Kerr looked doubtful for a moment, as if Torrance’s words had stirred some memory deep inside his thick skull. Then he set his jaw. ‘Be that as it may… I’m in command here – it was up to me to decide whether or not we were goin’ to accept their surrender.’
‘What was I supposed to do, stand here with my thumb up my bum waiting for you and Lefty to finish debating the morality of killing in wartime? We’re lost, outnumbered and behind enemy lines. You said it yourself – we’re in no position to be taking prisoners.’ Torrance trembled with fury at his comrade’s mealy-mouthed sanctimony. He made a conscious effort to calm down and moderate his tone. ‘All right, so maybe it was a bloody lousy thing to do. Maybe it makes me a complete bastard. But we ain’t paid to be choirboys, and we can’t afford to be, neither; not if we want to get out of this mess alive.’
Rossi shaded his eyes from the sun as he gazed across to where the pair of water buffalo stood abandoned in the field. ‘Was there no’ a Malay boy wi’ those oxen five minutes ago?’
Sheridan nodded. ‘I expect he’s running back to tell his father what happened here. His father will tell the headman of their village, and the headman will tell the Japs for fear that if he doesn’t, the Japs will accuse them of helping us, and exact reprisals.’
‘Right,’ said Torrance. ‘That means we got about three hours until this place is swarming with some very angry Japs, so unless you want to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp, I suggest we get moving.’ He started striding down the causeway, and the others followed.
The hot sun soon dried out their clothes, or at least left them as dry as they could ever be when the sweat poured off them like Niagara Falls. As the afternoon wore on, the song of the cicadas picked up again. In the rubber plantation beyond the end of the causeway, the path divided three ways. Kerr paused to consult his map. Torrance strode past him to follow an overgrown trail leading through thick jungle.
‘Do you even know where that trail leads to?’ Kerr called after him.
‘To a woodcutter’s hut, I expect.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s a woodcutter’s path. Woodcutters’ paths always lead to woodcutters’ huts.’
An atap-thatched shack with sides made of plaited bamboo, the woodcutter’s hut stood in a clearing with a stream running through it. Torrance shrugged off his pack and massaged his aching shoulders through the fabric of his shirt. ‘This looks like a good place to bivvy for the night. We can build a fire out here, wash our gear in the stream.’
‘Build a fire?’ echoed Sheridan. ‘Are you sure that’s wise? Won’t the Japanese see the smoke?’
‘That canopy’s a hundred feet above us. Maybe more. So the smoke from any fire we make will disperse long before any Japs see it.’
‘Hold your horses,’ said Kerr. ‘I’m in command. I decide when and where we’ll make camp.’
‘You can go on and blunder about in the darkness if you like.’ Torrance took his groundsheet out of his pack and unfolded it. ‘But the rest of us are stopping here.’
Sheridan took out a notebook and a pencil stub. ‘Were you a younger sibling?’ she asked Kerr.
Torrance headed off into the bushes to ease his bowels, first digging a small pit with his entrenching tool. Almost the first thing they had learned in their training for bush warfare was to always bury your soil. He took out the geological survey he had found on board the wrecked aeroplane and leafed idly through its pages as he squatted there. It was full of technical terms like ‘sedimentary rock’, ‘alluvial soil’, ‘gold-bearing veins’, ‘placer deposits’ that made it impossible to make head nor tail of—
Gold-bearing veins?
Torrance turned back a page.
‘…the discovery of a number of nuggets indicating the presence of rich, gold-bearing veins further up the valley (see fig. 42).’
Geological survey my arse, thought Torrance. It’s a bloody treasure map!
* * *
Mitsumoto clenched his fists as he gazed down at the corpses of the two Japanese soldiers sprawled on their backs in the padi water. Then he turned the beam of his torch to where the wrecked Morris Ten lay on its side. He could see from the licence plate it was the one the stragglers they were chasing had taken from the Sheridans’ bungalow.
‘They’re on foot now.’
Ziegler called from the head of the convoy halted on the causeway. Mitsumoto walked back past the three Bedford three-tonne lorries he had commandeered for the men from Kozuki’s battalion, to where Sergeant Ogata levelled his rifle at a Malay man in his mid-thirties wearing a short sarong and a white T-shirt who had halted astride a bicycle. The Malay was jabbering away in his own language, heedless of the rifle aimed at his chest.
Mitsumoto addressed the Malay in English. ‘Who are you?’
‘Suleiman bin Mustapha, tuan. I am one of the clerks at a plantation near here. I was on my way home when I saw half a dozen British soldiers taking refuge in a woodcutter’s hut nearby. When I saw your vehicles and realised you were Japanese, I thought I should report it.’
‘Can you lead us there?’
‘Yes, tuan. This I will gladly do.’
‘Lead the way on your cycle, but stop when we’re half a mile from this woodcutter’s hut. From there you can give us directions.’
Mitsumoto got back in the civilian vehicle he had commandeered for a staff car, a black Riley 16 Kestrel fastback saloon, to which Ogata had now fixed U-Kikan pennants to the mudguards. ‘Follow him,’ Mitsumoto told Ishikawa, indicating the cyclist as he turned his bicycle around and pedalled back along the causeway. Once they were off the causeway, Ishikawa had difficulty keeping Suleiman in the beams of the Riley’s headlights. They rounded a corner, and Ishikawa had to brake sharply to avoid hitting Suleiman, who had stopped astride his bike where a narrow trail led off through the jungle from the edge of a rubber plantation.
The first light of dawn was creeping across the sky when Mitsumoto’s men hurried up the woodcutter’s path in single file, Ogata carrying a Nambu light machine gun, another man toting the panniers full of spare magazines, the rest with their Arisaka rifles at the port. One of them stumbled and swore.
‘Keep the noise down!’ hissed Mitsumoto. ‘Remember, we want to take them by surprise!’
As they advanced along the trail in single file, the jungle on either side came alive. Unseen birds greeted the coming dawn with an astonishing cacophony of chirping, squawking, chattering, trilling, quacking, whistling, honking and hooting, to which the gibbons added their strange whoops. Dew dripped from every tree, pattering on the leaves below.
The woodcutter’s hut stood in a clearing. Nearby, someone had hung up a groundsheet from the trees by its four corners to collect any rain that fell overnight.
Mitsumoto ordered his men to take up positions on two adjacent sides of it, so they would not shoot each other, and anyone trying to leave the hut in any direction would be caught in the crossfire, though the only entrance appeared to be the single door in the front.
Mitsumoto’s men were still getting into position when the door opened and a tall white man stood framed there, wearing nothing but a ragged pair of baggy khaki shorts, army boots, and a strange, lopsided, khaki-drab hat on his head, with a silver badge pinned over one ear. Though his unshaven face, arms and legs were bronzed, his chest and shoulders were white where a shirt had protected them from the sun, and half-healed leech bites dotted his calves. He stood there for a moment, yawning and scratching himself through the crotch of his shorts, before striding across to where Ogata had set up the Nambu in the bushes. The white man unbuttoned the fly of his shorts and relieved himself into the undergrowth.
The stream of urine was still pattering against the leaves when he suddenly cried out. ‘Japs!’ His dripping manhood flapping in the early morning mist, he turned and ran back towards the hut. ‘Japs!’ he shouted again. ‘There are Japs in the bushes!’
Ogata fired a short burst. At that range he could not miss
. The white man stumbled and fell a few feet short of the threshold. A second white man appeared in the doorway, dressed like the first, cradling a Thompson sub-machine gun in his arms. An Arisaka cracked, and the man with the tommy gun fell. Then everyone was firing, bullets ripping through the plaited bamboo of the walls.
Eleven
‘Cease firing!’ bawled Mitsumoto.
The firing slackened off on the Japanese side, then died away altogether. From within the hut, rifles continued to pop sporadically, and a burst from a Thompson tore through the leaves behind Mitsumoto.
He cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Cease firing!’ he shouted in English. ‘You are surrounded! Throw out your weapons and come out with your hands up, and your lives will be spared. Continue to resist, and you will be killed!’
A low murmur of voices came from within the hut as the occupants discussed the offer. Finally, one of them shouted back a counter-offer.
‘Go to hell, you wee bauchle!’
This was at once followed up with a tommy-gun burst in Mitsumoto’s direction. He ducked as the bullets cracked over his head.
The Japanese resumed firing without awaiting an order from their captain. Ogata slammed a fresh magazine into the Nambu and emptied it into the hut, sweeping it across at chest level, then lowering his aim and sweeping it back at waist level, and finally at ankle height to get anyone lying flat on the floor. The riflemen blazed away too, riddling the hut until it looked like a giant bamboo colander. Surely nothing could have survived such a monsoon of lead, and yet sporadic shots still seemed to come from within.
A white man appeared in the doorway. He was bleeding from half a dozen wounds, but still gripped a sub-machine gun in one hand. The Japanese stopped shooting. The man stood there, panting, swaying. His face had the ashy pallor of death and he looked as if he must fall down dead at any moment, but instead he began to stumble towards the bushes where Mitsumoto was concealed. Lowering the tommy gun, he resumed firing. He managed to squeeze off half a magazine – the shots went well over Mitsumoto’s head – before Ogata cut him down with the Nambu.
Silence descended over the clearing once again. Even the birds, monkeys and tree frogs in the surrounding vegetation had grown quiet. Mitsumoto glanced across to where Ogata lay behind the Nambu. Catching the sergeant’s eye, he jerked his head towards the door. Ogata shook his head. Mitsumoto gestured a second time, impatiently. Swallowing, Ogata rose to his feet, effortlessly hefting the Nambu in his arms. He dashed across to stand beside the door. Breathing hard, he stood there a moment, bracing himself, then swung around, standing in the doorway – silhouetted to anyone in the gloom within – before ducking out of the way again a moment later. When no shots came out, he peered around the corner, then hesitantly edged inside, leading the way with the Nambu’s muzzle.
He emerged again a minute later, doffing his cap to wipe sweat from his gnarled brow with his sleeve. ‘They’re all dead.’
Mitsumoto crossed to stand in the doorway. In addition to the dead men sprawled outside, another four lay within, some face down on the bare-earth floor which soaked up their blood, others sitting with their backs to the walls, heads lolling, eyes staring glassily. He was surprised to see that two of them were dark-skinned and wearing turbans: Ziegler had said nothing about any of the men they were chasing being Indians.
Ziegler strode across to see for himself. ‘Those are not the men who took the survey. This must be some other party of stragglers.’
‘Chikusho!’
* * *
‘Did you check your boots?’ Torrance asked MacLeod in another woodcutter’s hut about three miles away.
‘Check ma boots…?’
‘Whenever you leave your boots off overnight in the jungle, it’s a good idea to turn them upside down in the morning and give ’em a good shake, in case any nasty creepy-crawlies have crawled in them.’
‘He’s new to this jungle lark,’ Rossi reminded them as MacLeod turned his boots wrong side up, shaking them vigorously for a good two minutes before putting them on. ‘He’ll learn. One day he’ll be an old jungle hand like the rest of us.’ He gave his own boots a shake, and a big black scorpion dropped out and scuttled about the bare-earth floor.
‘Scorpion! Scorpion!’ he shrieked.
‘Kill it! Kill it!’ yelled Torrance.
Grant flailed at it with a boot, but it was too nimble for him. Rossi snatched up his Lee-Enfield and aimed five rounds at the scorpion, missing with all of them. Realising they were outmatched, the five Argylls fought one another to be the first out of the hut.
‘Did you see the size of that thing?’ Rossi asked when they were outside, holding his hands a foot apart.
‘Nippy little sod, wasn’t it?’ said Torrance.
‘Where’s Dr Sheridan?’ asked MacLeod.
The five of them exchanged glances. Sheridan was nowhere to be seen.
‘Titch,’ said Kerr. ‘Go back in there and make sure the lassie’s all right.’
‘To hell wi’ that!’ said Grant. ‘I’m no’ going back in the hut wi’ yon scorpion!’
Sheridan emerged. She held the scorpion in her right hand, its tail pinched between her thumb and forefinger while it arched its body and flailed its legs and pincers. ‘Heterometrus spinifer,’ she explained. ‘Also known as the giant forest scorpion. He’ll give you a nasty sting, as bad as a hornet’s, but hardly fatal.’
The five men backed away as she approached, holding up the scorpion so they could take a better look. She shrugged, and flung it into the bushes.
‘Dinna do that!’ said Kerr. ‘He’ll just crawl back in to the hut.’
‘Baloney! Why, the poor critter’s more afraid of you than you are of him.’
‘That I very much doubt!’ said Rossi.
They sat down to breakfast. ‘We’d better go easy on the bully,’ said Torrance. ‘One tin between two. We don’t know how long it will be before we reach Kuala Lumpur.’
‘Give us some paper, Slugger,’ said Grant.
‘Ponce some off Lefty, can’t you? I’ve hardly got any left.’
‘What about that geography report you found the other day?’
‘I’ve used it all up.’
‘What, already?’
‘Got gyppy tummy, ain’t I?’ Torrance had not told any of the others about the references to gold in the geological survey. He had been the one who had climbed up to the wrecked aeroplane to retrieve it, so as far as he was concerned it was a case of finders, keepers. Not that he had any intention of turning prospector after the war. But the fact that the survey was an original, judging from the pencil-drawn maps – perhaps the only copy – suggested it must be worth a bob or two if only he could find the right buyer.
Once they had eaten and refilled their water bottles, they resumed their journey southwards. As the day wore on, the assorted wildlife which had made such a cacophony at dawn became quiet, and a weirdly oppressive silence fell over the jungle, broken only by the occasional tapping of a woodpecker in search of grubs.
After a couple more miles, they came to a bamboo forest, the stout canes stretching straight up more than a hundred feet to terminate in a canopy made up of feathery clusters of leaves that gave everything below a weirdly greenish tinge. There was no undergrowth to speak of, but the canes grew so close together, in places it was difficult to force their way between them.
Leaving the bamboo behind, they followed a tapir track through a forest of towering serayas, entwined with strangler figs and lianas draped with moss. As they paused to catch their breath, Torrance pulled his water bottle from his webbing and took a swig. Seeing Sheridan watching him longingly, he handed her the bottle.
She shook it in her hand. ‘You’ve hardly any left…’
‘Drink. There’s plenty of water in the jungle, if you know where to look.’ Glancing around, he saw a vine hanging nearby. Gripping it with one hand, he drew his bayonet and sawed through it, holding it to catch the stream of water that gushed out in his open
mouth.
Seeing this, Kerr hacked through another vine with his parang, and got a dribble of milky, bitter-tasting sap in his mouth for his trouble.
Torrance laughed. ‘It only works with rattan vines, Primsie.’
They descended from the hills and followed the banks of a stream for a couple of miles. Rounding a bend in the stream, they saw a bridge up ahead, or what was left of it. The Bombay Sappers and Miners had done their work here, severing the Trunk Road, not that it seemed to be slowing up the Japanese advance. Japanese soldiers had waded into the waist-deep water supporting pairs of logs on their shoulders, each held aloft by four men, one at each corner, creating a continuous walkway from one side of the stream to the other, and what looked like an entire battalion of Japanese infantry were carrying their bicycles across it.
‘We must be close to the front line,’ whispered Torrance.
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Kerr.
‘Stands to reason, dunnit? They’re not gonna leave those poor lads standing there to support the entire weight of their army, are they? No, that’s just temporary. Those lads crossing now, they’ll form a defensive perimeter, and then they’ll send their engineers in to build a proper bridge. I reckon that means they only just got here.’
Leading the way back around the bend in the stream, Kerr took out one of his maps. ‘Yon must be the Trunk Road. Mebbe if we skirt to the west for a couple of miles – enough to avoid their perimeter – we could follow the road down to Kuala Lumpur. With any luck we should run into our lads within a few miles.’
Sheridan looked over his shoulder at the map. ‘That’s the long way round. Why not just cross the road and cut across the hills? That way it’s only about seven miles from here to Batu, and another fifteen from Batu to Kuala Lumpur. We could spend the night in Batu and reach KL before sunset tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, doc. I think we’ll stick with the road,’ said Kerr.
The Name of Valour Page 12