Long Walk To The Sun (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 1)

by William Peter Grasso

  Even Jillian startled herself by offering up a silent cheer. She took a deep breath and got a hold of herself. Look at us, she thought. We’re ready to do his bidding full stop…no matter how bloody crazy his plan is.

  “Okay, that’s how it’ll work,” Jock said in conclusion. “Any questions?”

  “Just one,” Jillian said. “What am I supposed to be doing in this plan of yours?”

  “You’re supposed to stay right here and wait for us,” Jock replied.

  “And how the bloody hell will you recognize Najima without me?”

  “There can’t be too many people still in there. Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. He’ll be the only full colonel in there.”

  Guess added, “If we’ve gotta shoot a couple extra to be sure, it don’t make no nevermind.”

  “I really think I should go with you,” Jillian said, begging more than contradicting.

  Gently, Jock took her face in his hands. He stared into her eyes—softly, deeply—telling her heart things no words could express.

  “No,” he whispered. “Stay here. Please.”

  As he stood, she held his hands, brushing his fingertips with a tender kiss as they left her face. She was sure Guess and McMillen knew exactly what was brewing between her and their commander, even though they were facing away, watching for the enemy. They probably had some crude Yank slang for it, no doubt, to match the leer she had caught earlier on the first sergeant’s face. She didn’t care who knew. Not anymore.

  Before she released him, she said, “Good hunting, Jock...and hurry back.”

  The interior of the Mission House was darker than Jock imagined. As he led Guess and McMillen down its long hallway, each step they took made the wooden floorboards creak, announcing their approach no matter how carefully they put their feet down. The house seemed deserted at first, but halfway down the hall they began to hear two muffled voices. One was a man’s, making what sounded like furious demands in Japanese. The other was a woman’s, sobbing words in what might have been fear or simply frustration. As they reached the end of the hallway, they knew the voices could only be coming from behind the last door on the right. It was closed tight.

  Wordlessly, Jock positioned his two men on either side of the doorway. His Thompson poised to fire from the hip, he kicked the door open—and froze. He was totally unprepared for the scene that greeted him.

  Jock had no doubt he had come face-to-face with Colonel Najima. There was no mistaking the likeness he had seen from afar a few hours ago. Jock lowered the muzzle of his Thompson, thinking:

  I can’t shoot a man this way…not in the predicament he’s in. But I can’t let him slip through my fingers, either.

  Najima was bound hand and foot to a simple wooden armchair. He was naked as a jaybird, glowering at the Americans with an air of superiority that seemed ridiculously inappropriate for the circumstances. There were welts across his legs and torso, fresh and bright red, probably inflicted by the stout bamboo stick now lying on the floor. A comfort woman, very young, clad in a kimono—perhaps the person who had put the colonel in this compromising position and administered the corporal punishment—was kneeling behind the chair, the colonel’s sword in hand, trying and failing to cut the thick, coarse ropes that bound him. She dropped the sword and slumped into the corner, trembling with fear, pleading with her hands. She babbled indecipherable words that could only come from one begging for her life.

  Jock pulled her to her feet. “GO,” he commanded, pointing to the door.

  McMillen swung into the doorway. He had expected to hear the deafening chatter of a Thompson, not words. He was no more prepared than his captain for what he saw.

  “Son of a bitch!” McMillen said. “I’ve seen some fucked-up shit in my life, but this takes the goddamn cake.” He wasted little time scooping up the colonel’s sword and hanging it from his pack. Quite satisfied, he said, “Man, this is a better souvenir than those uniforms we swiped.”

  “I’m letting the woman go,” Jock said, propelling her toward the door. She bounced off McMillen and into the hallway, where she found herself staring down the barrel of Guess’s rifle.

  “Captain says let her go, Killer,” McMillen said to Guess. “You ain’t gonna believe the queer-ass bullshit that’s been going on in here.”

  Guess lowered his rifle and waved the comfort woman away. She backed a few steps down the hall, still cringing in terror. Then she turned and ran as fast as her bare feet would carry her toward the entranceway. Just before she reached it, there was the sound of bombs exploding again, not in Weipa this time but farther to the south, where they were supposed to be. The woman shrieked, dropped to the floor, curled her knees to her chest and covered her head with her arms.

  “GO ON…GET OUTTA HERE,” Guess said, pointing his rifle at her. “YOU AIN’T GONNA GET ANOTHER CHANCE LIKE THIS, LADY.”

  The comfort woman looked frantically out the doorway, then back at Guess’s rifle before coming to a decision. The rifle was deadly close; the bombs were not so close. At least not this time. She bolted out the door.

  No sooner had she vanished from sight, the thud-thud-thud of the bombs’ impact melded into a tremendous explosion that shook the Mission House. Its bright, orange flash lit the night sky like apricot daylight and cast its eerie brilliance into the house for a brief moment.

  “What the fuck was that?” McMillen asked.

  “Ammo dump…or fuel depot,” Jock replied. “Nothing else goes up like that. Maybe those flyboys finally dropped something in the right place.”

  Guess took a glance inside the room. Seeing the bound, naked colonel, the expression on his face registered more than shock. He was offended. “Whoring’s bad enough,” he said as he trained his rifle on Najima, “but whatever sex stuff’s been going on in here gotta be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “Put the rifle down, Guess,” Jock said, “and save that shit for the padre.”

  “But it just ain’t normal, Captain,” Guess continued. “Look at him! He ain’t even embarrassed. This man needs to die for a whole lotta reasons.”

  “I said put the rifle down, Guess. We’re not going to kill him.”

  McMillen suddenly seemed as offended as Guess as he asked, “What do you mean, Captain? What the hell did we come here for?”

  “He’s our prisoner,” Jock said. “First Jap POW of this damn war, I’m guessing…and we’ve got him. Grab the chair and carry him out of here just the way he is.”

  Neither McMillen nor Guess could believe what they had just heard. They stood in place, shaking their heads, mouths agape.

  “Don’t I speak English? Pick up the chair and let’s get out of here,” Jock said as he gathered the colonel’s clothing from pegs on the wall. “Move it!”

  Still silent, McMillen and Guess slung their weapons on their shoulders and, one on each side, picked up the chair with the colonel still bound to it. They maneuvered their human cargo into the hallway, and with Jock leading the way, headed toward the door that led outside.

  Najima had yet to utter a sound since the Americans found him. The colonel’s silence so far came as small comfort to Mike McMillen, though. He asked Jock, “What if he starts to make noise, sir?”

  “Butt-stroke him in the head. That’ll shut him up for a while.”

  Guess asked, “Do you think he knows what we’re saying, Captain?”

  “Right now, I couldn’t care less.”

  Guess started to chuckle. “Miss Forbes is gonna get a real kick outta this.”

  “I’ll bet it ain’t nothing she ain’t seen before,” McMillen replied, “just a whole lot smaller.”

  They all looked to see if that comment got a rise out of the Jap colonel, but his facial expression never changed. That same glower was still there. No look of indignation, annoyance, or shame came over him.

  “Nah, he doesn’t understand us,” Jock said.

  They were outside now, in the faint glow of the fire raging to the south. It lit t
he settlement with that same apricot light from the initial explosion, only continuous and muted now, casting long, dancing shadows against the tree line in the distance where Jillian was waiting. Jock still led the way. McMillen and Guess, encumbered with the chair-bound colonel, moved more slowly and lagged behind. As Jock neared the colonel’s abandoned car, a new shadow fell on the ground before him, its source still obscured by the car’s mass. This new shadow advanced across Jock’s path with a halting yet rhythmic motion, like the second hand of a wind-up clock. Or the gait of a limping man.

  The Kempeitai sergeant—that same, game-legged bastard Jock had seen beating Jillian yesterday—stepped into his path from behind the hood of the car. Jock could just make out the thin moustache—and the dull, metallic glimmer of something in his raised hand:

  A pistol…

  He was only 20 feet away. The kempei took one last, tottering step as he steadied his aim.

  To Jock, it felt like a year of his life passed in the split second it took to train his Thompson on the kempei. Trapped in this bizarre, slow-motion world of impending death, Jock couldn’t believe his weapon had not yet fired. He could swear he was squeezing the trigger hard enough to break it off, yet it seemed to be moving slower than a glacier.

  But there was no burst of automatic gunfire, just a dull thump, like a coconut being cleaved with a machete—and then a hot, wet spray hit Jock’s face, stinging and blinding him. Only then did Jock hear the crack of a distant gunshot.

  Maybe another year went by until Jock drew his next breath—and then time snapped back to its normal cadence. He wiped the spray’s sticky residue from his eyes and realized, Oh shit! It’s the Jap’s brains!

  Jock could see again. The limping kempei was no longer standing before him. His body was face-down in the dirt. Even in the dim, flickering light, Jock could tell his head was gravely misshapen, the skull shattered and emptied. The dark pool growing around it could only be blood. Someone had done the kempei in with a killer head shot. Jock was fairly sure it hadn’t been him.

  It hadn’t been McMillen or Guess, either. At the sound of the gunshot, they had dropped the chair holding Najima, unslung their weapons and flung themselves to prone firing positions. But they had no idea who or what to shoot. They never saw the Kempeitai sergeant until he was dead on the ground.

  With one glance backwards, Jock could see McMillen and Guess shared with him the same thought: We need to get the fuck out of here.

  The three Americans covered the remaining distance to the tree line—complete with their seated captive—on the dead run. “I think we just broke the record for the hundred yard dash,” Mike McMillen said as they collapsed among the trees to catch their breath. Najima’s chair was tipped on its back, its immobile occupant staring at the sky.

  McMillen asked Jock, “Who the hell shot that guy back there?”

  It was Jillian who replied, “I did,” as she approached out of the dancing shadows. She skidded to a halt at the sight of Najima, who shot a hateful glance at her and finally uttered some guttural words no one understood—but they all easily grasped it wasn’t a friendly, Hello…nice to see you again, Miss Forbes.

  After a moment of staring incredulously at the naked colonel, she said, “What in bloody hell have you done, Jock?” She sounded like a frustrated parent scolding a delinquent child.

  “We didn’t do anything,” Jock replied. “We found him like this, and we took him prisoner.”

  Jillian threw up her hands. “I thought you wanted him dead!”

  “Change of plans. Captured is even better than dead. I’ll explain later.”

  McMillen was still trying to come to grips with what they had just done. “First time I ever heard of a recon unit taking prisoners, sir,” he said.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Jock replied. “Now we’ve got to figure out where to stash the good colonel.”

  “I know just the place,” Jillian said. “Follow me. We shouldn’t have any trouble navigating, with that fire as bright as it is now. We need to get farther upwind anyway. This is the dry…and any fire is going to spread fast.”

  As they made their way deeper into the woods, Jillian cast another, bewildered glance at the bound colonel, asking no one in particular, “What is it with these Japanese and their bloody ropes?”

  Melvin Patchett awoke from unconsciousness to a strange glow in the sky. His eyes hadn’t focused yet—they wouldn’t for a few minutes—and he could hear nothing but a high-pitched siren screaming in his ears. He was lying on his back in a hole several feet deep, unable to move very much. His entire body ached, as if every square inch had been battered by powerful blows—but all the parts still seemed to be there. Slowly, a thought came together in the murky labyrinth of his mind:

  Them Gerries sure shelled us good this time. Knocked me right on my ass.

  A dark shape materialized and hovered over him. A fucking Hun, Patchett thought, his hands scrambling frantically around him for his rifle, a bayonet, an entrenching tool—anything to thwart this soldier of the Kaiser moving in to finish him off.

  “Whoa, Top! Take it easy!” It was Doc Green’s voice, but Melvin Patchett couldn’t recognize it. Not through the distortion of his fiercely ringing ears.

  “Sprechen sie Englisch?” Patchett asked, his voice weak and raspy.

  Doc’s ears were ringing like sirens, too, but he was pretty sure he understood, even if the words were in German. “OF COURSE I SPEAK ENGLISH,” he said, pumping up the volume to be heard more clearly. “WHERE ARE YOU HURT, TOP?”

  Top? That made no sense to Melvin Patchett. He was a private, not a first sergeant. Other details filtered back into his head: he was 18 years old. This was France. The Great War. Over There and all that crap.

  “Did we hold?” Patchett asked.

  “HOLD WHAT, TOP?”

  “The Marne. We’re supposed to hold at the Marne River.”

  Doc Green eased himself to a sitting position on the ground next to the first sergeant. All the squatting and kneeling to check on casualties was causing the wound on his leg—a jagged gash through the calf—to throb painfully. He needed to rest it for a moment. He’d use that time to bring Melvin Patchett back to reality.

  “Top, listen to me carefully,” Doc said, his mouth right next to Patchett’s ear. “You’re not in France anymore. This is Australia. And it’s not 1918…it’s 1942. We’re in a new war. We’ve just been on the receiving end of a bombing raid, probably by our own blokes.”

  Melvin Patchett propped himself up on his elbows. His head was clearing and his eyes were beginning to focus. He recognized the man sitting next to him—it’s that Aussie doc. He knew now he was no longer 18, no longer a private. There were men he was responsible for.

  “How many dead and wounded, Doc?” Patchett asked.

  “Everyone’s wounded, one way or the other. Nobody’s dead, but it looks like a giant bloody buzzsaw went through this place. I reckon your making us dig in deep saved us all. How do you feel? I can’t see any wound on you…except your ears are bleeding.”

  Patchett shrugged off Doc’s concern. He checked his wristwatch but couldn’t read it. His eyes weren’t working well enough for that yet. “What time is it, Doc?” he asked.

  “About oh two twenty-five.”

  “Hmm. Looks like the middle of the day with all this damned light. What’s burning over there?”

  Doc shrugged. “Not sure…but whatever those bombs hit started one hell of a fire. Bloody good thing we’re not downwind. It’s going to spread and burn everything in the forest from the airfield to Weipa.”

  First Sergeant Patchett struggled to his feet, picking up his helmet and Thompson in the process. “Hey, you’re wounded, too,” he said, pointing to the bloody bandage on Doc Green’s leg.

  “No problem. I’ll stitch it up later, when I get a chance.”

  “Outstanding,” the first sergeant replied. “Now let’s get off our asses and check on the others.”

  I
t was the middle of the night—a little after 0200—and Corporal Grover Wheatley still hadn’t gotten a minute’s sleep since leaving Brisbane almost 48 hours ago. He and this lunatic—this Captain Brewster—had trudged 25 miles up the coast since that tub of a patrol boat dropped them off at Archer Bay. At least that was Brewster’s estimation. To Grover Wheatley, it seemed like they walked 500 miles. He was exhausted. His feet were killing him. Even though he showed little exposed skin—just his forearms, face, and neck—he’d been bitten by about a million mosquitoes. The K rations they carried were like eating nothing at all. And without sleep, he wouldn’t last much longer.

  Wheatley’s frazzled mind began a silent rant against his captain. Look at him, all snug in his bedroll like his mommy tucked him in. How on earth can this idiot sleep? It sounds like every animal in this fucking jungle is circling, waiting to make a meal out of us! And I don’t even need to be here! I got to track exactly one transmission from this Task Force Miles so far…and guess what? It says they’re north of here somewhere. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo! I could have told you that just looking at a map in Brisbane. I should stick this rifle up the captain’s ass right now and pull the trigger...

  His rant was cut short when he felt the first tremor right through the soles of his boots. A few seconds later, he heard a dull rumble, like thunder. It seemed to be coming from the north. Wheatley turned and looked in that direction. A brilliant orange cap sat on the horizon like a vivid brushstroke on a black canvas. Something was burning. How far away, he couldn’t tell. But he was sure there was one hell of a fire going on someplace.