At least we hope that’s all they’ve got, Jock thought.
“The watch is relieved once a week,” Shaw continued. “When that occurs, the new lot walks in from Port Moresby and the old walks back the next day. They always use the same trail, one that runs along the ridge and down the slope to Bootless Inlet. It takes most of the daylight hours to make the trip one way.”
“That’s not the same trail we’ve been using?” Jock asked.
“No, Captain. We’re a few miles to the east.”
“When’s the next watch change?” Jock asked.
“Tomorrow, quite possibly,” Shaw replied.
“Oh, that’s just fucking dandy,” Jock said. The faces of his lieutenants and first sergeant were none too pleased, either. But he plowed ahead with the briefing.
“Now let’s review the reason we, the men of Task Force Blind Eye, are here. Today is D minus two…two days until the invasion. Before D plus zero…invasion day…we’re going to neutralize the Japs at that OP on Astrolabe and make it our own.”
Trevor Shaw looked suddenly troubled. “Captain,” he said, “by neutralize, do you mean kill them all?”
“Yessir, Commander, those are my orders.”
“When do you plan on making this assault?” Shaw asked.
“It has to be tonight,” Jock replied. “We’ll need most of tomorrow to get that monster of a radio up the mountain and into operation.”
“Well, then, Captain…for your sake and everyone else’s…there’s a new development you must consider…”
Chapter Four
Day 1
In the blink of an eye, Jock’s expression had grown just as troubled as Trevor Shaw’s. Jock asked the old coast watcher, “So the Japs on the OP have to report their status every hour? When did this new development happen?”
“Two days ago,” Shaw replied. “It’s quite possible the Japanese are expecting a strike against Port Moresby soon and have tightened procedures. We advised Brisbane, but I guess the message never got through to you.”
Jock struggled to keep his frustration from boiling over. “Commander, me and my men have been stuck on a damned troopship for over a month. First, we were headed to Guadalcanal. Then Washington redraws the theater boundaries…and suddenly the eastern Solomons aren’t MacArthur’s territory anymore…so here I am in Papua with only half my company. It’s amazing we know anything at all about what’s going on, I guess.”
“Yes,” Shaw replied, “the fog of war can be very thick sometimes.”
“Tell me about it,” Jock said. “But you think you’ve got a contingency plan, Commander?”
“Yes,” Shaw began. “As I told you earlier, my man Gabriel has become a bit nimble with the Japanese language. If you can manage to take the OP without them sounding the alarm, he can speak the status reports over the telephone so suspicion is not aroused in Port Moresby. He knows the procedure…he’s heard them do it a number of times already. They report every hour on the half-hour.”
It was no secret to anyone Jock liked the idea; his smile betrayed him. “So we can sit up there all day tomorrow and the Japs will be none the wiser,” he said. “At least until the relieved watch doesn’t show up back at Port Moresby like it’s supposed to.”
“Exactly, Captain,” Shaw replied. “And by that time the invasion forces should already be landing.”
First Sergeant Patchett wasn’t smiling, though. “If that new watch comes waltzing in sometime tomorrow,” he said, “we get to neutralize the damn place twice. We just doubled our chances of screwing up.”
Jock looked to Trevor Shaw and asked, “You’re sure the change of watch will be tomorrow, Commander?”
“That would be in keeping with their schedule.”
Jock paused, weighing his words carefully. “Then we have to do whatever it takes,” he said.
There wasn’t any time for a proper recon. It would take nearly four hours just to get up and down the 3,000-foot mountain from their position, plus however long you wanted to spend snooping around the ridge at its peak. He had scheduled the attack on the OP for midnight—just eight hours from now. It’s better everybody rests and gets some food in them, Jock thought as he tore into the crackers from a K ration package, if you can call this crap “food.” It’s amazing what you’ll eat when you’re starving. He sat on the ground and tried in vain to relax, settling back against a tree as the attack plan ran through his head over and over again, like a movie on a continuous loop.
Melvin Patchett sat down next to Jock and scowled at the K ration box in his hands. “Makes you pine for those seafood dinners on Cape York, don’t it, Captain?”
Jock smiled. He’d been thinking the same thing.
Patchett asked, “You think these natives here are gonna be as helpful as the ones on the Cape?”
“I sure hope so, Top,” Jock replied. “This kid Gabriel…we’d better take care of him like he’s the second coming…and he’d better be everything Commander Shaw says he is.”
A woman’s voice spoke from the other side of the tree trunk. “I wouldn’t worry about that, Yank.” Virginia Beech’s unsmiling face poked into view over Patchett’s shoulder. “Just make sure you buggers don’t muck it up.”
“Now, Ginny…be nice,” Patchett said in a tone Jock had never heard from his first sergeant before. It left him dumbfounded. Was he flirting?
“I was being nice, you bloody wanker,” she replied as she rose, picked up her shotgun, and sauntered away.
The startled look was still on Jock’s face as he said, “You two sure seem to have hit it off. You’re not sweet on her, are you, Top?”
Relaxing against the tree, Patchett smiled and said, “What’s not to like, Captain? She’s a good-looking widow woman with a set of brass balls on her…and like yours truly here, she’s reached a certain maturity.”
Trying not to laugh out loud, Jock replied, “Why, you horny old son of a bitch...”
“Not old, Captain…mature.”
They only needed to climb another 10 minutes or so and they’d be at the ridge atop Astrolabe. Trevor Shaw stopped Jock and his men there. The column behind them—mostly invisible in the dense forest—would stretch for 100 yards back down the trail that wound its way steeply to the top. “This is our rendezvous point,” Shaw said.
“So where’s your boy, Commander?” Jock asked, his voice uneasy.
“We’re early, Captain,” Shaw replied. “Your men made excellent time.”
“Yeah. We’re infantry. We’re used to long walks.”
Shaw smiled. “Yes, I can see that. But fear not…Gabriel will be along very soon.”
First Sergeant Patchett had brought up the rear of the column; there was no better place to police up stragglers. Now that the column had stopped, he moved to the front to join Jock and Commander Shaw.
“Everybody make it okay, Top?” Jock asked.
“All present, sir. Only had to kick a couple of ’em in the ass once or twice.” Patchett looked around and scowled. “We didn’t get stood up, did we, Captain?”
“Not yet. We’re early,” Jock replied. “Tell you what…get the men spread out off the trail and—”
“Already done that, sir,” Patchett interrupted. The tight-lipped look of annoyance that accompanied his words could only mean, How fucking dumb do you think I am? Jock had been on the receiving end of that look many times before.
“Very well, Top,” Jock said. “Way ahead of me, as usual. But while we’re waiting, get Hadley and Boudreau up here. We’ll take them with us on our little look-see.”
“Good choice, sir,” Patchett said. He headed back down the trail to fetch the two scouts.
It seemed like an hour had passed, but the hands on Jock’s wristwatch said it had been only three minutes since he last checked. They would run out of daylight soon; the sun seemed to be racing to its nightly refuge behind the towering peaks of the Owen Stanleys. We need a guided tour of the Jap positions while there’s still some daylight, Jock kn
ew only too well. Otherwise, an attack in the dark is going to be one gigantic circle jerk. And if this kid doesn’t show, we’re going to have to come up with a new plan right quick.
No sooner had that thought darkened Jock’s mind, Trevor Shaw said, “Ahh, here comes the lad now.”
Lad seemed to sum up Gabriel Lakai completely. He was short and slender, his dark skin in sharp contrast to his white, short-sleeved shirt and khaki shorts. He walked beneath a puffy cloud of bushy black hair. Like Shaw’s Papuan porters, he was barefoot and his only weapon a knife hanging from a sheath at his waist. He can’t be more than fifteen, Jock thought.
If his appearance was childlike, his voice was anything but. “Good evening, Commander Shaw,” he said in a deep and cultured adult voice. “You chaps arrived early, I see.”
They wasted little time with introductions. Within moments of his arrival, Gabriel Lakai was ready to lead the five-man scouting party to the Japanese observation post. Trevor Shaw remained behind. “I’d be of no use,” he said, excusing himself, “but you’re in excellent hands with Gabriel.”
Out of abundant caution, Gabriel had removed his bright white shirt. Patchett had summed up the Americans’ feelings on the matter when he said, “You can see that damn shirt from Australia, for cryin’ out loud.”
As they crossed over the thickly treed peak, Sergeant Tom Hadley was the first of the Americans to notice the telephone cable running along the ground. “Hey,” he whispered, “is this the Jap landline to Port Moresby?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Gabriel replied.
Hadley lifted the cable off the ground, gauging its heft. “No big deal,” he said. “Shouldn’t be any problem cutting and splicing it back together.”
Gabriel seemed alarmed by the idea. “Why would you want to cut it?” he asked.
“Simple,” the sergeant replied, “It’s insurance…so the Nips can’t blow the whistle on us if things get a little messed up.”
They continued on toward the objective, sneaking silently through the trees on the backslope. The setting sun at their backs cast its oblique rays around the tree trunks, brightening just for a short while the steeply tilted earth beneath the forest canopy. Instinctively, the men crouched lower as they advanced; those rays of light could silhouette a man like a target on a shooting range.
Gabriel raised a hand, bringing the group to a halt. “The Japanese are just beyond that knob…about fifty yards,” he whispered.
Jock huddled his men. “If anybody needs to take a leak, do it now,” he said. Corporal “Bogater” Boudreau took him up on the offer.
“That damn Cajun,” First Sergeant Patchett mumbled. “Ain’t a one of us had enough to eat or drink lately to have more than a drop in him…or a mouse shit-worth of crap…but Bogater still needs a latrine break.”
“Relax, Top,” Boudreau said as he buttoned his trousers. “When nature calls, a man’s gotta answer.”
Tom Hadley stifled a laugh as he kept a wary eye for the enemy. “He just wants to make sure that if we get in Dutch, he can’t piss himself.”
The top of the knob provided an excellent vantage point. While Hadley and Boudreau covered the rear, Jock, Patchett, and Gabriel peered over the edge. The scene that was revealed could only be described as relaxed. They looked down on an open wooden shelter, its roof and floor made of rough planks.
The structure was level despite the steep incline on which it was built. The downslope side of the shelter was suspended in the air some eight feet, supported by the trunks of two sturdy trees. The upslope side rested on the slanted ground, leaving an open, triangular space below the floor where a few sacks of rice and several small barrels—probably full of water—were stashed.
The shelter had no walls, just a railing that ran along the three sides not touching the ground. There was enough room for 20 men to sleep in close quarters on the mats littering the floor and hammocks slung from support posts. Camouflage netting was carelessly tossed across the roof, but it was unnecessary; with the canopy of treetops above, the shelter would be difficult to spot from even low-flying aircraft.
Almost everything inside was visible. Jock counted eight men seated on the floor, eating bowls of rice with chopsticks. They talked loudly and were obviously in high spirits. When a man got up to refill his bowl, the thin floorboards creaked and sagged under his weight. A number of rifles were haphazardly stacked in a corner against the railing. A radio set, complete with hand-cranked generator, sat unmanned in another corner. Outside the structure, a few large cook pots simmered over an open fire.
“Okay,” Jock whispered, “this is where they live, but you can’t see shit from here. Where’s the OP?”
Gabriel pointed up the slope to the peak. “There,” he said.
Through the trees, Jock could barely make out the shape of a man silhouetted against the fading sky. He appeared to be seated on a box or stool beneath a canvas canopy that was mottled in a camouflage pattern. The shape of another man would appear and disappear among the shadows as if pacing back and forth.
Two more Japanese men stomped down from the peak, arguing loudly. Both had swords on their belts. Jock and Patchett identified one as an Army captain but didn’t recognize the uniform of the other.
“That’s Lieutenant Oshida,” Gabriel whispered. “He’s one of the Navy officers assigned to the observation post. He dislikes the job very much.”
“Is this the whole setup?” Jock asked Gabriel. “Just this hut and some bleacher seats up on the ridge?”
“Yes, Captain, this is all of it.”
“I count twelve men,” Patchett said. “That sound right to you, son?”
“Yes, sir. Those are the same twelve as when I left earlier.”
Patchett scowled at being called “sir” but thought, This ain’t the time for no etiquette lesson.
Jock eyed the field telephone in a corner of the shelter. “I suppose there’s another phone at the OP?” he asked.
“That’s correct,” Gabriel replied.
They took one long, last look before sliding down behind the knob. Jock whispered to his first sergeant, “What do you think, Top?”
“Unless we’re the biggest fuck-ups on God’s green Earth,” Patchett replied, “it shouldn’t be no big thing to take out that bunch of route-step Nips.”
Jock smiled. “You can say that again, Top. Now…Sergeant Hadley, Corporal Boudreau…crawl up there and take a good look. Learn it like the back of your hand.”
Chapter Five
Day 1
His men were chomping at the bit to go early—as soon as night had completely fallen—but Jock made them wait: the attack would commence at midnight and not before. First Sergeant Patchett found himself defending the captain’s decision to group after group of anxious, disgruntled GIs. His words were always the same: “Listen up, knuckleheads…the captain wants them Japs to be snoring when we hit ’em…not playing cards or playing with their peckers. And I’m here to tell you he’s got the right idea. Now quit your griping and relax. It’ll be here and gone before y’all know it.”
The plan was simple—but there was one catch: the Japs actually on lookout duty on the peak would have to be taken out first—and silently—right before the attack on the shelter. That meant sneaking up on the enemy and slitting his throat with a bayonet. Theo Papadakis was the only man to volunteer. “I’ll do it, sir,” he told his captain without batting an eye. “I ain’t no stranger to a knife fight.”
No one noticed the flash of annoyance Papadakis’s suggestion brought to the face of Lieutenant Bob Wharton.
“No, Lieutenant,” Jock replied, “this isn’t a knife fight. It’s an assassination. Besides, I need you where you belong, leading your platoon.”
The brief, uncomfortable silence that followed was broken when First Sergeant Patchett asked, “May I say something, Captain?”
“Sure, Top. Go ahead.”
Patchett turned to Papadakis and said, “Like the captain said, you got better things to do,
Lieutenant. Anyway, I’m the only one of us sorry bastards ever killed a man hand to hand…so I guess it’s my job. Just give me Mukasic and Simms…they already got blood on their hands from the Cape. That oughta be enough to handle it.”
Jock and Patchett exchanged a nod that sealed the deal. Then, every man in the unit waited for the next few hours to pass, checking his weapon and equipment over and over again, trying to quell the mortal terror that was growing inside him like a cancer.
First Sergeant Patchett wanted that one last cigarette more than anything in the world. He was sure he wasn’t alone in that desire. The captain had already slapped the curfew on smoking for the night, though, and with good reason: the glow from a cigarette made an otherwise invisible man a target visible for hundreds of yards in the dark. Striking the match to light one was as good as turning on a spotlight. A whole company—or at least the half of a company they were at the moment—would be given away if just a handful caved in to the craving. He decided to do a sweep of the unit to make sure none of his men were foolish enough to ignore orders and light up, even if it’s just some wise-ass hiding under a groundsheet, sweating his balls off just for a smoke.
Patchett had only taken a few steps when he saw the reddish glow of burning tobacco and felt his blood start to boil. “Are you begging to get dead, you numbskull?” he hissed, striding up to the offender. “I said no smoking and I fucking meant it!” He was startled when the object he jerked from the man’s lips was not a cigarette, but a pipe.
“I’m so sorry, First Sergeant,” Trevor Shaw said. “I meant no harm—”
“That’s all fine and dandy, sir, but that’s a good way to get yourself and the rest of us killed.” Patchett dumped the pipe’s contents onto the ground, stomped the embers dark, and handed the pipe back to Commander Shaw. “Sorry, sir…didn’t mean no offense. It’s just the way it’s gotta be.”
Operation Long Jump (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 2) Page 3
