Corrigan's Run

by Colin Falconer

  Any moment the Japanese would start the diesel motors of the Deutschland and come after them. If there'd only been time to scuttle Heydrich's yacht ...

  At that moment the boathouse exploded in a ball of bright orange flame, and a mushroom of black smoke flowered into the night sky.

  ‘Christ!’ Corrigan muttered.

  ‘Corporal Bingiti,’ Sergeant Lavella said. ‘I tell him for to shoot benzene drums. No more boat. No more Japoni.’

  The rifle fire from the shore was sporadic now. They motored through the reef at the mouth of the bay. In a few more moments they would beyond the headland and safe from the Japanese snipers along the shoreline.

  ‘Well, that's the worst over,’ Corrigan said. ‘All we've got to do now is carry the batteries five miles back through the jungle with the Japanese combing every inch of coastline. Should be a breeze.’

  *****

  Corrigan knew every inch of the waters around Santa Maria; after so many years navigating this particular stretch of coast, the Admiralty charts were imprinted on his mind. He headed north, hugging the coastline to Marmari Point. He could beach the Shamrock there, in the shallow bay to the east of the village. Manning’s new camp at Mount Tahunga was just five miles to the south-east.

  As they entered the bay Corrigan immediately sensed something was wrong; he strained his eyes into the dark, every instinct telling him to turn back. But I can’t turn back, he thought. I have to get these batteries onto dry land. He slowed the engines and crawled through the reefs.

  ‘Which way?’ Sergeant Lavella said, now realizing something was wrong.

  ‘I don't know,’ Corrigan said. ‘Something's just not right.’

  Lavella and his men waited in the stern, their eyes turned fearfully towards the black shore. Slowly the Shamrock inched her way forward, the chug-chug of her motors echoing around the lagoon.

  Then, through the moonlight, Corrigan glimpsedsomething shining in the waves.

  A shark?

  A school of flying fish?

  Then he realized what it was. ‘Holy Christ!’ he shouted. ‘Wreck!’

  Chapter 32

  The full moon was reflected on the submerged wreckage of the Japanese bomber. It shone like whalebones in the shallows. Corrigan turned the Shamrock hard to starboard, to try and steer around it.

  The passage was too narrow for the maneuver. He felt the hull grind over the coral, then she lurched violently and swung round on her beam.

  They were all thrown onto the deck. Corrigan scrambled back to his feet and fed power full astern, trying to back her off the reef. The water around the stern churned and boiled, but the Shamrock did not move.

  Lavella appeared beside him. ‘Bugger up finis?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Corrigan said. ‘We're stuck fast on a falling tide.’

  He looked at his watch. In another couple of hours it would be dawn and the Japanese spotter planes would find them.

  ‘Which way we go?’ Lavella said.

  ‘Well sergeant, it looks like we're going to get our boots wet.’

  *****

  Manning sat on one of a crate, staring at the radio. He took the binoculars from around his neck, and laid them on the trestle table. It was still early morning, but already a large sweat stain had spread across the back of his khaki shirt. He sagged forward, cradling his head on his arms.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Rachel said.

  Manning turned, startled. He forced a smile when he saw her. ‘Yes I'm fine. Just tired, that's all.’

  ‘I heard the bombers.’

  Manning nodded. ‘Three squadrons and a flight of Zeros. And there's five transports and a destroyer escort steaming down The Slot.’ He slapped the useless radio with the flat of his hand. ‘Looks like the Americans are on their own today.’

  Rachel sat down next to him. She nodded at the radio. ‘Is this making so much of a difference?’

  Manning gave her a thin smile. ‘I believe so.’

  There was a long silence. Rachel took a deep breath: ‘I don't want to go.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don't want to leave the island. Put my uncle on the submarine, if you will. Corrigan too, if he wants to go. But let me stay here and help you. I'm not afraid.’

  Manning stared at her. What was she? Nineteen, twenty? He couldn't allow it. She had her whole life in front of her. Besides, he had been brought up to believe that war was a man's work. ‘It's out of the question,’ he said simply.

  ‘There's nothing you do here that I can't do.’

  Manning smiled grimly. ‘You're probably right. But it's still out of the question. Nevertheless I admire your courage.’

  ‘My uncle always told me never to run away from anything.’

  ‘I wish he'd tell that to Patrick.’

  Rachel stiffened. ‘Mister Corrigan doesn't lack courage.’

  ‘Oh, I know he doesn't,’ Manning said, surprised at how quickly Rachel had leaped to the Irishman's defence. ‘I didn't mean it that way.’

  ‘Then what did you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps it's better if you ask Patrick that question.’

  ‘You seem to know an awful lot about him.’

  ‘Perhaps, but that doesn't mean I understand him. I've been on this island a long time. He talks to me from time to time. He has his devils, like all of us. Patrick's are perhaps a little more vicious than most.’

  Manning fell silent and Rachel knew better than to pry further. He was far too much the Englishman to break another man's confidence.

  She went to the door of the hut. ‘Do you think he'll be all right?’

  ‘Oh, don't worry about our Patrick. He'll be back, and he'll have the batteries with him. Whatever else he may be, Patrick's a survivor.’

  *****

  They arrived back at the camp the next afternoon.

  They had walked all day and half the night, the batteries on their shoulders; their skin chafed raw; two of the men had burns on their arms and hands from spilled acid.

  Corrigan had waited on the outgoing tide. They had waded ashore in waist deep water with the batteries wrapped in an ancient waterproof Corrigan had salvaged from the Shamrock’s saloon. They had been forced to leave the wounded corporal behind them on the jungle track after he fainted from blood loss.

  When they arrived Manning was in the radio hut, noting down the shipping movements along The Slot in a small leather-bound notebook. He came out of the hut, his hands on his hips, his face inscrutable.

  ‘We've got the batteries,’ Corrigan said.

  ‘Jolly good,’ Manning said. And without another word he turned and went back inside the hut.

  Chapter 33

  Wolfgang Heydrich stood by the smoldering ruins of his boathouse and wanted to weep. His lower lip trembled as he stared at the charred stumps of the pilings and the skeleton of the Deutschland now lying in fifteen feet of shimmering water.

  He cursed Corrigan softly in the harsh tones of his mother tongue. Then he hawked up the bile in the back of his throat and spat into the water.

  The bodies of the five dead Japanese soldiers had been laid out at the foot of the jetty. Already they were beginning to stink. A heavy khaki ground sheet had been thrown over the corpses and the flies swarmed around in lazy black clouds.

  Heydrich wrinkled his nose and walked back down the path to the bungalow. He found Tashiro on the veranda with Kurosawa. Kurosawa saw the German planter first. He stopped in mid-sentence and stared at him.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Ask Tashiro-san what he's going to do about my yacht,’ Heydrich said.

  Tashiro glared at him but Heydrich was determined they would not brush him off this time. He would not allow these yellow barbarians to treat him like one of the natives.

  ‘Tashiro-san not wish speak now,’ Kurosawa said.

  ‘I don’t care what he wishes. Ask him what he's going to do about my yacht.’

  Kurosawa remained stubbornly silent. But Tashiro didn
't need Kurosawa to interpret for him. He smiled, then drew his sword from the leather scabbard at his waist. The razor sharp blade flashed in the sunlight. Heydrich shrieked as the tip sliced a cleft under his chin.

  He fell back against one of the wooden posts; Tashiro held him pinned there, with the point of the sword.

  The planter felt blood trickling down his neck and his shirt. He hardly dared breathe; his eyes did not move from the blade. Tashiro need only flick his wrist and he was done for. It could have been seconds, or minutes; when he finally lifted his eyes to meet those of his tormentor he saw the expression in Tashiro’s face and realized that he was making up his mind whether or not to kill him. He emptied the contents of his bladder down the front of his trousers.

  Heydrich's involuntary act saved his life. Tashiro saw the stain spread across the white cotton trousers and started to laugh.

  Satisfied, he lowered the sword and put it back in its sheath. Then he grabbed Heydrich by the collar and threw him down the steps. Heydrich scrambled to his feet and hurried away down the path towards the copra sheds.

  Minutes later they heard a girl screaming in the servants' huts. It was Alice Melema'a. Heydrich had found a scapegoat for his humiliation already.

  Chapter 34

  It was exactly six o'clock.

  Mitchell sat by the radio. Shoup had his earphones on, and was turning the dials looking for a contact. They had been joined by a half dozen other pilots from the squadron, all dressed in their flying gear.

  Mitchell was sipping a canteen cup of scalding Navy issue coffee. The aluminum rim always seemed ten degrees hotter than the contents, but it was welcome enough in the chill of the tropic dawn.

  There was an air of expectancy. After nearly six weeks, the men on Guadalcanal had their first stirrings of hope. They had all just faced their sternest test.

  It had began just after sunset the day before. The Marine positions to the east of Henderson Field had taken a blistering twenty-minute pounding from the Japanese destroyers in Skylark Channel. There was an uncanny silence when it finally the barrage finally stopped, and then a red flare had drifted down over the ridge, turning the jungle the color of blood. Then they all heard the banzai screams as the Japanese attacked Red Mike Edson's Baker Company; the deadly chatter of the Brownings answered them.

  For two nights Mitchell and his men lay in their tents listening to the sounds of the battle getting closer and closer to the airstrip. The Marines almost lost the ridge; Edson finally beat back the Japs by having his howitzers fire through his own lines, butchering the enemy with his artillery from just fifty yards, the big guns actually side by side with what was left of his own infantrymen. Those tactics had last been employed eighty years before at the battle of Bull Run.

  The next morning Mitchell saw the survivors straggling back from the line, their eyes red-rimmed and empty, they were all too exhausted to pursue their defeated enemy. The Japanese left six hundred dead behind them on what the Marines now called Bloody Ridge.

  The next day the Navy broke the siege. Admiral Kelly Turner lost an aircraft carrier, the USS Wasp, but he finally made it through to Iron Bottom Sound with the Marines Seventh Division and one thousand tons of rations.

  But the other break that had swung the balance back in their favor was The Weatherman.

  The Grumman Wildcats of the Cactus Air Force were no match for the Japanese Zeros, they were neither as fast or as maneuverable. But the Japanese always arrived at Guadalcanal low on fuel after their long flights from Kavieng or Rabaul, and slowed down by the extra belly tanks of fuel they were forced to carry.

  The only way to overcome the superior performance of the Zeros was by attacking them from above; the two-hour warning they received from The Weatherman gave them time to scramble their fighters and climb to their attack altitudes of 30,000 feet. When the Japanese finally arrived over the island, Mitchell's squadron was already in the air. They would then swoop down on them out of the sun, and cut them to pieces.

  The Japanese knew what was happening, but there was nothing they could do about it. If they tried to fly around the islands to the north they would not have enough fuel to reach Guadalcanal; if they flew too high they would betray their presence to the American radar anyway.

  While The Weatherman stayed on the air, they had the Japanese fighters cold.

  But for days there had been nothing. Perhaps the Japs had found him.

  The radio crackled to life and behind the whine and static Mitchell heard the Weatherman’s clipped limey accent. The pilots grinned at each other in relief.

  ‘Good morning, Allies. This is The Weatherman. There's some cloud over Bougainville and New Georgia today, but it seems to be clearing to the north-east. Three formations of bombers passed to the east of here thirty minutes ago. About ten thousand feet is my guess. Fighters are moving in to support them from Bougainville. I can see them from here. You're going to be busy today. Good luck Americans. Over and out!’

  *****

  Shoup scribbled the message on to his pad and reached for the field phone. When he turned around the hut was empty. The pilots were already running towards the revetments and climbing up the olive-drab fuselages of their fighters.

  As the Weatherman said, they were in for a big day.

  *****

  Colonel Nakamura leaned on his desk, both hands splayed across the smooth mahogany surface. His voice was deceptively soft. ‘How could this have happened?’

  ‘My men did not expect such an attack, Nakamura-san,’ Tashiro said. ‘We were caught by surprise.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  He got to his feet and paced the room, his hands clenched into fists behind his back. He turned to face the large map of the island that hung on the wall behind him. ‘They must be up here,’ he said, slapping the flat of his hand on the dark green shaded area to the north.

  ‘My men are conducting a sweep of the jungles there at this moment.’

  ‘What about the natives?’

  ‘They say they have not seen the Englishman. They will not help him, Nakamura-san. They know what will happen to them if we find him in one of their villages.’

  The colonel turned away from the map and stared out of the window, at the neatly kept square of lawn and to the breakers frothing in the bay beyond it. ‘The battle for Guadalcanal does not go well for us. The Americans are putting up strong resistance. Furthermore, the High Command believes the enemy is receiving news of all our movements between the islands by sea and by air. The damage that may already have been done is incalculable. We cannot allow this to continue!’

  ‘We will catch him, Nakamura-san,’ Tashiro said.

  ‘It has already taken you too long. How many men did you lose?’

  ‘Five dead, three wounded,’ Tashiro said. The bitter shame of being defeated by these guerrillas was gnawing into his soul.

  ‘How many of them were there?’

  ‘It is impossible to estimate Colonel. In the darkness . . . there was much confusion.’

  ‘The Englishman had seven armed native policemen on the island. We can assume they have remained loyal to him. In addition the Irishman and the priest may have joined him. That makes ten men, at most. Hardly a formidable foe, Tashiro-san.’

  ‘We found the body of one of the native police in the remains of the boat shed, Colonel.’

  ‘A great victory! Nine men, then. I will give you another two platoons. Use whatever means is necessary to track the Englishman down. But find him. We have to find him!’

  Chapter 36

  ‘How is he?’ Manning asked.

  ‘He needs expert attention. I have done all I can, but it’s not going to be enough.’

  Rachel bent over her uncle's emaciated body and loosened the dressings on his leg. Father Goode muttered and tossed as he lay on the bamboo cot, bathed in his own perspiration.

  Manning watched her work, and grimaced. The leg was bloated, it looked like an Italian sausage and the flesh around the wound had turned
blue-black. As Rachel removed the dirty dressings his stomach churned at the taint of putrefaction.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘The Americans have promised to send a submarine as soon as possible.’

  ‘We have already waited almost a month. Every day he is worse. If we wait any longer it will be too late.’

  ‘There's a major battle going on at Guadalcanal. They don't have the submarines to spare just for a . . .’ He stopped himself.

  ‘Just for a sick priest and his stupid niece.’

  ‘I wasn't going to put it quite like that.’

  Rachel smiled an apology. ‘I'm sorry.’

  ‘The Americans have promised to evacuate you as soon as they can.’

  ‘It's just watching him die like this, by degrees . . . even if he lives, he's going to be a cripple.’

  Manning did not know what to say to her. He would be relieved to see them all on the submarine. Their presence in the camp was only an additional burden. Father Goode's delirious outbursts sometimes shattered the silence, and if it ever happened when there was a Japanese patrol nearby, his cries would lead them right to them.

  Then there was Corrigan; morose, unpredictable and still drinking heavily; and then there was Sanei, his island wife, silent as a shadow, with those dark, sullen eyes. Each of them threatened his mission in their own way. What he fretted about the most was this inexplicable tension between Sanei and Rachel. She looked as if she wanted to put a knife in her. What was the reason for it?

  He looked at Rachel and wondered.

  ‘You should have left while you had the chance,’ he told her. ‘I tried to warn you.’

  ‘We stayed for the same reasons you did.’

  ‘Oh, I don't think so.’

  ‘No man risks his life just for King and Country. My uncle thinks he's doing this for God. I suspect there may be a personal motive.’