“Ernie, pace off a hundred yards,” McCoy ordered. “We’ll zero for two hundred yards. We should be shooting at anywhere from fifty to a hundred fifty yards. Trajectory will be pretty flat with two-hundred-yard Zero.”
Zimmerman marched off toward the end of the clearing, found a suitable tree, and then marched back toward them, one hundred measured three-foot paces.
McCoy drew a one-inch circle in the center of a piece of typewriter paper with a grease pencil, and then filled in the center.
“Now let’s see if these things will shoot into eight inches at a hundred yards,” he said.
“We have sixty-eight rounds, period,” Everly said, then took from a musette bag four gray cheap cardboard boxes labeled ORDNANCE CORPS U.S. ARMY. TWENTY CARTRIDGES CALIBER .30-06 ARMOR PIERCING and laid them carefully on the ground. They showed signs they’d been wet; the cardboard had shrunk when it dried, and the outline of the cartridges they contained was clearly visible. McCoy picked up one of the boxes, the one that was not full.
He took a black-tipped cartridge from the box and examined it. On the base it was stamped FA 1918.
“Frankford Arsenal, 1918,” he announced. “Jesus Christ! They’re as old as I am! What makes you think these will fire? They’ve been water-soaked, God knows how many times.”
“There’s shellac over the primers,” Everly said. “Most of them work fine.”
“ ‘Most of them,’ ” McCoy said, and then turned to Captain Macklin. “Make some more targets,” he said, handing him the grease pencil.
Then he took the target, walked to the tree Zimmerman had selected, and stood for a moment frustrated. Then he took the knife strapped to his left wrist from its sheath and used it to pin the target to the tree.
Then he walked back to the line in the dirt Zimmerman had drawn with the toe of his boondockers and sat down. He unfastened the frogs of the leather sling on his rifle and converted it to a rifleman’s sling. He adjusted the sling, twice, until he was satisfied, and then rolled onto his stomach.
By this time, the others had walked up to him. He took three cartridges, loaded them into the magazine, and rammed one into the chamber with the bolt.
He took a long time finding the proper sight picture before touching off the first round. Then he chambered another round, fired, and repeated the process a third time.
“Well, at least they all went off,” he said as he rose to his feet and went to the target—removing the sling as he walked. A half-inch above the black circle and two inches to the right of it were three holes in the target. He was able to conceal them with his thumbs held together.
“Not bad,” he said.
“You going to fuck with the sights?” Zimmerman asked. “Or do it Kentucky?”
“I don’t have two inches to play with, Ernie,” McCoy said, and sat down and adjusted the rear sight so that it would move bullet impact two inches to the left.
Then he went back to the firing line, dropped back in the prone position, replaced the sling, and loaded three more cartridges into the magazine. It took him as long as the first time to find what he thought was a satisfactory sight picture, and then he squeezed one off.
This time, the result was only a dull click as the firing pin moved forward against the cartridges’ primer.
“Shit,” McCoy said bitterly. “And I fired the worst-looking ones first.”
He angrily worked the action, ejecting the malfunctioning cartridge. He looked at it in disgust. There was a clear mark where the firing pin had struck the primer. He started to throw it away in anger.
“Don’t,” Everly said. “We can use the bullet!”
McCoy looked up at him and tossed him the malfunctioning cartridge. Then he rolled back into the prone position, found a satisfactory sight picture, and squeezed the trigger. The cartridge fired, and so a moment later did the third.
He stood up and walked back to the target. Now there were two holes, which he could cover with one thumb, in the grease pencil bull’s-eye.
“OK,” he said. “Now you, Ernie.”
McCoy jerked his knife from the tree.
“How am I supposed to put my target up?” Zimmerman protested.
“You’ll think of something,” McCoy said. “You’re a gunny, right?”
“I’m not going to shoot your fucking knife,” Zimmerman said.
“You’ll think of something,” McCoy repeated.
Zimmerman affixed his target to the tree with a chrome-plated toenail clipper, then walked back to the firing line.
By the time the four marksmen—McCoy, Zimmerman, Wendlington, and Alvarez—had zeroed their rifles, the total stock of CARTRIDGES CALIBER .30-06 ARMOR PIERCING available to USFIP was down to thirty-six. Eight cartridges had misfired.
McCoy did the mental arithmetic—eight failures in thirty-two shots was one in four, twenty-five percent—but said nothing. He was sure the others could count too.
[SEVEN]
Headquarters, U.S. Forces in the Philippines
Davao Oriental Province
Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines
0815 Hours 27 January 1943
“We won’t have time to talk this all through again when we get down to the highway,” Captain McCoy said, “so this will be the last time. If there’s any question, if anybody doesn’t know exactly what he’s supposed to do, now is the time to ask, not later. So listen up.”
McCoy was sitting on—or more accurately, leaning against—the ladderlike stairs to the bachelor officers’ thatched hut on stilts. The others, again wearing their dyed-black utilities, were sitting on the ground in a half-circle facing him. Wendlington, Pierce, and the two Filipinos were wearing the spare sets of utilities the landing team had carried with them.
“There are some things we won’t know until this happens,” McCoy said. “First of all, we won’t know how many Jap trucks there will be until Everly comes down the road on his motorcycle. At least two, that’s almost for sure, and maybe as many as four or five. If there’s only two, that gives us the most trouble, because we need two trucks to move the wounded and civilians. That means we’re in trouble if one truck—or both of them—are damaged when we hit the convoy. If both trucks are knocked out, then we call the whole thing off. We grab their weapons and whatever we can get off the trucks and come back here. If one truck is knocked out, we’ll make the decision whether to call it off, or try to do with just one truck, then.
“There are four firing teams. Each team has a Springfield and nine rounds. Five in the rifle and four spares, plus two carbines, each with six fifteen-round magazines. I can’t say this enough: The less shooting the better, and the one thing we don’t want to hit is the trucks.
“There will probably be four Japs in each truck—the driver, somebody riding with him, and two soldiers in the back. The first thing we do is take out the drivers of the first and last trucks. Then the drivers of the trucks in between, and then the guards.
“I’ll fire the first shot. Nobody shoots until I do. We can’t take the chance that when he hears shooting the driver of the lead truck will step on the gas to get away. As soon as you hear my shot, start shooting. But have a target before you shoot!
“As soon as the trucks are stopped, the riflemen will take a carbine, and we’ll go on the road and make sure everybody is dead.”
“Don’t just drop the Springfields and forget them,” Everly interrupted. “I want them on the trucks before we leave!”
“Right,” McCoy said. He didn’t see any real use for the rifles without ammunition, and if each rifleman fired three shots—and five seemed most likely—before picking up a carbine, there would be four rounds left for each rifle. And Garands, and ammunition for them, would be on the Sunfish. But he knew the Springfields were important to Everly, so he went along.
“As soon as we get the trucks rolling,” McCoy went on,
“Lieutenant Everly will get back on his motorcycle and head off down the road to the wounded and civilians. And to
make sure the people on the side of the road know it’s us, and not Japanese in the trucks.
“Then we pick up our passengers and go on down the road until Everly stops us. We’ll unload the passengers and move them into the jungle. Lieutenant Alvarez’s people will then take the trucks further down the road and get rid of them. And then we wait for the Sunfish.”
He looked around his audience. No one seemed to be paying attention to him.
They’re bored, he thought. This must be the tenth time I’ve gone through this.
“Are there any questions?” McCoy asked.
There were no questions.
I think at this point that I’m supposed to say something encouraging. I can’t think of what.
“OK,” McCoy said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
He pushed himself off the ladderlike stairs and picked up his Springfield.
“Good luck, gentlemen,” Fertig called from behind him.
I was wondering where he was, and he’s been there all the time.
Their eyes met.
“See you after the war, McCoy,” General Fertig said.
“Yes, Sir,” McCoy said. He raised his hand in salute. Fertig returned it casually. McCoy did an about-face and walked to Master Sergeant Lamar, who was in the process of slinging his Springfield over his shoulder.
Lamar would lead them to the interception site north of Tarragona. Lamar met McCoy’s eyes, nodded, turned, and started off. McCoy looked over his shoulder to make sure that Macklin was behind him, and then started off after Master Sergeant Lamar.
[EIGHT]
1.7 miles north of Tarragona
Davao Oriental Province
Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines
0920 Hours 31 January 1943
In the professional judgment of Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, if there was going to be a convoy today, it would have been here by now. That meant that there would be no convoy today. That posed problems.
They had been here since shortly after noon on the twenty-ninth. It had rained on and off since their arrival, often in short, intense storms against which the crude shelters they had built offered little protection. They were soaked through each time it rained, and there was no time to get dry. After each rain, the insects came out, and they were all covered with angry welts.
He did not like to consider the effect this was having on the wounded and civilians down the road.
It was possible, of course, that the Japanese would set out from Tarragona at ten, or eleven, or for that matter at half past two in the afternoon, which meant they could not leave their concealed positions on the road and move into the jungle where they could safely make fires. All they could do was wait.
And it was entirely possible that a key element of what now was seeming less and less a clever plan—Everly’s riding down the road on his motorcycle to inform them the convoy was on the way—would go awry for a number of reasons, starting with the malfunction of the motorcycle, or a motorcycle accident, to Everly falling into the hands of the Japanese.
He found himself in the uncomfortable position of hoping that Everly had been killed. Better that than falling into the hands of the Japanese. McCoy had seen enough of Japanese techniques of interrogation to know that no man had the ability—courage had nothing to do with it—to deny Japanese interrogators anything they wanted to know.
He was deep in this depressing chain of thought when he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of a motorcycle engine.
Then, behind him, he heard the action of a carbine, and turned to look at Macklin.
“What are you going to do, shoot Everly?” McCoy asked sarcastically, and was immediately sorry.
This is not the time to jump all over Macklin; what I should be doing is reassuring him. I will very likely need the sonofabitch.
Macklin looked at him like a kicked puppy.
“Don’t fire that thing until I shoot,” McCoy said, then rose to his feet and stood behind a tree that gave him a good look at the road.
Two minutes later Everly appeared, looking from side to side as he rode very slowly down the road.
McCoy stepped from the behind the tree so that Everly could see him.
When he did, Everly cut the motorcycle’s engine and coasted up to McCoy.
“They should be about ten minutes behind me,” Everly said. “Four trucks. All the guards are in the last truck.”
“Go hide the bike,” McCoy ordered.
Everly kicked the engine to life. The noise now seemed deafening.
McCoy turned to Macklin.
“Did you hear that? Four trucks? All the guards in the last one?”
Macklin nodded.
“You stay here. I’ll pass the word to the others.”
Macklin visibly did not like the idea of being left alone, but he nodded his understanding.
McCoy went onto the shoulder of the road. Lieutenant Alvarez, late of the Philippine Scouts, and Lieutenant Lewis, late aide-de-camp to Rear Admiral Wagam, stood up in the positions across the road.
“We heard him,” Alvarez said.
“I’m going to pass the word to them,” McCoy said, gesturing down the road to where Pierce, Lamar, Zimmerman, and Wedlington were in position, “to take out all the guards as soon as I start shooting.”
Alvarez nodded, and McCoy trotted farther down the road.
When he returned to his position, McCoy didn’t see Macklin. After a moment, he found him. He was five yards deeper inside the thick jungle than he had to be, in a squatting position behind a large tree.
Resisting the urge to tell him to get back where he had placed him, McCoy walked to him, took the spare carbine and two magazines from him, and went back to the position he had selected for himself.
He put the Springfield sling on his arm, carefully examined his stock of nine cartridges, and loaded into the rifle the five that had the best chance of firing.
The sound of the Japanese truck engines began to be heard just a minute later, far sooner than the ten minutes Everly had predicted. McCoy worked the Springfield’s bolt and made sure the safety was off.
The driver of the first truck that appeared was hunched over the wheel, resting both arms on it. The soldier beside him seemed to be sleeping.
McCoy found a sight picture, the front blade of his sight on the Japanese’s nose. He took a deep breath, let half of it out, and squeezed the trigger.
The Springfield slammed into his shoulder. Without thinking about it, McCoy chambered another round.
The Japanese driver seemed to jerk erect, then slumped farther over the wheel. The truck continued down the road, not slowing at all. McCoy’s front sight found the other, now wide-awake, Japanese, and he squeezed off another round.
Nothing.
Furiously, he chambered a third cartridge and searched for a sight picture. He found one, but just as his finger tightened on the trigger, the head of the second Japanese jerked violently to the side.
Lieutenant Alvarez had also found a suitable sight picture.
McCoy moved his eyes to the second truck. The driver had slammed on the brakes and seemed to be trying to push the steering wheel away from him. McCoy found his nose with his front blade sight and squeezed off a round. The Springfield slammed reassuringly against his shoulder. When he found the Japanese again, he immediately lost that sight picture as the truck veered off the road and slammed into a large tree. McCoy searched for the front-seat passenger, and again, as he tightened his finger on the trigger, his target seemed to explode.
Lieutenant Alvarez, McCoy thought approvingly, knows how to shoot.
And then he became aware of many gunshots.
He tore off the Springfield sling and picked up the carbine, chambering a round as he did so.
He heard movement behind him, and turned to see Macklin coming out of the jungle, holding the carbine as a hunter holds a shotgun. He moved past McCoy as if he didn’t see him.
McCoy’s attention was diverted by a crunchi
ng sound, and he looked toward the sound. The first truck had driven off the road and into a tree.
The engine stalled.
McCoy jumped to his feet and ran down the road toward it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chambers Lewis start after him.
They reached the truck at about the same time. Both Japanese were beyond question dead. They rested their carbines against the fender and, with what seemed like an extraordinary amount of effort, pulled both bodies from the truck.
McCoy crawled behind the wheel, put the transmission in neutral, and cranked the engine. After a moment’s hesitation, it caught. He and Chambers grinned at one another.
McCoy backed the truck onto the road. Apparently, it was undamaged. He got from behind the wheel and looked back up the road.
Captain Robert B. Macklin, USMC, was moving among the bodies on the road, shooting each one in the head with his carbine.
[NINE]
Site Sugar
Davao Oriental Province
Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines
0001 Hours 6 February 1943
With some difficulty, Captain Robert B. Macklin, USMC, read the luminous hands on his wristwatch. The hour and minute hands pointed at midnight; the second hand clicked past thirty-five seconds.
“Columbus, Columbus, this is Coffin, Coffin,” the radio hissed.
“Right on schedule,” Captain Macklin whispered.
McCoy ignored him. “Read you five by five, Coffin, go ahead,” he said to his microphone. He stood up and shined a flashlight out to sea, two long flashes and then two short ones.
“We have your light,” the radio hissed. “What are surf conditions?”
“Your boats can land.”
“Give us five, I say again, five, minutes and another light.”
“Acknowledge,” McCoy said, then let the microphone drop to the length of its cord and looked at his watch.
“Right on schedule,” Macklin repeated.
Behind the Lines Page 55
