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

by William Peter Grasso

  “Didn’t think them flyboys would hit shit,” Patchett muttered. “It was kinda misty down here when they made their run.”

  They crept forward through the mud of the gullies for nearly another hour, Jock at the column’s point, with Ginny close behind. He could hear the Japanese long before seeing them, their voices loud, unconcerned with being overheard. Some sounded like they were giving orders; others like boisterous, idle talk. Soldiers bustled about an assembly area which sprawled across gently sloping terrain and straddled a network of creeks. The thatched huts of what was once a native village towered over ranks of small Japanese tents.

  “That’s the village of Birribi,” Ginny whispered to Jock as she circled its location on his map.

  Staring through binoculars at the Japanese camp, Jock said, “Looks like the natives have cleared out.”

  “Good on them,” Ginny replied. “They’re probably safer wherever they are…at least with you Yanks dropping bombs willy-nilly.”

  Melvin Patchett asked, “How many Japs you figure, sir?”

  “I make it as a battalion, Top. You agree?”

  “Yep. And this camp’s a hell of a lot farther down the backslope than we reckoned. The dumb bastards feel safe here. They ain’t even got pickets out.”

  Jock ducked behind the gully’s bank. “Let’s try to get a little closer,” he said. Patchett nodded his agreement.

  They didn’t get far. Peering around a bend in the gully, Jock suddenly found himself less than 30 yards from some approaching mules, a dozen or so by his quick count. Three bored Japanese soldiers were herding the animals, whips in hand and rifles slung over shoulders.

  Jock made two quick but urgent hand signals to his patrol: Be quiet! Get down!

  The patrol flattened itself in the slurry coating the bottom of the gully. The Japanese soldiers hadn’t noticed them, and wouldn’t unless standing directly overhead. If the mules knew of the patrol’s presence—and they probably did by smell alone—they didn’t seem to care.

  Patchett found the tense scene instructive: Son of a bitch! Maybe they got pickets after all, but they got four legs instead of two. Them muleskinners ain’t figured out whipping them animals never gets ’em to do what you want, though. Wonder what kind of munitions those mules been carrying? It ain’t artillery, that’s for damn sure. I don’t see none in that camp…not even small bore stuff. The heaviest weapons they’ll have are mortars and machine guns…and they’ll have to get a whole lot closer to use them.

  Jock was doing his own mental calculations: These Japs are clever little bastards. This camp is just out of range for our artillery. Even our closest 155 battery is a little too far away to lob one this far over the mountain…and those big guns won’t be getting closer anytime soon. Not without engineers to build roads. I’ve got to get another air raid on this place…today. Now that we know exactly where the Japs are, maybe the Air Force will have better luck hitting them.

  Frank Simms found a reason far more immediate than the Japanese to be terrified: in the mud inches from his face, a snake was coiling its body in what seemed slow motion. Mottled geometric patterns adorned its dark skin, looking just like the ones that Aussie doctor had advised them to steer clear of back on Cape York.

  It wasn’t a very big snake—maybe three feet long, its body lean. Nothing like the other slithering killers they had seen in this part of the world. But Simms’s mind burned with one question, proposed and answered in a millisecond:

  How fucking big does a snake have to be to kill you?

  With the speed that is adrenaline’s gift, Frank Simms snatched the helmet from his head and plunked it over the coiled body. His arms pressed down on the steel dome with all his might, trapping most of the snake—and the needle-like fangs Simms swore he saw—inside.

  But that didn’t fix everything.

  About a foot of the snake’s tail managed to avoid imprisonment beneath the helmet. It began to wrap itself around Frank Simms’s wrist. Powerfully.

  Despite the mud caked on his hand, Simms could see it quickly turning blue.

  He wanted—no, needed—to cry out in pain and horror.

  He didn’t dare. First Sergeant Patchett was giving him that look. Every man in Charlie Company knew what those narrowed eyes and firmly set mouth meant: Make a fucking peep and I’ll kill you myself, sissy-boy.

  Patchett cast another look, this one a silent command punctuated by an impatient jerk of the head. It was aimed at Mike McMillen, who caught its meaning immediately: Get over there and help that man.

  Both sergeants knew they shared the same thought: Not again…Didn’t we have enough trouble with fucking snakes on Cape York?

  McMillen crawled closer to Simms, until they were face-to-face across the helmet entrapping the creature.

  “What if it digs out from underneath?” Simms asked in a near-hysterical whisper.

  “Snakes can’t dig, Frank,” McMillen said. “They’ve got nothing to dig with.”

  “But what if he just squeezes out through the mud?”

  “Then I cut his fucking head off,” McMillen replied, his bayonet at the ready.

  “My hand’s gonna fall off any second, Sarge,” Simms whimpered.

  That hand wasn’t blue anymore. Now it was a ghastly white.

  “Just relax, Frank,” McMillen said. “We’re gonna have to move out of here one way or the other real soon. When we do, I’ll cut off the son of a bitch’s tail and you grab your helmet and back away, real quick-like. Your hand’ll be okay.”

  “Fuck that, Sarge. I’m leaving the helmet.”

  “The hell you are, Private. You know what Top said: ‘No trooper of mine runs around under fire without his steel pot.’ He even makes Miss Ginny wear one, for cryin’ out loud.”

  “But…but this is different! That snake is—”

  “Shut the hell up, Frank, and do as I say. That’s a fucking order.”

  The mules got closer, a few stopping to graze. The muleskinners cracked their whips; the animals seemed more determined than ever to continue munching the grass.

  One beast, no more than 10 feet from where Jock lay, seemed to be performing a high-wire act, tottering along the edge of gully’s bank as it foraged.

  That’s all I need, having a fucking mule fall on me. These sons of bitches better be as sure-footed as they say. Damn! It’s right on the edge…

  Liberated by the mule’s hooves, clods of earth rained down closer and closer to Jock with each step the animal took.

  There was a sudden torrent of yelling in Japanese.

  Shit. They saw us. Shit.

  Jock tightened his grip on the trigger. The rest of the patrol did the same

  But the muleskinners couldn’t see anything but their disobedient animals. They weren’t sounding an alarm; their words were more the annoyed utterances of young men going through the motions of a detested job, and a poorly performed one at that.

  They hadn’t even unslung their rifles.

  The mules stopped eating and stood their ground, refusing to move, filling the air with strange, foghorn-like honks. They didn’t seem upset, merely offended.

  The noisy standoff between man and beast gave Jock his chance. He gave the signal to pull back.

  “Now!” Mike McMillen whispered.

  The bayonet sliced through the snake’s tail like a flash of lightning, passing so close to Simms’s wrist he felt sure McMillen had skinned him.

  Without realizing it, Frank Simms, helmet in hand—and with a most unwelcome bracelet still clamped to his wrist—had scooted backwards some 10 feet from the writhing, mortally wounded snake.

  His Thompson stayed behind, just inches from the snake.

  With one more quick slash, McMillen severed the snake’s head for good measure. After all, he told himself, Miss Ginny, the major, and me have to climb over this fucker to get out of here. Even a dying snake can still kill you.

  Mike McMillen joined Patchett and Simms in slow retreat, scooping up Simms’s forgo
tten weapon along the way. Ginny Beech and Jock crept close behind.

  Hearts pumping, eyes scanning for danger new and old in every direction, the patrol inched slowly back in the direction they had come. The mud beneath their feet made sucking noises that seemed so loud they swore each step could be heard in Tokyo.

  But neither the mules nor the muleskinners, still locked in their noisy standoff, seemed to notice.

  It seemed a safe distance now; Jock signaled Halt.

  He peered over the gully’s bank.

  Shit.

  They were still much closer to the herd and its handlers than he wanted to be.

  “We’ve got to keep going,” Jock said.

  “Hang on,” Frank Simms hissed, trying—and failing—to pull the severed tail from around his arm. “This fucking thing’s like a vise! I can’t feel my hand!”

  Ginny Beech got to Simms first. With one snap of her wrist, she jerked the snake’s tail free and flung it to the ground, where it squirmed in postmortem agony.

  “It’s easier if you stay calm,” Ginny said. “You aren’t bit, are you, laddie?”

  “Nah,” Simms muttered, trying to shake some life back into his cadaverous hand.

  “You’re lucky that snake wasn’t bigger,” Ginny said. “It might’ve snapped your arm like a bloody twig.”

  McMillen added, “It’s like fucking Cape York all over again.”

  Patchett was tired of this melodrama. “All right, all right…that’s enough about the damn snake,” he said. Looking to Jock, he asked, “What do we do now, sir? Give the Air Force another try?”

  “You read my mind, Top,” Jock replied.

  Even though the Japanese were still close, the patrol was beginning to taste success. As they quickly put more distance between themselves and the enemy camp, that taste became sweeter—until the sound of artillery impacting in the distance far to the west turned it sour.

  Patchett cocked an ear to the explosions. “Sounds like our guns are shooting at The Notch,” he said, his tone anxious. “That’s either real good news…or real bad news.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Day 13

  Jock’s recon patrol made it back to OP Charlie Able in record time. “Not surprising,” Ginny Beech said. “We ran the whole bloody way.”

  Lee Grossman filled them in about the artillery fire on The Notch: “The Japs still hold it. Boudreau’s got an LP about a mile west now keeping tabs on them. Hadley and his men will be back soon. No casualties.”

  Jock blew out a sigh of relief and said, “Could be worse.”

  “A hell of a lot worse,” Patchett added.

  “By the way,” Grossman said, “the landline to Regiment is laid in. Spill’s waiting for you.”

  Jock called in the air raid request on the Japanese camp personally. There were still several hours of daylight left. The Air Force liaison at Regiment agreed to divert one of the day’s last raids to Jock’s target. A feeling of quiet elation settled on the members of the patrol: they had set powerful wheels in motion. Now it was time to rest and wait for the results.

  Once the recon patrol’s debrief was done, Jock didn’t think it odd Melvin Patchett vanished for about 15 minutes. He wasn’t surprised, either, that Ginny Beech dropped from sight for that same period of time: Nothing like a brush with danger to make a man—even a graying fossil like Melvin Patchett—want to sow some seed.

  As he expected, they reappeared separately but almost simultaneously. They were cleaned up, refreshed, and relaxed. Very relaxed. Patchett took a circuitous path to the CP that went right past the medic’s aid station. Jock couldn’t help but notice the first sergeant slipping what appeared to be a small medicinal tube to the doc. That done, he walked straight to Jock.

  Making sure no one else could hear, Jock asked Patchett, “Let me guess…Tetracaine?”

  “Can’t fool you, can I, sir?”

  “Good for you, Top.”

  Patchett replied with just a sly smile.

  Then the first sergeant got very serious, showing a vulnerability Jock had only seen hints of in their many months together. “I had my heart in my mouth that whole damn patrol, sir,” Melvin Patchett said. “I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her.” Then he added, “Don’t she remind you of somebody, though?”

  “Yep,” Jock replied, “Ginny’s definitely an older version of Jillian. They’re like two peas in a pod, aren’t they?”

  Patchett nodded. “Can you imagine if all the women in Australia were as tough as them two, sir? There wouldn’t be a man left standing in that country.”

  “I’d love to stay and watch the air show with you,” Jock said, “but duty calls. I’ve got to get back to Regiment, and I’d better hurry if I’m going to make it off this damned mountain before dark.”

  “Get some rest once you get back, sir,” Patchett replied. “You look like shit.”

  Like buoyant fans at a football game, Charlie Company and their two Australian guests looked down the backslope from their grandstand seats at OP Charlie Able, waiting for their team to score that winning touchdown.

  “Them flyboys shouldn’t have a damn bit of trouble finding those Japs this time, boys,” Patchett said. “The sky’s clear as a bell…the target coordinates are dead on. This oughta be one hell of a ball game.”

  Despite his public bravado, one sobering thought had begun to darken Melvin Patchett’s private optimism: But this is the Air Force we’re talking here…and they can still find the damnedest ways to fuck up. Shit…them prima donnas bombed our asses on Cape York and got medals for it. One of us shoulda stayed down by the Jap camp with that Very pistol. He could’ve marked the spot with a flare so them pilots couldn’t miss it. They’d pin a medal on that guy, that’s for damn sure...if we could ever find his cold, dead body.

  Charlie Company waited. And waited.

  When the sun finally dropped behind the Owen Stanleys, casting the shadows of dusk across their world, they knew that touchdown would never come.

  Somewhere, somehow, someone had dropped the ball.

  They were on their own again. Fifth Air Force wouldn’t be helping them beat the Japanese tonight.

  Lee Grossman asked, “What if those Japs come, Top? We’ll be outnumbered at least three to one.”

  Patchett replied, “We’ve got artillery…and we’ve got the high ground, Lieutenant. They don’t.”

  The hike down Astrolabe’s steep front slope had been an exhausting ordeal for men running on no sleep. To Jock and his driver, Travis Spill, reclaiming the jeep at the base of the mountain had seemed a gift from heaven. Their legs, which now felt like rubber bands ready to snap at any moment, savored the relief the little vehicle offered. Its hard canvas seats felt as good as any plush armchair.

  Night was falling across Regimental HQ as Jock and Spill drove up. Killing the jeep’s engine, Spill asked, “Can I get you some chow, sir?”

  “No, thanks,” Jock replied, “but you go ahead. Catch a little shut-eye while you have the chance, too. I know where to find you.”

  Food and sleep: Travis Spill liked the sound of that. He did an about face and shuffled off to the mess tent.

  Jock dragged his exhausted body into the HQ tent. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept for more than a few minutes. The lack of sleep had taken its toll, mentally as well as physically.

  It would have been difficult for a man at the top of his game to absorb what Colonel Hailey had to say. For a man fatigued beyond human limits, those words could incite violent rage. Or a nervous breakdown.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Jock asked, not believing what had just spilled from the colonel’s mouth.

  “You heard me, Major,” Hailey said. “I put the screws to that bombing raid you called. Division concurs with my action.”

  “But sir,” Jock said, his voice hoarse and pleading, “there’s a battalion sitting on our flank—”

  “And there’s a division to our front, Major. That’s what I’ve directed our
air assets to concentrate on…not some ghost battalion”—Hailey sneered as he said those words—“miles on the other side of some mountain only goats can cross.”

  Jock could barely stand and think, let alone debate. For him, the discussion quickly devolved to an out-of-body experience. He stood beside himself, observing and listening as his own, shrieked arguments—life and death arguments—bounced off a man who rejected every word out of hand.

  “It’s not a ghost battalion, Colonel,” Jock watched himself say. “It’s very real. I saw it, with my—”

  “I know, Major,” Hailey interrupted. “With your own eyes. That’s another problem I’m having with you. You’re running around playing scout corporal while what I really need is an operations and intelligence officer.”

  Words began to tumble from Jock’s mouth as if prerecorded, uncensored for propriety. “This regiment…this whole division…is in static defensive positions right now,” he said. “You don’t need an operations officer for the time being. There won’t be any operations until the Aussie landings influence this fucking stalemate—”

  “At ease, Major,” Colonel Hailey interrupted again. “I’d mind your tone if I were you.”

  Jock plowed on, his words coming like a runaway train. “But what you do need…and what I’ve been trying to give you…is sound intelligence on the enemy around us.”

  “This is your last warning, Major Miles,” Hailey said. “Are you quite finished?”

  Jock had no idea if he was finished or not. He hadn’t planned to say any of those things; they came out all by themselves. His psyche—rubbed raw by exhaustion and this incredibly obtuse lieutenant colonel—was refusing to bump its head against stone walls any longer. Unwisely, perhaps, it had decided to unburden itself.

  Is this the Army or some nuthouse? he asked himself. If this is the loony bin, which one of us is the loony?