The general stole a glance at his wristwatch and thought, Oh, for fuck’s sake, Governor…get on with it!
“These black crewmen sail from Weipa Mission, high on Cape York—”
“I’m familiar with where it is,” Briley interrupted.
“Very well, General,” Owens continued. “Now, these blacks work for a white woman, who they say is doing business with the Japanese, wheeling and dealing…and turning a tidy profit in Japanese currency to boot. These fisherman had pockets full of Japanese money, as well. What’s worse, this woman is organizing all the blacks on Cape York to support the Japanese. You can understand the prime minister’s concern.”
“Of course I can understand the concern,” Briley said. “The loyalty of the blacks has always been a great question mark. Now, I must ask…are we sure the story these fishermen tell is true? And how did you even get word of it so fast?”
“Bad news like this always travels very quickly, General,” Owens replied. “The Navy wisely alerted their headquarters immediately. The government wires have been abuzz ever since. As to the veracity of the blacks’ story, Constable Murray can shed a great deal of light on that. He was the constable in Weipa for many years, and bravely maintained order there until the very last minute, when he was finally ordered to evacuate.”
Sam Briley still wasn’t sure why his time was being wasted by these two men. His mind wandered: he imagined long ranks of Aborigines in loincloths, armed only with spears, being mowed down like dominoes by his troopers’ machine guns. But he knew he would have to do something to placate the prime minister’s errand boy. MacArthur had dumped this issue into his lap, and his lap alone; he’d better not disappoint the boss. Maybe the Aborigines in his next daydream would be armed with Nambu machine guns and do a little mowing down of their own.
If only this constable inspired my confidence a little more, Briley thought. Mick Murray was sweating profusely. His well-worn suit seemed as dusty as the streets of Brisbane and was tailored for a larger man. His face was turning red—perhaps the buttoned-up collar was too tight? He certainly wasn’t being choked by the necktie that hung loosely, its knot almost an inch below that top button. Or maybe this man drinks a bit? Murray had not once met eyes with Samuel Briley.
The general asked, “Do we even know this woman’s name, Constable Murray?”
“Yes, General, we do. Her name is Jillian Forbes.”
“And you know this Forbes woman personally?”
“Known her since she was born, General.”
“Then tell me something about her,” Briley said.
“She’s just like her father was…thinks she’s a law unto herself. When she was a kid at the Mission, she only played with the black kids, and she was wilder and more savage than any of them. When she got a little older, she took a strong liking to black boys…if you know what I mean. Her father sent her off to The Women’s College here in Brisbane, but they threw her out.”
“Why?” Briley asked.
“Moral turpitude, I’m told. Caught her sneaking away to have it off with boys…sometimes black boys. She didn’t fit their image of a fine Queensland lady.”
“How old is this woman now, Constable?”
“About twenty-four, I reckon,” Murray said as he pulled a photo from his jacket pocket and handed it to the general. “That’s from her days at the College. Her hair’s longer and more wild now.”
Briley asked, “Why wasn’t she evacuated with the other whites?”
“She refused to go. I tried to talk reason with her, but she threatened me at gunpoint. She said she wouldn’t abandon her fishing business.”
“This twenty-four-year-old woman actually runs a business?” Briley asked.
“Yes, she does.”
“Successfully?”
“Yes, she’s bloody good at it. She’s bloody good at lots of things…and the boongs love her, just like they loved her father. She thinks like them…only she’s much smarter. And much more dangerous.”
“And you’re sure all this makes her a collaborator?” Briley asked.
Before Murray could say a word, Governor Owens answered the question. “The prime minister is completely convinced. The opinion in Canberra is unified.”
“This seems like quite the rush to judgment, Governor.”
“Surely you can understand why, General. This represents Australia’s worst nightmare becoming reality.”
“Fine,” the general said. “I suppose you’d like her taken into custody?”
Governor Owens shook his head gravely. “No, General,” he said. “Canberra feels this situation calls for a far more expedient remedy. This treason must be nipped in the bud. Promptly.”
Samuel Briley let those words swirl in his head for a moment, then leveled a stern look at the governor. “And the Australian military can’t handle this task, either?”
Sir Malcolm Owens returned the general’s stern gaze. “That would put our military…and our government…in a most awkward position, don’t you think, General?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Stuart Botkin watched in the darkness as the phosphorescent second hand of his wristwatch swept around the dial. When it reached the 12, it would be exactly 2215 hours—time for the mobile Japanese transmitter to go on the air. Botkin was confident it would fail to do so on this night—or any night in the future.
He and Mike McMillen crouched among the trees that marked the eastern edge of the Weipa Mission. The radio truck sat unattended in the clearing, its engine idling, just 20 yards in front of them. The radio compartment on its bed resembled a large, windowless box big enough for several men to work in, covered in canvas, open only at the tailgate. With Captain Miles’s permission, the two American soldiers had made their way back to the Mission at twilight to execute a plan Stu Botkin had been dreaming up ever since being assigned to Task Force Miles.
The captain had been hard to convince at first, probably because he was already down three men—Roper and Russo dead, Boudreau out of action—and couldn’t afford to lose any more on some half-assed scheme. But Botkin needed somebody to guide him to the Mission, and Mike McMillen already knew the safest route. It would have to be just the two of them—or nothing. They’d be stuck out here all night, too—it wasn’t safe to attempt a return to camp in darkness. But that would be the price of success. Maybe they’d even catch a little sleep while they waited for the dawn. As to Task Force Miles’s nightly radio transmission, Botkin’s men—PFC McGuire and PFC Savastano—were more than capable of handling that chore without their sergeant holding their hands.
In technical terms, the plan to sabotage the Japanese transmitter was very simple. No step for a stepper, First Sergeant Patchett had said as he nodded in approval of Botkin’s plan. Captain Miles still had his doubts, though, asking, Are you sure you’ll know how to sabotage a Jap transmitter? Botkin explained that there were only a limited number of workable radio circuits on God’s green Earth, and he could recognize any one of them at a cursory glance. It didn’t matter where they were made—each internal stage of the radio had to use one of those circuits. And if you knew how they worked, it was easy to figure out how to make them not work. A little bit of shop trash—bits and pieces of wire and metal—draped across critical connections inside the transmitter would turn it into a smoldering piece of junk in a split second. All Stu Botkin needed was a minute or two alone with that transmitter. If Miss Forbes was right about the Jap radio operators visiting the knocking shop, he’d get all the time he needed.
There had been only one tense moment in the whole affair. As Botkin worked alone on the transmitter, he suddenly heard voices speaking Japanese outside. It sounded like two or three men were arguing—everything in Japanese sounded so damned urgent! He had heard it spoken a few times before by Japanese students at the University of Illinois, where he was studying electrical engineering before his father died and the tuition money ran out. Unable to find a job in the Depression-torn American Midwest, Stu Botkin
enlisted in the peacetime Army.
But what sounded like arguing turned to boisterous laughter. Botkin peeked over the truck’s tailgate to watch three young Japanese soldiers swagger away, perhaps a little drunk. Or maybe they just got laid.
Stu Botkin carefully weaved his little pieces of sabotage into the transmitter’s wiring, taking great care to not displace anything in the truck, including the stack of papers on the operator’s desk. Even in Japanese, he could tell the papers were radio message forms, with printed blocks to separate the different parts of a transmission. No doubt, these were the messages to be transmitted tonight. When he was done, he took a moment to admire his handiwork:
That oughta do it. A grenade would do the job a whole lot easier…but then they’d have a pretty good idea what happened.
He was back in the tree line with McMillen a full 10 minutes before the radio truck’s crew—there were four of them—returned at 2210, just enough time to warm up their set’s vacuum tubes before tapping that first character on the telegraph key at precisely 2215.
The second hand on Botkin’s watch swept through the 12. The truck’s engine began to rev higher—more power for the transmitter—and Botkin was sure he could feel the air come alive with a surge of electricity—or is it just my anxiety? Within a heartbeat, a dull, white flash illuminated the opening at the truck’s tailgate for an instant, followed by a persistent, orange glow that grew steadily brighter. One of the radio operators jumped from the tailgate to the ground, yelling words Botkin and McMillen couldn’t hear over the truck’s engine. The two men in the cab must have heard him, though; they spilled to the ground just in time to watch the side canvas begin to burn at its lower edge, spreading quickly in an ever-growing semicircle upward, promising to engulf the entire truck bed.
The second radio operator jumped to the ground, a sleeve of his tunic burning. He rolled on the ground trying to extinguish the flames. In the fire’s glow, his face was a silent movie’s vision of continuous screaming, with the sound of his agony blotted out by the rumble of engine noise. He kept screaming even after the flames burning his arm were out.
The truck’s canvas sides had burned away, exposing the smoldering remains of the radio set. The flames now worked on the canvas roof over the bed and cab, dropping flaming patches down onto the truck body and tires.
McMillen started to inch backwards. “Maybe we should get a little more distance,” he said, “in case the gas tank blows the whole thing sky high.”
But Stu Botkin couldn’t take his eyes off the spectacle he had just caused, one that far exceeded his expectations. He didn’t move—couldn’t move—until Mike McMillen grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away.
“That fire…,” McMillen said, “if it gets much brighter out here, they’ll be able to see us plain as day, Stu. Then we’re really fucked.”
They stopped their retreat about 100 yards deeper into the woods. The truck was still burning, even more ferociously than before. Every few seconds, a sharp POOMF was heard as one flaming tire after another exploded.
“I sure wasn’t expecting anything like that,” McMillen said, shaking his head in wonder. “You really know how to blow the shit out of something, don’t you, Stu?”
No one was more surprised than Sergeant Stu Botkin. Over and over, he kept saying, “I had no idea…Incredible!”
Just when it seemed the inferno had finally burned itself out, the truck’s gas tank exploded with a BOOM that shook the forest and a brilliant flash that ruined the Americans’ night vision for a good 30 minutes. They clung to the base of a tree, fingers on their Thompsons’ triggers, knowing full well that unless an enemy was accommodating enough to outline himself against the blaze, they’d never see him coming.
When the radio truck caught fire, Jillian and her men were still at the icehouse, pretending to be busy with something other than the disposal of a frozen corpse. They’d been waiting ever since nightfall for a chance to get Sato’s body out of that icy tub, onto a cart, and over to the riverbank. On this particular night, though, the Japanese seemed to be everywhere in the Mission, and the opportunity to remove the body had yet to present itself. Once the truck began to burn, a state of panic gripped the Japanese troops. For the first time since they landed on Cape York, they thought they might actually be under attack. But from who?
“Oh, bloody hell!” Jillian mumbled from the icehouse’s veranda, as she watched officers and sergeants, none too calm themselves, organize the frantic soldiers into defensive positions ringing the Mission. The few blacks wandering about the Mission wisely made themselves scarce, correct in their assumption the soldiers would be looking for scapegoats very soon.
A few minutes after the chaos began, Jillian saw Colonel Najima finally emerge from the Mission House, still fumbling with his sword belt, trying to get it buckled about his waist. A subordinate—from the tunic he wore, Jillian thought he was an officer, too—rushed up to report to the colonel. Just then, the truck’s gas tank exploded, rocking both men and blowing their caps off. Even Jillian, much farther away, felt the shock wave like a brief blast of scorching tropic wind.
The subordinate scuttled off toward the flaming hulk of the truck. In short order, he returned to the colonel with four soldiers in tow. One seemed to have a sleeve burned off his tunic. The four braced in a line before the colonel. Najima walked down that line, saying something to each man, then slapping him soundly in the face. The subordinate then marched the four to a vehicle, which drove off down the road toward Airfield One. Even in the dim light, Jillian could see each of the four hanging his head like a man headed for the gallows—or the executioner’s block. The fire was burning itself out and so was the anxiety of the remaining Japanese troops. A few even began to laugh and joke.
Jillian turned to the two black men beside her. “See?” she said. “The universe is in order again. Blame is assessed…authority has asserted its righteousness once more.” She reached into the ice box and handed a beer to each of the blacks before taking one herself. “But, fellows, I’m afraid Mister Sato is going to be cooling off a little while longer.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The duty officer at the Mossman radio station—a US Army Signal Corps second lieutenant fresh to Australia named Ernest Smith—was breathless as he spoke on the telephone to Headquarters, convinced he was conveying a crucial piece of intelligence. “That’s right, sir,” Lieutenant Smith said, “the Japanese transmitter did not go on the air tonight. We’ve been scanning all the possible frequencies. It’s just not there.”
Smith listened to what the voice on the other end of the line had to say and then turned to his radio operator, asking, “Did we get the position report from Task Force Miles, Corporal Welsh?”
With an air of irritation, Corporal Stanley Welsh slid the headphones off his ears and down to around his neck. He spun his swivel chair around to face the duty officer. “Yeah, we got it, Lieutenant. Already forwarded it to HQ. Don’t they talk to each other down there?” As an afterthought, he added, “Different fist sent it tonight, though.”
“Fist? What do you mean?” Lieutenant Smith asked.
Boy, this shavetail sure is green, Corporal Welsh thought. “Different fist, sir? It means a different operator sent it. You can tell…there’s a different touch to the Morse. You never heard that expression before?”
Shrugging off his embarrassment, Smith once again listened to the voice on the other end of the line and then asked Welsh, “Did Task Force Miles mention anything about the Jap transmitter?”
Now the corporal was really annoyed. “How the hell should I know, Lieutenant? Those transmissions are just a bunch of letters and numbers to me. The brass at HQ are supposed to figure out what it all means.”
The waiter brought General Samuel Briley his fourth glass of whiskey. It was almost midnight, and the lounge of Lennon’s Hotel in downtown Brisbane, crowded with American officers and Australian women just a short while ago, was emptying fast. The only officers from
MacArthur’s staff that remained were the diehard drinkers or those making a last, desperate attempt to procure female companionship for the night. The rest had retired to their rooms long ago.
Sam Briley knew sleep would elude him this night unless he sorted out the predicament dropped in his lap by Governor Owens. The Australian government wanted one of its citizens summarily executed for treason. A young woman, at that. No questions asked, no arrest, no trial. They couldn’t risk even the possibility that a white person was encouraging the Aborigines to support the Japanese. He took the photograph of Jillian Forbes from his pocket and traced the outline of her face with his finger.
But the politicians need to protect themselves, just in case this all blows up in their faces…so let us Yanks do the dirty work.
He stuffed the photo back into his pocket.
He had spent the last two hours hashing the plan over in his mind. Actually, accomplishing the objective probably wouldn’t be difficult at all: there was already an American patrol conveniently in the area—Task Force Miles—who should be able to do the job. Miles and company were, like any other soldiers, considered expendable, their mission more a flawed gesture of moral support among impotent allies than a military necessity. If they lost their lives or just took the fall for a political decision gone terribly wrong, it didn’t matter. There was just one problem: it wouldn’t be very wise to transmit the order to assassinate a civilian by radio, even coded. Anyone with a receiver and the current code book could read it. Worse, there would be message forms filed, entries in transmission logs, and the long-term memories of clerks and radio operators. All quite capable of pointing accusing fingers for years to come. Such an order would have to be a written and sealed, eyes-only, burn-after-reading document, hand delivered to the man expected to carry them out.
Long Walk To The Sun (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 1) Page 24