While the kicks were still flying, Jock took the sniper rifle from the startled Guess. Try as he might, Jock couldn’t center the Japanese sergeant in the crosshairs—his hands trembled too badly. He could feel his heartbeat pounding in his temples, his ears, his fingertips. He had fired at men before without difficulty—at Pearl, they were just abstractions, generic Japanese enemy in airplanes. But this was the first time he had wanted to kill a specific man, for a very specific reason: what he was doing to Jillian Forbes. He took a deep breath and held it. His hands obliged and steadied for a moment. His finger tightened around the trigger—until McMillen’s disillusioned voice broke the target fixation:
“So we’re not recon anymore, sir? Now you want to shoot ’em?”
Jock lowered the rifle and got a hold of himself. Holy shit…what the hell am I doing? The mission, man…the mission comes first. Always. We’re recon...we can’t expose ourselves.
He handed the Springfield back to Guess and then patted McMillen on the shoulder. “Good call, Corporal,” Jock said. “Thanks.”
The Japanese staff cars wound their way down the trail toward Weipa Mission and were soon out of sight. Cautiously, Jock led his men closer to Jillian’s house. They were still concealed among the trees when Jillian pulled herself to her feet. The distance, the green of their clothing, and the blackening of their faces made no difference: she saw them right away, like strange animals that didn’t belong in her part of the world. She didn’t seem glad to see them.
Jock recognized the meaning of her furtive hand gestures immediately: Stay away! Don’t come here! Her head swiveled nervously while her hands spoke, as if expecting the Japanese to return at any moment. She pulled out a pocket watch, pointed to it quickly, and flashed five fingers. Jock got the message:
Five. Seventeen hundred hours. She’ll meet us then, just like we agreed.
Reluctantly, he retreated with his men into the woods. They made their way back to the abandoned settlement to rejoin First Sergeant Patchett and the rest of the team. The only Japanese they encountered on this leg of the journey were four soldiers frolicking naked in the river where it narrowed southeast of Weipa Mission, either unconcerned or totally ignorant of the threat posed by crocodiles. Their uniforms hung from branches well away from the river bank.
“Let’s take their clothes, sir,” Mike McMillen said, fully expecting his captain to slap down the idea as being far too risky.
But much to his surprise, Jock replied, “Yeah…why not? Go ahead…they’ll think some of their own guys pranked them.”
Not wasting a second, Corporal McMillen organized the raid. “Killer, Mook…you snatch the duds. Me and the captain will cover you. Don’t fuck up, now…The guys back with Top will be so ticked off we got souvenirs and they don’t.”
It took Guess and Mukasic only seconds to grab the clothes and return. “Those Nips never saw a thing,” Teddy Mukasic said, gloating over the bounty. “Too busy playing grab-ass, like a bunch of queer-boys.”
Laying the shirts out on the ground in front of Jock, Guess asked, “Can you read these ranks, Captain?”
“Looks like we’ve got three senior privates…and a lance corporal,” Jock said.
“Three naked senior privates and a naked lance corporal,” McMillen said, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “How come you didn’t take their shoes, too, Mook?”
“They look like they got the jungle rot worse than ours do,” Mukasic replied. “Who needs ’em?”
“Okay,” Jock said, “enough fucking around. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jock and his men had been back at the camp in the abandoned settlement for about an hour. They had spent the time since their return trying to clean themselves up. The first sergeant had scrounged a bucket or two from the termite-riddled remnants of shacks around the settlement and filled them with fresh water from a nearby stream.
“Don’t go drinking that water now,” Patchett said. “It ain’t treated. Good for washing up, though…give yourselves a helmet bath. And make sure you change your socks and use plenty of powder on them doggies. We don’t need no trench foot out here. Doc would have my ass.”
After three days in the bush, they were all sorely in need of some washing up. PFC Billings, the North Carolinian of the group, had summed up the collective state of their grooming this way: “We all smell kinda like a road-kill skunk. No wonder them flies love us so much.” Billings might have a point: the mosquitoes had been brutal since the move to this new position. The Americans were constantly swatting them away from their faces.
Seventeen hundred hours came and went without Jillian’s arrival. “Maybe she’s spooked now, with them Japs beating her up and all,” Patchett said, shading his eyes as he scanned the woods for any sign of visitors. “Kinda curious, though, as to why, all of a sudden, they ain’t being so friendly as she claimed.”
“Give her time, Top,” Jock replied. “She’ll be here…” His voice trailed off, exposing the certainty he tried to express as merely wishful thinking. After what he saw happening to her a few hours ago, he knew that if she didn’t come, it was because something terrible was happening to her all over again—and he wished against all reason he had pulled the trigger when the limping Jap was in his sights.
It was nearly 1730 when Corporal Pacheco, manning the north position in the perimeter, suddenly forgot all about the mosquitoes bedeviling him and was jarred into a blood-pumping state of awareness. Something was coming through the woods straight for him—it looks like a horse…it’s someone riding a horse. His finger tightened around the Thompson’s trigger—and then he saw it was a woman on a horse: Jillian Forbes.
“Aren’t you going to challenge me before you shoot me?” she asked, as her horse walked right up to Pacheco. Then she added, “You mean I remembered that bloody password all day for nothing?”
Embarrassed, Pacheco lowered his weapon and waved her into the perimeter.
Melvin Patchett got to her first and helped her down from the horse. He studied the bruises on her face. “They hurt bad, miss?” he asked, his concern sincere.
“The slapping was the easy part. I got a lot worse this morning. I’m still sore all over from that.”
Jock was now at her side. He had been so relieved to see her—and then he heard those words a lot worse this morning. “What do you mean? What happened this morning?” he asked, bracing himself for what the answer might be.
“First things first,” she said. “Now that I see it’s safe, I’ve got a surprise for you blokes. Please…tell your men not to shoot.” She put her fingers to her lips and let out a shrill whistle of several alternating notes, which seemed more like the call of some exotic bird than any sound a human might make.
Two black men came out of the woods, leading a donkey hitched to a cart. On the cart were several barrels. One was full of fresh drinking water. The others were filled with the seafood feast she had proposed last night.
“Now, if only I could have brought some music, too,” Jillian said.
Jock whispered in her ear, his words tense and irritated. “I thought you wanted to keep the blacks out of this…so you bring two of them right into my camp?”
Jillian found his annoyance wonderfully naïve and funny. So did the two black men, who, without hearing his words, had understood what he asked by the look on his face. “Oh, Jock,” she replied, “they’ve all known you were here for the past two days. Bloody hell…they could smell you a mile away. And all the bloody noise you make? Believe me, you can trust them…and you’ve been trusting them, whether you know it or not, ever since you set foot in their country.”
She directed Jock’s attention back to the barrels, which his men were eagerly emptying. “We smoked you some fish and steamed you some crabs,” she said, “since you probably don’t want to be making any fires. I’m sure we’ve brought more than enough…there’s fifteen of you, right?”
“More like fourteen now,” Jock said.
>
“Oh, dear God…what happened?” she asked.
“Let’s get them eating first, then I’ll tell you all about it.”
The two black men departed with the donkey and cart as quietly as they had arrived. “Where are they going?” Jock asked.
“They’ve got something to do for me,” Jillian replied.
As he watched the blacks depart, Jock noticed something odd. They never had to swat any flies away. In fact, the flies didn’t seem to come near them. Or Jillian, either, for that matter.
“Why do the flies leave you and the blacks alone?” he asked.
“The blacks have a natural immunity,” she replied. “As for me…well, who knows? It’s just bloody amazing, isn’t it?”
As the men chowed down, Jock told Jillian the story of Russo, the snake, and Guess. “That poor lad,” she said, gazing over at Guess, who was caring tenderly for Franz. “He must have been so terrified. I know exactly how he feels.”
Jock’s reply was a mix of surprise and skepticism: “You do?”
She was quiet for a few moments, staring vacantly into the distance. When she finally spoke, her voice had a fatalistic coldness, and she did not turn to face him. “Yes, I do. I killed someone today, too…Sato.”
For a second, Jock thought she was kidding. “Bob Sato?” he asked. “The amorous Jap with the business card?”
Gravely, she nodded, and Jock realized this was no joke. His brain began to put the day’s events together and he said, “So those soldiers at your house…”
“Yeah. They’re looking for him…and I’m their number one suspect.”
Now it was time for Jillian to tell her story. When she got to the end, she explained why the black men who brought the food had left so quickly. “They’re getting the icehouse ready so we can get rid of the body quickly. Tonight, as soon as it’s dark, we’ll leave it on the Embley riverbank at a spot where a croc will be sure to find it. And if that croc leaves a little bit of him behind, all the better.”
Jock wasn’t convinced of her plan’s wisdom. “Either way, aren’t you still going to be a suspect?”
“Look, Jock…the Kempeitai aren’t different from any other police. They’re not interested in being Sherlock Holmes. They just want to frighten the bloody daylights out of people…and they’re finally getting their chance. So it’s time to get rid of the lot.”
She fell silent again. As if she didn’t have enough weighing down on her, there was still more. As her eyes began to fill with tears, she buried her face in her hands. Her voice trembling, she said, “One of my boats…it didn’t come back. We don’t know why…”
Then, just as quickly as she had broken down, Jillian composed herself. Jock envied the look of determination that came over her face. The shit she’s in is at least as deep as mine…and she seems to be handling it a whole lot better.
Suddenly, she jumped up and started walking toward her horse. Over her shoulder, she said, “Damn, Jock…I almost forgot to give you something!” When she returned, she handed him a tubular map case. “Here are the charts I promised.”
Jock unrolled the charts and placed them on his ground sheet. Using the data from his old map and notebook, he plotted the position of the Japanese airfield and headquarters on Jillian’s chart, using the azimuth shots he got while up in the tree. Patchett double-checked and concurred with his work. When they compared the different results on her chart and his map, they said, in unison, “Holy shit!” The plotted positions were different by nearly a mile.
“I guess we’re gonna trust this brand new chart over that old map, sir?” Patchett said, not really asking a question, just stating the obvious.
“So when are they going to bomb it?” Jillian asked.
“We’ll call in the coordinates tonight…so I suppose the bombers will come tomorrow night,” Jock replied. “Make sure that none of the blacks are anywhere near Airfield One then.”
“I’ll make sure of it,” she replied. “Look, I’ve got to get going…I need to be back at the Mission before dark.”
“Wait. There’s something I need to ask you,” Jock said.
He told her of his plan to assassinate the Japanese colonel at the Mission House. “The way I figure it,” Jock said, “that’s the only place we can count on finding him. They’ll all come running out to get back to the airfield when they hear the bombs start falling. But there’s just one problem…none of us know what this Colonel Najima looks like…”
“So you need someone to point him out to you,” Jillian said.
“Yeah.”
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
“No, wait,” Jock said. “I didn’t mean it had to be you. Anyone who knows what—”
“No, Jock. I said I’d do it.”
She couldn’t help but notice the scowl on Melvin Patchett’s face. “I don’t think your first sergeant wants my help,” she said.
As Patchett bit his tongue, Jock said, “Let’s just say the first sergeant thinks this part of the plan…” he paused and searched for the right word before adding, “...is unnecessary.”
Patchett shook his head and said, “It’s more than that, sir. There won’t be no hiding this colonel’s body. Ain’t either of you worried that the Japs’ll think a civilian knocked him off, too? If you think they’re getting nasty with reprisals now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Jock tried to reply diplomatically. “That’s always a possibility, Top, but—”
Jillian interrupted once again. “There’re no buts about it, Yanks,” she said. “Sato was just a pencil-pusher. Kill their commander and it’s a whole different story. I’ve been watching them for a while now…they’re not exactly balls of fire when it comes to initiative, from the officers right down to the privates. They follow orders pretty well, but with nobody to tell them what to do every step, they stand around with their thumbs up their arses. I wouldn’t hire a one of them. And if you’re worried about reprisals against civilians, they’d have to find us to kill us, because once the fighting starts, we’re all going bush. Nobody will be safer than us.”
Neither Jock Miles nor Melvin Patchett had a rebuttal. She seemed so convinced in her logic they found themselves wanting to accept it, too.
“I’ve really got to go,” Jillian said. “Shall we meet same time tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Jock replied, “but we’re going to move camp at first light. We can’t stay in one place too long. I was thinking of here…” He pointed to a spot on the chart closer to the Weipa Mission but still deep in the forest.
“That should be good,” Jillian said after studying the chart. “Easy for me to find, too. Shall I bring dinner again?”
Their mouths may have been full, but every soldier in earshot responded, “YES!”
Taking the reins from Guess, Jillian climbed up on Franz and said, “Oh, by the way…the Jap wireless is setting up for the night in the Mission right now. I guess it’s the radio operators’ turn to visit the knocking shop.”
As the horse stepped cautiously through the perimeter, Jock caught up and said, “Jillian, I hope everything turns out okay with your boat.”
“Thanks, Jock,” she replied, smiling in gratitude. Then she vanished into the forest.
A few minutes later, as Jock was preparing the target data for the night’s radio transmission, Sergeant Botkin approached. “I heard what Miss Forbes said about the Jap transmitter, sir. Me and Mike…I mean Corporal McMillen…we started talking and came up with a little idea…”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
General Samuel Briley slumped behind his desk at the American headquarters in Brisbane. He hated after-hours meetings. Never accomplished a damned thing at any one of them, he thought as he rearranged the paraphernalia on the desk for a third time. Men are at their best in the morning. After that, it’s all downhill…and the only place to be at nineteen hundred hours is the club. But the message that came down from MacArthur’s headquarters two floors above had been specific: accommodate the governor imm
ediately, in whatever manner you deem necessary and feasible.
That damned fool governor probably just wants to protest some more about our Negro troops slipping into downtown Brisbane…and slipping it to the local white girls. General Briley and Sir Malcolm Owens, Governor of Queensland, had discussed that topic several times already.
A knock on the office door. Briley’s aide, John Joseph Pershing “Scooter” Brewster, stuck his head and shoulders just far enough into the office to display the shiny new captain’s bars pinned to his collar. “The Governor is here, sir…and he’s brought another gentleman with him. A police constable.”
There was little need for formality or pleasantries between Briley and Owens. They were well acquainted with each other. The police constable, though, required an introduction.
“General Briley, this is Constable Mick Murray,” Governor Owens said. “He’s offered to join us and share his considerable expertise in the matter we are about to discuss.”
Samuel Briley was finding it difficult to fathom what this coarse-looking, balding man—obviously ill at ease in their presence—had to share in any matter they might discuss. Offered to join us, my ass, the general thought. Anybody as uncomfortable as this constable appeared to be had obviously been ordered here against his will.
“I cannot emphasize enough just how concerned the prime minister is about this matter,” Owens said. “It goes right to the very fabric of our Australian society.”
The benign smile on Briley’s face belied the thought in his head: Oh shit…he’s going to whine about my nigger troops polluting Aussie girls again, just like I thought.
Governor Owens pressed on. “This morning, an Australian Navy patrol boat apprehended a fishing craft in the Gulf of Carpentaria. This boat, named Andoom Clipper, was crewed by four blacks from northern Cape York, who have been taken into custody. Once naval officers sorted out their childlike babblings, they told a story that strikes fear into the hearts of all good Australians.”
Long Walk To The Sun (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 1) Page 23