“Maybe not, and I sure hope and pray they don’t,” Randall said with a worried frown. “But think this over for a moment, Jimmy. The Japs know that he is going to make a break. And maybe MacArthur doesn’t know that they know. The Japs have flocks of destroyers and cruisers in these waters. Supposing they threw up a blockade and MacArthur ran smack into it too late? It would be goodbye for keeps. It...”
Randall suddenly cut himself off short and turned to John Smith.
“What about that Jap plane?” he asked. “It did land on that place you and your men cleared off, didn’t it?”
“Yes, the airplane is there,” the big black said, and smiled. “I told you that two high-ranking officers arrived in it.”
“Hell, yes!” Randall cried and slapped a hand to his forehead. “Of course you did. But, tell me, is it guarded? Do you think my friend and I stand a chance of stealing it?”
The black shook his head.
“There are no guards,” John Smith said, “but there are Japanese working on it, and they have guns. Perhaps when they are through they will go away and leave it. But perhaps the two high officers will then get into the plane and fly away.”
“I see what you mean,” Randall said sadly. “Tell me this. How far is it to the plane from where we are right now?”
“Ten minutes’ walking time,” John Smith replied instantly. “But their camp is in between, and so you would have to go around it. That might take an hour or more. Besides, the Japs might see you. I forgot to tell you—they believe that the pilot of your plane is on the island. And they have sent out searching parties. It would be too dangerous for you to leave this cave now. You must wait until they have given up the search.”
“Hey, but what about this cave!” Jimmy Joyce gasped. “It...!”
“Then you did not notice when Tonga brought you here?” John Smith asked gently. “It does not look like a cave from the outside. Do not worry. The Japs will not find it. I do not think they will search for very long. It will soon be night, and they do not care to leave their camp when it is dark. No, you must remain here for a while. It would not help anything to get killed by the Japs. In Australia I heard a man say, ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ And he was right. Always tomorrow is another day.”
“Sure, sure!” Randall said bitterly. “But sometimes it works the other way around. Sometimes tomorrow is too late.”
“It is never too late when a man’s life is saved,” John Smith said gravely.
Randall nodded, but did not make a comment. He realized that John Smith spoke the truth, but the cave had suddenly become a place unbearable. Of course it was his almost frantic desire for action, and his utter helpless state, that caused him to feel as he did.
“Supposing we could get to that plane, Red?” Jimmy Joyce’s voice cut through his rambling thoughts. “What then? Where would we head? Davao? Maybe the Japs have reached there, too.”
“Where would we head?” Randall echoed and looked at him. “Not south to Davao, that’s a cinch. Up north to Bataan, of course. To Bataan to find General MacArthur and tell him that the Japs are wise to his plan to escape to Australia. He could change his plans then and outwit the enemy. Holy smoke, Jimmy! Maybe the Japs have already spread a net that not even a fly could get through, or even a minnow swim through. Bataan, of course. What else?”
“Nothing, of course,” Jimmy Joyce murmured. “And to think that the Jap plane is just ten minutes’ walk from here! It...”
Young Joyce choked on the rest and fell silent. Red Randall nodded miserably, bit his lip, and said nothing. And the two big blacks stared at them somber-eyed.
Chapter Thirteen – One Less
THERE WAS NO sound save that of heavy breathing in the cave where the two Yank pilots and the two natives sat on the damp dirt floor, waiting for night to fall. As the hours dragged past, the only thing that made it possible for Randall to hold himself in check, to prevent himself from going absolutely haywire, was the certain knowledge that Jimmy Joyce was suffering every bit as much as he was. A quick glance every now and then at Joyce’s pale, strained face gave him proof enough of that fact. And the way he kept locking and unlocking his fingers about his jackknifed knees showed that Jimmy was just as tense as he was, and if Jimmy could hold himself in, then, doggone it, he could, too!
But it was indescribable torture. Then suddenly the more or less quiet of the jungle outside the cave entrance was shattered by the sound of the Japanese plane’s engine starting up. Randall cocked one ear in the direction of the sound.
“Testing it, or about to take off?” he asked himself aloud. “If that plane goes, we’re sunk for keeps.”
“It may return again tomorrow,” John Smith said quietly. “Perhaps it leaves to get more news of all that is to happen.”
“Maybe!” Randall said sharply. “But if they’ve got that radio all set up, they don’t need a plane to bring them news. Jimmy! I’ve had enough of this. How about you?”
Young Joyce stared at him with a faint frown on his brows.
“What do you mean, Red?” he asked.
“Sticking here in this cave and waiting!” Randall said hoarsely. “Waiting for what? Tonight? Tomorrow morning? And while maybe our only hope, that plane, takes off and is flown away for good? I’ve had enough of it, Jimmy. I say, let’s do something. Doggone it, anything is better than this. I’ll have the screaming meemies in another minute!”
“Don’t, for the love of Mike!” Jimmy Joyce groaned. “I’d join you at the drop of the first scream. But what the heck can we do, Red? If the Japs have searching parties out, we might simply walk straight into a hail of bullets.”
“Well, at least that would be something!” Randall retorted. Then turning to John Smith, he said, “We can’t stay here any longer. There’s too much at stake. We’ve got to try at least to get away from here. Will you lead us as close as you can to the landing strip? You can drop us there, and we’ll go the rest of the way alone.”
The big black did not speak for a long minute. He stared hard at Randall’s face as though trying to figure out the thoughts behind his words. Then suddenly he sighed.
“When a white man wishes to be a fool,” he said sadly, “it is useless to speak of danger. He becomes deaf and does not hear. I have told you it is dangerous to leave here now, but you do not hear me. So I will not say it again. Yes, I will send Tonga back to our camp, and I will lead you through the jungle to the plane. Americans are my friends. They will some day bring peace where there is now only a terrible war. If I can help a little, then I must help. I will speak to Tonga, and then we will go.”
“Thanks, John Smith!” Randall said and touched his ann. “You’re okay. And we won’t forget you, you can bet.”
The big black looked at him grave-faced and silent for a moment. Then he turned away and moved over to where Tonga sat holding his needle-pointed spear. He spoke to him in a low voice. Tonga grunted just once, and without turning his black eyes toward Randall and Jimmy Joyce, he slid out of the cave like a shadow and was gone.
John Smith stood up, nodded at the two pilots, and reached a hand down inside the belt of his trousers. He pulled out the most wicked-looking knife Randall had ever seen, and for a brief instant his heart stopped beating. But John Smith simply took a better grip on the handle of the knife and nodded once more.
“Follow me,” he said. “One behind the other. Make not a sound. When I stop, you stop. Do not even breathe. When I move, you move, too. Come!”
During the next half-hour Randall experienced all the sensations of living in the middle of a weird, crazy dream. Nothing at all seemed real, or even approaching reality. Several times he scratched his hands on bush thorns, as he bellied his way through dense jungle with the bottoms of John Smith’s big black feet no more than six inches from his nose. Within a few minutes after they had left the cave, they no longer heard the sounds of the bushwhacking Japanese. They themselves made hardly a sound as they wormed their circuitous way around the enemy c
amp.
In a little while they were even out of earshot of the beating throb of the Japanese aircraft engine. No one spoke a word. The two boys were soaking wet with perspiration. They crawled on and on. And then, for the, dozenth time, John Smith stopped and held up a warning finger. For a long moment the three remained motionless, scarcely breathing. Then John Smith twisted around until he was head to head with Randall.
“The airplane is two hundred steps from here,” John Smith whispered. “We have passed their camp, but there is still the radio station. It is between us and the landing strip.”
“Okay,” Randall whispered back, and was a little surprised that his stiff lips could form the word. “Then let’s crawl around it.”
But John Smith frowned and shook his head.
“We cannot crawl around it,” he said. “On one side there are many Japs. Raise your head a little and you can see them. And on the other side is a swamp. We could not crawl through it. No man could. It is my fault. I did not know they had decided to build their radio station at a new place.”
Bracing his two hands on the ground, Red slowly inched his head upward until he could peer through a place where the jungle growth was no quite so thick, yet thick enough to hide him from other eyes.
No more than forty yards away was a small nipa hut. Above it a three piece bamboo radio antenna mast extended up beyond the topmost branches of the jungle trees. The spot was a bit of ground that sloped off gradually all around. Twenty or more Japanese, stripped to the waist, were working both inside and outside the nipa but. It did not take a second glance for Randall to see that they were setting up radio equipment and a small power station to operate the equipment. Oddly enough he could not hear a sound, though he could see plainly that the Japanese were chattering to one another. He guessed it was because the heavy jungle growth soundproofed that particular spot.
For a moment he stared at the figures, and then looked beyond the rise of ground where a section of the cleared landing strip was visible. And so, also, was the rear half of the Jap Mitsubishi fighter. From the set of the plane’s elevators, and from the fact that no eddies of dust or dirt were swirling back, he could tell that the engine had been silenced. It probably had been run up for a rev test, and that thought brought back a little hope. But that hope died instantly when he moved his gaze to the right of the rise of ground where John Smith had said there was a swamp. The swamp certainly was there. He could see the little patches of green muck-covered water. And he was forced to admit to himself that to try to pass through that place was to meet death from drowning, or from the bullet of a Japanese gun.
Japanese in front, and Japanese to the left. And a deadly swamp to the right. That was the picture that confronted Randall. As he sank back to the jungle floor he met the inquiring gaze of Jimmy Joyce. He shook his head dejectedly. The big black man seemed to understand Red’s feeling of hopelessness.
“We must go back!” the chief whispered. “We must go back, or wait here until it is dark. It will be dark in another two hours. If they do not have too many lights, perhaps we can slip by those working Japanese.”
Two hours? Two hours to hug the ground and do nothing. Randall groaned inwardly, lowered his eyes before John Smith’s steady gaze, and clenched his teeth hard. Well, there was nothing to do but wait...and like it. Maybe!
“Okay, we wait,” he whispered to John Smith.
The decision was made, but the gods of war, or tough luck, or whatever you want to call them, were still to be reckoned with. A lone Japanese. Just one man out of all the Japanese in the world happened at that instant to see something in a tree above the three ground-hugging men that caught his interest. He walked over from the nipa radio hut, plunged into the jungle growth, and suddenly came to a halt several feet from John Smith. For a full second nobody moved.
And then John Smith leaped up like a charging bolt of black lightning. The hand holding his knife lunged out, but once again tough luck took a hand in the grim play. John Smith tripped, lost his balance, and fell crashing to the ground. The lone Japanese man’s mouth opened to scream forth a wild cry of alarm, and his brown right hand tugged viciously at the automatic holstered at his belt. Maybe one split second, maybe two, but during that flash of time Red Randall was in wild, reckless motion. He came up off the ground and dived headlong at the Japanese, both arms flung out in front of him. Maybe the man saw him coming and half crouched. Or maybe he dropped into a crouch to aim his gun the better. Anyway, Randall’s head did not crash into the pit of his stomach. Instead it caught the Japanese in the throat, under the chin, and snapped his head back with terrific force.
At the same instant he locked both arms about the man’s head as Tojo’s little warrior went flying over backwards. He hit the ground with Randall on top of him. His head was twisted far to one side, and in spite of the roaring in his brain, Randall heard the sickening crunch of the man’s neck breaking. The blood in Red’s veins seemed to turn to water. He could do nothing but close his eyes tight, grit his teeth hard, and keep his arms locked about the man’s twisted head and neck, and struggle weakly to beat off the wave of black oblivion that came sweeping in at him from all sides. And then close at hand he heard Jimmy’s excited whisper:
“Anyway, one rat less!”
A moment later something hit him a terrific wallop, and it was lights out for Red Randall.
Chapter Fourteen – Clay Pigeons
A VIOLENT SNEEZE that shook Lieutenant Red Randall from head to foot brought him back to consciousness and snapped his eyes open. Bright light instantly hurt his eyes, and he closed them both immediately. A dozen assorted pains and aches in his body began to make themselves felt. He groaned. Then he tried the experiment of opening one eye.
He kept it open and stared up at a thatched roof. A very poorly thatched roof it was, because sunlight was streaming through a dozen or more cracks. Then he opened the other eye, and decided to try to sit up. He was on his back, of course, on some kind of coarse woven mat. Above him was a thatched roof held up by four corner posts, but there were no walls.
Bracing himself with one hand, he started to push slowly up to a sitting position when four things happened in rapid succession. First, a rifle cracked. Second, a bullet sang past his cheek so close he could almost feel its hot breath. Third, a hand slapped his shoulder and knocked him flat. And fourth, Jimmy Joyce’s voice cried out in sharp warning.
“Stay flat, Red! The dirty devils are playing shooting gallery!”
He remained on his back for a few seconds until he regained his breath. Then he rolled over on his right side, and gaped owl-eyed at Jimmy Joyce sprawled out on his stomach a few feet away.
“Come again, Jimmy?” he said thickly. “What shooting gallery? And who smacked you in the eye?”
Young Joyce impulsively moved a hand to a puffed-up and very black and blue right eye, but jerked it away before he touched it.
“The Japs are playing clay pigeon with us, Red,” he said. “A dozen of them out there with rifles. Get up off this floor and they drill one by real close. They think it’s swell fun, the dirty rats. And if they come better than real close, so what? A big laugh for them. So stay down. They won’t shoot unless you stick your head up. How do you feel?”
“Like the wrath of God!” Randall groaned. “What happened? And where are we? What is this place? A cow shed?”
Jimmy Joyce wormed over a bit closer, and tried to give Randall a cheerful smile. With his black eye he looked more as though he were trying to scare small children.
“An unfinished nipa hut, Red,” he explained. “The floor is on bamboo stilts. The natives keep their cows and pigs underneath. Only the Japs have their pigs under this one. Can’t you smell them?”
“Both!” Randall said grimly. “The pigs and the Japs! But what...? No, hold it! It all comes back, now. A Jap stumbled on us, and everything went boom. But where’s John Smith? Did they get him? And what was that explosion? It sounded like the end of the world. And what...?”
“Come out of your spin, will you?” Jimmy Joyce interrupted. “One question at a time, man! Besides, I don’t know everything. I guess your explosion must have been that Jap’s gun going off. I remember seeing it up close to your ear. It brought the others on the run. I tried to get the gun of the Jap you had killed, but they jumped on me before I was even close.”
“And John Smith?” Randall asked as young Joyce paused to nod with grim satisfaction.
“He skipped out, Red,” Joyce said quietly. “He wiggled through the jungle and was gone. I don’t think the Japs even knew he was there. The big stiff, leaving us cold that way! I came to here about ten minutes before you did. The Japs took two pot shots at me before I got sense enough to stay down. Guess that’s why they didn’t tie us up or shoot us on the spot. So they could have fun, the swine!”
Red Randall nodded absently. He was suddenly sick and cold all over because of the thought that had flashed through his mind. Had John Smith really sold them out to the Japanese? Had he pulled that creeping act, and that tripping stunt as he was about to knife the lone Japanese, just to make it look good? But why? Why take all that time? Why come back to the cave? It didn’t make sense!
“It doesn’t make sense unless John Smith suddenly decided that to help us would be the finish for him and his natives,” he spoke aloud. “Maybe he decided he was in too deep, that we didn’t stand a chance. So he took the best way out to save his own hide. Did he send Tonga to tell the Japs what we were going to try to do? Was that stuff about not knowing they had moved the radio station just a lot of bunk for our benefit?”
“So, what does it matter, Red?” Jimmy Joyce said wearily. “John Smith has done the disappearing act, and we’re here. That’s what it adds up to. Now, would you like to see a pretty sight, my out-of-luck friend?”
The bitterness and despair in Jimmy Joyce’s voice should have warned Randall, but it didn’t.
Red Randall on Active Duty Page 8