the other stops.

  And Sessions just accepted it when McCoy told him that if he or Zimmerman took off alone with the film, the Kempei-Tai, who had been following them around since they crossed the Yangtze River, would figure there was something special up, and that would be the last time he or Zimmerman would ever be seen.

  “Chinese bandits, Lieutenant,” McCoy said. “Since there really aren’t any, the Japs have organized their own.”

  “And similarly, taking the whole convoy to Tientsin right away would make them think something was out of the ordinary?”

  “Yes, it would,” McCoy said. “They probably would leave the whole thing alone, but you couldn’t be sure. If we do what we told them we’re going to do…”

  “That would be best, obviously,” Sessions concluded the sentence for him.

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  And it will give us another night on the road, maybe more if I get lucky and one of the trucks breaks down. And maybe that will mean maybe more than one other night with Ellen. Christ knows, I’ve done all the crawling through rice paddies I’m going to do on this trip.

  He had no such luck. They spent the next night in a Christian & Missionary Alliance mission, where he was given a small room to share with Sergeant Zimmerman. Since he was in a different building from the officers and missionaries, there was just nothing he could do about getting together with Ellen.

  He wondered if he might get lucky in Tientsin. He hoped so. It would probably be the last time in his life he would ever have a woman like that.

  It was about two hundred miles from Huimin to Tientsin. About halfway there, there was another ferry. This one crossed a branch of the Yun Ho River. It wasn’t much of a river, maybe two hundred yards across, and the ferry was built to fit. He thought for a minute that he and Ellen were going to get to cross first, which meant they would be alone for a little while. There probably was no place where they could screw—except maybe the backseat of the Studebaker. But he would have willingly settled for that.

  At the last minute, though, Sessions decided to go too, and climbed in the backseat. And then, as McCoy was about to drive down the bank onto the ferry, Sessions had another officer inspiration.

  “Sergeant Zimmerman!” he called. “Would you come with us, please?”

  A moment later, he leaned forward.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be all alone over there,” he said, significantly. “Do you?”

  “No, sir,” McCoy said. “I guess not.”

  What does he think is going to happen over there? I shouldn’t have tol
d him about the Chinese/Japanese bandits. If I hadn’t, he would have stayed behind, and I could have had fifteen, twenty minutes alone with Ellen.

  When Ellen turned to smile at Ernie Zimmerman as he moved into the back beside Sessions, she caught McCoy’s hand in both of hers, and held it for a moment in her lap. He could feel the heat of her belly.

  On the other side of the river, he drove the Studebaker far enough up the road to make room for the convoy to reform behind it as they came off the ferry.

  And then Lieutenant Sessions did something very nice.

  “McCoy, you stay here in the car with Mrs. Feller. Sergeant Zimmerman and I will walk back to the river to wait for the others.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said.

  He took Ellen’s hand as soon as they were out of the car. She held it in both of hers and drew it against her breast.

  McCoy watched the rearview mirror very carefully until Sessions and Zimmerman had disappeared around a bend. Then he turned to her and put his arms around her.

  “What are we going to do?” Ellen asked against his ear.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “At least I got to put my arms around you.”

  She kissed him, first tenderly, then lasciviously, and then she put her mouth to his ear as she applied her fingers to the buttons of his fly.

  “I know what to do,” she said. “Just make sure they don’t suddenly come walking back.”

  After a moment, she sat up to let him reach down and open her dress. Then he slipped his hand behind her, unclasped her brassiere, and freed her breasts.

  And then, all of a sudden, the hair on the back of his neck began to curl, and he felt a really weird sensation—of chill and excitement at once.

  He was being a goddamned fool, he told himself. He was just scared that the two of them would be caught together doing what they were doing.

  And with a strange certainty, he knew that wasn’t it at all.

  He lifted himself high enough on the seat to look in the backseat. Zimmerman’s Thompson was on the floorboard. That left Zimmerman and Sessions with nothing but Zimmerman’s pistol.

  “What are you doing?” Ellen asked, taking her mouth off him.

  “There’s a Thompson in the backseat,” McCoy said. “You grab it and run after me.”

  He pushed his thing back in his pants and took his Thompson from the floorboard.

  “What’s the matter?” Ellen asked.

  “Goddamnit, just do what I tell you!” he snapped, and sprang out of the car. As he trotted down the road, he chambered a cartridge in the Thompson.

  I’m going to race the hell down there and find the two of them sitting on a bench waiting for the ferry. And they are both going to think I’ve lost my fucking mind.

  But they weren’t sitting on a bench when he trotted around the bend.

  They were up against a steep bank, and there were twenty, twenty-five Chinese, dressed as coolies, crowding them.

  The convoy would be broken in pieces in only one place between Huimin and Tientsin. The only place, therefore, where it could credibly be reported that Chinese bandits had attacked it. And the Japanese had damned well figured that out.

  And they had handed the Japs the opportunity on a silver platter. Sessions and Zimmerman were isolated and practically unarmed. After the ‘bandits’ finished with them, they would have come to the car.

  Zimmerman had the flap on his .45 holster open, but hadn’t drawn it.

  “Take the fucking thing out, for Christ’s sake,” McCoy called out.

  The Chinese looked over their shoulders at him. Several of them took several steps in his direction. Several others moved toward Zimmerman and Sessions.

  McCoy was holding the Thompson by the pistol grip, the butt resting against the pit of his elbow, the muzzle elevated. He realized that he was reluctant to aim it at the mob.

  Goddamnit, I’m scared! If I aim it at them, the shit will hit the fan!

  He pulled the trigger. The submachine gun slammed against his arm, three, four, five times, as if somebody was punching him. He could smell the burned powder, and he saw the flashes coming from the slits in the Cutts Compensator on the muzzle.

  Everybody froze for a moment, and then the Chinese who had been advancing on Zimmerman and Sessions started to run toward them. After that the shit did hit the fan. Pistols were drawn from wherever they had been concealed. McCoy saw that at least two of the pistols were Broomhandled Model 98 Mausers, which fire 9-mm cartridges full automatic.

  McCoy put the Thompson to his shoulder, aimed very carefully, and tapped the trigger. The Thompson fired three times, and one of the Chinese with a Broomhandle Mauser went down with a look of surprise on his face. McCoy found another Chinese with a Broomhandle and touched the trigger again. This time the Thompson barked only twice, a dull blam-blam, and the second Chinese dropped like someone who’d been slugged in the stomach with a baseball bat.

  As he methodically took two more Chinese down with two-and three-round bursts from the Thompson, he saw Zimmerman finally get around to drawing his pistol and working the action.

  A movement beside him startled him, frightened him. He twisted and saw that Ellen was standing a foot behind him. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. He had time to notice that she had her breasts back inside her brassiere, but that there was something wrong with her dress. Then he figured out that she hadn’t gotten the right button in the right hole.

  She had Zimmerman’s Thompson in her hands, holding it as if she was afraid of it. And around her shoulder was Zimmerman’s musette bag. The bulges told him there were two spare drum magazines in it. Her eyes were wide with horror.

  He returned his attention to the mob, and fired again.

  “Shoot, for Christ’s sake!” McCoy shouted. Zimmerman looked baffled.

  Sessions finally did something. He snatched the Colt from Zimmerman’s hand. Holding it with both hands he aimed at the ground in front of the Chinese. He fired, and then fired again. McCoy heard a slug richochet over his head.

  That dumb sonofabitch is actually trying to wound them in the legs!

  He put the Thompson back to his shoulder and emptied the magazine in four-and five-shot bursts into the mob of Chinese. There was no longer time to aim. He sprayed the mob, aware that most of his shots were going wild. And then when he tugged at the trigger, nothing was happening. The fifty-round drum was empty.

  Conditioned by Parris Island Drill Instructors to treat any weapon with something approaching reverence—abuse was the unpardonable sin—he very carefully laid the empty Thompson on the ground and only then took Zimmerman’s Thompson from Ellen.

  When he had raised it to his shoulder, he saw that the mob had broken and was running toward the ferry slip. For some reason that produced rage, not relief. Telling himself to take it easy, to get a decent sight picture before pulling the trigger, he fired at individual members of the now-fleeing mob. He was too excited to properly control the sensitive trigger, and the Thompson fired in four-, five-, and six-shot bursts until the magazine was empty. By then there were five more Chinese down, some of them sprawled flat on their faces, one of them on his knees, and another crawling for safety like a worm, his hands on the gaping wound in his leg.

  McCoy ejected the magazine and went for the spares in the musette bag around Ellen’s shoulders. He snared one on the first grab, but as he did so he dislodged the top cartridge from its proper position in the magazine. He put the magazine to his mouth and yanked the cartridge out with his teeth. Then he jammed the magazine into the Thompson and put it back in his shoulder. Two Chinese were rushing toward him, one with a knife, the other with what looked like a boat pole. He took both of them down with two bursts. One of the 230-grain .45 slugs caught the second one in the face and blew blood and brains all over the road.

  And then it was all over. No Chinese were on their feet; and when he trained the Thompson on the ground, the ones down there seemed to be dead. Except one, who was doggedly trying to unja
m his Broomhandle Mauser. McCoy took a good sight on him and put two rounds in his head.

  There were more than a dozen dead and wounded Chinese on the ground. Some were screaming in agony.

  Lieutenant Sessions ran over to McCoy, looking as if he was trying to find something to say. But nothing came out of his mouth for several moments.

  “My God,” he whispered finally.

  McCoy felt faint and nauseous. But forced it down. Then Ellen slumped to her knees and threw up. That made McCoy do the same thing.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Sessions finally asked.

  “Shit!” McCoy said.

  Ellen looked at him, white-faced, and he thought he saw disgust in her eyes.

  “I guess the Japs decided you’re not really a Christer, Lieutenant,” McCoy said.

  “Jesus Christ, the film!” Sessions said. “Where is it?”

  “Goddamn it,” McCoy said, and started to run back to the car.

  He was halfway to the car when he heard shots and then a scream. He spun around. Zimmerman had finally got his shit together. He had put a fresh magazine in McCoy’s Thompson and was walking among the downed Chinese, methodically firing a couple of rounds into each of them to make sure they were dead.

  Ellen was doing the screaming, while Lieutenant Sessions held her, staring horrified at what Zimmerman was doing.

  And McCoy saw the cavalry finally galloping to the rescue.

  The ferry was in midstream. Lieutenant Macklin, who had found his steel helmet somewhere, stood at the bow with his pistol in his hand and a whistle in his mouth. Behind him were the two BAR men, and behind them the rest of the drivers, armed with Springfields. McCoy did not see the Reverend Mr. Feller.

  He ran the rest of the way to the car. The film was where he had left it, in the crown of his campaign hat, concealed there by a skivvy shirt.

  He got behind the wheel and backed up to where Ellen stood with Lieutenant Sessions. Sessions opened the back door, and she got in and slumped against the seat, white-faced and white-eyed.

  The ferry finally touched the near shore, and Lieutenant Macklin, furiously blowing his whistle, led the cavalry up the road to them.