“Not see them, John Smith, hear them,” Randall explained. “The destroyers have...well, machinery that can hear the sound a boat makes going through the water. It can pick up sounds of engines and propellers and locate a ship’s exact position. Flares dropped from the plane in that area will give them a lighted up target to shoot at. Those Yank boats will be caught cold. Even their high speed won’t take them out of that kind of a trap. I... John Smith, you’ve got to help us. You’ve got to! And look, why did you run away last night when...?”
“So that I would still be alive today,” the big black interrupted. “Had I been caught they would have shot me. They would also have shot all my men. Then there would have been nobody alive today to help you. But we are alive, and we are going to help you. I have spoken with my men. They do not wish to be slaves any longer. They wish to fight the Japanese for their freedom, even if it means death. So we will fight the Japanese, and while we fight, you and your friend will escape. You will find your great General MacArthur and warn him of the Japanese destroyers that wait in Mindanao Strait. You must not let the Japanese capture him.”
A feeling of self-shame swept through Randall, and for a moment he was too choked up inside to speak. For the second time he had had moments of doubt about John Smith, and for the second time the black man had proved that he was loyal to them and wanted only to help. And now he and his men were going to help, even though it might mean death. It was indeed true that the color of a man’s skin had nothing to do with what was in his heart.
“You’re going to fight the Japs, John Smith?” he whispered through the matting. “But how? You told us that you did not have any guns.”
“We have the guns, now, a few of them,” came the quiet reply. “And we will get more before the fight is over. But listen to me. When there is much shouting and shooting, and much smoke from their burning camp, you must escape to that plane. We will have first killed the guards, if there are any. Run to the plane and take it into the air. Find your great General MacArthur and warn him. He must go in some other direction. The destroyers might find him, even without the help of a plane. You must find him and warn him. And...”
“Yes?” Randall whispered as the black’s voice faded out.
“Tell him that John Smith and his men are not afraid of the Japanese,” came the words after a moment more of silence. “Tell him that we will fight as long as we are alive. Tell him that we will fight them here, and in our own Solomon Islands, if any of us live to get there. Tell him that we fight, and that one day he must come back with soldiers and ships and guns and planes, and help us in the fight. Now I go. When you hear the shouting and shooting, escape to the plane. Goodbye.”
“Wait a minute, John Smith!” Randall whispered fiercely, as a sudden thought flashed through his brain. “Get that radio station first, will you? Get that radio station so they can’t flash anything to the destroyers. Will you?”
“We will leave nothing standing!” came the hoarse reply. “We will not leave a Japanese alive, if we can help it. I go. Goodbye, my friends.”
“Look, John Smith, we both thank you from...” Randall began but stopped. Something told him that John Smith was no longer under the floor. He swallowed hard and looked at Jimmy Joyce. Young Joyce’s eyes were bright and hard, and there was mounting color in his cheeks.
“When I think of the things I thought and said about John Smith!” he muttered. “I could kick myself all over the Pacific for being such a confounded fool! But I wonder if it will work, Red? Will he and his gang be able to tear into these rats so we can get to the plane and get it off? Or will the Japs slaughter them all like so many helpless sheep?”
“That’s in the lap of the gods, Jimmy,” Randall said with a shrug. “All we can do is hope and pray it does work.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy Joyce murmured, and turned his eyes in the direction of the setting sun. “Hope and pray that it does work, and also that the Japs don’t decide to do something about us before it’s dark enough for John Smith and his boys to start their attack.”
Randall tried to swallow but his mouth and throat were dry and burning. He closed his eyes and nodded.
Chapter Sixteen – Escape
THE SUN HAD sunk far down below the western rim of the horizon, but shafts of crimson light still reached high up into the sky to merge with the slate blue of onrushing twilight and made the heavens a canopy of ever-changing color. It was truly a sight of breathtaking beauty—but not for Red Randall or Jimmy Joyce. Some other time, perhaps, they could admire the sight. But right now they waited impatiently for nightfall, when shouts and shots would signal the start of the attack by John Smith and his tribesmen against the Japanese force on Siquijor Island.
Time, the two waiting, praying Yanks could gauge only by the gradual change of light. Though their watches were gone they continually kept lifting their left wrists, only to sigh and stare again at the changing sky. An hour to wait? Perhaps, but it seemed not one hour, or even two. It seemed years that they spent stretched out on the nipa hut floor waiting and praying and waiting some more. Years of waiting. Years spent in trying not to think. Years of just looking at each other, and striving to draw renewed strength and courage and patience from what each saw in the other’s face. Years spent whispering all kinds of crazy things to one another. Saying anything to take up the time, and to keep from thinking unthinkable thoughts.
And then, suddenly, their hearts froze solid, their blood turned to ice, and all their hopes came crashing down like a house of cards. They both heard the jabbering of Japanese voices. The voices were coming closer and closer. And an instant later they felt the nipa hut floor shake just as it had when the Japanese major had climbed up to boot them in the ribs and scream his questions at them.
So the Japanese had come first!
Then came the crack of a rifle, the twang of a speeding bullet, and the agonizing scream of a dying man. All three seemed to register upon Red Randall’s stunned brain simultaneously in the twinkling of an eye. Hardly realizing he was doing so, he rolled over on his side, pushed up on one elbow, and looked toward the Jap camp. He did not see the camp at first, however. What he saw first was closer, much closer, right at the edge of the nipa hut floor. It was the figure of the Japanese officer who had “visited” them once before. The major was twisting slowly around on one foot. His Luger dangled from the fingers of his right hand, his left was clutched to his throat, and bright red blood spilled out between the fingers. For one flash instant Randall had a glimpse of a face distorted with terror and pain, and then the Jap lost his balance, and like a wet sack of meal fell off the edge of the floor and down out of sight.
“Red! Red! The attack has started! Hear that shooting? Look! They’re setting fire to the camp. John Smith is making good his promise. Come on, Red! Let’s go!”
Not until he was halfway to the rear side of the nipa hut floor did Randall realize that he was in motion. In his eyes there still was the weird scene of that Japanese major spinning in agony just a few feet away. From farther away came the blood-curdling cries of John Smith’s Solomon Island warriors attacking the Japanese camp. As the two Americans dropped off the rear side of the elevated floor, Red cast one quick glance back toward the village. Four nipa huts were now a seething mass of flame and dense black smoke that mushroomed toward the sky. The air was filled with the yammer and chatter of many guns. Black men and brown men were darting and twisting about shooting, slashing out with knives, or hurling blazing torches at more of the camp’s nipa huts. Randall thought he saw the tall, massively built figure of John Smith shooting a submachine gun with one hand, while with the other he waved a long gleaming knife high over his head.
He thought he saw John Smith, but before he could make sure, he landed on his back in some bushes that promptly tossed him off onto damp ground as though they were things alive and possessed hands. He rolled over quickly and up onto his hands and knees, and then grabbed for Jimmy Joyce who had stumbled and was about to pitch forward
on his face.
“Don’t bust your neck, now, for cat’s sake!” he gasped. Come on. Let’s...”
Red Randall did not complete what he was about to say. He had taken three running steps, pulling Jimmy Joyce after him, when suddenly he pulled up short and gaped in a sort of fascinated horror at what lay at his feet. It was the headless body of a Japanese soldier. Even in death his fingers still clutched his rifle, but no finger was curled about the trigger, indicating that he never had the chance to use it.
“John Smith, or one of his men!” Randall muttered. “So they were guarding the plane. A rat waiting right in these bushes in case we...”
“Red!” Jimmy Joyce’s half-strangled voice sounded close to his ear. “For heaven’s sake, look, Red. The plane! Look what’s on the ground!”
The light was now bad, and getting worse as more and more smoke billowed up from the burning Jap camp. Randall had to peer twice at the Japanese plane before he saw what young Joyce was indicating. More motionless dead bodies. Bodies without heads, and garbed in the uniform of Japan. Death had found them where they stood in their tracks without a chance to use their guns.
Just for an instant the boys paused, and then Red Randall and Jimmy Joyce were racing the last few steps to the plane. On impulse, and without thinking, Randall vaulted into the pilot’s pit. But Jimmy Joyce made no complaints. Who would try to get the Mitsubishi off was of the least importance now. The main thing was to get the engine running, and get the plane off the ground.
Never in his life had Randall sat in a Japanese plane, and a moment of terrified panic gripped him as be looked at the array of Japanese-marked instruments. However the moment of panic passed when he realized that there really were not so many of them, and each was easily distinguishable in spite of its foreign markings. In fact, the instruments and switches were arranged pretty much the same as in American planes, and his hand moved instinctively to the ignition switches, the throttle, and the starter button.
He grabbed the starter button. There was a heart-freezing instant of silence, and then the grinding whir of starter gears blended with the shout of joy from his lips. A moment later both sounds were blotted out by the mighty surging roar of the engine as it caught and kept on going. Vibration caused by the powerful engine shook the entire plane like a leaf, and Randall hastily eased back the throttle a little. At the same time he twisted around in the seat to see if Jimmy Joyce was aboard. Young Joyce guessed the reason for the action and nodded that he was set. However, Randall did not turn front immediately. On the contrary, he sat frozen and staring at a squad of Japanese soldiers that came dashing out of the jungle behind and onto the landing strip. They took a few racing steps toward the plane, then dropped to their knees and flung up their rifles. Four of them suddenly toppled over on the ground as there came a burst of gunfire from the right. The remaining six of the squad fired, and bullets screamed by the Mitsubishi even as Randall saw the stabbing bursts of flame.
The death song of those passing bullets drove the paralysis from his muscles and snapped him out of his trance.
“Duck, Jimmy, and keep down!” he shouted. Even as the words spilled from his lips, he was turning front, kicking off the wheel brakes, and opening up the throttle wide. The Mitsubishi seemed to buck and prance like an untamed horse, and then it went surging forward with a violence that drove Randall’s head back against the head rest and almost tore his hands from the controls. As it was, the violent lunge forward pulled his right foot off the rudder pedal, and the aircraft swerved crazily toward a cloud of gray-black smoke that seemed to ooze out of the jungle and creep across the narrow landing strip.
“Red! What are you doing?”
Jimmy Joyce’s scream of wild alarm was just in time. Before the careening machine could dash itself into the dusky trees along the runway, Red had the plane under control once more and swerved it back to the center of the landing strip. By now it was so dark that he could see no farther than ten or fifteen yards in front of the speeding plane. The Japanese still were shooting at the moving plane from both sides of the runway. But the redheaded American flier held the plane dead on its course; a course that lead straight toward a wall of night-shrouded smoke just in front of the Mitsubishi’s whirling propeller. What was beyond that wall of smoke? Japanese? Jungle? Shore line? What? The plane seemed to cling stubbornly to the ground despite all his efforts to lift the wheels clear. Was it the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?
Suddenly a black wall, blacker than the clouds of smoke that hugged the ground, and blacker than the shadows of night settling down over the island, loomed up dead ahead of him. For a fleeting second it was touch and go. He hauled back hard on the control stick, and with his very hands tried to lift the thundering plane into the air.
For one infinitesimal period of time it seemed to his spinning brain that the Mitsubishi stood absolutely still, and that it was the black wall that was rushing toward it. And then suddenly the plane seemed to shoot straight upward, and the black wall, which he saw was the edge of the jungle at the far end of the take-off strip, swept by under his wings. He was clear. He was in the air. Had there been tall coco palms growing there the laboring plane could never have cleared them.
“Up, up, old girl!” he half mumbled and half sobbed. “You may be Jap-made, but you’re a whole lot of airplane just the same. Come on, up some more. Up some more!”
As though it were a thing alive, with ears that could hear and a brain that could understand, the Japanese Mitsubishi climbed steadily upward through the smoke and the darkness of the tropic night. Not until the altimeter told Randall that some four thousand feet of air were under his wings did he level off and ease back the throttle to take some strain off the thundering engine and to conserve fuel.
Fuel was the one and all important thing now that Jimmy Joyce and he were airborne. If success was to be theirs, it would depend upon the amount of high-test gas in the Mitsubishi’s tanks. Of course, John Smith had begged him to find General MacArthur’s boats and warn the great military leader that the Japanese were spreading a destroyer net across the Mindanao Strait to trap and catch him when he tried to sneak through. But Randall had not told the big black that such a thing was just about as impossible as finding a rowboat in the middle of the Pacific. No, he did not stand a chance of finding those Yank boats, wherever they were. But he did stand a fifty-fifty chance of saving them from the waiting Jap destroyers. If he...
He cut short the rest as he was tapped sharply on the left shoulder. He turned his head and looked back at Jimmy Joyce. Young Joyce had a helmet on and was holding up the intercom jack and making motions to Randall to plug in the jack in his cockpit. Jimmy was also shouting something, but Randall could not hear a word above the roar of the engine. So he just nodded, turned his head front and searched for the pilot’s helmet. Luckily it had been left stuck behind a bracing wire. He slipped it on his head, fastened the strap, and searched the instrument board for the jack-hole. He found it and plugged in.
“Can you hear me, Red?” came Jimmy s voice in his earphones. “Can you hear me?”
“Clear as a bell, kid!” Randall cried joyfully. “You all okay?”
“Okay, considering,” young Joyce replied. “One little thing that bothers me, though. It’s what do we do now?”
Randall didn’t answer at once. He took a moment or two to stick his head over the cockpit rim and stare downward and back. There was not much to see. Night had now closed down, and the rolling smoke from the burning Japanese camp on Siquijor Island blotted out all signs of the flames, except for a dull red glow here and there.
“Bless you, John Smith,” Randall whispered softly, “and all your men! We’ll never forget you. Never, as long as we live. If General MacArthur does reach Australia, John Smith, it will be because you helped to make it possible.”
“Red, can you hear me?” Jimmy Joyce’s voice blasted in his earphones. “Can’t you keep your intercom working?”
“It’s oka
y, Jimmy,” Randall spoke into his flap-mike. “What was it you asked me a moment ago?”
“I asked, what do we do next?” young Joyce repeated. “Do you think we can get to Davao from here? Or some place else on Mindanao? According to John Smith the Japs haven’t overrun that island yet.”
“We’re not going to Mindanao yet, Jimmy,” Randall replied. “We’ve got to try to help General MacArthur, and...”
“You mean, find his boats in this darkness?” Joyce cried out. “We wouldn’t stand a chance, Red. Let’s hit for some place on Mindanao and radio the General that...”
“Ten to one his PT doesn’t carry radio, Jimmy,” Randall cut him off. “Besides, even if they have radio we don’t know their wave length. No, Jimmy. For a while it’s got to be the same old thing. Waiting, I mean. We’ve got to coast around up here and wait. Wait until those destroyers hear the PT engines and give us the signal with their searchlight beams. Then, please God, we do our stuff for General MacArthur.”
“What?” Jimmy Joyce almost screamed. “Do what with this plane? Are you nuts?”
“Maybe,” Randall grunted and drew a hand across his tired, aching face. “But you’re forgetting something, Jimmy. The reason we darn near didn’t get this plane off the ground. It didn’t dawn on me until we were in the air.”
“Didn’t...?” Jimmy choked out and began again. “What are you raving about, anyway?”
“Our battle load, of course!” Randall snapped. “The two five-hundred-pound bombs that the Japs so kindly fitted to the wings of this thing. That’s why it took us such a run to get off. Two five-hundred-pounders, if they’re an ounce, Jimmy. Now do you begin to catch on?”
Red Randall on Active Duty Page 10