“And a mighty big one, Lieutenant!” Colonel Baxter suddenly spoke at his elbow. “But that’s what the others will have to do. Blast the Japs out. Every last one of them. Blast them out, and have the troops give the cold steel to any stragglers. Yes, it will be a big job. It would be nice to be able to help...then.”
The Colonel stopped abruptly and turned toward the door of his office.
“But this isn’t then, it’s now!” he said harshly. “Let’s go inside and wait. Only thing we can do. It’s up to the Japs to make the next move. And they won’t make it until they’re darn good and ready, the cunning devils.”
The two youths followed him inside, and it was then that Randall remembered the copilot, Lieutenant Wilson.
“What about Wilson, sir?” he asked. “Did you hear anything from the doctor?”
Colonel Baxter looked up from his desk and nodded toward the south.
“Wilson is aboard that plane,” he said. “And the medico, too. Wilson can be pulled through, and we’ll have enough medical men to handle the wounded here. Major Sparkes was listed to go out on that plane, anyway. He gave Wilson a transfusion, and decided he could weather the trip south. So I gave orders for Wilson to be taken along. You trained airmen don’t grow on bushes. And it’s my belief that air power will decide this war. I suppose that sounds strange coming from a man who’s been infantry close to thirty years, eh?”
“No, sir,” Randall replied instantly. “It simply shows that you realize every branch of service has its place in this war.”
“Yes, every branch does,” the Colonel said. “But air power is at the top of the list. Now, if I were only about twenty-five years younger, maybe I’d...”
The senior officer smiled faintly and finished the rest of his sentence with a wave of his hand. And with that the three of them lapsed into silence, each seemingly quite content to mull over his own thoughts. Presently the silence, but mostly the sense of complete inactivity, began to get under Randall’s skin. With the Japanese liable to strike at most any moment he could not understand how Colonel Baxter was content to sit in his blacked-out office and stare into space. He started to speak, but on second thought checked himself. After all, the defense of Negros was not one bit of his business.
Colonel Baxter caught the movement of his lips, as he glanced his way. “Something bothering you, Lieutenant?” he asked.
Randall flushed slightly and licked his lips.
“Well, not exactly, sir,” he said, and hesitated. “It’s...well, it’s just that it seems strange to be sitting here cooling our heels when at any moment the Japs may let go at us. Don’t misunderstand me, sir. I frankly know little or nothing about the infantry end of war. I was just wondering, that’s all.”
“We’ve done all we can with what we have.” The Colonel nodded at the two field phones on his desk. “Those phones are the nerve center of our defenses. My men and officers are stationed at points all about the island. If an attack is made on any given point I’ll be informed within five seconds. And then I’ll act accordingly. That’s why I must wait here. There isn’t anything else that I can do. I’ve talked to my men. They know how I feel. If I should go fluttering about from post to post it would just make them more jittery. That’s the toughest job in all of the infantry routine, Lieutenant. To wait for the other fellow to start things. To wait for him, because you haven’t got the men or the equipment to take the initiative. Yes, to wait...and hope that the unexpected won’t be pulled on you.”
The Colonel hardly had stopped talking when from outside came a savage burst of rifle fire instantly followed by shrill screaming that made the hair stand up straight on Red Randall’s head. For a long second he could not move. He stared in stupefaction at Colonel Baxter’s blood-drained face. And then, with the suddenness of an exploding bomb, one of the field telephones jangled harshly.
Quick as a flash the Colonel scooped it up and put the receiver to his ear. He barked half a dozen words into the mouthpiece and then virtually flung the instrument down on the desk top and leaped to his feet.
“And the unexpected did happen!” he shouted above the crackle of gunfire from somewhere out on the flying field. “A party of the devils filtered through Post Ten. Must have swum ashore from their boats. You want to help? Okay. Grab a gun off the wall and follow me. But stick close. We’ve mined the field, and some of the mines may be touched off.”
As the Colonel snapped out the words he waved a hand at a wall rack of portable machine guns. Both Randall and Joyce leaped over and took down a gun and a handful of filled cartridge clips that they jammed into their pockets. Then they whirled and dived after the Colonel who was already on his way outside. The instant they hit the darkness they could see the stabbing jets of flame far up at the other end of the landing strip. A land mine went off and in the furious red-orange flash of light Randall saw the party of fifty or more Japanese soldiers racing like madmen straight across the field. A number of their devil brothers in arms had gone sky high with the exploding land nine, but that did not stop the rest. They came charging forward, screaming like maniacs and shooting their guns at anything and everything that was in front of them.
A heavy hand came down like a ton of bricks on Randall’s shoulder.
“On your belly!” Colonel Baxter thundered. “You want a stray bullet to clip you? Down on your belly, and shoot low. Aim at their legs. Now! Let them have it, the dirty devils!”
The charging group of the enemy was being sprayed with fire from both sides of the field, but they kept charging straight toward the spot where Colonel Baxter, Randall, and Joyce hugged the ground. It was as though the Japanese had been hypnotized by their officers and told to head for just one point, regardless of what happened. Hunched over, and in close-packed formation, they came on. Bullets from the flanking fires cut into them and sent man after man spinning on his face. But still the survivors charged straight for Colonel Baxter’s office.
The pounding in his ears and the savage vibration of his gun told Randall that he was slamming his own kind of death into that charging band of maniacs. Yet in a crazy sort of way it all seemed like a mad dream. He was not living this business of hugging the ground and slamming slugs into legs and bodies racing straight at him. He was simply dreaming it.
But it was no mad dream. As though to prove that fact, a bullet hit the ground two yards in front of him and ricocheted up past his left cheek so close that he could feel its heat. And then a fountain of red, orange, and yellow fire belched up out of the ground just in front of the charging Japanese.
For long seconds Randall could see nothing but dazzling flame that seemed to sting the very skin of his face. And then the light faded, and Red saw a huge hole ringed by dead Japanese soldiers. Not one of them was left alive. Randall closed his eyes for an instant and swallowed hard. He had ceased firing, but he had not the slightest idea whether it had been before, at the time, or after the explosion of the land mine that he had released the pressure of his trigger finger.
“The fools, the mad fools!” he suddenly heard his own lips speaking. “They...they were just asking for it!”
“And, please God, we can give it to them every time, just like that!” Colonel Baxter spoke harshly at his side. “But it won’t be. That’s their style. A suicide bunch to test us out. When they come the next time, there will be plenty of them. Either of you hit? I heard a couple of ricochets whine by.”
“Not me, sir,” Randall said, and suddenly shivered a little. “But one of them was close enough.”
“I’m all right,” Jimmy Joyce spoke up. “I only hope I got as many of them as I think I did.”
“For pilots you both did all right,” Colonel Baxter said with a twisted grin, and pushed up on his knees. “Well, that’s another round we win. They’ll wait awhile now. Meantime I’ve got to take a look around. If they can ease by Post Ten, they can ease by the other posts. You two had better go back to the office. I’ll send Captain Parsons over to keep you company. In case l
ookout rings, Parsons will know where to reach me in a hurry. Good shooting, and thanks, Lieutenants. I won’t be long.”
Back in the office once more both Randall and Joyce sank down on the box chairs as though their legs had suddenly been kicked out from under them. Reaction to the short but sharp battle settled with a rush, and for several minutes neither had the desire to speak. They just sat staring silently at each other’s grimy and smoke-blotched faces.
“Gosh!” Red eventually gulped and pressed a hand to his stomach. “This infantry business sort of gets you down here, doesn’t it? The way those fools ran straight into our fire was like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“It wasn’t nice,” Jimmy said with a shake of his head. “But I can’t say I’m sorry for a darn one of them. I only wish there were ten times the number that there were!”
“No, and thank heavens there weren’t,” Randall corrected. “They would have trampled all over us. Good gosh! Even that small bunch were too darn close when somebody set off that mine. Dropping like flies, but still enough left to keep on coming. Don’t look right now, but I’m still scared pink, if you want the truth. And... Holy smoke! Where did the time go? You see what time it is, Jimmy? Fifteen to midnight. It can’t be! Why it was only a couple of minutes ago that...! Hey! Your watch says the same?”
“It does!” Jimmy Joyce breathed and lifted wide eyes to meet Randall’s. “Two hours since we last checked? It doesn’t seem possible!”
“That scrap must have taken longer than we thought,” Red murmured. “Fifteen minutes to midnight. Fifteen minutes more to wait.”
He stared at the two telephones on the desk. Neither phone bell rang, and the hands on his watch moved around the dial to ten minutes of midnight, to five minutes.
A clammy coldness stole through Randall, and his heart began to pound. If the Sea King did not show up, there would be no way to inform Colonel Denton that they were doomed on Negros. The Colonel would never know that they did not board the Sea King. He would journey to Chungking and wait there in vain. When he would finally give them up for lost it might be too late to establish other means of contact with Agent Six at Takahara. Perhaps by then Agent Six’s vital information would be of no value at all. Too late again...and another Japanese knife blow in Uncle Sam’s back.
Red looked at the palm of his right hand, at the tiny blue dot impregnated in the skin between the third and fourth fingers. He would carry that dot to his grave, Colonel Denton had said. To a grave on Negros, with Japanese machine-gun bullets in his heart? And what about the two envelopes of sealed orders that he carried next to his skin? The envelope for the Sea King’s commander and the one for General Ling Chan. Would he ever deliver them, or would they occupy a Negros grave with him?
“It’s midnight, Red. I guess we can stop hoping.”
Jimmy Joyce’s voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away. Randall lifted his eyes and looked at the bitterness and disappointment stamped all over his friend’s face. A great lump rose up in his throat and he choked it back.
“Yes, midnight,” he said. “But we can’t stop hoping, Jimmy. The Sea King could be a few minutes late. Besides, maybe our watches are fast. And...I wonder where that Captain Parsons is Colonel Baxter said he would send over.”
“Who knows?” young Joyce grunted gloomily. “Who knows anything in this cockeyed mix-up?”
Just then the blackout curtain over the door was flung back, and an unshaven and tired-eyed infantry captain came bursting inside.
“I’m Parsons!” he snapped. “Colonel Baxter sent me to collect you two. Come along. We’ve got to make it fast. The Sea King is in the cove.”
“The Sea King?” Randall fairly shouted as he leaped to his feet.
“That’s what I said!” the Captain barked. “Step on it, please. I’ll take you there...unless the Japs have cut us off. Come on!”
“You mean another attack?” Randall asked as he went through the curtained door at the Captain’s heels.
“Just that, and it’s the real business this time,” the other told him. “But save your breath, both of you. You’re going to need it for running. Stick close!”
The Captain started off through the darkness as though he were doing an Olympic quarter mile, and he held to the pace. Randall pounded along in the Captain’s footsteps. Just a pace behind Randall came Jimmy Joyce. Firing had broken out far to the south of the flying field. Every now and then Red caught the flash of an exploding shell. Cold hate boiled up within him, and his heart ached for the brave Yanks and Filipinos who were facing that Japanese pounding. A sense of shame flooded through him that he should be actually running away from the fighting.
Half a dozen times the Captain swerved sharply to the right or to the left. The man seemed to have cat’s eyes, for he missed every palm tree and every rock, whereas Randall came within an ace of breaking a leg or his neck several times.
Finally the Captain swerved for the last time, half slid and half fell down a short embankment to a stretch of hard-packed sand. Randall and Joyce came down practically on top of him, and then the trio ran up the strip of packed sand to where three figures stood silently waiting.
“Here they are, Colonel,” the Captain gasped. “I think I’d better get right back to my company. The firing is pretty heavy to the south. Doesn’t sound so good.”
“It isn’t, so get going, Parsons.” Colonel Baxter’s voice spoke grimly in the darkness. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Give the order to save the mines for the last ditch stand. Good luck.”
“Yes, sir,” the Captain said, then whirled around and was gone.
“This is Commander Tracey of the Sea King, Lieutenants Randall and Joyce,” the Colonel spoke again and nodded to a tall figure at his side. “He’ll take charge of you now. I happened to be here when his boat carne in so I sent Captain Parsons after you instead of ringing you up. You didn’t know the way here, anyway. Get into the dinghy here, and good luck to both of you.”
“This way,” Commander Tracey spoke and took hold of Randall’s arm. “Step easy, though. It’s canvas, not wood. Lend a hand, Keyes.”
The third figure of the group stepped forward to guide Randall into the half-beached dinghy, but the Yank pilot held back for an instant and turned to Colonel Baxter.
“I feel like a heel, leaving this way, sir,” he blurted out. “Maybe Joyce and I should stay and help.”
“No,” the Colonel said quietly, though he pressed Randall’s arm in a gesture of heartfelt appreciation. “You have your orders, Lieutenants, and I have mine. And orders are orders. Just think of my boys every time you see a Jap and let him have it where it counts. We’ll be counting on you doing that. Now, so long, and good luck.”
“So long, sir,” Red Randall said as a great lump clogged in his throat. “We’ll never forget you, sir. Never.”
Colonel Baxter turned away and ran back along the beach. Two minutes later the dinghy came alongside the sleek huh of the Sea King a few hundred yards out. Randall turned and stared back at the blackness that was Negros Island and at the faint red glow of the battle raging over on the far side. Tears stung the backs of his eyes, and he impulsively clenched both hands into rock-hard fists.
“A sacred promise to you fellows!” he whispered softly. “We’ll come back some day, lots of us, and drive them into the sea. You will not die in vain, we promise you!”
Chapter Nine – Surprise Party
DARKNESS. BLACK, PITCH darkness.
To Red Randall standing on the conning tower bridge of the Sea King it seemed as though he had not seen the true light of day for years and years. It was as though he had been living in a world of blue battle lights and dark nights ever since he could remember. Five nights and four days had dragged by since he had said “so long” to Colonel Baxter on the beach of Negros. But so far as he was concerned he had lost all track of time. He was just living in a world of waiting, and hoping and praying. He was so utterly sick of the stuffy insides of a submarine that he ne
ver wanted to see one again as long as he lived. His nerves were ragged from the seemingly endless waiting, and it took much of his will power not to flare up at anybody who so much as spoke to him.
But he was not alone in the way he felt, and that at least was a little consolation. He knew that Jimmy Joyce was on edge; in fact, so was everybody aboard the Sea King. They all were living on nerve, and perhaps even borrowed time. Only their training and their sense of loyalty and duty held them in check.
It is not a particularly pleasant experience to steal and creep through waters that are practically alive with enemy surface craft seeking you out for horrible destruction, or to lay on the bottom for hours while enemy aircraft circle in the air above, dumping bombs that make your boat shake and tremor from stem to stern. But the Sea King and her crew had weathered it through. Now, on the fifth night, she was standing off a little point of land that jutted out into the Yellow Sea from Kiaochow.
“I guess you’ll be mighty glad to be rid of us, Commander,” Randall tried to say lightly to the Sea King’s officer at his side.
“Frankly, I will,” the Commander replied. “But not because we haven’t enjoyed having you two as passengers. It’s simply because this is our last run of this kind. We’re going back to Pearl Harbor for complete overhauling, and then off on some other assignment. It’s not much fun to play ferry boat and have to pass up some awfully tempting targets. I certainly don’t envy the boys that take over this job. Oh, it’s all right for a few times. You do get a kick out of fooling the Japs in their own home waters. But after two or three times you get sick of it. You want more than ever to slap a couple into them and watch them sink. On this kind of assignment you can’t do that, unless, of course, you get trapped and there isn’t anything else to do. No, I won’t be sorry at all when you two start ashore in the dinghy and we can head back. Naturally, though, I wish you the best of luck at whatever job you’re on.”
Red Randall Over Tokyo Page 6
