The driver took a moment to light a cigarette as the two officers walked away, heading for the heavy-gauge rope ladder than hung down that side of the ship’s hull, leading back up to the main deck. With the assault on Laha already commenced, the distant sounds of gunfire and exploding artillery were an ever-present background noise that accompanied the occasional flash of an explosion here or there, faint and indistinct through the grey haze that lay across the cool waters of the bay itself.
“I would have expected a heavier guard than this, captain,” Reuters declared officiously, sounding for all the world like a commanding officer concerned about inadequate security. “Are you certain these men are able to defend against any attack?”
“The majority of our forces have been drawn away to assist in the attacks across the bay, or in containing those enemy still trapped at the southern tip of the peninsula,” Yanagisawa answered quickly, making a show of sounding respectful but not at all happy the man was questioning the abilities of the Japanese soldier. “Most of those remaining are posted less than a kilometre away, tasked with guarding the bulk of our prisoners here at Tan Tui barracks. With a larger force so close to hand, we do not believe there is any threat that requires more than two or three men on watch here.”
He halted as they reached the ladder, turning back to Reuters and adding: “Are you certain you left your briefcase here yesterday?” He considered the older man with a critical eye, then made a show of staring up at the deck rail, high above them. “This is a difficult climb even for the fittest soldier…”
“I shall manage well enough, thank you, captain…” Reuters replied curtly, doing his best to ignore the clear and obvious slight against his advanced age. “In the unfortunate instance that it isn’t found, at least I will have been present and can be assured every avenue was examined… I appreciate your concern, but indulge me, if you will…”
“Of course, sir,” Yanagisawa conceded graciously, smart enough to recognise when best to take a moderate line with a superior officer, albeit one of a foreign military. “Orders from the general are quite clear that I am to assist you in any way I can.” He reached for the ladder, stopped as if a new thought had suddenly occurred, and turned back again with one last piece of advice. “You understand, sir, that the general has made it clear that no one is to be permitted near the cargo in this vessel’s hold… for reasons of safety, of course…”
“Of course, captain…” Reuters agreed blithely, not missing a beat. “I understand completely.” He forced a thin smile and managed to keep most of the sarcasm out of his tone, adding: “Believe me, I’ve no desire to make this old body of mine take on any more steps, ladders or climbs than is absolutely necessary.”
“Yanagisawa-san…!”
The sudden call interrupted the captain as he lifted his leg and made an effort to mount the first of the ladder’s wooden-slat rungs. With a grunt of mild irritation, he allowed himself to drop back to the ground and turned to face the direction of the caller.
“Captain, we’ve had a report of a large group of Australian troops surrendering just north of Tan Tui…!” The approaching junior officer was an army lieutenant – one from Yanagisawa’s own unit. “The report I have indicates at least two platoons, possibly more. Major Hasegawa has requested an English-speaking officer be on hand to receive them and conduct initial interrogations.”
“There is no one else who can do this, Taro-Chan?” The captain snapped, giving an exaggerated sigh of frustration.
“I’m sorry, sir… the major was very particular, and you’re the only officer we have this side of the bay at the moment.”
“Sir, I’m being summoned on an urgent matter…” Yanagisawa began, explaining the situation to Reuters in English.
“Orders are orders, captain,” the Reichsmarschall accepted with exaggerated grace, nodding sagely. “I understand of course. Please… don’t let me keep you from your duties…”
“My orders are to escort you at all times…”
“Surely there’s little that can happen to me while I’m aboard this ship,” Reuters pointed out in a relaxed, logical tone. “Your guards can assist me, can the not? And I’ve no doubt they know not to let me get into any trouble… I’d be more than happy to wait here for you to return… or you can simply order your driver to take me back to HQ when I’m done and I can wait for you there, if you’d prefer…?”
The captain paused for a long moment, clearly torn between his duties keeping an eye on the German officer and his new order to attend to these surrendering Australians. In the end, the more immediate situation won out. As much as he instinctively mistrusted this old man, the German was ultimately correct: the guards knew not to allow anyone near the ship’s cargo, and there was no way they would take orders to the contrary from a gaijin, no matter what rank the man supposedly held.
“The driver will take you back when you are done, sir… as you suggest…” he decided finally with another, softer sigh of apprehensive resignation. “I trust you will keep to the task at hand and not delay your return for any reason…” he added, eyes narrowing slightly as he decided a vague warning might be in order. “I should hate for anything to happen to you due to some misunderstanding…”
“Of course, captain… you have my word…”
With a single, formal bow of salute, Yanagisawa turned and stalked off with his lieutenant in tow, leaving Reuters to his own devices and stopping only to speak for a moment with the jeep’s driver, presumably appraising him of the situation and of his revised orders.
The Reichsmarschall released a long, low sigh of his own – one of outright, nervous relief – and turned back to the ladder, swallowing hard to steel his own fraying nerves and prepare himself for the difficult climb up to the ships deck, towering above.
“Difficult even for a fit soldier, you say?” He muttered angrily, hoisting himself up onto the first rung and grunting faintly with exertion. “Damn your eyes and damn your fit bloody soldiers too!” He growled, grunting again as he pushed himself onward up the ladder at slow but steady pace, his eyes never leaving the rail above him as he set them on the distant goal of that towering deck.
“The bloody thing’s stuck completely…!” Langdale called out angrily from the back of the Bedford truck, coated to the waist in the same dark, sloppy mud that had bogged the vehicle to its rear axles. “Nothing’s gonna move this bastard short of a bloody crane…!”
“Damn it…!” Donelson snapped softly as she, Lloyd and half a dozen other men in various uniforms, Detmers and Oetzel included, backed away from the side of the vehicle they’d been trying to push free, their lower legs similarly coated by the same soft, dark muck. “Of all the bloody things…!”
They’d headed out mid-morning, deciding to get away well ahead of the noon deadline for the Japanese ceasefire, in the hope that they would therefore have plenty of time in which to reach their destination on the peninsula’s south-western coast. That hope had lasted for perhaps the first two miles, at which point they’d encountered the first rushing, swollen creek too deep and too wide for their trucks to negotiate.
With no other alternative, they’d attempted the crossing with one vehicle and had almost made it across only to end up bogged to the axles in that soft, sinking mud on the opposite bank. No amount of effort exerted by those clustered about the Bedford had managed to break it free, and with not a single winch between any of the three vehicles, there appeared to be no other solution to their predicament.
“It looks a bit more solid over this side,” Lloyd ventured with dubious optimism, stamping his mud-encrusted boots against a section of river bank that seemed to squelch just a little less loudly than elsewhere. “Maybe if we had a good run at it rather than taking it slowly…?”
“Don’t see as we’ve much bloody choice,” she conceded with a shake of her head. They’d wasted an hour already in their futile attempts to free the vehicle, and in the last few minutes they’d heard the sounds of heavy gunfire rising
from somewhere off to the north-east, a clear indication that the ceasefire had well and truly come to an end. The track was set back from the coast at that point, something to be thankful for at that moment as they also heard the boom of naval gunfire from Japanese warships entering the bay, somewhere off to the east and much closer. Had they been stuck on an exposed section of beach, it might’ve been a very short journey indeed.
“Come on then…” Lloyd grumped, extending his arms as if to guide everyone else away from the main path through the fast-flowing creek and the muddy banks on either side. “Let’s get this all clear so we can have a bloody go…”
On the other side of the river – the direction from which they’d originally come – at least a dozen sick and/or wounded patients waited in silent suffering, either standing about, sitting on the hard ground or lying on stretchers as John and Victoria Watson walked about, checking one each of them and making sure they were all right. They’d been forced to offload from the lead truck prior to the crossing attempt, on the assumption that it was best there was no one in the cargo bed due to the small but significant danger that the vehicle might either be overturned or even swept away. They watched sullenly, almost as a group, as Lloyd forced his way back through the rushing water and headed for the nearer of the two remaining trucks.
He spent some time explaining his idea to the clearly-dubious driver, then headed to the back of that vehicle and proceeded to assist in moving the wounded men resting there off to one side of the damp track in anticipation of a second crossing attempt.
With this accomplished, he gallantly backed his own idea by climbing into the cab beside the waiting driver and fastening the seat belt across his lap as tightly as he was able. The big GMC 2½-tonner started with a cough and a grumble, and settled into the steady, slightly uneven burble of a diesel engine, the man behind the wheel giving it a few moments to warm up before gunning it experimentally in preparation for his run at the creek. Reversing back a few yards to provide more of a run up, the driver slotted it into gear and surged forward, taking care not to dump the clutch so quickly as to lose traction.
He hit the creek at perhaps twenty miles per hour, not a great speed but ultimately sufficient for a vehicle with such substantial mass. A huge wall of water sprayed up ahead of the nose, splashing down across the hood and windshield and inundating the cab itself. The diesel itself carried on regardless however, fitted as it was with a quite effective snorkel that sat at roof height atop a long, cast-iron pipe leading back into the engine’s air intake.
The wall of water was pushed to either side before it, slowing the GMC to a crawl and slewing it wildly to one side, but it held on in the end and trundled smartly across the opposite bank, sinking noticeably into the mud but ultimately possessed of enough remaining momentum to carry the truck through and out onto the firmer surface of the track on the other side. A subdued cheer rose up from those standing about as Lloyd emerged from the cab, standing on the running board and giving a triumphant fist-pump over his head.
With the concept now proven effective, the last truck, another Bedford, made it across in similar rushed fashion, also making it clear on the other side without any further fuss just a few moments later. The decision still remained however as to how to deal with the predicament of the remaining bogged vehicle, still stuck fast and not likely to be going anywhere soon.
“We’ve no rope anywhere…?” Eileen exclaimed in angry exasperation, climbing down following a search of the GMC’s cab. “None anywhere in any of these bloody trucks…?”
“Not a bloody skerrick,” Lloyd growled, dropping from the cargo bed and similarly frustrated as their last chance of freeing their stricken truck quickly evaporated.
“We’ll need to leave it then,” she snapped angrily, not liking the idea but unable to see any other viable alternative. “We’ll get the wounded into the two remaining trucks as best we can and the rest of us can bloody-well slog it out on foot; we’ve got nearly twelve hours left to make our destination.”
“And, of course, you intend to walk rather than ride in one of the bloody trucks,” he presumed with a faintly sour expression.
“There’s nary enough room for the invalids as it is,” Eileen sighed, softening a little over the clearly protective tone in his voice, “and I think you’ll agree; I don’t mind a bit of a stroll here and there either. I’m a big girl now, ‘dad’,” she added, managing a faint, wistful smile. “I appreciate the concern, but I can carry a pack and shoot a gun well enough: there’s a lot of those poor buggers that need a ride a bloody site more than I do!”
“All that gear you store in your head is vital to the Allied war effort!” Lloyd pointed out, referring to her well-known photographic memory. Picking up the change in her tone, he added quickly: “This isn’t some misguided, half-arsed attempt at chivalry…” The statement was at least a partial lie, and both knew it, but the fact that Eileen’s eidetic memory was also a resource they couldn’t afford to lose was accurate all the same. “You get more and more like Max every day!”
“There’s no need for insults,” she grinned in return, the conversation back on safer ground. “Sure you’re not just worried some slip of a girl might beat you on this wee walk now?”
“Says the marathon runner…” Lloyd observed quietly, giving a dry grin of his own.
“Fuckin’ squeezer…!” Langdale sniped from behind as he wandered up, having overheard the last part of the conversation. “Harden up…!”
“You can get stuffed as well,” Lloyd fired back over his shoulder, still grinning. “I wouldn’t be saying too much with your little bloody legs: twice as many steps as the rest of us to get anywhere.”
“I’ll be takin’ bugger all steps, mate…” came the cocky reply as Langdale sauntered past, rifle resting casually over one shoulder. “Picked out a nice little spot above the cargo area of the Bedford where I can park meself; don’t fancy a walk all that much…”
“You oughta talk to a bloody lawyer when we get home!” Lloyd suggested with a malicious grin. “Sue the bloody council for building the footpath too close to yer arse…!”
He received no reply save for a casually waved middle finger, extended over Langdale’s unencumbered left shoulder as the SAS sergeant wandered off toward the waiting Bedford, displaying not a care in the world.
“What’s it like on that planet you two live on…?” Eileen asked with a faint smile, almost feeling a little envious of the devil-may-care attitude to adversity the pair generally appeared to display most of the time.
“The horror… the horror…!” Lloyd cried hoarsely, lifting clawed hands in supplication and doing his best Marlon Brando as she burst into a moment of tension-relieving laughter.
Detmers, Oetzel and the rest of the Kriegsmarine sailors they’d brought with them had been left at a loose end for a few moments as the squad of Australian soldiers that were their escorts moved off to assist in the loading of the wounded into the remaining two working trucks. It was a tight and uncomfortable squeeze for most, with far too many crammed into each cargo bed, and some of the more mobile forced to cling precariously to the wooden slats that formed the raised sides of each vehicle’s rear. The German officers present had all eventually joined in, volunteering their help with moving the injured, leaving just a few of their colleagues standing about to one side of the track, generally ignored during the urgent preparations for a new departure.
Standing a few yards back even from the rest of his own group, Seaman Bremer glared on at the Australians around him and at his own officers: men who’d insulted and humiliated him and – more to the point – who’d also betrayed the Führer and the Fatherland itself by consorting with the enemy. No matter what they told him… no matter what so-called evidence they threw in his face… he knew, as only a fanatic could, that there was only one true course a soldier of Deutschland could take. Choosing his moment perfectly, Bremer took a few careful, tentative steps back toward the surrounding treeline, then turned and
slipped quietly into the jungle, disappearing within seconds behind the dense palms and scrubby undergrowth.
Reuters had all but exhausted himself completely by the time he’d managed to reach the top of the ladder and drag himself and onto the deck of the Kormoran. Leaning against the railing, he wheezed in a few deep, desperately-needed lungfuls of air and cast a shrewd eye about, taking in the surrounding environment and silently trying to remind himself that he was in fact as young as he ‘used to be’. From his position amidships, not far forward from the towering bulk of the bridge and the ship’s main superstructure, he could clearly see two guards standing together near the steps down to the main cargo hold, where he knew the device was being stored.
Slipping his right hand slowly – almost unconsciously – into the side pocket of his jacket, Reuters took another long, careful look around, this time concentrating on the rear of the ship and the surrounding area. He could see another guard posted toward the stern, but it was clear the man would not be able to see his colleagues forward due to the obstruction of the bridge and ship’s upperworks. It was also clear that their position, many feet above the ground, was completely hidden from any prying eyes that might care to look upward from immediately below; something Reuters had been counting on from the outset.
With one final, deep, never-settling breath, he pushed away from the railing and sauntered along the deck as casually as he was able toward the open hatches of the main hold and the pair of guards standing close by. As he drew nearer, he veered off course slightly and bent to collect the discarded briefcase he’d tossed to the deck in anger and frustration the day before. Closing the soft-leather satchel and straightening it as bet he could, he tucked it under his left arm and continued to walk slowly toward the guards, neither of which had turned in his direction.
The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3) Page 77