Operation Long Jump (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 2)

by William Peter Grasso

  The colonel bent over and puked some more.

  “You take care now, Colonel,” Worth called as the airsick officer wobbled to his jeep.

  As the jeep roared to life, Jock asked, “What happened to him?”

  “These officers from Division think it’s better to fly a mile high. We got bounced around in all kinds of turbulence…caught a stiff headwind and damn near came to a stop in mid-air. Then, some flak opened up on us. I had to dive like a brick to get the hell out of there.”

  “All that a little too much for the colonel’s delicate stomach, I guess?”

  “I suppose so. I just thank heavens he didn’t get sick all over the cabin. You need to go someplace, sir?”

  “Yeah,” Jock said, “I need to see the other side of town again. And I’d like to take a peek behind Astrolabe if we still have enough light.”

  “No sweat, sir,” Worth replied as he headed for the latrine. “Just let me fill up her tank and empty mine. Be right back.”

  They were airborne in less than 20 minutes, retracing the route of their last flight together. “I’m going to stay low, sir,” Worth shouted to Jock in the back seat. “We’ll save gas not climbing so much.”

  Jock looked to the water below. There were far fewer American transport ships offloading their supplies to the beach. He’d noticed that earlier today, too, as the plane bringing them back from Weipa descended for landing at Twenty Mile. He knew why: They’ve been pulled back to pick up General Blamey’s Aussies.

  Nothing seemed new on the far side of Port Moresby. There was still a small Japanese outpost on the hills inland from the beach at Boera. John Worth gave those hills a wide berth now; maybe this time the gunners sitting up there would be luckier and do more than just punch holes in her fabric skin if they got too close. Jock could see all he needed through binoculars: We’re not going to read their laundry tags this time.

  After the pass around the hills was done, Worth asked, “How do you want to get behind Astrolabe, sir? Going around the west end is quickest…it’s a straight line, but it’s a little dicey. We’d pass over where I started catching flak before. Or course, if I hadn’t been screwing around at five thousand feet…”

  “Go down to the eastern end,” Jock replied. “We’ll start our look-see there.”

  They backtracked over the water, nearly all the way back to Twenty Mile. Once safely behind the American lines, Worth turned the L4 inland toward the mountain.

  Worth asked, “Are we looking for anything special, sir?”

  “I need to get a good lay of the land back there, John. I’ve looked down at it from the peak, but you can only see so far.”

  “How come, sir? We expecting Japs from that direction?”

  “Lately, that’s become my biggest fear, John.”

  The L4 reached Astrolabe’s eastern tip. “How close to the peak you want to go, sir?” Worth asked. “It would be better if we stayed away a bit, out of the mountain wave.”

  “I know,” Jock replied. “Let’s stay a mile or so north of the peak. Use those rising smoke columns as a guide.”

  “Is that smoke from native villages, sir?”

  “Should be. There’s a bunch of them on the backslope. They haven’t been touched by the fighting…at least not yet.”

  The smoke…wispy, grayish. Typical of a village’s cook-fire. But something didn’t look right. Jock rechecked his map. He counted five smoke columns rising into the sky. Four of the columns—separated by no more than a mile—were in places he’d expect: Trevor Shaw and Ginny Beech had confirmed the presence of those villages when Jock’s men first took the OP on Astrolabe from the Japanese. The fifth smoke column, a bit farther north—the map was blank there, showing nothing but open space.

  “That far smoke column, John…about ten degrees off the right nose. Let’s take a closer look. Get down in the treetops if you can.”

  Flying down the backslope, the L4 was in a moderate descent and able to make decent speed—almost 80 miles per hour. They were nearly there.

  “You want to pass it to the right or left?” Worth called from the front seat.

  “Make it to the left, John.”

  Worth nudged the L4 that way. As the last few seconds to flyover ticked off, he said, “Okay, banking right.”

  The right bank gave Jock Miles a view of nothing but the ground below, unobstructed by the lower fuselage. In the instant the L4 flashed over the smoke’s source, Jock didn’t know who was more startled: him, or the faces of a few Japanese soldiers looking up at him with open mouths as they tended the cook-fire.

  “Shit,” Jock said. “We’ve got Japs.”

  “You need another pass, sir?”

  “Yeah…Gotta get an idea how many.”

  “Okay, but we’d better come in from a different direction,” Worth said, pulling into a turn so tight, Jock swore the low wingtip was skimming through the trees.

  The L4’s second pass was slower: she wasn’t flying downhill coming out of the north. Still, at just a few feet above the trees, she whizzed over the objective in the blink of an eye. Jock saw many more men this time. There were too many to count—and they were scurrying about like their lives depended on it.

  “Turn northeast, John, NOW!”

  Worth did as he was told, only asking why as he rolled out on the requested heading. “What’s the deal, sir?”

  “I’ve got a hunch…follow this creek a little bit…” Jock paused, straining to see through the canopy of trees.

  “YEAH…THERE THEY ARE,” Jock said, pounding his fist against his knee for emphasis. “There’s a whole damned column of them walking up the slope. That cook-fire…that’s their supper stop. Fish heads and rice all around, I guess.”

  “So how many you figure, sir?”

  “I really can’t tell, John. It could be a division for all I know.”

  “You know, sir…if there’s that many guns pointing at us, maybe we—”

  “You’re right, John. Let’s get out of—”

  They both pretended not to hear that first thump or feel her shudder…but denial of the painfully obvious can last only a moment. The purr of her engine had turned to a coarse rumble mixed with a hair-raising howl, like the sound of a grinder against metal. There were a few more thumps, more felt than heard; someone had her well in his sights and was hitting her again and again.

  Her engine cowling began to flap like a street sign in a howling gale. What had been the smooth arc of her propeller tips was now a jagged, oscillating blur. She seemed determined to shake herself apart at any moment. Her remaining life as a flying machine seemed to be measured in seconds.

  “JOHN! TURN WEST…MY GUYS ARE ONLY A FEW MILES AWAY. WE’LL BE SAFE THERE…”

  He didn’t add: If we survive the crash.

  Worth was paying Jock no attention. His mind was already made up. He turned east, retracing the route they had taken to get behind the mountain.

  “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING, JOHN? TURN AROUND!”

  “No dice, sir. If we go west, our only choice is which tree we end up in. If I go east, I’ve got a chance of getting us back to Twenty Mile. It’s not that far.”

  Jock checked his map. “BUT IT’S MORE THAN TWELVE MILES BACK TO THE AIRFIELD, JOHN.” And Astrolabe was in the way.

  “Once I get out from behind this damned mountain, I can maybe glide the rest of the way. Now let me fly, will you? And start figuring out what you can jettison…because we’ll need to lighten up here real quick. Every pound’s gonna matter.”

  The engine sputtered, surged, and sputtered again as John Worth struggled with the throttle and mixture to keep it running. “I think she’ll keep going,” he said. “Won’t make much power…and we sure as hell can’t climb…but I think I can nurse her back home.”

  She hardly seemed to be moving. Jock snuck a peek at the airspeed indicator; its needle hovered just above 50 miles per hour.

  “HOW SLOW CAN THIS THING FLY, JOHN?”

  “With a good headwind
, she can fly backward. Just relax, sir…Why don’t you call in what we just saw on the radio…before we have to chuck it overboard.”

  The radio! Use the damned radio, Jock thought as he fumbled with its knobs. I’ve really got my head up my ass. I’m screaming my head off like a scared little girl, and this green kid in the pilot’s seat is cool as a cucumber. And we’re still flying, somehow…

  Her engine began to backfire. The propeller seemed to be barely spinning, each blade plainly visible as it spun past the windshield.

  “Oops, too lean,” Worth said as he fiddled with the controls. A few more backfires, and the engine resumed its sickly grumble.

  Jock took another look at the airspeed indicator; it seemed stuck at 50 miles per hour. They were still behind Astrolabe; the mountain’s peak towering above them had never looked so tall.

  Jock couldn’t raise Division or Regiment on the radio. He tried Blind Eye Six. The unmistakable Aussie accent of Trevor Shaw replied. Jock’s signal was very weak, Shaw reported, but readable.

  John Worth offered a reason for the radio problems: “Our antenna’s probably shot to hell.”

  There was no time to code the message. What Jock told Blind Eye—in the clear—was concise: “Move immediately to block Japs in unknown strength seven miles east-northeast your position, advancing from north.”

  There was no reply. The L4’s radio had gone dead. There was nothing but static from the headphones.

  “Get rid of it,” Worth said.

  Jock disconnected the heavy radio from its mount and wrestled it out the open cabin window. The plane shot up in altitude the moment it left his hands. The sudden climb made his gut feel like it had bounced off the cabin floor.

  “Hang on,” Worth said, “I’m gonna cut around the end of the mountain real close. We’ll probably get our brains beat in from turbulence.”

  Astrolabe’s peak still loomed high above the little L4 as she skirted the mountain. Worth had been right: they did get their brains beat in, but it didn’t last very long. They were soon clear of Astrolabe’s high ground, no longer skimming its trees. The ground was now 2,000 feet below them as they flew across the lowlands. Twenty Mile Airfield was visible some six miles in the distance. They were headed straight for it.

  “I think we’ve got it made, sir,” Worth said.

  The engine wasn’t convinced, though. It began the cycle of surging and sputtering again. This time, John Worth couldn’t find the sweet spot in the controls that kept it turning. Two miles from the airfield, the engine quit.

  At least we’ll crash in GI-held territory, Jock told himself, looking for the silver lining as the now-silent L4—this wounded glider—seemed to be sinking lower more quickly than it was moving forward.

  There was at least half a mile to go, and Jock was already able to count leaves in the treetops. John Worth didn’t say a word. Jock watched the back-seat control stick moving gently between his knees, responding to Worth’s gentle ministrations to keep her in the air just a few more seconds.

  She seemed to stop in mid-air, and Worth pushed her nose down ever so gently. She began to creep forward again—they were close, but not close enough.

  But she kept flying. Jock wasn’t sure how that was possible: the airspeed indicator showed 40 miles per hour—but we’re hardly moving…

  The top of a tree dead ahead loomed higher than the L4’s wing. A gentle nudge of the controls and she was around it. A few more seconds and she seemed to be floating on a sea of treetops. There was a sound like paper ripping that went on for what seemed an eternity—and then it stopped. There were no trees beneath them now, only the flat, dirt runway of Twenty Mile. First, a bump—then a steady rumble as her wheels grasped the earth and didn’t let go.

  They were home.

  Jock climbed from her cabin first and surveyed the L4. Her engine was a mess: most of the lower cowling was gone, leaving only some jagged aluminum behind. A slick coating of blackened oil started at the engine’s firewall and extended down the belly as if smeared by a giant paintbrush. A cylinder head was completely gone, giving a clear view of the piston inside. One propeller blade was shorter than the other, its tip jagged and splintered like a shattered baseball bat.

  The source of that ripping noise just before landing became apparent, too: leafy branches were entangled in the landing gear. She had been trimming the treetops during her last few seconds of flight.

  Worth still hadn’t left the aircraft. Sticking his head in the cabin door, Jock asked, “Are you okay?” Then he saw why the pilot was in no hurry to get out. The telltale stain in his crotch gave him away. He had pissed himself.

  John Worth was ready to die of embarrassment right then and there. “You won’t tell anyone, will you, sir?” he asked. “They might not want to fly with me.”

  “Are you kidding me, John? The only story I’m going to tell is what a fantastic job you did to get us back alive.”

  Travis Spill pulled up in the jeep. “They’ve been screaming for you, sir,” Spill said. “Don’t that plane have a radio?”

  “Not anymore,” Jock replied.

  At least the jeep still had its radio, and it worked fine. The first message brought Jock some small measure of relief: Blind Eye Six had relayed his information about the Japs on Astrolabe’s backslope to HQ, and they were moving into a blocking position, as ordered. They had even called in artillery on the location Jock identified. He could hear the rumble of batteries firing in the distance.

  But there was still a world of things to do.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Day 12

  They had to hurry if they were going to be in position before dark. Charlie Company would need to walk some six miles along Astrolabe’s peak, back to the vicinity of the old OP they left five days ago. As they broke camp at The Notch, two questions still swirled in Lee Grossman’s head: Are we supposed to leave an OP at The Notch? Are we even supposed to be moving at all?

  Repeated radio calls to Long Jump Six-Two Eagle—Jock Miles’s airborne call sign—received no reply. Lee Grossman tried calling Regimental Headquarters. He got a response but no answer to his question. The voice on the radio merely recited the operations order Jock had written earlier that afternoon, the one that instructed all units to hold present positions and maintain contact with opposing Japanese forces.

  Grossman shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense,” he told Melvin Patchett. “We just told them there are Japs coming up the mountain. Don’t they think the regiment…shit, the whole division…ought to react?”

  What Grossman didn’t know was the only staff officer in HQ at the moment was the adjutant, who was busy preparing the regiment’s casualty report for the day. Operations orders were not his concern.

  “But that damned radio call,” Grossman said, “it was in the clear, Top. How do we really know it was Major Miles and not some Jap?”

  Melvin Patchett gave his company commander the look every man in the unit had come to know well. It meant, quite simply: you dumb son of a bitch. With all due respect, of course.

  “Lieutenant,” Patchett said, his voice weary, like that of a schoolteacher repeating the same lesson over and over again, “that was Major Miles on the radio. I guaran-damn-tee it.” He paused, and then added, “You know, sir, me and the major been to a couple of rodeos together.”

  “Okay, fine. We move. But what about the OP right here at The Notch, Top? Isn’t that important anymore?”

  “I reckon it is, sir…but even if we did leave an OP here, how in blue blazes are they gonna communicate with the rest of the world? Commander Shaw’s radio gotta come with us.”

  The first sergeant had a point. Shaw’s radio needed to stay with the company. An OP at The Notch would have no more than a walkie-talkie for a radio, and it would only be able to transmit about a mile. They would need Shaw’s radio as a relay, but it would be six miles away, well out of walkie-talkie range. In fact, every American radio on the ground in Papua would be well out of range.
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  Even telephones wouldn’t work: the reels they had left held less than two miles of wire.

  “I know how we can do it, sir,” a voice called out. Grossman and Patchett turned to see Sergeant Tom Hadley standing by the trail. He lifted a cable from the ground and held it in his hand.

  “We can use the old Jap wire,” Hadley said. “It runs from the old OP, down through The Notch, all the way to Port Moresby. We cut it here and splice into it…then we do the same when we get to where we’re going. An instant landline from The Notch to Commander Shaw’s radio.”

  Patchett nodded his endorsement. “Just might work, sir, but to avoid confusion, let’s call the OP at The Notch OP Charlie Baker. The old OP, we’ll call it OP Charlie Able.”

  There were personnel problems, too. Ginny Beech said, “The porters will carry your kit back to OP Charlie Able, but then they want to go home. If there’s a fight brewing on the backslope, their villages will be in the crossfire. They need to help move their families to safety.”

  Lee Grossman had no choice but to reply, “Of course. No problem.”

  Actually, Grossman thought, it’s a really big problem. A handful of porters double the company’s capacity to carry ammunition and supplies. They eat next to nothing…hell, they consider K rations a feast…and they never seem to get tired. But we can’t hold them against their will.

  Patchett pulled Ginny aside. “When your porters go,” he whispered, “I want you to go, too. Safer that way.”

  “Oh, that’s so sweet, Patch,” she said, touching his cheek. Then she turned hard as nails: “But forget it. I’m bloody staying.”

  There hadn’t been much for Jock to update on the big situation map at Regimental HQ. The only American unit that had moved was Charlie Company, from its perch at The Notch to its blocking position six miles east, now named OP Charlie Able. Right where the Jap OP used to be, he thought, before we took it from them. The only other change on the map was the red rectangle on the backslope of Astrolabe that designated—pending further information—a Japanese infantry unit of unknown size.