“Sounds like tanks,” Patchett said, with an exuberance he rarely displayed. “We must be getting them bastards after—”
His words stopped dead. The exuberance died with them.
“Shit,” he said as the vehicles came into view, “it’s just some Aussie Bren Gun carriers. What the hell do they think they’re gonna do with those pieces of shit in these parts?”
“Yeah,” Jock said, “they’ll just stall in the swamps. And they aren’t heavy enough to flatten a bunker, anyway. I’d trade all three of those things for one fucking—”
It was time for Jock’s words to stop dead. One of the carriers had groaned to a halt. A most unlikely passenger popped out.
“Hooooleeeee sheee-it,” Patchett said, eyes wide, jaw dropped, like he had just seen the ninth wonder of the world.
Jock muttered, “How in the hell…”
The woman walked toward them as if her presence was the most natural thing in the world. “You wankers got something to eat?” she asked.
It took a while for Jillian and Jock to unravel from the embrace and kiss. GIs in every direction stopped and stared in disbelief: Something’s bizarre about this little scenario. This ain’t supposed to be happening here.
One GI was unwise enough to make a lewd comment about what the lady was about to do to one of the major’s body parts. Bogater Boudreau put him flat on his back with one punch.
“Don’t you never say nothing like that about Miss Forbes again,” Bogater said, his foot on the man’s neck, “or there’ll be a line of guys in this battalion waiting their turn to kick the shit outta you.”
Jock wouldn’t let go of her, even after the crush of the embrace was through. He needed the physical reassurance this wasn’t a cruel dream. He asked, “What the hell are you doing here, Jill?”
As she related the story, he wished he hadn’t asked.
He had never feared more for her safety than at that moment.
Gently, he tried to trace the fading ligature marks on her throat. She grasped his hand to guide it away; when she did, he saw the flesh on her wrists for the first time. Raw, chafed, and bruised, it looked so much worse than the faint coil pattern pressed into her neck.
Even though he was keeping a respectful distance, Patchett couldn’t help but wince when he saw the wounds, too.
“Never mind, both of you,” she said. “It’s over now.”
Her face broke into a devilish smile: “Are you tossers going to feed me, or what?”
She polished off the first C ration meal in short order and asked, “Got any more?”
“Go easy, Jill,” Jock replied, feeling worthless for having to say it. “We’re real short. We haven’t had a food drop in days. Once the airfield up the road at Dobodura opens up, it’ll get better.”
She hoped he was right about that. He’d lost so much weight; he seemed to be shrinking before her eyes.
“Those Bren Gun carriers I rode in with,” Jillian said, “do you think they’ll be any help? We started out with four, but one broke down after a couple of miles…and the one I rode in was on the verge of overheating any minute.”
Jock’s embittered silence was the only answer she needed. She slid closer and wrapped her arms around him.
“It’s got to get better, Yank,” she said, her voice a soothing whisper. “We’ll have all sorts of goodies pouring into Oro Bay before you know it.”
Jillian wanted to look deep into his eyes but couldn’t; there was no depth to them anymore. They had drained to shallow pools of exhaustion and torment. But something else was floating there, too. She tried to tell herself otherwise, but the evidence was staring her in the face: he was losing hope. It wasn’t just Jock: she could smell the despair on every GI she saw.
Even Jock’s attempt at a smile couldn’t disguise it.
“Can you spend the night, Jill?”
She wanted nothing more than to say yes, to stay, to give him any measure of comfort she could manage.
But she knew she couldn’t. She had to get back to her ship.
“I can’t, Jock,” she replied.
“But how will you get back?”
“I’ll hitch another ride. There are enough blokes driving on that trail now. It’ll be a main road before you know it.”
“But what if there’s no one, Jill?”
“Then I’ll walk. It’s not far.”
“What do you mean, not far? It’s fifteen miles back to Oro Bay.”
She gave him the smile you’d shine on a fearful child needing reassurance. “You forget where I’m from, Jock,” she said. “To us, fifteen miles is—like you Yanks say—around the corner.”
“But there might be more Japs…”
Jillian’s smile didn’t fade as she replied, “After that last encounter, I think I’m more afraid of nuns than Japs.”
“I ain’t fucking doing it, Tom, and that’s all there is to it. You’ve got me confused with somebody who gives a shit.”
Acting Company Commander Tom Hadley looked the new buck sergeant, a Philadelphia wise-ass named Frank Bustamante, dead in the eye.
“Then you’re busted, Bustamante.”
Hadley took a moment to enjoy his statement’s alliterative flair before adding, “And you’re under arrest.”
The buck sergeant laughed out loud—but there was a rising panic in his voice as he asked, “For what, Tom?”
“Failure to obey orders, inattention to duty, insubordination, you name it.” Hadley motioned to one of the corporals and said, “Take Private Bustamante up to battalion. Tell the sergeant major I’ll send the charge sheet along later.”
Frank Bustamante made a cocky show of seeming unconcerned. “You can’t, Tom. You ain’t an officer and you ain’t really the fucking company commander. You’re just acting.”
PFC McCleary, the company’s resident scholar, looked up from his well-worn copy of Kafka and said, “He can, Frank. If he can order you to put your ass on the line he sure as hell can take your stripes. It’s quite logical.”
“And actually,” Hadley added, “all I was asking you to do is have another look for our missing guys.”
“Fuck that,” Bustamante replied. “I ain’t gonna get my ass shot off looking for corpses. Put me in the stockade, Tom…I don’t give a shit. I’m better off there, anyway.”
A look of mock disbelief on his face, Hadley said, “Who said anything about the stockade, Private? Short of men as we are right now, you think we’re going to ship you off to a nice, cozy jail cell back in Port Moresby? Allow me to repeat your own words: fuck that. Actually, I’m thinking you’ll be staying right here, doing your duty alongside your brothers in arms, while a different disciplinary measure is employed.”
“And what the fuck would that be, Tom?”
“Forfeiture of pay,” Hadley replied.
Frank Bustamante’s face looked truly stricken now. “You can’t do that,” he moaned.
“He can, Frank,” PFC McCleary said, this time without bothering to look up from his book.
“Oh yeah? If you do, Tom, you’ll be taking food out of my mother’s mouth.”
Hadley asked, “How’s that?”
“I allot all my pay to her. You take that money, she don’t eat.”
“Geez, too bad about that, Frank,” Hadley replied, without a hint of sympathy.
Still moaning, Bustamante asked, “What am I gonna tell her?”
As he walked away, Hadley replied, “Tell her she should’ve had a smarter son.”
PFC McCleary offered Bustamante one final piece of wisdom: “You know, Frank, if you really wanted to help out your mom’s piggy bank, you should’ve gotten yourself killed. That ten grand life insurance payout would’ve done her a lot more good than the measly thirty bucks a month.”
It was late afternoon before Tom Hadley made it to the battalion CP.
“No luck finding your missing men?” Jock asked.
“No sir,” Hadley replied. “The patrol got a little deeper into the plan
tation before they started taking fire, though. Looks like the Japs might have abandoned some of the outer bunkers.”
“About time,” Jock replied. “We’ve only dropped about a million tons of high explosives on them. Any of your guys hurt?”
“Two men wounded, sir. Doc’s patching them up right now.”
“So they can stay, Tom?”
“One can, sir. Not too sure about the other.”
Jock shuffled some papers on the field desk. “I see you’re going to court-martial Bustamante.”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Sounds like he’s got it coming. It’s a shame, too, him just getting his third stripe and all. You’d think he’d know better.”
“I think he was just trying to test me, sir.”
“Well, Tom, I’d say you passed that test. But I’ve got one little problem…you really want to bust him and hit him with forfeiture of pay? Isn’t that a little steep?”
“I know it might sound that way, sir,” Hadley replied. “That’s why the paperwork to stop his pay is going to get lost somewhere between here and division.”
A wry smile crept across Jock’s face. Melvin Patchett, at his field desk a few feet away, was smiling, too.
“So,” Jock said, “you’re just going to let him stew for a while, thinking his pay’s getting docked.”
“Yessir. I figure having a pissed-off guy on the line is better than having no one.”
After Hadley left the tent, Jock turned to Patchett and said, “Top, I’d say you trained that young man real well.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Night is different, Sergeant Mike McMillen thought as he stared into the dark, moonless void beyond Able Company’s perimeter. Everything changes in the dark. Shadows you wouldn’t pay a damn bit of attention to in daylight become monsters wanting to eat you…or maybe just Jap soldiers trying to stick you in the gut.
A match’s flame becomes bright as a flashlight.
A flashlight becomes a beacon.
You can hear better…or at least hear more of everything. Jungle rain sounds like a toilet that won’t stop flushing—and I can hear that fucking creek running like it’s right in front of us, but it’s a hundred yards away.
The sound of some moron coughing can be heard for a mile. The crack of a branch is like a gunshot.
And the battle raging seven or eight miles away sounds like Armageddon, waiting to swallow you up.
Within seconds, a fire ignited in the distance, an orange dome of brilliant light…
Another fire flared, and then one more.
Suspended in the darkness, the three blazes were funeral pyres on a black canvas.
Mike McMillen had a pretty good idea what was burning. So did the man crouched next to him, Sergeant Major Patchett.
McMillen asked, “That’s where the Australians are, ain’t it?”
“I reckon so,” Patchett replied.
McMillen asked, “You think that’s those Bren Gun carriers going up?”
“Hell yeah,” Patchett replied, “every last one of them, it looks like. Damn fool Aussies were using tracers. Didn’t anyone ever tell them those things work both ways?”
“You think the Aussies were trying a night attack?”
“Doubt it,” Patchett replied. “More likely it was the Japs doing the attacking. Stay on your toes, Mike. If them Nips feel like roaming around in the dark, they may come visit us, too.”
“We’re ready,” McMillen said.
“You’d better be. Oh, and Mike…Merry Christmas.”
“Oh, yeah. You, too, Sergeant Major.”
The Japanese came to visit in less than five minutes. The night instantly devolved into the swirling, deafening, and incomprehensible melee of combat.
Silhouettes raced through the darkness, appearing and disappearing like pop-up targets in a shooting gallery.
Some men yelled in rage and bloodlust.
Others screamed in mortal agony as their lives were stolen away.
And still others cowered in their fighting holes, too terrified to fight…
Too terrified to even move.
Mike McMillen dropped into such a hole. The two GIs in it were curled into tight balls, as if each wanted to be back in his mother’s womb.
McMillen smacked them both across their helmets with the butt of his Thompson.
“FIRE THOSE FUCKING WEAPONS RIGHT FUCKING NOW,” McMillen said.
He could see the whites of their frantic eyes, shining like marbles in the darkness. No words were necessary; the eyes told him all he needed to know.
“I’ve done this drill too many times before, assholes,” he said, thrusting an M1 into each man’s hands. “Just pull the fucking trigger. I don’t give a flying fuck where the rounds go. Pull it…NOW.”
One of the GIs summoned the courage to speak: “But, Sarge, I don’t know where—”
McMillen cut him off. “No fucking buts. Shoot the goddamn weapon. If nothing else, it’ll keep their heads down. That’s all you gotta do.”
Each man did as he was told, flinching when his rifle fired as if he’d never pulled that trigger before.
“That’s it,” McMillen said. “Now keep it up. I’ll be coming back to check on you two douchebags real soon…and I better find this hole filled up with empty clips when I do.”
It seemed like everything was happening at either light speed or slow motion; there was no in-between. The normal rhythms of life had vaporized into the warm night air.
Light speed: the Japanese soldier racing toward Able Company’s CP.
Slow motion: Theo Papadakis cutting him down—cutting him nearly in half, actually—with his submachine gun.
Light speed: the shock wave and lethal fragments of an enemy grenade tearing through the CP.
Slow motion: knocked down and stunned by the blast, Theo Papadakis dragged himself along the ground. He found the CP’s field telephone.
He couldn’t believe how difficult it was to turn the crank.
Even more unbelievable: the phone still worked.
It was Major Miles who picked up at Battalion. Papadakis’s words wheezed out of him: “Fire mission, target Roger Peter Three, shell HE...”
It was too hard to hold the phone anymore. He dropped it, leaving Major Miles’s anxious voice still hissing in the earpiece.
For a few, brief moments, life returned to its normal cadence. The sound of men talking, yelling commands, curses, even promises of death to every Jap within the sound of their voices could be heard clearly…
So could the staccato chatter of weapons firing…
And the crump of mortar shells—the fire mission he had just called was spraying its deadly mayhem across Roger Peter Three, a registration point for mortars and artillery just outside the perimeter.
Then, as if someone forgot to wind the clock, the mysterious whirlpool of combat spun down to slow motion again. To Theo Papadakis’s ears, the sharp cracks of gunfire became little more than the clanks of a tinker’s hammer. Those clanks faded—and died.
The fight’s over, Theo told himself.
I hope to hell we won.
He tried to wipe his eyes clear with his hand but only made them worse. It felt like he was dragging a wet rag across his face.
Even in the dark, he could tell why: great flaps of skin were dangling from his hand like a torn glove.
No wonder I couldn’t crank the damn phone…
What a great Christmas this is gonna be.
And then his world went blacker than the night.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
With sunrise came the reckoning. Jock toured the aftermath of last night’s battle with Melvin Patchett at his side.
Patchett’s eyes, tough and unshining like ovals of suede, took in the scene at the perimeter near Roger Peter Three, one that was all too familiar. He summed it up simply:
“We took an ass-whupping, sir.”
“But we held, Top,” Jock replied. There was no hint of boast or pride in his wo
rds, just exhaustion and resignation.
“Yeah,” Patchett said, the word clipped and dry. His eyes panned the field of battle once again and added, “But we paid one hell of a price.” He summoned Sergeant McMillen to join them.
“Mike,” Patchett said, “you sure all these Japs are dead?”
“Absolutely, Sergeant Major. I saw to it myself.”
“Did you have to shoot any of them all over again?”
“Just one.”
“That’s damn good,” Patchett replied. “We don’t be needing no more surprises from them sneaky bastards today. How many Jap dead do you count?”
“About fifty-seven, Sergeant Major, near as we could count the ones that ain’t all in one piece. Looks like at least two were captains. Three stars sitting on two stripes—that’s a captain, right?”
“Sure is,” Patchett said. “That means we got hit by more than one company. Probably a battalion.”
“Oh, that’s just swell,” McMillen replied, his voice as sarcastic as he could make it. “By the way, are the natives going to bury all these Japs, just like back at Port Moresby?”
“That’s the plan,” Patchett said, “but if they don’t, maybe we can tear Eighty-Third Regiment away from their essential duties, like guarding that airfield that don’t need to be guarded.”
Jock asked, “What’s the word on Lieutenant Pop, Mike?”
“Touch and go, sir. That hand of his is tore up real bad and he’s hit in a couple of other places, too. Lost a lot of blood.”
Patchett’s mind was focused elsewhere: “You notice the same thing I’m seeing, sir? A lot of these Japs died of gunshot wounds. You better believe they were flat on their asses before the mortars ever hit. Otherwise, they’d be chewed up like them other poor bastards scattered in pieces all over the place.”
“Yeah, I see that,” Jock replied, and then asked McMillen, “What do you make of that, Mike?”
“I tried to keep my whole platoon shooting, sir.”
“How successful do you figure you were with that?”
Operation Easy Street (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 3) Page 16